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The Lady and the Pirate, a novel by Emerson Hough |
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Chapter 39. In Which Are Sealed Orders |
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_ CHAPTER XXXIX. IN WHICH ARE SEALED ORDERS She stood before me for just a moment undecided. The twilight was coming and the room was dim. "Auntie will miss me," said she, "after a time." "I have missed you all the time," was my reply. "But you sent for me?" "Of course I did. Doesn't this look as though I had?" "I don't quite understand----" "Shall I call Jimmy to explain? He called you a heartless jade----" "The little imp! How dare he!" "--As in fact all of our brotherhood has come to call you: 'The heartless jade.'" "I made fudges for him! And the little wretch told me I wasn't playing the game! What did he mean? Oh, Harry, I wouldn't have come if I hadn't wanted to play the game fairly. I'm sorry for what I said." She spoke now suddenly, impulsively. "What was it you said?" "When I said--when I called you--a coward. I didn't mean it." "You said it." "But not the way you thought. I only meant, you took an unfair advantage of a girl, running off with her, this way, and giving her no chance to--to get away. But now you do give me a chance--you meant to, all along--and in every way, as I've just done telling auntie, you've been perfectly fine, perfectly splendid, perfectly bully, too! It has been a hard place for a man, too, but--Harry, dear boy, I'll have to say it, you've been some considerable gentleman through it all! There now!" And she stood, aloof, agitated, very likely flushed, though I could not tell in the dark. "Thank you, Helena," I said. "And as to your being any other sort of a coward--that you had physical fear--that you wouldn't do a man's part--why, I never did mean that at all. How could I? And if I had--why, even Auntie Lucinda said your going out after that Chinaman the other night was heroic--even if he couldn't have cooked a bit!--and you know Auntie Lucinda has always been against you." "Yes, and you both called me a coward, because I quit my law office and ran away from misfortune." "Yes, we did. And I meant that, too! I say it now to your face, Harry. But maybe I don't know all about that----" "Maybe not." "Well, I wouldn't want to be unjust, of course, but I don't think a man ought to throw away his life. You're young. You could start over again, and you ought to have tried. Your father made his own money, and so did my father--why, look at the Sally M. mine, that has given me my own fortune. Do you suppose that grew on a bush to be shaken off? So why couldn't you go out in the same way and do something in the world--I don't mean just make money, you know, but do something? That's what a girl likes. And you were able enough. You are young and strong, and you have your education; and I've heard my father say, before he died--and other men agreed with him--that you were the best lawyer at our bar, and that you had an extraordinary mind, and a clear sense of justice, and, and----" "Go on. Did he say that?" "Yes." "But with all my fine qualities of mind and heart," said I, "I lost all when I lost my money!" "What do you mean?" "I'll tell you what I mean--you dropped me because you thought me poor. Well, I don't blame you. It takes money to live, and you deserved all that the world can give. I don't blame you. There were other men in the world for you. The trouble with me was that there was no other woman in the world for me. All our trouble--all our many meetings and partings--have come out of those two facts." "Did you think that of me?" she asked at length, slowly. I suppose she was pale, but I could not see. "I certainly did. How could I think anything else?" "Harry!" she half whispered. "Why, Harry, Harry!" "Admit that you did!" I exclaimed bitterly, "and let me start from that as a premise. Listen! If you were a man, and loved a woman, and she chucked you when you lost your money, do you think you'd break your neck to make any more success in the world after that? Why should you? Why does a man work? It's for a home, for the sake of power, and mostly for the sake of the game." "Yes." "And I could play that game--I can play it now, and win at it, any time I like. I quit it not because I was afraid of the game--it's the easiest thing in the world to make money, if that's all you really want to do. That's all your father wanted, or mine, and it was easy. I can play that game. But why? Ah! if it were to win a quiet home, the woman I loved, independence, usefulness, contentment,--yes! But when all those stakes were out of the game, Helena, I didn't care to play it any more. And that was why you thought I ran away. I did run away--from myself, and you." She was silent now, and perhaps paler--I could not see. "--But wherever I have gone, Helena, all over the world, I've found those two people there ahead of me, and I couldn't escape them--myself, and you!" "Did you think that of me, Harry?" She half whispered once more. "Yes, I did. And did you think that of me?" "Yes, I did. But I did not understand." "No. Like many a woman, you got cause and effect mixed up: and you never troubled yourself to get it straight. Let me tell you, unless two people can come to each other without compromises and without explanations and without reservations, they would better never come at all. I don't want you cheap, you oughtn't to want me cheap. So how can it end any way other than the way it has? If it was my loss of fortune that made you chuck me, I oughtn't ever to give you a second thought, for you wouldn't be worth it. The fact you did, and that I do, hasn't anything to do with it at all." "No." "And if you don't think me able and disposed to play a man's part in the world, you oughtn't to care a copper for me, that is plain, isn't it?" "Yes, quite plain." "And the fact that you did, and that you do, has nothing to do with it--nothing in the world, has it, Helena?" "No." She must have been very pale, though I could not tell. "Therefore, as logic shows us, my dear, and because we never did get our premises straight, and so never will get our conclusions straight, either--we don't belong together and never can come together, can we?" "No." I could barely hear her whisper. "No. And that is why, just before you came, I was trying to pull myself together and to advance as best an unhappy devil may, upon Chaos and the Dark! And that's all I see ahead, Helena, without you--Chaos and the Dark." "It was all you saw that night, in the little boat," she said after a time. "Yet you went?" "Oh, yes, but that was different." "Is this all, Harry?" she said, and moved toward the door. "Yes, my dear; it is all--but all the rest." Her color must have risen, for I saw dimly that she raised both her hands to her bosom, her throat. Thus the heartless jade stood, her head drooped, unable to meet the piercing gaze of my eagle eye. There came a faint scratching at the door, a little whimpering whine. "It is Partial, my dog, come after you," said I bitterly. "He knows you are here. He never has done that way for me. He loves you." "He knows you are here, and he loves you," said she. "That is why things come and scratch at doors where ruffians live." I flung open the door. "Partial," said I, "come in; and choose between us." As to the first part of my speech, the invitation to enter, Partial obeyed with a rush; as to the second, the admonition, he apparently could not obey at all. In his poor dumb brute affliction, lack of human speech, he stood, after saluting us both, alternately and equally, hesitant between us, wagging, whining and gazing, knowing full well somewhat was wrong between us, grieving over us, beseeching us--but certainly not choosing between us. "Give him time," said I hoarsely. "He loves you more, and is merely polite to me." "Give him time," said she bitterly. "He loves you more, and you don't deserve it." But Partial would not choose. "He wants us both, Helena!" said I at last. "He has wiped out logic, premises, conclusions, cause and effect, horse, cart and all! He wants us both! He wants a quiet home and independence, Helena, and usefulness, and contentment. Ah, my God!" She reached down and put a hand on his head, but he only looked from one to the other of us, unhappy. "Don't you love me, Helena?" I asked quietly, after a time. "For the sake of my dog, can you not love me?" She continued stroking the head of the agonized Partial.... And until, somewhat inarticulately, I had choked or spoken, and had caught her dark hair against my cheek and kissed her hair and stammered in her ear, and turned her face and kissed her eyes and her cheek and her lips many, many times, Partial held his peace and issued no decision.... At least, I did not hear him.... She was sobbing now, her head on my shoulder, as we sat on the locker seat, and Partial's head was on the cushion beside us, and he was silent and overjoyed, and tranquilly happy--seeing perhaps, that a quiet home would in the event be his, and that he was going to live happy ever after. And after I drew Helena's head closer to my face, I kissed her hair. "Do you love me, Helena?" I asked. "Only the truth now, in God's name!" "You know I do," she said, and I felt her arms about my neck. "Have you, always?" "I think so, yes. It seems always." "We have been cruel to each other." "Yes, are cruel now." "How now?" "You make me say I love you, and yet----" "You will marry me--right away, soon, Helena--as I am, poor, ragged, without a cent, only myself?" "Not here," she smiled. "At Edouard Manning's, at once, as soon as we get in?" "It is duress! I am in the power of a ruffian band! Is it fair? Are you sure I know my mind?" "I am sure only that I know my own! Tell me, what was in that note I carried, addressed to yon varlet Davidson?" "Sealed orders!" "And how does that affect me, Helena. Tell me--I know you love me, and you know that all the rest is small, to that; but as to that wedding part of it, Helena--what do you say?" She hesitated for an instant. "You want me to--come--to come with honor, as you do?" "Yes. I'll take any risk that means with you." "Will you take sealed orders, too?" "Yes." "Turn on the lights." I reached the switch, and an instant later a dozen high candle-power bulbs flooded the suite with light. With a little cry of dismay Helena sprang away, and stood at my shaving-glass, arranging her hair. Now and then she turned her face just enough to smile at me a little, her eyes dark, languid, heavy lidded, a faint shadow of blue beneath. And now and then her breast heaved, as though it were a sea late troubled by a storm gone by. "What will auntie say?" she sighed at last. "What will you say?" I replied. "Oh, brute, you shall not know! I must have some manner of revenge against a ruffian who has taken advantage of me while I was in his power!" "Ah, heartless jade!" "--So you shall wait until we are ashore. I will give you sealed orders----" "When?" "Now. And you shall open them at your friend's house--as soon as we are all settled and straightened after leaving the boat--as soon as----" "It looks as though it were as soon as you please, not when I please." "Harry, it is my revenge for the indignities you have heaped on me. Do you think a girl will submit to that meekly--to be browbeaten, abused, endangered as I have been! No, sir--sealed orders or none. I have only owned I loved you. So many girls have been mistaken about things when--when the moon, or a desert island or--or something has bewitched them. But I haven't said I would marry you, have I, ever?" "No. I don't care about that so much as the other; but I care a very, very great deal about it, too. You, too, are cruel. You are a heartless jade." "And you have been a cruel and ruthless pirate." "Tell me now!" "No." And she evaded me, and gained the door. "I must go. Oh, it's all a ruin now--Auntie'll be furious. And what shall I say?" "Give her sealed orders, and my love! And when do I get mine?" "In five minutes." She was gone.... And after some moments, rapt as I was at her late presence, which still seemed to fill the room like the fragrance, like the fragrance of her hair which still lingered in my senses, I looked about, sighing for that she was gone. Then I noted that our friend Partial had gone with her. "Fie! Partial, after all, you loved her more!" I said to myself. But in a few moments I heard a faint sound at my door. I opened. There stood Partial in the dusk, gravely wagging his tail, looking at me without moving his head. And I saw that he held daintily in his mouth a dainty note, addressed to me in the same handwriting as that on the note I had sent out from the heartless jade to yon varlet. And it was sealed, and marked with instructions for its opening.... "When You Two Varlets Meet." No more. "Peterson," said I, advancing to the forward deck, where I found him smoking, "I've been getting up some correspondence, since we'll be ashore by to-morrow noon----" "--I don't know as to that, Mr. Harry." "Well, I know about it. So, tell Williams that, even if he has to work all night, we must be moving as soon as it's light enough to see. I've got a very important message----" "By wireless, Mr. Harry?" chuckled the old man. "Yes, by wireless," (and I looked at Partial, who wagged his tail and smiled). "So I must get into Manning Island the first possible moment to-morrow. And Peterson, as we've had so good a run this trip, with no accident or misfortune of any kind, I don't know but I may make it a month or two extra pay--double--for you and Williams, and even John. And as to Willy, please don't fire him, Peterson, for his deserting the ship's cook the other night. In fact, I'm very glad, on the whole, he did. Give him double pay for doing it, Peterson!" "Ain't this the wonderful age!" remarked Peterson to a star which was rising over the misty marsh. "Especial, now, that wireless!" I only patted Partial on the head, and we smiled pleasantly and understandingly at each other. Of course, Peterson could not know what we knew. _ |
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