“And as for Helena, I can look her in the face, and she can me, now. And—will you telephone to New Iberia for a minister—at once—for this evening train? And will you tell Edouard to have his man lay out his best evening clothes for me—tell him I’ll trade him these of my cook’s for them—and a suit of traveling clothes? Because, oh! fellow varlet——” (I paused here; we both did; for a mocker just now broke into an extraordinary burst of song, so sweet, so throbbingly sweet, that we could not help but listen, both of us being lovers)....
“What were you saying, old man?” Cal Davidson asked after a while, musingly, as one awakening.... “Some bird, what?”
... “Because, to-night,” I answered, “I am going to marry my fair captive, yon heartless jade, Helena. I’ve loved her always, rich or poor, and she loves me, rich or poor. And we shall live happy ever after. And may God bless us, and all true lovers!”
“Amen!” I heard some one say; and have often wondered whether it was yon varlet, the mocking-bird, or Cal Davidson himself, who spoke.... I looked around for Partial. He had followed Helena.
FOOTNOTE:
[B] (The words in Helena’s note, addressed to Henry Francis Drake, Esquire, were, as I have said, but two: “Yes—Now”. That was why I was married that evening. It was curious about the wedding ring, for that I would not borrow; so an old negro blacksmith took a gold ring Edouard gave me, one found years ago by a Cajun treasure hunter in some one of the few successful hunts for the treasure of Jean Lafitte; and into this, in place of the gem long since missing, he clasped my pearl, the one we got on the river far in the north; the great pearl later known as the largest and most brilliant ever found in fresh water. It was I who named it the “Belle Helène”. So that our ring pleased all but L’Olonnois and Jean Lafitte. These two pirates had set at work that very afternoon, with ’Polyte (by Edouard’s consent) and dug behind the smoke-house. Wonderful enough, they did find old bricks, enclosing a sort of hollow cavity, bricks of an ancient day; and though they got nothing else (’Polyte said he knew who had beaten them to this treasure—it was Achilles Dufrayne of Calcasieu, curse him!) they both explained how easy it would be to deceive the fair captive into thinking we really had found the ring’s setting as well as the ring itself, in a pirate treasure-box. I would not do that, on the ground that already I had deceived the fair captive quite enough.... But, though yon varlet, my friend dear old Cal Davidson, spoke rather freely about his honeymoon, and all that, I can not do so of mine with Helena.... I did not know that I could again be so happy. Often I have wished I were a romantic man, like dear old Cal.... I fear my book on the mosquitoes of North America never will be written now.—H. F. D.)
THE END
Transcriber's Note
Minor typographic errors in spelling and punctuation have been corrected without note.
The Table of Contents has been made consistent with the chapter headers, as follows--"In Which I Have a Polite Conversation" amended to "In Which I Have Polite Conversation"; "In Which Is Certain Conversation" amended to "In Which Is Certain Polite Conversation".