IN WHICH I AM A CAPTIVE
“WHAT ho! Jean Lafitte,” said I at length, rousing myself from the old habit of reverie, of which I had chiefest dread; “and you, Henri L’Olonnois, scourges of the main, both of you, listen! I have a plan to put before you, my hearties.”
“Say on, Sirrah!” rejoined the younger pirate, so promptly and so gravely that again I had much to do to refrain from sudden mirth.
“Why then, look ye,” I continued. “The sun is sinking beneath the wave, and the good ship rides steady at her anchor. Meantime men must eat! and yonder castle amid the forest offers booty. What say ye if we pass within the wood, and see what we may find of worth to souls bold as ours?”
“’Tis well!” answered L’Olonnois; and I could see assent in Lafitte’s eyes. In truth I could discover no great preparations for a long voyage in the open hold of the Sea Rover, and doubted not that both captain and crew by this time were hungry. Odd crumbs of crackers and an empty sardine can might be all very well at the edge of the village of Pausaukee (I judged they could have come no greater distance, some twelve or fifteen miles); but they do not serve for so long a journey as lies between Pausaukee and the Spanish Main.
They rose as I did, and we passed beyond the clump of tall birches, along the edge of my mowing meadow, and through the gate which closes my woodland path—to me the loveliest of all wood-trails, so gentle and so silent is it always, and so fringed, seasonably, with ferns and flowers. Thus, presently, we saw the blue smoke rising above my lodge, betokening to me that my Japanese factotum, Hiroshimi, now had my dinner under way.
To me, it was my customary abode, my home these three years; but they beside me saw not the rambling expanse of my leisurely log mansion. They noted not the overhanging gables, the lattices of native wood. To them, yonder lay a castle in a foreign land. Here was moat and wall, then a portcullis, and gratings warded these narrow portals against fire of musketoon. My pet swallows’ nest, demure above my door, to them offered the aspect of a culverin’s mouth; and, as now, I made my customary approach-call, by which I heralded my return from any excursion on the stream of an evening, I could swear these invaders looked for naught less than a swarm of archers springing to the walls, and the hoarse answer of my men-at-arms back of each guarded portal. Such is the power of youthful dreaming, such the residuary heritage of days of high emprise, when life was full of blood and wine and love, and savored not so wholly of dull commonplace!
But indeed, (or so I presume; for at the moment my own imagination swept on with theirs) none manned the walls or rattled the chains of gate and bridge. The saffron Hiroshimi opened the screen door before us, showing no surprise or interest in my strange companions. Thus we made easy conquest of our castle. As we entered, there lay before us, lighted softly by the subdued twilight which filtered through the surrounding grove, the interior of that home which in three years I had learned much to love, lonely as it was. Here I now dwelt most of the time, leaving behind me, as though shut off by a closed door, the busy scenes of an active and successful life. (I presume I may fairly speak thus of myself, since there is no one else to speak.)
My pirate companions, suddenly grown shy, stood silent for a moment, for the time rather at a loss to carry on the play which had been easier in the open. I heard Jimmy draw a long breath. He was first to remove his hat. But his companion was quicker to regain his poise, although for a moment he forgot his pirate speech. “Gee!” said he. “Ain’t this great!”
I doubt if any praise I ever heard in my life pleased me more than this frank comment; no, not even the kind word and hand-clasp of old Judge Henderson, what time I won my first cause at law. For this that lay about me was what I had chosen for my life to-day. I had preferred this to the career into which my father’s restless ambition had plunged me almost as soon as I had emerged from my college and my law-school—a career which my own restless ambition had found sufficient until that final break with Helena Emory, which occurred soon after the time when my father died; when the news went out that I, his heir, was left with but a shrunken fortune, and with many debts to pay; news which I, myself, had promulgated for reasons of my own. After that, called foolish by all my friends, lamented by members of my family, forgotten, as I fancy, by most who knew me, I had retired to this lodge in the wilderness. Here, grown suddenly resentful of a life hitherto wasted in money-getting alone, I had resolved to spend the remainder of my days, as beseemed a student and a philosopher. Having read Weininger and other philosophers, I was convinced that woman was the lowest and most unworthy thing in the scale of created things, a thing quite beneath the attention of a thinking man.