I HAD myself quite forgotten my appointed hour of eleven, feeling so sure that it would not be remembered, as of covenant, by the party of the second part, so to speak, and was sitting on the forward deck looking out over the interesting pictures of the landscape that lay about us. It was the morning of a Sabbath, and a Sabbath calm lay all about us—silence, and hush, and arrested action. The sun itself, warm at a time when soon the breezes must have been chill at my northern home, was veiled in a soft and tender mist, which brought into yet lower tones the pale greens and grays of the southern forest which came close to the bayou’s edge. The forest about us not yet fallen before the devastating northern lumbermen—men such as my father had been, who cared nothing for a tree or a country save as it might come to cash—was in part cypress, in part cottonwood, but on the ridge were many oaks, and over all hung the soft gray Spanish moss. The bayou itself, once the river, but now released from all the river’s troubling duties, held its unceasing calm, fitted the complete retirement of the spot, and scarce a ripple broke it anywhere. Over it, on ahead, now and then passed a long-legged white crane, bound for some distant and inaccessible swamp; all things fitting perfectly into this quiet Sabbath picture.
My cigar was excellent, I had my copy of Epictetus at hand, and all seemed well with the world save one thing. Here, at hand, was everything man could ask, all comforts, many luxuries; and I knew, though Helena did not, that the safe increase of my fortune—that fortune which some had called tainted, and which I myself valued little, soon as I had helped increase it by the exercise of my profession—was quite enough to maintain equal comfort or luxury for us all our lives. But she was obstinate, and so was I. She would not say whether she loved Cal Davidson, and I would never undeceive her as to my supposed poverty. Why, the very fact that she had dismissed me when she thought my fortune gone—that, alone, should have proved her unworthy of a man’s second thought. Therefore, ergo, hence, and consequently, I could not have been a man; for I swear I was giving her a second thought, and a thousandth; until I rebelled at a weakness that could not put a mere woman out of mind.
And then, I slowly turned my head, and saw her standing on the after deck. Her footfall was not audible on the rubber deck-mats, and she had not spoken. I resolved, as soon as I had leisure, to ask some scientific friends to explain how it was possible that with no sound or other appeal to any of the sensorial nerves, I could, at a distance of seventy-five feet, become conscious of the presence of a person no more than five feet five, who had not spoken a word, and was standing idly looking out over the ship’s rail, in quite the opposite direction from that in which I sat. And then the ship’s clock struck six bells, and recalled the appointment at eleven. Hastily I dropped Epictetus and my cigar, and hurried aft.
“Good morning again, Helena,” said I.
She stood looking on out over the water for a time, but, at length, turned toward me, just a finger up as to stifle a yawn. “Really,” said she, “while I am hardly so situated that I can well escape it or resent it, it does seem to me that you might well be just a trifle less familiar. Why not ‘Miss Emory’?”
“Because, Helena, I like ‘Helena’ better.”
A slow anger came into her eyes. She beat a swift foot on the deck.
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t stamp with your feet. It reminds me of a Belgian hare, and I do not like them, potted or caged.”
“I might as well be one,” she broke out, “as well be one, caged here as we are, and insulted by a—a——”
“A ruthless buccaneer——”