IN WHICH WE BURN ALL BRIDGES
"But, Monsieur," began Jean, a few moments later, as he entered from
the alley door.
"_Eh bien?_ What then, Jean?" I demanded hastily, already leading
Helena toward the door.
"This! This!" And he waved in my face a copy of the same paper which
had lain on our table. "The streets are full of it. And I see, I
behold--I recognize! It is Mademoiselle--that is to be Madame!"
My face flushed hotly. "As I hope, Jean." That was all I said. "Now,
please, out of our way. Is the taxi there?"
He stepped aside. I heard his voice, eager, apologetic, but knew that
now no time must be lost. Vague sounds of voices came to us from the
main room of the cafe, ordinarily so quiet. I felt, rather than knew,
that soon the news would be about town. The throb of the taxi was
music to my ears when I found it in the dark.
"Stop for nothing," said I to the driver, as I closed the door. "Slip
K, on the river-front, below the warehouses. Stop at the car tracks
where they turn. And go fast--I must catch a boat that is just
leaving."
"What boat--from there--are you sure, sir?" asked he, touching his
cap.
"Of course I'm sure. Go on! Don't stop to talk, man!"
He made no answer to this, but turned to his wheel. We shot out into
Royal Street, turned down it, spun into a narrow way past the old
Cathedral, crossed Jackson Square in the full moonlight, passed the
Old Market, and threaded dark and dirty thoroughfares parallel to the
river. None sought to stay us, though many paused in the gently
squalid life of that section, to look after our churning car, a thing
not usual there so far from depot or usual landing place.
Helena sat silent, looking fixedly ahead through the glass at the
driver's back; nor did I find words myself. In truth, I was as one now
carried forward on the wings of adventure itself, with small plans,
and no duty beyond taking each situation as it might later come. A
dull feeling that I had sinned beyond forgiveness came upon me, a
conviction that my brutality to one thus innocent and tender had
passed all limits of atonement. She could never forgive me now, I
felt; and what was almost as intolerable in the reflection, I could
not forgive myself, could not find any specious argument longer to
justify myself in thus harrying the sensibilities of a woman such as
this one who now sat beside me in this mad midnight errand, proud,
pale and silent. Slowly I sought to adjust myself to the thought of
defeat, to the feeling that my presumption now had o'er-leaped itself.
Yes, I must say good-by to her, must release her; and this time, as I
well knew, forever.
But, though I turned toward her half a dozen times in these few
minutes, she made no response to what she must have known was my
demand upon her attention. I gathered her gloves for her, and her
flowers, but she only took them, her lips parting in courtesy, not in
warmth, and no sound came to my ears, straining always to hear her
voice, a pleasant sound in a world of discords ever. I even touched
her arm, suddenly, impulsively. "Helena!" But she, not knowing that I
meant to give her liberty, though over a dead heart, shrank as though
I had added physical insult to my verbal taunts. Anyway I turned, I
was fast in the net of circumstance, fanged by the springs of
misapprehension.... Well, then, but one thing remained. She had said
it was a man's place to fight, and so now it would be! I must go on,
and take my punishment until justice had been done. Justice and my own
success I no longer confused in my own mind; but in my soul was the
grim resolution that justice should first be done to one human soul,
even though that chanced to be my own. After that, I should get her
again in the hands of her friends and myself; indeed, disappear beyond
all seeking, in parts of the world best known to myself. If I myself
were fair, why should not fairness as well be given to me?
And with no more than this established, and nothing definite in plan,
either, for the present, I mechanically opened the door of the taxi
for her when the driver pulled up and bent a querying face about to
ask whether or not we now were opposite Slip K. I noted that he did
not at once drive away. Evidently he sat for some moments gazing after
us as we disappeared in the gloom of the river-front. His tale, as I
afterward learned, enabled the morning papers to print a conclusive
story describing the abduction of Miss Emory and her undoubted
retention on the stolen yacht, which, after lying at or near New
Orleans, some time that night, once more mysteriously had
disappeared.
No doubt remained, according to this new story, that the supplies put
aboard at Slip K by Lavallier and Thibodeau had gone to this very
craft, the stolen yacht! With this came many wild and confusing
accounts and descriptions, including a passionate interview with Mr.
Calvin Davidson, of New York, who had announced his intention of
overhauling these ruffians, at any cost whatsoever; and much counsel
to the city officials, mingled with the bosom-beating of one
enterprising journal which declared it had put in commission a yacht
of its own, under charge of two of its ablest reporters, who had
instructions to take up the chase and to remain out until the mystery
had been solved and this beautiful young woman had been rescued from
her horrible situation and restored again to her home. There were more
portraits of Helena--furnished, most like, from Cal Davidson's
collection; one also of Aunt Lucinda (from a photograph of far earlier
days); and lastly, a half-page portrait of myself, the unnamed ruffian
who was the undoubted leader in this abduction--the portrait being
drawn by a staff artist "from description of eye-witnesses." As I
later saw this portrait I rejoiced that I was long ignorant of its
existence: and had I known that night that yonder chauffeur to whom I
had given undue largess had such treason as that portrait in his soul,
I know not what I might have done with him.
But of this misinformation, of course, I was at the time ignorant, as
was all the city ignorant of the truth. What happened was otherwise,
nor was the truth learned even by the great metropolitan journals of
the North, which now recognized the existence of a "big story", and
added their keener noses to the trail. The great fact overlooked by
them all was that they pursued no criminal, but a man of education, I
may fairly say of brains.
In my law practise many baffling cases came to me, because I most
liked, precisely, that sort of case. Once, for instance, a family of
my town well-nigh was disrupted by a series of anonymous letters, done
in typewriting, accusing an honorable man of dishonorable conduct. The
letters left the man's wife in an agony of loyalty and suspicion
alike. He brought me the letters, and to me the case was simple from
the start. I got the repair slips of a certain typewriter house, and
compared them until I found a machine with a bent letter M--knowing
as I did that each machine has its own individuality as ineradicable
and as inescapable as any personal handwriting. So at last I went to a
small outlying city, and going into a business house there asked to
see the stenographer in private. "My dear Miss ----," I said to her,
"why do you persist in sending these letters to Mr. ----?" I laid them
before her, and she wept and confessed, very naturally.
That was merely jealousy of a discharged employee; and it was easy as
a case--easier I always thought, than the probate case I won over a
contested signature charge filed by certain heirs under a will. In
this case I merely went to the dead man's earlier home and learned his
history. Time out of mind he, a thrifty and respected German, had held
some petty county office or other; and by going over old county
warrants and receipts signed in forty years by my man, I discovered
what I already knew--that a man's signature changes many times during
his life, especially if he begins life as an uncultured immigrant and
advances to a fair business success later in his life: so that his
later signatures on records proved his signature in his will.
Again, liking these simple mysteries, I had long ago learned to laugh
at the old and foolish assertion that murder will out, that not the
most skilful criminal can long conceal a capital crime. It is not
true. No one knows how many murders and other crimes go unsolved or
even unknown. The trouble with murderers, as I knew well enough, was
that they lacked mentality. And often I said to myself that were it in
my heart to kill a man, I assuredly could do so, and all my life
escape unsuspected of the crime.
It may be that my fondness for these less obvious things in the law
had rendered me a trifle different from my fellow men. I could never
approach any question in life without wanting to go all about it and
to the bottom and top, like a cooper with his barrel. I was thus
actuated, without doubt, in my relations years since with Helena
Emory--I knew the shrewdness and accuracy of my own trained mind. I
confess I exulted in the infallible, relentless logic of my mind, a
mind able and well trained, especially well trained in reason and
argument. So, when I put the one great brief of all my life before
Helena, my splendid argument why should she love me, I did so, at
first, in the conviction that it must be convincing. Had I not myself
worked it out in each detail, had not my calm, cool, accurate reason
guarded each portal? Was it, indeed, not a perfect brief--that one I
held in my first lost case--the lost case which sent me out of my
profession, left me a stranded hulk of a man?
But then, when these two pirate youngsters had found me and touched me
with the living point of some new flame of life, so that I knew a vast
world existed beyond the nature of the intellect, the old ways clung
to me, after all. Even as I swore to lay hold on youth and on
adventure (and on love, if, in sooth, that might be for me now), I
could not fight as yet wholly bare of the old weapons that had so long
fitted my hand. So, even on that very morning when we set forth from
my farm to be pirates, my mind ran back to its old cunning, and I
recalled my earlier boast to myself that if I ever cared to be a
criminal I knew I could be able to cover my tracks.
Those writing-folk, therefore, who now wasted thousands of dollars in
pursuit of trace and trail of Black Bart, wealthy ex-lawyer, knew
nothing of their man, and guessed nothing of his caliber or of his
methods. They even failed to look in plain sight for their trail
maker. And having done so, they forgot that water leaves no trail. Yet
that simple thought had come to my mind as I had sat at breakfast in
my own house, some weeks before this time! Even then I had planned all
this.
Absorbed as I had been in this pursuit of Helena, baffled as I had
been by her, unhappy as I now was over her own unhappiness, fierce as
was my love for her, still and notwithstanding, some trace of my old
self clung to me even now when, her hand on my arm, I guided Helena in
silence over the creaking planks of the dock, and saw, at last, dim
beyond the edge, the boom of the Mississippi's tawny flood, rolling on
and onward to the sea. Here was a task, a problem, a chase, an
endeavor, an adventure! To it, I was impelled by my old training; into
it I was thrust by all these fevers of the blood. Even though she did
not love me, she was woman ... in the dark air of night, it seemed to
me, I could smell the faint maddening fragrance of her hair.... No. It
was too late! I would not release her. I would go on, now!
And with this resolution, formed when I caught sight of the passing
flood, I found a sudden peace and calm, and so knew that I was fit for
my adventure as yon other boy, L'Olonnois, was for his.
I paused at the edge of the wharf, at the side of our boat. We still
were arm in arm, still silent, though she must have felt the beating
of my heart.
"Helena," I whispered, "yonder, one step, and your parole is over.
Here it is not. That boat, just astern, is the one in which Cal
Davidson chased us all the way from Natchez, in which I chased him all
the way from Dubuque. His men do not know we are here, nor does he as
yet. Now, what is it that you wish to do?"
She stood silent for some time, tightening her wrap at the throat
against the river damp, and made no answer, though her gaze took in
the dark hull of the low-lying craft made fast below us. When at last:
"One thing," she began, "I will not do."
"What is it?" I asked. We spoke low, but I well knew my men were aware
of our coming.
"I shall ask no favor of you." And as she spoke, she stepped lightly
on the rubbered deck of the _Belle Helene_.
"Halt! Who goes there?" called the hoarse voice of Jean Lafitte, the
faithful: and I knew the joy of the commander feeling that loyalty is
his.
"'Tis I, Black Bart," I answered, full and clear. "Cast off, my
friends!"
At once the _Belle Helene_ was full of activity. Peterson I met at
the wheel. I heard the bells jangle below. I saw Jean, active as a
cat, ready at the mooring-stub, waiting for the line to ease. Then
with my own hand I threw on every light of the _Belle Helene_, so that
she blazed, in the power of six thousand candles, search-light and
all: so that what had been a passing web of gloom now became a
rippling river. The warehouses started into light and shade, the
shadows of the wharf fled, the decks of the grimy craft alongside
became open of all their secrets.
And now, revealed full in the flood of light as she stood at the side
portal, Helena did what I had not planned. Freed of her parole she
was--and she had asked no favor of me--so she had right to make
attempt to escape; and I gently stepped before her even as Jean cast
off and sprang aboard: and as I heard L'Olonnois' voice imperatively
demanding silence of the pounding at the after cabin door. All at
once, I heard what Helena heard--the rattle of wheels on the stone
flagging of the street beyond. And then I saw her fling back her cloak
and stand with cupped hands. Her voice was high, clear and unwavering,
such voice as a pirate's bride should have, fearless and bold.
"Ahoy, there! Help! Help!" she cried.
Some sort of shout came from the street, we knew not from whom. A
noise of an opening hatch came from the _Sea Rover_ at our stern, and
a man's tousled head came into view.
"What's goin' on here," he demanded, as quaveringly as querulously.
I made no answer, but saw our bows crawl out and away, felt the sob of
the screws, the arm of the river also, and knew a vast and pleasing
content with life.
"L'Olonnois!" I called through the megaphone.
"Aye, aye, Sir!" I heard his piping rejoinder.
"Cast loose the stern-chaser and fire her at yon varlet if he makes a
move." I knew our deck cannon was loaded with nothing more deadly than
newspapers, but I also knew that valor feeds on action. Not that I had
given orders to fire on the world in general. So, I confess, I was
somewhat surprised, soon after the shout of approval which greeted my
command, to hear the air rent by the astonishing reverberation of our
Long Tom, which rolled like thunder all along the river-front,
breaking into a thousand echoes in the night.
I heard the patter of feet along the deck, and had sight of Jean
Lafitte tugging at a halyard. Not content with our defiance of law and
order, he must needs break out the Jolly Rover with its skull and
cross-bones. And as we swung swiftly out into midstream, ablaze in
light from bow to stern, ghostlike in our swiftness and the silence of
our splendid engines, I had reason to understand all the descriptive
writing which, as I later learned, greeted the defiant departure of
this pirate craft and its ruffian crew. Thus I bade all the world come
and take from me what I had taken for my own.
I stepped to the wheel with Peterson, expecting to find him pale in
consternation. To my surprise he was calm, save for a new glitter in
his eye.
"There's nothing on the river can touch her," said he, as he picked up
his first channel light and called for more speed. "Let 'em come!"
A sudden recklessness had caught us all, it seemed, the old spirit of
lawless man breaking the leash of custom. I shared it--with exultation
I knew I shared it with these others. The lust of youth for adventure
held us all, and the years were as naught.
I turned now to find Helena, and met L'Olonnois, his face beaming.
"Wasn't that a peach of a shot?" said he. "It would of blew yon varlet
out of the water, if I'd had anything to load with except just them
marbles. Are you looking for Auntie Helen? She has just went below."