_ CHAPTER XXXVIII. IN WHICH IS AN ARMISTICE WITH FATE
"Black Bart!" said Jimmy. "Say, now----"
"Well, good mate," said I, and laid a hand on his curly fair head, "what shall I say?"
"Say nothin'," he remarked, dropping his voice. "Listen!"
"Yes?"
"We have held a council."
"Who has?"
"Why, me and Jean Lafitte and the heartless jade. I told her you sent us to her to bid her seek your presence."
"Jimmy! What on earth do you mean! That's precisely the last thing I would have done--I haven't done it. On the contrary----"
"I told her," he resumed calmly, "that when Black Bart, the pirut, spoke, he spoke to be obeyed. She said, 'I can't go,' and I said, 'You
gotta go.'"
"You, yourself, may now go and tell her that there has been a very bad mistake, Jimmy; and that she need not come."
"An' make her cry worse? I ain't goin' to do it!"
"Sir! This is mutiny!--But did she cry, Jimmy?"
"Yes. Awful. She said she was homesick. She ain't. I don't know what really is the matter. I ast Jean Lafitte, an' he said maybe you'd know. We thought maybe it was something about yon varlet. Do you know?"
"No, I do not, Jimmy." I found myself engaged in one of those detestable conversations where one knows the talk ought to end, yet dislikes to end it.
Jimmy stood for some time, much perturbed, looking every way but at me, and at last he blurted out.
"Don't you just jolly well awfully love the fair captive, yon heartless jade--my Auntie Helen? Don't you, Black Bart?"
I made no answer, but frowned very much at his presumption.
"--Because, everybody else does. She's nice. I should think you would.
I do, I know mighty well."
"She is--she is--she's a very estimable young woman, Jimmy," said I, coloring. "I think I may say that without compromising myself."
"Then why do you hurt her feelings the way you do--when she's plumb gone on you, the way she is?"
I sprang toward him to clap a hand over his garrulous mouth, but he evaded me, and spoke from behind the bathroom door. "Well, she is! Don't I hear her sticking up for you all the time--didn't I hear her an' Auntie Lucinda havin' a reg'lar row over it again, 'I don't care if he
hasn't got a cent!' says she."
"But yon varlet is rich," said I.
"She didn't mean yon varlet--she meant you, I'm pretty sure, Black Bart. An' she's been feedin' Partial all the afternoon--say, he's the shape of a sausage."
"She is heartless, Jimmy! Little do you know the ways of a heartless jade--she wants to win away from me the last thing on earth I have--even my dog. That's all. Now, Jimmy, you must go."
But he emerged only in part from his shelter. "So Jean Lafitte an' me, we looked it up in the book; an' it says where the heartless jade is brought before the pirut chief, 'How now, fair one!' says he, an' he bends on her the piercin' gaze o' his iggle eye: 'how now, wouldst spurn me suit?' The fair captive she bends her head an' stands before him unable to encounter his piercin' gaze, an' for some moments a deep silence prevails----"
"Jimmy!" I heard a clear voice calling along the deck. No answer, and Jimmy raised a hand to command silence of me also.
"Jimme-e-e-e!" It was Helena's voice, and nearer along the rail. "Here's the fudges--now where can the little nuisance have gone! Jim!"
"Here I am, Auntie," replied the little nuisance, as she now approached the door of our cabin; and he brushed past me and started not aft but toward the bows. "An' there
you are!" he shouted over his shoulder in cryptic speech, whether to me or to his Auntie Helen I could not say.
She stood now in such position near my door that neither of us could avoid the other without open rudeness. I looked at her gravely and she at me, her eyes wide, her lips silent for a time. Silently also, I swung the cabin door wide and stood back for her to pass.
"You have sent for me?" she said at last, still standing as she was. A faint smile--part in humor, part in timidity, part, it seemed suddenly to me, wistful; and all just a trifle pathetic--stirred her lips.
"'I sent my soul through the Invisible,'" said I; and stepped within and quite aside for her to pass.
"Jimmy told the biggest lie in all his career," said I. She would have sprung back.
"--And the greatest truth ever told in all the world. Come in, Helena Emory. Come into my quiet home. Already, as you know, you have come into my heart."
"I am not used to going into a gentleman's--quarters," said she: but her foot was on the shallow stair.
"It is common to three gentlemen of the ship's company, Helena Emory," said I, "and we have no better place to receive our friends."
She now was in the room. I closed the door, and sprung the catch.
"At last," said I, "you are in my power!" And I bent upon her the piercing gaze of my eagle eye. _