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.