They were puzzling and annoying questions, but, with a conduct quite what would be expected from so gallant a sailor, he at last made up his mind. Of one thing he was certain, that
he loved Emily, and that she was the only woman in the world for him. And he would be free. So Revere, like Barry, hesitated and was lost!
Even the situation with regard to the old ship was a puzzling one. There would be no evading the orders of the government. The ship must be sold to the best advantage and broken up. Yet to destroy the ship was to write the admiral's death-warrant. He had to obey his orders. No sentimental considerations would be allowed to interfere with the command of the department. Still, how could he do it? He did not dare tell the news to the admiral, he could not mention it to Emily, he would not even like to declare it to the old sailor.
The more he considered the situation the more unfortunate the position in which he found himself. As a lover, of Emily, that is, he was pledged to another woman. As a guest of the admiral, he was there to take away the ship. And, although he entered little into his calculations, he might have added, had he known it, that on both counts, ship and maiden, he was about to break the heart of the man who had saved his life. And all of this had been brought about in the most innocent and unwitting way. He felt himself, in some strange manner, the sport of a hard and malignant fortune.
The night was still and calm to the admiral, sleeping dreamlessly without foreboding; but to his granddaughter ah, she was the dreamer. This young hero, this demigod from over the sea, how he had looked at her, how he had listened to her, how his eyes had seemed to pierce the very depths of her maiden soul! He had not complimented her upon her singing; he had only asked for more and still more. And how beautifully his voice had blended with hers! Was he, indeed, the fairy prince come at last to awaken the sleeping beauty of her passion, to kiss into life the too long dormant feeling in her heart?
There are songs without words in maidens' hearts, and one of them rippled through the innocence of her girlish soul in the still watches of that heavenly night.
And they all forgot old Barry alone on the ship.
CHAPTER XI Blows at the Heart
SusquehannaWith what jealous pain the veteran seaman dogged the footsteps of the young sailor and watched him examine his beloved ship! Nothing escaped Revere's rigid scrutiny. Barry himself, after his years of familiarity with the old hulk, could not have made a more exhaustive investigation. There was but one spot which Revere did not view. That was the private locker which the old seaman had made for himself in the one habitable portion of the ship.
"What's this?" Revere had asked, pausing before the closed, locked door. "Your traps, eh? Well, I guess we have no need to inspect them," he continued, smiling, and passing on.
Yet, had he known it, behind that closed door lay his fate, for the lost letters and papers which Barry had not yet read were there.
The keen, critical examination of the old ship by the young lieutenant enhanced the growing animosity of the sailor. His cool comments seemed like a profanation. Barry felt as if his enemy were appraising the virtues of his wife; as if, examining her in her old age, he were disappointed and surprised at not finding in her the qualities and excellencies of her youth. Every prying finger touch, crumbling the rotting wood, was a desecration. Every blow struck upon the timbers to test their soundness was an added insult.
Had the young man been less intent upon that task he would have seen in the clouded brow, the closed lips, the stern expression upon his companion's face something of the older man's exacerbated feelings; but, engrossed by his inspection, he noticed nothing. Indeed, like many very young naval officers of the time, he thought but little of the sailor at best. He was a part and a very essential part of the vast naval machine, of course, but otherwise nothing. When Revere grew older he would learn to estimate the value of the man upon the yard-arm, the man behind the gun, and to rate him more highly; but at present his attitude was more or less one of indifference.
It was true that Barry, equally with Emily, had saved his life;
but by a perfectly natural trick of the mind or heart, rather all the heroism of that splendid achievement had focussed itself about the woman, and to Revere the man became an incident rather than a cause, merely a detail. Just as the captain who leads the forlorn hope gets the mention in the despatches and enrolls his name upon the pages of history, to the exclusion of those other men, perhaps no less brave than he, who followed him, so Emily stood to the fore, and Barry's part was already half forgotten. This carelessly oblivious attitude of mind, which he divined even in the absence of any very specific outward evidence of it, added to the exasperation of the sailor, and he fairly hated the officer.