Woven with the Ship Part 10

"Yes, wondering?"

"How soon you had recovered from your accident, and how much better and stronger you seem than when I had to help you up the hill yesterday morning."

He laughed at this clever thrust, rather shamefacedly, it must be admitted, and flushed at the same time, while he answered her.

"I am afraid you will think me a great hypocrite," he admitted, contritely, realizing that he could lose nothing by frankness; "certainly, I am feeling very delightful--I mean, well and comfortable, now."

"Yet you are rowing in the hot sun! Now, I do not see how you can be comfortable at all, and I do not believe, since you feel so well now, that you needed any a.s.sistance whatever in getting up the hill. You deceived me. Neither my grandfather nor Captain Barry ever do that,"

she continued, gravely, at the same time looking reprovingly at him.

She leaned back in the boat, as if the matter was decided. "I wanted to speak to you about it before, but there was always some one around."

"Miss Emily, let me explain," he exclaimed, filled with shame, surprised, yet pleased, to think she should take so trifling a matter so seriously. "You see," he added, half in jest and half in earnest, "after saving my life so gallantly the other night, I had rather a feeling of--er--dependence upon you, you know, the next morning, and it seemed natural and appropriate to ask you to help me up the hill. I could have gone up myself I--I suppose----"

"I am glad you are honest now, at any rate. I must say you seemed to acquire the feeling very lightly."

"Of honesty? Thank you!"

"I mean of dependence."

"I didn't. I never had it before. You see, it's dangerous to save a life. The one who is saved always feels that he belongs to the one who saves. Now, I----"

"How do you know so much about it?" she broke in, with instinctive promptness. She would like to have him complete his sentence, and yet, like all women, she tried to put it off; hence her interruption. "Did you ever save any one's life?"

"Yes, once," he replied, rather reluctantly, inwardly perturbed at the turn the conversation was taking.

"Oh, how was it?" she questioned, interestedly, dropping her tone of banter instantly. "Was it a fellow-officer?"

"No."

"A sailor, then?" anxiously.

"No; a young lady," desperately.

"Oh, a young lady!" she exclaimed in dismay, with a note of disappointment in her voice that she endeavored in vain to suppress, and which he was very glad indeed to recognize.

"Yes; one summer at Cape May. She got beyond her depth in the surf, and I swam out and brought her ash.o.r.e without any great difficulty.

Not a very romantic story, is it? Not half as much as--I mean, not at all----"

"Oh, I think it very romantic indeed," answered this child of nature, whose notions of romance and love and other things were drawn from the antique novels of her grandfather's library; "if I had saved any one's life I should----"

She stopped and blushed furiously as the natural answer to her impetuous remark sprang into her mind.

"I will finish for you," interrupted Revere, eagerly, his resolution of reticence recorded in his determination of the previous night growing decidedly faint in the face of the fascination she exercised over him. "I----"

He would have gone on, but something in her glance stopped him. With the quickness of love and intense sympathy he divined that the hour was not yet. There was an unspoken appeal in her eyes, in her burning cheek, her trembling hand, her heaving breast, which he could not disregard. He had been on the brink of an avowal. Thank heaven, he had stopped in time! For her sake and for his own he would be on his guard. He would not transgress again. He vowed it in his soul.

"I am deeply grateful," he went on, after a pause which somehow, in spite of him, expressed all he wished her to understand, "both to you and the sailor, and I hope to evidence my devotion and grat.i.tude in some tangible way. By the way, what a strange character he seems! He appears to have taken a dislike to me. He said this morning he wished he had not saved me."

"How dared he speak so?" cried the girl, sitting up in the boat, her face flushed this time with indignation. "Not save your life? Why--but there," she went on, swiftly recovering herself, "he is a strange creature, as you say, and moody at times. He lives alone on the ship, and sees no one but grandfather and me. He is devoted to me. He would do anything for me."

"Those queer things in your room,--the harpoon, the shark's tooth, the model of the ship?"

"He put them there. They are odd things for a girl's room, are they not? but when you realize that they express the affection of an honest, faithful heart, they become quite fitting for any woman. Yes, I am fond of him, and I love those things for his sake. He is devoted to the admiral and to the ship, too."

Mr. Richard Revere was too profoundly conscious of the vast difference between Emily Sanford and any common sailor to feel the slightest jealousy at her ungrudging praise; indeed, he liked it.

"So I discovered," he a.s.sented, appreciatively. "Miss Emily, you go down to that ship sometimes; often, I suppose. Please do not go any more."

"Why not?" curiously.

"It is very insecure. I do not see how it can last much longer. Some day it will collapse into shapeless ruin; soon, I think. And if you were there----" He hesitated and looked at her. "Please do not go," he continued.

"But it will break Captain Barry's heart to have me refuse. I've always gone."

She spoke doubtfully, as if seeking a further reason.

"Better break his heart than throw away your life. Believe me, I have made a thorough inspection of the ship. It's unsafe. It's almost gone.

I marvel that it stands now."

"Poor old ship!"

"Yes, 'tis sad indeed. But you won't go, will you?"

"Not--not--if you do not wish me,--I mean, not if it is unsafe," she answered, softly, looking down.

He had shot the boat in toward the sh.o.r.e of a little island in the harbor, and there, under the deep shadow of some overhanging trees, he stopped rowing, as he said, to rest a moment, just keeping the boat under control with the oars.

"Poor old ship!" continued the girl, mournfully, as she dabbled her sunburnt but shapely hand in the water; "when it goes, grandfather will go, Captain Barry will go, and I will be left--alone."

"No, no!" he exclaimed, softly, all his resolution gone in the face of the powerful yet innocent appeal. "Not alone, for I----"

"That girl?" she interrupted, meaningly.

"What girl?" impatiently.

"The one you saved. Is she beautiful?"

"Some people consider her so, I believe."

"What is she like?" breathlessly.

"She is tall and rather large. She has brown hair and brown eyes. She has been beautifully educated, and she is exquisitely bred."

"She sings, too, I suppose?"

"Yes; her voice has been very highly cultivated."

"And you have sung to her, with her?" sadly.