Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14.djvu/696

686 himself one day, when Columbia called him up into the parlor, clapping her hands ever suspecting that the theme might please another less,—there was but one for him as if he had been a slave, a signal he well understood, and was proud to understand,—when she asked him to bring the step-ladder, and to help her, for the curtains must come down from the show-room, it was going to be a parlor now, and no show-room again forever. With heavy misgivings, with a feeling that they were hard on to "the parting of the ways," Silas obeyed her.

Even so, according to her will was it that the drapery, the flags rich in patriotic portraiture, the Washington, the Franklin, and the Lafayette, must come down. Some pictures she had painted, some sketches she had made, were to take their place: her father had insisted on having them framed, and now they should hang on the walls.

He assisted Columbia without a word of comment. Now the room, she said, would no longer look hot and uncomfortable. There would be less dust to distract one on the walls. But Silas, the stickler for old things, thought jealously, "There's always a reason ready to excuse every change. It's pride that's to pay now,—she's getting ashamed of the shop."

And he remembered the queer look Alexander had cast around him the last time he entered that room; and he knew that this same Alexander was now expected home daily.

This was the rock, then, against which the sturdy craft of Silas was destined to strike and go to pieces! This was the whirlpool which should uproot the fairest tree and swing it to final ingulfing! Dark foreboding! sad fear! his heart was so concerned about Columbia Dexter. Alas for the halcyon days! it was winter indeed, but a winter worthy of Labrador.

So much she rejoiced in this midshipman's advancement, so proud of it she seemed,—she was so bold in prophecy where he was concerned, so manifestly fitted to appreciate a hero's career,—she could talk so long about him without every suspecting that the theme might please another less,—there was but one end likely, or desirable, for all this.

Then Alexander came. And his popularity waxed, instead of waning. So Silas at last gravely said to himself, after his sensible, moderate manner of dealing with that unhappy person, "If she and the young man were only married and settled, there the business would end; he should no longer be distracted, as he did not deny he had long been, on her account." That admission was fatal. It compelled him to ask himself sharply why he should be distracted. "What business was this of his? Did he not, above all things, desire that Columbia should be happy? Must she not be the best judge of what could make her happiness?" He tried to deal honestly with himself.

This endeavor led him to remark one morning to Columbia,—

"You and Alexander seem to be getting on finely."

"Oh, yes," said she,—"of course."

"I hope you always will," he continued, with a tragic vehemence of wish.

"Thank you, Silas; we shall, I think," she replied, with such an excess of gratitude, so he deemed it, that the poor fellow attempted no more.

All that day he thought and thought; and at night Silas Swift looked back from a corner of High Street at a building over whose door a flag was waving, and said to himself, "I was born as free as others,"—and he walked on silently, with himself for his dismal company.

It made no difference to him where he went, which path he took, he said; but he passed Salt Lane, and crossed Long Wharf, and walked down the beach, under the old sycamores, and wandered on. There was another seaport-town some miles down the coast; he was walking in that direction, but he did not acknowledge a purpose.

How splendid was the night! a night of magnificent constellations, of flashing auroras, of many meteors; and he saw the comet, which he and Columbia had looked for since its first