"Good! Answered like yourself; answered like the lad I used to see looking out on the river that runs to the sea; like the lad my old heart warmed to because there was honesty in his face; like the lad who has grown to be a man, and who sits afore me now with truth in his eyes."
"Thank you for that, sir."
"What woman does this lad, now grown to be a man, love? Ellen--the pretty Ellen, the truest-hearted, gentlest-hearted, kindest-hearted, dearest lass on all the high seas. What woman does Joshua's friend Dan love? That's a question I ask myself. 'Tis easily answered. Minnie--Minnie with the mermaid's hair, and with eyes bright as the stars. Does Minnie love Dan? Yes; but not as Dan wants her to love him. Why? Because there is some one in the way."
"Who, sir?" Joshua was constrained to ask, but dreading the answer.
"She loves Dan's friend Joshua better than she loves Dan. Let that friend, who sits afore me now, search his heart and his mind, and let him say what he thinks. He knows her nature; has been her friend since she was a girl; and, cunning as a woman may be, no woman can be cunning enough to hide her love always from the man she loves, though she may hide it from all the rest of the world. It happens sometimes in a man's life that he may be unconscious of a thing for years perhaps, it being present to him all the time, until, sometimes in one way, sometimes in another, a sudden light is thrown upon it, and he sees in a flash what he has been blind to all his life before."
"You are right, sir," said Joshua sadly. "It has happened to me now. I have been blind."
As he sat, sadly looking at the evening shadows reflected in the river, every circumstance connected with his intimacy with Minnie came to his mind with an interpretation different from that it had borne before. Her pretty fancy of the shell, which he had thought of often as a childish conceit bore a different meaning now. Tender looks and simple acts, which had pleased him at the time, gathered strength, and became more than tokens of mere friendship. Child as she was when he first went to sea, he recognized now that she had more than the strength of a child; that even then, indeed, she was almost a woman. When he came back, a man, she had saved his life; and when he thanked her for it--surely he could do no less!--she told him that she did not want thanks, for the having saved his life would ever be her sweetest remembrance. "Little Minnie, little Minnie," he had said, kissing her, "thank you for your devotion." He remembered that she trembled, and that something like a sob escaped her when he had kissed her. Had he done wrong? Was he to blame? All he had done had been innocently done, as from a brother to a sister. And her feelings were known to others when they had been hidden from him. Minnie's secret was known to her father and to Susan. That was the reason why Basil Kindred had questioned him so strangely, and had told him the story of his life. Words uttered by Basil, which had borne no direct signification when they were spoken, came to him now with startling vividness. "Young men are often thoughtless in their actions," Basil had said; "they do not know the depth and earnestness of some womanly natures." The revelation that had come to him served also to account for Susan's singular conduct that very morning.
"So," he thought; "they believe I have been playing with Minnie's feelings; and both of them have condemned me. And I at the same time engaged to Ellen! It is too dreadful to think of. What can I do? Oh, what can I do?"
The unspoken words rended him to the soul; he was enveloped in a despairing darkness. But a greater terror than all fell upon him when he thought of Dan. In such a momentous crisis as that through which Joshua's mind was passing, nothing of the past is unremembered. Words which otherwise are borne in mind only by their sense come back as if they were just being, uttered. When Dan had imparted to Joshua the secret of his love for Minnie, he had said, "A great hope, shadowed by a great fear, has entered my soul; a hope which, fulfilled, would make earth heaven for me. Is it too precious a thing to pray for? It seems so to me. I tremble as I think of it. But if it is not to be, I hope I shall soon die." And Joshua heard again that cry from Dan's soul, almost word for word. The sacred nature of the love existing between Dan and Joshua needs to be understood to realize the terrible fear that smote Joshua at the present time. If Dan should ever come to believe him false, he would not wish to live: for the salt would have gone out of his life forever.
For full a quarter of an hour Joshua was wrapped in painful thought; and the Old Sailor had not disturbed him. But now, as he raised his tearful eyes to the Old Sailor's face, the Old Sailor laid his hand gently upon Joshua's knee, and said,--