Why should he so much disturb himself on her account?—she was so studious, so blameless, what great need of this oversight he was exercising continually?
Young Alexander, now Midshipman Alexander, once a cabin-boy, promoted step by step on the score of actual merit and brave service performed,—Midshipman Alexander, son of an old sailor's old widow, who lived in Salt Lane, to whom Andrew Swift and Silas Dexter and other well-disposed men had lent a helping hand when poverty had brought her to some desperate strait,—this young Alexander, who had been coming home once in every three years since his twelfth birthday, and who in the course of many years of voyages came to look on Dexter's house as his home on land, after his mother died,—he interfered with the peace of Silas Swift.
He returned from service, after every voyage, a taller, stronger, nobler, wiser, handsomer man. He had a career open before him; he could not fail of honorable fortune. Every inch a hero Alexander looked, and was; nobody ever tired of hearing his adventures; no one grew unbelieving, when he spoke of the future,—all things seemed so possible to him; and then he was really not possessed of the demon of vanity, the ill-shaped evil monster, but was straightforward, and earnest, and determined, and capable.
And Dexter, any one could see, was growing dreadfully proud of his Columbia.
Silas Swift felt the sands moving under his feet. He dared not build on a foundation so insecure. But, oh, he wished himself away from High Street, ten thousand, thousand miles! He fell into dreaming moods that did not leave him satisfied and cheerful. Surely, other quarters of the globe had other circumstances than these which kept him to a life so dull, under skies so leaden. Alas! the waving of the banners did not any more uplift him, leading him on as a good soldier to battles and victories. He tried to get the better of himself,—after the last visit of this Alexander, he was tolerably successful; he studied hard, ambitious to keep at least on an equality of learning with Columbia,—and he went far ahead of her, for certain desperate reasons. But when Dexter began to treat him with profound respect, as a man of learning should be treated, according to his notions, the poor young fellow, mortified and miserable, put away his books, and loathed his false position.
The old time to which through all prosperity Silas clung with fond fears, the dear old time was all over, he said to 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.