Woven with the Ship Part 24

"Ay," he said, "the cruise is over. Where's Barry?"

"Under the s.h.i.+p, sir."

"And a good end! Strike the flag. I've lost my last command."

Instantly Revere ran to the foot of the staff and silently cast off the halliards. As the little blue flag of a rear-admiral, with its white stars, came floating gracefully, reluctantly, down from the masthead where it had flown so long, the veteran slowly and painfully rose to his feet. With his right hand he lifted the sword of the _Const.i.tution_, with his old vigor and his old grace he bared the blade and brought it up before him in graceful salute, while the flag fell into Revere's arms.

"Come aboard, sir," he said, softly, as if to an Eternal Captain.

He stood erect a moment and then sank gently back into the chair. For the first time in his life he forgot the weapon in his hand. The sword fell clattering at his feet. The emblem of power, authority, and rank, all now slipping from him, lay neglected where it fell. A smile quivered upon his lips, but otherwise he sat still and quiet, looking out into the future. A few seconds. The light faded from his eyes, the life left his heart. The s.h.i.+p had fallen, the flag was down. It was the end.

The old man had entered the last haven, dropped anchor in the final harbor. The little breeze which lifted his white hairs so tenderly had wafted his soul into another country, a better--that is, an heavenly!

With a low cry, Emily threw herself on her knees before him.

Down on s.h.i.+p House Point a light, a flame, burst out amid the torn and shattered timbers. In a few moments the ruins of the now unheeded s.h.i.+p were blazing furiously. Barry had cunningly planned it so that the s.h.i.+p, after it had buried him, should be his funeral pyre.

Fitting it might have been, thought Revere in his heart, as he looked at the flames roaring up from the s.h.i.+p, if the body of the admiral, like that of the Vikings of old, might have been laid upon its burning timbers.

L'ENVOI.

When he was buried, his country, recognizing his merit and remembering his services again, sent its best to honor him in death. Admiral Farragut, with a brilliant staff, was there. He was of the navy of the present, Revere represented the navy of the future, and both stood together at the grave of the navy of the past.

They buried him on the high hill overlooking s.h.i.+p House Point. Down on the Point, at the admiral's feet as it were, and just where the s.h.i.+p had stood, Revere erected a huge block of rough granite which bore this inscription:

JOHN BARRY, Chief Boatswain's Mate of the United States s.h.i.+p-of-the-Line _Susquehanna_, Who perished in the fall of that s.h.i.+p, September 20th, 1865.

"_Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends._"

In the lofty character of his motives, in the atonement of his self-sacrifice, in the greatness of his end, his purpose of destruction was forgotten.

When his naval duties permitted, Emily and Richard often came back to the old white house on the hill in the summer, and to Charles Stewart Revere, John Barry Revere, little Emily Revere, and Richard Revere, Junior, it was the most fascinating spot on earth. They stand with their father by the huge Celtic cross which marks the admiral's resting-place, and hear again the story of the sword of the _Const.i.tution_, destined one day to be drawn against the country in which it had been made. Or--and this they like even better--they sit with their mother (lovelier in Richard's eyes with every pa.s.sing year) beneath the shadow of the mighty rock on the Point, while she tells them stories of old John Barry, and how at the last he held up the s.h.i.+p.

_Part II_

VERACIOUS TALES OF VARIOUS SORTS

"When fiction rises pleasing to the eye, Men will believe, because they love the lie; But truth herself, if clouded with a frown, Must have some solemn proof to pa.s.s her down."

CHURCHILL

"'Tis strange--but true, for truth is always strange, Stranger than fiction."

BYRON

"Variety's the very spice of life."

COWPER

Copyright, 1900 and 1902, by J. B. Lippincott Company.

Copyright, 1901 and 1902, by Charles Scribner's Sons.

Copyright, 1902, by Henry T. Coates & Company.

Copyright, 1902, by The Golden Rule Company.

Copyright, 1902, by Daily Story Company.

Copyright, 1902, by Cyrus Townsend Brady.

COUPS DE THeaTRE

"The world's a theatre, the earth a stage, Which G.o.d and Nature do with actors fill."

THOMAS HEYWOOD

A VAUDEVILLE TURN

COMEDY

"My soul, sit thou a patient looker-on, Judge not the play before the play is done: The plot has many changes: every day Speaks a new scene: the last act crowns the play."

FRANCIS QUARLES

The most popular theatre in America, according to the advertis.e.m.e.nts, where nothing was played but the "continuous," was packed from parquet to top gallery with a perspiring crowd of pleasure-seekers one hot August night. The papers had said--_via_ the society columns, of course--that everybody was out of town for the summer, and incidentally, therefore, that all the ordinary places of amus.e.m.e.nt were closed, except _Les Varietes_. However, the city was not quite deserted; for, of the anch.o.r.ed ninety-nine hundredths of the population, all who could do so, apparently in despair of other amus.e.m.e.nt, and attracted by the popular prices, had crowded into "the home of refined vaudeville," as it was called on the programme. The house was fluttering with fans; most of the spectators and actors felt as though they were slowly deliquescing in perspiration, but, on the whole, the audience seemed to be enjoying it.

The usual _melange_--how natural and appropriate it seems to use French words when treating of the vaudeville!--of entertainments entirely suited even to a Mrs. Boffin, become a world-wide type of matronly modesty and virtue--had been provided by the high-minded and scrutinizing management. Ladies in short skirts capered nimbly over the stage to the "lascivious pleasing" of the banjo; gentlemen with one leg rode marvellously endowed bicycles in impossible ways; tumblers frisked and frolicked about without the slightest regard either for temperature or gravitation; happy tramps,--at least the announcements said they were happy,--whose airy, carefully tattered garments were in entire consonance with the heated atmosphere, delivered themselves of speeches full of rare old humor and fairly bristling with Boeotian witticisms. There were men singers and women singers, musical cranks, freak piano-players, monologue artists, burlesquers, and then a little play,--at least they said it was a play.

So with these multifarious stirrers-up-of-varied-emotions the evening drew toward its close. Finally, just before the biograph went through its eye-shattering, soul-distressing performance, the little boy who walked solemnly across the stage before each turn with such a queer, self-important strut that the regular patrons--those who came early and brought their luncheon--felt disappointed when he took a vacation, set out upon the racks, provided on either side of the proscenium arch for the purpose, a tablet bearing the name "Mademoiselle Helene."

When the curtain rose thereafter the stage was set for a woodland. The lights were turned thrillingly low, so that the expectant audience were scarcely aware how the tiny little body, whom they saw standing in the full blaze of the calcium-light ray suddenly flashed upon her from the mysterious apparatus in the balcony, had reached the centre of the stage.

The little miss was apparently not more than six years old. She had short white stockings on her plump little pink legs, and her dainty feet were covered with black ankle ties. She wore fluffy little pink and white skirts like a ballet-dancer, and with her little bare arms she blew graceful kisses to the audience as she bounded before it.

With her sweet blue eyes, her golden hair, she made a beautiful picture, as she pirouetted around the stage on the tips of her ten little toes, kicking up her little legs, bending her back, wriggling her skirts in imitation of older and more sophisticated performers,--to put it mildly,--which would have been more amusing if it had not been a little pitiful.

So little, so cool, so sweet, so fresh, so innocent she seemed, that in the hot theatre on that hot night no wonder a great, rapturous "oh-h-h!" of delight and approbation burst from feminine lips--and masculine ones, too, if the truth be told. As the little maid in perfect silence continued her dance, exclamations of admiration rose from the audience, and when she finished her first turn and stopped panting, bowing, hand-kissing, the theatre rang with hand-clapping.

Though some of the fathers and mothers in the audience, with thoughts of their own little folk, murmured under breaths, "What a pity! She ought to be at home in bed!" the witchery of her movements and the charm of her face were as strong upon them as they were upon the others; more so--they had children of their own.

As she stopped and stood alone on the large stage after her final _pas_, bowing again and again and throwing more kisses in that sweetly infantile way, there was a commotion among the people enjoying "standing room only" in the pa.s.sage-way at the back of the parquet. A tall, broad-shouldered man forced himself through the crowd, in spite of angry remonstrances and rude resistance, and ran down the aisle.

His pale face was working with emotion, his eyes s.h.i.+ning.