Under the unexpected blow,
Marshall had turned older. His clear blue eyes had grown less
alert, his broad shoulders seemed to stoop. In sympathy, her own
eyes filled with sudden tears.
"What will you do?" she whispered.
"I don't know what I shall do," said Marshall simply. "I should
have liked to have resigned. It's a prettier finish. After forty
years--to be dismissed by cable is--it's a poor way of ending it."
Miss Cairns rose and walked to the door. There she turned and
looked back.
"I am sorry," she said. And both understood that in saying no more
than that she had best shown her sympathy.
An hour later the sympathy of Admiral Hardy was expressed more
directly.
"If he comes on board my ship," roared that gentleman, "I'll push
him down an ammunition hoist and break his damned neck!"
Marshall laughed delightedly. The loyalty of his old friend was
never so welcome.
"You'll treat him with every courtesy," he said. "The only
satisfaction he gets out of this is to see that he has hurt me. We
will not give him that satisfaction."
But Marshall found that to conceal his wound was more difficult
than he had anticipated. When, at tea time, on the deck of the
war-ship, he again met Senator Hanley and the guests of the
SERAPIS, he could not forget that his career had come to an end.
There was much to remind him that this was so. He was made aware of
it by the sad, sympathetic glances of the women; by their tactful
courtesies; by the fact that Livingstone, anxious to propitiate
Hanley, treated him rudely; by the sight of the young officers,
each just starting upon a career of honor, and possible glory, as
his career ended in humiliation; and by the big war-ship herself,
that recalled certain crises when he had only to press a button and
war-ships had come at his bidding.
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