Rebecca Harding Davis

“ He looked out of the window, his fingers knitted behind him.
"There is the sea, and I am here, but Tom is not here; he's dust and ashes, yonder in Salem graveyard,—a heap of yellow dust, nothing more,"—a laugh, which the foulest of French skeptics would have envied, crossing his grim face at this fancy of the child's being yet alive and near to him.
But the creed having asserted itself thus, the simple face grew suddenly blank, and the gray eyes looked out of their dark hollows as if the world were empty and he alone lived to tell the tale. ”

“ Ah! you do not know Lotty!" touching the closed white lids with an inexpressibly tender smile. "I call her 'Sharley,' when we are alone together,"—going on in his simple, monotonous fashion; "and when she sleeps the heaviest, she have never forgot to hear that name. She never will,"—looking up quietly.
"But your wife is dead now," said Lufflin, almost impatiently; "and you yourself thank God that she will never waken to her old loves and hates and fancies."
"I?" gasped Jacobus.
There was a long silence; as his old creed came back to him, the blood rushed thick and cold about his heart. ”

“ God has been so good to us, Jerome,—and it is His day of the whole year,—the day," her voice sinking with an inexpressible tenderness, "when Love came into the world as a little child,—as a little child."
He looked at her wistfully for a moment, then took up his stick and an hygrometer, saying, as he opened the door,—
"But hear to the cry of the sea! it grows more muffled and dull each hour. If Death itself could speak, that is his voice, I think." He spoke vaguely, with an anxious, absent look, then went groping down the dark stairway. ”

“ There was a dead quiet in the fog as he came out and waited on the flagging before the house. Lufflin and George Cathcart came by, presently, carrying lanterns and ropes, their faces looking ghastly in the greenish light; their voices, too, were thin and far off as in a dream, though the Captain tried to be hearty and gruff as usual.
"Best within, Mounchere Jacobus; it's an uncertain night; best within."
"You apprehend the rain?"
"No; it's a dry storm; unpleasant on this coast. Go in; there's no telling what frenzy may seize the wind, and Charlotte is alone." ”

“ That these boors, that death itself, should come between him and his wife and say she could not hear his lightest word!
"Why, it's Lotty!"—in a whisper, hugging the stiff body closer, looking up to Lufflin. "Dead or alive, it's my wife. It's Lotty. Do not you understand?"
"Yes, Mounchere, yes, I understand,"—sopping his face and bald head with his handkerchief. "My good men, had you not better go out a moment? We need air here. He only meant," gently, when they were gone, "that she is at rest; our pain cannot pain her now."
"When I do suffer, she will suffer with me," muttered Jacobus. ”

“ M. Jacobus had a watchful keeper; she was never far off; she put her hand on his shoulder now with,—
"What do you look for at sea, Jerome?"—speaking cheerfully, and in his own tongue.
He did not turn his head until he thought he had put all his trouble out of sight.
"I pursue your Captain's fancy," he said. "I find in the sea but muddy water, with power to bring rage and destruction for no cause. I find great treasures lying useless below, starving men sailing above,—great pain, death every day,—the baby washed from its mother's arms, the husband from the wife. ”

“ What if Death itself served them to-night, and crept upon Charlotte and him unawares in some horror of this coming storm? Jacobus, like all skeptics, was superstitious; but he had courage and zest enough to fight down the terror that seized him, to pamper and play with it. He threw his lank length upon the wet beach, and clasped his hands under his head; where he disturbed the sand, gleamed sudden flashes of phosphoric light; he brought them out of the darkness with his finger: "Fit writing for the dead gone over to leave upon the shore for those who should follow!" ”

“ Why! you man, Lufflin," starting to his feet, and drawing up his full height, "if that could be, would I stand to look at her here? Could I live, if she were truly gone?—she, that has been strength and hope and hands for me these many years? I'm not a strong man, like—like you, Captain," with a sudden weak giving way. "God gave me Sharley. Death cannot take her away."
Lufflin took up her hand.
"So soft it used to be!" he said. "It's been hard-worked since then. It would be well for Lotty, if death were a long sleep: she needs it."
Jacobus made no reply. ”

“ Lufflin was awed, he knew not why.
"It is as if they had found something which Death itself could not take away," he thought, after a space of wonder, as if they had talked to God Himself to-day.
The Professor wished him a happy Christmas, in his simple, hearty fashion, and then the two men sat talking of how they kept the day long ago: Lufflin telling of frolics on ship-board, but M. Jacobus going back constantly to the time when he was a boy with his mother. ”

“ Yes, Mounchere," after a pause, as they rose from table, "Nature's grand here, as you say,—or God, which is the same thing. If a man don't come nearer to Him by a day's outlook on yon sea than by years of town-life, it's because his eyes aren't worth the having."
M. Jacobus stretched his long neck to look out at the dull, creeping, moaning waste without, his warm Gallic blood shivering with a vague idea that the relentless, inexorable Thing was no bad symbol of the Puritan's God. ”

“ Yet he stepped to the kitchen-door and listened keenly, when, after a long silence, he heard the door above open, and Charlotte lead her husband into the library.
"Mounchere knows what his wife's done for him at last," he muttered;—"and there goes in the baby," as a faint cry and a rush of skirts followed,—with an amused laugh, and his eyes dim.
But when he heard Lotty coming presently for him, he hurried in, to stretch himself on his bunk, and began to snore.
"It's kind in them to think of an old fellow like me; but they're best alone. ”

“ The man, nervous and fierce, that had been smothered in the unable bookworm so long, sprang up to cope with the sudden death that faced him.
"You be too late!" he heard Cathcart's shrill cry, as he fought his way through the surging surf; and at the same moment there was a heavy crash,—where, he could not see.
The fog blinded him; the sand, driven by the resistless wind, cut his skin, penetrated his eyes and nostrils; while higher and higher, as he waded on, the muddy water crept up his body, slimy and cold, and tangling his feet in its undertow of kelp. ”

“ Nature had done all she could in wringing out whatever green and lusty life was left in rocks and sand to make the place home-like and cheerful. Beside the trees, there was a patch of kitchen-garden back of the house, a grape-vine or two on the walls, trailing moss hanging to its eaves,—the delicate web-like moss that grows along this coast out of dead wood; even the beach rocks glowed into colors,—dark browns, purples, and reds. ”

“ On this, the day before Christmas, the house and the land about it were smothered in a cold mist: only the shivering sea beyond had voice or motion.
"It's a dull, uncanny place, Mrs. Jacobus," said Lufflin, anxiously. "It looks like a prison to me to-day. What if we've made a mistake?"
"We have made no mistake," calmly.
"Indoors," he persisted, "the house is cheerful enough. But it's a rough coast, and the oyster-dredgers and wrackers hint that the house be n't above highest water-mark. They're a wild pack, them wrackers. ”

“ This side of that gray horizon of darkness which absorbed all his fears, the northern lights streamed up, a pale orange glare, and showed him a heavy, impenetrable bulwark of shadow, that rose closer and closer with each throb of the breakers, walling out the sea. His feet sank curiously in the yielding sand, as if he stood at the verge of a maelstrom. Some rough hand griping his shoulder roused him from his daze.
"Cathcart!" he said; then pointing out, "what lies yonder, George? It might be Death's world, I think!"
The fisherman's arm shook, he fancied ”

“ But she held it down; watched the tide go out, measuring each sullen sweep with calculating eyes: the old swimming and fishing education in the inlet had not worn out its effect on her.
"The wreckers talk folly," she said; "no tide could touch the house,"—leaning farther out to see the two approaching figures go into the doorway beneath.
One man looked up, waving his hat as he passed, and she drew in her head with a sudden blush and a dewy light in her eyes, catching her breath.
"I have made no mistake," she thought, vehemently. "Look in his face! It is the right home for Jerome." ”

“ Jacobus had never, I suppose, considered whether his son had genius or not, or what he was to do in the world: to get the boy out of the poisonous city, to see his first look at the ocean, to watch the sturdy little rogue fight the breakers, fish, swim, net for crabs, was about the highest pleasure which the simple old man had ever pictured for them. ”

“ Now that I am no longer a child, and know that she can never look back, that what was my mother is but a heap of bones and dust, I—I cannot keep the day."
She stood in his way.
"Dead is dead!" he cried, fiercely, "When I know that she and the child I loved cannot speak or look at me more than this stone at my feet, I cannot believe in the day on which you say He came to bring eternal life."
"There is nothing more alive to me than my little Tom. I'm sorry you do not feel it so, Jerome," said matter-of-fact Charlotte. "I was not what you call a religious woman before he died ”

“ He soothed her, for she had grown nervous and trembling; let her cling to his neck and cry away her trouble, after the fashion of women who have brought their hearts out to argue for them.
"Let us forget that far-away country," he said, after a while, "and go to rest, Lotty. The moans of this storm will wear your strength out,"—leading her to the foot of the chamber-stairway.
She went up, pausing at the top to look back, a smile on her flushed cheeks and swollen eyes. ”

“ When she turned to the window, the cold and gathering night somehow made her home more real, the future alive with great and good possibilities.
Yet it was a foreboding, revengeful night. Outside the little panes of the passage-window she could see the gray walls of the house and the bare trunks of the trees darken and draw apart in the dull light. ”

“ He is but a fisher for the oyster, but I find in him a man of many facts."
When he had mounted to his chamber and secured his prey in a jar, however, he did not return to George Cathcart, but stood irresolute, his hands clasped behind his back, the shiny boatman's hat he wore pulled over his eyes.
Twelve years ago the poor Frenchman and his son had planned this coming to the sea: the boy used to get into his father's bed by dawn to talk it over snugly. It came to be their grand scheme and hope for the future; for neither the father nor little Tom had intellects of a high achieving order. ”

“ Captain Lufflin, who had left her with conscience and grief both at work with her a few minutes before, opened the door with a half-scared look, pushing Jacobus before him, whose sleeve she caught eagerly, bidding him good-morning with a laugh.
"God bless us all!" said Lufflin. "The ways of women!" ”

“ This house, a gray stone cottage of five or six rooms, in the most solitary part of the lee-coast, had been vacant for some time, and was to be sold cheap. Lufflin bought and furnished it in his own name; and then, as she directed, asked the Professor and his wife down to spend the Christmas holidays with him. He was anxious and awkward as a school-boy when they arrived the night before.
"It was too tough a job for you to set me, Charlotte," he grumbled. "How was I to choose a home for a man that lives, they say, by the sight of his eyes and the hearing of his ears? ”

“ Lufflin began to perceive now for what she had worked; he chafed his whiskers, and entered into the spirit of the thing with zest.
"You'd call me a happy man, now, Mounchere, to be the owner of this bit of ground, eh?"
"I can conceive," said the Professor, gravely, catching his squirming prey, and tying them up in a handkerchief,—"I can conceive no better abode than this for a man of esprit,—of what you call stamina in mind. His wants are little; he rests, he works, he studies books, Nature. She is greatly good to him in this place; she opens her most delicate secrets ”

“ I would hunt, wrestle, fight, as no man had done before. I would be the first leader in the world,—a soldier, a priest,—God! what was there I would not be! What came of it all?"—his voice rising into a weak, wiry cry. "There was a tiny cancer, a little taint in my blood,—a trifle,—bah! a nothing! My grandfather died a drunkard; my father ate opium. I⸻Sharley, it's an old story to you."
She did not shame him by a look at him: her own face had the old pallor and defiant clench of the jaws which Lufflin had seen. She drew his hand under her arm, and kissed it passionately. ”