Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/1020

946 friendship with his colleagues; the associations with the little community in which his lot was cast, limited in some directions as they might be; the fair demesne of Greek literature in which his feet were so much at home; his own literary gift, even if a slender one; his dear, dear child.

And Gertrude? Under the invigoration of his mood a situation which had long seemed unamenable to change resolved itself into new and simpler proportions. The worthier aspects of his home life, the finer traits of his wife's character, stood before him as proofs of what might yet be. His memory had kept no record of the fact that when in the first year of his youthful sorrow, sick for comfort and believing her all tenderness, he had married her, to find her impatient of his grief, nor of the many times since when she had appeared almost wilfully blind to his ideals and purposes. His judgment held only this, that she had never understood him. For this he had seldom blamed her; but to-night he blamed himself. Instead of shrinking away sensitively, keeping the vital part of his life to himself and making what he could of it alone, he should have set himself steadily to create a place for it in her understanding and sympathy. Was not a perfect married love worth the minor sacrifices as well as the supreme surrender from which he believed that neither of them would have shrunk?

He returned to his desk and began to rearrange the contents of the little drawer. Among them was a small sandalwood box which had been their mother's, and which Stella had prized with special fondness. He had never opened it since her death, but as he lifted it now the frail clasp gave way, the lid fell back, and the contents slipped upon the desk. They were few: a ring, a thin gold locket containing the miniatures of their father and mother, a small tintype of himself taken when he first left home, and two or three notes addressed in a handwriting which he recognized as Wayland's. He replaced them with reverent touch, turning away even in thought from what he had never meant to see.

By and by he heard in the distance the roll of carriages returning from the Fieldings' reception. He replenished the fire generously, found a long cloak in the closet at the end of the hall, and waited the sound of wheels before his own door. "The rain has grown heavier," he said, drawing the cloak around his wife as she descended from the carriage. Something in his manner seemed as distinctly to envelop her. He brought her into the study and seated her before the fire. She had expected to find the house silent; the glow and warmth of the room were grateful to her after the chill and darkness outside, her husband's presence after that vague sense of futility which already the evening's gayety had left upon her.

"I suppose I ought to tell you about the party," she said, a little wearily; "but if you don't mind, I will wait till breakfast. Everybody was there, of course, and it was all very fine, as we all knew it would be. I hope you've enjoyed your Latin poets more."

"They are Greek, dear," he said. "I have been making translations from some of them now and then. Some day we will take a day off and then I'll read them to you. But neither the party nor the poets to-night. See, it is almost two o'clock."

"I knew it must be late." She looked at him curiously. "But you look as fresh as a child that has just waked from sleep."

"Perhaps I have just waked," he agreed.

They rose to go up-stairs. "I will go in front," she said, "and make a light in our room while you turn off the gas in the hall."

He paused for a moment after she had gone out and turned to a page in the Greek Anthology for a single stanza. Shelley's translation was written in pencil beside it: