Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/58

50 a while, and put his hand gently on her hair; streaked with gray as it was, she seemed nothing but a child to him still.

"You're growing like your mother, Lotty," he said.

After a long while she spoke again, but under her breath, as if half talking to herself.

"We had a child once, Jerome and I," she said.

"I know," the Captain rejoined, quickly turning his eyes from her face, and, after waiting for her to go on, added, "Never but the one,—I know."

"It was a boy,—little Tom."

There was a sudden choking gulp in the mother's throat; she had overrated her strength a little. The old man looked steadily out to sea, and took no notice.

"They never were apart, Jerome and the boy," she went on at last, firmly; "and when I would see them at work with their play-tools, or romping together, I used to wonder which of the two had the most simple, affectionate nature, or knew less of the ways of the world."

Lufflin said nothing to this defence. He was annoyed at himself for having vexed her,—conscious and remorseful for any wrong he had done M. Jacobus, but with a stronger suspicion than before that he had galled some old wound in her memory. Whatever the secret might be, it had made her feeling for her husband, he saw, as tender and keen with pain as that for the little child she had lost, and whose place none had ever come to fill.

"I've often thought, too, that when the time comes"

She stopped abruptly.

"Yes, Charlotte,"—to hide her effort to control herself.

"He's gone, Tom is, you know,—eleven years ago, now. But when the time comes for Jerome to see his boy again, I've often thought he would have no reason to dread the child's eyes. It's different with me. But they may say of my husband what they will, my baby need not be afraid to lay his head upon his father's breast. He needn't be afraid."

The Captain took up the cold hand that was nervously thrumming on the window-sill, and held it quiet, averting his eyes from her face, distorted with dry, silent weeping.

"It's different with me," she cried, "Sometimes I think, Uncle George, it would be better if I'd never see my boy again. I'm sharper and coarser than other women. I've had to rub with the world."

Lufflin was a queer old fellow. He did not tell her these were but the morbid fancies of an hysterical woman, or blame himself for rousing them. He muttered something about low tide and George Cathcart, and bustled off down the stairs. She had a stronger mind than he, he suspected; silence and her own will would bring her to herself quicker than any comfort of his could do.

He proved to be right. She did not notice his going; stood at first looking into the dark bank of sea-horizon, as if she would have forced out of that vague Beyond where her child had gone the truth of all that had hurt her in her life. The dull thud of the retreating tide kept time to her thoughts,—finally came into them: it was so natural for her mind to swing back into whatever was real and at hand.

Not that she forgot the little fellow whose restless feet and hands were quiet at last in the graveyard at Salem: she never forgot him; since they laid him there, the thought of him had sounded in every day of her busy life like a faint hymn sung by lips far away, holy and calm,—a story of God in it.

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