Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/69

1866.] The morning dawned, bleak and blue; the thin light came into the cracks of a wrecker's hut, colder than even on the sea. Jacobus had made a heap of ropes and driftwood on which to lay his dead. He sat holding her head on his breast, having twisted up her wet hair in a vain effort to adjust it as she liked it best. There was no wild vagueness in his eyes, such as dimmed them sometimes over his books; it was a grave, simple, reasonable face that bent over this cold and unanswering one. It seemed as if this one great blow, which God had given, had struck out from his life all its vain vagaries and dreams.

Lufflin and one or two fishermen stood by, looking on; and outside he heard women's voices, in shrill whispers, and a sob now and then.

"I want to carry her in the shore farther," he said, looking up impatiently. "I will not have her vexed by these sounds of trouble."

"Yes, yes," said Lufflin, soothingly. "But you forget, dear Sir, she's beyond all reach of pain now. Sorrow and tears cannot come near her again."

"I don't know," said Jacobus,—"she has a quick ear for any cry of trouble,"—holding the thin, blue-veined hand in his, and looking at it with a face which made old Lufflin turn away.

"She be at rest now, yer woman," piped George Cathcart, in true class-meeting twang. "Not all yer cries, nor the cries of the sea, neyther, 'u'd wake her. Glory be to God!"

Jacobus looked from one to the other, his sickly frame in a heat of inarticulate rage. 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. "You don't know," after a pause, "how together we have been, or that you could not say. Is it that I should go back to that den in New York alone? That I live there for days,—for years? That I hunger and work as before, and she not heed nor care,—my wife? 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's world, and all His creatures," persisted Lufflin, "are foul with sin. You blessed Him that for them and it death was an eternal sleep."

"I did not remember her love for me," pleaded Jacobus, humbly. "It could not sleep. 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. He sat down and held his dead in his arms; she was his own; so were those years of hard