Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/71

1866.] They made ready for the day inland, he supposed; but they could do nothing like this,—glancing in, as he trotted up stairs, at the big fires he had built, and the bits of holly stuck around, and then out at the sweep of barren lee-coast and the desolate sea.

"And Lotty's surprise of the house, and that blessed baby! She's a devilish clever woman to contrive such a day for Mounchere, that's a fact!"

The library, when he reached it, seemed the very heart and core of all Christmas brightness. The very cold, and the hungry solitude of the restless sea on which the window opened widely, deepened the warmth within. The room slept in a still comfort: no fire was ever so clear, no air so calm, no baby so content to be alive as this which lay on its mother's breast while she walked to and fro. Her face was paler and humbler than he had ever seen it; her husband followed her unceasingly with his eyes,—a strange sense of almost loss in them Lufflin fancied, idly.

Jacobus was very silent and still; he did not seem so nervous with happiness as the Captain had fancied this opening of a new life would make him; but there was about him a rested and hushed look,—a depth of content which he did not believe any gain of the house or child could give. 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.

"I have neglected it for long," he said. "I shall never again. I think she will like us to keep it. She and—our boy."

He laid his hand on the baby's head, but his eyes wandered dreamily away out beyond the sea.

The day was fuller of cheerfulness and pleasure than even the lonely old sailor had hoped; the two people in whom he was beginning to confine his whole interest were happy in a way he could not fathom; he could not understand why Jacobus should look and listen to his wife so hungrily.

"It was the child that the day gave to him, not 'Sharley,' as he calls her," thought Lufflin.

So he took the baby in his arms, feeling as if it were in some sort neglected.

"I like to think," he said, after looking in its face awhile, and speaking with an effort, as he always did, about "religion,"—"I like to think of Christ as a helpless baby; that's the reason I like Christmas for."

"To think," said Charlotte, softly, "that to-day Eternal Love came into the world!—and Life!" glancing at her husband.

But Jacobus did not speak; he had his face covered with his hand, and when he looked up was paler than before. Lufflin fancied there was a change in the simple-hearted old bookworm's manner all day, a quiet composure, the dignity of a man who knew his place both with God and his brother man.

He went down again presently, leaving them alone for a little while. M. Jacobus was standing by the window, watching the awful stillness with which a new day lifts itself over the sea; he had the child in his arms, and beckoned Lotty to his side. She came and leaned her head on his shoulder.

"You will never leave me now, Sharley,—never," he said, his face kindling with a new, strange triumph.

The waves lapped the shore in gentle rifts of spray; the beach itself shone in the rising light like fretted silver. Beyond the foamy earth-colored breakers lay the illimitable sea, a dark violet glow, fading into the dim horizon whence came the dawn. The man's eye was fixed on the far line which his sight could never pass; his wife's quick glance followed his. It was from that dread Beyond, she knew, that he had