eh?"—and trotted down the back stairs, leaving her in the narrow hall. "Old Mounchere Jacobus must have been a good fellow," he thought, "to have deserved all this. God deals so differently with different men!"
She had nothing more to say about it, Madame Jacobus had told him; yet, standing there in the quiet cold light, within a few steps of the closed door behind which was her husband, her feet on the floor of the house she had worked hard to buy him, the child in her arms she would give him to-morrow, she thought she had touched in this hour the very depth and height of life.
"It is worth all the pain that's gone,—it's worth it all," she said again and again, pressing the boy so closely that he cried. 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. There was no mellowness in the outlines of rocks or beach: they loomed up harsh and threatening. From the low, dingy horizon came at intervals subdued soughs of wind that broke on the projecting headlands with a muffled cry. The floor grew chilly to her feet; the strip of carpet shook in the gusts; and the passage was dark, but for a cheerful glimmer of light under the Professor's door. Charlotte went shivering with her baby into the nurse's room; and when she had watched it safe into its cradle, came out, going again through the hall to the library. As she touched the door-handle, she checked herself in humming some song, growing colorless as she thought what it was,—an old ditty with which she used to lull little Tom to sleep, but never had sung since then. But in a moment a curious smile came on her lips. "That is all right," she said, opening the door. From that moment her little boy and poor Tom, dead in the city graveyard yonder, were as one to the mother: she nursed them in her heart together.
One word as to the plan of the house, for the better understanding of what followed. It was niched, as we said, into a cove of rocks, open only to the sea. In spite of all the croaking of the wreckers, the highest tide had never yet approached nearer than to ten feet sheer descent from the foundation-stones. On the ground-floor was a room appropriated by the Captain, filled with his bunk, fishing-nets, guns, and other trumpery, and the kitchen and offices; above were the library and dining-room; and on the third floor three bed-chambers.
M. Jacobus sat now by the fire in the dining-room, his feet on the fender, some books scattered around him, rapidly getting out with them into a world where northeasters, nor high tides, nor his wife either, ever came. She saw that in the half-frown with which he looked at her over his spectacles.
"M. Jacobus!" she said.
"Plait-il, Madame?" and afterwards laid down his book, thinking the figure before him could hardly be that of his matter-of-fact wife: which was true enough,—for her heart was brimful of her little project and the child, and the face, with its low forehead and resolute jaws, beamed curiously young and eager. Her husband seated her, and stood leaning on the mantel-shelf while she talked: he had all the courtesy of an old-fashioned Frenchman towards women; and besides, M. Jacobus had a keen eye for beauty in this the only woman he had ever loved.
"Go down, Jerome; the tide turns," she said. "Captain Lufflin is watching it. Besides, I want this room to make ready for to-morrow."
M. Jacobus began, obedient as usual, to button his coat, muttering, "To-morrow?" however, with a puzzled face.
"It is Christmas,"—with the repressed excitement now in her voice as in her eyes. "I want that we shall keep the day this year; I have some little plans"———
The skeptic's face altered; he lingered over the last button of the coat.
