The Tides of Barnegat Part 20

As she spoke Jane regained her feet, and crossing the room, settled into a chair by the boy's crib. Long after Martha had closed her own door for the night Jane sat watching the sleeping child. One plump pink hand lay outside the cover; the other little crumpled rose-leaf was tucked under the cheek, the face half-hidden in a tangle of glossy curls, now spun-gold in the light of the shaded lamp.

"Poor little waif," she sighed, "poor little motherless, fatherless waif! Why didn't you stay in heaven? This world has no place for you."

Then she rose wearily, picked up the light, carried it across the room to her desk, propped a book in front of it so that its rays would not fall upon the sleeping child, opened her portfolio, and sat down to write.

When she had finished and had sealed her letter it was long past midnight. It was addressed to Lucy in Dresden, and contained a full account of all the doctor had told her of Bart's death.

CHAPTER XII

A LETTER FROM PARIS

For the first year Jane watched Archie's growth and development with the care of a self-appointed nurse temporarily doing her duty by her charge. Later on, as the fact became burned into her mind that Lucy would never willingly return to Warehold, she clung to him with that absorbing love and devotion which an unmarried woman often lavishes upon a child not her own. In his innocent eyes she saw the fulfilment of her promise to her father. He would grow to be a man of courage and strength, the stain upon his birth forgotten, doing honor to himself, to her, and to the name he bore. In him, too, she sought refuge from that other sorrow which was often greater than she could bear--the loss of the closer companionship of Doctor John--a companionship which only a wife's place could gain for her. The true mother-love--the love which she had denied herself, a love which had been poured out upon Lucy since her father's death--found its outlet, therefore, in little Archie.

Under Martha's watchful care the helpless infant grew to be a big, roly-poly boy, never out of her arms when she could avoid it. At five he had lost his golden curls and short skirts and strutted about in knee-trousers. At seven he had begun to roam the streets, picking up his acquaintances wherever he found them.

Chief among them was Tod Fogarty, the son of the fisherman, now a boy of ten, big for his age and bubbling over with health and merriment, and whose life Doctor John had saved when he was a baby. Tod had brought a basket of fish to Yardley, and sneaking Meg, who was then alive--he died the year after--had helped himself to part of the contents, and the skirmish over its recovery had resulted in a friendship which was to last the boys all their lives. The doctor believed in Tod, and always spoke of his pluck and of his love for his mother, qualities which Jane admired--but then technical cla.s.s distinctions never troubled Jane--every honest body was Jane's friend, just as every honest body was Doctor John's.

The doctor loved Archie with the love of an older brother; not altogether because he was Jane's ward, but for the boy's own qualities--for his courage, for his laugh--particularly for his buoyancy. Often, as he looked into the lad's eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with fun, he would wish that he himself had been born with the same kind of temperament. Then again the boy satisfied to a certain extent the longing in his heart for home, wife, and child--a void which he knew now would never be filled. Fate had decreed that he and the woman he loved should live apart--with this he must be content. Not that his disappointments had soured him; only that this ever-present sorrow had added to the cares of his life, and in later years had taken much of the spring and joyousness out of him. This drew him all the closer to Archie, and the lad soon became his constant companion; sitting beside him in his gig, waiting for him at the doors of the fishermen's huts, or in the cabins of the poor on the outskirts of Barnegat and Warehold.

"There goes Doctor John of Barnegat and his curly-head," the neighbors would say; "when ye see one ye see t'other."

Newcomers in Barnegat and Warehold thought Archie was his son, and would talk to the doctor about him:

"Fine lad you got, doctor--don't look a bit like you, but maybe he will when he gets his growth." At which the doctor would laugh and pat the boy's head.

During all these years Lucy's letters came but seldom. When they did arrive, most of them were filled with elaborate excuses for her prolonged stay. The money, she wrote, which Jane had sent her from time to time was ample for her needs; she was making many valuable friends, and she could not see how she could return until the following spring--a spring which never came. In no one of them had she ever answered Jane's letter about Bart's death, except to acknowledge its receipt. Nor, strange to say, had she ever expressed any love for Archie. Jane's letters were always filled with the child's doings; his illnesses and recoveries; but whenever Lucy mentioned his name, which was seldom, she invariably referred to him as "your little ward" or "your baby," evidently intending to wipe that part of her life completely out. Neither did she make any comment on the child's christening--a ceremony which took place in the church, Pastor Dellenbaugh officiating--except to write that perhaps one name was as good as another, and that she hoped he would not disgrace it when he grew up.

These things, however, made but little impression on Jane. She never lost faith in her sister, and never gave up hope that one day they would all three be reunited; how or where she could not tell or foresee, but in some way by which Lucy would know and love her son for himself alone, and the two live together ever after--his parentage always a secret. When Lucy once looked into her boy's face she was convinced she would love and cling to him. This was her constant prayer.

All these hopes were dashed to the ground by the receipt of a letter from Lucy with a Geneva postmark. She had not written for months, and Jane broke the seal with a murmur of delight, Martha leaning forward, eager to hear the first word from her bairn. As she read Jane's face grew suddenly pale.

"What is it?" Martha asked in a trembling voice.

For some minutes Jane sat staring into s.p.a.ce, her hand pressed to her side. She looked like one who had received a death message. Then, without a word, she handed the letter to Martha.

The old woman adjusted her gla.s.ses, read the missive to the end without comment, and laid it back on Jane's lap. The writing covered but part of the page, and announced Lucy's coming marriage with a Frenchman: "A man of distinction; some years older than myself, and of ample means.

He fell in love with me at Aix."

There are certain crises in life with conclusions so evident that no spoken word can add to their clearness. There is no need of comment; neither is there room for doubt. The bare facts stand naked. No sophistry can dull their outlines nor soften the insistence of their high lights; nor can any reasoning explain away the results that will follow. Both women, without the exchange of a word, knew instantly that the consummation of this marriage meant the loss of Lucy forever. Now she would never come back, and Archie would be motherless for life.

They foresaw, too, that all their yearning to clasp Lucy once more in their arms would go unsatisfied. In this marriage she had found a way to slip as easily from out the ties that bound her to Yardley as she would from an old dress.

Martha rose from her chair, read the letter again to the end, and without opening her lips left the room. Jane kept her seat, her head resting on her hand, the letter once more in her lap. The revulsion of feeling had paralyzed her judgment, and for a time had benumbed her emotions. All she saw was Archie's eyes looking into hers as he waited for an answer to that question he would one day ask and which now she knew she could never give.

Then there rose before her, like some disembodied spirit from a long-covered grave, the spectre of the past. An icy chill crept over her. Would Lucy begin this new life with the same deceit with which she had begun the old? And if she did, would this Frenchman forgive her when he learned the facts? If he never learned them--and this was most to be dreaded--what would Lucy's misery be all her life if she still kept the secret close? Then with a pathos all the more intense because of her ignorance of the true situation--she fighting on alone, unconscious that the man she loved not only knew every pulsation of her aching heart, but would be as willing as herself to guard its secret, she cried:

"Yes, at any cost she must be saved from this living death! I know what it is to sit beside the man I love, the man whose arm is ready to sustain me, whose heart is bursting for love of me, and yet be always held apart by a spectre which I dare not face."

With this came the resolve to prevent the marriage at all hazards, even to leaving Yardley and taking the first steamer to Europe, that she might plead with Lucy in person.

While she sat searching her brain for some way out of the threatened calamity, the rapid rumbling of the doctor's gig was heard on the gravel road outside her open window. She knew from the speed with which he drove that something out of the common had happened. The gig stopped and the doctor's voice rang out:

"Come as quick as you can, Jane, please. I've got a bad case some miles out of Warehold, and I need you; it's a compound fracture, and I want you to help with the chloroform."

All her indecision vanished and all her doubts were swept away as she caught the tones of his voice. Who else in the wide world understood her as he did, and who but he should guide her now? Had he ever failed her? When was his hand withheld or his lips silent? How long would her pride shut out his sympathy? If he could help in the smaller things of life why not trust him in this larger sorrow?--one that threatened to overwhelm her, she whose heart ached for tenderness and wise counsel.

Perhaps she could lean upon him without betraying her trust. After all, the question of Archie's birth--the one secret between them--need not come up. It was Lucy's future happiness which was at stake. This must be made safe at any cost short of exposure.

"Better put a few things in a bag," Doctor John continued. "It may be a case of hours or days--I can't tell till I see him. The boy fell from the roof of the stable and is pretty badly hurt; both legs are broken, I hear; the right one in two places."

She was upstairs in a moment, into her nursing dress, always hanging ready in case the doctor called for her, and down again, standing beside the gig, her bag in her hand, before he had time to turn his horse and arrange the seat and robes for her comfort.

"Who is it?" she asked hurriedly, resting her hand in his as he helped her into the seat and took the one beside her, Martha and Archie a.s.sisting with her bag and big driving cloak.

"Burton's boy. His father was coming for me and met me on the road. I have everything with me, so we will not lose any time. Good-by, my boy," he called to Archie. "One day I'll make a doctor of you, and then I won't have to take your dear mother from you so often. Good-by, Martha. You want to take care of that cough, old lady, or I shall have to send up some of those plasters you love so."

They were off and rattling down the path between the lilacs before either Archie or the old woman could answer. To hearts like Jane's and the doctor's, a suffering body, no matter how far away, was a sinking ship in the clutch of the breakers. Until the lifeboat reached her side everything was forgotten.

The doctor adjusted the robe over Jane's lap and settled himself in his seat. They had often driven thus together, and Jane's happiest hours had been spent close to his side, both intent on the same errand of mercy, and BOTH WORKING TOGETHER. That was the joy of it!

They talked of the wounded boy and of the needed treatment and what part each should take in the operation; of some new cases in the hospital and the remedies suggested for their comfort; of Archie's life on the beach and how ruddy and handsome he was growing, and of his tender, loving nature; and of the thousand and one other things that two people who know every pulsation of each other's hearts are apt to discuss--of everything, in fact, but the letter in her pocket. "It is a serious case," she said to herself--"this to which we are hurrying--and nothing must disturb the sureness of his sensitive hand."

Now and then, as he spoke, the two would turn their heads and look into each other's eyes.

When a man's face lacks the lines and modellings that stand for beauty the woman who loves him is apt to omit in her eager glance every feature but his eyes. His eyes are the open doors to his soul; in these she finds her ideals, and in these she revels. But with Jane every feature was a joy--the way the smoothly cut hair was trimmed about his white temples; the small, well-turned ears lying flat to his head; the lines of his eyebrows; the wide, sensitive nostrils and the gleam of the even teeth flashing from between well-drawn, mobile lips; the white, smooth, polished skin. Not all faces could boast this beauty; but then not all souls shone as clearly as did Doctor John's through the thin veil of his face.

And she was equally young and beautiful to him. Her figure was still that of her youth; her face had not changed--he still caught the smile of the girl he loved. Often, when they had been driving along the coast, the salt wind in their faces, and he had looked at her suddenly, a thrill of delight had swept through him as he noted how rosy were her cheeks and how ruddy the wrists above the gloves, hiding the dear hands he loved so well, the tapering fingers tipped with delicate pink nails.

He could, if he sought them, find many telltale wrinkles about the corners of the mouth and under the eyelids (he knew and loved them all), showing where the acid of anxiety had bitten deep into the plate on which the record of her life was being daily etched, but her beautiful gray eyes still shone with the same true, kindly light, and always flashed the brighter when they looked into his own. No, she was ever young and ever beautiful to him!

To-day, however, there was a strange tremor in her voice and an anxious, troubled expression in her face--one that he had not seen for years. Nor had she once looked into his eyes in the old way.

"Something worries you, Jane," he said, his voice echoing his thoughts.

"Tell me about it."

"No--not now--it is nothing," she answered quickly.

"Yes, tell me. Don't keep any troubles from me. I have nothing else to do in life but smooth them out. Come, what is it?"

"Wait until we get through with Burton's boy. He may be hurt worse than you think."

The doctor slackened the reins until they rested on the dashboard, and with a quick movement turned half around and looked searchingly into Jane's eyes.

"It is serious, then. What has happened?"

"Only a letter from Lucy."

"Is she coming home?"