The Tides of Barnegat Part 21

"No, she is going to be married."

The doctor gave a low whistle. Instantly Archie's laughing eyes looked into his; then came the thought of the nameless grave of his father.

"Well, upon my soul! You don't say so! Who to, pray?"

"To a Frenchman." Jane's eyes were upon his, reading the effect of her news. His tone of surprise left an uncomfortable feeling behind it.

"How long has she known him?" he continued, tightening the reins again and chirruping to the mare..

"She does not say--not long, I should think."

"What sort of a Frenchman is he? I've known several kinds in my life--so have you, no doubt," and a quiet smile overspread his face.

"Come, Bess! Hurry up, old girl."

"A gentleman, I should think, from what she writes. He is much older than Lucy, and she says very well off."

"Then you didn't meet him on the other side?"

"And never heard of him before?"

"Not until I received this letter."

The doctor reached for his whip and flecked off a fly that had settled on the mare's neck.

"Lucy is about twenty-seven, is she not?"

"Yes, some eight years younger than I am. Why do you ask, John?"

"Because it is always a restless age for a woman. She has lost the protecting ignorance of youth and she has not yet gained enough of the experience of age to steady her. Marriage often comes as a balance-weight. She is coming home to be married, isn't she?"

"No; they are to be married in Geneva at his mother's."

"I think that part of it is a mistake," he said in a decided tone.

"There is no reason why she should not be married here; she owes that to you and to herself." Then he added in a gentler tone, "And this worries you?"

"More than I can tell you, John." There was a note in her voice that vibrated through him. He knew now how seriously the situation affected her.

"But why, Jane? If Lucy is happier in it we should do what we can to help her."

"Yes, but not in this way. This will make her all the more miserable. I don't want this marriage; I want her to come home and live with me and Archie. She makes me promises every year to come, and now it is over six years since I left her and she has always put me off. This marriage means that she will never come. I want her here, John. It is not right for her to live as she does. Please think as I do!"

The doctor patted Jane's hand--it was the only mark of affection he ever allowed himself--not in a caressing way, but more as a father would pat the hand of a nervous child.

"Well, let us go over it from the beginning. Maybe I don't know all the facts. Have you the letter with you?"

She handed it to him. He pa.s.sed the reins to her and read it carefully to the end.

"Have you answered it yet?"

"No, I wanted to talk to you about it. What do you think now?"

"I can't see that it will make any difference. She is not a woman to live alone. I have always been surprised that she waited so long. You are wrong, Jane, about this. It is best for everybody and everything that Lucy should be married."

"John, dear," she said in a half-pleading tone--there were some times when this last word slipped out--"I don't want this marriage at all. I am so wretched about it that I feel like taking the first steamer and bringing her home with me. She will forget all about him when she is here; and it is only her loneliness that makes her want to marry. I don't want her married; I want her to love me and Martha and--Archie--and she will if she sees him."

"Is that better than loving a man who loves her?" The words dropped from his lips before he could recall them--forced out, as it were, by the pressure of his heart.

Jane caught her breath and the color rose in her cheeks. She knew he did not mean her, and yet she saw he spoke from his heart. Doctor John's face, however, gave no sign of his thoughts.

"But, John, I don't know that she does love him. She doesn't say so--she says HE loves her. And if she did, we cannot all follow our own hearts."

"Why not?" he replied calmly, looking straight ahead of him: at the bend in the road, at the crows flying in the air, at the leaden sky between the rows of pines. If she wanted to give him her confidence he was ready now with heart and arms wide open. Perhaps his hour had come at last.

"Because--because," she faltered, "our duty comes in. That is holier than love." Then her voice rose and steadied itself--"Lucy's duty is to come home."

He understood. The gate was still shut; the wall still confronted him.

He could not and would not scale it. She had risked her own happiness--even her reputation--to keep this skeleton hidden, the secret inviolate. Only in the late years had she begun to recover from the strain. She had stood the brunt and borne the sufferings of another's sin without complaint, without reward, giving up everything in life in consecration to her trust. He, of all men, could not tear the mask away, nor could he stoop by the more subtle paths of friendship, love, or duty to seek to look behind it--not without her own free and willing hand to guide him. There was nothing else in all her life that she had not told him. Every thought was his, every resolve, every joy. She would entrust him with this if it was hers to give. Until she did his lips would be sealed. As to Lucy, it could make no difference. Bart lying in a foreign grave would never trouble her again, and Archie would only be a stumbling-block in her career. She would never love the boy, come what might. If this Frenchman filled her ideal, it was best for her to end her days across the water--best certainly for Jane, to whom she had only brought unhappiness.

For some moments he busied himself with the reins, loosening them from where they were caught in the harness; then he bent his head and said slowly, and with the tone of the physician in consultation:

"Your protest will do no good, Jane, and your trip abroad will only be a waste of time and money. If Lucy has not changed, and this letter shows that she has not, she will laugh at your objections and end by doing as she pleases. She has always been a law unto herself, and this new move of hers is part of her life-plan. Take my advice: stay where you are; write her a loving, sweet letter and tell her how happy you hope she will be, and send her your congratulations. She will not listen to your objections, and your opposition might lose you her love."

Before dark they were both on their way back to Yardley. Burton's boy had not been hurt as badly as his father thought; but one leg was broken, and this was soon in splints, and without Jane's a.s.sistance.

Before they had reached her door her mind was made up.

The doctor's words, as they always did, had gone down deep into her mind, and all thoughts of going abroad, or of even protesting against Lucy's marriage, were given up. Only the spectre remained. That the doctor knew nothing of, and that she must meet alone.

Martha took Jane's answer to the post-office herself. She had talked its contents over with the old nurse, and the two had put their hearts into every line.

"Tell him everything," Jane wrote. "Don't begin a new life with an old lie. With me it is different. I saved you, my sister, because I loved you, and because I could not bear that your sweet girlhood should be marred. I shall live my life out in this duty. It came to me, and I could not put it from me, and would not now if I could, but I know the tyranny of a secret you cannot share with the man who loves you. I know, too, the cruelty of it all. For years I have answered kindly meant inquiry with discourteous silence, bearing insinuations, calumny, insults--and all because I cannot speak. Don't, I beseech you, begin your new life in this slavery. But whatever the outcome, take him into your confidence. Better have him leave you now than after you are married. Remember, too, that if by this declaration you should lose his love you will at least gain his respect. Perhaps, if his heart is tender and he feels for the suffering and wronged, you may keep both.

Forgive me, dear, but I have only your happiness at heart, and I love you too dearly not to warn you against any danger which would threaten you. Martha agrees with me in the above, and knows you will do right by him."

When Lucy's answer arrived weeks afterward--after her marriage, in fact--Jane read it with a clutching at her throat she had not known since that fatal afternoon when Martha returned from Trenton.

"You dear, foolish sister," Lucy's letter began, "what should I tell him for? He loves me devotedly and we are very happy together, and I am not going to cause him any pain by bringing any disagreeable thing into his life. People don't do those wild, old-fashioned things over here.

And then, again, there is no possibility of his finding out. Maria agrees with me thoroughly, and says in her funny way that men nowadays know too much already." Then followed an account of her wedding.

This letter Jane did not read to the doctor--no part of it, in fact.

She did not even mention its receipt, except to say that the wedding had taken place in Geneva, where the Frenchman's mother lived, it being impossible, Lucy said, for her to come home, and that Maria Collins, who was staying with her, had been the only one of her old friends at the ceremony. Neither did she read it all to Martha. The old nurse was growing more feeble every year and she did not wish her blind faith in her bairn disturbed.

For many days she kept the letter locked in her desk, not having the courage to take it out again and read it. Then she sent for Captain Holt, the only one, beside Martha, with whom she could discuss the matter. She knew his strong, honest nature, and his blunt, outspoken way of giving vent to his mind, and she hoped that his knowledge of life might help to comfort her.

"Married to one o' them furriners, is she?" the captain blurted out; "and goin' to keep right on livin' the lie she's lived ever since she left ye? You'll excuse me, Miss Jane,--you've been a mother, and a sister and everything to her, and you're nearer the angels than anybody I know. That's what I think when I look at you and Archie. I say it behind your back and I say it now to your face, for it's true. As to Lucy, I may be mistaken, and I may not. I don't want to condemn nothin'

'less I'm on the survey and kin look the craft over; that's why I'm partic'lar. Maybe Bart was right in sayin' it warn't all his fault, whelp as he was to say it, and maybe he warn't. It ain't up before me and I ain't pa.s.sin' on it,--but one thing is certain, when a ship's made as many voyages as Lucy has and ain't been home for repairs nigh on to seven years--ain't it?" and he looked at Jane for confirmation--"she gits foul and sometimes a little mite worm-eaten--especially her bilge timbers, unless they're copper-fastened or pretty good stuff. I've been thinkin' for some time that you ain't got Lucy straight, and this last kick-up of hers makes me sure of it. Some timber is growed right and some timber is growed crooked; and when it's growed crooked it gits leaky, and no 'mount o'

tar and pitch kin stop it. Every twist the ship gives it opens the seams, and the pumps is goin' all the time. When your timber is growed right you kin all go to sleep and not a drop o' water'll git in. Your sister Lucy ain't growed right. Maybe she kin help it and maybe she can't, but she'll leak every time there comes a twist. See if she don't."

But Jane never lost faith nor wavered in her trust. With the old-time love strong upon her she continued to make excuses for this thoughtless, irresponsible woman, so easily influenced. "It is Maria Collins who has written the letter, and not Lucy," she kept saying to herself. "Maria has been her bad angel from her girlhood, and still dominates her. The poor child's sufferings have hardened her heart and destroyed for a time her sense of right and wrong--that is all."