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 class
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 brimming 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 space, 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 glasses, 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
assisting 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?"
"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 passed 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 assistance.
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 passin' 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."
With this thought uppermost in her mind she took the letter from her
desk, and stirring the smouldering embers, laid it upon the coals. The
sheet blazed and fell into ashes.
"No one will ever know," she said with a sigh.