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.