These rumors never reached the doctor. No scandalmonger ever dared talk gossip to him. When he first began to practise among the people of Warehold, and some garrulous old dame would seek to enrich his visit by tittle-tattle about her neighbors, she had never tried it a second time. Doctor John of Barnegat either received the news in silence or answered it with some pleasantry; even Ann Gossaway held her peace whenever the doctor had to be called in to prescribe for her oversensitive throat.
He was aware that Jane had laid herself open to criticism in bringing home a child about which she had made no explanation, but he never spoke of it nor allowed anyone to say so to him. He would have been much happier, of course, if she had given him her confidence in this as she had in many other matters affecting her life; but he accepted her silence as part of her whole attitude toward him. Knowing her as he did, he was convinced that her sole incentive was one of loving kindness, both for the child and for the poor mother whose sin or whose poverty she was concealing. In this connection, he remembered how in one of her letters to Martha she had told of the numberless waifs she had seen and how her heart ached for them; especially in the hospitals which she had visited and among the students. He recalled that he himself had had many similar experiences in his Paris days, in which a woman like Jane Cobden would have been a veritable angel of mercy.
Mrs. Cavendish's ears were more easily approached by the gossips of Warehold and vicinity; then, again she was always curious over the inmates of the Cobden house, and any little scraps of news, reliable or not, about either Jane or her absent sister were eagerly listened to. Finding it impossible to restrain herself any longer, she had seized the opportunity one evening when she and her son were sitting together in the salon, a rare occurrence for the doctor, and only possible when his patients were on the mend.
"I'm sorry Jane Cobden was so foolish as to bring home that baby," she began.
"Why?" said the doctor, without lifting his eyes from the book he was reading.
"Oh, she lays herself open to criticism. It is, of course, but one of her eccentricities, but she owes something to her position and birth and should not invite unnecessary comment."
"Who criticises her?" asked the doctor, his eyes still on the pages.
"Oh, you can't tell; everybody is talking about it. Some of the gossip is outrageous, some I could not even repeat."
"I have no doubt of it," answered the doctor quietly. "All small places like Warehold and Barnegat need topics of conversation, and Miss Jane for the moment is furnishing one of them. They utilize you, dear mother, and me, and everybody else in the same way. But that is no reason why we should lend our ears or our tongues to spread and encourage it."
"I quite agree with you, my son, and I told the person who told me how foolish and silly it was, but they will talk, no matter what you say to them."
"What do they say?" asked the doctor, laying down his book and rising from his chair.
"Oh, all sorts of things. One rumor is that Captain Holt's son, Barton, the one that quarrelled with his father and who went to sea, could tell something of the child, if he could be found."
The doctor laughed. "He can be found," he answered. "I saw his father only last week, and he told me Bart was in Brazil. That is some thousand of miles from Paris, but a little thing like that in geography doesn't seem to make much difference to some of our good people. Why do you listen to such nonsense?" he added as he kissed her tenderly and, with a pat on her cheek, left the room for his study. His mother's talk had made but little impression upon him. Gossip of this kind was always current when waifs like Archie formed the topic; but it hurt nobody, he said to himself—nobody like Jane.
Sitting under his study lamp looking up some complicated case, his books about him, Jane's sad face came before him. "Has she not had trouble enough," he said to himself, "parted from Lucy and with her unsettled money affairs, without having to face these gnats whose sting she cannot ward off?" With this came the thought of his own helplessness to comfort her. He had taken her at her word that night before she left for Paris, when she had refused to give him her promise and had told him to wait, and he was still ready to come at her call; loving her, watching ever her, absorbed in every detail of her daily life, and eager to grant her slightest wish, and yet he could not but see that she had, since her return, surrounded herself with a barrier which he could neither understand nor break down whenever he touched on their personal relations.
Had he loved her less he would, in justice to himself, have faced all her opposition and demanded an answer—Yes or No—as to whether she would yield to his wishes. But his generous nature forbade any such stand and his reverence for her precluded any such mental attitude.
Lifting his eyes from his books and gazing dreamily into the space before him, he recalled, with a certain sinking of the heart, a conversation which had taken place between Jane and himself a few days after her arrival—an interview which had made a deep impression upon him. The two, in the absence of Martha—she had left the room for a moment—were standing beside the crib watching the child's breathing. Seizing the opportunity, one he had watched for, he had told her how much he had missed her during the two years, and how much happier his life was now that he could touch her hand and listen to her voice. She had evaded his meaning, making answer that his pleasure, was nothing compared to her own when she thought how safe the baby would be in his hands; adding quickly that she could never thank him enough for remaining in Barnegat and not leaving her helpless and without a "physician." The tone with which she pronounced the word had hurt him. He thought he detected a slight inflection, as if she were making a distinction between his skill as an expert and his love as a man, but he was not sure.
Still gazing into the shadows before him, his unread book in his hand, he recalled a later occasion when she appeared rather to shrink from him than to wish to be near him, speaking to him with downcast eyes and without the frank look in her face which was always his welcome. On this day she was more unstrung and more desolate than he had ever seen her. At length, emboldened by his intense desire to help, and putting aside every obstacle, he had taken her hand and had said with all his heart in his voice:
"Jane, you once told me you loved me. Is it still true?"
He remembered how at first she had not answered, and how after a moment she had slowly withdrawn her hand and had replied in a voice almost inarticulate, so great was her emotion.
"Yes, John, and always will be, but it can never go beyond that—never, never. Don't ask many more questions. Don't talk to me about it. Not now, John—not now! Don't hate me! Let us be as we have always been—please, John! You would not refuse me if you knew."
He had started forward to take her in his arms; to insist that now every obstacle was removed she should give him at once the lawful right to protect her, but she had shrunk back, the palms of her hands held out as barriers, and before he could reason with her Martha had entered with something for little Archie, and so the interview had come to an end.
Then, still absorbed in his thoughts, his eyes suddenly brightened and a certain joy trembled in his heart as he remembered that with all these misgivings and doubts there were other times—and their sum was in the ascendency—when she showed the same confidence in his judgement and the same readiness to take his advice; when the old light would once more flash in her eyes as she grasped his hand and the old sadness again shadow her face when his visits came to an end. With this he must be for a time content.
These and a hundred other thoughts raced through Doctor John's mind as he sat to-night in his study chair, the lamplight falling on his open books and thin, delicately modelled hands.
Once he rose from his seat and began pacing his study floor, his hands behind his back, his mind on Jane, on her curious and incomprehensible moods, trying to solve them as he walked, trusting and leaning upon him one day and shrinking from him the next. Baffled for the hundredth time in this mental search, he dropped again into his chair, and adjusting the lamp, pulled his books toward him to devote his mind to their contents. As the light flared up he caught the sound of a step upon the gravel outside, and then a heavy tread upon the porch. An instant later his knocker sounded. Doctor Cavendish gave a sigh—he had hoped to have one night at home—and rose to open the door.
Captain Nat Holt stood outside.
His pea-jacket was buttoned close up under his chin, his hat drawn tight down over his forehead. His weather-beaten face, as the light fell upon it, looked cracked and drawn, with dark hollows under the eyes, which the shadows from the lamplight deepened.
"It's late, I know, doctor," he said in a hoarse, strained voice; "ten o'clock, maybe, but I got somethin' to talk to ye about," and he strode into the room. "Alone, are ye?" he continued, as he loosened his coat and laid his hat on the desk. "Where's the good mother? Home, is she?"
"Yes, she's inside," answered the doctor, pointing to the open door leading to the salon and grasping the captain's brawny hand in welcome. "Why? Do you want to see her?"
"No, I don't want to see her; don't want to see nobody but you. She can't hear, can she? 'Scuse me—I'll close this door."
The doctor looked at him curiously. The captain seemed to be laboring under a nervous strain, unusual in one so stolid and self-possessed.
The door closed, the captain moved back a cushion, dropped into a corner of the sofa, and sat looking at the doctor, with legs apart, his open palms resting on his knees.
"I got bad news, doctor—awful bad news for everybody," as he spoke he reached into his pocket and produced a letter with a foreign postmark.
"You remember my son Bart, of course, don't ye, who left home some two years ago?" he went on.
The doctor nodded.
"Well, he's dead."
"Your son Bart dead!" cried the doctor, repeating his name in the surprise of the announcement. "How do you know?"
"This letter came by to-day's mail. It's from the consul at Rio. Bart come in to see him dead broke and he helped him out. He'd run away from the ship and was goin' up into the mines to work, so the consul wrote me. He was in once after that and got a little money, and then he got down with yellow fever and they took him to the hospital, and he died in three days. There ain't no doubt about it. Here's a list of the dead in the paper; you kin read his name plain as print."
Doctor John reached for the letter and newspaper clipping and turned them toward the lamp. The envelope was stamped "Rio Janeiro" and the letter bore the official heading of the consulate.
"That's dreadful, dreadful news, captain," said the doctor in sympathetic tones. "Poor boy! it's too bad. Perhaps, however, there may be some mistake, after all. Foreign hospital registers are not always reliable," added the doctor in a hopeful tone.
"No, it's all true, or Benham wouldn't write me what he has. I've known him for years. He knows me, too, and he don't go off half-cocked. I wrote him to look after Bart and sent him some money and give him the name of the ship, and he watched for her and sent for him all right. I was pretty nigh crazy that night he left, and handled him, maybe, rougher'n I ou'ter, but I couldn't help it. There's some things I can't stand, and what he done was one of 'em. It all comes back to me now, but I'd do it ag'in." As he spoke the rough, hard sailor leaned forward and rested his chin on his hand. The news had evidently been a great shock to him.
The doctor reached over and laid his hand on the captain's knee. "I'm very, very sorry, captain, for you and for Bart; and the only son you have, is it not?"
"Yes, and the only child we ever had. That makes it worse. Thank God, his mother's dead! All this would have broken her heart." For a moment the two men were silent, then the captain continued in a tone as if he were talking to himself, his eyes on the lamp:
"But I couldn't have lived with him after that, and I told him so—not till he acted fair and square, like a man. I hoped he would some day, but that's over now."
"We're none of us bad all the way through, captain," reasoned the doctor, "and don't you think of him in that way. He would have come to himself some day and been a comfort to you. I didn't know him as well as I might, and only as I met him at Yardley, but he must have had a great many fine qualities or the Cobdens wouldn't have liked him. Miss Jane used often to talk to me about him. She always believed in him. She will be greatly distressed over this news."
"That's what brings me here. I want you to tell her, and not me. I'm afraid it'll git out and she'll hear it, and then she'll be worse off than she is now. Maybe it's best to say nothin' 'bout it to nobody and let it go. There ain't no one but me to grieve for him, and they don't send no bodies home, not from Rio, nor nowheres along that coast. Maybe, too, it ain't the time to say it to her. I was up there last week to see the baby, and she looked thinner and paler than I ever see her. I didn't know what to do, so I says to myself, 'There's Doctor John, he's at her house reg'lar and knows the ins and outs of her, and I'll go and tell him 'bout it and ask his advice.' I'd rather cut my hand off than hurt her, for if there's an angel on earth she's one. She shakes so when I mention Bart's name and gits so flustered, that's why I dar'n't tell her. Now he's dead there won't be nobody to do right by Archie. I can't; I'm all muzzled up tight. She made me take an oath, same as she has you, and I ain't goin' to break it any more'n you would. The little feller'll have to git 'long best way he kin now."
Doctor John bent forward in his chair and looked at the captain curiously. His words convey no meaning to him. For an instant he thought that the shock of his son's death had unsettled the man's mind.
"Take an oath! What for?"
"'Bout Archie and herself."
"But I've taken no oath!"
"Well, perhaps it isn't your habit; it ain't some men's. I did."
"What about?"
It was the captain's turn now to look searchingly into his companion's face. The doctor's back was toward the lamp, throwing his face into shadow, but the captain could read its expression plainly.
"You mean to tell me, doctor, you don't know what's goin' on up at Yardley? You do, of course, but you won't say—that's like you doctors!"
"Yes, everything. But what has your son Bart got to do with it?"
"Got to do with it! Ain't Jane Cobden motherin' his child?"
The doctor lunged forward in his seat, his eyes staring straight at the captain. Had the old sailor struck him in the face he could not have been more astounded.
"His child!" he cried savagely.
"Certainly! Whose else is it? You knew, didn't ye?"
The doctor settled back in his chair with the movement of an ox felled by a sudden blow. With the appalling news there rang in his ears the tones of his mother's voice retailing the gossip of the village. This, then, was what she could not repeat.
After a moment he raised his head and asked in a low, firm voice:
"Did Bart go to Paris after he left here?"
"No, of course not! Went 'board the Corsair bound for Rio, and has been there ever since. I told you that before. There weren't no necessity for her to meet him in Paris."
The doctor sprang from his chair and with eyes biasing and fists tightly clenched, stood over the captain.
"And you dare to sit there and tell me that Miss Jane Cobden is that child's mother?"
The captain struggled to his feet, his open hands held up to the doctor as if to ward off a blow.
"Miss Jane! No, by God! No! Are you crazy? Sit down, sit down, I tell ye!"
"Who, then? Speak!"
"Lucy! That's what I drove Bart out for. Mort Cobden's daughter—Mort, mind ye, that was a brother to me since I was a boy! Jane that that child's mother! Yes, all the mother poor Archie's got! Ask Miss Jane, she'll tell ye. Tell ye how she sits and eats her heart out to save her sister that's too scared to come home. I want to cut my tongue out for tellin' ye, but I thought ye knew. Martha told me you loved her and that she loved you, and I thought she'd told ye. Jane Cobden crooked! No more'n the angels are. Now, will you tell her Bart's dead, or shall I?"
"I will tell her," answered the doctor firmly, "and to-night."
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