Before another Sunday night had arrived Warehold village was alive with two important pieces of news.
The first was the disappearance of Bart Holt.
Captain Nat, so the story ran, had caught him carousing in the House of Refuge on Sunday night with some of his boon companions, and after a stormy interview in which the boy pleaded for forgiveness, had driven him out into the night. Bart had left town the next morning at daylight and had shipped as a common sailor on board a British bark bound for Brazil. No one had seen him go—not even his companions of the night before.
The second announcement was more startling.
The Cobden girls were going to Paris. Lucy Cobden had developed an extraordinary talent for music during her short stay in Trenton with her friend Maria Collins, and Miss Jane, with her customary unselfishness and devotion to her younger sister, had decided to go with her. They might be gone two years or five—it depended on Lucy's success. Martha would remain at Yardley and take care of the old home.
Bart's banishment coming first served as a target for the fire of the gossip some days before Jane's decision had reached the ears of the villagers.
"I always knew he would come to no good end," Miss Gossaway called out to a passer-by from her eyrie; "and there's more like him if their fathers would look after 'em. Guess sea's the best place for him."
Billy Tatham, the stage-driver, did not altogether agree with the extremist.
"You hearn tell, I s'pose, of how Captain Nat handled his boy t'other night, didn't ye?" he remarked to the passenger next to him on the front seat. "It might be the way they did things 'board the Black Ball Line, but 'tain't human and decent, an' I told Cap'n Nat so to-day. Shut his door in his face an' told him he'd kill him if he tried to come in, and all because he ketched him playin' cards on Sunday down on the beach. Bart warn't no worse than the others he run with, but ye can't tell what these old sea-dogs will do when they git riled. I guess it was the rum more'n the cards. Them fellers used to drink a power o' rum in that shanty. I've seen 'em staggerin' home many a Monday mornin' when I got down early to open up for my team. It's the rum that riled the cap'n, I guess. He wouldn't stand it aboard ship and used to put his men in irons, I've hearn tell, when they come aboard drunk. What gits me is that the cap'n didn't know them fellers met there every night they could git away, week-days as well as Sundays. Everybody 'round here knew it 'cept him and the light-keeper, and he's so durned lazy he never once dropped on to 'em. He'd git bounced if the Gov'ment found out he was lettin' a gang run the House o' Refuge whenever they felt like it. Fogarty, the fisherman's, got the key, or oughter have it, but the light-keeper's responsible, so I hearn tell. Git-up, Billy," and the talk drifted into other channels.
The incident was soon forgotten. One young man more or less did not make much difference in Warehold. As to Captain Nat, he was known to be a scrupulously honest, exact man who knew no law outside of his duty. He probably did it for the boy's good, although everybody agreed that he could have accomplished his purpose in some more merciful way.
The other sensation—the departure of the two Cobden girls, and their possible prolonged stay abroad—did not subside so easily. Not only did the neighbors look upon the Manor House as the show-place of the village, but the girls themselves were greatly beloved, Jane being especially idolized from Warehold to Barnegat and the sea. To lose Jane's presence among them was a positive calamity entailing a sorrow that most of her neighbors could not bring themselves to face. No one could take her place.
Pastor Dellenbaugh, when he heard the news, sank into his study chair and threw up his hands as if to ward off some blow.
"Miss Jane going abroad!" he cried; "and you say nobody knows when she will come back! I can't realize it! We might as well close the school; no one else in the village can keep it together."
The Cromartins and the others all expressed similar opinions, the younger ladies' sorrow being aggravated when they realized that with Lucy away there would be no one to lead in their merrymakings.
Martha held her peace; she would stay at home, she told Mrs. Dellenbaugh, and wait for their return and look after the place. Her heart was broken with the loneliness that would come, she moaned, but what was best for her bairn she was willing to bear. It didn't make much difference either way; she wasn't long for this world.
The doctor's mother heard the news with ill-concealed satisfaction.
"A most extraordinary thing has occurred here, my dear," she said to one of her Philadelphia friends who was visiting her—she was too politic to talk openly to the neighbors. "You have, of course, met that Miss Cobden who lives at Yardley—not the pretty one—the plain one. Well, she is the most quixotic creature in the world. Only a few weeks ago she wanted to become a nurse in the public hospital here, and now she proposes to close her house and go abroad for nobody knows how long, simply because her younger sister wants to study music, as if a school-girl couldn't get all the instruction of that kind here that is necessary. Really, I never heard of such a thing."
To Mrs. Benson, a neighbor, she said, behind her hand and in strict confidence: "Miss Cobden is morbidly conscientious over trifles. A fine woman, one of the very finest we have, but a little too strait-laced, and, if I must say it, somewhat commonplace, especially for a woman of her birth and education."
To herself she said: "Never while I live shall Jane Cobden marry my John! She can never help any man's career. She has neither the worldly knowledge, nor the personal presence, nor the money."
Jane gave but one answer to all inquiries—and there were many.
"Yes, I know the move is a sudden one," she would say, "but it is for Lucy's good, and there is no one to go with her but me." No one saw beneath the mask that hid her breaking heart. To them the drawn face and the weary look in her eyes only showed her grief at leaving home and those who loved her: to Mrs. Cavendish it seemed part of Jane's peculiar temperament.
Nor could they watch her in the silence of the night tossing on her bed, or closeted with Martha in her search for the initial steps that had led to this horror. Had the Philadelphia school undermined her own sisterly teachings or had her companions been at fault? Perhaps it was due to the blood of some long-forgotten ancestor, which in the cycle of years had cropped out in this generation, poisoning the fountain of her youth. Bart, she realized, had played the villain and the ingrate, but yet it was also true that Bart, and all his class, would have been powerless before a woman of a different temperament. Who, then, had undermined this citadel and given it over to plunder and disgrace? Then with merciless exactness she searched her own heart. Had it been her fault? What safeguard had she herself neglected? Wherein had she been false to her trust and her promise to her dying father? What could she have done to avert it? These ever-haunting, ever-recurring doubts maddened her.
One thing she was determined upon, cost what it might—to protect her sister's name. No daughter of Morton Cobden's should be pointed at in scorn. For generations no stain of dishonor had tarnished the family name. This must be preserved, no matter who suffered. In this she was sustained by Martha, her only confidante.
Doctor John heard the news from Jane's lips before it was known to the villagers. He had come to inquire after Martha.
She met him at the porch entrance, and led him into the drawing-room, without a word of welcome. Then shutting the door, she motioned him to a seat opposite her own on the sofa. The calm, determined way with which this was done—so unusual in one so cordial—startled him. He felt that something of momentous interest, and, judging from Jane's face, of serious import, had happened. He invariably took his cue from her face, and his own spirits always rose or fell as the light in her eyes flashed or dimmed.
"Is there anything the matter?" he asked nervously. "Martha worse?"
"No, not that; Martha is around again—it is about Lucy and me." The voice did not sound like Jane's.
The doctor looked at her intently, but he did not speak. Jane continued, her face now deathly pale, her words coming slowly.
"You advised me some time ago about Lucy's going to Trenton, and I am glad I followed it. You thought it would strengthen her love for us all and teach her to love me the better. It has—so much so that hereafter we will never be separated. I hope now you will also approve of what I have just decided upon. Lucy is going abroad to live, and I am going with her."
As the words fell from her lips her eyes crept up to his face, watching the effect of her statement. It was a cold, almost brutal way of putting it, she knew, but she dared not trust herself with anything less formal.
For a moment he sat perfectly still, the color gone from his cheeks, his eyes fixed on hers, a cold chill benumbing the roots of his hair. The suddenness of the announcement seemed to have stunned him.
"For how long?" he asked in a halting voice.
"I don't know. Not less than two years; perhaps longer."
"TWO YEARS? Is Lucy ill?"
"No; she wants to study music, and she couldn't go alone."
"Have you made up your mind to this?" he asked, in a more positive tone. His self-control was returning now.
"Yes."
Doctor John rose from his chair, paced the room slowly for a moment, and crossing to the fireplace with his back to Jane, stood under her father's portrait, his elbows on the mantel, his head in his hand. interwoven with the pain which the announcement had given him was the sharper sorrow of her neglect of him. In forming her plans she had never once thought of her lifelong friend.
"Why did you not tell me something of this before?" The inquiry was not addressed to Jane, but to the smouldering coals. "How have I ever failed you? What has my daily life been but an open book for you to read, and here you leave me for years, and never give me a thought."
Jane started in her seat.
"Forgive me, my dear friend!" she answered quickly in a voice full of tenderness. "I did not mean to hurt you. It is not that I love all my friends here the less—and you know how truly I appreciate your own friendship—but only that I love my sister more; and my duty is with her. I only decided last night. Don't turn your back on me. Come and sit by me, and talk to me," she pleaded, holding out her hand. "I need all your strength." As she spoke the tears started to her eyes and her voice sank almost to a whisper.
The doctor lifted his head from his palm and walked quickly toward her. The suffering in her voice had robbed him of all resentment.
"Forgive me, I did not mean it. Tell me," he said, in a sudden burst of tenderness—all feeling about himself had dropped away—"why must you go so soon? Why not wait until spring?" He had taken his seat beside her now and sat looking into her eyes.
"Lucy wants to go at once," she replied, in a tone as if the matter did not admit of any discussion.
"Yes, I know. That's just like her. What she wants she can never wait a minute for, but she certainly would sacrifice some pleasure of her own to please you. If she was determined to be a musician it would be different, but it is only for her pleasure, and as an accomplishment." He spoke earnestly and impersonally, as he always did when she consulted him on any of her affairs, He was trying, too, to wipe from her mind all remembrance of his impatience.
Jane kept her eyes on the carpet for a moment, and then said quietly, and he thought in rather a hopeless tone:
"It is best we go at once."
The doctor looked at her searchingly—with the eye of a scientist, this time, probing for a hidden meaning.
"Then there is something else you have not told me; someone is annoying her, or there is someone with whom you are afraid she will fall in love. Who is it? You know how I could help in a matter of that kind."
"No; there is no one."
Doctor John leaned back thoughtfully and tapped the arm of the sofa with his fingers. He felt as if a door had been shut in his face.
"I don't understand it," he said slowly, and in a baffled tone. "I have never known you to do a thing like this before. It is entirely unlike you. There is some mystery you are keeping from me. Tell me, and let me help."
"I can tell you nothing more. Can't you trust me to do my duty in my own way?" She stole a look at him as she spoke and again lowered her eyelids.
"And you are determined to go?" he asked in his former cross-examining tone.
"Yes."
Again the doctor kept silence. Despite her assumed courage and determined air, his experienced eye caught beneath it all the shrinking helplessness of the woman.
"Then I, too, have reached a sudden resolve," he said in a manner almost professional in its precision. "You cannot and shall not go alone."
"Oh, but Lucy and I can get along together," she exclaimed with nervous haste. "There is no one we could take but Martha, and she is too old. Besides she must look after the house while we are away."
"No; Martha will not do. No woman will do. I know Paris and its life; it is not the place for two women to live in alone, especially so pretty and light-hearted a woman as Lucy."
"I am not afraid."
"No, but I am," he answered in a softened voice, "very much afraid." It was no longer the physician who spoke, but the friend.
"Of what?"
"Of a dozen things you do not understand, and cannot until you encounter them," he replied, smoothing her hand tenderly.
"Yes, but it cannot be helped. There is no one to go with us." This came with some positiveness, yet with a note of impatience in her voice.
"Yes, there is," he answered gently.
"Who?" she asked slowly, withdrawing her hand from his caress, an undefined fear rising in her mind.
"Me. I will go with you."
Jane looked at him with widening eyes. She knew now. She had caught his meaning in the tones of his voice before he had expressed it, and had tried to think of some way to ward off what she saw was coming, but she was swept helplessly on.
"Let us go together, Jane," he burst out, drawing closer to her. All reserve was gone. The words which had pressed so long for utterance could no longer be held back. "I cannot live here alone without you. You know it, and have always known it. I love you so—don't let us live apart any more. If you must go, go as my wife."
A thrill of joy ran through her. Her lips quivered. She wanted to cry out, to put her arms around his neck, to tell him everything in her heart. Then came a quick, sharp pain that stifled every other thought. For the first time the real bitterness of the situation confronted her. This phase of it she had not counted upon.
She shrank back a little. "Don't ask me that!" she moaned in a tone almost of pain. "I can stand anything now but that. Not now—not now!"
Her hand was still under his, her fingers lying limp, all the pathos of her suffering in her face: determination to do her duty, horror over the situation, and above them all her overwhelming love for him.
He put his arm about her shoulders and drew her to him.
"You love me, Jane, don't you?"
"Yes, more than all else in the world," she answered simply. "Too well"—and her voice broke—"to have you give up your career for me or mine."
"Then why should we live apart? I am willing to do as much for Lucy as you would. Let me share the care and responsibility. You needn't, perhaps, be gone more than a year, and then we will all come back together, and I take up my work again. I need you, my beloved. Nothing that I do seems of any use without you. You are my great, strong light, and have always been since the first day I loved you. Let me help bear these burdens. You have carried them so long alone."
His face lay against hers now, her hand still clasped tight in his. For an instant she did not answer or move; then she straightened a little and lifted her cheek from his.
"John," she said—it was the first time in all her life she had called him thus—"you wouldn't love me if I should consent. You have work to do here and I now have work to do on the other side. We cannot work together; we must work apart. Your heart is speaking, and I love you for it, but we must not think of it now. It may come right some time—God only knows! My duty is plain—I must go with Lucy. Neither you nor my dead father would love me if I did differently."
"I only know that I love you and that you love me and nothing else should count," he pleaded impatiently. "Nothing else shall count. There is nothing you could do would make me love you less. You are practical and wise about all your plans. Why has this whim of Lucy's taken hold of you as it has? And it is only a whim; Lucy will want something else in six months. Oh, I cannot—cannot let you go. I'm so desolate without you—my whole life is yours—everything I do is for you. O Jane, my beloved, don't shut me out of your life! I will not let you go without me!" His voice vibrated with a certain indignation, as if he had been unjustly treated. She raised one hand and laid it on his forehead, smoothing his brow as a mother would that of a child. The other still lay in his.
"Don't, John," she moaned, in a half-piteous tone. "Don't! Don't talk so! I can only bear comforting words to-day. I am too wretched—too utterly broken and miserable. Please! please, John!"
He dropped her hand and leaning forward put both of his own to his head. He knew how strong was her will and how futile would be his efforts to change her mind unless her conscience agreed.
"I won't," he answered, as a strong man answers who is baffled. "I did not mean to be impatient or exacting." Then he raised his head and looked steadily into her eyes. "What would you have me do, then?"
"Wait."
"But you give me no promise."
"No, I cannot—not now. I am like one staggering along, following a dim light that leads hither and thither, and which may any moment go out and leave me in utter darkness."
"Then there is something you have not told me?"
"O John! Can't you trust me?"
"And yet you love me?"
"As my life, John."
When he had gone and she had closed the door upon him, she went back to the sofa where the two had sat together, and with her hands clasped tight above her head, sank down upon its cushions. The tears came like rain now, bitter, blinding tears that she could not check.
"I have hurt him," she moaned. "He is so good, and strong, and helpful. He never thinks of himself; it is always of me—me, who can do nothing. The tears were in his eyes—I saw them. Oh, I've hurt him—hurt him! And yet, dear God, thou knowest I could not help it."
Maddened with the pain of it all she sprang up, determined to go to him and tell him everything. To throw herself into his arms and beg forgiveness for her cruelty and crave the protection of his strength. Then her gaze fell upon her father's portrait! The cold, steadfast eyes were looking down upon her as if they could read her very soul. "No! No!" she sobbed, putting her hands over her eyes as if to shut out some spectre she had not the courage to face. "It must not be—it CANNOT be," and she sank back exhausted.
When the paroxysm was over she rose to her feet, dried her eyes, smoothed her hair with both hands, and then, with lips tight pressed and faltering steps, walked upstairs to where Martha was getting Lucy's things ready for the coming journey. Crossing the room, she stood with her elbows on the mantel, her cheeks tight pressed between her palms, her eyes on the embers. Martha moved from the open trunk and stood behind her.
"It was Doctor John, wasn't it?" she asked in a broken voice that told of her suffering.
"Yes," moaned Jane from between her hands.
"And ye told him about your goin'?"
"Yes, Martha." Her frame was shaking with her sobs.
"And about Lucy?"
"No, I could not."
Martha leaned forward and laid her hand on Jane's shoulder.
"Poor lassie!" she said, patting it softly. "Poor lassie! That was the hardest part. He's big and strong and could 'a' comforted ye. My heart aches for ye both!"
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