The Tides of Barnegat Part 36

Once in the reading she had tightened her grasp on her chair as if to steady herself, but she did not flinch; she even read some sentences twice, so that she might be sure of their meaning.

In his eagerness the captain had not caught the expression of agony that crossed her face as her mind, grasping the purport of the letter, began to measure the misery that would follow if Bart's plan was carried out.

"I knew how ye'd feel," he went on, "and I've been huggin' myself ever since it come when I thought how happy ye'd be when I told ye; but I ain't so sure 'bout Lucy. What do you think? Will she do what Bart wants?"

"No," said Jane in a quiet, restrained voice; "she will not do it."

"Why?" said the captain in a surprised tone. He was not accustomed to be thwarted in anything he had fixed his mind upon, and he saw from Jane's expression that her own was in opposition.

"Because I won't permit it."

The captain leaned forward and looked at Jane in astonishment.

"You won't permit it!"

"No, I won't permit it."

"Why?" The word came from the captain as if it had been shot from a gun.

"Because it would not be right." Her eyes were still fixed on the captain's.

"Well, ain't it right that he should make some amends for what he's done?" he retorted with increasing anger. "When he said he wouldn't marry her I druv him out; now he says he's sorry and wants to do squarely by her and my hand's out to him. She ain't got nothin' in her life that's doin' her any good. And that boy's got to be baptized right and take his father's name, Archie Holt, out loud, so everybody kin hear."

Jane made no answer except to shake her head. Her eyes were still on the captain's, but her mind was neither on him nor on what fell from his lips. She was again confronting that spectre which for years had lain buried and which the man before her was exorcising back to life.

The captain sprang from his seat and stood before her; the words now poured from his lips in a torrent.

"And you'll git out from this death blanket you been sleepin' under, bearin' her sin; breakin' the doctor's heart and your own; and Archie kin hold his head up then and say he's got a father. You ain't heard how the boys talk 'bout him behind his back. Tod Fogarty's stuck to him, but who else is there 'round here? We all make mistakes; that's what half the folks that's livin' do. Everything's been a lie--nothin'

but lies--for near twenty years. You've lived a lie motherin' this boy and breakin' your heart over the whitest man that ever stepped in shoe leather. Doctor John's lived a lie, tellin' folks he wanted to devote himself to his hospital when he'd rather live in the sound o' your voice and die a pauper than run a college anywhere else. Lucy has lived a lie, and is livin' it yet--and LIKES IT, TOO, that's the worst of it.

And I been muzzled all these years; mad one minute and wantin' to twist his neck, and the next with my eyes runnin' tears that the only boy I got was lyin' out among strangers. The only one that's honest is the little Pond Lily. She ain't got nothin' to hide and you see it in her face. Her father was square and her mother's with her and nothin' can't touch her and don't. Let's have this out. I'm tired of it--"

The captain was out of breath now, his emotions still controlling him, his astonishment at the unexpected opposition from the woman of all others on whose a.s.sistance he most relied unabated.

Jane rose from her chair and stood facing him, a great light in her eyes:

"No! No! NO! A thousand times, no! You don't know Lucy; I do. What you want done now should have been done when Archie was born. It was my fault. I couldn't see her suffer. I loved her too much. I thought to save her, I didn't care how. It would have been better for her if she had faced her sin then and taken the consequences; better for all of us. I didn't think so then, and it has taken me years to find it out. I began to be conscious of it first in her marriage, then when she kept on living her lie with her husband, and last when she deserted Ellen and went off to Beach Haven alone--that broke my heart, and my mistake rose up before me, and I KNEW!"

The captain stared at her in astonishment. He could hardly credit his ears.

"Yes, better, if she'd faced it. She would have lived here then under my care, and she might have loved her child as I have done. Now she has no tie, no care, no responsibility, no thought of anything but the pleasures of the moment. I have tried to save her, and I have only helped to ruin her."

"Make her settle down, then, and face the music!" blurted out the captain, resuming his seat. "Bart warn't all bad; he was only young and foolish. He'll take care of her. It ain't never too late to begin to turn honest. Bart wants to begin; make her begin, too. He's got money now to do it; and she kin live in South America same's she kin here.

She's got no home anywhere. She don't like it here, and never did; you kin see that from the way she swings 'round from place to place. MAKE her face it, I tell ye. You been too easy with her all your life; pull her down now and keep her nose p'inted close to the compa.s.s."

"You do not know of what you talk," Jane answered, her eyes blazing.

"She hates the past; hates everything connected with it; hates the very name of Barton Holt. Never once has she mentioned it since her return.

She never loved Archie; she cared no more for him than a bird that has dropped its young out of its nest. Besides, your plan is impossible.

Marriage does not condone a sin. The power to rise and rectify the wrong lies in the woman. Lucy has not got it in her, and she never will have it. Part of it is her fault; a large part of it is mine. She has lived this lie all these years, and I have only myself to blame. I have taught her to live it. I began it when I carried her away from here; I should have kept her at home and had her face the consequences of her sin then. I ought to have laid Archie in her arms and kept him there. I was a coward and could not, and in my fear I destroyed the only thing that could have saved her--the mother-love. Now she will run her course. She's her own mistress; no one can compel her to do anything."

The captain raised his clenched hand:

"Bart will, when he comes."

"How?"

"By claimin' the boy and shamin' her before the world, if she don't.

She liked him well enough when he was a disgrace to himself and to me, without a dollar to his name. What ails him now, when he comes back and owns up like a man and wants to do the square thing, and has got money enough to see it through? She's nothin' but a THING, if she knew it, till this disgrace's wiped off'n her. By G.o.d, Miss Jane, I tell you this has got to be put through just as Bart wants it, and quick!"

Jane stepped closer and laid her hand on the captain's arm. The look in her eyes, the low, incisive, fearless ring in her voice, overawed him.

Her courage astounded him. This side of her character was a revelation.

Under their influence he became silent and humbled--as a boisterous advocate is humbled by the measured tones of a just judge.

"It is not my friend, Captain Nat, who is talking now. It is the father who is speaking. Think for a moment. Who has borne the weight of this, you or I? You had a wayward son whom the people here think you drove out of your home for gambling on Sunday. No other taint attaches to him or to you. Dozens of other sons and fathers have done the same. He returns a reformed man and lives out his life in the home he left.

"I had a wayward sister who forgot her mother, me, her womanhood, and herself, and yet at whose door no suspicion of fault has been laid. I stepped in and took the brunt and still do. I did this for my father's name and for my promise to him and for my love of her. To her child I have given my life. To him I am his mother and will always be--always, because I will stand by my fault. That is a redemption in itself, and that is the only thing that saves me from remorse. You and I, outside of his father and mother, are the only ones living that know of his parentage. The world has long since forgotten the little they suspected. Let it rest; no good could come--only suffering and misery.

To stir it now would only open old wounds and, worst of all, it would make a new one."

"In you?"

"No, worse than that. My heart is already scarred all over; no fresh wound would hurt."

"In the doctor?"

"Yes and no. He has never asked the truth and I have never told him."

"Who, then?"

"In little Ellen. Let us keep that one flower untouched."

The captain rested his head in his hand, and for some minutes made no answer. Ellen was the apple of his eye.

"But if Bart insists?"

"He won't insist when he sees Lucy. She is no more the woman that he loved and wronged than I am. He would not know her if he met her outside this house."

"What shall I do?"

"Nothing. Let matters take their course. If he is the man you think he is he will never break the silence."

"And you will suffer on--and the doctor?"

Jane bowed her head and the tears sprang to her eyes.

"Yes, always; there is nothing else to do."

CHAPTER XX