How came this to pass? One would need to go back into the story of Miss Julia's life as well as that of Aurora Lane. She had been lame from birth, hopelessly so, disfiguringly so. Yet callous nature had been kind to her, had been compassionate. It gave to her a face of wondrous sweetness, a heart of wondrous softness thereto. Hopeless and resigned, yet never pathetic and never seeking pity, no living soul had ever heard an unkind or impatient word from Julia Delafield's lips, not in all her life, even when she was a child. She had suffered, yes. The story of that was written on her face—she knew she might not hope—and yet she hoped.
She knew all the great romances of the world, and knew likewise more than the greatest romancer ever wrote of women. For her—even with her wistful smile, the sudden flashing of her wistful eyes—there could be no romance, and she knew that well. Not for her was to be ever the love of man. She was of those cruelly defective in body, who may not hope for any love worth having. Surrounded daily by her friends, her books, Miss Julia was an eager reader, and an eager lover. She knew more of life's philosophy perhaps than any soul in all her town, and yet she might enjoy less of life's rewards than any other. A woman to the heart, feminine in every item, flaming with generous instincts, and yet denied all hope of motherhood; a woman steeped in philosophy and yet trained in emotion—what must she do—what could she do—she, one of the denied?
What Miss Julia had done long years ago was to select as her best friend the girl who of all in that heartless little town most needed a friend—Aurora Lane. She knew Aurora's secret—in part. In full she never yet had asked to know, so large was she herself of heart. All Spring Valley had scorned Aurora Lane, for that she had no father for her child. And—with what logic or lack of logic, who shall say?—Julia Delafield had taken Aurora Lane close to her own heart—because she had the child!
It is not too much to say that these two hopeless women, the one outcast of society, the other outcast of God, had brought up that child between them. Those who say women have no secrets they can keep should have noted this strange partnership in business, in life, in maternity! This had gone on for twenty years, and not a soul in Spring Valley could have told the truth of it. Don Lane did not know of it even now.
"Why, Aurora," said Miss Julia more than once in those early years to her friend, "you must not grieve. See what God has given you—a son!—and such a son! How glad, how proud, how contented you ought to be. You have a son! Look at me!"
So Aurora Lane did look at Julia Delafield. They comforted one another. It was from Miss Julia that year by year, falteringly, she learned to hope, learned to hold up her head. Thus gradually, by the aid of the love of another woman—a rare and beautiful thing, a wondrous thing—a thing so very rare in that world of jealousy in which by fate women so largely live—she got back some hold on life—she, mother of the son of no man, at the urge of a woman who could never have a son!
"Oh, we will plan, Aurora!" said Miss Julia in those piteous earlier times. "We will plan—we will get on. We'll fight it out together." And so they had, shoulder to shoulder, unnoted, unpraised and unadvised, year by year; and because they knew she had at least one friend, those who sat in judgment on Aurora Lane came little by little to forgive or to forget her sin, as it once was called of all the pulpits there.
And now a drunken tongue had recalled sharply, unforgivably, unescapably, that past which had so long lain buried—a past to which neither of them ever referred.
In all these years time had been doing what it could to repair what had been. Time wreathes the broken tree with vines to bind up its wounds. It covers the scarred earth with grasses presently. In all these years some men had died, others had left the village. Certain old women, poisonous of heart, also had died, and so the better for all concerned. Other women mayhap had their sacrifices—and their secrets. But as for Aurora Lane, at least she had won and held one friend. And so they two had had between them a child, a son, a man. One had gathered of the philosophy of life, of the world's great minds. The other had brought into the partnership the great equipment with which Nature forever defies all law and all philosophy save her own.
Now, product of their twenty years of friendship, here he stood, tall and strong—Don Lane, their boy, blood on his hand because of that truth which he swiftly—too swiftly—had declared to be a lie; and which was no lie but the very truth.