CHAPTER IX
THE SPREAD OF FIRE
The doctor kept his word. His hand was the first that touched Jane's when she came down the gangplank, Martha beside him, holding out her arms for the child, cuddling it to her bosom, wrapping her shawl about it as if to protect it from the gaze of the inquisitive.
"O doctor! it was so good of you!" were Jane's first words. It hurt her to call him thus, but she wanted to establish the new relation clearly. She had shouldered her cross and must bear its weight alone and in her own way. "You don't know what it is to see a face from home! I am so glad to get here. But you should not have left your people; I wrote Martha and told her so. All I wanted you to do was to have her meet me here. Thank you, dear friend, for coming."
She had not let go his hand, clinging to him as a timid woman in crossing a narrow bridge spanning an abyss clings to the strong arm of a man.
He helped her to the dock as tenderly as if she had been a child; asking her if the voyage had been a rough one, whether she had been ill in her berth, and whether she had taken care of the baby herself, and why she had brought no nurse with her. She saw his meaning, but she did not explain her weakness or offer any explanation of the cause of her appearance or of the absence of a nurse. In a moment she changed the subject, asking after his mother and his own work, and seemed interested in what he told her about the neighbors.
When the joy of hearing her voice and of looking into her dear face once more had passed, his skilled eyes probed the deeper. He noted with a sinking at the heart the dark circles under the drooping lids, the drawn, pallid skin and telltale furrows that had cut their way deep into her cheeks. Her eyes, too, had lost their lustre, and her step lacked the spring and vigor of her old self. The diagnosis alarmed him. Even the mould of her face, so distinguished, and to him so beautiful, had undergone a change; whether through illness, or because of some mental anguish, he could not decide.
When he pressed his inquiries about Lucy she answered with a half-stifled sigh that Lucy had decided to remain abroad for a year longer; adding that it had been a great relief to her, and that at first she had thought of remaining with her, but that their affairs, as he knew, had become so involved at home that she feared their means of living might be jeopardized if she did not return at once. The child, however, would be a comfort to both Martha and herself until Lucy came. Then she added in a constrained voice:
"Its mother would not, or could not care for it, and so I brought it with me."