The Tides of Barnegat

by Francis Hopkinson Smith

"As for me, I ain't never surprised at nothin' Jane Cobden does. She's queerer than Dick's hat-band, and allus was, and I've knowed her ever since she used to toddle up to my house and I baked cookies for her. I've seen her many a time feed the dog with what I give her, just because she said he looked hungry, which there warn't a mite o' truth in, for there ain't nothin' goes hungry round my place, and never was. She's queer, I tell ye."

"Quite true, dear Mrs. Pokeberry," remarked Pastor Dellenbaugh in his gentlest tone—he had heard the discussion as he was passing through the room and had stopped to listen—"especially when mercy and kindness is to be shown. Some poor little outcast, no doubt, with no one to take care of it, and so this grand woman brings it home to nurse and educate. I wish there were more Jane Cobdens in my parish. Many of you talk good deeds, and justice, and Christian spirit; here is a woman who puts them into practice."

This statement having been made during the dispersal of a Wednesday night meeting, and in the hearing of half the congregation, furnished the key to the mystery, and so for a time the child and its new-found mother ceased to be an active subject of discussion.

Ann Gossaway, however, was not satisfied. The more she thought of the pastor's explanation the more she resented it as an affront to her intelligence.

"If folks wants to pick up stray babies," she shouted to her old mother on her return home one night, "and bring 'em home to nuss, they oughter label 'em with some sort o' pedigree, and not keep the village a-guessin' as to who they is and where they come from. I don't believe a word of this outcast yarn. Guess Miss Lucy is all right, and she knows enough to stay away when all this tomfoolery's goin' on. She doesn't want to come back to a child's nussery." To all of which her mother nodded her head, keeping it going like a toy mandarin long after the subject of discussion had been changed.

Little by little the scandal spread: by innuendoes; by the wise shakings of empty heads; by nods and winks; by the piecing out of incomplete tattle. For the spread of gossip is like the spread of fire: First a smouldering heat—some friction of ill-feeling, perhaps, over a secret sin that cannot be smothered, try as we may; next a hot, blistering tongue of flame creeping stealthily; then a burst of scorching candor and the roar that ends in ruin. Sometimes the victim is saved by a dash of honest water—the outspoken word of some brave friend. More often those who should stamp out the burning brand stand idly by until the final collapse and then warm themselves at the blaze.

Here in Warehold it began with some whispered talk: Bart Holt had disappeared; there was a woman in the case somewhere; Bart's exile had not been entirely caused by his love of cards and drink. Reference was also made to the fact that Jane had gone abroad but a short time AFTER Bart's disappearance, and that knowing how fond she was of him, and how she had tried to reform him, the probability was that she had met him in Paris. Doubts having been expressed that no woman of Jane Cobden's position would go to any such lengths to oblige so young a fellow as Bart Holt, the details of their intimacy were passed from mouth to mouth, and when this was again scouted, reference was made to Miss Gossaway, who was supposed to know more than she was willing to tell. The dressmaker denied all responsibility for the story, but admitted that she had once seen them on the beach "settin' as close together as they could git, with the red cloak she had made for Miss Jane wound about 'em.

"'Twarn't none o' my business, and I told Martha so, and 'tain't none o' my business now, but I'd rather die than tell a lie or scandalize anybody, and so if ye ask me if I saw 'em I'll have to tell ye I did. I don't believe, howsomever, that Miss Jane went away to oblige that good-for-nothin' or that she's ever laid eyes on him since. Lucy is what took her. She's one o' them flyaways. I see that when she was home, and there warn't no peace up to the Cobdens' house till they'd taken her somewheres where she could git all the runnin' round she wanted. As for the baby, there ain't nobody knows where Miss Jane picked that up, but there ain't no doubt but what she loves it same's if it was her own child. She's named it Archie, after her grandfather, anyhow. That's what Martha and she calls it. So they're not ashamed of it."

When the fire had spent itself, only one spot remained unscorched: this was the parentage of little Archie. That mystery still remained unsolved. Those of her own class who knew Jane intimately admired her kindness of heart and respected her silence; those who did not soon forgot the boy's existence.

The tavern loungers, however, some of whom only knew the Cobden girls by reputation, had theories of their own; theories which were communicated to other loungers around other tavern stoves, most of whom would not have known either of the ladies on the street. The fact that both women belonged to a social stratum far above them gave additional license to their tongues; they could never be called in question by anybody who overheard, and were therefore safe to discuss the situation at their will. Condensed into illogical shape, the story was that Jane had met a foreigner who had deserted her, leaving her to care for the child alone; that Lucy had refused to come back to Warehold, had taken what money was coming to her, and, like a sensible woman, had stayed away. That there was not the slightest foundation for this slander did not lessen its acceptance by a certain class; many claimed that it offered the only plausible solution to the mystery, and must, therefore, be true.