When she had finished and had sealed her letter it was long past midnight. It was addressed to Lucy in Dresden, and contained a full account of all the doctor had told her of Bart's death.
CHAPTER XII
A LETTER FROM PARIS
For the first year Jane watched Archie's growth and development with the care of a self-appointed nurse temporarily doing her duty by her charge. Later on, as the fact became burned into her mind that Lucy would never willingly return to Warehold, she clung to him with that absorbing love and devotion which an unmarried woman often lavishes upon a child not her own. In his innocent eyes she saw the fulfilment of her promise to her father. He would grow to be a man of courage and strength, the stain upon his birth forgotten, doing honor to himself, to her, and to the name he bore. In him, too, she sought refuge from that other sorrow which was often greater than she could bear—the loss of the closer companionship of Doctor John—a companionship which only a wife's place could gain for her. The true mother-love—the love which she had denied herself, a love which had been poured out upon Lucy since her father's death—found its outlet, therefore, in little Archie.
Under Martha's watchful care the helpless infant grew to be a big, roly-poly boy, never out of her arms when she could avoid it. At five he had lost his golden curls and short skirts and strutted about in knee-trousers. At seven he had begun to roam the streets, picking up his acquaintances wherever he found them.
Chief among them was Tod Fogarty, the son of the fisherman, now a boy of ten, big for his age and bubbling over with health and merriment, and whose life Doctor John had saved when he was a baby. Tod had brought a basket of fish to Yardley, and sneaking Meg, who was then alive—he died the year after—had helped himself to part of the contents, and the skirmish over its recovery had resulted in a friendship which was to last the boys all their lives. The doctor believed in Tod, and always spoke of his pluck and of his love for his mother, qualities which Jane admired—but then technical class distinctions never troubled Jane—every honest body was Jane's friend, just as every honest body was Doctor John's.
The doctor loved Archie with the love of an older brother; not altogether because he was Jane's ward, but for the boy's own qualities—for his courage, for his laugh—particularly for his buoyancy. Often, as he looked into the lad's eyes brimming with fun, he would wish that he himself had been born with the same kind of temperament. Then again the boy satisfied to a certain extent the longing in his heart for home, wife, and child—a void which he knew now would never be filled. Fate had decreed that he and the woman he loved should live apart—with this he must be content. Not that his disappointments had soured him; only that this ever-present sorrow had added to the cares of his life, and in later years had taken much of the spring and joyousness out of him. This drew him all the closer to Archie, and the lad soon became his constant companion; sitting beside him in his gig, waiting for him at the doors of the fishermen's huts, or in the cabins of the poor on the outskirts of Barnegat and Warehold.
"There goes Doctor John of Barnegat and his curly-head," the neighbors would say; "when ye see one ye see t'other."
Newcomers in Barnegat and Warehold thought Archie was his son, and would talk to the doctor about him: