The Tides of Barnegat Read online

  CHAPTER III

  LITTLE TOD FOGARTY

  With the warmth of Jane's parting grasp lingering in his own DoctorJohn untied the mare, sprang into his gig, and was soon clear of thevillage and speeding along the causeway that stretched across the saltmarshes leading past his own home to the inner beach beyond. As hedrove slowly through his own gate, so as to make as little noise aspossible, the cottage, blanketed under its clinging vines, seemed inthe soft light of the low-lying moon to be fast asleep. Only one eyewas open; this was the window of his office, through which streamed theglow of a lamp, its light falling on the gravel path and lilac bushesbeyond.

  Rex gave a bark of welcome and raced beside the wheels.

  "Keep still, old dog! Down, Rex! Been lonely, old fellow?"

  The dog in answer leaped in the air as his master drew rein, and witheager springs tried to reach his hands, barking all the while in shortand joyful yelps.

  Doctor John threw the lines across the dash-board, jumped from the gig,and pushing open the hall door--it was never locked--stepped quicklyinto his office, and turning up the lamp, threw himself into a chair athis desk. The sorrel made no attempt to go to the stable--both horseand man were accustomed to delays--sometimes of long hours andsometimes of whole nights.

  The appointments and fittings of the office--old-fashioned andpractical as they were--reflected in a marked degree the aims andtastes of the occupant. While low bookcases stood against the wallssurmounted by rows of test-tubes, mortars and pestles, cases ofinstruments, and a line of bottles labelled with names of variousmixtures (in those days doctors were chemists as well as physicians),there could also be found a bust of the young Augustus; one or twolithographs of Heidelberg, where he had studied; and some lineengravings in black frames--one a view of Oxford with the Thameswandering by, another a portrait of the Duke of Wellington, and stillanother of Nell Gwynn. Scattered about the room were easy-chairs andsmall tables piled high with books, a copy of Tacitus and an earlyedition of Milton being among them, while under the wide, low windowstood a narrow bench crowded with flowering plants in earthen pots, theremnants of the winter's bloom. There were also souvenirs of hisearlier student life--a life which few of his friends in Warehold,except Jane Cobden, knew or cared anything about--including a pair ofcrossed foils and two boxing-gloves; these last hung over a portrait ofMacaulay.

  What the place lacked was the touch of a woman's hand in vase, flower,or ornament--a touch that his mother, for reasons of her own, nevergave and which no other woman had yet dared suggest.

  For an instant the doctor sat with his elbows on the desk in deepthought, the light illuminating his calm, finely chiselled features andhands--those thin, sure hands which could guide a knife within a hair'sbreadth of instant death--and leaning forward, with an indrawn sighexamined some letters lying under his eye. Then, as if suddenlyremembering, he glanced at the office slate, his face lighting up as hefound it bare of any entry except the date.

  Rex had been watching his master with ears cocked, and was now on hishaunches, cuddling close, his nose resting on the doctor's knee. DoctorJohn laid his hand on the dog's head and smoothing the long, silkyears, said with a sigh of relief, as he settled himself in his chair:

  "Little Tod must be better, Rex, and we are going to have a quietnight."

  The anxiety over his patients relieved, his thoughts reverted to Janeand their talk. He remembered the tone of her voice and the quick wayin which she had warded off his tribute to her goodness; he recalledher anxiety over Lucy; he looked again into the deep, trusting eyesthat gazed into his as she appealed to him for assistance; he caughtonce more the poise of the head as she listened to his account oflittle Tod Fogarty's illness and heard her quick offer to help, andfelt for the second time her instant tenderness and sympathy, neverwithheld from the sick and suffering, and always so generous andspontaneous.

  A certain feeling of thankfulness welled up in his heart. Perhaps shehad at last begun to depend upon him--a dependence which, with a womansuch as Jane, must, he felt sure, eventually end in love.

  With these thoughts filling his mind, he settled deeper in his chair.These were the times in which he loved to think of her--when, with pipein mouth, he could sit alone by his fire and build castles in thecoals, every rosy mountain-top aglow with the love he bore her; with nowatchful mother's face trying to fathom his thoughts; only his faithfuldog stretched at his feet.

  Picking up his brierwood, lying on a pile of books on his desk, andwithin reach of his hand, he started to fill the bowl, when a scrap ofpaper covered with a scrawl written in pencil came into view. He turnedit to the light and sprang to his feet.

  "Tod worse," he said to himself. "I wonder how long this has been here."

  The dog was now beside him looking up into the doctor's eyes. It wasnot the first time that he had seen his master's face grow suddenlyserious as he had read the tell-tale slate or had opened some noteawaiting his arrival.

  Doctor John lowered the lamp, stepped noiselessly to the foot of thewinding stairs that led to the sleeping rooms above--the dog close athis heels, watching his every movement--and called gently:

  "Mother! mother, dear!" He never left his office when she was at homeand awake without telling her where he was going.

  No one answered.

  "She is asleep. I will slip out without waking her. Stay where you are,Rex--I will be back some time before daylight," and throwing hisnight-cloak about his shoulders, he started for his gig.

  The dog stopped with his paws resting on the outer edge of the top stepof the porch, the line he was not to pass, and looked wistfully afterthe doctor. His loneliness was to continue, and his poor master to goout into the night alone. His tail ceased to wag, only his eyes moved.

  Once outside Doctor John patted the mare's neck as if in apology andloosened the reins. "Come, old girl," he said; "I'm sorry, but it can'tbe helped," and springing into the gig, he walked the mare clear of thegravel beyond the gate, so as not to rouse his mother, touched herlightly with the whip, and sent her spinning along the road on the wayto Fogarty's.

  The route led toward the sea, branching off within the sight of thecottage porch, past the low, conical ice-houses used by the fishermenin which to cool their fish during the hot weather, along thesand-dunes, and down a steep grade to the shore. The tide was makingflood, and the crawling surf spent itself in long shelving reaches offoam. These so packed the sand that the wheels of the gig hardly madean impression upon it. Along this smooth surface the mare trottedbriskly, her nimble feet wet with the farthest reaches of the incomingwash.

  As he approached the old House of Refuge, black in the moonlight andlooking twice its size in the stretch of the endless beach, he noticedfor the hundredth time how like a crouching woman it appeared, with itshipped roof hunched up like a shoulder close propped against the duneand its overhanging eaves but a draped hood shading its thoughtfulbrow; an illusion which vanished when its square form, with its widedoor and long platform pointing to the sea, came into view.

  More than once in its brief history the doctor had seen the volunteercrew, aroused from their cabins along the shore by the boom of a gunfrom some stranded vessel, throw wide its door and with a wild cheerwhirl the life-boat housed beneath its roof into the boiling surf, andmany a time had he helped to bring back to life the benumbed bodiesdrawn from the merciless sea by their strong arms.

  There were other houses like it up and down the coast. Some hadremained unused for years, desolate and forlorn, no unhappy ship havingfoundered or struck the breakers within their reach; others had been inconstant use. The crews were gathered from the immediate neighborhoodby the custodian, who was the only man to receive pay from theGovernment. If he lived near by he kept the key; if not, the nearestfisherman held it. Fogarty, the father of the sick child, and whosecabin was within gunshot of this house, kept the key this year. Noother protection was given these isolated houses and none was needed.These black-hooded Sisters of the Coast, keeping their lonely vigils
,were as safe from beach-combers and sea-prowlers as their white-cappednamesakes would have been threading the lonely suburbs of some city.

  The sound of the mare's feet on the oyster-shell path outside his cabinbrought Fogarty, a tall, thin, weather-beaten fisherman, to the door.He was still wearing his hip-boots and sou'wester--he was just in fromthe surf--and stood outside the low doorway with a lantern. Its lightstreamed over the sand and made wavering patterns about the mare's feet.

  "Thought ye'd never come, Doc," he whispered, as he threw the blanketover the mare. "Wife's nigh crazy. Tod's fightin' for all he's worth,but there ain't much breath left in him. I was off the inlet when itcome on."

  The wife, a thick-set woman in a close-fitting cap, her arms bared tothe elbow, her petticoats above the tops of her shoes, met him insidethe door. She had been crying and her eyelids were still wet and hercheeks swollen. The light of the ship's lantern fastened to the wallfell upon a crib in the corner, on which lay the child, his shortcurls, tangled with much tossing, smoothed back from his face. Thedoctor's ears had caught the sound of the child's breathing before heentered the room.

  "When did this come on?" Doctor John asked, settling down beside thecrib upon a stool that the wife had brushed off with her apron.

  "'Bout sundown, sir," she answered, her tear-soaked eyes fixed onlittle Tod's face. Her teeth chattered as she spoke and her arms weretight pressed against her sides, her fingers opening and shutting inher agony. Now and then in her nervousness she would wipe her foreheadwith the back of her wrist as if it were wet, or press her two fingersdeep into her swollen cheek.

  Fogarty had followed close behind the doctor and now stood looking downat the crib with fixed eyes, his thin lips close shut, his square jawsunk in the collar of his shirt. There were no dangers that the seacould unfold which this silent surfman had not met and conquered, andwould again. Every fisherman on the coast knew Fogarty's pluck andskill, and many of them owed their lives to him. To-night, before thisinvisible power slowly closing about his child he was as powerless as askiff without oars caught in the swirl of a Barnegat tide.

  "Why didn't you let me know sooner, Fogarty? You understood mydirections?" Doctor John asked in a surprised tone. "You shouldn't haveleft him without letting me know." It was only when his orders weredisobeyed and life endangered that he spoke thus.

  The fisherman turned his head and was about to reply when the wifestepped in front of him.

  "My husband got ketched in the inlet, sir," she said in an apologetictone, as if to excuse his absence. "The tide set ag'in him and he hadhard pullin' makin' the p'int. It cuts in turrible there, you know,doctor. Tod seemed to be all right when he left him this mornin'. I hadhusband's mate take the note I wrote ye. Mate said nobody was at homeand he laid it under your pipe. He thought ye'd sure find it there whenye come in."

  Doctor John was not listening to her explanations; he was leaning overthe rude crib, his ear to the child's breast. Regaining his position,he smoothed the curls tenderly from the forehead of the little fellow,who still lay with eyes closed, one stout brown hand and arm clear ofthe coverlet, and stood watching his breathing. Every now and then aspasm of pain would cross the child's face; the chubby hand would openconvulsively and a muffled cry escape him. Doctor John watched hisbreathing for some minutes, laid his hand again on the child'sforehead, and rose from the stool.

  "Start up that fire, Fogarty," he said in a crisp tone, turning up hisshirt-cuffs, slipping off his evening coat, and handing the garment tothe wife, who hung it mechanically over a chair, her eyes all the timesearching Doctor John's face for some gleam of hope.

  "Now get a pan," he continued, "fill it with water and some corn-meal,and get me some cotton cloth--half an apron, piece of an old petticoat,anything, but be quick about it."

  The woman, glad of something to do, hastened to obey. Somehow, thetones of his voice had put new courage into her heart. Fogarty threw aheap of driftwood on the smouldering fire and filled the kettle; thedry splinters crackled into a blaze.

  The noise aroused the child.

  The doctor held up his finger for silence and again caressed the boy'sforehead. Fogarty, with a fresh look of alarm in his face, tiptoed backof the crib and stood behind the restless sufferer. Under the doctor'stouch the child once more became quiet.

  "Is he bad off?" the wife murmured when the doctor moved to the fireand began stirring the mush she was preparing. "The other one went thisway; we can't lose him. You won't lose him, will ye, doctor, dear? Idon't want to live if this one goes. Please, doctor--"

  The doctor looked into the wife's eyes, blurred with tears, and laidhis hand tenderly on her shoulder.

  "Keep a good heart, wife," he said; "we'll pull him through. Tod is atough little chap with plenty of fight in him yet. I've seen them muchworse. It will soon be over; don't worry."

  Mrs. Fogarty's eyes brightened and even the fisherman's grim facerelaxed. Silent men in grave crises suffer most; the habit of theirlives precludes the giving out of words that soothe and heal; whenothers speak them, they sink into their thirsty souls like drops ofrain after a long drought. It was just such timely expressions as thesethat helped Doctor John's patients most--often their only hope hung onsome word uttered with a buoyancy of spirit that for a moment stifledall their anxieties.

  The effect of the treatment began to tell upon the little sufferer--hisbreathing became less difficult, the spasms less frequent. The doctorwhispered the change to the wife, sitting close at his elbow, hisimpassive face brightening as he spoke; there was an oven chance nowfor the boy's life.

  The vigil continued.

  No one moved except Fogarty, who would now and then tiptoe quickly tothe hearth, add a fresh log to the embers, and as quickly move back tohis position behind the child's crib. The rising and falling of theblaze, keeping rhythm, as it were, to the hopes and fears of the group,lighted up in turn each figure in the room. First the doctor sittingwith hands resting on his knees, his aquiline nose and brow clearlyoutlined against the shadowy background in the gold chalk of thedancing flames, his black evening clothes in strong contrast to thehigh white of the coverlet, framing the child's face like a nimbus.Next the bent body of the wife, her face in half-tones, her stoutshoulders in high relief, and behind, swallowed up in the gloom, out ofreach of the fire-. gleam, the straight, motionless form of thefisherman, standing with folded arms, grim and silent, his unseen eyesfixed on his child.

  Far into the night, and until the gray dawn streaked the sky, thisvigil continued; the doctor, assisted by Fogarty and the wife, changingthe poultices, filling the child's lungs with hot steam by means of apaper funnel, and encouraging the mother by his talk. At one time hewould tell her in half-whispered tones of a child who had recovered andwho had been much weaker than this one. Again he would turn to Fogartyand talk of the sea, of the fishing outside the inlet, of the bigthree-masted schooner which had been built by the men at Tom's River,of the new light they thought of building at Barnegat to take the placeof the old one--anything to divert their minds and lessen theiranxieties, stopping only to note the sound of every cough the boy gaveor to change the treatment as the little sufferer struggled on fightingfor his life.

  When the child dozed no one moved, no word was spoken. Then in thesilence there would come to their ears above the labored breathing ofthe boy the long swinging tick of the clock, dull and ominous, as iftolling the minutes of a passing life; the ceaseless crunch of the sea,chewing its cud on the beach outside or the low moan of the outer barturning restlessly on its bed of sand.

  Suddenly, and without warning, and out of an apparent sleep, the childstarted up from his pillow with staring eyes and began beating the airfor breath.

  The doctor leaned quickly forward, listened for a moment, his ear tothe boy's chest, and said in a quiet, restrained voice:

  "Go into the other room, Mrs. Fogarty, and stay there till I call you."The woman raised her eyes to his and obeyed mechanically. She was wornout, mind and body, and had lost her powe
r of resistance.

  As the door shut upon her Doctor John sprang from the stool, caught thelamp from the wall, handed it to Fogarty, and picking the child up fromthe crib, laid it flat upon his knees.

  He now slipped his hand into his pocket and took from it a leather casefilled with instruments.

  "Hold the light, Fogarty," he said in a firm, decided tone, "and keepyour nerve. I thought he'd pull through without it, but he'll strangleif I don't."

  "What ye goin' to do--not cut him?" whispered the fisherman in atrembling voice.

  "Yes. It's his only chance. I've seen it coming on for the lasthour--no nonsense now. Steady, old fellow. It'll be over in a minute.... There, my boy, that'll help you. Now, Fogarty, hand me that cloth.... All right, little man; don't cry; it's all over. Now open the doorand let your wife in," and he laid the child back on the pillow.

  When the doctor took the blanket from the sorrel tethered outsideFogarty's cabin and turned his horse's head homeward the sails of thefishing-boats lying in a string on the far horizon flashed silver inthe morning sun, His groom met him at the stable door, and without aword led the mare into the barn.

  The lamp in his study was still burning in yellow mockery of the rosydawn. He laid his case of instruments on the desk, hung his cloak andhat to a peg in the closet, and ascended the staircase on the way tohis bedroom. As he passed his mother's open door she heard his step.

  "Why, it's broad daylight, son," she called in a voice ending in a yawn.

  "Yes, mother."

  "Where have you been?"

  "To see little Tod Fogarty," he answered simply.

  "What's the matter with him?"

  "Croup."

  "Is he going to die?"

  "No, not this time."

  "Well, what did you stay out all night for?" The voice had now grownstronger, with a petulant tone through it.

  "Well, I could hardly help it. They are very simple people, and were sobadly frightened that they were helpless. It's the only child they haveleft to them--the last one died of croup."

  "Well, are you going to turn nurse for half the paupers in the county?All children have croup, and they don't all die!" The petulant voicehad now developed into one of indignation.

  "No, mother, but I couldn't take any risks. This little chap is worthsaving."

  There came a pause, during which the tired man waited patiently.

  "You were at the Cobdens'?"

  "Yes; or I should have reached Fogarty's sooner."

  "And Miss Jane detained you, of course."

  "No, mother."

  "Good-night, John."

  "Say rather 'Good-day,' mother," he answered with a smile and continuedon to his room.