UNDER a growing weight of uneasiness, combined with a sense of utter discontent with himself, Galt put Lionel down when he had half listened to his accusing prattle for an hour, and sought the shadowy solitude of his great house.
Yes, Margaret Dealing knew, he told himself. That was plain from her change of manner. She knew the truth at last, and was now heaping upon him the silent, womanly contempt which he so eminently deserved.
He sat at his open window and watched the shadows fall and sullenly creep across the lawn as the sunbeams receded, and the twilight of a close, sultry evening came on. He went down to supper when he was called, but he ate little and his loneliness seemed more oppressive there in the open gas-light, under the gaze of the observant and solicitous attendants. Taking a cigar, he went outside and began to walk up and down on the grass, now grimly fighting against the fate which, like some grim sea-monster, was clutching him with a million penetrating tentacles, and coiling round him as might some insidious reptile bent upon retributive torture. How had he dared to question the predominance of spirit over matter when this piteous appeal for the peace of his soul was oozing from the very fibre of his being?
Presently he saw Wynn Dearing emerge from the front door of his home, carrying a traveller’s bag. Dearing rested the bag on the walk at his feet and stood looking down the street. Then, with his arms folded, he began to walk nervously to and fro.
“He is going away,” Galt speculated. “He looks excited. I wonder if Margaret could have told him of her discovery?”
Galt stood still, held to the ground by the sheer horror of the thought. Of all possible happenings, he had most dreaded his best friend’s discovery of that particular thing. The young doctor had turned toward him and was approaching. He now held his head down and had clasped his hands tensely behind him. Suddenly, when quite near, he raised his eyes and recognized Galt.
“Hello, Kenneth!” he said. “I didn’t know you were at home. Otherwise, I should have run in and said good-bye.”
“You are going somewhere, then?” Galt said.
“To Augusta for a few days,” Dearing replied. “I got a letter offering me a chance to do an important operation. I shall be glad to get away, even for so short a time as that. I almost wish, old man, that I could stay away forever. I used to love this town, but I hate it now. I hate anything that is heartless and totally blinded by money and power to all sense of justice and common decency.”
“Why, what’s gone wrong?” Galt inquired.
“Wrong? The place is rotten to the core!” Dearing burst out. “Kenneth, a thing is going to be countenanced by the citizens of this town that would stain the character of the Dark Ages. Haven’t you heard the news that has set every tongue to wagging like a thousand bell-clappers?”
“No, I haven’t heard anything out of the ordinary. You see, I am keeping so close here at home that—”
“Well, old man, the lowest, poorest excuse for a man that old Stafford ever produced is coming back,” Dear-ing broke it, furiously. “Fred Walton, I mean. I didn’t think he’d have the effrontery to show his face here again, but he has decided to do it.”
“Oh!” Galt exclaimed. But that was all he said, for Dearing went on, angrily:
“Yes, and the dastardly thing—the most outrageous fact about it all—is that every soul in the place is ready to receive him with open arms. He has made lots of money; he is rich; he has reformed, they say, and, idiots that they are, they have forgiven him. I have heard his return spoken of by a score of our very best citizens, and not one of them has even mentioned the crime that lies at his door—the crime that stands out to-day in a more damning light than it ever did. The brave, patient, suffering little woman—who is as high above him intellectually, morally, and every other way as the stars are above the earth—and that glorious child are to have another slap from his dirty, egotistical paw. He put her into prison and made her an exile with his nameless offspring, and yet he comes back like a royal prince. ‘Wild oats,’ they call his vile conduct, and they are ready to wipe it off his record. That is modern mankind for you, and, Kenneth, this one circumstance has come nearer to shaking my faith than anything that ever happened to me. If God can allow an insult like that to come to Dora Barry now, after all she has borne so sweetly, silently, and bravely, He can be no God of mine. I’ll be through with the creeds, I tell you. I’ll join your gang of scoffers and trot along wherever your black philosophy leads. Even my uncle has no protest to make, nor my sister, who I thought had given the scamp up in disgust. By George, she even looks happy over it! I don’t want to meet him face to face. I don’t know that I could control myself. She has given me no right to act as her defender; if she had, Kenneth, I’d take up her cause if it ended my career here forever!”
“You? You?” Galt gasped.
“Yes, I. Listen, old man. You are my best friend, and I feel like telling some one. I feel that it would be a sort of tribute of respect to her worthiness. I presume you, like all the rest, think that I never have had any preference for any particular woman, but I have had, and I am not ashamed of it.
“When I was a boy of thirteen or so, and Dora was about eight, we used to play together. Even at that age I had an eye for beauty, and she was the prettiest child that ever lived. We called ourselves sweethearts. Her old father used to get us to sit for him in his studio, and he would talk to us as only such a beautiful soul could to children. He used to sigh and say that she would be a pauper, and that I would grow up a prince, for an artist could not leave his daughter money, and my father was said to be well-to-do. Even at that early age I denied the possibility of such a thing making any difference between her and me, and when she grew up into such beautiful girlhood, and was studying art under her father, I determined to make som............