Chapter XX

The minister from the doorstep of the parsonage watched the stooped figure as it shambled down the street. The rain was still falling in torrents. The thought crossed his mind that the old man might not be able to compa.s.s the two miles or more of country road. Then he got into his raincoat and followed.

"My umbrella isn't of the best," he said, as he overtook the toiling figure; "but I should have offered it."

Andrew Bolton muttered something unintelligible, as he glanced up at the poor shelter the young man held over him. As he did not offer to avail himself of it the minister continued to walk at his side, accommodating his long free stride to the curious shuffling gait of the man who had spent eighteen years in prison. And so they pa.s.sed the windowed fronts of the village houses, peering out from the dripping autumnal foliage like so many watchful eyes, till the hoa.r.s.e signal of a motor car halted them, as they were about to cross the street in front of the Brookville House.

From the open door of the car Lydia Orr's pale face looked out.

"Oh, father," she said. "I've been looking for you everywhere!"

She did not appear to see the minister.

Bolton stepped into the car with a grunt.

"Glad to see the old black Maria, for once," he chuckled. "Don't you recognize the parson, my dear? Nice fellow--the parson; been having quite a visit with him at the manse. Old stamping-ground of mine, you know. Always friendly with the parson."

Wesley Elliot had swept the hat from his head. Lydia's eyes, blue and wide like those of a frightened child, met his with an anguished question.

He bowed gravely.

"I should have brought him home quite safe," he told her. "I intended ordering a carriage."

The girl's lips shaped formal words of grat.i.tude. Then the obedient humming of the motor deepened to a roar and the car glided swiftly away.

On the opposite corner, her bunched skirts held high, stood Miss Lois Daggett.

"Please wait a minute, Mr. Elliot," she called. "I'll walk right along under your umbrella, if you don't mind."

Wesley Elliot bowed and crossed the street. "Certainly," he said.

"I don't know why I didn't bring my own umbrella this morning," said Miss Daggett with a keen glance at Elliot. "That old man stopped in the library awhile ago, and he rather frightened me. He looked very odd and talked so queer. Did he come to the parsonage?"

"Yes," said Wesley Elliot. "He came to the parsonage?"

"Did he tell you who he was?"

He had expected this question. But how should he answer it?

"He told me he had been ill for a long time," said the minister evasively.

"Ill!" repeated Miss Daggett shrilly. Then she said one word: "Insane."

"People who are insane are not likely to mention it," said Elliot.

"Then he is insane," said Miss Daggett with conviction.

Wesley looked at her meditatively. Would the truth, the whole truth, openly proclaimed, be advisable at this juncture, he wondered. Lydia could not hope to keep her secret long. And there was danger in her attempt. He shuddered as he remembered the man's terrible words, "Twice I have been tempted to knock her down when she stood between me and the door." Would it not be better to abandon this pretense sooner, rather than later? If the village knew the truth, would not the people show at least a semblance of kindness to the man who had expiated so bitterly the wrong he had done them?

"If the man is insane," Miss Daggett said, "it doesn't seem right to me to have him at large."

"I wish I knew what to do," said Elliot.

"I think you ought to tell what you know if the man is insane."

"Well, I will tell," said Elliot, almost fiercely. "That man is Andrew Bolton. He has come home after eighteen years of imprisonment, which have left him terribly weak in mind and body. Don't you think people will forgive him now?"

A swift vindictiveness flashed into the woman's face. "I don't know,"

said she.

"Why in the world don't you know, Miss Daggett?"

Then the true reason for the woman's rancor was disclosed. It was a reason as old as the human race, a suspicion as old as the human race, which she voiced. "I have said from the first," she declared, "that n.o.body would come here, as that girl did, and do so much unless she had a motive."

Elliot stared at her. "Then you hate that poor child for trying to make up for the wrong her father did; and that, and not his wrongdoing, influences you?"

Miss Daggett stared at him. Her face slowly reddened. "I wouldn't put it that way," she said.

"What way would you put it?" demanded Elliot mercilessly. He was so furious that he forgot to hold the umbrella over Miss Daggett, and the rain drove in her hard, unhappy face. She did not seem to notice.

She had led a poisoned life, in a narrow rut of existence, and toxic emotions had become as her native atmosphere of mind. Now she seemed to be about to breathe in a better air of humanity, and she choked under it.

"If--" she stammered, "that was--her reason, but--I always felt--that n.o.body ever did such things without--as they used to say--an ax to grind."

"This seems to me a holy sort of ax," said Elliot grimly, "and one for which a Christian woman should certainly not fling stones."

They had reached the Daggett house. The woman stopped short. "You needn't think I'm going around talking, any more than you would," she said, and her voice snapped like a whip. She went up the steps, and Elliot went home, not knowing whether he had accomplished good or mischief.

Chapter XXI

Much to Mrs. Solomon Black's astonishment, Wesley Elliot ate no dinner that day. It was his habit to come in from a morning's work with a healthy young appet.i.te keen-set for her beef and vegetables.

He pa.s.sed directly up to his room, although she called to him that dinner was ready. Finally she went upstairs and knocked smartly on his door.

"Dinner's ready, Mr. Elliot," she called out.

"I don't want any today, thank you, Mrs. Black," was his reply.

"You ain't sick?"

"Oh, no, only not hungry."

Mrs. Black was alarmed when, later in the afternoon, she heard the front door slam, and beheld from a front window Elliot striding down the street. The rain had ceased falling, and there were ragged holes in the low-hanging clouds which revealed glimpses of dazzling blue.