“I wonder if he used to recall the child he left, tossed helpless upon the mercies of the town?” murmured one of the neighbors.
“Is my desk here, and has it been touched?” he now asked, proceeding hastily into the workroom. “Ah, it all looks very natural,” he remarked; “very natural! I can scarcely believe that I have been gone more than a day. Oh, there’s the model of the torpedo I was planning! Let me see,” and he lifted up the half-completed model, with what Clarke could not but call a very natural emotion, looking it over part by part and finally putting it down with a sigh. “Good for those days,” he commented, “but would not answer now. Too complicated by far; explosive agencies should be more simple in their construction.” And so on for half an hour; then he descended and walked away of his own accord to the front door.
“I have seen the old place!” he blandly observed, “and that is all I expected. If my daughter sees fit to acknowledge me, she will seek me in the wild spot in which I have made for myself a home. Here I shall not come again. I have not returned to the place of my birth to be a bugbear to my only child.”
“But,” cried some one in protest, “you are poor and you are hungry.”
“I am what fate and my own folly have made me,” he declared. “I ask for no sympathy, nor do I feel disposed to urge my natural rights.”
“If you are Polly Earle’s father, you will be fed and you will be clothed,” put in Clarke hotly. “There is a meal for you now at the tavern, if you will go there and take it.”
But the proud man, pointing to his dog drew himself up and turned scornfully away. “He can procure me as much as that,” said he. “When my daughter has affection and a child’s consideration to show me, then let her come to Hadley’s cave. Food! Clothing! I have had an apology for both for fourteen years, but love—never; and all I want just now is love!”
Polly, who was not many steps off, heard these words and, moved by fear or disgust, dropped her hands which she had instinctively raised at his approach. He saw and smiled grimly, then with a bow that belied his aspect and recalled the old days when a bow passed for something more than a perfunctory greeting, he moved sternly down the walk and out through the stiff old gate into the dusty highroad.
Half a dozen or more of the most eager witnesses of this extraordinary scene followed him down the hill and into town, anxious no doubt to set the town ablaze with news of Ephraim Earle’s return and of his identity with the newly arrived hermit at Hadley’s cave.