- PELLY. Write soon.
It is impossible to tell you of the glow that warmed and lighted me on reading these friendly lines. They were all the more grateful owing to the fact that if Pelly believed of me what Vio and every one else believed, as quite possibly he did, it would have made no difference. Of the things taught me in my contact with the less sophisticated walks in life, the beauty of a world in which there is comparatively little judging was the most comforting. There were all kinds of jealousies there, bickerings, sulkings, puerilities, and now and then a glorious free fight; but condemnation was rare. The bruised spirit could be at peace in this large charity, and in the spaciousness of its tolerance the humiliated soul could walk with head erect. Its ideals and pleasures might be crude; but they were not pharisaical.
If I had any doubt as to my plans I had none any longer. The instinct that urged me back to the room with the new set of toadstools was like that of the poor bull baited in the ring to take refuge amid the dumb, sympathetic herd of its own kind. I asked only to be hidden there, to live and work, or, if necessary, die obscurely.
Not that I hadn't had a first impulse to try and clear my name; but the futility of attempting that was soon apparent. I had nothing to offer but my word, and my word had been rejected. In the course of the two or three hours since the scene with Vio and Lydia, while I had gone to the station to secure a berth on a night train for New York and dined at a hotel, I had come to the conclusion that the effort to explain would be folly. The mere fact that my doings between Bourg-la-Comtesse and the Auvergne were still blurred in my memory would make any tale I told incoherent and open to suspicion. In addition to that Vio knew, Wolf knew, and others knew that I had not offered my services to the Ambulance Corps of my own free will, while my letters had painted my horror of the sights I witnessed with no thought of reserve. My supposed suicide being ascribed to remorse, the discovery that I was alive and well and in hiding in New York—
No; the evidence against me was too strong. The one witness who might say something in my favor, Doctor Scattlethwaite, had himself not believed me. He could say that the claim I was putting forth now I had put forth two years previously; but there would be nothing convincing in that.
Besides, and there was much in the fact, I wanted to get away, to get back among those who trusted me, and to whom I felt I belonged. If the thread of flame had led me to my old life it was only to show me once for all that there was no place for me in it. Knowing that, I could take hold of the new life more whole-heartedly and probably do better work there. Already new plans were springing to my mind, plans which I could the more easily put into operation because of having some money at my disposal. Mildred Averill would help me in that and perhaps I could help her. If Vio secured a divorce, and I should put no obstruction in the way of that—
But Vio herself came into my room with the calm manner and easy movement which in no wise surprised me, as she was subject to such reactions after moments of excitement.
"What are you doing, Billy?"
She seated herself quietly.
A coat being spread before me on the bed, I folded the sleeves, and doubled the breasts backward.