CHAPTER XXXVIII
“AND DID NOT UNDERSTAND”
A short time later, with his playing suit in the hand bag he carried, Locke left the hotel and started for the railway station, where he would join the other members of the team, all of whom, save Hutchinson and himself, were stopping at a boarding house. As he swung down the street, Janet Harting came out of a store and turned toward him. He saw her, and his heart jumped. She saw him, and in a moment she turned squarely around and hastened the other way, vanishing beyond the first corner.
He knew she had seen him this time and deliberately avoided him; there could be no question about it. The evening before he had come upon her suddenly on the street, lifted his hat, and spoken; but she had passed on without a word or a token to betray that he had been observed.
Although it seemed impossible then that she had failed to see him, he was not positive; now, however, he knew, and the knowledge left him breathless and dazed. When he reached the corner beyond which she had disappeared she was far along the street, and hurrying as if in great fear that he would pursue her.
“It’s too much for me,” he murmured. “It’s got me guessing. There’s no getting around it, she dodged me. Why? She saw me last night, and did not speak. Why? I can hardly believe it of her. What have I done? She is the last person I’d ever fancied would do anything of the sort.”
He did not long remain in doubt, for he was not a dull-witted man. The controversy about him was the cause of it all; she had heard what every one in Kingsbridge who took the slightest interest in baseball had heard, and she believed that he had spoken falsely to her. Impulsive, indignant, scornful, she wished to have nothing further to do with a man who could look straight into her eyes and tell her an untruth without a blush or as much as the turning of a hair.
“That’s it,” he said. “There’s no other explanation. I must call on her this evening, after we get back, and tell her the straight truth.”
The truth! If he had not been truthful, was he silly enough to fancy penitence would help him now?
The day proved tiresome and wretched for Tom Locke, and it was far from satisfactory for his teammates, with Fryeburg winning through a ninth-inning rally that tied the score and a batting streak in the tenth which earned them the run they needed, with only one out. Stark, seeing the pitcher had wilted, and fearing the batters who were coming up, asked Hutchinson to call Lefty in to save the day; but the manager grimly refused.