Rees tore himself from his mother’s clasp with wild eyes. For a moment he saw the reckless folly of the course he had been pursuing, and the ruin to which it had brought him. The next, his mind was again clouded. For the poison of delicate flattery had been subtle, and had penetrated his system thoroughly.
Half an hour later he was walking up the hill, with unsteady steps, towards Amos Goodhare’s lodgings.
CHAPTER V.
Rees Pennant reached Amos Goodhare’s lodgings just as the latter, having finished his tea, was about to start on his usual evening walk.
He saw the young man coming up the street, and waited on the threshold for him, noting, with hawk-like keenness, the signs of unusual and strong emotion in his ingenuous face.
“Come in, come in, my dear young friend,” he said with soothing deference, which poured balm into poor Rees’s wounded soul. “I am fortunate, indeed, to have delayed starting just long enough to see you.”
And he stood aside, inviting the young man to enter with a welcoming gesture.
Rees hurried in, threw himself on the little, hard, chintz-covered sofa in the cottage sitting-room, and tried to bury his face in the one brick-like cushion. Goodhare followed him into the room, and, without worrying him by persistent inquiries into the cause of his evident distress, stood beside the couch and placed a firm hand, the very touch of which seemed to the unhappy lad instinct with friendship and support, on the young fellow’s shoulder.
The room faced the east, and the light from the window was, moreover, obscured by a screen of long-legged geranium plants. When, therefore, Rees suddenly turned and looked up at the librarian, he did not notice the hungry impatience in the elder man’s eyes, like the expression of a vulture hovering over the body of a dying traveller. He saw only the tall figure bending over him, felt only the pressure of a long, lean hand on his, and believed that here at last was some one who understood him, who loved him, not with the blind, unreasoning love of his mother and Deborah, but with affection and admiration which were a just tribute to his own high qualities. Here he should find true sympathy, unmixed with blame.
“Something is troubling you, my dear boy, if you will allow me to call you so,” said Amos, at last, in a voice the very tones of which were consolation. “Tell me if you like, or be silent if you like. You can take your own time with—if I may presume to call myself so—an old friend like me.”