Reuben did not press for an answer, but began telling her about the work he and Fairchild had inaugurated that morning. “We are not going to wait for the committee,” he said. “The place can be in some sort of shape within a week, I hope, and then we are going to open it as a reading-room first of all, where every man of the village who behaves himself can be free to come. There will be tea and coffee at low prices; and if the lockout continues, I’ve got plans for something else—a kind of soup-kitchen. We sha’n’t attempt to put the thing on a business basis at all until the men have got to work again. Then we will leave it to them, as to how they will support it, and what shall be done with the other rooms. By the way, I haven’t seen much lately of the Lawton girl’s project. I’ve heard vaguely that a start had been made, and that it seemed to work well. Are you pleased with it?”
Kate answered in a low voice: “I have never been there but once since we met there last winter. I did what I promised, in the way of assistance, but I did not go again. I too have heard vaguely that it was a success.”
Reuben looked such obvious inquiry that that young lady felt impelled to explain: “The very next day after I went there last with the money and the plan, I heard some very painful things about the girl—about her present life, I mean—from a friend, or rather from one whom I took then to be a friend; and what he said prejudiced me, I suppose—”
A swift intuition helped Reuben to say: “By a friend’ you mean Horace Boyce!”
Kate nodded her head in assent. As for Reuben, he rose abruptly from his seat, motioning to his companion to keep her chair. He thrust his hands into his pockets, and began pacing up and down along the edge of the sofa at her side, frowning at the carpet.
“Miss Kate,” he said at last, in a voice full of strong feeling, “there is no possibility of my telling you what an infernal blackguard that man is.”
“Yes, he has behaved very badly,” she said. “I suppose I am to blame for having listened to him at all. But he had seen me there at her place, through the glass door, and he seemed so anxious to keep me from being imposed upon, and possibly compromised, that—”
“My dear young lady,” broke in Reuben, “you have no earthly idea of the cruelty and meanness of what he did by saying that to you. I can’t—or yes, why shouldn’t I? The fact is that that poor girl—and when she was at my school she was as honest and good and clever a child as I ever saw in my life—owed her whole misery and wretchedness to Horace Boyce. I never dreamed of it, either at the time or later; in fact, until the very day I met you at the milliner’s shop. Somehow I mentioned that he was my partner, and then she told me. And then, knowing that, I had to sit still all summer and see him coming here every day, on intimate terms with you and your sister and mother.” Reuben stopped himself with the timely recollection that this was an unauthorized emotion, and added hurriedly: “But I never could have imagined such baseness, to deliberately slander her to you!”
Kate did not at once reply, and when she did speak it was to turn the talk away from Horace Boyce. “I will go and see her to-morrow,” she said.
“I am very glad to hear you say that,” was Reuben’s comment. “It is like you to say it,” he went on, with brightening eyes. “It is a benediction to be the friend of a young woman like you, who has no impulses that are not generous, and whose only notion of power is to help others.”