XII
JOHN was not back at the office “within the week.” He forgot the office and Simeon Tetlow and Tomlinson. He had eyes only for a white face looking up to him from the pillow and his ear listened only for low moans that broke the darkness. The spirit of courage had driven the thin body a step beyond the line where the soul has its way, and the body had turned and struck back.
Tomlinson, waiting in his daughter’s home, wondered a little at the silence, but waited, on the whole, content. Since his talk with John a hope had sprung up in him that, somehow, the boy would do for him what he could never do for himself. He had started out for Bayport more because he wanted to look Simeon Tetlow in the face than because he hoped for justice at his hands. But since he had talked with the hoy, his purpose had changed imperceptibly and his shrewd Scotch sense of justice asserted itself. He would speak the president of the road fair. The man should have his chance. He should not be condemned unheard. So Tomlinson waited, his sullen mood passing gently into tolerance.
But his daughter, a buxom woman, many years Eddie’s senior, grew impatient at the delay. She prodded Tomlinson a little for his inaction.
“What is it like, that Johnny Bennett—a slip of a boy—can do for ye with Simeon Tetlow?” she had demanded scornfully when the week had gone by and no word had come.
“He has a way ye can trust, Jennie—the boy has,” the old man had replied.
“Best trust yourself,” said the woman.
“Go and stan’ up before Sim Tetlow. Tell him to his face what ye want. And if he won’t give it to ye—then curse him!”
So the old man wavered forth, half driven to a task to which he felt himself unequal. But his reliance was on the boy. He would find him and ask what to do.
“John Bennett?” The assistant bookkeeper, hurrying back from luncheon a little late, paused in the doorway, looking at the tall, red-eyed Scotchman who put the anxious question.