“How did you get hold of such nonsense?”
“Heard the women talking.”
Jim pondered a moment. Then he said “Damn,” and Joe admired him as never before. When Jim had gone out, directly, Joe shook his fist at a sugar barrel, and said “Damn,” in a whisper.
Jim in the meantime was hurrying along the road to the Bolton house. He made up his mind that he must see Lydia. He must know if she had authorized the revelation that had evidently been made, and if so, through whom. He suspected the minister, and was hot with jealousy. His own friendship with Lydia seemed to have suffered a blight after that one confidential talk of theirs, in which she had afforded him a glimpse of her sorrowful past. She had not alluded to the subject a second time; and, somehow, he had not been able to get behind the defenses of her smiling cheerfulness. Always she was with her father, it seemed; and the old man, garrulous enough when alone, was invariably silent and moody in his daughter’s company. One might almost have said he hated her, from the sneering impatient looks he cast at her from time to time. As for Lydia, she was all love and brooding tenderness for the man who had suffered so long and terribly.
“He’ll be better after a while,” she constantly excused him. “He needs peace and quiet and home to restore him to himself.”
“You want to look out for him,” Jim had ventured to warn the girl, when the two were alone together for a moment.
“Do you mean father?” Lydia asked. “What else should I do? It is all I live for—just to look out for father.”
Had she been a martyr bound to the stake, the faggots piled about her slim body, her face might have worn just that expression of high resignation and contempt for danger and suffering.
The young man walked slowly on. He wanted time to think. Besides—he glanced down with a quick frown of annoyance at his mud-splashed clothing—he certainly cut a queer figure for a call.
Some one was standing on the doorstep talking to Fanny, as he approached his own home. Another instant and he had recognized Wesley Elliot. He stopped behind a clump of low-growing trees, and watched. Fanny, framed in the dark doorway, glowed like a rose. Jim saw her bend forward, smiling; saw the minister take both her hands in his and kiss them; saw Fanny glance quickly up and down the empty road, as if apprehensive of a chance passerby. Then the minister, his handsome head bared to the cold wind, waved her farewell and started at a brisk pace down the road.