Mr. Carter walked over to the windows and shut and fastened them; then he picked up his son’s hat and handed it to him.
“You come home with me,” was all he said.
William went.
His adoring mother received him like the returned prodigal, and Emily waited on him with eyes red from weeping. No one mentioned Fanchon; the family seemed to have resolved to let her drop out of sight forever. With Daniel’s aid, William managed to see Leigh that night for the first time since the shooting.
It was a moment of horrible embarrassment and humiliation for William. He was shocked, too, at the sight of the boy’s white face and the dark rings under his girlish eyes. Leigh had gone through deep waters on his account, yet it was one of those things that cannot be talked about.
“My job, Leigh,” he said laconically. “You had no business to take it away from me.”
Leigh blushed like a girl.
“I couldn’t hear Fanchon slandered like that,” he cried. “I had to do it!”
William bowed his head, looking down at the floor of the cell. He hadn’t the heart to tell the boy that he believed the slanders. Curiously enough, under Leigh’s clear eyes, he felt ashamed of believing in them; but his inveterate rage against his wife remained undiminished. She had deceived him, he no longer believed in her, and he was furious against her for the ruin she had wrought. The very fact that he had been head over ears in love with her embittered him the more. It was an intolerable humiliation.
He left Leigh in a passion of sorrow and self-accusation, and went home to spend a sleepless night. Toward morning, from sheer exhaustion, he dozed off into troubled dreams. He thought he had been cast into a fiery furnace along with Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego; he could see three shadowy figures moving like giants through fields of flame. Presently an angel touched him on the shoulder and called to him—in French. The angel had the face of Fanchon.