Yet he was so essentially honest that he could not think of returning to Bridgeboro without first going back to the farm to tell them what he had done. He knew that this would mean questioning and might possibly, through some inadvertence of his own, be the cause of the whole story coming to light. But he could not think of going to Bridgeboro, leaving these people who had been so kind to him to hear of his disgrace from others. He would go back himself and tell his aunt; he would be in a great hurry to catch the later train and that would save him from being questioned. Yet it seemed a funny thing to do to go back and hurriedly announce that he had killed a deer and as hurriedly depart. Poor Westy, he was beginning to see the difficulties involved in his spectacular good turn.
He wandered over to the railroad, worried and perplexed. Wherever he might go there would be trouble. He would have to face his aunt and uncle, then his father and mother. And he could not explain. How could he hope to run the gauntlet of all these people with just the one little technical truth that he had killed a deer?
It was just beginning to dawn on him that truth is not a technical thing at all, that to stick to a technical truth may be very dishonest. Yet, he had (so he told himself) killed the deer. And that one technical little truth he had invoked to save Luke Meadows.
He would not, he could not turn back now.
CHAPTER XV
RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL
He could catch a train to Bridgeboro in half an hour and leave the thunderbolt to break at the farm after he was safely away. Or he could return to the farm and still catch a train from Chandler at eight-twenty. He decided to do this.
He lingered weakly in the station for a few minutes, killing time and trying to make up his mind just what he would say when he reached the farm. The station was dim and musty and full of dust and aged posters. One of these latter was a glaring advertisement of an excursion to Yellowstone Park. It included a picture of Old Faithful Geyser, that watery model of constancy which is to be seen on every folder and booklet describing the Yellowstone. Westy looked at it wistfully. “See the glories of your native land,” the poster proclaimed. He read it all, then turned away.
The ticket office was closed, and in his troubled and disconsolate mood it seemed to him as if even the railroad shut him out. Not a living soul was there in the station except a queer-looking woman with spectacles and a sunbonnet and an outlandish bag at her feet. Westy wondered whether she were going to New York.
Then he wondered whether, when he reached Bridgeboro, he might not properly say that he was very sleepy and let his confession go over till morning. Then it occurred to him that he was just dilly-dallying, and he strode out of the station and through the little main street where farming implements were conspicuous among the displays. He paused to glance at these and other things in which he had never before had an interest. Never before had he found so many excuses for pausing along a business thoroughfare.
He intended to return through the woods but a man in a buckboard with a load of clanking milk cans gave him a lift and set him down at the crossroads near the farm. He cut up through the orchard because he had a queer feeling that he did not want any one to see him coming. It seemed very quiet about the farm; he had an odd feeling that he was seeing it during his own absence. It looked strange to see his aunt stringing beans on the little porch outside the kitchen and Ira sitting with his legs stretched along the lowest step. His back was against the house and he was smoking his pipe. The homely, familiar scene made Westy homesick for the farm.