“Hello, Kenneth!” he said. “I didn't know you were at home. Otherwise, I should have run in and said good-bye.”
“You are going somewhere, then?” Galt said.
“To Augusta for a few days,” Dearing replied. “I got a letter offering me a chance to do an important operation. I shall be glad to get away, even for so short a time as that. I almost wish, old man, that I could stay away forever. I used to love this town, but I hate it now. I hate anything that is heartless and totally blinded by money and power to all sense of justice and common decency.”
“Why, what's gone wrong?” Galt inquired.
“Wrong? The place is rotten to the core!” Dearing burst out. “Kenneth, a thing is going to be countenanced by the citizens of this town that would stain the character of the Dark Ages. Haven't you heard the news that has set every tongue to wagging like a thousand bell-clappers?”
“No, I haven't heard anything out of the ordinary. You see, I am keeping so close here at home that—”
“Well, old man, the lowest, poorest excuse for a man that old Stafford ever produced is coming back,” Dearing broke it, furiously. “Fred Walton, I mean. I didn't think he'd have the effrontery to show his face here again, but he has decided to do it.”
“Oh!” Galt exclaimed. But that was all he said, for Dearing went on, angrily:
“Yes, and the dastardly thing—the most outrageous fact about it all—is that every soul in the place is ready to receive him with open arms. He has made lots of money; he is rich; he has reformed, they say, and, idiots that they are, they have forgiven him. I have heard his return spoken of by a score of our very best citizens, and not one of them has even mentioned the crime that lies at his door—the crime that stands out to-day in a more damning light than it ever did. The brave, patient, suffering little woman—who is as high above him intellectually, morally, and every other way as the stars are above the earth—and that glorious child are to have another slap from his dirty, egotistical paw. He put her into prison and made her an exile with his nameless offspring, and yet he comes back like a royal prince. 'Wild oats,' they call his vile conduct, and they are ready to wipe it off his record. That is modern mankind for you, and, Kenneth, this one circumstance has come nearer to shaking my faith than anything that ever happened to me. If God can allow an insult like that to come to Dora Barry now, after all she has borne so sweetly, silently, and bravely, He can be no God of mine. I'll be through with the creeds, I tell you. I'll join your gang of scoffers and trot along wherever your black philosophy leads. Even my uncle has no protest to make, nor my sister, who I thought had given the scamp up in disgust. By George, she even looks happy over it! I don't want to meet him face to face. I don't know that I could control myself. She has given me no right to act as her defender; if she had, Kenneth, I'd take up her cause if it ended my career here forever!”
“You? You?” Galt gasped.