Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/402

Rh the common people that is most to be prized, that is sane, normal, unshaken by the gusts of passion and prejudice. It took him not more than a day to become the most radical of advocates. He placed himself willfully and definitely in opposition to all in which the men who were thinking him a cad believed. And even while doing this he never imagined that a social blight would rest upon him permanently or that he might actually have to turn for his familiar friends to men like Tustin and Caskey. He had no doubt whatever that when he chose and when he had taught his bigoted old associates their lesson he could reassume the place in the community which as a true aristocrat he had occupied. For the time being, however, he was contented to show his independence of friendship and disapprobation by avoiding the club, the principal centre of both.

He had written his wife nothing of his new activity; a letter to her on such a subject would be too stupidly economic, and the explanation might better be delayed until he could see her. Besides he suspected that she would be distressed by the polemical character of the affair, and he wished to spare himself the irritation which he would feel if she indulged in hasty and unwarranted criticism. She had an unbecoming confidence in Floyd.

The reckoning, however, was not to be so easily deferred. Two days after the appearance of Stewart's second communication in the Eagle, he received a telegram from Lydia announcing that she was coming home at once and would arrive in Avalon late the next afternoon. Stewart was annoyed. She had taken the precaution to insert in the dispatch the words "All well," and therefore it could not be sudden illness, either of herself or of the baby, that was bringing her back to Avalon a month earlier than she had planned to come. It required no great subtlety of mind to guess the reason. Undoubtedly she had been reading, even in Chester, the Avalon Eagle.