Foley went to Sutton's rooms again, but for several days he could hear
nothing of him. One evening, however, when he was sitting in the garden,
happening to look up, he saw the melancholy figure of the American
coming down the garden path. Now that he actually saw Sutton, and was
vividly aware of the atmosphere of reserve and solitude that enveloped
him, Foley shrank from saying the things that he felt he ought to say.
And yet someone must speak to him; someone must tell him his duty, and
make him go back to the good simple people who had cared for him,
supported him, and who relied on him so much!
He had been away, Sutton said, as the two young men walked slowly down
the garden path. It was very still there in the twilight; and they were
alone, shut in as it seemed, and very remote from the world outside.
"Have you decided yet when you are going home?" Foley asked.
"Home?"
"Yes; home to America."
"I don't know," Sutton replied. After a moment he added, in the same
quiet voice, "perhaps I shall never go back."
"Then you have found some occupation in England?"
Sutton shook his head.
But didn't he think he ought to go back then, Foley asked. One had
duties--and, trying to speak more lightly, he added, "You must have
learned a great deal, Eliaphet, after studying all these years. Oughtn't
you to go back and teach them out there?"
"I have nothing to teach them--nothing they would be willing to learn."
"Oh, but surely, if you tried you could find something! It seems to me
you _ought_ to try."
"Oh, I _have_ tried!" he said, his cheeks flushing with painful emotion;
"but now they don't want me to come back any more--they never want to
see me again! I used to pray I might never change;--and when you would
argue with me,--but now I see it was all wrong, and all my liberal
ideas--"
"I hope," Foley interrupted, for this had been on his conscience ever
since his talk with Abel, "I hope your change, whatever it is, has
nothing to do with anything I ever said; you must have misunderstood
me," and he went on to explain that he had never been really
reactionary. He had always believed in compromise, and a conservative,
reasonable progress.
"Do you know, Eliaphet," he went on, "I think you have made a mistake in
staying here so long in this old place. It isn't wholesome to live so
far from real life; you ought to get away, you ought to go home."
But Sutton had only listened to two or three of his friend's words.
"No," he cried eagerly, "no, we can make no compromise. We must give up
the human reason, we must go back to the Past, we must submit. Oh,
Foley," he cried, and there was a strange appeal in his voice, "we have
been friends, but now we may never see each other again,--let me warn
you, you must decide whether you will be on the right or the wrong
side--oh, if you only knew at what peril you refuse to listen!"
For a moment Foley was almost frightened. Then, reminding himself of
reason and reality, he said, "But, Eliaphet, are you quite sure that you
yourself are doing what is right in staying here? When so much depends
on you out there--Dr. Turnpenny and all. And they have sacrificed so
much too. Have you thought--"
"As if I was not always thinking of it!" Sutton cried; "but I could not
go back to them a Roman Catholic; they would rather I was dead. And
Foley, when you judge me, remember that I have had to make sacrifices
too--I have given up everything, everything! What can I do?"
A Roman Catholic! Of course he could not go back. Foley was dismayed.
Why had he not foreseen it?
For a moment they stood in silence. Then Sutton turned away.
"You don't understand," he said, in a voice that his friend always
remembered afterwards; "No one understands," and he went down the path
alone and out of Foley's sight.