PART II
CHAPTER I
Ten eventful years of toil and struggle for John Trott went by. True to the prophecy of Cavanaugh and other practical men, he succeeded. Step by step he rose till, on the death of Mr. Pilcher, he became an equal partner with Reed in the business. He and Dora still lived with the McGwires in the old house, which was now kept for roomers only. John could have well afforded to give Dora a more expensive home, but both he and she had become inseparably attached to these first friends of theirs in New York.
Dora, a tall, slender girl of nineteen, while not exactly pretty, was quite attractive. John had sent her to a select school for young ladies, and the polish and education she had received had not spoiled her. She was not ashamed of the fact that she and John had once been what they were. In fact, the McGwires knew all the circumstances connected with their clandestine flight from the South, and guarded well their secret.
Not once, even indirectly, had either John or Dora heard from their former home. Dora had almost entirely forgotten it, and, while John could not possibly do so, it had become like a dream of blended joy and pain which he persistently put aside. But at times a grim certitude fixed itself on him, that, having once loved, he could never love again. He never met a marriageable woman, no matter how attractive or willing she might be to receive his attentions, without feeling the presence of a certain barrier of contrast to an ideal embedded in his tragic past. There was a vast store of love and tenderness in him, and this he poured out on his foster-sister. He was a natural man and yielded to sensual temptations, but always with the after-result of feeling vaguely soiled and lowered, and was in continual strife with his passions. To-day they were conquered, to-morrow they held temporary sway. And there was a rebuke, always a rebuke which no reasoning could set aside—a rebuke rising out of the mystic sanctity of the short union between him and his bride. "Tilly!" The very name crept upon him unawares as from the exquisite mental pictures he was always trying to suppress. "Tilly!" He caught himself applying it to Dora, a slip of the tongue, which, better than anything else, revealed to him the psychic bonds between him and a personality lost to him forever. Once Dora asked him if he thought, by any chance, that Tilly might have died. He started, reflected for a moment, and then answered in a way that was a surprise even to himself. "No, she's living," he said. "If she were dead I'd feel it."
"That is no criterion to go by," answered Dora, who had become quite religious and was now a member of the Methodist Church. "Do you know what Harold would say about that?"
"Harold might say a lot of absurd things about it"—John smiled indulgently—"but he is no criterion, either."
"Well, I'll tell you what he'd say, and it is my opinion, too," the girl went on. "He'd say that the very intuitive feeling you say you have—your firm confidence of her existence, is due to the fact that she has passed from this plane of life, is now on another, and that she is always with you in spirit because she loved you once, still loves you, and wants to protect you. Don't you see how pretty that is, brother John? She has become, as Harold would say, your guardian angel, your very conscience. When you are tempted to do wrong she restrains you; and when you actually do something wrong she has a way of rebuking you through your intuition."
This argument displeased John, as all such theories did. He claimed, with many of his rather materialistic friends, that to believe in a blissful life to come only rendered one less useful in the present, and was a strong proof of innate selfishness in the individual who was seeking it for himself alone.
But he let Dora have her way, and why shouldn't he? Indeed, he was almost sure that she and Harold were falling in love with each other. Harold was preaching now in a small church on the west side of the city, and his mother and sisters and Dora were diligent helpers in many ways.
"I'm becoming sure," Mrs. McGwire said, with a smile, one day to John as they lingered at the breakfast-table after Betty and Dora had left, "that Dora and Harold are very much in love, and I'm glad of it. A minister ought to marry early, and your sister, of all girls, is the one I'd want for him."
"So it is like that, is it?" John said, resignedly. "Well, I have no objections, I'm sure. I want her to be happy."
CHAPTER II
One evening, shortly after that, Harold came into John's room, saying that he wanted to speak to him in private. He was slightly above medium height, quite thin, and attenuated-looking. He wore the black frock-coat, high, stiff collar, and black necktie of his calling. For a man of less than twenty-four years of age he certainly was grave and serious-looking. He was endeavoring to produce a show of whiskers on his cheeks and chin, but the effort was almost in vain, for the hairs grew sparsely and were of a color between yellow and light brown that did not make for density of appearance. However, he was earnest and sincere, and John liked and trusted him.
"I've been wanting to see you for some time, Mr. Trott," he began, taking a chair that was vacant near John's and linking his white hands between his knees. "I don't know what you will think of me, but I've had the audacity to fall in love with your sister, and, as I look upon you as her guardian and protector, I felt honor-bound to come to you."
"I see, I see." John had flushed with embarrassment. "Well, the truth is, Harold, I have been suspecting something of this sort lately, and I can imagine what you want to say."
Harold had never been one to give in to embarrassment. Life was too serious and needed too many corrections to justify him in losing time or emotion in that way, so without change of color, or quickened pulse, he went on. "I have reason to believe, Mr. Trott, that Dora reciprocates my feeling, and you may be sure that it has given me great happiness. She is wrapped up in my work, and I know of no woman who would so readily adapt herself to the routine of a minister's career. The only thing bothering us both has been—"
For the first time Harold hesitated.
"Go ahead," said John, awkwardly, and quite unaware of what was forthcoming.
"You see, I know what she has been to you all these years," Harold resumed, "and we both know, too, what your religious, or lack of religious, views are, and it has pained me to think that perhaps you would prefer as Dora's husband a man of—well, a man whose views were more in accord with your own than mine can ever possibly be."
Not knowing what to say, John hung fire. He had always been outspoken where his views were directly challenged, and, despite the delicacy of the present crisis, he had nothing to take back. All things being equal, he really would have preferred to have his protégée marry, if she married at all, a man whose calling he could be proud of. He had ridiculed parsons as the most parasitical of all men, and yet here he was about to hand over to one of them the only human treasure he possessed.
"I see you understand me," Harold half sighed, "and I am not so full of religious zeal as not to sympathize with you. I don't see how a man can live without more faith than you have, but I admire your firmness of conviction in what you think is right. You may call yourself an atheist, Mr. Trott, but you really are not one. A great man has said that there are no atheists—that every man who does good, defends goodness, and contends against evil of any sort has as good a god as any one. I don't agree with him fully, but I know that what you did for Dora, full of despair as you were at the time, proves that you had divinity in you. That act was godlike and had to have a source outside of mere animal instinct."
John was touched. He held out his hand. "Let all that pass, Harold," he smiled. "I am sure that Dora loves you, and I want to make her happy. You are her choice. You have a right to her."
"I thank you," Harold responded, with his first touch of emotion. There was silence for a moment, then Harold said: "There is yet another matter, Mr. Trott, and both Dora and I are worried over it. It belongs to a little secret of ours. We have not even told my mother yet, and we dread doing so. Mr. Trott, I have just received an appointment to a desirable post among the missionaries in China."
"China!" John repeated, his honest mouth drooping, his eyes taking on a dull fixity of gaze.
Harold shrugged and nodded. "I thought that would pain you, and so did Dora, but there is nothing else to do but to tell you about it frankly. The heads of the work prefer men with wives, and Dora has her heart set on aiding me in the Orient."
The smoldering embers of John's antagonism under its threatened blight flared up. His blood flowed hotly to his brain. He knew that the separation would be for years if not for all time, and how could he be expected to submit calmly to such a heartless course? Could Dora find it in her gentle nature to desert him like that after all they had been to each other?
"I see that you are hurt," Harold sighed, softly, "and I am more than sorry, Mr. Trott."
John's anger was dying down; a cool breath of sheer despair and resignation seemed to blow over him. How could he live on alone? he wondered, and yet the thing proposed was the logical outcome of many natural circumstances and had to be borne.
"I believe," John answered, "that the missionaries, once they leave, do not return to America frequently?"
"No, they are all poor people, Mr. Trott, and the money saved from such costly traveling expenses can be well used in other ways."
"We'll let that pass," John said, "and come to something else. I have put by a little money to be given or left to Dora, and—"
But raising his hand, and flushing freely now, Harold checked him.
"Don't speak of that, Mr. Trott, please!" he urged. "Dora mentioned something of the sort to me. She said you had thrown out some hint of it recently, and she and I talked it over. We both decided that we'd rather not let you do anything of the sort. You are a young man yourself, and have already done a thousand times more than your duty to Dora. Indeed, we'd both feel very unhappy if you carried out such a plan. You laugh at men of my calling and say they are grafters, but it is really not as you think. Most of the missionaries I've met are poor men, and they are willing to remain so. It would be an absurdity for Dora and me to accept help from you, when our organization is pledged to see that superannuated ministers and their wives are cared for as long as they live."
John was about to speak, vaguely pleased by the manliness of Harold's words, when Dora suddenly came in. Her face was flushed, but her eyes were steady. She stood by Harold's side, who had risen, and smiled half fearfully at John.
"Well, have you told him?" she asked Harold.
He nodded, and put his arm around her waist.
"I mean, have you told him about China?" she went on, anxiously.
"Yes"—with a smile—"and that we simply will not let him give us any of his hard-earned money."
"No, indeed, brother John," Dora cried. "Not a penny of your money will I take after all you have done for me. You must get married—you must be sensible and find you a good wife. You will need all the money you have, too. It is bad enough—my leaving you like this—without taking your savings. We simply won't hear to it, will we, Harold?"
"No," the other answered, firmly. "We'd be acting a lie if we teach others that poverty and humility are a blessing while having a nest-egg of our own."
"Now hear from me." Dora tried to speak with amusing lightness. "While you were here, Harold, exploding your bomb, I've been telling your mother. She is down in her room, crying her heart out. She takes it very hard. It has been the pride of her life that you are a minister, but she never dreamed that she'd miss hearing you preach every Sunday of her life, and help you with your work besides. That's the mother of it, and this is really the hardest blow she's ever had."
There was a sound of a dog barking down-stairs. It was John's pet fox-terrier, Binks.
"He is after a rat," Dora said, forcing a smile to her set face and somehow not wanting to meet the eyes of the stricken man.
"Yes"—John rose—"it is time for me to take him out. He stays in too much." John knew that he was expected to say more on the other subject, but all at once his tongue had become tied. An indescribable despair incased him like walls of sinister darkness. The young couple seemed to feel his mood and to be baffled by it, standing in the presence of his disappointment as if conscious of actual guilt in causing it. Neither said anything, and John got his hat and descended to his dog.
They heard him whistling to Binks as if nothing unusual had happened. They heard the yelping animal scampering up the basement steps to meet him. Creeping wordless, and hand in hand, to the stairs, they saw John bend down and take the dog in his arms. Binks was licking the side of his face, and John seemed unconscious of it. The mute watchers heard the front door close after him. Dora turned back into John's room. She was wiping her eyes. Harold took her into his arms.
"Don't, don't, dear!" he said, tenderly. "It can't be helped, you know. He will suffer—another will suffer, but it has to be. We all bear a cross of some sort or other."
"I know it," she continued to sob, "but it is terrible. Harold, I have never seen such a look on his face as was on it when I came in the room just now. He looked as if he had lost every hope in life. I didn't think I'd ever wound him like this. I used to tell him that he and I would be near together always—if he married or if I married. You see, I know he counted on it, for he mentioned it frequently. Wasn't that pitiful—taking Binks up that way? I could almost hear him sob."
"You are too sentimental, dear," Harold answered, trying to disguise his own emotion, which perhaps Dora's melting mood had elicited. "You soft-hearted women are always attributing your own feelings to men. He'll soon get over it. Besides, a man as young as he is ought not to become a confirmed old bachelor, and this very separation may drive him into a happiness as normal as yours and mine is going to be."
"I hope so—oh, I hope so!" Dora whimpered, still wiping her eyes. "If he should remain unhappy here I am afraid I'd not be wholly content away from him."
"He'll marry, don't worry," Harold said, kissing her again. "He's bound to do so. He is too fine a man to pass his life in loneliness."
CHAPTER III
The wedding, one bright morning in June, was a most simple one and took place in the little church that Harold was leaving. The rites were performed by the Rev. Arthur Kirkwood, the young minister who was succeeding him. Harold was popular with his congregation, and the church was fairly well filled with sympathetic friends, none of whom were known to John. Indeed, he was a dreary alien in a weirdly convivial assemblage, the smug elation of which irritated him. Mrs. McGwire, Betty, and Minnie were all so busy shaking hands with people they knew that John was really ignored. He wanted it so, and yet he keenly felt the line of demarcation between the element in which he lived and that which had engulfed Dora and was sweeping her out of his ken forever. He sat alone in the second row of seats, only a few feet from the pulpit and a table laden with flowers. A few young people in the choir overhead were laughing gaily. The faces all over the room were beaming expectantly, and some of the most impatient persons asked when the bride and groom would arrive.
"At ten o'clock, sharp," Mrs. McGwire said, aloud, so that all could hear. "They are coming in a carriage, and expect to be driven straight to the train from here."
The time dragged slowly for John. He saw a few persons eying him with mild interest as the brother of the bride, but most of the others were occupied in exchanging jests or greetings with this or that acquaintance as their heads met over the backs of the seats. To while away the time, and for the sheer love of it, a man who was a sort of leader in church singing suddenly began to sing a well-known revival hymn, and the others joined in lustily. John detested it. He had heard it during his isolated childhood at Ridgeville, later at Cranston, and here it was a strident requiem over the bier of his last hope. He was inclined to self-analysis, and he wondered if any of the audience could imagine the dark and rebellious state of mind that he was in. He was not jealous of Harold, he did not begrudge Dora's happiness or desire to curb the festive mood of the people around him. He was simply in despair and could see no way of escape. He tried to think of going back to the office the next day and plunging into work, but how could he do so without some aim in life? Dora had refused financial aid from him. Of what account were his past earnings or those of the future?
The singing was brought to an abrupt end. Mrs. McGwire, who had stationed herself at the street door, suddenly cried out, "They are coming!" and a fluttering silence brooded on the room.
Dora and Harold, accompanied by Mr. Kirkwood, entered the adjoining Sunday-school room from the street with the playful intent to deceive the audience, who were watching the front, and the McGwires all hastened through a doorway near the pulpit to greet them. Betty, a tall, dignified young lady in a becoming street dress, ran across to John.
"Will you come speak to them now, or afterward?" she asked, smiling.
"Afterward," he answered, flushing under the composite stare of the whole room and irritated by being made so conspicuous.
"But you won't have a very good chance then," she advanced. "You know there will be an awful rush at the carriage. You'd better come now."
He complied. He found Dora and Harold in the arms of Minnie and her mother. Both of the latter were weeping.
"I'd cry, too," Dora said, smiling sadly up at John, "but it would leave streaks of wet powder on my face. I am to be a pale and interesting bride. I'm sorry to leave you, brother John."
"Never mind, Sis," he said, bravely. "Everything goes in this life." She leaned toward him, and he kissed her. He was still a crude man and shrank from caressing even Dora in the presence of others.
"We'll meet again," she said, confidently; "don't let yourself believe otherwise."
"All right, I won't." He forced himself to smile.
"Ten o'clock!" cried out Mr. Kirkwood, who was ready at the door. "You mustn't miss that train. I'm going in to take my place. Come right in, Brother McGwire."
"Then this must be good-by, darling John," Dora whispered. "I know you won't want to push through the crowd to us afterward."
"Good-by—good-by," he said, and then he shook hands with Harold. "Good-by, Harold," he said. "I'm leaving her with you."
"I'll do my best, Mr. Trott," Harold said, feelingly. "She is a treasure and I am robbing you. God knows I wish it could be without pain to you."
"Nevermind; that is all right," John answered.
Mrs. McGwire and Minnie, a plain, rather gawky girl, went to the first row of seats in the church, sat down, smiled knowingly at some friends in the rear, and John and Betty followed. Some one at the organ played a wedding march, and Harold and Dora came in and stood before the waiting preacher.
It was soon over. The organ groaned mellowly, and Harold led Dora down the aisle to the vestibule. The congregation followed like stampeding cattle. John was left alone, the McGwires having hurried out through the Sunday-school room to get a last sight of the pair as they entered the carriage.
John met Mrs. McGwire outside as the carriage was disappearing down the street. She said she and her daughters were going to stay awhile to attend to the flowers and some other gifts, and he went home alone. The massive door was locked, and, opening it with a pass-key, he entered the hall. He heard Binks barking in the back yard and he went down to him.
"They didn't want you there, did they, Binks?" he said, taking the dog in his arms. "You'd have made a row, wouldn't you? Well, she is gone, old boy—you don't realize it now, but you will later, when you miss the feeds and nice baths she gave you. She used to buy choice morsels for you. I know, for I've seen the bones lying around."
The remainder of that day he spent in sheer torment, strolling about in the parks with Binks, and when he returned home he found Betty and Minnie alone in the parlor. Their eyes were red from weeping.
"It is on account of the way mother is taking it," Betty explained. "She's gone to bed with a headache. The excitement of the wedding kept her up, but she has gone to pieces since they left. Really, Harold was all she had in the world. Min and I didn't count."
John could think of nothing to say, and he went on to his room. There were some blue-prints and calculations awaiting his attention on the big desklike table in his room, and he took them up to look them over, but laid them down again.
"What is the use?" he muttered. "My God! what is the use of anything? Money? What do I care for money? What could I do with it if I had millions?"
That night when he was about to go to bed he looked into Dora's room. She had left it in perfect order, but somehow it seemed as barren as a room for transient guests in a hotel.
"Dear, dear Sis," he said, with a lump in his throat. "When you and I used to get up before day in that old ramshackle home—you in your rags, and I in my overalls—we didn't dream that all those things would happen and draw to an end like this. There is nothing for me to look forward to—nothing, absolutely nothing, but you will find peace, contentment, and happiness. Well, that is enough. It was worth it, Sis. I'm out of it, and it is only my yellow streak that is whining."
The room, in its tomblike silence and inanimate reminders, oppressed him sorely, and, closing the door that he might not, even by accident, glance into it again that night, he started to undress for bed, when Binks began loudly barking down-stairs. Then he heard Betty trying to quiet him.
"What is the matter with him?" John called down from the head of the stairs.
"I think he wants you," Betty laughed. "I can't pacify him. He keeps jumping up and down, pawing the floor, and crying like a baby."
"Unfasten him, please, and let him come up," John answered.
Immediately there was a swishing, thumping sound on the stairs and Binks rushed into John's room and began to lick his hands and whine. Although he was ready for bed, John sat down in a big chair, took the dog into his arms, and fondled him like an infant. Binks seemed to understand, for he became restful at once. John was not conscious of it, but he sat with the animal in his lap for nearly an hour. Suddenly he became aware that it was late, and he put on his bath-robe and slippers, with the intention of taking the dog down to his kennel, but Binks, as if reading his mind, ran under the bed and remained out of sight. Stooping down, John saw a pair of small eyes gleaming in the shadow.
"Poor little devil, he's lonely, too!" John muttered. "Say, Binks, come out—let's talk it over. You want to sleep with me to-night, eh? All right, we'll keep each other company."
It was as if the little animal understood, for he came out readily, wagging his stubby tail, and began to stand on his hind feet and lick his master's hands. "All right, all right." John took him up in his arms, bore him to his bed, and placed him on the side next to the wall. And, as if fearful that John might change his mind, Binks snuggled down between the sheets, his snout on his paws, his eyes blinking almost with pretended drowsiness.
"Sly old boy!" John laughed, softly, and, throwing off his robe and slippers, he closed his door and lay down by the dog. His strong arm touched the sleek coat of his pet and somehow the contact soothed him. With a tightness of the throat, his eyes suffused with restrained tears, he told himself that absolutely all had not been taken from him, for Binks was left.
CHAPTER IV
Another year passed. As he had feared it would be, John's life was all but aimless and becoming even monotonous. What mattered it whether he and Reed had one or two contracts more or less in the year? Neither of them really was in need of the profits earned, and the business continued to come as fast as they cared to attend to it. John liked best the outside work, for then he took Binks along with him, and sometimes in bad weather he even brought the dog to the office, where Binks would lie quietly under his desk till called out by his master for lunch or a short stroll in the quieter streets.
"You are too much attached to him," Reed said to him. "I have a friend who used to have a pet like that. Some devilish person poisoned it one night, and my friend never could get over it. He told me that if it had been his only child it wouldn't have hurt him any more."
John shuddered and frowned darkly. "I know how he felt," he answered, simply, and turned away.
One morning, when John had the office entirely to himself and was going over some intricate plans and estimates, his stenographer came to him.
"There is an old man at the door who wants to see you," she announced. "He refused to give his name or state his business."
"Well, tell him, then, that I won't see him," John ordered, impatiently.
The girl left and came back. "He wouldn't give his name," she said, "but he said to tell you that he was an old friend and was very anxious to see you—that he hasn't seen you for about eleven years."
"Eleven years—an old friend!" John said to himself, aghast. "Who could it be, unless—" The girl was waiting, and he said, "Tell him to come in, please."
The girl went out and ushered in a gray-haired, gray-bearded old man who walked with a cane and was so bent downward that, under a broad-brimmed straw hat, John did not at once see his features. The stenographer retired to her workroom in the rear, and the visitor came to John.
It was Cavanaugh, who now removed his hat and exposed his face to view, a face gashed with deep lines, and fairly shrinking under a sort of awed timidity.
"I'm afraid I'm not welcome, John," he faltered, his wrinkled brow mantled with red, his old, fat hand checked in its impulsive movement forward and falling at his side. "I ought not to have come like this, but I couldn't help it. I was in the city, and wanted to see you for a lot of reasons."
"That's all right, Sam," John answered, extending his hand and trying to divest himself of the visible effects of the shock he had received. "How did you find me? Sit down."
Cavanaugh took the proffered chair. John pitied him, for his hands crossed on the top of his cane quivered with intense excitement, and his eyes swept the room with the slow awe of a beggar in the house of a prince.
"Mostly by accident," he answered, "and putting two and two together, and reasoning it out like a one-horse detective on his first job. John, I know I've done wrong, but—"
"Forget all that, Sam," John said, more at ease. "Don't think I've forgotten you. You are the one friend in the world that I really cared for down there, and it was my intention to get at you sooner or later. I thought, however, that I was considered dead to you and everybody at Ridgeville."
"You are—you still are," Cavanaugh said. "It is like this, John, and in a way your secret is still safe, for I won't give it away. You remember Todd Williams. He is in the firm of Williams & Chelton. They set up in dry-goods after you left. Well, last fall he was on here buying goods, and when he came back home one day after meeting—we belong to the same church—he called me off to one side like, and said, said he:
"'Sam, an odd thing happened to me on the Elevated train while I was in New York,' and with that he went on to say that while he sat reading his paper a feller got in and sat in front of him that was the exact image of you. He said the likeness was so great that he came in an inch of speaking to the feller, but, remembering the news of your death, he let it pass. Then he asked me if I thought there could have been any mistake made about you and Dora being in that wreck. I told him I thought not, and left him, but I'm here to confess, John, that from that minute my mind wasn't fully at rest. Hundreds of times I rolled it over and over in my thoughts—at night in bed, at work, in meeting, at meals with my wife—everywhere. Always, always I was wondering if you might be still alive, fighting your fight and making good away off som'ers. I told my wife how I was worried and she made light of it—said she herself often saw resemblances to folks in new faces. Then I guess I would have dropped it, but for one little, tiny thing that popped into my head one night while I was listening to a long-winded prayer during a revival. Well, sir, like a flash of blasting-powder this thought came to me. You left our town in the dead of night, and it was reasonable to suppose that you did everything you could to keep folks from knowing who you was and where you was bound for. Didn't you?"
"Yes," John nodded, and sat waiting.
"I thought so," Cavanaugh continued. "So you see, when the list of the lost was printed, and your name and Dora's, and your age and hers, and the town you was from, was given, the question come to me, who was it that reported them things so accurate after that awful disaster? You wouldn't have been handing your name and the child's about amongst strangers on the train before the accident, and if your bodies was burned up, all your belongings, papers, and the like would have been destroyed, and— Well, you see what I mean?"
John started and stared steadily. "I see it now, Sam, but I never thought of it before. I suppose everybody else overlooked that point but you."
"Yes, I'm the only one," Cavanaugh answered. "Well, John, after that, instead of being dead to me, somehow you got alive again. I don't want to talk like a sniffling old woman, John, for you are older now, but I loved you like a son, and the hope that you was alive and doing well up here made me powerful happy. You see, until your trouble come like a clap of thunder, I was almost living for you and your interests. I wanted us to establish a business between us that you could carry on after me and my old lady was gone, so, when I began to tote about the idea of you not being dead, I could think of nothing else, till—well, till I come here and found your name in the directory. You were the only John Trott in it, and was a contractor, and I knew I'd run you to your hole."
"I'm glad you did, Sam," John answered. "I've always wanted to see you again, but didn't know how to bring it about with absolute safety to my plans. I'd cut out the whole thing down there, and it seemed best to forget it—best for me and for Dora. She was so young when she was down there that she has almost forgotten the worst features of it—about—about her aunt and other things, I mean."
"I was going to inquire about her," Cavanaugh said. "Is she well and all right?"
John explained briefly, and heard his old friend sighing. "And so you are all alone now, not married—no one with you at all."
John nodded. "Oh, I'm all right. I'm 'neither sugar nor salt,'" he quoted an old saying. "Don't worry about me, Sam. I'll get along some way or other."
There was silence between the two for a few minutes. It was as if the old man were wondering what further information he might be at liberty to give pertaining to the past. Presently he cleared his throat and said:
"Your ma is still alive, John. Jane Holder is dead. Lots and lots of things that you don't know about have happened down home since you left. As soon as Jane Holder died your ma quit living in that old house. She pulled up stakes and drifted about some. She stayed awhile in Atlanta, then in Nashville, and finally came back to our town and moved out in the country. She was—was befriended—a nice woman and her husband sort of—well, I suppose they sort of took pity on her, and—"
"Stop, Sam!" John's face was dark and twisted from inner agony. "Please don't mention her. For Dora's sake I've been trying to think of her as never having actually existed. I don't blame her, you understand. She is living her life and I'm living mine. I don't blame people for their natures or characteristics. Such things come at birth. My father was one thing—she was another. But I've fought down my past, torn it out like an unwholesome dream. I may be mistaken, Sam, but it seems to me that I ought not to talk about all that now. I've fought to acquire a new life, and to some extent I have won it. What lies before me I don't know, and I don't greatly care. I'm still young in years and strong of body and mind, but I feel actually old. I suppose you have some sort of faith still. I have none at all. Dora has it, and it has made her contented, happy, and useful. I am glad she has it. I wouldn't take it from her. Tilly—Tilly used to—"
The name was spoken impulsively, as if some subconscious force or habit had assumed control over a tongue well bridled till now, and with tight lips John suddenly checked himself and sat flushing under the old man's kindly stare.
"I was going to mention her," Cavanaugh put in, his honest eyes falling to the floor, "but didn't know exactly how you'd feel about it. Oh yes, I still believe in a great Supreme Power that works for eternal good. Shall I tell you about Tilly?"
John was silent. His face had grown rigid and even pale. His lips quivered. "I think I know two things about her," he finally said. "Somehow I feel sure that she is alive and married to Joel Eperson."
Cavanaugh nodded slowly. "Yes, my boy; she finally took him, but it was not till four years after the report of your death. I see her and Joel off and on from time to time. It will do no good to open old wounds now, but I'll say this, John, and that is that your wife's constancy to your memory, and Joel's faithfulness to her through all her trouble—the death of her ma and pa, and—and some other things—has given the lie to every statement ever made that men and women don't actually love each other. If Tilly had had the slightest hope that you were living she'd have remained single till the end of time. She never considered that court edict as right. Oh, I wish I could—could tell you all I know on that line, but it would do no good now."
"No, we'd better drop it," John said, heavily. "It will do no good to go over it. I've regarded it as a dead issue for eleven years."
"That may be," Cavanaugh said to himself, "but he is stunned, actually stunned. I see it in his face and hear it in his voice. Poor boy! Poor boy!"
"Before dropping the subject I will tell you one thing more," the old man said, aloud, "and that is that they have two children, a boy of about six and a little girl of four or five. They are sweet little tots and are a great comfort. They are images of their mother, and I love 'em."
"Tell me this—tell me this, Sam," John said, and it was as if a great anxiety rested on him. "I want to know this. Of course, you'll see that it is no affair of mine, but I'd like to know if Eperson is providing well for Til—for his wife and children. Sam, she has suffered a lot through no fault of her own, and most of that suffering came through happening to meet me up there at Cranston and that silly boy-and-girl fancy of—of hers and mine. She deserves an easier time from now on, and that is why I'd like to know how she and Eperson are financially situated."
Cavanaugh drew his scraggy brows together. His color deepened to red in his cheeks. "I wish I could make a good report on that line," he answered, awkwardly, "but I can't give you the best of news. Joel is not to blame, though. I'll say that. He simply belongs to the class of men that come, as he did, from landholders and slave-holders. Such men are highly honorable, but they simply don't know how to make ends meet."
"Then they are poor, very poor?" John said, grimly.
"Yes, very poor," was the reluctant answer. "I'm not blaming Joel. He has done the best he could. I've never seen a man work harder. If he had been stingy and grasping he'd have made better headway, but he is always doing for others. Old Whaley died insolvent, and Joel took care of the widow and paid out big doctor's bills trying to save her life, through a long sick spell, and when she passed away he paid all the funeral expenses and put up a nice stone over the two graves. He doesn't own any land of his own, but rents a few acres here and there from year to year. He has to buy his supplies on credit at a high rate of profit, and is always up to his eyes in debt. Huh! John, you fellers that can work in a fine office like this, wear clothes like you've got on, and ride home in a comfortable car, reading your paper or smoking—I say, such as you have little notion what an easy berth you have compared to fellers like Joel Eperson. That is the sort of a thing that shakes my faith in the Almighty a little mite sometimes, but I don't let it get hold of me. In any case, Joel is blessed by having the wife he got. She is the most patient little mother that ever lived. I've never heard her complain. I did hear her say once, though, when I happened to pass along where she was at work in the cotton-field and stopped to chat a minute—she told me that she didn't ever worry about what would happen to her and Joel, because they could die and be done with it, but she did trouble about the children. She is so anxious for them to grow up and get an education and be useful in life, and she doesn't see much hope of it."
"You say she actually works in the field?" John exclaimed, with a shudder and a darkening face.
"Not always, but sometimes when Joel is away or sick, or when the crops are suffering for immediate attention. You know labor is high and cash is generally paid, and Joel hasn't the means to hire help at the time he needs it the most. Take cotton-picking, for instance. If the staple isn't taken from the boll in time the weather stains and ruins it. It is at a time like that that Tilly helps. But don't let it fret you. She told me, with that sweet smile of hers that I used to love so much when me and you was boarding with her folks, that outdoor work was good for her. But Joel objects to it. I saw him come out in the corn one day and take the hoe away from her and send her in the house. I never saw a sadder look on a proud man's face.
"'She will do it,' he said to me, almost groaning, as he spoke. Joel got confidential that day. He talked free-like, as men do when they reach the very bottom of ill luck. 'I thought,' said he, 'that I was doing right in marrying Tilly, for she was all alone in the world and unprotected, but you see what I've brought her to. I had hopes then— I have none now. Things never take an upward turn for some men, Cavanaugh. They head downward, and they pull everything they touch with them. They marry wives and make them suffer. They bring children into the world to suffer, and they go on that way till the earth receives their useless remains, and that is the end of their dreams.'
"I tried to cheer him up, but I couldn't. I wish, John, that I could tell you about his unselfishness as to one thing in particular, but I reckon I'd better not. It would do no good. I see from your looks that all this is going hard with you."
"No, nothing is to be gained by it, Sam," John said, shrugging his shoulders. He looked at his watch. "You must go to lunch with me," he said. "I want to see as much of you as possible while you are here."
"I am agreeable," Cavanaugh said, with a touch of his former ease of manner. "It seems like old times once more, my boy."
They lunched together and afterward went to the small hotel where Cavanaugh was staying, got the old man's valise, and went to John's home. Cavanaugh was put into Dora's old room and given to understand that it was his as long as he remained in the city. For a week the two friends were constantly together. John took the time off from business, and, with Binks trotting between them, the physically ill-mated and yet mentally congenial pair took long walks together. And not since Dora's departure had John felt so soothed and comforted. A spiritual force of some sort seemed to radiate from the bent old man that for the time almost regenerated his companion. John had discovered that Cavanaugh loved him as a son and regarded him with an ardent mixture of pride and ecstasy, as a son restored from death to life. Sometimes, in their ascent of an incline in their strolls, the old man would quite unconsciously catch hold of the arm of the younger, and in speaking he often held John's hand in one of his and gently stroked it, as if unconscious of what he was doing. At times, for no particular reason, he would lower his voice into an almost confidential whisper. However, it was on the last night of his stay, before his departure the following morning, that John was permitted to see even more deeply into Cavanaugh's heart. They were in Dora's room. The old man was undressing for bed when suddenly he sat down, locked his toil-hardened fingers between his knees, and lowered his shaggy head, as if buffeting an unexpected wave of despair.
"I want to tell you something, John," he said, in a shaky voice. "And I don't want you to forget it as long as life stays in you. I want you to know that no days in all my existence have been as happy as these with you. Not even my honeymoon, John, and that is saying a lot. I can't tell you about it. When I try my tongue fails, my throat fills, and my eyes stream with tears. You'll never regret being so good to me. God won't give you cause to ever regret it. What is ahead of me seems mighty short. I'll be dead, I guess, too soon for me to ever think about coming to New York again, and I know how you feel about going down there, but I'll take a sweet memory to my grave with me, John, and that is that you, with all your up-to-date success and education, treated me as sweet and gentle as a dutiful son would an old, unpolished, plain father that he loved and respected. You are lonely and unhappy, and I see no way to help you. That hurts. That hurts deep down in me! I hate to go away and leave you like this, never to see you again. What I told you about—about the little woman that was once your wife struck you a deadly blow between the eyes. You thought you had counted on her marrying again, but I reckon, after all, you hadn't really done that. I see—I understand. You have been all these years holding her in your heart, somehow, as yours in spirit if not in body, and now for the first time you are trying to look the facts in the face. I've noticed that you don't sleep sound. I hear you stirring about in the night."
John made no denial, and the fact that he did not do so proved to Cavanaugh that what he had said was true.
John rose and started to his own room. "I'll have you up in time for your train," he said. "Get a good sleep. You will need it before starting on a long journey like yours. Good night."
"Good night, my boy, good night," Cavanaugh said.
From his own room, where John sat smoking in the dark, he saw the light go out in Cavanaugh's room. He listened, expecting to hear the bed creak as it always did when the old man got upon it, but now there was no sound. There was silence for nearly half an hour, and then the telltale creaking came. John understood. Had he had a watch and a light, he could, to a second, have timed one of the saddest and most unselfish of prayers.
"Poor, dear old Sam!" he muttered, and began to undress for bed.
CHAPTER V
After Cavanaugh's departure the time hung heavy over John. He seldom heard from Dora, and, as business happened to be rather quiet, he really was too inactive for one of his introspective temperament. When not at work he spent the time altogether in the company of Binks, who seemed to have become actually human in his fidelity and affection.
One day, having to inspect a finished building on Washington Heights, not far from Dyckman Street, he took the dog along. And when the work was over he and Binks strolled down to the Hudson and walked along the shore. It was a warm day, and men, women, and children were fishing and bathing in the clear water.
Presently a spot was reached that looked inviting, and John decided to eat the lunch there that he had brought along. So, seating himself on a water-worn boulder, he opened his parcel and fed Binks as he himself ate.
Across the river in a bluish haze towered the Palisades, and on either side of him in the distance jutted out from the shore he was on long, slender, gray and yellow boat-houses with their pile-anchored floats. On his right at the water's edge was a group of Italians, picnicking together. There were the four heads of two families, stocky laboring-men, fat housewives, and young girls and boys. They had made a fire of driftwood on the rocks, and John could see a great pot of something stewing, and smelled the aroma of coffee and broiled sausages. The boys and girls had put on foreign-looking bathing-suits and, with tiny water-wings under their arms, were splashing about, trying to learn to swim.
"Binks, old chap," John said, aloud, as had become a habit of his, "there are some deep holes where those silly people are. Those kids may get beyond their depth. I hope the men can swim."
The Italians had a guitar. Some one played it, and native songs were sung. They were very happy. John told himself that it might be some sort of reunion of close friends or relatives. There were so many shouts of merriment in Italian, loud commands to the children from their mothers, and joyous retorts from the bathers, that John failed to hear a shrill cry of alarm from their midst. It was Binks, indeed, who suddenly pricked up his ears, barked, and began to run toward the picnickers. At first, absorbed in reflection, John paid no attention to the dog's antics, but, as Binks continued to bark excitedly, he stood up and looked toward the bathers. The children now ashore were screaming, women were shouting, waving their hands, and with their clothing on the two men were wading out into the water which from the passage of a great steamer was rolling like the surf of an ocean. That the men could not swim John saw at once, and he ran down the shore toward them.
"For God's sake, meester, save her! save my daughter!" a man screamed. "Me no swim! Dere, dere!" and he pointed to a pair of water-wings floating in a circle of bubbles thirty feet from the rocks.
John was a good swimmer, and, throwing off his coat, he plunged in at once, but Binks, who had been taught to spring into water and fetch back such things as sticks or a ball thrown in, and had sighted the water-wings, was several yards ahead of him.
"Dere, dere! My God! she's up de third time!" shrieked the girl's father. "Catch her, meester, catch her! It's de last time—de last time!"
On a curling swell John saw the girl's head and shoulders above the water. She was going down again, and a great rolling wave was close upon her. John saw that he could not reach her in time, and he saw something else that filled him with horror. Binks, with the captured water-wings in his mouth, was within the girl's reach, and she grasped him and dragged him under. There was a gurgling struggle, widening rings filled with bubbles floated on the swaying water, and nothing was seen of the girl or the dog.
A wail of despair rang out from the shore; men, women, and children ran to and fro, screaming. John was soon over the spot where the girl and dog had disappeared, and, exhausting the air from his lungs, he dived down as far as he could. He kept his eyes open, and moving from him in the murky depths he could not quite reach for lack of breath he saw the blue dress of the girl. That Binks was in her dying clutch he well knew. The buoyancy of John's body raised him to the top sooner than he wished, and when he appeared with nothing in his grasp the screams from the shore were louder than ever.
"Again! again! meester!" the father yelled, "farther up. O God! O God!"
Again John dived. This time he went quite to the bottom and crawled along from rock to rock, keeping himself down by the clutch of his hands. But to no avail. He saw nothing and was fairly bursting for lack of breath. The progress upward seemed endless, and when the surface was reached he was almost dead from exhaustion. But he dived again and again. Binks was drowning, he kept thinking, and there was little else in his mind. When he had dived unsuccessfully a dozen times a man arrived in a rowboat from one of the boat-houses with a rope and grappling-irons. Taking John into the boat, the two began to drag the river over the fatal spot. The man held the oars and John the rope.
"She's been under fifteen minutes," the boatman said. "There is little chance now, even if we get her up. My God! what fools those greasers are! Eating, drinking, and singing while their kid was going down!"
John had time to observe the group on the shore now. The mother of the girl had fainted, and the other woman was fanning her as she lay on the rocks, unsheltered from the sun. The children, in their wet suits, stood crying lustily.
"We can't do anything now," the boatman said when another five minutes had passed. "She is done for, but we'd as well keep on the job to satisfy 'em. The tow has taken her out, most likely."
Ten minutes more. Even the group on the shore seemed to have given up hope. However, the irons caught. It might be a rock, John thought, but the object yielded gently. "Hold! Not so hard!" John ordered. "You might pull it loose. I've caught something!"
Carefully he drew in the rope. He saw the blue dress through several feet of water, and, reaching down, he caught it with his hand. A moment later and the drowned girl, with Binks clutched in her death-grip, was drawn into the boat.
A scream of joy from the reviving mother of the girl rent the air. Having been unconscious of the passage of time, she evidently thought her child might yet be alive. As the boatman gently pulled toward the rocks, John disengaged Binks from the stiff fingers, and held him in his lap.
"Poor mut!" the boatman said. "She choked the life out of him. They are always like that—they will grab at a floating chip. Turn the girl's head down, will you, and let the water run out? There may be a speck of life left, but I think she is as dead as a mackerel."
Putting Binks aside, John obeyed. The girl's face was purple, her lips foaming. The rocks reached, the two Italian men, their yellow faces stamped with agony, were ready up to their waists in water to take the girl ashore.
John knew nothing about what is called "first aid to the drowning," and so, with his dead pet in his arms, he climbed up the rocks. Men were gathering from the two boat-houses. He heard somebody say, "There is a cop and a doctor!" The screaming women, the sobbing children, the awed questions of spectators just arrived, fell on closed ears, as far as John was concerned. Picking up his coat, he wrapped it about Binks and bore him homeward. Looking back, he saw the doctor examining the body on the rocks. John sat down alone in the sun. He told himself that he would let his clothing dry on him as he walked homeward. But what was to be done about the body of his pet? He couldn't take it home with him, and he knew of no burial-ground for dogs. He sat down on the shore to think it out. His mind was in a queer jumble of resentment and resigned despair. How could Binks actually be dead? How could he go home without him? And yet the wet, limp object with the bulging, glazed eyes and distorted muzzle was all that was left of the loving, vivacious animal to which he had been so warmly linked.
The doctor was coming back. He passed John, and then paused. "Is that the dog she drowned?" he asked, bending down sympathetically and stroking the animal's coat.
"Yes. How is the girl?" John asked.
"Dead," was the answer, and the doctor stood erect and walked away.
For several hours John remained on the shore. He saw the Italians bearing the girl's body away, followed by the women and children. Then a thought came to him. There was a dense strip of sloping wooded land between the river and the nearest street, and in the midst of it stood a tall oak. At the foot of this tree he would bury Binks's remains. The oak would be a landmark that he could easily single out again. He found some newspapers, and, wrapping up the body in them, he dug a grave and put his pet into it.
The sun was going down above the New Jersey cliffs when the rite was ended. The great disk was as red as living coals of fire. A tree with shooting branches and stark trunk three miles away was clearly outlined across its face. A big excursion-steamer bound for Albany was passing. The surface of the river was sprinkled with sail-boats and varicolored canoes. From somewhere on the water came the clear, joyous tones of a cornet. Some player was putting his soul into his music. John walked down to one of the boat-houses. Men were fishing from the float. At a crude bar he bought a cigar and lighted it. He asked about the fishing of one of the fishermen and apathetically listened while the man talked of rods, reels, lines, sinkers, and bait. John did not want to go home. The thought of the hot, close, and lonely house, in his present frame of mind, was repellent. He wondered if he was giving way to sickly sentimentality, for he had a desire to pass that night in the wood in solitary vigil over the grave of his loved companion.
Presently he shrugged his shoulders and started homeward. "Be a man, John Trott!" he said, with closed lips. "Why shouldn't Binks die?—everybody has to die sooner or later. What does it matter? The only thing that matters is to bear your burden like a soldier and a man."
CHAPTER VI
Dear John [so ran the first letter from Cavanaugh after the latter returned to Ridgeville]—I hardly know how to begin this letter. Since I got home I declare everything here seems awfully tame. That was a wonderful visit I had as I look back on it. I wish it could have gone on forever. I am glad I saw you, for a lot of reasons. You were lonely and blue, my boy. Even your partner spoke to me about you. He said since Dora left that you was really in danger of a nervous breakdown. Mrs. McGwire and her oldest girl said the same thing. They were all worried about you, and so am I.
I've got a confession to make, and the sooner it is made the better I'll feel. John, you know how a town like this one is. The folks here love to gossip about anything they can pick up, and I'm going to tell you that when it got circulated among some of your old work friends that I'd gone to New York a few of them began to nose about and make inquiries. They thought it was such a peculiar thing, you see, for a man of my age and habits to do that they kept talking and talking and joking and what not. Then, as might have been expected, Todd Williams, who you remember thought he saw you on the train in New York, put his finger into the pie. He told it about that he was now more sure than ever that it was you he saw on the train and that I had gone up there to see you. That did the job, and I don't know what to do about it. Folks meet me on the street and ask about you as if it was a settled fact that you never died in that wreck, and, with their eyes staring straight into mine, I don't know what to do or say. John, I don't know how to lie with a sober face. The more I shifted about and tried to get out of it the more they believed it, till now, no matter what I say, they only laugh and make fun and say that I'm keeping something back. So please tell me what to do. The truth is that the facts, if they get out, will never harm you in any way. It is now so long since you left that only a very few that used to know you are alive or here. The fever for going West struck most of your old friends and they moved away. I really think that I'd advise you not to keep the truth back any longer. Questions are asked about what came of Dora, and if I say that she is married and gone away it will end all sorts of idle speculations.
If I've got you into a fix in this matter please forgive me, for it all came about through no intention of mine. If I could lie as straight as some contractors can beat down the price of material or wages, I'd have got you out of this, but I'm getting old and I'm like a baby in the hands of these mouthing, tattling folks. Oh, how I wish you could come down here! You'd not feel as bad about all that has happened if you'd come down and visit me and my wife, and throw it off like an old worn-out coat. What a joy it would be to give you a room and see you seated at our humble board! Think it over, my boy. Life is short at best, and we ought to spend part of it with the folks that really love us, and we love you, John—both of us do.
John sat down in his room one night to answer this letter, but, though he tried very hard, he could think of little to say. Cavanaugh's simple phrases had sounded his deepest emotional depths, and yet he could not bring himself to write an appropriate response. He started to mention the death of Binks, but gave that up. That, he argued, would only cause his old friend to be the more deeply concerned over his welfare. So he wrote the most cheerful letter of which he was capable, about his activity in business matters, and his ability to look on the bright side of such things as the absence of Dora and his unmarried state. He ended the letter with this:
Yes, I fully agree with you in regard to a frank and truthful statement about my being alive, etc. I understand the situation and don't blame you at all. Tell every one who cares to inquire that the newspaper report was a mistake and that you saw me while you were here. I want to see you and your wife as badly as you want to see me, but I'm afraid I cannot come down, now, at any rate.
CHAPTER VII
Joel Eperson sat on his small one-horse wagon, which was loaded with fire-wood. He was taking the wood to Cavanaugh's from the small farm he was renting two miles from Ridgeville. Joel had aged remarkably. Young as he was, his thin hair and beard were becoming gray, and his sallow face was seamed with lines of worry and care. His clothing was of the cheapest material and threadbare, and yet faultlessly clean. As he got down at the front gate Cavanaugh and his wife, who were seated under an apple-tree at the side of the house, came around to meet him.
"Here is the wood you wanted," Joel said, removing his hat in quite his old chivalrous way. "You said dry oak, and I found plenty on the hill back of my corn-field."
"And mighty nigh killed yourself cutting it in lengths and splitting it," Cavanaugh said. "Dry oak is a hard proposition for anything but a sawmill. What do you want for this load?"
"A dollar is what I usually get," Joel answered, sensitive as he always was when dealing with friends.
"Humph!" Cavanaugh sniffed, and looked at his wife. "This load is twice as big as any dollar load I ever bought, and will throw out twice as much heat to the square inch. I'll tell you, Joel, I've got a two-dollar bill that is burning a hole in my pocket, and it goes for this load of wood or you have me to whip. We are out of stove-wood, too, and I don't want any dickering from you about it."
Joel flushed under his tattered straw hat. "It isn't worth that much," he declared, tapping the ground with his whip.
"It is worth it to me, Joel," Cavanaugh smiled, "so what can you do about it? I won't take double value from any man, much less you. How is Tilly?"
"She is fairly well, thank you," the farmer replied.
"And the little ones?" Mrs. Cavanaugh asked, with a motherly smile.
"They are both all right, thank you," Joel said, his undecided glance on his wood. Then, to his surprise, the contractor came through the gate, took the reins from his hands, and drove the horse with its load around to the gate at the side of the house. Halting there, Cavanaugh began to throw the wood over the fence.
"Let him have his way, Joel," Mrs. Cavanaugh said, smiling. "He'd be miserable if he got anything too cheap from an old friend like you. Before you start home, come in; I've made two little waists for the children from a pattern Tilly lent me the last time she was in. I hope they will fit."
"You are always doing things like that, and yet want me to take double price for my produce," Joel said, frowning. "Something is wrong somewhere, Mrs. Cavanaugh."
The old woman laughed lightly. "Go help Sam throw off the wood, Joel," she said. "Don't tell me I haven't the right to sew for little children when I have none of my own. I love your two, and what I do for them has nothing to do with you."
With a look of blended pleasure and pain, Joel joined Cavanaugh, and together they unloaded the wagon. When it was empty Joel shook the bits of bark and chips from the plank flooring, and stared at the contractor timidly. "There is a matter I want to ask you about, Mr. Cavanaugh," he began, clearing his throat. "It is a serious thing for me, and my wife, too. I've wanted to mention it for several days—in fact, since I first heard of it. I really don't know whether I have the right to ask you, and if I haven't you must stop me. Mr. Cavanaugh, all sorts of stories have been floating about to the effect that—that my wife's—that John Trott's reported death was a mistake, and that—and that you went up to New York to—"
Joel broke off. He was quite agitated.
"I know what you mean," Cavanaugh put into the break. "How did you hear it?"
"My neighbors are all talking about it," said Eperson, laboriously, his face now grim and fixed. "I went to Todd Williams and asked him about it. All he could tell me was that he saw a man in New York that looked like John Trott, but he said it might have been only a fancy. Of course, I've kept the talk from Tilly as much as possible. I asked our neighbors not to mention it to her and they promised, but—but—"
"You think she has heard it?" Cavanaugh submitted, gravely.
Eperson nodded. A grim expression twisted his lips awry and left them quivering as he spoke. "Yes, I think some part of it, at least, has reached her. I saw a change in her last night when she came back from a visit to the Creswells. She didn't mention it to me, but I was watching her and I saw a change. She was excited. I think I might call it excitement, Mr. Cavanaugh, and she didn't sleep well last night. She got up several times, and it seemed to me once that she was about to speak to me about it, but still she didn't."
"I see, I see," said Cavanaugh, slowly. "Well, Joel, I hardly know what is right to do in a matter as delicate as this is, but still right is right, and if there is anybody in the world that ought to know the truth about this, why, it is you and Tilly. Joel, the truth is, John Trott and Dora are both still alive."
"Then, then, it is true?"
"Yes, Joel; I've just had a letter from John and he wants the facts known. But I don't see that there is any reason for you to be disturbed. You see, the law parted John and Tilly years ago, and even if it hadn't, his long desertion (we'll call it that) would have amounted to the same in any court."
Like an automaton which all but creaked in its joints, Joel took up his reins. Tapping his thin horse with his whip and making a clucking sound between his teeth, he turned his wagon around.
"Wait! You haven't been paid yet," Cavanaugh cried, holding out a bill.
Pausing, a flurried, far-away look in his eyes, Joel took the money.
"Thank you—thank you," he ejaculated. "So there's no doubt about it? Did you actually see him, Mr. Cavanaugh—with your own eyes, I mean? I don't want any hearsay or second-hand report. I want the truth—the facts."
"I spent a week with him, Joel."
Eperson wound the lines around his left hand and brought his desperate eyes back to Cavanaugh's face. "There is one thing more," he gulped, his hand at his throat. "Is he—is John Trott a—a married man?"
"No, Joel; he's single. Marrying didn't seem to be—well, exactly in his line. His time has been taken up with a growing business, his books, a pet dog, and Dora. She was like a loving sister, I understand, till she married a man she loved and moved out of the country. John is a sort of—well, you might say a sort of stay-at-home, soured old bachelor that never took much to women. At least that's the way I size him up. He makes plenty of money, and has laid up some, but I don't think he cares much for it. He's odd—a sort of deep-feeling fellow—different from the general run of men."
In a nervous sort of movement Joel wiped his lips with his hand.
"There is a thing I'd like to know," he said, slowly, impressively, frankly. "You say he is single, and that makes me wonder. Mr. Cavanaugh, truth is truth, and, as you say, right is right; would you mind telling me whether you think he has—has changed—well, in regard to his—his feeling toward Tilly?"
"You are asking me a ticklish question," Cavanaugh said, with a start and a dropping of his honest eyes. "You see, John never came right out and talked plain on that line, and—"
"I was only asking for your personal opinion," emphasized Joel; "in talking with him did you gather that—that his sentiments had undergone no change since he left here?"
"I don't see what good it will do," the old man said, "but since you insist on knowing I may as well admit that I didn't see any change. In my opinion, Joel, he loves her even more than he did. He didn't say so, you understand, but that's what I gathered. I was watching him when I told him about you and her getting married, and I must say I pitied him. I don't know why, but I did. He looked so downcast, and, you might say, almost astonished."
With the groping movement of a man in the dark, Eperson started to get into his wagon, but was stopped by Mrs. Cavanaugh.
"Wait, Joel!" she called out. "You are forgetting these things," and she brought them to him wrapped up in paper. "Give Tilly my love and tell her if the waists don't fit I can take them in or let them out."
"Thank you; you are very, very, kind." Joel had lifted his hat, and, with a hand that seemed bloodless, he took the parcel and put it into his wagon, carefully covering it with his coat. He made no effort toward starting on again, and, as there was an opening for it, Cavanaugh said to his wife:
"I've just been telling him about John, and it seems to me that Joel is sorter worried about—about its effect on Tilly."
Eperson nodded as if acquiescing to a statement too delicate to be discussed, and remained silent, a wilted look of despair on him.
"I see, I see," Mrs. Cavanaugh said. "I was wondering how she would take it. She's never been exactly like other women. Few women would have—have, you know what I mean, Joel—would have acted like she has all along in regard to John's mother. I must say, and I know that you will agree with me, that she showed herself to be a wonderfully good Christian woman. Why, sometimes it looked to me like she loved Mrs. Trott more than she did even her own mother. But she's been rewarded—oh, you know she's been gloriously rewarded! Your sweet little wife, Joel, has saved the very soul and body of a lone, lost woman. But you helped—oh yes! if it hadn't been for you she never could have done it. And you deserve your reward, too. In my opinion you have been a man amongst a million in all you have done in that matter."
"I don't deserve your praise, Mrs. Cavanaugh," Eperson sighed. "I did it all for Tilly. She was unhappy till we began to help Mrs. Trott. I saw where the trouble lay, and did a little, that's all."
"And are you worried about how Tilly will take the news about John?" Mrs. Cavanaugh asked, while her husband hung open-mouthed on Eperson's answer.
"I don't know how exactly to make you understand the—the situation," Joel stammered. "But I reckon I may as well say, and be done with it, that—that—" He went no farther, his words piling one upon another on his helpless tongue, his great, tender eyes bulging from their dark-ringed sockets.
"You can't mean that she would be worried about the divorce." Mrs. Cavanaugh feebly came to his assistance. "Sam and I were talking that over. There is no doubt that it was legal in every way. Old Whaley saw to that. Narrow-minded and hard as he was, he acted for the best in that case."
"I see you don't understand." Joel dug the toe of his coarse shoe into a tuft of grass and mechanically pounded it with his heel. "You don't understand, because you don't know Tilly as well as I do. Mrs. Cavanaugh, how can I put it any better than to—to say that—no matter what was done in court, no matter what John Trott did that might be called 'desertion,' Tilly would never have married again if she had thought he was alive. I'd never have dared to ask her to marry me if I hadn't thought he was dead. I believed it—from the bottom of my soul I believed it, and—and, my friends, listen! I got her to believe it. I saw that she doubted it a little, and I worked and worked, and argued and argued, till finally I got her to believe it. But even then I'd have failed if Mrs. Trott hadn't—hadn't helped me. Mrs. Trott believed he was dead, and it was her belief and my talk that finally convinced Tilly. But now what is to be done?"
"Why, nothing that I can see," Mrs. Cavanaugh answered. "All you have to do is to show Tilly that in no sense of the word is she bound by her first marriage. You seem to think she is worried over that."
Joel shrugged his shoulders and took a deep breath. "You don't understand yet," he said, with a low groan. "She is excited—so excited that she can't sleep, but it is not the kind of excitement you think it is. She's heard the report that John Trott is still alive and she is afraid that it may not—by some chance—be true. I don't mean that she'd ever live with him again—now that she is—is a mother, or that she'd hold it against me for marrying her as I did; but to know that no harm came to him will make her happier than she's been for many a day. That is a thing I've got to face. She is the mother of my children, but she has never given me her whole heart and soul. She gave them to John Trott. She has never blamed him for any step he took. She thought that he left here for her sake, and died for her sake. Do you think I don't know that when she hears that he himself has never married in all these years—do you think that she will then love him less than she did? She always looked on him as the most wronged man alive. Do you suppose that she herself will turn against him now? In the name of God, what excuse would she have, and him still loving her as Mr. Cavanaugh thinks he does?"
"I never looked at it that way," Mrs. Cavanaugh said. "You are getting me all mixed up. Does Mrs. Trott— Have any of the reports got to her?"
"No, not yet; but Tilly will want to tell her, now that there is no doubt as to the truth. I must tell my wife what I have just learned. It is my duty to tell her. Yes, yes, I must tell her. I'm honor-bound at once to give her all the joy in my power."
It was as if both Cavanaugh and his wife could think of nothing in the way of comfort for Eperson, and, taking his reins into a better grasp and touching his hat politely, he mounted his wagon and drove away.
CHAPTER VIII
The loose planks on Joel's wagon rattled over the rain-washed and little-used road running from the main highway to the farm he was renting. The house was a log cabin of only three rooms, situated on a bleak, treeless hillside. Adjoining it was a diminutive corn-crib made of pine poles with the bark still on them, and a lean-to shed which was roofed with long shingles sawn and split from red oak.
As he drove his clattering wagon up the slope his two children, little Joel and Tilly, ran out to meet him. The boy held his sister's hand to keep her from falling, and was gleefully shouting to his father to stop and take them into the wagon. Eperson checked his horse and got down and made places for them on his coat.
"Where's your mother?" he inquired, his dull eyes on the cabin.
"In the house," answered little Joel. "Supper is nearly ready."
"Hold your sister," Eperson ordered, as he started the horse and walked along by the wagon; "she might fall."
Tilly came to the front door and stood watching them as they drew nearer. The sun was going down, and its last slanting rays made a living picture of her in the crude frame of logs. She looked older than the average woman of her age, and yet there was a rounded mellowness to her features, a suave, spiritual radiance from her skin, eyes, and hair, which always caught and held the attention of an observer. The same quality seemed to pervade her voice. It had always been musical; it was even more so now. Her husband saw that she was all aglow and smiling as she stepped down to the wagon and held out her arms for the little girl.
"Not a long ride, was it, pet?" she said, as the child put its arms around her neck and kissed her cheek.
Taking up the parcel, Joel handed it to his wife. "Mrs. Cavanaugh sent it," he explained. "It is the waists."
"Mrs. Cavanaugh?" Tilly said, in groping surprise. "Where did you see her?"
"I sold Cavanaugh the wood." Joel felt the heat flow into his cheeks. "He ordered it a week ago."
"Was he—was he at home?" Tilly held the child's face to hers, and Joel noted a tense ripple of expectation in her voice.
"Yes, he was there." Joel lowered his head to take up the reins he had dropped, preparatory to driving around to the wagon-shed. From the corner of his eyes he saw that Tilly stood rigid at his side, and he thought he knew why she lingered thus. He was starting his horse, when she said, suddenly:
"Well, come right in. Your supper is ready."
As he put his horse into its stall and fed it with fodder and corn, he almost wished that he could prolong the task, for how was he to pass through the coming ordeal, which was like death to him?
He went into the house, bathed his face in a pan of water, brushed his long thin hair, carefully adjusted his collar, and put on his coat. As a rule, farmers did not wear their coats in the house in warm weather, but Joel had never sat at the table with his wife without having his on. It was an observance of respect to women which had been handed down to Joel from conventional forebears, and from which he could not have departed.
Tilly and the children were at the table. It had grown dark within the almost windowless cabin, and an oil-lamp furnished the light, the yellow rays of which fell over the food, which consisted of boiled vegetables, cornbread, butter, and mush and milk for the children.
Out of respect to Tilly, who always did it in his absence, Joel, when at home, said grace at the table, and the upturned plates to-night mutely reminded him of that duty.
It had always been the same simple formula which, also, had descended to Joel, and over his folded hands to-night he uttered it. Moistening his dry lips as if to render them pliant, Eperson sent his prayer out into the sentient mystery which was so relentlessly wrapping him about.
"Loving Father," he prayed, "we thank Thee, this night, for all the evidence of Thy loving tenderness and care. Bless this food to our needs. Render us kind and merciful to our neighbors, and, when our earthly service to Thee is ended, receive us into the grace and peace of Thy eternal kingdom. Amen."
Eperson forced himself to eat. Under the stress of his emotions his appetite had departed, and yet he pretended to be enjoying his food. Tilly was eating with more relish, it seemed to him, than usual, and he thought he knew the psychological reason for it. He had never seen her look so buoyantly ethereal as she did to-night. To have described the change upon her would have been beyond the power of man. She was like an older sister to her children. Her love for them seemed to issue from her like some supernal blending of light and music as she bent to adjust the bib of the younger one, or sweetly to admonish the older in regard to his too rapid eating of his mush and milk.
"Don't—don't hurry, Joie darling!" her lilting voice produced. "You don't want to be like a little piggy at his trough, do you, my sweet boy?"
When supper was over, Tilly washed the dishes and Eperson put the children to bed, removing their moist clothing, bathing their bare, dusty feet and legs, and putting on their nightgowns. What a holy service of resignation it was to-night! Why was he so depressed with a sense of his vast paternal unworthiness? Why, unless he was thinking of John Trott's success? He told himself that his whole life had been a failure. Many of his personal debts were unpaid and unpayable. There were men he dreaded meeting because they always asked for the money due them, or showed by their faces that they were thinking of his delinquency. And there were others harder to meet who showed by their faces and the matters they spoke about that they had no thought of ever being paid. Ah! then there were still other men—men from whom he could not bring himself to borrow. They were the few, like Cavanaugh, who wanted to help him, but did not know how to broach so delicate a subject with so sensitive a man.
The children tucked away in the general sleeping-room, Eperson went outside to the chairs that stood by the door-step and sat waiting for Tilly. Would she come to him as promptly as usual? he wondered, his stare on the blinking stars beyond the hilltops. Perhaps not so readily, for an ineffable veil seemed to have been lowered between him and her since her talk with the neighbors in regard to her first husband's survival. He listened for the clatter of dishes and pans in the kitchen. It had ceased. That work was over. Now, nothing would detain her, he told himself, and he tried to brace his courage for the performance before him.
But she did not come at once. He heard her voice, with its indescribable gurgle of maternal sweetness, teaching the children to say their prayers.
"God bless mother," was repeated after her, "God bless father—God bless Grandmother Trott, and all the good people in the world. Amen."
"Grandmother Trott!" Joel's whole weary being throbbed with the mental utterance of the words. Then he heard Tilly singing a quaint lullaby sung by the negroes. He wondered if she were purposely delaying her usual after-supper chat with him. After all, what was there to tell her? She had evidently heard the main facts of the matter—that was plain from that irrepressible elation of hers.
She extinguished the light and came out to him, taking the chair he stood holding for her. The starlight gleamed on his bare brow. It was like a well-wrought piece of granite. He brushed his hair back with an unsteady hand as he sat down.
"I was talking with Cavanaugh," he began, and paused to clear the huskiness from his throat.
"I know," Tilly said. "I've heard everything."
"You have?" Joel said, tremulously.
"Yes, the Creswells told me yesterday. You see, Tom Creswell works in the post-office, and the postmaster showed him and the other clerks a letter that Mr. Cavanaugh was sending to John since he got back from New York. Then the postmaster showed him one answering it. The postmaster met Mr. Cavanaugh and asked him about it, and Mr. Cavanaugh told him that it was all a mistake about John and Dora being killed. He says John is doing well and looks well. Oh, I'm so glad—so glad! Ever since the report of that wreck it has been on my mind like a horrible dream. Night and day it would come up to haunt me. Don't you see, I thought— I felt that if—if I had not gone away that day with my father John would have been alive. So now, you see, I haven't that to think about. God spared him and Dora, and Mattie Creswell says they are both happily married."
"Both?" Joel exclaimed. "You haven't got it right, Tilly. Dora married and left him all alone. Cavanaugh says John never married."
"Never married?" Tilly's sweet lips hung quivering. "But Mattie Creswell says her brother told her that Cavanaugh said that John was married to a wealthy girl in high society."
"It is my duty to tell you the truth," Eperson said, the look of death deepening on him. "He never married. He has been leading a strange, lonely life. I think I know why. You can guess."
"I can guess?" Tilly was pale and trembling as she leaned toward him.
"Well, no, perhaps you can't," Joel corrected, "but I know why."
"You know why?" Tilly's voice broke on the last word, and she stared at him eagerly, her sweet mouth drooping.
"Yes, because no man who was once your husband even for the few days that you were his could ever marry any other woman."
"You—you rate me too highly," Tilly faltered, putting her hands over her face. "Why, why, I've always thought that till his death he hated me for deserting him as I did when all the rest of the world was down on him."
"He is no fool, and he was not even then, boy though he was. He knew why you went away so suddenly. Do you hear me? He simply acted as I would have done in his place. He endeavored to set you free from certain unbearable conditions, and that is what I would have done. In setting you free he rescued another girl from a life of degradation and despair, but that is neither here nor there. John Trott deserves credit, and I shall give it to him. Dead though you thought he was, he has always had your heart. I've seen that in a thousand things you have done and said. Your love for his mother was due to that, and God knows you've had your reward there, for you awakened an immortal soul and have earned its eternal gratitude and love. Don't think I am complaining, Tilly. I knew when you came to me that your heart was not mine. I've never been able to win it and I never shall."
"Why, you don't think—you don't think—" stammered Tilly. "Surely you don't think that I still—still—" She suddenly stopped and stared at her husband in a bewildered way. "You don't suppose, Joel, that I could believe that he—that all these years John—"
Joel slowly swung his head up and down. "I believe that you both love each other still. I was wrong to over-persuade you when you held out so long against me. John Trott acted for your good in leaving, and I should not have saddled on you myself, the greatest failure among men that ever lived. I feel to-night as if the blight of an avenging God is on me for my presumption. I have put two little children on your hands and feel as incapable of protecting you and them as a crawling infant."
"I won't listen to you!" Tilly stood up. "You shall not abuse yourself in this way. You acted exactly as you should. No one could blame you. You are one of the noblest men living. Without you I'd have been lost after my mother and father died. For you to say that—that John and I still—I won't say the word. You have no right to utter it when all is considered—you and me and the children. What right have you to—to think that you could know John's heart, when you have not seen him for eleven years? You may think you know mine. You may do so if you insist on making yourself unhappy, but you have no right to—to pass an opinion on—on the present feelings of my first husband. What are you going by, I'd like to know? You don't suppose that John would tell Mr. Cavanaugh such things, even if they were true? And how could Mr. Cavanaugh come to you, my husband, and—and even mention such a thing?"
Joel was on his feet also. The childlike and unconscious eagerness of his wife to make sure of the thing she was secretly craving stabbed him to the core of his being, and yet he told himself that it was his duty to withhold nothing concerning his rival from her.
"Reading him as I'd read myself," Joel answered. "I thought he'd remain constant, but to-day I wormed it out of Mr. Cavanaugh."
"Wormed what out—what out?" Tilly sank back into her chair, open-mouthed, her eyes gleaming portals to breathless expectancy. "You can't mean that Mr. Cavanaugh thinks—actually thinks that John still—?"
Joel bowed his head in the relentless starlight, sat down as from sheer frailty, and was silent. The undulating landscape, the fields, the meadows, the woodland, the hills and streams seemed to hold their vast breath with his. Suddenly Tilly rose. It was as if she were about to stand behind his chair, as was her wont at times, put her hands upon his shoulders, and kiss his thorn-crowned brow, but she did not. She went slowly into the cabin. He heard her feet—feet he knew to be winged with sudden, far-reaching joy—treading the boards as she went to the bed of the children. What was she doing? he wondered. Her step ceased. He pictured her as seated by the side of the children's bed. Was she pitying him or rejoicing? Why ask? He knew. And his love was so divine a thing that, but for his throes of death-agony, he could have rejoiced with her.
CHAPTER IX
Cavanaugh had a duty to perform. He had decided to take on himself the act of informing Mrs. Trott of her son's survival. So, the next morning after his colloquy with Eperson he walked out to the cabin the widow occupied near the home of Eperson. As he passed Joel's place he saw from the distance that Joel was at work in his corn-field, and, watching a few minutes, he saw Tilly come out and feed her chickens, so he judged that Mrs. Trott had not yet been told the important news.
Walking on, he soon reached the isolated cabin in the woods that he was seeking. It had but a single room, one window in front, and a crude chimney made from unhewn stones and clay. The door facing the little road was open, and as he drew near, Mrs. Trott, hearing his step, came to the door and looked out.
She was now quite gray, and wore a plain dress of homespun unadorned in any way save for a neat white collar and an old cameo pin which had been a gift of her husband's. A touch of her old beauty still lingered in the contour of her face and good basic features. Her eyes had a placid expression, and her voice had become that of a child who loves to be led and petted. She smiled on recognizing the unexpected visitor, and gave him a seat in the cabin.
"I didn't expect to see you out this way," she said. "Joel told me a couple of weeks ago that you'd gone off somewhere."
He nodded. It was difficult to introduce the topic on his mind, and he chatted with her about the land in the neighborhood, Joel's prospective crop, and the fear some of the farmers had of a harmful drought if rain did not fall within a week or so. He had not been able to come to the matter in hand when a sound outside was heard.
"Grandmother Trott," a small voice piped up, "sister won't come on. She keeps stopping and picking flowers and leaves."
Mrs. Trott laughed, and her face beamed. "It is Joel's children," she explained. "The little darlings come with milk for me every bright day. Tilly sends it."
Rising, she stood in the doorway. "Come on; but, no, Joie, don't pull her hand so hard! You might jerk her little arm out of joint. Come on by yourself. She will come when she feels like it."
The boy soon appeared with the pail of milk and set it in the door. "Mother said tell you she'd have some fresh butter for you in the morning and some eggs. The hens have started again. Tilly and I found six eggs in the hay last night. Grandmother, where are the kittens?"
"Right around behind the cabin, dearie," Mrs. Trott answered, taking the pail. "The mother-cat is nursing them in the sun. Show them to your little sister. You may have them when they are larger."
Cavanaugh heard the children as they went behind the house and bent over the cat and kittens. He heard them uttering endearing words to the animals. "Don't, don't, you little stupid!" Joel cried. "She may scratch you! Don't you see her claws?"
Mrs. Trott laughed softly as she emptied the pail and washed it out.
"They are the sweetest children in the world," she said to Cavanaugh, as she put the pail on the door-step and sat down again. "They stayed with me a week last month when Joel and Tilly went to camp-meeting over the mountain. They were not one bit of trouble, and, oh, I did love to have them about! I never let on to Tilly and Joel, but when they took the darlings away I was awfully blue. Short as the time was, you see, I got accustomed to them."
The children had gone home and still Cavanaugh had not reached the object of his visit. It was the shadow of vague wonderment in the widow's eyes, and her lagging talk, that compelled him to introduce it. He first spoke, and rather adroitly, of Todd Williams's encounter in New York with the man who resembled her son, and, pausing, he heard her sigh.
"Poor boy! poor boy!" she muttered, sadly. "And they said he and Dora were on the way to New York when that awful thing happened. Mr. Cavanaugh, you are a good man. You've always been considered a good man by everybody that knows you. I understand that you never had any children, but you may know the human heart well enough to know that no regret ever heard of can be deeper than that which is brought on by the sort of thing that happened to me. I don't talk this way to Tilly and Joel, because I owe them too much to let them dream that I am not thoroughly happy. But if I could live a thousand years I'd never be able to rid my mind of the positive knowledge that by—by—I will say it—I'll say it to you as I'd say it to a priest, if I was a Catholic. I've often wished I was one, so that I could let what I feel out of me. Maybe saying it like this to you will do a little good. I don't know, but I will say that nothing on earth can rid my mind of the fact that by my thoughtless way of acting when I was young I— I—"
"Stop! I know what you mean, my poor friend," Cavanaugh broke in, "and you are getting all wrought up. Listen to me. Why not look on the hopeful side, the bright side? How do you know but that John and Dora are still alive, and none the worse; in fact—"
He suddenly checked himself, for a sickly, greenish pallor had overspread the listener's face, and she leaned forward as if about to swoon. In a moment, however, she had recovered herself, and, sitting erect, her white, shapely hands pressed to her breast, she smiled feebly.
"Oh, I know what you mean, Mr. Cavanaugh. I did try that. I summed up every hope, everything that held out the slightest promise. I used to lie awake at night and declare over and over that it couldn't be—that the laws of life wouldn't let such an unjust thing happen to them, innocent as they were, and with their right to live, but it didn't do any good. I didn't let anybody know about it, but one after another I got three different papers with John's name in them. I went to Atlanta and visited the editors of all the papers and asked their advice. They were sorry, but they said the list had never been disputed and ought to have been even bigger than it was. Then I gave up."
A shrewd, half-fearful gleam was in the contractor's shifting eyes.
"I know, I know, Mrs. Trott," he gently persisted, "but many and many an account like that has turned out afterward to be incorrect. You don't know it, but maybe all three of those papers got their information from one report. You see, a reporter representing a lot of papers in a sort of combine goes to a spot like that was and his account is telegraphed all about over the country. So you see, even if you had seen it in a hundred papers you wouldn't have to take it as law and gospel."
Mrs. Trott slowly shook her head and moaned softly.
"I wonder if I dare tell her," Cavanaugh debated with himself. "She almost fainted just now. She may have a weak heart. I must be careful. I've heard of sudden joy killing." He was silent for a moment; then he began again: "Mrs. Trott, you are welcome to your opinion, and I reckon you'll let me have mine. But, to tell you the truth, I never have been fully convinced that John and Dora was lost in that wreck. I have my reasons, and they are pretty good ones."
He saw her arched brows meet in a little frown of polite wonderment, and she was about to speak when little Joel suddenly reappeared at the door.
"Oh, grandmother," he half lisped, in breathless haste, for he had been running, "I forgot to tell you what mother told me to say. She said for me to be sure not to forget. She said tell you that she is coming over after dinner to tell you the best news you ever heard."
"Ah, tell her I'm glad, darling!" Mrs. Trott said, with a smile. And she went and stooped down before the child and added: "Won't you give old grandmother a sweet little hug? There! there! that's a darling little man!" And Cavanaugh saw her pressing the boy to her breast and kissing his cheeks.
When the child had left she came back to her chair, her face filled with a rare maternal glow. "If you were a younger man, Mr. Cavanaugh, and childless, as you now are, I'd advise you to adopt children. I don't know why or how it is, but I know that persons can love other children than their own and love them deeply, too. I love Tilly's two— I really do. That child there, that little boy with all his cute ways and moods, takes me back to the childhood of my own son. But I neglected him. How I could have done it only God knows, but I did, and you know it better than any one else besides myself. You gave him a fine start, and if he had lived he would have made a great success. But I must stop— I must stop! I think I know what Tilly's good news is. Joel has been trying to rent the Marsden farm. He put in a bid for it. It is a big place, and Mr. Marsden furnishes supplies. Maybe Joel has got it. I hope so, for he is at the end of his rope."
"The good news is not for poor Joel, Mrs. Trott. The truth is that Tilly wants to tell you the same thing I've come to tell you. You know I said that I never was fully convinced about John. Now what if I was to tell you that I went to New York to make sure?"
"Make sure? Make sure that—that John—" she began and stopped.
He nodded, holding her bewildered stare by his fixed eyes. "I found out enough up there to be sure, Mrs. Trott."
"You mean that John— Why, you can't mean that—?"
Again he nodded. "I've been afraid to shock you with the good news, but he is alive and prospering. I was with him a week."
She was convinced. She sat white and limp. She put her thin hands to her face as if to hide her joy from him. He saw her breast heaving. He heard her sob in an effort to control her emotion, and then she became quiet.
That night at home Cavanaugh wrote a long letter to John. "Something must be done," he wrote, in one place. "If you had seen that transformed human soul as I saw her there in her lonely log hut and heard her talk of you and your babyhood and the thousands of regrets she has for what she has done and left undone, your kind heart would have melted with pity as mine did. My old mother's passed on, John, but if I could call her back I'd give my last breath to furnish her with a minute's joy. You could give yours years of comfort and happiness. Do you know what I'd do if I was you? I'd come here and get her and take her back to New York with me, and let her have some of the things she used to hunger for and which may have caused her to do as she did. She is poor; she needs you; the two good friends who have been helping her so long really haven't the means to keep it up. You must come—you really must. If you don't it will darken the end of your life. I love you too much to let you neglect this sublime duty. Men of the greatest brains have married repentant women and never regretted it; surely a man as noble as you are, and as able as you are, can afford to pardon the woman who gave him his very life."
Mrs. Cavanaugh read the letter when it was finished. She made no comment on it, but her opinion of her husband had never been so high. Deep pools of his inner being for the first time in his life were exposed to the light of her understanding.
"May I?" she asked, taking the pen into her hand, and laying his letter open on the table.
"Yes," he nodded. "Add anything you like."
"Dear John," she wrote on the margin, in the cramped style of one who writes but seldom, "come to your mother. Do as Sam says. He knows what is best."
CHAPTER X
Among the farmers of that locality it was considered somewhat beneath the dignity of the men to milk the cows, but Joel Eperson had never permitted his little wife to lay her hands to that particularly arduous part of the day's duties. And to-night at dusk he was at this work in the stable-yard, Tilly and the children still being at Mrs. Trott's cabin. He knew why his wife had gone there, and painfully he was comprehending why she was so late in getting back. There would naturally be much to say on a subject like that by the two women in all the world whom such a startling revelation touched so closely. Joel took his pail of milk into the cabin. He put some more wood into the stove that it might be hot and ready for use when Tilly arrived, and then he walked to and fro in the yard, his dull eyes on the dewy fields. On his right, a half-mile distant, the fires of the lime-kilns and brickyards were beginning to glow against the cliffs in the coming darkness, and the songs of the negro stokers and the thwacks of their axes fell on his ears. He emptied the water in the pail and brought up some more from the spring at the foot of the slope. Still his family did not come, and he started out to meet them. He crossed the meadow, skirted his corn, which till only the other day he had looked on with pride, walked between the rows of his cotton-plants to curtail the distance, and finally reached the wood through which ran the path to Mrs. Trott's cabin. As he stood there for a moment he heard voices. Both Tilly and Mrs. Trott were speaking, but he could not see them for the thickened darkness beneath the trees.
"I must hurry now." It was Tilly's voice, and it rang with the lilting tones of triumphant joy. "It is late. Joel will be looking for me."
"Yes, I'll turn back," Mrs. Trott was heard saying. "Let me kiss them once more. Oh, I am so wonderfully happy! Really, dear girl, I'd like to die feeling as I do to-night. You see, I never expected it— I never dreamt that such a thing could be possible. I thought all chance of ever begging his forgiveness was gone, and now maybe, some day or other, I can. I wouldn't ask him to take me back, you understand, but only to say that he wouldn't hold it against me the rest of his life. But I'd want him to know one thing, Tilly, my sweet child, and that is the things you have done for me on account of—on account of—you know what I mean?"
"Hush, grandmother," Tilly answered, in the tremulous tone which indicated emotions firmly checked. "You must not forget who I now am. You must not forget that I'm the mother of those darling children."
"No, my child, nor can I forget their noble father. I wouldn't wound him for the whole world. I love him as—as—yes, I love him as much as I do John, but in a different way, that is all. John was my baby, Joel is my grown-up son. You must never forsake Joel in thought, word, or act. Remember that."
What Tilly answered Joel refused to hear. He was too honorable a man to listen further, and he turned back and with slow, weighty steps reached his home again. He stood in the kitchen doorway, waiting. He heard Tilly and the children coming. They were singing merrily and romping like sprites across the meadow.
"I'm coming! I'm coming! I'll catch you! Boo!" Tilly cried. "Hide from him, darling—hide behind the bushes! Where is she, brother? She must be lost. Oh, there she is!" This was followed by childish screams of delight and the mother's cooing words.
Joel went to meet them, advancing across the yard and taking little Tilly into his arms.
"I know we are late," his wife said, regretfully, "but grandmother came part of the way back, and you know she walks slowly."
"It is all right," Joel said, pressing little Tilly's cheek to his. "It is not very late."
"Well, I'll hurry with the supper," Tilly answered. It was significant, he reflected, that she did not mention then the reception of the startling news by Mrs. Trott. Even while they all sat at the table Tilly failed to bring it up, and a general air of repression brooded over them.
Indeed, the children had been put to bed, the dishes washed, and husband and wife were alone together in the moonlight at the door, and still the subject in the minds of both had been avoided. He wondered if she expected him to mention the matter. Surely she ought to know that it was not exactly the thing that he, a mere outsider, had the right to pry into. An awkward silence fell between them, the sort of silence that surely boded ill for their future harmony of intercourse. Tilly seemed to sense this, and suddenly put her shoulder to the wheel of duty.
"I didn't get to tell grand— I didn't get to tell Mrs. Trott, after all." It was significant that she abruptly discarded a formerly accepted term of endearment. "Mr. Cavanaugh was there this morning for that purpose, so—so the greater part of her excitement was over when I got there."
"But she was happy, of course," Joel got out, well knowing that his remark was an empty one.
"Oh yes, of course." Tilly was silent for several minutes. Then she added: "The poor woman is afraid that John will not forgive her. She doesn't want help from him, she declares, and she thinks it would be unwise for them ever again to meet face to face, but she says she would like for him to know how sorry she is for many things. I think, myself, Joel, that it would be inadvisable for—for them to meet, just at present, anyway. Don't you?"
"I don't know. I can't say. I'm not in a position to decide," Joel floundered. "It would depend on him. It is unfortunate that so many miles separate them. He evidently has some established way of living into which she might not fit so well. The mere fact of his being still alive reached her by accident and through no effort on his part."
"I'm sure she has no idea of making any advancement." Tilly seemed to Joel, as she spoke, quite another woman from the one who had been his wife all those years, and Joel simply sat, bent forward, his every nerve and muscle drawn taut by vast swirling forces within him.
"Then you don't think that he would—would forgive her?" asked Tilly, with obvious anxiety which she was striving to minimize.
Joel's prompt reply surprised her. "I know he would," said Joel, "if he knew all the circumstances. I have never known a nobler man. I don't believe a nobler man ever lived. In trying to help his mother I was only doing what I was sure he would have done for me under the same conditions. If I only knew how to show him what his mother now is I'd do it."
They were silent for a while; then, suddenly, Tilly stood behind him and put her hands on his shoulders. "Joel," she said, "you are blue to-night." She toyed with the hair on his brow; she bent almost as low as when in that posture she sometimes kissed him, but she did not kiss him to-night, and he noted the fact as a man dying unattended in a dungeon might test his own pulse. He longed to take the little hand so close to his cheek and press it to his famished lips, but something told him that she would (not openly, but inwardly) now actually shrink from such a caress.
"No, don't think I am blue," he protested, fighting forward on his black billows, and grimly smiling. "You are happy and I shall be for your sake. You mustn't observe my cranky ways too closely. I'm all right."
"Somehow I can't exactly believe it." Tilly twisted a lock of his hair between her slow, reluctant fingers. "You seem changed, a little, anyway, and I think we ought to come to a thorough understanding right now. You have an imagination, Joel. You used to write poetry to me, you remember, and for all I know you may now be fancying all sorts of really absurd things. Now be sensible. John and I did love each other away back there, but we were parted and for years I have thought of him as dead. But now he is away off up there, and I am here with you and our darling children. You love them, they love you—and—and you love me, and I—love you. Now be sensible. Can you, even with a crazy flight of your imagination, fancy that John and I ever again will or could be—be like we once were? Throw the idea away if you have it. Of course, I must be happy in discovering that my hasty desertion back there did not cost him his life and Dora's. Oh, that thought worried me! I never let you know how much it worried me! I guess I would have married you much sooner than I did if I had not had that on my mind. But all that is past and gone now. I'm here and John is away off up there. Your idea that he still loves me is ridiculous on the face of it. What was I, even when he was here? Only an ignorant country girl, while he has no doubt grown and learned and altered in a thousand ways. I've seen successful men from big cities. They don't seem to think as we do, or act or speak like us. I'd be a silly dowdy to such a man. I think, of course, if it comes about naturally, that his mother ought to go to him, but I don't think he ever ought to—to come back here, and I am sure that he won't. I am sure of that—I'm sure of it. He has been burnt once, as the saying is, and that will be enough. But I predict that she will go to him. No, I'll take that back. I said that, but I am not sure. Do you know, it is God's truth, Joel, that the sweet old soul loves you and me and the children so much now that she would not leave us even—even for John. She let that out this afternoon while Tilly was sleeping in her lap. The very thought of going started her to crying, and it was some time before I got her quiet."
Tilly's hand actually touched his neck, but Joel still felt that he had no right to clasp it. The wild thought of grasping it and drawing his wife's lips down to his possessed him, but he promptly killed the impulse. Grimly he told himself that he would be fondling a shadow, feasting on a husk.
Suddenly she drew her hand away. "I'm awfully tired to-night," she sighed. "I'll go to bed, but you needn't hurry. Shall I fill your pipe?"
"No, thank you," he said, rising as courteously as of old. "I sha'n't smoke any more to-night."
"Well, good night," she said.
"Good night," he echoed.
The flare from the lime-kilns and the brickyards lit the cliffs, hills, and sky. He beard the town clock striking ten. Little Joel had waked, and his mother was gently telling him to go to sleep. The child wanted water. Tilly went to the kitchen for it, and the father heard her sweetly cooing as she held the cup for his son to drink. What a marvel that—his son and hers.
CHAPTER XI
"John is not coming. I see that plain enough from this letter," Cavanaugh announced to his wife at noon one day, as he entered the sitting-room where she sat sewing on a machine.
"Why, what's wrong?" the old woman asked, in a tone of disappointment.
"I can't tell exactly," Cavanaugh answered. "It is all round about, with this reason and that. He seems to have a mistaken idea that it will stir up an awful rumpus in the papers. He wants to help his mother, and says for me to see her and tell her so. He is willing to make a substantial settlement on her, but she wouldn't take it. Do you hear me? She wouldn't have scraps thrown at her like that. If he came here and made it up she might let him help, but she'll never accept it that way. I am disappointed in him. After the way I wrote, he ought to have come and been done with it."
Mrs. Cavanaugh adjusted her glasses, took the letter and read it, moving her wrinkled lips as she slowly intoned the words. Then she handed it back.
"Man that you are," she sniffed, "you don't see what ails him. He doesn't once mention Tilly, but in every line there he is thinking of her and her happiness. He'd love to come back here and see the old place and all of us, but he is afraid it will upset Tilly. You said you thought he still loves her— I know he does. I can see it all through that letter, and I'm sorry for him, poor fellow!"
"Oh, I see what you mean," Cavanaugh said, in a mollified tone, "and I believe you are right, too. He was thinking of her happiness when he ran away, and he is doing it now. Yes, yes, he still loves her. I saw it in a hundred ways when me and him was together up there. He never had room for but one woman in his heart, and she fills it still. She is the drawback in the case, I'll bet. He thinks she is happy with Joel and the children and he doesn't want to break in at this late day. But he will come. Mark my words, he will come to help his mother when I write him more fully. I'll explain, too, that I'll keep it from the papers, and when he gets here he can stay out here with us and keep away from old acquaintances as much as he likes. Yes, he will come."
It ended in accordance with this prediction. One evening at dusk John arrived in town and was delivered by a street-hack at Cavanaugh's door. He was received with open arms by the old couple and treated as a much-loved son. And he was glad that he came. For the first time since the departure of Dora and the loss of Binks he felt restful and at home. The delightful old-fashioned room, filled with the very perfume of cleanliness, to which he was assigned, at once charmed and soothed him. Till late that night the three friends sat talking on the porch. Several times Mrs. Trott was mentioned, but Tilly not once. That she and Joel lived near by and had been the widow's stanch friends John was not yet aware, and the Cavanaughs wondered, half fearfully, what effect that knowledge would have on their guest.
John was waked the next morning by the long, resonant blowing of the whistles at the mills. It was scarcely light, and, only partly conscious at first, he fancied that it was his old signal for rising. He thought he was in his dismal room at his mother's house, and that little ragged Dora was clattering about in the kitchen below. Slowly he came to full comprehension and lay back on his bed and closed his eyes. But it was not to sleep. What a tangle of sordid memories wrapped him about! How profoundly wise, by comparison, had he become! He wondered if the tiny cottage in which he and Tilly had passed those few days of blinded bliss were still extant. If so, would he dare visit it? He thought not. Neither would he care to see again his mother's old home.
Later, when the sun was up, he heard Cavanaugh on the porch, and he rose, dressed, and joined him. Presently breakfast was announced. How the cozy table in its snowy expanse appealed to him—the food he used to like, the open door looking out on a flower-garden, a plot of dewy grass, and a row of beehives! He had a sense of wanting to live that way always. He was weary of the life that he had just left, and the ephemeral things he had won. His desire for rest was that of an old man whose years are spent. Somehow he felt that he and the Cavanaughs were on a par as to age and experience. They had suffered mildly through long lives—he had suffered keenly in a shorter one.
It was understood between him and Cavanaugh that the first thing to be done was for him to visit his mother. So, when breakfast was over, they fared forth in the cool, brisk air for that walk in the country. As they neared the cabin Cavanaugh saw Joel's house in the distance. He might have descried either Joel or Tilly about the place by careful looking, but was afraid that even a glance in that direction might attract John's attention. Presently Mrs. Trott's cabin was before them, and, leaving his companion in the edge of the wood, Cavanaugh went ahead to prepare the widow for the surprise before her. Presently he came back.
"I must say she was awfully excited," he began. "I was sorry for her. She turned as white as a sheet and shook powerful; but she wants to see you, and said tell you to come right on. Now you know the way home, John, and so I'll turn back."
"A cabin—a mere log cabin, such as the poorest negroes live in!" John reflected, and yet it was the abode of the woman who used to demand so many luxuries, and that woman, looked at from any angle, was his mother. He was conscious of no tenderness or pity. Those things were reserved for the instant of his first view of her. Great soul that he was, it required but the downcast eyes of the repentant woman to melt him into streams of sympathy when she appeared in the low doorway, a pitiful flush of embarrassment struggling out of the pallor of her cheeks and surrounding her still beautiful eyes.
"Mother!" he cried, huskily, and he advanced to her, his arms outstretched. "I had to come to you. I heard you were in need, but I didn't know it was like this."
She seemed unable to say a word. She hid her shamed face, her childlike face, so full of timid remorse, on his shoulder, and he felt her sobs shaking her breast. He led her to a chair inside the cabin and gently eased her down to it, his fingers, filially hungry for the first time in his life, gently and consolingly playing about her hair and brow.
Presently she found her voice. "I was afraid you'd never come," she faltered, still with that shrinking humility which had so completely won him to her. "But here you are. Oh, I don't know what to say, John— I don't know what to say, except that I am not the same silly woman I used to be. I used to think that the way I lived when you was here was the only way I could live, but now I'd rather die than take back a single day of it. Strange as it may seem, I like this. I like the still woods out there, the rocks, grass, and wild flowers, and being alone. Yes, I like to be all alone. When I'm all alone, even in the dead of night, something seems to come to me and pity me and give me the sweetest rest and peace. There wasn't but one thing that haunted me, and that was thinking you were dead. When I heard that was a mistake I felt very happy, though I didn't think I'd ever see you again."
It seemed to him, as he sat in that crude hut, that nothing stranger had ever happened to him than seeing her in such surroundings.
"Is it possible," he asked, "that you spend the nights here in this place?"
"For six years now, winter and summer." She smiled wistfully. "I've got my little garden behind the cabin, and my chickens and my cats, and they keep me busy. Then I read a lot of books and stories. The Cavanaughs send them to me off and on, and—and"—she started visibly—"some other people do, too."
"Other people?" he repeated to himself. "Then she has friends, after all."
Presently a patter of feet sounded outside and a child's voice came in at the open door. "Grandmother Trott! Where are you?"
"Here, here!" Mrs. Trott called out in a flurried tone. She made a start as if to rise, and yet it seemed to John that she had lost the power to move. Then a little boy appeared at the door, two tin pails in his hands. "Here's the milk, grandmother, and some fresh butter. Mother said keep the pie and biscuits warm. She just took them from the stove before I started. Grandmother, sister wants to see the kittens. May she?"
"Yes, yes, of course." Mrs. Trott, still agitated, got up. Little Tilly was now in the doorway, and she took her into her arms. As for Joel, he had espied one of the kittens, and was crossing the room after it, when for the first time he saw John and paused, somewhat abashed.
"Come here." John smiled, holding out his hands, and the boy went to him trustingly. "My, my! what a solid boy you are!" John went on, taking him on his knee. "How old are you?"
"Six, and sister's four," was the answer.
Mrs. Trott, still with the look of concern on her face, was putting Tilly down, that she might empty the pails, and while her back was turned the little girl crept confidingly to John's disengaged knee. With a laugh, he took her up also. He was strongly drawn to them both, and why he couldn't have said, unless it was because they were friends of his mother and had given her such an endearing appellation.
Mrs. Trott brought the pails back. She still wore an embarrassed look, which, in his preoccupation over the children, he failed to note.
"They are very nice and friendly," he smiled up at her, an arm about the body of each child. "Whose are they?"
"Now you must go back," Mrs. Trott said, with obvious evasion, holding out the pails to Joel. "Tell your mother that I am very much obliged."
"But mother said we must rest awhile here and not come right back," the boy answered, leaning on John's shoulder.
"No. I's tired, grandmother." Tilly drew back also into her snug retreat. "Where's the tittens, brother?"
But Joel could see kittens any day, and John was now showing him his new gold watch and chain and Tilly was admiring his scarf and pin, daintily touching the rich silk with her tiny sun-browned fingers.
With something like a sigh of resignation Mrs. Trott sank into her chair and listened to the chat of the trio. That her son was charmed with the children of his former wife she saw plainly. What would he do or say when told the truth?—and that it was due him to be told she did not doubt.
"They are beautiful and lovely," John said, when they both left his lap and went behind the cabin to see the kittens. "Whose children are they?"
"I see that I must tell you and be done with it," Mrs. Trott said, with a warm flush. "Can't you guess?"
"Why, how could I guess?" he asked, wonderingly. "They call you grandmother, too—how is that?"
"John," she gulped, "they are Tilly's and Joel's!"
His moving lips seemed to frame the words she had spoken, but without the issue of sound. They were both silent for an awkward pause; then he said, haltingly, "I did not know that they were in this neighborhood."
"Mr. Cavanaugh told me that you didn't know about them and me," she answered, all but apologetically. "Oh, John, I hope you won't blame me, but I simply could not have lived without them! They are responsible for what I now am. They came to my aid immediately after you were reported dead, and have stuck to me ever since."
"Then they are the friends Sam mentioned!" John said.
"Yes, they are the ones. They wanted me to come live with them after they married, but I couldn't— I simply couldn't; but I did consent to live near them like this, and I am glad, for they have been like loving children to me. John, you don't know how noble and unselfish poor Joel is. Nothing has ever prospered with him. He has always had bad luck, and yet he never thinks of himself. I was with Tilly when both her children were born. She seems now like a daughter, and Joel a son. As for the little ones, I love them with all my heart. I owe it to you to tell you the truth. Had I thought you alive, of course, I could not have been so intimate with them, but we all three thought you were dead, and, somehow, drifted together."
"I know, and that is all right," John said, a shadow of his old brooding despair in his eyes. The prattle of the children behind the house came to his ears. Through the doorway the midday sun beat yellow and warm on a crude bed of flowers close by. Mrs. Trott continued her recital of past happenings. She told even of Tilly's visit to the old house; of her occupying his room, of her own and Joel's vigil on the outside. She spoke of the saddened years in which Tilly had refused to think of marriage, and how she herself had worked with Joel to bring it about.
"If I knew one thing," she presently said, gravely studying his face, "I might feel that I had a right to tell you something particular about Tilly. I mean if I knew one certain thing about you yourself."
"Me myself?" he cried, groping for her meaning.
"Yes, you, John. Mr. Cavanaugh hinted at what he thought your present feeling for Tilly is, but I'd have to know for myself before—before I'd feel at liberty to tell you what I have in mind. Mr. Cavanaugh said you hadn't said so in so many words, but that he was sure that you still feel the same toward Tilly that you did before you and her parted."
He had lowered his head. He now interlaced his fingers between his knees, and she saw them shaking.
"She is the same and more to me," he said. "As long as I live I shall love her."
"Do you really mean that, John?"
"Yes, and much more," he answered, firmly. "I don't blame her for anything that she has done. She had every right to marry. I counted on it happening even earlier."
"I see you are in earnest, and I'll tell you," Mrs. Trott said. "John, she finally married Joel, but she did it only out of gratitude and pity. She was grateful to him for helping me, do you understand? After you left, she actually looked on me as her mother, because—because I was yours. Then she pitied Joel because he was so unhappy without her. But, la me! the other day, when she found out that you were alive, no angel in heaven could have been happier. She tries to hide it—she hardly knows what it means—but she can't hide it. It shows in her face, in her laugh, in her dancing movements. She has no idea she will ever see you again, and she doesn't dream of leaving Joel or the children, but knowing that you are alive and doing well has made her blissfully happy. Hers is a great, unselfish love, if there ever was one.
"You can't mean what you say," John faltered, his eyes beaming, his face aflame, his breast heaving.
"Yes, I do," his mother assured him. "I don't know that I'm doing exactly right to tell you, but I have told you. I can't fully make her out on one thing, and that is whether she believes you still care for her or not. Sometimes I think she believes that you still love her. I don't know why she is so happy unless that is at the bottom of it."
CHAPTER XII
John rose to go. Promising to return the next day, he started back to town. By choice he went through a strip of forest-land. In some places the growth of trees, bushes, and vines was dense. Small streams trickled through the moss and grass over pebbled beds, clear and cool in the shade and warm in the open sunshine. Above the blue sky arched, with here and there a white cloud against which some buzzards were circling in majestic calmness. For the first time in many years he felt that he had not loved in vain. Tilly loved him. He loved her. She had suffered; so had he. The world had mistreated them, that was all. He remembered something she had once said about love being eternal. How sweet the thought now was!
The next morning he was at his mother's cabin again. He had a plan to unfold to her. He described his life in New York, and spoke of the many advantages of living there. He wanted her to come with him. He would give her every comfort that could be thought of. His income was ample. They would be company for each other. The things she wanted to forget would never follow her there. She would make good, new friends and end her days in contentment and comfort.
She listened to him attentively, a warm stare of maternal pride in her meek eyes, but when he paused she slowly shook her head. She seemed embarrassed; then she said: "I couldn't do that, John. You may think it odd of anybody, but I really wouldn't like a bustling life like that now. I've got a taste of this, and I think I'd rather keep it. Then I must be honest with you. I mustn't keep back anything. The truth is I don't want to leave Tilly and Joel and the children. I've got used to them, I reckon. I think they want me, too, I really do; at least I hope so. I've found this out, John; people either like one sort of life or the other. When I was living like—like I used to live, I wanted that and nothing else, but now I want this and nothing else. I wish you could live here, but you know best about that. It would be wrong in some ways, for, considering the way you and Tilly feel about each other, and her duty to Joel and the children, it wouldn't be best for you to be close together. I was thinking about that last night and wondering whether you and her ought to meet even once again. It seems to me that it would be awkward for you both, and hard on poor Joel."
"I had no idea of—of meeting her," John said, in a tone which sank beneath his breath. "I must spare her that."
"It is a pity—a pity, but it will be best!" Mrs. Trott sighed. "I wish I could see some other way, but I can't. How long are you going to stay?"
"Not longer than a week," he answered. "Are you sure that you won't go with me?"
She slowly shook her head. "No, I must stay here, John. I couldn't leave them— I really couldn't. They have wound themselves about my tired old heart and I want to stay near them. I wish I could help them out of their terrible poverty. The children ought to be educated. They are wonderfully bright."
They sat without speaking for several minutes; then John said, suddenly: "Do you think we could, between us, devise any way by which I might help them substantially? I assure you I have plenty of money for which I have no need."
"Oh, that would never do, John!" Mrs. Trott exclaimed. "Neither Joel nor Tilly would accept it. That is out of the question."
John's face fell. "I was afraid you'd say that," he sighed. Then, with a start and an eager searching of her face, he said: "Will you answer me a direct question? If you, yourself, were to come into some money, at your death would you want them to have it?"
"Why, of course!" she answered. "That is all I'd want money for now."
"Then the way is clear," John beamed, and his voice throbbed with excitement. "You are my mother. You can't keep me from making you comfortable out of my useless means. I have some absolutely safe securities that bring in good dividends. Before I return to New York they will be in your name at one of the banks in town, with a cash deposit to your credit. The income on the stocks amounts to about three thousand a year. Remember, I am in no way suggesting to you what you should do with the principal or the interest, but legally to be on the safe side, you ought at once to make a will."
"Why, John— John, you astound me!" his mother cried. "Mr. Cavanaugh intimated that you were not particularly well off, and here you say—you say that I am to have three thousand dollars a year from you. Why—why—"
"It is nothing," he said, smiling. "I want to do it, and you must help me. If you should decide to do so, you can convert some of the stocks into money and buy Joel a farm on which he could make a good living. After I am gone they won't refuse it from you, for you owe it to them, considering all they have done for you."
Without knowing it, Mrs. Trott was weeping. Great crystal tears were on her cheeks. Her still beautiful lips were quivering; her slender hands were clasped in her lap.
"Oh, John, John, can it be possible to do this for them?" she half whimpered. "I want to do it. I want to help them, but poor Joel is so sensitive and proud that—that—"
"You owe it to him, and I, as your son, who left you unprotected, owe it to him also. When I am gone he will see that it had to be. Let him know about the will in his children's favor, but give him to understand that the money is from you, not from me, and tell him, too, if you can do so adroitly, that I shall never come this way again. This is his home, not mine. As for Til—as for his wife, I shall not meet her while I am here. You are going to help them substantially—that is the main thing. You, no one else."
"Oh, it would be glorious—glorious!" Mrs. Trott dried her eyes on her apron. "As for Tilly, Tilly—it may seem to you a strange idea of mine, John, but somehow I believe, actually believe that she would accept the money from you as readily as she'd give her last cent to you under the same circumstances. She is a strange, strange little woman, more of the next life, it seems to me, than this. She has been an angel of light to me and I couldn't leave her; even if you were an emperor offering me a throne I'd stay here. In taking your money, John, I am taking it on her account. She will see through your plan, but it will only make her the happier, for she thinks your soul and hers are united for all time, and it may be so, John—it may be so. Love like yours and hers ought not to die. How could it?"
He sat silent. All the morbid hauntings of his past seemed to be withdrawing like shadows before some vast supernal light. His body felt imponderable. A delicious pain clutched his throat and pierced his breast. He was ashamed of his weakness and tried to shake it off, but it continued to thrill and sob in every nook and cranny of his hitherto unexplored being. The woman before him seemed more than mere flesh, blood, and bone. A veritable nimbus hovered over her transfigured head and shone against the unbarked logs behind her.
CHAPTER XIII
By choice, he started home through the wood. He wanted the feel of the grass, heather, and moss beneath his feet; the scent of wild flowers in his nostrils; the bending boughs of great trees over him; the minute sounds of insects in his ears; the flight of winged things in his sight. Deeper and deeper into the wood he plunged. There seemed something to be drunken like an impalpable spiritual elixir. He held out the arms of his being to it; he opened the pores of his body and soul to it. The far-off hum of the town's commerce and traffic seemed an insistent denial of the intangible thing for which he hungered, and he closed his ears to it. Presently he heard the sound of breaking twigs and the stirring of dry leaves behind the vines and boulders close by on his right, and he paused to listen. Then there fell upon his ears the soft voices of children, and, carefully parting the pliant branches of some willows, he saw in a little grassy glade Tilly's daughter and son. They were gathering flowers and ferns. Little Tilly had her chubby arms full, and Joel was plucking more.
It was a beautiful sight, and yet it drenched him with infinite pain. He was tempted to attract their attention, to take them into his arms again, but he checked the impulse.
"What is the use?" he muttered. "They are hers, not mine—his and hers, not mine and hers."
Softly he moved away. Presently he came to a fallen tree and sat down on it. He could no longer hear the children's voices. However, another sound broke the stillness about him. It was the rapid tread of some one hurrying through the wood in his direction. The branches of the bushes in front of him parted and Tilly stood facing him, her cheeks and brow flushed and damp from rapid walking. That she could be so beautiful as now he had never dreamed possible. The years had added indescribable charm and grace to her every movement, feature, and expression.
"Oh, John!" she cried, holding out her hands as appealingly and naïvely as of old, "the children are lost! They started for your mother's cabin, but haven't been there. There are dangerous places in this wood, and—"
He smiled reassuringly as he took her hands. "They are all right," he said. "They are just over there. I saw them only a moment ago."
Their hands clung together, but neither of them was cognizant of the fact. It was as if not a day had elapsed since they had parted. Forgetting every law of propriety, he drew her into his arms. Her uncovered head went as of old to his shoulder, and he was about to kiss her throbbing lips when, with her hand to his mouth, she suddenly checked him.
"No, no, John!" she said, and she disengaged herself from his embrace with a firm, resolute movement. "I understand how you feel, but you mustn't— I mustn't. I want to—yes, yes, I want to kiss you, but it would be wrong."
"Yes, it would be wrong," he groaned, and turned white. He sat down on the trunk of the tree. She stood before him. Neither spoke for a while, and the prattling voices of the children sounded on the warm, still air.
"I'm afraid I have pained you," Tilly said, after a moment, and she put her hand on his shoulder as if to make him look at her. "I wish I knew some other way, but I know of none."
"There is no other way," he declared, his hungry eyes now on her face, the marvel of which still held him enthralled. In all his dreams of her she had never appeared so transcendently wonderful.
"How could she ever have been mine—actually mine?" he asked himself from the abyss into which he was sinking.
"You see," she went on, now taking his hand into hers, "I'd have to tell Joel. I'm his wife, the mother of his children, and there can be nothing in my life that is not open to him. He is the soul of honor, John."
"I know it," John answered, simply.
"This thing is killing him, John," she went on, rapidly, as if taking no heed of what she was saying. "The world was against him, anyway, and the news of your being here so prosperous and successful by contrast to himself has bowed his head to the earth. I don't know what to do or what to say. He knows how I feel. You see, I couldn't hide from him the joy I felt when I heard you were living. I can bear anything now—anything! You see, Joel thinks that you—he has no reason for thinking so, of course, for you have lived up there and he here—but he thinks—it is stupid of him—but he thinks that you feel—exactly the same toward me as you did when we were married. Exactly! Exactly!"
"It wouldn't take a wise man to know that," John said, bitterly, his lips awry, his stare dull with agony.
"You mean to say that you do?" Tilly urged, her little hand pressing his spasmodically, her eyes glistening with moisture.
He nodded slowly. "How could I help it? You have done nothing to alter my feeling toward you except to deepen it. How can I overlook the fact that you befriended my mother (after I deserted her) and made her what she now is?"
"That was nothing but my duty, and my love for her," Tilly answered. She paused for a moment, and went on:
"Then you don't blame me for marrying again?" This was tremulously uttered, and the speaker's eyes were now downcast.
"No, I expected it. In a way, you owed it to Joel. In fact, I owe him more now than I can ever repay."
Tilly released his hand and sat down on the log beside him. Her little feet were thrust out from her, and he saw her poor tattered shoes and noted the coarse dress she wore.
"I've always wanted to know one thing," she faltered. "A thousand times after the report of your death I wondered if you died understanding how it was that I left you. Did you know why I left our little home so suddenly, John?"
"Why, to escape the awful scandal that was in the air; but what is the good of bringing that up now?"
"Ah, I see, you didn't quite know the truth," Tilly cried. "John, my father was practically out of his mind that day. He died not long afterward of softening of the brain. He had a revolver, and would have shot you if he had met you. I was expecting you home every minute, and when I saw that I could pacify him by going right back with him I did it."
"Oh, I see!" A great light broke on John. "Then it was really to save my life."
"As I saw it, yes," Tilly replied. "I wrote to you once, after I got to Cranston, but I learned afterward that father stopped the letter. I was kept like a prisoner at home, John, until the court, under my father's influence, and a narrow-minded jury had annulled our marriage. In spite of that, I was ready to go to you and only waiting for a chance, when the news of your death came. I didn't blame you for leaving. I knew that you did it in despair of any other solution, and also to help poor little Dora. That was a glorious thing to do, and God blessed your effort. How is she, John?"
"Well, and happy—both of them. I had a letter yesterday. They like their work and believe they are doing good."
"And you did that, John—you did it. When your own troubles were greatest, you thought of that poor child. It was the noblest thing a man ever did."
John shrugged his shoulders. "It was selfish enough. I needed a companion, and she became one. For years we were like real brother and sister."
"And then she left you all alone," Tilly sighed. "Oh, John, John, the world has been unkind to you! You see, I have my children. Only a mother can know what that means. I don't hear their voices now. Will you show me where they were?"
He led her through the wood to the glade. A great deadening chagrin was on him. He told himself that she had suddenly bethought herself of the need of the protection of her children's presence. Parting the bushes on the edge of the glade, he looked around and presently espied them asleep in the shade of a tree. Little Tilly's head lay on a heap of flowers and ferns, and Joel lay coiled on the grass at her feet.
"They often do that," Tilly beamed up at John. "We needn't wake them yet—not just yet. I have a thousand things to say and ask, but my thoughts are all in a jumble. How strange it seems to be here like this with you again! I wonder, can there be any harm (in God's sight) in telling the simple, honest truth? I've never done a conscious wrong in my life, John. I did what I thought was right when I married you—when I left you to go home with my father—when I secretly visited your mother—when I finally married Joel—and now while I am here with you like this telling you that—that—"
She broke off, her all but etherealized face paling and growing more rigid.
He clutched her hands. He held them passionately, desperately to his breast. "Go on!" he panted. "For God's sake, go on! I am starving for a word from your lips. I've heard you speak a million times in my dreams. Night after night I've lived with you in our little cottage, only to wake and find it a damnable mockery, with nothing but the dull grind of life before me."
"What I say I would say to Joel's face if I could do so without killing him." Tilly smiled wistfully. "John, I don't believe a true woman can love but once in the way I loved you. She can many; she can have children when she thinks it can bring no harm to her dead lover, but, if she is a genuine woman, she will exult when that lover rises from the grave and stands before her again. Dear John, I could take your suffering face between my hands and kiss your lips as no woman ever kissed a man's lips before. Yes, I could do it, and I'd die to be able to do it again, but it is not to be. My body may not love, but my soul may, and it is an eternal thing, John, and so is your soul. Those children have a right to the care of a mother who is untainted in the sight of the world. Their poor, patient, unfortunate father deserves as clean a wife as the earth can produce. I know you love me— I know it. I feel it. I see it. But we've got to part. I believe in God. When I doubt God I suffer and am forced back to faith by the pain I feel. Believing in God, I also believe that the greater the cross put upon us the more patiently it must be borne. My cross is to live without you—yours is to live without me. But, oh, my heart aches—aches—aches for you! It seems to me that your burden will be heavier even than mine, for I have my children and you are all alone. John, John, you are young yet. Don't you think that if you were to marry some good girl and have children of your own—"
"No," he broke in, shuddering. "Leave that out! I couldn't do it—knowing your heart as I now know it."
"I see, I understand, and—yes, I'm glad. Oh, I can't help it, John. I'm glad. When do you leave here?"
"Very soon now—in a few days."
"How strange, oh, how strange!" she mused, aloud. "And after this—after this brief moment I am not to see you again, or hear from you—yes, I'll hear through your mother, for she tells me she is not to leave with you. How odd that is, too! Joel and I and the children have robbed you even of the mother who bore you. You never knew her as she now is, John, and that is a pity, too. In her rebirth she is as saintly as a consecrated nun. She does not know that she believes in God, but she does. There is a streak of doubt in her as there was in you. Are you still an unbeliever, John?"
He lowered his head, shrugged, and contracted his brows. "I don't like to say—to you, at least," he faltered. "Not to you, Tilly."
"But you may, John—it won't pain me at all. I used to think that the worst sinners were those who denied the existence of God, but I now think there may be persons so godlike that they can't realize the existence of any God outside of themselves. John, you are godlike. If I could think of you as sinning, I'd sin in that thought alone. Go on calling yourself an atheist, and the angels will treat it as a holy jest."
"I don't follow you," he said, wearily, as if he would dismiss the subject. "You are mistaken about me. I am just an average man. But I don't believe as you do. It may be beautiful—it no doubt is, but I can't grasp it. It never came my way, somehow."
The wood was very still. Under the beating sun, the wild flowers and tender leaves of plants were the shelter of myriads of moving things visible and invisible. Suddenly a locust sang in the top of a persimmon-tree. A crow flew cawing over a distant field. The rumble of a farmer's wagon was heard on the road. Tilly's face was steadily raised to John's. She put her hand on his arm, the arm she used to lean on so lovingly in their walks on the mountain road.
"You can live without conscious faith, John," she said, in the sweet treble tone he had loved so long, "but I cannot. If I doubted, as I did once when we thought Tilly was dying, I'd wither up in despair. You may as well know the truth. I live only for my children, John. Joel has to suffer in not having all my heart— I can't help that. He must suffer, too, because he makes no headway in life and is unable to provide well for me and his children. I can't help that, either. That is his cross and he is bearing it like a saint. But as for me, I have two things to live for—my children and your mother. God has put them in my hands and I must care for them. Do you think I could live without faith now? Why, I know God must help me care for them. I am praying for that. Night after night—day after day I plead with God to provide for those three. I want to see the children educated. I want to keep your mother as happy and peaceful as she now is. She is my mother now—she is also Joel's; she is the grandmother of my children. Don't you think my prayer will be answered, John?"
"I know it," he said, suddenly, recalling the compact just made with his mother. "I know it."
"Then you believe, too," she cried, eagerly, wonderingly.
"Yes, I believe that," he admitted, reluctantly. "Something will happen—something will turn up. You must never lose faith and hope."
Tilly looked up at the sun. "It is eleven o'clock at least," she said. "I must be going. I have to get Joel's dinner ready. I shall tell him about this, of course, and now"—she choked up—"this must be good-by. How can it be? It doesn't seem possible—that is, forever. For, if it were possible, the God I adore would be a fiend. We are going to meet in another life. As sure as you and I stand here loving each other as we do, we are going to be reunited. A stream of spirit will connect us even while alive. If it were otherwise, there'd be no law and order in the universe, and law and order are everywhere. Yes, we'll meet again, someway, somehow, somewhere."
She held out her hands. He took them into his. He was drawing her to him, the old fire of divine passion filling him, when he felt the muscles of her fingers stiffen defensively, and she turned her eyes to the sleeping children.
"No, no! No, my darling," she said, a fluttering sob in her throat, her eyes filling. "We must be honorable. Good-by. Leave me here with them, please. I'll let them sleep a moment longer and then take them home."
"Good-by," he said, turning away. The bending branches of the bushes came between her and him. Like a plodder who has become suddenly blind he staggered forward. The earth seemed to sink as he trod upon it. Wild-grape vines whipped his brow and cheeks. Stones slipped and rolled beneath his feet as he groped along. He was panting like a wild animal long and closely pursued.
He had turned away from the town's direction. He told himself that he could not just now meet Cavanaugh and his wife with the meaningless platitudes of daily life. A rugged, wooded hill rose before him. He paused, rested awhile, and then began to climb its steep side. Half-way to the summit, he stopped and looked about him.
There lay the growing town where his boyhood was spent. There loomed up the graveyard, with its ghostly slabs and shafts. There was the old house which had haunted his dreariest dreams, and there—yes, there was the cottage which had been the shrine of his sole joy in life. Drawn close together in perspective and full of meaning they stood—his House of Despair, and his Cottage of Delight. From both he tore his clinging gaze. Beyond his mother's cabin lay an undulating meadow and another log cabin. Along a narrow path walked a woman holding the hands of two children. Across the furrows of a corn-field to meet the three trudged a man without a coat, an ax on his shoulder. They met. The man took the younger child up in his arms, and the three others walked onward through the yellow veil of light.
The observer groaned, filled, and sobbed. Through a mist of unrestrainable tears he watched fixedly till the group had vanished in the cabin. Then he started toward the town.
CHAPTER XIV
A few days later Joel Eperson stopped his wagon, which was loaded with wood to be taken to town, at Mrs. Trott's cabin. He left his horse unhitched and stood before the door. Mrs. Trott, who was within, heard him and came out smiling.
"The children told me," Eperson began, "that you wanted to see me."
"Yes, Joel," she answered, taking one of the chairs in front of the cabin and indicating the other with a wave of her hand. "We've got to have a talk, and what do you think? It is business this time."
"Business?" he echoed, puzzled by her mood and mien.
"Yes, and I am going to say in advance, Joel, that you have got to lay aside some of your old-fashioned notions for once in your life and be sensible. Joel, John is going back to New York very soon, and he is not coming here anymore."
"You say—you say—?" Eperson's moist lips hung loosely from his yellowing teeth, and he broke off, only to begin again. "But why do you tell me of it, Mrs. Trott?"
"Mrs. Trott!" the woman cried. "Why do you call me that for the first time? Hasn't it been 'Grandmother Trott' all these years? Listen, Joel. You are too touchy for your own good. I am telling you about John because you ought to know it. You may be silly enough to think that he wants to come between you and Tilly, but he doesn't, and she wouldn't encourage it, even if he did. So that is the end of that. The next thing is my own business with you. Joel, John is better off than we had any idea of, and what do you think he has done? He has turned over to me in my name a big lot of stocks that bring in a fine income, and, besides that, he has placed to my credit in the bank several thousand dollars to invest as I like. I am a rich woman, now, Joel."
"Fine! Fine! Splendid! Splendid!" Joel cried, impulsively, and then his face began to settle back into perplexed rigidity as he sat and waited.
"Yes, it is fine," Mrs. Trott went on, "and what I want to see you about, Joel, is this: As you know, there are several splendid farms around here with good houses on them that are offered for sale. Now I want to buy one of them, and I want you to help me do it."
"I'll do anything I can," he answered, lamely, for he well knew that she had not finished what she had to say. "I am afraid that I am not a good business man, however, and that the judgment of others—"
"I really want the Louden farm," Mrs. Trott said. "Mr. Cavanaugh says it is a bargain. He built the big house that is on it and says that it was decidedly well made out of the best materials. It is a beautiful place, as you may know, with the fine spring and fruit and shade trees and stables and barn!"
"Yes, it is splendid in every way," Eperson said; "and you think that you can get it?"
She smiled broadly. "Through the lawyers I have already a binding option on it. The final papers will be signed to-day."
"But how can I help you?" Joel asked, still shrinkingly.
Mrs. Trott hesitated, as if to decide exactly how she should make her next move. Then, with a half-fearful smile, she said: "You remember, Joel, how you pleaded with me, just after you and Tilly were married, to come live with you and her?"
"Yes, for we wanted you—we've always wanted you to be closer to us."
"Well, I want to go to you now, Joel," was the slow reply. "I'm lonely. Another change seems to have come over me. I have learned to love the children so much that I am restless without them. Their little visits seem too short, and on rainy days and in the winter they can't come. Yes, I want to be with you all, and I am asking you to take me at last, Joel."
"Asking me—asking me?" he stammered, comprehending her trend in part. "Why, you know—you ought to know that I—that we—"
"Well, it is for you to take me or refuse me," Mrs. Trott put in, with a wistful smile. "I want to live on the farm. I can't manage it by myself and I want you to take charge of it for me—and let us all live in that big, fine house together."
"But I— Why, I—" Joel broke down again, his patrician face awry from sheer torture, and then sat twisting his gaunt hands over his ragged, quivering knee. "I see, it is good and kind of you, but—but— I don't see how I, myself, could possibly accept your offer."
"You have to, Joel," she retorted, still with her motherly smile. "You can't refuse a thing that will give me and your wife and children so much happiness."
"But I'd be on—on your son's bounty," Joel flashed from the very embers of his humiliation.
"Absurd!" exclaimed Mrs. Trott. "He says he owes you more than he ever could repay. He says you cared for me when he deserted me, and that you played the part of a man while he was a coward. But that is neither here nor there. Joel, I have willed all my new possessions to you and your wife and children. When I'm dead and gone you will have to have them, anyway, so why not make me happy the remainder of my life?"
He was unable to formulate a logical reply, but beneath the revelation she had made he sat limp and bruised as a flower drenched and beaten by abnormal rain and wind.
"Does Tilly know all this?" he asked, timidly, a cowed expression in his dull eyes.
"Yes, Joel, and she wants you to accept my plan. She will be happy when you do, for your sake and for the sake of the children."
He got up. His tanned face above his clean but frayed collar looked like the mask of some Indian chieftain thwarted in his last patriotic hope. His poor, underfed horse, in reaching for the grass near his bitted mouth, had drawn the reins beneath his hoofs and was about to break them.
"Excuse me," Joel said, and he went to the animal and tied up the reins. He came back. His face was still rigid, his lips were quivering.
"You wish it, you say," he faltered. "Tilly wants it, but how about your son? Would he care for me to share in the benefits of his gifts to you?"
Mrs. Trott deliberated for an instant, then she said: "He is doing it more for you, perhaps, than us, Joel. He declares he owes it to you. I've told him how you have often stinted yourself to pay my bills. I have told him, too, that but for you I'd have remained in the life he so detested. Not one man in a thousand would have treated me as you have done. You can't avoid it, Joel—we are all going to live in that fine house and be comfortable and happy at last."
He bowed silently. That was his answer. He accepted her proposal as a proud man might a shameful verdict of death. He went back to his wagon, raised his tattered hat, and mounted upon his load of wood.
CHAPTER XV
The details of the business were all settled. John was ready to leave for New York. He was to take the midnight train and was finishing his packing in his room at about nine o'clock when Cavanaugh came in.
"I have something to tell you that you may or may not like," the old man faltered. "I don't know how you'll feel about it, but Joel Eperson is at the gate and says he wants to speak to you."
"Eperson!" John exclaimed, with a start.
"Yes, and the poor fellow looks awful, John. He could barely speak. He leaned on the gate like he could hardly stand up. I hope you will be kind and gentle with him. I have never seen such a pitiful sight. It's his pride, I reckon, and it has been cut to the quick."
John said nothing. It was an encounter he had hoped to avoid. He put some things into his bag and pressed them down. How could he confer on any terms with that man of all men? And yet he plainly saw that the meeting was inevitable.
"It wouldn't do to turn him away," Cavanaugh advised, gingerly. "You see, it would upset all the other plans, for I know him well enough to know that if you treat him roughly to-night he will not live on that farm. He would kill himself first."
"He and I will make out all right," John said, turning resolutely to the door. "Will he not come in?"
"I don't think he wants to," Cavanaugh said. "He kept in the shadow while I was talking to him and had his hat pulled down over his eyes."
As John went outside he saw Eperson at the fence. A thing that touched him sharply was the fact that Eperson unlatched the gate and swung it open, as a servant might have done for his master, while he still kept his eyes hidden under the broad brim of his slouch-hat.
"I came to see you— I had to see you, Mr. Trott," Eperson muttered, jerkingly. "I heard you were going away to-night and I couldn't—well, I had to see you."
"I understand, Eperson," John said, wondering over his own stilted tone to a man whom he so profoundly pitied. "Will you come in—or shall we—?"
"Yes, we can walk, if you don't mind," Eperson answered, quickly. "I really think it would be better. Curious people pass along and look in windows sometimes, but back here in the wood there is no light and it is quiet."
"Yes, that is better," John agreed. And side by side the two men walked along Cavanaugh's lot fence till they were in the thicket of stunted trees behind the property. Presently Eperson paused, raised his head, and spoke again:
"This will do, Mr. Trott. I really don't know what to say in beginning, for it seems to me that a million things come up, but your mother told me about the property you gave her—the farm and all the rest."
"Yes, yes, I know— I hoped that she would mention it to you," John said, out of a sympathy he didn't dream he possessed. "That was really part of the—the understanding. She needs a comfortable home and she could not look after it herself. She knows, and I know, that you can manage it well, and so—"
"But—but don't you see—can't you understand?" Eperson pushed his hat back and his great, all but bloodshot eyes gleamed piteously in the starlight. "Don't you see that I can't be put on a rack like that and live under it? Do you think I have no pride or manhood left? I am a failure—worse than a beggar. I aspired for that of which I was unworthy—your wife—and I've come to tell you something to-night which no proud man ever in the history of the world told another. I've come to tell you that—"
"Stop, Joel, you mustn't," John broke in, and he gently laid his hand on the shoulder of the other. "That is a thing neither of us must ever hold in mind for a moment. Listen to me. You and I are in the swirl of great laws we can't understand. Of one thing we can be certain, and that is that we love the same woman. Don't come to me to-night with the idea that you are about to get in my debt. I'm in yours. I was a coward. I deserted my post of duty under the first great blight that fell upon me. I was only a poor, bewildered, stung boy, but I fled while you remained, advised, protected, and cared for both my wife and my mother. By so doing, and through your children, you tied the hearts of those two beings to you forever. My mother is a transformed woman through you—my former wife through you is a glorified mother. Don't think I am fooling myself with romantic ideals. I know where I stand. If I were to dare to-day to lay claim to your place, Tilly would turn upon me in disgust and hatred. And why? Because the price to be paid would be the happiness of the father of her children. That is a holy thing in her eyes, and I, myself, profoundly respect it."
"My God! My God!" moaned Eperson, "you can say this—you can be all this to a man like me?" Eperson's great eyes were filling; his rough breast was heaving; the shoulder under John's gentle hand was quivering.
"Yes, because I admire you from the depths of my soul," was the reply. "Your wife is not for me. My mother is not for me. Your children are theirs and yours. My mother is making a gift to you— I am not doing it. I shouldn't say gift. She is trying to pay a debt that she owes you."
A sob broke from Joel. He caught John's hand and stared into his eyes. "I now know why Tilly still loves you," he gulped. "She loves you because you are more of God than man. I don't know what to say to you further, but I will say this—and as the Almighty is my witness I mean it. I'll do my duty as the father of my children, as the husband before the law of my wife, and as the manager of your mother's property, but I'll never try to win my wife's heart from you."
John's arm slid around the neck of the bowed and broken man. He started to speak, but his voice clogged with a pain that was delicious. It was as if both he and his companion somehow had stood aside from their bodies and were floating among the trees in the dim starlight.
Presently, and without a word, Joel turned and walked away. He plunged again into the wood as if to avoid contact with any one from the streets of the town. On he went, his face turned homeward. There was a hill to ascend, a vale to cross. He reached the top of the hill. His step had become sluggish. He groaned aloud. He folded his arms and stood staring into the moonlight.
"It is incomplete—unfinished, not rounded out," he muttered. "It cannot remain as it is. I haven't the strength to put it through. I know where I'd fail. I'd continue to suffer, and so would he. He is noble to the core of his being. He is doing his best to help me and her, but he is giving more than he is getting, and that isn't fair. After all, after all, there is one thing that I can do for him that he could not do for me!"
THE END
BOOKS BY
ZANE GREY
| THE U. P. TRAIL |
| THE DESERT OF WHEAT |
| WILDFIRE |
| THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT |
| RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE |
| DESERT GOLD |
| THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS |
| THE LONE STAR RANGER |
| THE RAINBOW TRAIL |
| THE BORDER LEGION |
| KEN WARD IN THE JUNGLE |
| THE YOUNG LION HUNTER |
| THE YOUNG FORESTER |
| THE YOUNG PITCHER |
BOOKS BY
BASIL KING
| THE CITY OF COMRADES |
| ABRAHAM'S BOSOM |
| THE HIGH HEART |
| THE LIFTED VEIL |
| THE INNER SHRINE |
| THE WILD OLIVE |
| THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT |
| THE SIDE OF THE ANGELS |
| THE WAY HOME |
| THE LETTER OF THE CONTRACT |
| IN THE GARDEN OF CHARITY |
| THE STEPS OF HONOR |
| LET NOT MAN PUT ASUNDER |