The Cottage of Delight: A Novel

by Will N. Harben

"There is nobody over home," she explained, apologetically. "They went off last night to be gone two days—another trip to Atlanta with old Roly-poly and some more. Aunt Jane was sick, but she dressed and went, all the same. I came over to cook your breakfast, wash the dishes, and do up the house. Why shouldn't I? There is nothing to do at home."

He said nothing, but as he turned away a faint sense of gratitude seemed to enter the aching void within him. A little later she called him to the dining-room. He had eaten no supper the night before, and his physical being demanded nourishment. He sat down and the child waited on him. The coffee was good and bracing, the eggs and steak were prepared to his taste, the toast brown and crisp.

Somehow he now regarded Dora with pity. How frail, wan, and anemic she looked! How thin and bloodless her hands and cheeks! She had the making of a good woman in her, but she, too, was losing her chance. How sad! How pitiful!

"You work too hard," he suddenly said, and he wondered if that touch of refined consideration for another had come from his contact with his wife. "You are too little and young. Sit down yourself and eat."

She shrugged her peaked shoulders and laughed. "I'm not hungry. I'm not a bit hungry here lately. The only thing I care for is syrup and bread, and they say too much of that as a regular diet will get you down in the long run."

He stared, his impulse toward her betterment oozing out of him. The whistles of the factories reminded him that he was not to work that day—that he was not to return at dark to Tilly, as had been his wont, and he rose and went back to the bedroom. What was to take place? Why, the day would drag by and Cavanaugh would return with some verdict or other—some report that would settle his fate forever.

Leaving Dora at work in the kitchen, he went outside. Desiring not to meet any one, he made his way to the nearest wooded hillside beyond his mother's house and the bleak, white-capped cemetery. From that coign of vantage he saw the town stretched out beneath him. He found a great moss-grown boulder and half lay, half sat on it. The sun climbed higher and higher; the din of the town and its industries beat in his ears, the buzz of a planing-mill, the clang of hammered iron. He ought not to have attempted to pass that particular day in absolute solitude and inactivity, but he knew naught of his own psychology. He watched for the coming and going of trains, telling himself again and again that Cavanaugh's return would decide his fate forever. What would he be informed? How could he face the thing that he had told Cavanaugh actually was to happen—that Tilly and he were to be parted forever?

At noon he crept down the hill, keeping himself hidden till the way was clear, then he hastened across the open to the cottage. The child, still there, had given it a semblance of order, and his lunch was on the table. She refused to sit with him, though he asked her in a tone that was full of consideration and that odd, abashed tenderness for her which seemed to be rooting in the loam of pained humility which filled him.

"I want to know, brother John," she said, her deep-sunken eyes staring earnestly—"I want to know if you think she is coming back?"

He gulped down his hot coffee, and as he replaced his cup in his saucer he said, with a touch of his old fatalistic recklessness: "I don't know. I think not. Sam is up there to-day to—to see about it. He will be back to-night. I don't know. I'm leaving it all to him, and—and to—her."