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."