The Cottage of Delight: A Novel

CHAPTER XI

"It was that fellow Eperson with his sister," John blurted out. "They came by to take you to the party. He acted like he owned you."

"Oh, it was Joel and Martha Jane!" Tilly smiled. "Oh no, he doesn't think he owns me, by any means. Martha Jane put him up to it. She and I are great friends and she was afraid I wouldn't get an escort."

John shrugged dubiously and answered: "You may look at it that way if you want to, but I see through him. I know his brand."

To Cavanaugh's wonderment, Tilly seemed pleased rather than offended, for she indulged in a little satisfied laugh.

"I suppose you told him we would be there?" she said, lightly, and it was the old man who answered, seeing that John had nothing to say.

"Yes, he knows that now, Miss Tilly, though he looked sorter set back. In my day and time about the last thing I'd want to do would be to take a sister of mine to a shindig. Going and coming was always the biggest part of the game, and you may bet there was times when I was in for busting a party up as soon as supper was over so as to be on the road again."

Tilly laughed merrily. "I'll make you a buttonhole bouquet if you will wear it," she proposed.

"Well, not to-night—I thank you all the same," Cavanaugh returned, "but you may some other time when I've got my best clothes on. I don't want to part with you two, but don't you think you ought to be on the way?"

"Yes, it is time," Tilly said, and John rose to his feet and stiffly held his arm out to her.

"Please tell mother that we are gone," she said, as she took John's arm and the two turned away.

"What a purty sight!" the old man mused, standing and gazing after them as they walked away in the moonlight. He followed as far as the gate and leaned on it and watched them till they were out of sight.

Presently Mrs. Whaley came out and joined him. He delivered Tilly's message and they sat down and chatted for half an hour; then she went back into the kitchen.

She was making dough for bread to be baked the next day when her husband came and stood beside her. He wore no coat and his coarse suspenders hung loose over his hips; the collar of his shirt was open, showing his hairy chest.

"I saw you out there talking to Cavanaugh," he began. "Did you say anything about that matter?"

"I did—in a roundabout way," she said, taking the great lump of wheat dough in her hands and rolling it into a heap of dry flour at one end of the long wooden bowl. "I didn't want him to take up a notion that we want to marry her off, but I tried to find out what I could. Mr. Trott never has had any love-affairs. He is mighty young—younger than you'd naturally think to have the job he has, and somehow he never has taken to a girl before. Mr. Cavanaugh says this is the first time, and I know he is telling the truth. Oh, he had a lot to say in Mr. Trott's favor. He says he has a wonderful mind for building and the like, and that the time will come when he will make piles of money. He already gets high wages, and it is always cash, too. He doesn't have to wait till the end of the year like Joel Eperson and other farmers do, and then be up to their eyes in debt, with nothing left over to begin another crop on."

"Does he drink or gamble? That is what I want to know," Whaley put in suddenly.

"No, he doesn't. Mr. Cavanaugh says he hardly thinks of anything but figuring, planning, and calculating. He goes to bed early and gets up early, and can handle a gang of men better even than he can, he's so popular with them."

"Didn't you find out about the feller's religion?"

"No, I didn't. I sorter touched on that—said you wanted to know—but Mr. Cavanaugh made light of it—said all that would come out right in due time. He said he was no hand for hurrying up the young on those lines. He said John Trott at bottom was the right sort, and that he would count on him serving the Lord in the long run as well as the next one."

"I don't know as I'd let that old skunk pick a religion for a son-in-law of mine." Whaley's lip was drawn tight as he spoke. "He don't take enough interest in doctrine, and when you force him to talk about it he says entirely too much about salvation through works alone. I like a man that knows what he believes and can point straight to Biblical authority in page, line, and word. It behooves a Christian to watch out what sort of a mate his daughter picks. Infidelity will breed at a fireside faster than tadpoles under skum in a mud-puddle."

"Well, I'm for keeping that part out of it just now," Mrs. Whaley suggested, timidly. "This is a good chance for the girl, and you know you have made a lot of folks mad by the way you talk to them."

"Well, I haven't said anything to Trott yet," Whaley answered, "and I may not, though he hasn't been out to meeting yet and that seems odd, when the Sabbath is a day of rest and there is nothing else to do."

"I happened to hear him tell Tilly that he was going next Sunday," Mrs. Whaley answered, "so you see that will work out all right."

"Well, we'll wait and see," Whaley returned. "They dance over there at Teasdale's house, don't they?"

"Some do and some don't," was the answer, slowly made. "Tilly don't and Mr. Trott never did in his life."

"There isn't much difference in actually dancing and giving sanction to it by looking on," Whaley said, his heavy brows meeting in a frown, "an' I'm in for calling a halt on Tilly going to such places. Looks like there would be plenty of decent amusements without hot-blooded young folks hugging up tight together and spinning around on the floor till they are wet with sweat from head to foot. Sally Teasdale ought to be churched, and she would be if she was a Methodist. The Presbyterians ain't strict enough. Well, if I believed in foreordained baby damnation as they do I'd let a child of mine dance her way into hell and be done with it. They make me sick. I had an argument with old Bill Tye yesterday and I fairly flayed up the ground with him—didn't leave him a leg to stand on, but he was mad—oh, wasn't he mad? The crowd laughed at him good."

Whaley turned away. He intended to chat with Cavanaugh outside, but he met the contractor coming in at the front door on his way to bed.

"I found that passage from Paul and read the whole chapter," Whaley began, but Cavanaugh stopped him.

"I'll see it to-morrow," he said. "My eyes are not strong enough to read at night, even with my specs, and I'm a little bit tired, too. I walked out to the sawmill—five miles and back—this morning, to see about some timber, and it was quite a stretch for me. Good night."

"No wonder he didn't want to see it," Whaley smiled to himself as he leaned in the doorway. "I had him beat and he knows it. I'll bet the old skunk has already looked it up, or asked somebody about it."

CHAPTER XII

"Well, you shouldn't dislike him," the little minx continued, designedly. "He hasn't done you any harm. How could he? You have known each other such a short time."

Had John been other than the crude working-boy that he was, he might have made a more adroit answer, but, even as it was, it was not unpleasing to his sly tormentor.

"What is he hanging around you so much for?" John demanded. "I've heard that your father doesn't like him. What does he mean by coming, at the slightest excuse, like to-night, for instance?"

"Joel and I have been friends ever since we were tiny tots," Tilly answered, as casually as a school-girl chewing gum. "And even if—if he really does love me and—and wants me to be his wife, should he be blamed for that?"

The very suggestion of her marriage to any one, and that man in particular, drove John wild. He bit his lip; he swore under his breath, and his oaths had never been guarded before meeting Tilly; his eyes flashed from the fires behind them. He clenched his fists.

"You are mine, mine, mine!" he said to himself with the grinding teeth of a cave-man, and he was all but unaware that his words were not audible. She was smiling up at him, so sweetly, so placidly. What a nimbus of transcendental charm hovered over the wonderful face in the moonlight. Suddenly he checked his onward stride, caught her, and drew her around facing him. What he might have said or done he never knew, but Tilly gravely started on again, gently extracting her hand from his fierce clasp and restoring it to his arm.

"We must not stop," she said. "I hear a horse behind us. It is somebody going to the party, perhaps."

He said nothing as her fingers left his, and they walked on again. It was a horse and a buggy containing a couple from the village. Tilly spoke merrily to them and they answered back as they dashed on.

"It is Marietta Slocum and Fred Murray," Tilly explained. "They are engaged."

"Engaged?" The word seemed to fill the entire consciousness of the crude social anomaly. He told himself that an engagement must naturally precede marriage, and how was that to come about with that helpless tongue in his mouth? Besides, how did he know but that Tilly might refuse him? How did he know but that there might even now be some understanding between her and Eperson? The sheer thought chilled him like a blast from a cavern of ice. She seemed to feel the limpness of the arm she held or in some way to sense the despair that was on him so quickly following the mood she had interrupted only a moment before.

"You are so strange!" she sighed, taking a better grasp on his arm, and even bearing down on it slightly as she lowered her head thoughtfully. "You are a mystery to me. I can't make you out."

He could not explain. He was not sure that he cared to explain the terrible internal quakings which to him seemed so unmanly, so unlike any feelings that had ever come to him. He wondered if Eperson had actually spoken open words of love to her, and, if so, how had the fellow, with all his suave ability, managed it?

Another buggy passed. Tilly explained who the occupants of it were after she had greeted them. They were George Whitton and Ella Bell Roberts. Then she added, with a touch of seriousness:

"You ought to have lifted your hat just now."

"Lifted my hat? Why, I don't know her— I've never seen her before!" he retorted, with the irritation of a great mind descending to a triviality.

"Because he lifted his to me and you are with me," Tilly persisted in her mild rebuke. "It is the custom here, but it may not be at Ridgeville."

John was chagrined, but determined to hide it. "I have never heard of a man bowing to a man or a woman he never saw before," he fumed. "I don't care what you all do; it is foolishness out and out."

"Well, when you are in Rome," Tilly quoted in quite a grave tone, "you ought to do as the Romans do."

The thing rankled within him. The blood had mounted to his brow and stayed there. Even Tilly was telling him how to deport himself. He adored her, but he was angry enough to have sworn in her gentle, uplifted eyes. She observed his moody mien and playfully shook his arm.

"Don't be mad," she urged, sweetly. "I meant no harm, but I do want them all to like you, and I'm afraid they won't if you fail in little things like that just now. They won't understand—they will think you are stuck up, and I know you are not a bit vain. I am sure of that—as sure as I'm alive. If you were I'd not like you."

She had intimated that she liked him, and that ought to have been sufficient to quell the storm within him, but it did not quite. Her rebuke hurt far more than any which had ever come to him. She adroitly changed the subject. She spoke of the work on the court-house and praised his part of it, but what did that matter? He knew what his work was and he was just learning profound and relentless things about the difference between himself and her—between her puzzling environment and his, which was all too distinctly plain for his present comfort. As they neared Teasdale's and saw the lights streaming from the open doors and windows across the lush greensward and noted the considerable collection of horses and vehicles under the shade-trees and along the fences, he became conscious of an overwhelming timidity with which he felt unable to cope. Had Tilly been like himself and feared the entry into the light and easy gaiety of the chattering throng, he would not have felt so isolated. But her very unconsciousness of the thing as any sort of ordeal to be dreaded depressed him as emphasizing the fateful demarcation between her walk of life and his.

They reached the steps of the large, rather rambling one-story farm-house. There was a long veranda in front, both ends of which were filled with merrymakers. There was a wide hallway, and it, too, was filled with jolly, loud-talking couples, as well as the big parlor on the right.

"Oh, here they are!" Sally Teasdale cried, coming forward and taking Tilly into her slim, pretentious arms. "I heard of you two poking along like snails on the big road. As if you couldn't see enough of Mr. Trott at home! I am going to introduce myself to him, to pay you back. I'm Sally Teasdale"—holding out her hand to John—"and I am glad you came to my party."

John did not know what he said, if he said anything audible. It was the damnable glibness of speech of others which he had to contend with and which seemed to be as silly as unattainable.

"Now, dear, run back to my room and take off your wrap," Miss Teasdale said to Tilly. "I'll show Mr. Trott the men's room."

"He has nothing but his hat," Tilly lingered to say, "and he can leave that anywhere."

"Yes, if you like," his hostess said, leading him to a spot on the veranda where many men's hats were hanging on nails driven into the weather-boarding. He hung up his and immediately felt Sally clutch his arm.

"Tilly says you don't dance," she ran on. "What a pity! It is great fun, and a good way to get acquainted. I suppose you are a member of the church. Which one?"

"None at all," he heard himself saying, as if in a dense fog and from a great distance.

"How funny that you don't dance, then?" she went on, leaving an opening for him which he did not enter. He did not like her. She was too tall and angular, too harsh of voice and fluent of talk and irritating suggestion. He had the sense of being managed when he wanted above all to be unmolested. Besides, she had sent Tilly away, and without Tilly he felt lost.

"I must introduce you to my father," Sally said. "He is old-fashioned and wants his way about everything. He would scold me if I didn't introduce you at once. He is inside. Come on. My stepmother is busy in the kitchen fixing refreshments."

CHAPTER XIII

"I want you to try one of my juleps," Teasdale chuckled. "That is some of the best old rye that ever slid down a thirsty throat."

"I don't drink," John said. "I won't take anything."

"What, what? You don't? Well, I won't insist—I never do—but stay with me a minute till I take one straight. My old lady says I take too much at every party Sally has, and unless some feller is in here with me she thinks I am tanking up all by myself."

"Go ahead," John answered, and the farmer proceeded to help himself to an ample supply of the amber fluid. While he drank, the sound of tuning fiddles and the twanging of guitars came from the parlor.

"The niggers have come," Teasdale gurgled, as he smacked his lips and screwed the corn-cob stopper back into the neck of the jug. "Sally will start out with dancing, I reckon. I used to be a great hand at it, but I'm too heavy now."

He led the way back to the parlor. Four black men sat in a corner vigorously sawing and picking their instruments. One of them, the leader, called out in stentorian tones, "All hands fer de fust set!" and there was a laughing rush from the hall and the veranda of several couples to secure places. Seeing a chance to get away from his host, John drew back into the hall, where he found himself jostled and ignored by the tempestuous human mass. He edged his way along a wall to the veranda, and there saw something startlingly disagreeable. It was Joel Eperson and Tilly standing side by side, their faces averted toward the gate. Joel was regarding her with the eyes of dumb adoration and listening closely to something she was saying. John saw that the opposite end of the veranda was deserted and he went to it. He tried to keep his eyes from the pair, but it was impossible. His misery increased, seeming to ooze into him from some external reservoir of pain. All around him surged a life bewilderingly new and fatuous. He saw Joel bend down to pick up a flower Tilly dropped and saw him smile as he gave it back to her. What could she be saying, with that sweet, drawn look about her lips? What was Joel asking? He saw her nod, and Joel took her arm and the two went down the steps to the gravel walk that led from the house to the gate. Here back and forth they walked, arm in arm, now in the full light from the door and windows, again in the half-darkness near the fence. Once for fully five minutes they lingered at the gate while the silent spectator of their movements leaned tense and rigid against the balustrade. The promenade was quite in accordance with rural propriety and custom, but John could not understand why that pair in particular should be the only ones in the entire company to engage in it. It did not seem right. How could it be right?

The music, the sonorous calls to the dancers, the tripping of feet, pounded his tortured brain. The whole world in its new aspect seemed to meet him with fangs and claws exposed. He wanted to fight something physically, to express by oaths and blows the resentment packed within his primitive breast. He felt his gnarled and hardened fingers at Joel Eperson's thin neck. He saw the long hair sway back and forth as he shook the love-smitten man. His clutch tightened till Joel's eyes bulged from their sockets, and then, in gloating fancy, John dashed him to the ground, where he lay exposed to Tilly's view. But reality has little to do with the tricks of the imagination, and there stood Eperson at the fence with Tilly by his side.

Two girls were approaching. One was Sally Teasdale, the other Martha Jane Eperson.

"They've told the truth about you," the former greeted John, with a teasing laugh, as she introduced the slight, plain, dark girl whose hand she held. "You are really a woman-hater, or you would not be off here by yourself when all the girls want to know you."

Again he was scarcely conscious of what he was saying or leaving unsaid, and suddenly waked to the fact that his hostess had hurried away, and that the plain girl was in his care. After all, she was Eperson's sister, and he eyed her curiously, wondering if she, too, were his enemy.

"You've met my brother," she began. "He spoke about it the day the corner-stone was laid. There he is out there with Tilly now. I didn't want to come to-night, but he was crazy to be here so that he could see her."

"I thought that was it," John permitted his slow lips to say. "They have been going together a long time. That is, I've heard so."

"Yes, and I thought—we all thought that Tilly would end up by taking him, but it is all off now," Miss Eperson sighed, her eyes on the pair at the fence.

"All off?" John in his sober senses would have wondered at his ability to talk so freely with a girl he had just met. "Why, what do you mean?"

"As if you didn't know—as if everybody doesn't know!" Martha Jane laughed half sardonically.

"But I don't know what you mean." Something new and bountiful in its promise of joy filled John and drove the words from his palpitating tongue.

"The idea!" scoffed Martha Jane. "Well, if you don't know it you are blind as a bat in daytime. Brother knows it, I know it—everybody knows it."

"Knows what?" John demanded, his breath checked, his eyes gleaming, his whole being athrob under the dawn of an ecstasy the plain girl seemed to offer.

"Well, I'm not going to tell you, if you don't know," the girl answered, with a little shrug. "But if you want to understand, watch my poor brother. He never had a look like that before. She has been his very life. People that doubt real love ought to know Joel. He would go through fire and water for Tilly. He'd steal, he'd kill, he'd do anything. He is desperate to-night. When we got to her house and found that you and she were going to walk out here, it was the last straw. But he is a gentleman, my brother is, and he will never make a row over it."

Under the sheer blaze of this information, John stood speechless. He, boldly now, gave his arm to his little companion and they started to walk back and forth on the lawn as others were doing. His face was now turned from Tilly, but subconsciously he could fairly feel her proximity. John almost loved the little woman on his arm. How could he help it? She was so kind to him.

They were turning toward the steps when Tilly and Eperson approached. There was a wilted look of resignation on Eperson's face, a sentient animation in Tilly's eyes and about her lips, when she said to John:

"I hope you are having a good time and meeting all the girls. Sally said she would look after you."

He smiled and nodded. Something seemed to bear down on his brain and befog his sight. The lights, the lawn, the people, swirled around him.

"Yes, I'm all right," he said.

They were all on the veranda now and Joel stood facing his rival, a look of wondering respect in his shrinking gaze.

"Oh, Joel!" a voice was heard, and Sally Teasdale approached. "We need you. Mother is going to serve the refreshments and all the men who know the ins and outs of our kitchen are helping wait on the crowd. Will you come? Father is already unable to walk steady."

CHAPTER XIV

Joel served her first. He came past other girls and brought Tilly a plate containing cake and a glass of sillibub and hastened away after she had sweetly thanked him.

Tilly held the plate in her lap, idly toying with the spoon.

"Why don't you eat it?" John asked.

"Because the others haven't theirs yet," she answered.

"Oh, I see," he muttered, chagrined in spite of his happiness. "I'll never get on to your ways. I've been brought up different. I've worked hard since I was a boy—I— I—" But he could not go farther. Why should he allude to his sordid home life when it was a thing which he now so utterly despised? How could he speak of his mother, who was so widely and strangely different from the women Tilly knew? No, he would let those things rest.

Various young men had served all the ladies on the veranda when Joel came out with a plate and looked about as if trying to find some lady who had been overlooked. Finding no one, he brought it to John.

"You take it, Mr. Trott," he said, suavely, and yet with a touch of irrepressible dejection in his tone.

John stared in stupid bewilderment and then jerked out, "Keep it yourself." It was just such a well-meant reply as he might have made to one of his workmen who was offering him a cigar, and yet it quite frustrated Joel, who stood awkwardly waiting, the plate still timidly extended.

"Oh no! I'm going right back," Joel said. "I can't eat now, thank you. We are just beginning to help the men."

"Well, you can't wait on me," John blurted out. The situation was becoming tense and awkward, when Tilly half playfully reached out, took the plate, and gave it to John.

"Take it," she said, firmly. "Joel is in a hurry. The others are waiting."

John obeyed, but failed to thank Eperson. He was vaguely conscious that Tilly was smoothly performing the duty for him and that Joel was bowing himself away. Then they sat in silence. Others near by were boisterously laughing, beating time with their feet and singing with the band, but neither Tilly nor John had aught to say. It was as if the subject which was at once burning and soothing their souls was too vast and sacred to be touched upon in the neighborhood of others less profoundly stirred.

"Give me your plate. I'll take it in," John heard a young farmer saying to the girl he sat with. "You don't want to hold it all night. We'll be dancing again in a minute."

The girl obeyed, and the young man left with two plates in his hands. John noticed that Tilly had finished, and he offered to take her plate. She gave it to him. "Be careful," she warned him. "Sally borrowed most of them from the neighbors and wants to return them in good order."

John chafed under the admonition as he rose with his plate and Tilly's in either hand. He had, however, scarcely reached the door when, in trying quickly to step out of the way of two girls who were approaching, one of the plates and the goblet on it fell to the floor. John stood as if paralyzed. Then he softly swore. Every one on the veranda stopped talking and stared. What he would have done next John never knew, for Tilly suddenly approached.

"Never mind," she said, calmly. "Take the other one to the kitchen."

Furious at himself and all the swirling, clattering, and chattering company, John managed to make his way into the kitchen, where he delivered the plate to a buxom negro woman at a big dish-pan full of hot water. He saw Joel putting down some plates and glasses on a table near at hand. Joel smiled in a friendly way.

"I saw your little accident," he said. "I barely escaped the same thing just now. A fellow has to be a regular bareback rider or a tight-rope walker to get through this crowd with his arms full of glassware and crockery."

"No, I couldn't help it." John was conscious of a hot flow of blood to his face, and a vague sense of gratitude. "I'm no good at this sort of thing. I haven't been brought up to it."

Joel seemed to have no reply ready, and the two willingly parted. John found his chair by Tilly still unoccupied and sat down in it. Why didn't she say something about the accident, he wondered. He decided to bring it up himself, so ignorant was he of the ways of the new world to which she had introduced him.

"I'm sorry about those things I broke," he began, hurriedly. "It wasn't my fault. Those girls came out all of a sudden and faced me. I had to get out of their way, you see, or smash right into them. So I—"

"I know. I saw it," Tilly interposed. "Never mind. Let it pass."

"But I've got to fix it somehow," John blundered on. "Nobody shall lose through me. I am able to pay for any damage I do. Tell me who they belonged to and I'll send the owner a whole set of plates and goblets. I might not match the ones I broke, but—"

"Don't, don't think of that," Tilly urged, her pretty lips twitching with almost maternal sympathy. "If you were to offer to pay it would offend Sally."

"Offend her? Why, in the name of common sense?"

"I don't know, but it would hurt me—it would hurt anybody. It is of no consequence."

"But you talked differently before it happened," John insisted, his lip hanging and quivering. "You said distinctly that the things were borrowed and that Miss Sally wanted—"

"Yes, but it is done now and the only thing is to forget it. Don't even mention it to Sally."

"Not mention it to her? Why not?" John's tongue was thick with the mystery in which he was warmly floundering.

"Because that would not be right—not according to—to custom."

"Custom be—" John bit off the oath with exasperated teeth. "I don't care a hill of beans what the custom is here in these backwoods. I want to pay my way in this life. I laid a cigar down one day against a fellow's hat, and burned a big hole in it. I bought him another and it tickled him to death. It was the best hat in town, while his was an old one, and—"

"But this is different," Tilly pleaded. "Let it drop, please do. For my sake don't say anything more about it. I'll explain what I mean some other time."

That had to suffice. There was more music and dancing and the game of "Stealing partners" on the lawn. Tilly asked John if he wanted to play the game, but he confessed that he did not know what it was like. Saying that it would not look well for them to sit together so long, she led him down to the grass, and they stood watching the big circle of couples. It was very simple—far too simple to interest John. A partnerless young man would dart across the ring, select the partner of another, and they would merrily trip back to his "home" on the other side.

Seeing Tilly, a young man unknown to John came and "stole" her and drew her into the circle.

"Now let the girls steal!" a voice cried out, and several girls sped across the ring after partners. A lively minx with blue eyes and flowing golden hair danced up to John. "Come get in with me," she laughed. "Tilly Whaley hasn't introduced you to any of us. It is a shame. You may have heard Tilly mention me. I'm Jennie Webster."

"No, I never heard of you before," John said, bluntly, as they settled into their places in the ring.

Jennie laughed in her small handkerchief. She even bent her golden head to give vent to her amusement.

"What is the matter?" John demanded, in slow irritation, his eyes on Tilly, directly opposite with a young farmer whom he had once seen at the Whaleys'.

"Why, you are as funny as they all say you are," Jennie tittered. "I heard you were rough and outspoken, but I didn't think you'd admit that you never heard of me before. Why, sir, I'll have you know that I'm somebody, I am. You may bet your boots. I got the first prize for butter at the fair last fall and my father got two blue ribbons on a white pig—one on its neck and the other on its stumpy tail."

John wondered if she was making sport of him, but soon decided that there was no malice in the twinkling blue eyes.

"There goes Joel Eperson," she said, laying her small hand on John's arm. "He is not in the game. Watch Tilly— What did I tell you? I knew she would steal him. My, my! that couple are a wonder!"

John saw Tilly leaving her partner and crossing the grass to Eperson. "Come play," he heard her saying. "You've worked long enough for one evening."

John saw Tilly and Joel find a place opposite him. How his new hopes drooped at the sheer sight of them!

"You are living in her house; I guess you know about them," ran on John's companion.

"Know about them—know what about them?" he demanded, all but fiercely.

"Huh!" ejaculated the girl. "Have you been so busy with your bricks and mortar that you haven't heard that they have been sweethearts since they were tiny tots? Why, even my mother and father always inquire, when I get home from a party, whether Joel and Tilly got together? You see, few folks sympathize with her hard-shell old daddy, and everybody loves Joel—everybody, man, woman, and child. And I know why. It is because he is so fine, noble, and constant. Some think—some few—that Tilly will give in to her father and drop Joel, but take it from me—and I'm a girl—she won't. She loves him—down deep she loves him, for no girl could help it. She wouldn't be a true woman if she went back on adoration like that. He is not handsome, but there is something in him too sweet and good to talk about. Once we all were arguing at Sunday-school whether anybody could actually forgive an enemy, and nearly all of us agreed that we couldn't but that Joel Eperson could. Wasn't that funny? When I talk to him I feel restful. If I was about to do a bad thing and he spoke to me, I'd throw it up. He did once, but never mind about that. It is too long to tell you now. But I'll always—always love him for what he did and said right while I was wavering."

John now saw that Joel had given Tilly his arm and was leading her across the grass to a rustic seat under an oak-tree. The circle of forms and faces became blurred to John's sight. There was much laughter, much darting to and fro across the ring, but John heard only the voice of the little analyst at his elbow.

"There they go for the second dose of soothing-syrup," she twittered. "Old man Whaley doesn't know which side his bread is buttered on. By trying to keep them apart he is only driving them together. 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder,' and so does opposition. That pair is lapping up stolen sweets to-night."

CHAPTER XV

John was only a boy, and a crude one. Without excusing himself from his companion, he left her at the steps and abruptly stalked away. He had his choice of entering the crowded farm-house or sauntering about the grounds. Taking a cigar from his pocket, he struck a match on the door-step, lighted the cigar, and then turned toward the stables at one side of the house. Here among the horses and vehicles he stood reflecting gloomily, rebelliously. Across the lighted lawn he saw Joel and Tilly still on the bench. How close they seemed to sit, one against the other! The hot weight of rage again bore down on John's brain. He forgot to smoke. His cigar died in his inert fingers. Again he wanted to throttle his meek and placid rival. The man's sheer gentleness enraged him, for it was a quality he himself did not possess, and till now had denied. In the half-darkness he saw two young men come to a buggy not far from him, take from under the seat a flask, and heard them joking as they drank.

"I knew you had your arm around her, you sly dog!" one said, "and I held my horse in to give you a chance."

"She is a little beauty, eh?" another voice said with a laugh. "She nestled up against me like a sick kitten to a hot brick."

The flask was emptied. It whistled as it was hurled against the barn, and the two men went back to the house. What could Tilly and Joel be saying? She had said to John that he and she should not be seen too long together, and yet for the second time that evening she and Eperson had sequestered themselves like that. John told himself that he had been a fool to hope as he had done, and his rage and despair joined forces within him.

Presently he noticed that some of the young men were coming for their buggies and driving them up to the veranda. Then he saw some couples getting in and driving away. Still Joel and Tilly sat on the rustic bench. Still John lurked and watched in the darkness.

"Oh, brother, we must go now!" It was Martha Jane calling from the steps. "I don't want to hurry you, but we really must be going."

"Yes, yes, dear— I'm coming!" and Joel and Tilly rose and arm in arm slowly went to the house. A moment later Joel was coming for his buggy, and John, fearing to be seen alone in the dark, quickly advanced by another way to the veranda without meeting his rival.

He found Tilly ready to go and looking for him. "I wondered where you were," she said, softly. "We must be on the way."

He went on the veranda for his hat, leaving her at the foot of the steps. He joined her, the dead cigar in his mouth. He held out his arm. She took it, started on, then paused suddenly.

"Have you said good night to the Teasdales?" she asked.

"No," he retorted, impatiently, even angrily, for Eperson stood near by, hat in hand, extending a handkerchief to Tilly.

"You dropped it on the grass," he said. "I found it just now."

"Thank you," Tilly said, taking it and smiling sweetly. "Good night. Remember what I told you." Then she turned back to John. "You must say good night to them. They are rather particular, and will think it strange if you don't. There they are in the hall, all three of them."

He obeyed. How he got through it he never knew. He bore away with him a blurred impression of the farmer's red face, too affectionate handclasp; Mrs. Teasdale's fat and squatting movement as she silently and timidly bowed; and Sally's gushing appreciation of his coming, and her regrets at not having seen more of him through the evening.

Joel and Martha Jane were getting into the buggy. The latter leaned over a wheel to kiss Tilly. Joel raised his hat, and John found himself imitating the salutation, and despising it. He gave his arm to Tilly and they started home. The road ahead of them was dusty, and Joel's horse stirred the powdered clay into a cloud as he trotted ahead of them. This fact in itself angered John. He coughed and sniffed, but said nothing.

"I hope you liked the party," Tilly began. Her hand rested on John's arm in the same confiding way as formerly, but it stirred him no longer.

"I thought it was awful, silly, stupid!" he declared. "I never knew that grown-up people could act that way."

"I'm sorry," Tilly sighed. "I was afraid you would not enjoy so many strangers. It would not be natural for you to feel as much at home as the rest. You see, they have been going together for years, and, moreover, you said you had not been accustomed to such things."

"No, and I have not missed anything," he threw back.

She made no denial. Her hold on his arm had a caressing quality that would be hard to define. She seemed to understand him better than he understood himself. "Yes, I was afraid you wouldn't like it," she rejoined, "for you are different from most persons. You are the strangest man I ever knew—the very, very strangest. Your face is as smooth as a boy's, and yet somehow you seem old in—in experience—sad experience, too, I should think. You are rough on the outside, but I know you are pure gold on the inside."

"Pure gold, rubbish!" he sneered, inwardly. Had he not just heard a girl say that Joel Eperson was the best man alive? What did a woman's opinion amount to, anyway? And how could Tilly expect him to be such a fool as to believe her when she had acted as she had that evening with another man? The memory of this fired him afresh and he suddenly shook her hand from his arm and with bowed head strode along. He was breathing now like a beast of burden hard driven by pain.

"What is the matter?" Tilly asked, blandly, although she knew full well that she was responsible for his present mood, and, reaching out, she took his arm again. He did not lift it into place, and her hand slid down his wrist till his fingers were clasped by her pleading ones.

"Don't be mad at me," she said, soothingly. "If you understood everything you would not be."

Understood everything? Did she mean now that her engagement to Eperson would explain, justify all that had taken place?

"I do understand," he said, aloud, his cheeks twitching, his lips tight, his eyes gleaming. He had stopped short and now stood fairly panting, facing her.

"Oh, you don't—you don't!" she insisted. "Nobody knows, but myself and Joel, how he feels. I have tried to do right by him, and once I thought that in time I might feel otherwise, but it is impossible. I love him dearly in a certain way, but it is not as a woman ought to feel toward the one man in all the world for her—the one given by God Himself. Joel loves me in that way, and I am very, very unhappy about it. I see—I see—you thought to-night that he and I— But never mind. I was only trying to get him to take a brighter view, for he is very, very dejected."

"You mean to tell me, looking straight in my eyes," John cried—"you a truthful girl—you mean to tell me that you don't love him?"

Tilly, with eyes full to their brink with sincerity, and in a voice that rang true to its maidenly depths, answered: "No, I do not love him as—as a wife ought to love her husband. I've tried, but I can't."

The moonlight seemed filled with darting arrows of bliss made as visible as rockets against a black sky. John felt as if the vast earth were rocking his fears to sleep. He took her hand and drew it into its place on his arm. The ground seemed to fall away from each step he took as they moved forward.

"I see, I see," he heard himself saying; "then it doesn't make any difference. Poor devil! That's what ailed him, eh? No wonder! No wonder!"

Tilly's gentle pressure was on his arm and he was afraid she would feel the wild throbs of his being, for, strong man that he was, he was as much ashamed of them as of a secret sin. How could he open those joy-tied lips of his and tell her how he felt—how he had felt since his first sight of her? He tried to summon words that would be adequate, and failed utterly. But Tilly knew. She seemed to gather a knowledge of his emotions from the very moonlit silence that pervaded the fields and the woods around them.

Suddenly she began to quicken her step. "We must walk faster," she said, sighing, as one in joyous slumber about to wake. "Mother and father may hear the buggies passing and think we ought to be home earlier. You see, it is Saturday night, and if I'm out after midnight father says it is breaking the Sabbath and is angry."

The house was still, save for a lamp burning in the hall, when they arrived home. He helped her lock the front door, insisted on giving her the lamp, and with a lighted match made his way up to his room. He had not said good night to her. He remembered that with twinges of self-contempt as he stood undressing in his room and heard Cavanaugh snoring across the hall. Why had he overlooked it, he wondered. Why did he have to be instructed on such matters like a little child learning to walk, when they came so naturally to Tilly, to Joel Eperson and others?

He frowned as he jerked his necktie and gave up the problem. He would tell her when he saw her that he was sorry for the oversight. How could he tell her that it was partly due to his dazed happiness over what she had said about not loving Eperson?

He tumbled into bed, but could not sleep for a long time. Cavanaugh snored like the roar of a distant sawmill, but that didn't matter. The events of the evening were unreeling in a series of mind-pictures filled with lights and shadows and culminating in the blinding revelation of a single fact—the fact that Joel Eperson had cause for his present gloom. John knew that he himself was unlike the people he was meeting for the first time in his life, and he was sure that he could never be as they were, but he had come upon the marvelous belief that he and Tilly were meant for each other. Somehow, by some intent of Fate, they were destined to breast the world side by side, arm in arm, as they had walked the dusty road that night. He was conscious of many stupid shortcomings on his part, but she would overlook them. Indeed, she was overlooking them already. Finally he slept, and, of all absurdities, he dreamed of carrying bricks and mortar as a small, ragged boy for Cavanaugh, who had just hired him for a few cents a day to see what there was in him. Later he seemed to be telling his powdered and painted mother of his success and displaying to her indifferent gaze the first few cents Cavanaugh had ever paid him.

CHAPTER XVI

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," he jested. "Here you are flat on your lazy back while that little last night's partner of yours is out milking the cow and feeding the chickens. I saw her from my window just now looking as fresh as a pink morning-glory wet with dew. Old Whaley and his wife are hard masters even of their own child. I reckon Tilly would love to lie and snooze after that late tilt of yours and hers, but her folks don't allow it when there is work to be done. I don't want to meddle, my boy, but take it from me for what it is worth, Tilly is the kind of a girl to make a working-man a fine wife. Why? Well, because she hasn't been raised with a gold spoon in her mouth, and a lot of fool ideas about style, rank, and what not. She'd be industrious, saving, and grateful for what her husband could give her. And you—well, I'm not giving you taffy to tickle your vanity, but you'd lavish your last cent on a wife of your choice. How do I know? Well, how do I know that mighty nigh all you ever made—now, I'm going to speak plain—mighty nigh every cent you ever made was lapped up by your ma and Jane Holder and that poor little girl at your house? Huh! Don't I know that a big, strapping fellow that will do all that for folks of—of that stripe will do even more for the sweet little maid that leaves all her own kin to cleave unto him?"

"You don't know what you are talking about," John said from the pillow which half hid his flushed face.

"Well, maybe I don't," the contractor smiled benignly, "but you get up and put on your best suit. We are all going to meeting to-day. You've dodged that too often to help you along with old Whaley. He is wondering where you stand, anyway, on these vital questions of man's duty to God and His written law as Whaley reads it. Don't you forget about the way he treated that son of his that tied up with a follower of the Pope. In spite of his harsh ways Tilly loves her old daddy, and—and well, there is no use of your rubbing the old hog's bristles the wrong way. They might stick in your hand in the long run. You've talked too much to our men on your line of free thought, I am thinking. I heard one say yesterday that you claimed to be an out and out atheist. They all like you, but they are members of some church or other and they were scandalized to hear it. We are in a narrow, hidebound community up here and we've got to watch where we step. Fellers like those will talk, and what they say will be added to by others."

"I won't keep my mouth shut for anybody," John said, firmly, as he got up and began to dress. "I don't want to go to-day, but I will if you say so."

"Well, I do say so," Cavanaugh answered. "And we will set out as soon as the family does. I'm going to set, as usual, in the old man's Bible class that comes before the regular discourse, though I can't say that I get much profit out of it. I disagree with his interpretation of many passages, but he'd crawl over the benches and have a fist fight with me if I disputed his points. They say he is a regular devil when he is mad. Church member though he is, he actually shot a man once, and it was a wonder the chap didn't die. He carries a revolver. What do you think of that for an active disciple of the great Prince of Peace?"

"They are all that way," John said, warmly. "They are crooks and haven't brains enough to see how crooked their reasoning is."

Shortly after breakfast the three Whaleys started to church. Tilly walked between her father and mother, and John and Cavanaugh followed close behind. They found, on their arrival, a group of villagers, mountaineers, and farmers loitering on the grass-plot in front of the little building, but the Whaleys went straight in, and John and the contractor did likewise. Cavanaugh went forward to the benches at the front which were reserved for Whaley's Bible class. Eight or ten men and women were already seated there, and they nodded appreciatively to him and the Whaley family. John found himself quite alone on a bench near the door. He saw Tilly and her mother chatting with some other women, and Cavanaugh making himself quite at home as he shook hands with various smiling members of the class. Only half an hour was to be given to the class work and nearly all the students had arrived. John saw Whaley open his worn and interlined Bible and then step back to a bell-rope which hung down by the little white pulpit. He gave the rope a single forceful jerk and the cast-iron bell on the roof creaked and tapped lazily. That was a signal that the Bible class had begun its session.

Just now, to John's great discomfiture, Whaley, with his Bible in his stubby hands, came down the aisle to him.

"You can't hear back this far," Whaley said. "Move on up and join us."

"I'd rather not," John stammered, trying to steady his eyes and voice in his bewilderment.

"Well, I can't see why. It certainly can't hurt you to hear us go through the lesson, and you might learn a lot. Bible reading and study is fairly sweeping broadcast over the country. Over in Dadeville they have hired that woman blackboard teacher to come several hundred miles and are paying five dollars a head for the course. I've read some of her points in our Leaflet, and I'm here to tell you if she ever comes this way I'll refute her, if they oust me for disorder. It would be my duty, considering the light I have. Come on up."

There was nothing else to do, for the entire class, with the exception perhaps of Tilly, was looking toward him. John rose and followed the old man up the aisle, and found Cavanaugh gravely and sympathetically making space for him at his side. Tilly and her mother were just in front of him. John could have bent forward and whispered in the girl's ear, had he dared. The exercises began by a chapter being read, first a verse by Whaley and then a verse in turn by each of the class. John was fairly chilled by the horror of his predicament. It was plain that Whaley would expect him to read aloud, and he determined that he would refuse. He told himself that he would refuse if the whole silly bunch of fanatics were infuriated by it. He had been forced into the class and he would be forced no farther. As luck would have it, the book was handed to Cavanaugh before it reached John, and the old man read in a clear, confident tone the verse which had fallen to him. Then he started to hand the Bible to John, but John shook his head firmly.

"Pass it on to some one else," he said, almost aloud and with guttural sullenness. "I won't do it."

Then Cavanaugh displayed friendly diplomacy. "I'll read for my young friend, if it is all right," he said. "Me and him have a lot of talks on these same lines, but usually I do the reading."

Whaley frowned and glared, but, being impatient with any delay, he said, gruffly: "Well, well, go ahead. I don't know where Mr. Trott stands, anyway. He is bound to see the light sooner or later, and then he won't have to be begged to read the grandest Book the world ever saw, or be slow about joining a class like this, either. As many of you know, with pride, it is the best and biggest in the county, if not in the state."

Cavanaugh proceeded to read the verse, and the book went over to Mrs. Whaley and then to her daughter. And as Tilly read in her clear, unruffled voice John was conscious of a certain twinge of shame for his avoidance of a thing so simple as she made the act seem.

The reading was concluded, and Whaley set in to analyze the text, line by line. He would read a verse, and then ask the class what particular significance it held to their understanding. Answers came rapidly from all the class, and sometimes John noticed that, when all the others had failed to grasp Whaley's particular version, he would call on Tilly to reply and what she said always met with her father's approval, the reason being that the girl had already gone over the chapter with her parents at home. The lesson was concluded by a long-winded lecture from Whaley, and then the bell was rung for the regular service.

John failed to hear what the aged minister was saying, but he did note that Whaley now and then called out, "Amen!" in deep, self-satisfying tones. John could not keep his eyes from the back part of Tilly's head. He worshiped her hair, the very ribbons of her simple straw hat, the curve of her brave little shoulders. What a marvel she was in human form! It was almost impossible to realize that only a few hours before she had been alone with him, telling that dazzling story of her inability to love another man. He wondered if he might walk home with her. He was afraid not, and yet could not tell whence his fears came, unless they were due to his vague sense of having opposed her father's religion.

When the service was over, however, the opportunity came. It might have been brought about by deliberate design on the part of the contractor, for Cavanaugh drew the husband and wife into conversation about the sermon, and that threw Tilly and John together. The Whaleys seemed to forget Tilly's existence, and John and she fell in behind the three.

"I wondered what you were going to do when father went back after you," Tilly said, with a smile. "I was afraid to look around."

"What did you think when I refused to read in the class?" John inquired, forcing a lifeless smile.

"I hardly know," Tilly said, as she studied his face with bland sincerity. "It almost frightened me. I was afraid father would forget himself and storm out at you. But—but as for your reading out loud, of course, if you really do not believe in the Bible and love it, you ought not to read it in public. That would be sacrilege."

"And do you believe in it?" he demanded, almost rebukingly. "Do you believe that that Book is the actual word of some far-off God that no living man ever saw with his eyes or heard speak with his ears?"

"Yes," Tilly answered. "If I didn't believe it I'd be miserable. I can't see how you can doubt the existence of God—how you can keep from actually feeling His presence, especially when you are in trouble and seriously need His help."

John sneered. He loved Tilly with his whole being, but he despised her belief. "I can tell you why I don't believe," he said, a billow of feeling behind his words. "I believe if there were a God, that God would have to be a God of love, power, and pity, and with my own eyes I've seen— I have told you about that little orphan girl at home, Dora Boyles. She is a little, helpless, overworked rat without father or mother, in the care of an aunt who is no earthly good—and is crazy about men—crazy about clothes, cards, liquor, and dancing. That little dirty scrap of a girl is a child of God, the same as those polite, well-fed, well-dressed girls and boys we met last night, eh? Well, tell me what is God doing for her? As for me, myself, as I look back on what I went through among those haughty, hidebound people at Ridgeville, before Sam Cavanaugh held out a helping hand— Well, never mind about that, but I know I've been my own God, and I never run across any other except in the dreams of persons who get the best things of life and don't care whether anybody else gets them or not."

"You will think otherwise some day—you will have to," was Tilly's regretful ultimatum. "Someday you will need God so badly that you will turn to Him. I did once, and was answered, too."

"You don't mean it," John disputed, warmly. "No prayer was ever answered by any God, on the earth or off of it."

"Mine was," Tilly asseverated. "It was one night, and I was at home all alone. Father had lost his temper at an election and—and wounded a man in a dispute. Father was put in jail and mother hurried to him. The man was bleeding to death—the doctors couldn't stop the flow of blood. You can't imagine how I felt. I fell on my knees and prayed with all my soul to God to save my father and the man he had shot. At two o'clock—oh, I don't know how to express it!—at two o'clock I seemed to be lifted up into something like light, but it wasn't that. It was something finer and holier, but I knew, I knew that all was well. My mother came at sunup. She said they had stopped the flowing blood at two o'clock—exactly at two o'clock. My father was released the next day and the man finally recovered."

"Things like that happen once in a thousand times," John said, with an indulgent smile, "and people say it is in answer to prayer."

"But I know, for I felt it," Tilly responded, simply, and she said no more, for the three older persons had turned and were waiting for them on the street corner.