The Cottage of Delight Part 50

"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 n.o.blest 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 gra.s.s 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 G.o.d'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 pa.s.sionately, desperately to his breast. "Go on!" he panted. "For G.o.d'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 d.a.m.nable 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 G.o.d. When I doubt G.o.d I suffer and am forced back to faith by the pain I feel.

Believing in G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, but I now think there may be persons so G.o.dlike that they can't realize the existence of any G.o.d outside of themselves. John, you are G.o.dlike. 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. G.o.d has put them in my hands and I must care for them. Do you think I could live without faith now? Why, I know G.o.d must help me care for them. I am praying for that. Night after night--day after day I plead with G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sion 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 plat.i.tudes 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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?"