That evening a wonderful thing happened to John. It was a moonlit night
and Cavanaugh took the two older Whaleys down to see the progress on the
new building. That left John and Tilly on the veranda together. At first
the poor boy's tongue was tied, but under the influence of Tilly's calm
self-possession he soon found himself conversing with her quite easily.
There was a sort of commotion in the chicken-house near the barn and
they started down there to see what had caused it. He had seen young men
of the better class at Ridgeville walking with young ladies, holding to
their arms at night, and in no little perturbation he wondered if he
ought to offer Tilly his arm. He did not know, and he wondered what Joel
Eperson would do in the circumstances. Finally he plunged into the
matter. "Won't you take my arm?" he asked, so naturally that he was
surprised at himself.
She did so, although the path was clear and the distance short, and the
gentle pressure of her hand on his arm sent an inexplicable thrill
through him. She even leaned slightly and confidently against his
shoulder, and that, too, was a wonderful experience. He was filled with
ecstatic emotion. He slowed down his step and clumsily adapted his long
stride to her shorter one. There was a vast, swelling joy in his throat.
At the barn-yard gate she released his arm and opened it, and at once he
had a fear that he had made a mistake in not forestalling her. He was
flooded with shame at the thought that Joel Eperson would have known
what was proper and have acted quicker.
"Excuse me," the poor fellow stammered, his eyes on hers. He had never
used such words before and they sounded as strange to him as if they had
belonged to a foreign tongue.
"Excuse you, why?" she inquired, perplexed.
"Because--because I didn't open the gate for you," he replied. "I wasn't
thinking."
"Oh, that doesn't matter," she answered, evidently pleased, and there
was something in her eyes that he had never seen there before. Her face
seemed to fill with a warm light, and her pretty lips were slightly
parted. They walked on. The chicken-house, a shack with a lean-to roof
against the barn, was near and he stood by her as she looked in at the
open door.
"One of the planks they roost on fell down," she explained. "Too many of
them got on it. They will huddle together, warm as it is."
"I can fix it," he proposed, "but I'd have to have a light."
Tilly hesitated, looking again into the shack. There was a low chirping
from the perches overhead.
"Never mind to-night," she said. "They have found new places and will
soon settle down."
She turned back, facing him, and slowly they started toward the house.
This time she took his arm without being asked, and the act gave him
additional delight. He allowed the natural weight of his arm to gently
press her hand against his side and she did not resent it. In fact, he
felt as if her touch was responsive. The moonlight fell on her bare head
and played in her wonderful hair, upon which the moisture of the night
was settling. Half-way between the barn and the house there was an
empty road-wagon. Its massive tongue stood out straight a foot or so
above the ground. To his wonderment, Tilly sat down on it, thrusting her
little feet out in front of her.
"Let's sit here," she said. "They won't be back for some time yet."
He complied, his wonder and delight growing. They were silent. Finally
she spoke again.
"You are the strangest man I ever saw," she said, looking into his face
with her calm, probing eyes.
"Am I?" he asked. "Why, how so?"
"I don't know," she made answer, thoughtfully, and she locked her little
hands in her lap and looked down. "I can't make you out. You are so--so
gentle and tender with me. You are a mystery, a deep mystery. You don't
seem to take to women in general, and yet, and yet with me--" She sighed
and broke off abruptly.
In his all but dazed delight he could not supply the words she had
failed to summon, though he knew what he would have said could he but
have untangled his enthralled tongue.
"Oh, I'm no mystery!" He tried to laugh away his awkwardness. "I'm as
plain as an old shoe; no frills about me. You ask the boys that work
with me."
She was unconvinced. He saw her shake her wise little head and twist her
fingers together as she answered:
"A girl I know who saw you on the platform that day said she'd bet you'd
had an unfortunate love-affair. She said nothing else would make as--as
fine a young man as you are shun all the girls like you do. She even
hinted that maybe you were--were married down in Georgia and for some
reason or other was not telling it."
"Oh no, I'm not married," he laughed. "Gee! Sam would think that is
funny. Me married!"
"Then you _have_ had a--a love-affair with some girl, and--"
"Wrong again!" he laughed, deep in the throat of his ebullient joy.
"I've just been a sort of stay-at-home, pretty busy, you know. I've had
my hands full of night work, figuring, writing, and planning, and
through the day I've been hard at it, as a general thing. No, I'm just,
I reckon, not a natural ladies' man." How could he explain to her what
he had never understood or even tried to fathom, the reason why he was
different from other young men of his age whose manner of life he had
only superficially observed?
Tilly seemed still unconvinced. "That girl was Sally Teasdale," she went
on. "She was here yesterday. You may remember her--the tall, dark-haired
girl that sang in the choir that day and turned my music for me once.
She is going to have a party at her house down the road Wednesday night.
She is--is dead set on having you there. She says all the girls want to
get acquainted with you, and she--she wanted me to--to take you to it."
"To take me to it?" he repeated, hardly understanding what was really
meant, for how could a young lady be asking him to a party at her house
when no home of that sort had ever been open to him? How could that be
true, and that another girl of Tilly's social rank should really be
inviting him to escort her?
"I see, you don't want to go," Tilly said, with a touch of mild
resentment. "Well, that is for you to decide, and I would not have asked
you but there was no way out of it. Even mother advised me to mention
it."
Never had his confusion been greater. "Why, I want to go!" he blurted
out. "I don't see how you could doubt it. And you say that you will let
me go along with you?"
"Yes, but it was Sally's idea; not mine," Tilly urged. "Don't think I go
about inviting boys to take me places. You see, you are stopping at our
house, and that is why Sally mentioned it to me, but the fact that you
pay us board doesn't give me the right to pull you into things you don't
care for. You must be your own judge. No doubt you are frightfully tired
at night, and if you have writing and figuring to do after work hours,
why, it would be wrong of you to bother with a crowd of silly country
girls that you never saw before."
"Me tired? Oh no! Leave that out of the question," he warmly thrust in.
"I've set up with the boys when they were sick all night long, and
worked the next day without feeling it. What ails you? Why don't you
think I'd like to go with you? Well, I would-- I do want to go."
"Well then, we'll go," Tilly said. "I know you will like the
girls--Sally, especially, for she is crazy, simply crazy about you. Huh!
and you don't know it? Why, she goes to town nearly every day just to
pass the new court-house. Shucks! she knows every layer of brick that
goes in it, and every man by name that works under you."
"I think I remember the girl you mean." John was not absorbing the
compliment. "She is a tall, dark girl, as straight as an Indian squaw.
She stopped one day and asked me some questions about the rooms on the
lower floor. Sam come and showed her around-- I was too busy. Sam's on
the ladies' entertainment committee-- I am not."
"She told me she had never met you." Tilly leaned toward him as she
spoke. She clasped her hands over her knee. She was staring steadily,
her eyes flashing. "Oh, my! what won't some girls do to get in with a
new man? Huh! She has failed to get at you in every other way and is now
making a cat's-paw of me."
"I declare I don't know what you mean," John asserted, "but if you are
in earnest--about the party, I mean--why, you can count me in. I've
never been a party man--I wouldn't know what to do or say--but if you
will go with me, I'll be ready long before you are, I'll bet you. I'll
hire a horse and buggy at the livery-stable, and--"
"Oh no, I seldom ride," Tilly protested. "It is only about a mile and we
can walk that far in pretty weather like this. They all live close about
except Joel Eperson. He always drives in and brings his sister, Martha
Jane."
"Oh, so _he's_ going--_that feller_ is going!" John exclaimed in a
crestfallen tone. "I see--I see--_he's_ going."
"Yes. He is Sally's first cousin."
The uncouth mason sat silent. He folded his ponderous hands and scowled
as he did when displeased with the work of a bungling assistant. Tilly
was covertly and studiously regarding his profile.
"Why do you say it like that?" she inquired. "Is there anything strange
about Joel going to a party?"
"Strange? Not if he knows you are to be there. Does he?"
"I suppose he _does_ think I may be there, but what of it--what of it?"
John turned and stared toward the house. It was as if he were trying to
keep her from seeing the fierce expression he knew had clutched his
face. Tilly leaned closer to him. Her shoulder touched his. She sat
waiting for him to turn his head toward her again. Presently he looked
at her, his honest eyes holding a famished expression.
"What is there strange about Joel going?" she asked, softly and all but
propitiatingly.
"Nothing strange about it--just the reverse," he sighed. "I've heard
that he has been loving you ever since he was a little boy, and that he
comes to see you every chance he gets. I've heard that your father
doesn't like him. I see--his cousin has got this party up so you and he
can--"
Tilly sprang to her feet. John kept his seat, unaware that even rural
courtesy demanded that he rise when she did. But Tilly was no stickler
for conventions. She was a working-girl; he was a laborer, and there was
something to be fathomed in the man before her which lurked deep within
him. She was angry, or perhaps only impatient, but the mood passed as if
melting into the moonlight which laved her dainty form like some
supernal fluid.
"What you said is not kind or just," she objected, sweetly. "You
intimate that I'd meet Joel somewhere against my father's wishes. I
would not do so. I would not disobey my father or do anything on the sly
that he would oppose."
In dumb, almost stupid alarm John sat staring up at her. He quaked under
the sudden realization that he had offended her, and yet he had never
apologized to any one in his life. The fine sense of that sort of
restitution belonged to social paths John Trott had never traversed.
"Excuse me," he might have said, as he had said at the gate, but somehow
under her bent gaze he found himself unable to utter a word. It may have
been the sheer blank look in his eyes, or the helpless twitching of his
lips, that decided her, for she suddenly sat down by him again and
leaned forward till their eyes met.
"You did not mean to say that I'd do anything underhand, I'm sure," she
faltered. "I'm sure of it _now_."
"Oh no," he slowly shook his head and seemed to swallow an emotional
contraction in his throat. "I didn't mean any harm, but--but he _will_
be there, you say? He'll be there?"
"Yes, yes, of course," Tilly responded. "I suppose he will bring Martha
Jane. He usually does. But what of that?"
"He'll want to talk to you, I suppose?" John went on, his nether lip
hanging limp, his gaze steady.
"Why, yes--that is, maybe he will. Sometimes couples walk about between
the games and dances. I don't dance. My father and mother oppose it, and
our church does not sanction it; but you dance, don't you?"
"No, I've never even been to a dance. I hardly know what they are like.
The young folks at Ridgeville have them often at their club and at the
hotels and in their homes, but the boys are a lot of dudes that have
nothing else to do, and I hate them. I've always had to work for a
living and most of them are well off and look down on poor folks. People
here treat a fellow like me different somehow."
"It seems very strange that you don't dance," Tilly mused aloud,
"especially when you don't belong to the church. How does it happen that
you never joined?"
He shrugged and sniffed with uncurbed contempt, unaware of the fact that
what he was saying was an unheard-of thing in Tilly's circle. "I don't
believe in them," he jerked out. "They are a bunch of close-fisted,
grafting hypocrites. Most of them haven't the brains of a gnat. I've
helped build meeting-houses, run against the leaders, and know their
private lives. They say they believe there is a God-- I don't!"
Tilly sighed unresentfully. "You will see it differently some day," she
said. "Will you do me a favor?"
"Will I? Try me," he laughed, and he sat eagerly waiting for her to
continue.
In her earnestness she put her hand on his knee as she leaned closer to
him. "Then don't tell father how you feel about it--please don't. You
don't know him. You can't imagine how furious that would make him. A man
stopped at our house once to stay overnight. He was selling
harvesting-machines, and after supper he and my father had an argument
on the veranda. He said--the man said something like what you've just
said to me, and father made him leave the house--made him pack up and
leave at once, for father said it would be a sin for us to sleep under
the same roof. Mother did not object, either. She was glad to see him
go. Our preacher preached a sermon on it and said my father did right.
I'm sorry you believe as you do, but won't you promise me not to say
anything about it while you are here?"
"I'll promise you anything on earth you ask." John sat up straight. Her
little hand was still on his knee. He yearned to take it into his
calloused grasp and fondle into it his assurances of compliance with her
desires. "I don't object to any man's religion unless it rubs against my
rights as a man," he went on. "These church folks here may be better
than any I've run across, but down home the breed doesn't suit me. Why,
when I was a little fellow in the public school I've had them--women and
men--invite other boys to go to Christmas-tree parties, Sunday-school
festivals, or picnics, and leave me out. They would do it right before
my face, as if I was the very dirt under their feet. A thing like that
would be noticed by a little boy who wonders why he can't go along with
the rest."
"I didn't know there were such church members as that anywhere," Tilly
said, thoughtfully. "Oh, I see. I wonder if your folks are Catholics?"
"No. My father is dead. My mother doesn't go to any church."
"Oh, that's odd. Not any at all?"
"No. I guess she is like me. She doesn't know any of the members or care
a hill of beans about them. Why did you ask if we were Catholics?"
"Because Catholics are looked down on so much around here. If you had
said you were one, I was going to ask you not to mention that to my
father, either. The greatest trouble my family ever had came through the
Catholics. You see, I had a brother. He died five years ago. He was a
professing member of our church, and father was awfully proud of him
because he was a fine exhorter at revivals. When he wasn't more than
sixteen my brother actually preached in public, though he wasn't
ordained. They called him 'the boy wonder' and many people were
converted under him."
"I've seen his sort," John said, reflectively. "They had one down our
way, a sissy of a chap, that women fairly went crazy over, but you say
your brother died."
"Yes, but not before he caused us that great trouble," Tilly went on.
"It was this way. Father's chief ambition was to have him preach, and
when he was about twenty, and after father had saved and stinted to put
him through the Methodist seminary, an Irish family moved here. They
were Catholics. There was a girl in the family, and in some way or
other George got acquainted with her and got to visiting at her house.
You know the Catholics have no church here--there are so few of
them--but at her house my brother met Catholics who talked to him and
gave him books to read. The truth is, he fell in love with the girl and
our trouble began. She and her folks somehow convinced him that her
religion was the oldest one--that it was really established by our Lord,
and that all the other denominations had shot off from it. George had
the manhood to come to father and tell him what he believed and that he
was going to join the Catholics, so that he and the girl could marry
according to Catholic rites. I was too young to know what it was all
about, but I was terrified by father's fury. He acted like a crazy man.
He couldn't eat or sleep. He disowned my brother and drove him from
home. George married the girl and they all moved away. By accident we
heard that he had died of consumption away out West, and then a man--a
Catholic, some kin of George's wife--came to deliver some message George
had sent from his death-bed. We were all sitting in the parlor. Before
father would let him say what the message was father asked the man if
George died a Catholic, and when the man said he did and that a priest
had been called in, my father refused to hear the message and showed him
the door. My mother seemed willing to listen to it, but she always obeys
my father. They are almost exactly alike, and so she said nothing."
The gate latch clicked. Voices were heard from the house. "They are
back. I'll have to go in," Tilly said, and she sighed as from weighty
memories awakened by her recital.
John got up and Tilly took his arm again. It seemed to him that her hold
upon it was somehow insecure, and he took her hand and drew it higher
up. He had never touched her hand till now, and, while it was rough from
her accustomed toil, by contrast with his own brick-and-stone rasped
palm, it felt as soft as velvet. There was a warm lack of resistance in
it and he released it reluctantly. How glorious and bliss-drenching
seemed the moonlight as it lay on the landscape! And it was not to end,
he told himself. There was the party to look forward to. That would give
him another chance to see her alone. He was a strong man, and yet he was
all but swooning under emotions which he had never dreamed could exist.
"Oh, there they are!" he heard Mrs. Whaley exclaiming.
Tilly now released John's arm, stepped forward, and casually explained
the mishap in the chicken-house.
"The same thing happened some time ago," Mrs. Whaley said, pleasantly,
to John. "We've got too many chickens, anyway. I'm going to ship some of
them off."
He told her awkwardly that he would send one of the carpenters up to
repair the damage, and further showed his crudeness by adding that it
should not cost her anything, all of which struck her as being quite
gentlemanly of him, and proving his ability to command men who ranked
lower than himself in the scale of his trade.
They all separated for the night and John went to his bed stirred by
hopes and passions that kept sleep from his brain for hours.