Joel blandly and gallantly complied. His sister, now thrown with John
and Tilly after the others left, looked slightly embarrassed, and,
saying that she, too, would help serve the supper, she moved away. This
threw John and Tilly together again. Some couples had seated themselves
in chairs against the wall, and, as there were vacancies, they sat down
also. The negroes, to the accompaniment of guitars, began singing old
plantation melodies. The moon, higher in the heavens now, shed a
glorious sheen over the still landscape. John was too full of adoration
and joy to utter a word. Tilly seemed to sense his mood to its depths
and to blend a mood of like nature with it.
"I love you--I love you!" John's soul seemed to whisper, but his tongue
remained an inactive lump in his mouth.
"I know--I understand," Tilly's soul seemed to be saying in the same
inaudible way. He smelled the perfume of the geranium leaves on his
coat, and his big red fingers raised them to his nostrils. He told
himself that it was a silly, womanish act, but what did he care? Tilly's
fingers had pinned them there, the little fingers he longed to caress.
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."