The game was breaking up. The couples were moving toward the house. John
was desperate enough to have shaken the unconscious tantalizer now on
his arm. He could think of nothing to say and didn't care what his
companion thought about his inattention. He was wondering why Martha
Jane Eperson had said what she had said, and why he had been so foolish
as to believe it. Perhaps she had a motive. Perhaps it was sarcasm born
in the knowledge of his presumption. For aught he knew, she might now be
laughing over his credulity.
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.