One morning, two days after this, Tilly, half ill from worry, was in her
room. She heard the sound of wheels below, and, looking from her window,
she descried Joel Eperson in his buggy under the spreading branches of a
big beech in front of the gate. Her mother and father were at a lawyer's
office in the village, where they had gone to conclude the arrangements
for the immediate annulment of her marriage. She hastened down the
stairs, and went out to the grim, sentinel-like visitor, noting, as she
approached him, the tense, wasted expression of his sallow face and the
dark splotches about his honest eyes.
"Oh, Joel," she all but sobbed, "I'm so glad you came! Did Martha Jane
tell you I wanted to see you?"
"Yes, and I hurried over at once." He had bared his brow, held his
broad-brimmed hat in his hand, and had descended to the ground. He took
her hand and pressed it reverently and with a sort of shrinking
timidity. "I want you to know, Tilly, that if there is anything on earth
that I can do I'll willingly do it, if it costs my life. God only knows
how I long to help you."
"Oh, Joel, it is awful--awful!" she began, and stopped abruptly.
"Oh, I know-- I've heard everything!" he responded, "and it is a beastly
outrage. I feel like killing some one. Your father must be insane, and
the whole hot-headed mass of hoodlums who are making such a row over
nothing at all. I knew about your husband's unfortunate mother and
about his religious views, but those were things he could not help, and
I could not hold them against him."
"You knew about his mother?" Tilly cried, surprised. "You knew before
our marriage?"
Eperson shrugged his gaunt shoulders and transferred his resigned gaze
from her face to the still fields. "Yes," he said. "A man who thinks he
is a friend of mine, and--and knew of my attentions to you, he had heard
it down at Ridgeville and came to me with it shortly after your husband
came to Cranston to work. I asked him to drop it, and he did so. I was
convinced that your husband was an honorable man and in himself worthy
of the love I saw that you were giving him. I am ready to be his friend
as well as yours."
"Oh, Joel, you are so--so sweet and kind and noble! You are my only
friend--you and Martha Jane. Your support and friendship make me
stronger and braver."
They were both silent for a moment. Then Eperson said: "But you sent for
me, Tilly. There must be something that--"
"Yes," she interrupted, "there is something I want you to do for me. In
fact, there is no one else to go to. Oh, Joel, I want to get word to
John in some way. I was compelled to run away without seeing him, and I
have been unable to get a letter to him. My father has stopped my
letters both here and at the post-office. John will not know what to
think, and it struck me that if _you_ would write him that I haven't
turned against him, and that I will be true to him always in spite of
anything my people may do, it would help him to understand the
situation, and encourage him to wait till I can go back to Ridgeville."
"Of course, of course I would gladly do that, but would not this be
better?" Joel looked at his watch. "You see, it is too late to get a
letter off on this morning's train, but I could go in person. I could,
by driving fast, leave my horse and buggy at the livery-stable and catch
the train myself. In that case I could see him to-night, you know, while
if I wrote a letter it would not reach him till late to-morrow, if even
then."
"Oh, but could you--_would you_--really go?" Tilly asked, eagerly. "It
would be so much better, for then you could explain everything
thoroughly."
"Yes, but I must hurry," Eperson said, glancing at his horse. "I have
only a few minutes."
"Then hurry," Tilly urged him. "You will know exactly what to say. Tell
him that, no matter what is done in court, I shall still be true to him,
and that I love him now more than ever."
Eperson bowed gravely. "I'll do my best," he promised. "And I'll hurry
back and bring you his message. Shall I come straight here?"
"Yes, straight here," Tilly cried. "I'll find some way to talk with you
in private. Oh, you are so good, so good; but hurry, Joel! Don't miss
the train. Find Mr. Cavanaugh and he will show you how to reach John."
"I'll do my best, you may be sure," Eperson said, springing into his
buggy and taking up his reins and whip. "Good-by."
She watched him from the gate as he dashed away in the cloud of dust
raised by the hoofs of his trotting horse. She estimated the time it
would take him to reach the station, and dreaded hearing too soon the
whistle of the coming train's locomotive. Fully ten minutes passed
before she heard the whistle. Then she was sure that Joel would get
aboard in time. She was sure, because she knew the man who was serving
her.
That afternoon, rather late, her parents came home. They delivered the
news to her that the court had acted most promptly and she was now no
longer the legal wife of John Trott. She received the information as
stolidly as if it were a foregone verdict and quietly turned from her
harsh-faced parents and went up to her room.
"Not his wife?" She laughed to herself as she sat on her bed and locked
her limp hands in her lap. "As if a lawyer, a judge, and a few jurymen
could take my husband from me as easily as that! Huh! I'd live with him
without marriage if that is all there is to marriage. Joel will see him
to-night. Joel will tell him how I feel, and John will wait till I can
go to him. I know he loves me. I know that, and nothing else
counts--nothing!"
Later she descended the stairs and went into the kitchen where her
mother was at work. "Let me help you, mother," she said, taking the
broom from Mrs. Whaley's hands and beginning to sweep the floor. "You
must have had a lot to do while I was away."
Mrs. Whaley stood surprised for a moment, started to speak, hesitated,
and then went out to where her husband sat in the slanting rays of the
sun under an apple-tree.
"Where is she now?" he asked, glancing up from the open Bible and
manuscript on his knee.
"She's sweeping in the kitchen."
"You don't say!" he said, laconically. "Well, when she is through in
there send her here to me. I've got a straight talk for her. Things
can't rest exactly on the same basis as they used to, as far as she is
concerned. She has got to be on probation-like if she stays on under my
roof. A great deal will depend on her conduct from now on. Folks will be
inclined to slough away from us for a while. Already they blame you and
me, and say we were too eager to marry her off. Nothing like this ever
happened to any member of my church. It is bad in every way, and may be
worse. I'm going to pray that no--no living stigma may follow it. You
know what I mean. You know that I don't want to be the grandfather of
Liz Trott's grandchild, and I won't--I won't if there is a just God in
heaven. When Tilly is through that work send her to me."
"I'll do nothing of the sort," the woman said. "She is my child, as well
as yours, and you'd better let well enough alone."
"What do you mean?" he growled, his grisly brows meeting, the old
fanatical gleams in his eyes.
"I mean what I say," was the retort, deliberately delivered. "She was a
child when she left us--she is a full-grown woman now. A woman don't
live with a man even three or four days and remain the same as she was
before. If you take my advice you won't nag her over this. I don't like
her looks. She took the news of the divorce too quiet-like to suit me."
"Oh, that's it!" Whaley said, seriously, the flare in his eyes dying
out. "That's what you are afraid of. You think she might give us the
slip and get back to that scoundrel, divorce or no divorce. Well"--and
he continued to frown--"that would be bad--that would be making a bad
matter worse. I see your point, and you may be right. At any rate, I'll
hold up for a while. Yes, yes, I'll hold up."
"I think you'd better," was the answer, as the speaker turned back into
the house.