The Cottage of Delight Part 25

The negro turned his horse around and started back to town. John stood stock-still, his eyes on the cab disappearing in the gloom. He had stood that way for several minutes when a small hand was slipped into his from behind, and, looking around, he saw the soiled face and matted hair of Dora Boyles.

"Brother John," she faltered, "has Tilly left you--really--really left you?"

He dropped her hand and shoved her from him. "Go home!" he cried. "Go home, and don't bother me!"

She fell back a yard or so and stood staring at him. "I won't go till you tell me," she said, stubbornly. "I started over here this morning to show Tilly my doll and get her to help me dress it. I saw that crazy-looking old man come in a cab and take her and her trunk away. She was white--oh, she was as white as a sheet, and so pitiful-looking!"

"Go home, I tell you! Go home!" John gulped and snarled like a man goaded at once by grief and physical pain. "Go home, I tell you! Leave me alone!"

"I suppose that means she _has_ left," the child reasoned aloud. "Well, brother John, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, because I liked her awfully well.

But I'm not surprised. Aunt Jane told your ma yesterday--and it made her mad. My! didn't the old girl rip and snort? Aunt Jane told her this thing would happen sooner or later. She said no woman alive could stay cooped up in a little box like this very long and not have a single soul go near her, and you off all day."

John laid his hand roughly on the child's shoulder and smothered an oath of fury. "You go home!" he panted. "If you don't, I'll--"

"You'll do nothing!" The child smiled fearlessly. "Your bark is worse than your bite, brother John. But I'm going. I'll come back, though.

I'll be over to clean up and cook something for you. You won't come back to our old shack, I know."

When she had left he went into the cottage, but he did not light the gas again. The darkness seemed more suitable to his mood. He sat down on the edge of his and Tilly's bed. His ma.s.sive hand sank into her pillow. It was past his supper hour, but he had no desire to eat. The sheer thought of the kitchen where his young wife had worked, somehow suggested her death. A little round metal clock on the mantel was ticking sharply. He got up and wound it, as usual, at that hour. He went into the sitting-room. Here he sat down, lurched forward in unconscious weakness, and then, swearing impatiently, he steadied himself. He remained there only a minute. Rising, he went into the dining-room, felt about, as a blind man might, for a chair, and sank into it. Crossing his arms on the table, he rested his head on them. Had he been a weaker man he might have pitied himself. He had always contended that a man who could not bear pain and adversity had a "yellow streak" in him. He had once had a painful operation performed without an anesthetic, and he now told himself that he simply must master the things within and without him which had combined to overthrow him. He ground his teeth together. He clenched his fingers till the nails of some of them broke.

He closed his eyes. He tried to imagine that he was becoming drowsy and that he would soon sleep, but a thousand pictures floated through his brain and dug themselves in like burrowing animals. Chief among them was a view of Whaley striding about the Square, uttering s...o...b..ring anathemas against him. Another scene was that of Tilly's receiving the revelation he himself had shrunk from making. He saw the blight fall on her bonny face and her calm and inevitable consent to abandon him forever. And yet how could he bear _that_--exactly _that_? He groaned against the smooth surface of the table. He was ashamed of his frailty, for the mastery of himself seemed farther off, almost an impossibility.

The iron latch of the gate clicked. A heavy step grated on the gravel walk. He sat up straight and listened. The cast-iron door-bell rang.

There was a pause, then a step sounded in the hall. Some one was entering unbidden and stalking into the house.

"Oh, John--Johnny, my boy! Where are you?" It was Cavanaugh's voice filled with fluttering grief, tenderness, dismay.

"Here I am!" John did not rise. "Here, in the dining-room."

"But the light--the light. Why don't you--"

Cavanaugh broke off as he stood in the doorway. He paused there for a moment, as if wondering what state a light would reveal the crouched form of his friend to be in.

"I don't want a light, Sam," John muttered. "You can have one if you want it. Here are some matches--but, no, I'll light up. When I came in I was so tired that I sat down here a minute, and--well, I must have--have dropped asleep. But what the h.e.l.l's the use to lie to _you_?" He struck a match and held it to the gas-jet over the table beneath the gaudy porcelain shade. His writhing face, in the sudden flare of light, was white, holding a tint even of green. He sank back into his chair. "No, I won't lie, Sam. Besides, if you haven't already heard you will soon enough."

"I _have_ heard," Cavanaugh admitted. "I heard it at home from a neighbor. Then I went to the Square to make sure, and--"

"I know. It's town talk, a delicious tidbit for women and loafers," John sneered. "Well, well, it is done, Sam. It has happened, and that is all there is to it."

"I hurried over to see you and talk with you," Cavanaugh went on. "I don't know what step you want to take."

"I'll take none," John answered, grimly. "You don't think I want to kill anybody, do you? She is his daughter, and he had her before I got her. I tell you there is no fight in me, Sam. I can fight, as you know, when it has to be done, but there is no call for it in this case. Knowing Tilly as I know her, and now knowing my own plight as it has been made plain to me since I brought her here, I would think any man a d.a.m.ned idiot that would allow his daughter to marry me. G.o.d! G.o.d! No, never! Sam, Sam, I never found fault with you before, but you ought to have told me.

By G.o.d! you ought to have opened my d.a.m.ned sightless eyes!"

"Don't! don't! my boy!" Cavanaugh cried, huskily. "You are breaking my heart. I wanted you with me. I saw how you two loved one another, and I thought I was acting right. I--I couldn't pull the bad conduct of others between you and that sweet little girl. I am not satisfied to let it rest as it is, either. You may not want to take any steps, but it is my duty to try to do something."

"Something? What the h.e.l.l could you or any one do?"

"Well, I'll tell you what struck me, my dear boy. I'm going up to Cranston to-night and see how the land lies. I don't intend to rest idle and know no more than I've picked up in the wild talk of men on the streets up-town and a stupid negro cab-driver. This is a serious matter, and I have a big duty to perform."

"It won't do any good," John groaned, softly, and he shook his head.

"I've been thinking it all over. I began to get my eyes open as soon as we got here. I've been a fool--a boy, a blind boy, at that, and what has happened to-day is not such a great surprise. You needn't go up there and beg for me, Sam. Say what you will, I am not worthy of her--that's the whole d.a.m.ned truth in a nutsh.e.l.l."

"Not worthy of her?" Cavanaugh protested. "How ridiculous, my boy!"

"No, I'm not. I don't know a man that is, but I'm sure that _I_ never can be. Do you know that in meeting me and marrying me as she did that sweet child never had a fair deal? Other girls not as good as she is have married men with plenty of means, not a--a stain on them, with respectable friends and honorable blood-kin. But what have I done--my G.o.d! what have I done? Sam, I've committed a crime. No matter how I felt--how much I wanted her--I had no sort of right to her. No man has a right to lay a filthy load like mine on unsuspecting, frail shoulders.

It is done, but if I could undo it and make her as free as she was when--when I first saw her up there, I'd do it if it plunged me into the eternal h.e.l.l of flames her daddy believes in."

Cavanaugh's sympathies were wrung dry. He sat blinking as if every word from his protege were a blow well aimed at him. Once he started to speak, but his voice broke and he desisted, sitting with his arms grimly folded, his legs awkwardly crossed, a broad, dust-coated shoe poised in mid-air.

"Maybe I ought to have had a talk with you--_maybe_," he finally said.

"I--I prayed over it, John, but no light seemed to come to justify me in judging anybody in the matter--not your poor, misguided mother even, for our Lord and Saviour told us not to judge her sort. As I interpret Him, He said them that judged was the ones that needed judgment most of all.

So on that I acted. My wife saw it a little bit different at first, but she finally said I was right, and sanctioned it. It seems to me that your ma is--is what she is just on the outside, anyway. The other day out at the work, after she had said all that in hot pa.s.sion, it seemed to me that I noticed a look of shame and regret in her face, like she realized she had gone too far. You may remember that me and her stepped to one side just before she left, and--well, she started to cry. She did that, John, and it meant a lot. I was seeing her with her veil off--as you might say--I was looking beneath the paint, powder, and coming wrinkles. You know I knew her when she was a girl. I must speak plain.

She was a beauty then, and that was her ruin, for all the h.e.l.lish designs of the sharpest of men was centered on her. Your pa was clean, straight as a die, and loved her, but he was helpless. She loved attention and would have it. She fell. It had to come. It meant your pa's ruin, and it meant this blight that is on you and Tilly now; but, my boy, I stand here as a confident witness before G.o.d Almighty and state that nothing but good can come out of it in the long run. Peace out of the turmoil; joy out of the shame and grief; the fragrance of Elysian fields out of the moral stench under your mother's roof."

"Good?" John sniffed. "Sam, don't talk to me of a G.o.d--yours or any other man's. When you have been where I am now, you'll know more about G.o.d than you do. G.o.d? G.o.d? G.o.d? You say he is everywhere. He's here to-night, isn't he? Here in this room? There in the kitchen where she left the dishes unwashed? Here where she left the door unlocked and ran away, disgusted with me for leading her into such a mess."

"Hush, hush, my boy!" entreated Cavanaugh, a dry sob rasping his throat.

"Don't say any more! It is almost time for my train. I'm going up there to-night and see what can be done. Tilly will talk to me. What could she say here to these strangers? Now, don't go to work to-morrow. Things will move along all right for one day without us, and you won't feel like working, anyhow. I'll get back to-morrow night at ten o'clock. Wait for me here."

The grim silence which now brooded over John gave consent, and Cavanaugh rose and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Don't give up," he said. "I'm sure I'll bring back good news. G.o.d will see to that."

"I'll wait for you, Sam," John consented, "but it won't be as you hope.

There is no G.o.d to see to anything. G.o.d didn't help my father, did he?

Neither will he help me. The whole thing is blind chance. 'Lead us not into temptation'! What a pitiful prayer! My mother, you say, was led in when she was not more than a girl. Were the designing men on her track G.o.d's agents, and is my fate, and my young wife's, a part of some plan laid in heaven?"

"Wait, wait!" Cavanaugh reached down and took John's inert hand and pressed it. "I'll see you to-morrow night."

CHAPTER x.x.xI

John slept but little that night. There must have been a deep undercurrent of sentiment in his make-up, despite his practical type of mind, for the sight of everything Tilly had touched gave him infinite pain. He waked frequently through the night, and even while sleeping was tossed and torn by innumerable tantalizing dreams. He was awake at sunup, and again the lonely mental spectator of the clouded panorama of the day before.

There was a sound of pans and pots being handled in the kitchen, and he got up and went to the kitchen door. It was Dora making a fire in the range. She glanced up, saw him, smiled sheepishly, and lowered her head.

"There is n.o.body over home," she explained, apologetically. "They went off last night to be gone two days--another trip to Atlanta with old Roly-poly and some more. Aunt Jane was sick, but she dressed and went, all the same. I came over to cook your breakfast, wash the dishes, and do up the house. Why shouldn't I? There is nothing to do at home."

He said nothing, but as he turned away a faint sense of grat.i.tude seemed to enter the aching void within him. A little later she called him to the dining-room. He had eaten no supper the night before, and his physical being demanded nourishment. He sat down and the child waited on him. The coffee was good and bracing, the eggs and steak were prepared to his taste, the toast brown and crisp.

Somehow he now regarded Dora with pity. How frail, wan, and anemic she looked! How thin and bloodless her hands and cheeks! She had the making of a good woman in her, but she, too, was losing her chance. How sad!

How pitiful!

"You work too hard," he suddenly said, and he wondered if that touch of refined consideration for another had come from his contact with his wife. "You are too little and young. Sit down yourself and eat."

She shrugged her peaked shoulders and laughed. "I'm not hungry. I'm not a bit hungry here lately. The only thing I care for is syrup and bread, and they say too much of that as a regular diet will get you down in the long run."