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."
CHAPTER XV
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.