However, after the first three days had passed and there was now nothing in the cottage to be done except to prepare her husband's supper, breakfast, and lunch for his dinner-pail, the time began to drag on her hands. She sat on the little porch nearly all the time, for the outside view was more soothing than the cramped interior of the rather dark little house. Across the vacant lots, and above the dim roofs of the neighboring negro shanties, she saw the smoke from the town's cotton-factories, woolen-mills and iron-foundries, the steam-whistles of which were John's signals for early rising and her own best guide to the approach of nightfall and her husband's longed-for return. Above the trees, an eighth of a mile away, could be seen the roof of Mrs. Trott's house. John had reluctantly pointed it out one evening as they stood at the gate, and every day now she looked at it as the physical symbol of a mystery which was growing more and more inexplicable. She had come to feel that there was something about John's mother which he himself did not fully understand and from which he shrank in morbid and manly sensitiveness.
Cavanaugh had called one evening, and as the three friends sat on the porch, the weather being warm, he had explained that his wife was still confined to her bed and was deeply regretting her inability to come over and see Tilly. But neither did the contractor help Tilly to solve the brooding enigma. On the contrary, his very reticence seemed to deepen it, for he had the disturbed air of a man avoiding some disagreeable fact. How could it be, Tilly began to ask herself, that a man so genial as John should have absolutely no women friends in the town of his birth, and why was it that even his men friends should so persistently shun his residence and show so little interest in his bride? There was Joe Tilsbury, she recalled. What a contrast, what an inexplicable contrast! Joe's friends had given the wife he had brought home a far-reaching welcome, afternoon receptions, quilting-bees, dances, straw-rides, surprise-parties, and even the jovial jokers of the village, in grotesque costumes, had serenaded the couple with tin pans and cow-horns. Tilly herself had taken part in the courtesies to the wife of a man far beneath John in point of position and attainments.
What could it mean? What?
Four days after the departure of her daughter, Mrs. Whaley received the third letter from Tilly, and Whaley found her one morning at her churn with that letter on her knee, the dasher inactive in a steadily extended hand.
"Who's that from?" he inquired. "Oh, I see! She writes powerful often, don't she? Well, how does she like it?"
Mrs. Whaley was silent, her eyes on the milk-coated hole in the churn-lid through which the worn dasher was wont to glide up and down.
Noting her mood, Whaley gruffly took up the letter and, adjusting his black-rimmed nose-glasses, he read it.
"What do you think of it?" she asked, when he put it down.
"I don't know as I think anything much about it," was his response.
"House, house, house! That is all there is in it--tables here and chairs there, a new organ, cook-stove that runs by gas, and water on tap within arm's-length--to say nothing of milk left on the front-door step, as well as a block of ice in summer-time every morning. All that, I say, but not one word about the big union-tabernacle-tent revival that Cavanaugh said was to open there this week? I'd walk ten miles through the broiling sun to meet that preacher and hear him rip the hide off of the ungodly down there. That town is just big enough to be full of hell, 'blind-tiger' joints, and houses full of shamefaced strumpets that are fined in city court and allowed to keep on even by the law in their devilish occupation."
Mrs. Whaley was never known to sigh. Sighs are born of elements which she had suppressed till they had died a natural death, but there was something in her very uncommunicating manner that provoked her husband's lingering at her side.
"You don't say what you think," he said, restoring his glasses to their tin case and snapping its lid down.
She raised her eyes and fixed them on his. "It is not what she says, but what it seems to me she ought to say and don't that seems strange to me," was her reply. "Why, there is no mention at all about any of John's kin--not one single word about his mother--not one single word about any woman stepping in even for a minute. I don't care anything about your tabernacles or your whisky-joints--what seems strange to me is that Tilly don't seem to have made a single acquaintance since she got there.
She writes, you see, about Cavanaugh coming over and why his wife didn't, as if that was something to tell. She writes about John being away in the country all day, and, as far as I can gather, she is at home all by herself from dawn till nightfall. There is something powerfully odd about all that. I don't know what it is, but it is there."
"I know one thing about John Trott that I didn't know when he was here,"
Whaley pursued, tapping his thumb with the case of his glasses, "and I tell you if I had known it he would have had to change before he took a daughter of mine to live under a roof with him. I got it straight that he's been heard to say that he didn't believe in a God or the Bible, and that folks were silly fools that did. I heard it this morning and I made it my business to trace it down. He said it, and I'm here to say that I don't want to be the granddaddy of the children of an atheist. The wrath of an offended God would fall on them and on me. Tilly was put in my care. The Catholics damned the soul of my son when he went over to those idol-worshipers through the wiles of a present-day Eve, and here I stood stock-still and let an avowed atheist take away my daughter. Do you think I'm going to stand it? Man-killing is said to be wrong, but killing human snakes is not, and a man that will lead an innocent Christian girl away from the smiles of God deserves death, let the law of the land be what it may. I've got a good pistol. I've got a steady finger and a firm arm. I tell you to look out. I don't know what may happen. Our Lord said Himself that He came not to bring peace, but a sword, and I'll be at war with atheism against my own flesh and blood till I die."
"You wouldn't be as foolish as that," Mrs. Whaley faltered, for once daring to oppose her spouse. "Even if he is an infidel he may get over it under--under Tilly's influence."
"Get over it, a dog's hind foot!" Whaley sniffed, his great nostrils fluttering, his harsh face rigid. "No wife ever does. They go with their husbands and so do the children, and children's children, all the way down, if the flow of hell's poison is not stopped, and I'll stop it."
On the day that dialogue was taking place Sam Cavanaugh was seated by the bedside of his wife. "Yes, I went by there," he was saying. "John had bought some fine peaches from a mountain wagon and wanted Tilly to have them to put up in jars. She was out in the little yard. I saw her clean across the old circus-grounds. She was walking back and forth, and I'll admit she looked lonely. You were right about what you said that time. I begin to see my mistake. As awkward as it would have been, maybe I ought to have had a straight talk with John, if nobody else. It looks to me like he is slowly opening his eyes now, but doesn't know how to fetch up the subject when we are together. He comes a little later in the morning and starts for home on the dot. I've seen him on the scaffold, looking off over the fields in the very saddest sort of way.
He is becoming different. He never curses the men now when they make a bobble or are slow with mortar or brick, and he has lost interest in plans and figures. They have all noticed it. Some seem to understand, while others don't. They all respect him too much to tattle among themselves about his private matters. They love him. They all love John Trott--rough as he is, they all love him; and as for me--as for me--my God! my heart aches! I feel like I've made a mistake, but I can't feel that I am much to blame, for I was going by my best lights. They love each other, those two do, with all their souls. How could I burst it up with a nasty revelation like I'd 'a' had to make?"
CHAPTER XXIV
Two days after the arrival of the bride and bridegroom the report of the marriage reached the residence of Mrs. Trott. Jane Holder had been to town to make some purchases, and in a dry-goods store heard a delivery-man mention it. She made further inquiries and established the fact of the truth of the report. And when she left the street-car at the end of the line she walked past John's cottage and looked in at the open door. Tilly was sweeping out the little hall and Jane got a fair view of her as she hurried by.
"What a sweet little thing she seems!" Jane mused. "I wonder what Liz will do. It may make her mad. I'm sure she will be mad to find out that he has been here two days and not been over home. She is expecting some money from John, too, but how can he give it to her now that he has set up for himself? Why, he is just a boy! It seems funny to think of him having a wife and a snug little home like that."
She found Mrs. Trott in the dining-room, where Dora was arranging the table for the midday meal, and as she sat removing her hat and veil, her gaudy green sunshade in her lap, she made her revelation.
"What are you saying?" Lizzie Trott cried, incredulously, and with her carmined lips parted she stood staring at her friend.
Jane repeated what she had said, and then both of them were astonished by a comment from Dora as she leaned against the table and smiled.
"I'm glad it is out," the child said. "I was dying to tell it. I knew it was coming off long ago, but he made me promise not to give it away."
"You knew?" Mrs. Trott cried, her eyes flashing behind their waxed lashes.
"Yes, and all about the house being rented. Huh! I guess I did! I saw Sam Cavanaugh hide the key under the door-step one day, and after he left I unlocked the door and went in and looked it over. Oh, it is mighty pretty! I saw Mrs. Cavanaugh come in and clean it up one day, too, and I knew that things was getting ripe. Huh! I've already seen Tilly, too, for I've passed her several times while she was out in the yard. I'd have spoke to her, but my best dress was out on the line and I know John would want me to look neat and clean."
With steady eyes and a motionless breast Lizzie Trott turned toward the stairs. "I want to talk to you in private, Jane," she said, under her breath. "Come up to your room."
"I was going up, anyway, to get these hot things off," Jane said, complainingly. "Something is wrong with me, Liz. I can't lace as tight as I did without suffocating. I've got to take off my corset and lie down. I almost fainted in Lowe & Beaman's this morning while I was waiting for Doctor Renfrow to mix my tonic. He laughed and said that I drink too much adulterated whisky for a woman of my build. He felt my pulse and looked at my tongue and eyes and talked sorter serious about my condition. He asked how old my mother was when she died, and when I told him 'thirty-six' he shook his head and said I must come into his office some day and let him examine me thoroughly."
Jane was out of breath by this time, for she had been talking while ascending the stairs, and she turned into her room and sank down on the bed. Mrs. Trott followed and stood over her, her hands on her hips.
"You say they have been here two days?" she said.
"Yes; came in the night," Jane panted forth as she began to unhook her silk dress. "Oh, my! I have that gone feeling again--sort of swimming-like, and when I try to see all of your face at once I get only part of it--like a black spot was coming between--and if I look at the wall there in the shade or at the floor I can see wriggling lights. The doctor said my liver was awful."
Lizzie Trott took a chair and sat in it. She bent downward, her bare, shapely elbows on her knees, her ringed fingers holding her chin.
"For the love of Heaven," she said, impatiently, "let up on your whining for a minute and let's talk about John. What do you think about it?"
"Oh, I don't know what to think!" and with a low groan Jane threw herself back on the bed. "What do I care? They are full of health and can take care of themselves, while here I lie with hardly strength enough to unlace myself."
"Why didn't he tell us, do you suppose?" Lizzie continued. "Why hasn't he been over? Two days and nights, and nothing said or done! Why, it is outrageous--simply outrageous!"
"Oh, I see what you are driving at!" Jane sat up and began to unlace her corsets, her yellowish wrists and bony finger working behind her back.
"Now the spots are gone and my head is steady. It is peculiar how they come and go that way. Yes, I think I see what bothers you. Well, old pal, I'll tell you. I'll bet my life she is a good girl, and a worker, too. Country stock, maybe. She looks it. No style to her dress or the way she does her hair. Yes, yes, I think I understand what is bothering you. You are wondering--well, you know what I mean. You are wondering if anybody has told her--well, told her about us--_all_ about us, I mean."
Mrs. Trott showed a tendency to flare up, which her blank bewilderment seemed to quench. "You can say the most catty things when you try," she began, but finished with a low groan and sat with her eyes fixed on a pattern in the worn rug by the bed.
"Well, I am including myself," Jane said. "You may call that catty, but I don't. What is the use to plaster facts over? Between you and me, I simply don't believe John would take to a fast girl. If there ever was a boy that gave fast girls the cold shoulder, John Trott did. I always thought he was blind, anyway--going about with his figuring and blue papers with white lines on them. The way he hauled his money out and threw it at us proved he never stopped to think what he was doing. Yes, that little wife is the right sort, and I myself don't see how--well, how he could have brought her right here, you understand. You think so, too, and that is what is bothering you. You won't admit it, but that is the nigger in your woodpile, Liz! My! how easy I feel when I'm unstrapped! The doctor laid the law down on that when I was sick the last time, you know, but how can I walk through Main Street looking--?"
"For God's sake, dry up!" Lizzie suddenly shot out. "What am I going to do? How can I get along without his help, and he can't help me and keep up a separate house. Must--must I go over there? Do you think I--I ought to call? Doesn't it look like--like he means something by--by keeping it a secret? It wasn't sudden, for Dora says he told her some time back."
"Go over there? Huh! You make me smile, Liz. You didn't even get an invitation to the wedding, or a chance to make a present, and yet you are bothered about whether you ought to call or not. As for me, I'll not put foot across his door-sill--not even if he asked me. No, not even if he come begging me on bended knee. Huh! I guess not!"
"And why not?" Lizzie Trott asked, after a momentous pause.
"Because"--and as she answered Jane's eyes held a steely gleam as from some inner light of self-accusation that refused to be quenched even by fear of giving offense--"because if he did ask me I'd know the poor boy was still blind to what everybody else knows and what he would have known long ago if he had been as coarse as other men, or if folks had not liked him too much to talk plain to him. No, I'll not go there. I wouldn't know what to say, nohow. Huh! You wouldn't, either, I'll bet."
"You are not helping me much." Lizzie Trott readjusted the imitation tortoise-shell comb in her rather lifeless hair and gave a sigh, which was followed by a moan, half of anger, half of despair.
"I think I can take a nap now," Jane said. "I feel drowsy-like. If--if you have finished, I wish you would pull the shades down. Tell Dora I don't want anything to eat and not to bring it up. She will wake me if she does."
Mrs. Trott rose sullenly and drew the shades down. She cast a parting look at Jane, and was on the threshold when from the bed came these words:
"Liz, do me a favor, please do, like a good girl. If Jim Stacy comes again, don't let him know I'm up here. Tell him some lie--tell him I am in Atlanta. He is dead broke and always drinking and jealous. I'm too sick to talk to him, and, sick or not, he'd come right up. I've got to get rid of him, that is certain."
Making some sort of promise, Lizzie went into her own room and sat down in a rocking-chair. Nervously she swung back and forth for a few minutes, and then sat still, her eyes fixed on vacancy.