Chapter XX

Shortly after the return of Cavanaugh and John to their work on the court-house, John's fate was permanently decided. His chats with Tilly took place every evening, either on the veranda, in the yard, or in strolls along the mountain roads. One warm evening they had seated themselves on a log on a lonely road on a hillside. Below them in the twilight loomed up the hamlet with its lights and slow, blue smoke from the chimney-tops. In the distance a dog was barking and a farmer calling to his hogs. A church-bell was clanging for prayer-meeting. They sat close together. She had a fan, and, as the mosquitoes were troublesome, he had taken the fan and, novice that he was, he was awkwardly beating them away.

"Don't bother," she said. "You are tired after your day's work," and with a pretty air of male management she took the fan and fanned his flushed face. He was perspiring from the walk up the hill, and with her own dainty handkerchief she wiped his broad, tanned brow. He had never kissed her. He had hardly dared even to think of it, but he kissed her now. He was afraid she would rise resentfully and start for home, but she took it as a matter of course and allowed him to draw her head to his shoulder. For half an hour, in sheer bliss, he was unable to speak, and Tilly seemed to understand. When he recovered his voice it occurred to him that he must now ask her to be his wife, but he found himself unable to formulate the prodigious thing in words. However, he accomplished it indirectly, for he began telling her about the cottage Pete Carrol had left so neatly furnished, and which Cavanaugh wanted him to rent. Tilly listened as eagerly as a petted child who knows its privileges. She frankly asked about the furniture, the curtains, the rugs, the dishes, and, as he held his cheek against hers, he told her everything he could think of in regard to the place. Suddenly she laughed out happily, teasingly.

"You haven't even asked me to marry you," she said, voluntarily kissing him and then playfully stroking his lips with her soft, pliant fingers. "You are very strange, John. I always know what you feel--what you think--but you don't say them right out."

"I was afraid," he suddenly confessed. "I've been afraid all along--afraid of something, I don't know what, but afraid you'd refuse me--as--as you did Joel Eperson."

"Refuse you!" kissing him again, and nestling back into his arms. "How could you have thought that?"

"I don't know--but _will_ you--_will_ you?" he asked. "Will you say it to-night in plain words, Tilly? Will you be my wife, and go to Ridgeville with me and live in that little house?"

"How could you doubt it?" she asked, raising her head and looking at him trustfully and admiringly.

"I don't know, but I was afraid," he returned. "Somehow I can't feel that such a big thing could come my way. I want you--God knows I want you, but somehow you seem miles and miles above me. You know so much that I don't know. Every day it seems to me you teach me something I never knew before but--but if you will come with me I'll do everything in my power to make you happy. Will you?"

"Of course I will!" And Tilly kissed him again, and held him at arm's-length for an instant and looked at him proudly. "I am the one that ought to have been afraid," she smiled. "Men pass along and make love to country girls and never see them again. In fact, Sally Teasdale said the other day to me--she is mad on account of me and Joel--she said that you were just a flirt, amusing yourself while you are here. Those are the things a girl has to put up with, John. Sally had her eyes on you at first. She is dying to get married. She thought you were handsome and wonderful in every way till you got to going with me, and now she sniffs and turns up her nose and tries to make me doubt you."

"I never liked her, and she knew it," John said. "But let's not talk about her or any one else. There is no one I care a pin about except you and Sam and his wife."

"Nobody else--nobody?" Tilly asked, slowly. "Why, you told me once that your mother is living, that she is a widow and that you help take care of her!"

Here John's stiff fingers relaxed in their clasp on Tilly's small hand, and with averted face he sat still, silent, and gloomily reminiscent.

Tilly edged herself around till her eyes met his again. "Yes, I knew your mother was living, John," she went on, "and I'm going to confess something. I'm going to confess that I've been worrying more since you got back from your home than I did before. John, I thought if you really intended to ask me to marry you, that you would tell your mother about it, and that you would naturally tell me what she said--that is, if she was willing for you to marry me. But as you have never mentioned her since you got back, I thought--well, I thought she might have other plans for you and that you didn't want to hurt my feelings by telling me what she said."

John stared helplessly for an instant; then he shrugged his great shoulders. "She has got nothing to do with me or what I do," he blurted out. "She goes her way and I go mine."

"But surely," Tilly said, groping for his meaning, "she knows about me--you have told her--"

"No," John broke in, in a mood like that of his old impatience over work that was badly done by his assistants, "I haven't told her, and what is more, I shall not tell her. It is no business of hers. I did tell her that from now on I'd not supply her with as much money as I have been doing, but I didn't tell her why. She throws money away--she burns it in solid wads. She is--is foolish. She is not like your mother or any of these plain, sensible folks up here. She is on the go all the time, to parties, dances, and what not."

"I see," Tilly said, in a mystified tone. "Then she must be young. How old is she, John?"

"I don't know; I haven't the least idea," was John's prompt reply. "Let me think. Seems to me I heard Jane Holder say she was very young when I was born. That would put her at, well, near forty. But what does that matter? I don't care anything about her or her age."

"John, you speak so strangely," Tilly intoned, reproachfully. "You pretend that you don't love her. Why, I'll love her always and with all my heart if for nothing else than that she is your mother."

"Rubbish!" John sniffed. "You won't love her; you won't even like her. I tell you she is--is different from what you think. She is--is giddy, silly, complaining, quarrelsome--up all hours of the night and asleep all day or moping about with bloated eyes."

"I see. She is fond of society," Tilly returned, with a little self-deprecating sigh. "Ridgeville is a rather big town and there must be plenty of women like her there. I won't blame her for that. I shall love her, and I shall make her love me, too, if I possibly can. She will be old some day and she will need us both."

For some reason inexplicable to him, John was impatient with the trend of the talk. He was vaguely angry, and yet was trying to curb the impulse. For the first time he was finding Tilly unreasonable. Since the very inception of the plan to marry Tilly and reside in the little cottage he had pictured himself and her as being completely cut off from his old life. Since his visit to his home the sheer thought of the sordid old house and its inmates had jarred on him to the point of repulsiveness. He had learned to like the orderly simplicity of the circle in which Tilly had her being, and to wish that his might have been like unto it.

It was now time to return home, and they started back. Tilly hung lovingly on his arm. "We sha'n't quarrel about your mother," she said, soothingly. "I shall win her love if I can, and if I can't it won't be my fault. I am a plain, home-loving person, though, and she may not take to me at all. I'd like to help that little girl Dora, too. You say she can't read or write. I could teach her."

Here John's interest was roused. He bent toward Tilly's upturned face. "That would be nice," he said. "The poor little rat needs something of the sort. Yes, we must, between us, do something for that kid. She has the making of a fine woman in her."