Chapter VII

Joel Eperson sat on his small one-horse wagon, which was loaded with fire-wood. He was taking the wood to Cavanaugh's from the small farm he was renting two miles from Ridgeville. Joel had aged remarkably. Young as he was, his thin hair and beard were becoming gray, and his sallow face was seamed with lines of worry and care. His clothing was of the cheapest material and threadbare, and yet faultlessly clean. As he got down at the front gate Cavanaugh and his wife, who were seated under an apple-tree at the side of the house, came around to meet him.

"Here is the wood you wanted," Joel said, removing his hat in quite his old chivalrous way. "You said dry oak, and I found plenty on the hill back of my corn-field."

"And mighty nigh killed yourself cutting it in lengths and splitting it," Cavanaugh said. "Dry oak is a hard proposition for anything but a sawmill. What do you want for this load?"

"A dollar is what I usually get," Joel answered, sensitive as he always was when dealing with friends.

"Humph!" Cavanaugh sniffed, and looked at his wife. "This load is twice as big as any dollar load I ever bought, and will throw out twice as much heat to the square inch. I'll tell you, Joel, I've got a two-dollar bill that is burning a hole in my pocket, and it goes for this load of wood or you have me to whip. We are out of stove-wood, too, and I don't want any dickering from you about it."

Joel flushed under his tattered straw hat. "It isn't worth that much," he declared, tapping the ground with his whip.

"It is worth it to me, Joel," Cavanaugh smiled, "so what can you do about it? I won't take double value from any man, much less you. How is Tilly?"

"She is fairly well, thank you," the farmer replied.

"And the little ones?" Mrs. Cavanaugh asked, with a motherly smile.

"They are both all right, thank you," Joel said, his undecided glance on his wood. Then, to his surprise, the contractor came through the gate, took the reins from his hands, and drove the horse with its load around to the gate at the side of the house. Halting there, Cavanaugh began to throw the wood over the fence.

"Let him have his way, Joel," Mrs. Cavanaugh said, smiling. "He'd be miserable if he got anything too cheap from an old friend like you. Before you start home, come in; I've made two little waists for the children from a pattern Tilly lent me the last time she was in. I hope they will fit."

"You are always doing things like that, and yet want me to take double price for my produce," Joel said, frowning. "Something is wrong somewhere, Mrs. Cavanaugh."

The old woman laughed lightly. "Go help Sam throw off the wood, Joel," she said. "Don't tell me I haven't the right to sew for little children when I have none of my own. I love your two, and what I do for them has nothing to do with you."

With a look of blended pleasure and pain, Joel joined Cavanaugh, and together they unloaded the wagon. When it was empty Joel shook the bits of bark and chips from the plank flooring, and stared at the contractor timidly. "There is a matter I want to ask you about, Mr. Cavanaugh," he began, clearing his throat. "It is a serious thing for me, and my wife, too. I've wanted to mention it for several days--in fact, since I first heard of it. I really don't know whether I have the right to ask you, and if I haven't you must stop me. Mr. Cavanaugh, all sorts of stories have been floating about to the effect that--that my wife's--that John Trott's reported death was a mistake, and that--and that you went up to New York to--"

Joel broke off. He was quite agitated.

"I know what you mean," Cavanaugh put into the break. "How did you hear it?"

"My neighbors are all talking about it," said Eperson, laboriously, his face now grim and fixed. "I went to Todd Williams and asked him about it. All he could tell me was that he saw a man in New York that looked like John Trott, but he said it might have been only a fancy. Of course, I've kept the talk from Tilly as much as possible. I asked our neighbors not to mention it to her and they promised, but--but--"

"You think she has heard it?" Cavanaugh submitted, gravely.

Eperson nodded. A grim expression twisted his lips awry and left them quivering as he spoke. "Yes, I think some part of it, at least, has reached her. I saw a change in her last night when she came back from a visit to the Creswells. She didn't mention it to me, but I was watching her and I saw a change. She was excited. I think I might call it excitement, Mr. Cavanaugh, and she didn't sleep well last night. She got up several times, and it seemed to me once that she was about to speak to me about it, but still she didn't."

"I see, I see," said Cavanaugh, slowly. "Well, Joel, I hardly know what is right to do in a matter as delicate as this is, but still right is right, and if there is anybody in the world that ought to know the truth about this, why, it is you and Tilly. Joel, the truth is, John Trott and Dora are both still alive."

"Then, then, _it is true_?"

"Yes, Joel; I've just had a letter from John and he wants the facts known. But I don't see that there is any reason for you to be disturbed. You see, the law parted John and Tilly years ago, and even if it hadn't, his long desertion (we'll call it that) would have amounted to the same in any court."

Like an automaton which all but creaked in its joints, Joel took up his reins. Tapping his thin horse with his whip and making a clucking sound between his teeth, he turned his wagon around.

"Wait! You haven't been paid yet," Cavanaugh cried, holding out a bill.

Pausing, a flurried, far-away look in his eyes, Joel took the money.

"Thank you--thank you," he ejaculated. "So there's no doubt about it? Did you actually see him, Mr. Cavanaugh--with your own eyes, I mean? I don't want any hearsay or second-hand report. I want the truth--the facts."

"I spent a week with him, Joel."

Eperson wound the lines around his left hand and brought his desperate eyes back to Cavanaugh's face. "There is one thing more," he gulped, his hand at his throat. "Is he--is John Trott a--a married man?"

"No, Joel; he's single. Marrying didn't seem to be--well, exactly in his line. His time has been taken up with a growing business, his books, a pet dog, and Dora. She was like a loving sister, I understand, till she married a man she loved and moved out of the country. John is a sort of--well, you might say a sort of stay-at-home, soured old bachelor that never took much to women. At least that's the way I size him up. He makes plenty of money, and has laid up some, but I don't think he cares much for it. He's odd--a sort of deep-feeling fellow--different from the general run of men."

In a nervous sort of movement Joel wiped his lips with his hand.

"There is a thing I'd like to know," he said, slowly, impressively, frankly. "You say he is single, and that makes me wonder. Mr. Cavanaugh, truth is truth, and, as you say, right is right; would you mind telling me whether you think he has--has changed--well, in regard to his--his feeling toward Tilly?"

"You are asking me a ticklish question," Cavanaugh said, with a start and a dropping of his honest eyes. "You see, John never came right out and talked plain on that line, and--"

"I was only asking for your _personal_ opinion," emphasized Joel; "in talking with him did you gather that--that his sentiments had undergone no change since he left here?"

"I don't see what good it will do," the old man said, "but since you insist on knowing I may as well admit that I didn't see any change. In my opinion, Joel, he loves her even more than he did. He didn't say so, you understand, but that's what I gathered. I was watching him when I told him about you and her getting married, and I must say I pitied him. I don't know why, but I did. He looked so downcast, and, you might say, almost astonished."

With the groping movement of a man in the dark, Eperson started to get into his wagon, but was stopped by Mrs. Cavanaugh.

"Wait, Joel!" she called out. "You are forgetting these things," and she brought them to him wrapped up in paper. "Give Tilly my love and tell her if the waists don't fit I can take them in or let them out."

"Thank you; you are very, very, kind." Joel had lifted his hat, and, with a hand that seemed bloodless, he took the parcel and put it into his wagon, carefully covering it with his coat. He made no effort toward starting on again, and, as there was an opening for it, Cavanaugh said to his wife:

"I've just been telling him about John, and it seems to me that Joel is sorter worried about--about its effect on Tilly."

Eperson nodded as if acquiescing to a statement too delicate to be discussed, and remained silent, a wilted look of despair on him.

"I see, I see," Mrs. Cavanaugh said. "I was wondering how she would take it. She's never been exactly like other women. Few women would have--have, you know what I mean, Joel--would have acted like she has all along in regard to John's mother. I must say, and I know that you will agree with me, that she showed herself to be a wonderfully good Christian woman. Why, sometimes it looked to me like she loved Mrs. Trott more than she did even her own mother. But she's been rewarded--oh, you know she's been gloriously rewarded! Your sweet little wife, Joel, has saved the very soul and body of a lone, lost woman. But you helped--oh yes! if it hadn't been for you she never could have done it. And you deserve your reward, too. In my opinion you have been a man amongst a million in all you have done in that matter."

"I don't deserve your praise, Mrs. Cavanaugh," Eperson sighed. "I did it all for Tilly. She was unhappy till we began to help Mrs. Trott. I saw where the trouble lay, and did a little, that's all."

"And are you worried about how Tilly will take the news about John?" Mrs. Cavanaugh asked, while her husband hung open-mouthed on Eperson's answer.

"I don't know how exactly to make you understand the--the situation," Joel stammered. "But I reckon I may as well say, and be done with it, that--that--" He went no farther, his words piling one upon another on his helpless tongue, his great, tender eyes bulging from their dark-ringed sockets.

"You can't mean that she would be worried about the divorce." Mrs. Cavanaugh feebly came to his assistance. "Sam and I were talking that over. There is no doubt that it was legal in every way. Old Whaley saw to that. Narrow-minded and hard as he was, he acted for the best in that case."

"I see you don't understand." Joel dug the toe of his coarse shoe into a tuft of grass and mechanically pounded it with his heel. "You don't understand, because you don't know Tilly as well as I do. Mrs. Cavanaugh, how can I put it any better than to--to say that--no matter what was done in court, no matter what John Trott did that might be called 'desertion,' Tilly would never have married again if she had thought he was alive. I'd never have dared to ask her to marry me if I hadn't thought he was dead. I believed it--from the bottom of my soul I believed it, and--and, my friends, listen! I got her to believe it. I saw that she doubted it a little, and I worked and worked, and argued and argued, till finally I got her to believe it. But even then I'd have failed if Mrs. Trott hadn't--hadn't helped me. Mrs. Trott believed he was dead, and it was her belief and my talk that finally convinced Tilly. But now what is to be done?"

"Why, nothing that I can see," Mrs. Cavanaugh answered. "All you have to do is to show Tilly that in no sense of the word is she bound by her first marriage. You seem to think she is worried over that."

Joel shrugged his shoulders and took a deep breath. "You don't understand yet," he said, with a low groan. "She is excited--so excited that she can't sleep, but it is not the kind of excitement you think it is. She's heard the report that John Trott is still alive and she is afraid that it may not--by some chance--be true. I don't mean that she'd ever live with him again--now that she is--is a mother, or that she'd hold it against me for marrying her as I did; but to know that no harm came to him will make her happier than she's been for many a day. That is a thing I've got to face. She is the mother of my children, but she has never given me her whole heart and soul. She gave them to John Trott. She has never blamed him for any step he took. She thought that he left here for her sake, _and died for her sake_. Do you think I don't know that when she hears that he himself has never married in all these years--do you think that she will then love him less than she did? She always looked on him as the most wronged man alive. Do you suppose that she herself will turn against him now? In the name of God, what excuse would she have, and him still loving her as Mr. Cavanaugh thinks he does?"

"I never looked at it that way," Mrs. Cavanaugh said. "You are getting me all mixed up. Does Mrs. Trott-- Have any of the reports got to her?"

"No, not yet; but Tilly will want to tell her, now that there is no doubt as to the truth. I must tell my wife what I have just learned. It is my duty to tell her. Yes, yes, I must tell her. I'm honor-bound at once to give her all the joy in my power."

It was as if both Cavanaugh and his wife could think of nothing in the way of comfort for Eperson, and, taking his reins into a better grasp and touching his hat politely, he mounted his wagon and drove away.