Chapter XIII

By choice, he started home through the wood. He wanted the feel of the grass, heather, and moss beneath his feet; the scent of wild flowers in his nostrils; the bending boughs of great trees over him; the minute sounds of insects in his ears; the flight of winged things in his sight. Deeper and deeper into the wood he plunged. There seemed something to be drunken like an impalpable spiritual elixir. He held out the arms of his being to it; he opened the pores of his body and soul to it. The far-off hum of the town's commerce and traffic seemed an insistent denial of the intangible thing for which he hungered, and he closed his ears to it. Presently he heard the sound of breaking twigs and the stirring of dry leaves behind the vines and boulders close by on his right, and he paused to listen. Then there fell upon his ears the soft voices of children, and, carefully parting the pliant branches of some willows, he saw in a little grassy glade Tilly's daughter and son. They were gathering flowers and ferns. Little Tilly had her chubby arms full, and Joel was plucking more.

It was a beautiful sight, and yet it drenched him with infinite pain. He was tempted to attract their attention, to take them into his arms again, but he checked the impulse.

"What is the use?" he muttered. "They are hers, not mine--_his_ and hers, not _mine_ and hers."

Softly he moved away. Presently he came to a fallen tree and sat down on it. He could no longer hear the children's voices. However, another sound broke the stillness about him. It was the rapid tread of some one hurrying through the wood in his direction. The branches of the bushes in front of him parted and Tilly stood facing him, her cheeks and brow flushed and damp from rapid walking. That she could be so beautiful as now he had never dreamed possible. The years had added indescribable charm and grace to her every movement, feature, and expression.

"Oh, John!" she cried, holding out her hands as appealingly and naively as of old, "the children are lost! They started for your mother's cabin, but haven't been there. There are dangerous places in this wood, and--"

He smiled reassuringly as he took her hands. "They are all right," he said. "They are just over there. I saw them only a moment ago."

Their hands clung together, but neither of them was cognizant of the fact. It was as if not a day had elapsed since they had parted. Forgetting every law of propriety, he drew her into his arms. Her uncovered head went as of old to his shoulder, and he was about to kiss her throbbing lips when, with her hand to his mouth, she suddenly checked him.

"No, no, John!" she said, and she disengaged herself from his embrace with a firm, resolute movement. "I understand how you feel, but you mustn't-- I mustn't. I want to--yes, yes, I want to kiss you, but it would be wrong."

"Yes, it would be wrong," he groaned, and turned white. He sat down on the trunk of the tree. She stood before him. Neither spoke for a while, and the prattling voices of the children sounded on the warm, still air.

"I'm afraid I have pained you," Tilly said, after a moment, and she put her hand on his shoulder as if to make him look at her. "I wish I knew some other way, but I know of none."

"There is no other way," he declared, his hungry eyes now on her face, the marvel of which still held him enthralled. In all his dreams of her she had never appeared so transcendently wonderful.

"How could she ever have been mine--actually mine?" he asked himself from the abyss into which he was sinking.

"You see," she went on, now taking his hand into hers, "I'd have to tell Joel. I'm his wife, the mother of his children, and there can be nothing in my life that is not open to him. He is the soul of honor, John."

"I know it," John answered, simply.

"This thing is killing him, John," she went on, rapidly, as if taking no heed of what she was saying. "The world was against him, anyway, and the news of your being here so prosperous and successful by contrast to himself has bowed his head to the earth. I don't know what to do or what to say. He knows how I feel. You see, I couldn't hide from him the joy I felt when I heard you were living. I can bear anything now--anything! You see, Joel thinks that you--he has no reason for thinking so, of course, for you have lived up there and he here--but he thinks--it is stupid of him--but he thinks that you feel--exactly the same toward me as you did when we were married. Exactly! Exactly!"

"It wouldn't take a wise man to know that," John said, bitterly, his lips awry, his stare dull with agony.

"You mean to say that you _do_?" Tilly urged, her little hand pressing his spasmodically, her eyes glistening with moisture.

He nodded slowly. "How could I help it? You have done nothing to alter my feeling toward you except to deepen it. How can I overlook the fact that you befriended my mother (after I deserted her) and made her what she now is?"

"That was nothing but my duty, and my love for her," Tilly answered. She paused for a moment, and went on:

"Then you don't blame me for _marrying again_?" This was tremulously uttered, and the speaker's eyes were now downcast.

"No, I expected it. In a way, you owed it to Joel. In fact, I owe him more now than I can ever repay."

Tilly released his hand and sat down on the log beside him. Her little feet were thrust out from her, and he saw her poor tattered shoes and noted the coarse dress she wore.

"I've always wanted to know one thing," she faltered. "A thousand times after the report of your death I wondered if you died understanding how it was that I left you. Did you know why I left our little home so suddenly, John?"

"Why, to escape the awful scandal that was in the air; but what is the good of bringing that up now?"

"Ah, I see, you didn't quite know the truth," Tilly cried. "John, my father was practically out of his mind that day. He died not long afterward of softening of the brain. He had a revolver, and would have shot you if he had met you. I was expecting you home every minute, and when I saw that I could pacify him by going right back with him I did it."

"Oh, I see!" A great light broke on John. "Then it was really to save my life."

"As I saw it, yes," Tilly replied. "I wrote to you once, after I got to Cranston, but I learned afterward that father stopped the letter. I was kept like a prisoner at home, John, until the court, under my father's influence, and a narrow-minded jury had annulled our marriage. In spite of that, I was ready to go to you and only waiting for a chance, when the news of your death came. I didn't blame you for leaving. I knew that you did it in despair of any other solution, and also to help poor little Dora. That was a glorious thing to do, and God blessed your effort. How is she, John?"

"Well, and happy--both of them. I had a letter yesterday. They like their work and believe they are doing good."

"And you did that, John--you did it. When your own troubles were greatest, you thought of that poor child. It was the noblest thing a man ever did."

John shrugged his shoulders. "It was selfish enough. I needed a companion, and she became one. For years we were like real brother and sister."

"And then she left you all alone," Tilly sighed. "Oh, John, John, the world has been unkind to you! You see, I have my children. Only a mother can know what that means. I don't hear their voices now. Will you show me where they were?"

He led her through the wood to the glade. A great deadening chagrin was on him. He told himself that she had suddenly bethought herself of the need of the protection of her children's presence. Parting the bushes on the edge of the glade, he looked around and presently espied them asleep in the shade of a tree. Little Tilly's head lay on a heap of flowers and ferns, and Joel lay coiled on the grass at her feet.

"They often do that," Tilly beamed up at John. "We needn't wake them yet--not just yet. I have a thousand things to say and ask, but my thoughts are all in a jumble. How strange it seems to be here like this with you again! I wonder, can there be any harm (in God's sight) in telling the simple, honest truth? I've never done a conscious wrong in my life, John. I did what I thought was right when I married you--when I left you to go home with my father--when I secretly visited your mother--when I finally married Joel--and now while I am here with you like this telling you that--that--"

She broke off, her all but etherealized face paling and growing more rigid.

He clutched her hands. He held them passionately, desperately to his breast. "Go on!" he panted. "For God's sake, go on! I am starving for a word from your lips. I've heard you speak a million times in my dreams. Night after night I've lived with you in our little cottage, only to wake and find it a damnable mockery, with nothing but the dull grind of life before me."

"What I say I would say to Joel's face if I could do so without killing him." Tilly smiled wistfully. "John, I don't believe a true woman can love but once in the way I loved you. She can many; she can have children when she thinks it can bring no harm to her dead lover, but, if she is a genuine woman, she will exult when that lover rises from the grave and stands before her again. Dear John, I could take your suffering face between my hands and kiss your lips as no woman ever kissed a man's lips before. Yes, I could do it, and I'd die to be able to do it again, but it is not to be. My body may not love, but my soul may, and it is an eternal thing, John, and so is your soul. Those children have a right to the care of a mother who is untainted in the sight of the world. Their poor, patient, unfortunate father deserves as clean a wife as the earth can produce. I know you love me-- I know it. I feel it. I see it. But we've got to part. I believe in God. When I doubt God I suffer and am forced back to faith by the pain I feel. Believing in God, I also believe that the greater the cross put upon us the more patiently it must be borne. My cross is to live without you--yours is to live without me. But, oh, my heart aches--aches--aches for you! It seems to me that your burden will be heavier even than mine, for I have my children and you are all alone. John, John, you are young yet. Don't you think that if you were to marry some good girl and have children of your own--"

"No," he broke in, shuddering. "Leave that out! I couldn't do it--knowing your heart as I now know it."

"I see, I understand, and--yes, I'm glad. Oh, I can't help it, John. I'm glad. When do you leave here?"

"Very soon now--in a few days."

"How strange, oh, how strange!" she mused, aloud. "And after this--after this brief moment I am not to see you again, or hear from you--yes, I'll hear through your mother, for she tells me she is not to leave with you. How odd that is, too! Joel and I and the children have robbed you even of the mother who bore you. You never knew her as she now is, John, and that is a pity, too. In her rebirth she is as saintly as a consecrated nun. She does not know that she believes in God, but she does. There is a streak of doubt in her as there was in you. Are you still an unbeliever, John?"

He lowered his head, shrugged, and contracted his brows. "I don't like to say--to _you_, at least," he faltered. "Not to you, Tilly."

"But you may, John--it won't pain me at all. I used to think that the worst sinners were those who denied the existence of God, but I now think there may be persons so godlike that they can't realize the existence of any God outside of themselves. John, you are godlike. If I could think of you as sinning, I'd sin in that thought alone. Go on calling yourself an atheist, and the angels will treat it as a holy jest."

"I don't follow you," he said, wearily, as if he would dismiss the subject. "You are mistaken about me. I am just an average man. But I don't believe as you do. It may be beautiful--it no doubt is, but I can't grasp it. It never came my way, somehow."

The wood was very still. Under the beating sun, the wild flowers and tender leaves of plants were the shelter of myriads of moving things visible and invisible. Suddenly a locust sang in the top of a persimmon-tree. A crow flew cawing over a distant field. The rumble of a farmer's wagon was heard on the road. Tilly's face was steadily raised to John's. She put her hand on his arm, the arm she used to lean on so lovingly in their walks on the mountain road.

"You can live without conscious faith, John," she said, in the sweet treble tone he had loved so long, "but I cannot. If I doubted, as I did once when we thought Tilly was dying, I'd wither up in despair. You may as well know the truth. I live only for my children, John. Joel has to suffer in not having all my heart-- I can't help that. He must suffer, too, because he makes no headway in life and is unable to provide well for me and his children. I can't help that, either. That is his cross and he is bearing it like a saint. But as for me, I have two things to live for--my children and your mother. God has put them in my hands and I must care for them. Do you think I could live without faith now? Why, I know God must help me care for them. I am praying for that. Night after night--day after day I plead with God to provide for those three. I want to see the children educated. I want to keep your mother as happy and peaceful as she now is. She is my mother now--she is also Joel's; she is the grandmother of my children. Don't you think my prayer will be answered, John?"

"I know it," he said, suddenly, recalling the compact just made with his mother. "I know it."

"Then you believe, too," she cried, eagerly, wonderingly.

"Yes, I believe that," he admitted, reluctantly. "Something will happen--something will turn up. You must never lose faith and hope."

Tilly looked up at the sun. "It is eleven o'clock at least," she said. "I must be going. I have to get Joel's dinner ready. I shall tell him about this, of course, and now"--she choked up--"this must be good-by. How can it be? It doesn't seem possible--that is, _forever_. For, if it were possible, the God I adore would be a fiend. We are going to meet in another life. As sure as you and I stand here loving each other as we do, we are going to be reunited. A stream of spirit will connect us even while alive. If it were otherwise, there'd be no law and order in the universe, and law and order are everywhere. Yes, we'll meet again, someway, somehow, somewhere."

She held out her hands. He took them into his. He was drawing her to him, the old fire of divine passion filling him, when he felt the muscles of her fingers stiffen defensively, and she turned her eyes to the sleeping children.

"No, no! No, my darling," she said, a fluttering sob in her throat, her eyes filling. "We must be honorable. Good-by. Leave me here with them, please. I'll let them sleep a moment longer and then take them home."

"Good-by," he said, turning away. The bending branches of the bushes came between her and him. Like a plodder who has become suddenly blind he staggered forward. The earth seemed to sink as he trod upon it. Wild-grape vines whipped his brow and cheeks. Stones slipped and rolled beneath his feet as he groped along. He was panting like a wild animal long and closely pursued.

He had turned away from the town's direction. He told himself that he could not just now meet Cavanaugh and his wife with the meaningless platitudes of daily life. A rugged, wooded hill rose before him. He paused, rested awhile, and then began to climb its steep side. Half-way to the summit, he stopped and looked about him.

There lay the growing town where his boyhood was spent. There loomed up the graveyard, with its ghostly slabs and shafts. There was the old house which had haunted his dreariest dreams, and there--yes, there was the cottage which had been the shrine of his sole joy in life. Drawn close together in perspective and full of meaning they stood--his House of Despair, and his Cottage of Delight. From both he tore his clinging gaze. Beyond his mother's cabin lay an undulating meadow and another log cabin. Along a narrow path walked a woman holding the hands of two children. Across the furrows of a corn-field to meet the three trudged a man without a coat, an ax on his shoulder. They met. The man took the younger child up in his arms, and the three others walked onward through the yellow veil of light.

The observer groaned, filled, and sobbed. Through a mist of unrestrainable tears he watched fixedly till the group had vanished in the cabin. Then he started toward the town.