CHAPTER XV

The details of the business were all settled. John was ready to leave for New York. He was to take the midnight train and was finishing his packing in his room at about nine o'clock when Cavanaugh came in.

"I have something to tell you that you may or may not like," the old man faltered. "I don't know how you'll feel about it, but Joel Eperson is at the gate and says he wants to speak to you."

"Eperson!" John exclaimed, with a start.

"Yes, and the poor fellow looks awful, John. He could barely speak. He leaned on the gate like he could hardly stand up. I hope you will be kind and gentle with him. I have never seen such a pitiful sight. It's his pride, I reckon, and it has been cut to the quick."

John said nothing. It was an encounter he had hoped to avoid. He put some things into his bag and pressed them down. How could he confer on any terms with that man of all men? And yet he plainly saw that the meeting was inevitable.

"It wouldn't do to turn him away," Cavanaugh advised, gingerly. "You see, it would upset all the other plans, for I know him well enough to know that if you treat him roughly to-night he will not live on that farm. He would kill himself first."

"He and I will make out all right," John said, turning resolutely to the door. "Will he not come in?"

"I don't think he wants to," Cavanaugh said. "He kept in the shadow while I was talking to him and had his hat pulled down over his eyes."

As John went outside he saw Eperson at the fence. A thing that touched him sharply was the fact that Eperson unlatched the gate and swung it open, as a servant might have done for his master, while he still kept his eyes hidden under the broad brim of his slouch-hat.

"I came to see you-- I _had_ to see you, Mr. Trott," Eperson muttered, jerkingly. "I heard you were going away to-night and I couldn't--well, I had to see you."

"I understand, Eperson," John said, wondering over his own stilted tone to a man whom he so profoundly pitied. "Will you come in--or shall we--?"

"Yes, we can walk, if you don't mind," Eperson answered, quickly. "I really think it would be better. Curious people pass along and look in windows sometimes, but back here in the wood there is no light and it is quiet."

"Yes, that is better," John agreed. And side by side the two men walked along Cavanaugh's lot fence till they were in the thicket of stunted trees behind the property. Presently Eperson paused, raised his head, and spoke again:

"This will do, Mr. Trott. I really don't know what to say in beginning, for it seems to me that a million things come up, but your mother told me about the property you gave her--the farm and all the rest."

"Yes, yes, I know-- I hoped that she would mention it to you," John said, out of a sympathy he didn't dream he possessed. "That was really part of the--the understanding. She needs a comfortable home and she could not look after it herself. She knows, and I know, that you can manage it well, and so--"

"But--but don't you see--can't you understand?" Eperson pushed his hat back and his great, all but bloodshot eyes gleamed piteously in the starlight. "Don't you see that I can't be put on a rack like that and live under it? Do you think I have no pride or manhood left? I am a failure--worse than a beggar. I aspired for that of which I was unworthy--your wife--and I've come to tell you something to-night which no proud man ever in the history of the world told another. I've come to tell you that--"

"Stop, Joel, you mustn't," John broke in, and he gently laid his hand on the shoulder of the other. "That is a thing neither of us must ever hold in mind for a moment. Listen to me. You and I are in the swirl of great laws we can't understand. Of one thing we can be certain, and that is that we love the same woman. Don't come to me to-night with the idea that you are about to get in my debt. I'm in yours. I was a coward. I deserted my post of duty under the first great blight that fell upon me. I was only a poor, bewildered, stung boy, but I fled while you remained, advised, protected, and cared for both my wife and my mother. By so doing, and through your children, you tied the hearts of those two beings to you forever. My mother is a transformed woman through you--my former wife through you is a glorified mother. Don't think I am fooling myself with romantic ideals. I know where I stand. If I were to dare to-day to lay claim to your place, Tilly would turn upon me in disgust and hatred. And why? Because the price to be paid would be the happiness of the father of her children. That is a holy thing in her eyes, and I, myself, profoundly respect it."

"My God! My God!" moaned Eperson, "you can say this--you can be all this to a man like me?" Eperson's great eyes were filling; his rough breast was heaving; the shoulder under John's gentle hand was quivering.

"Yes, because I admire you from the depths of my soul," was the reply. "Your wife is not for me. My mother is not for me. Your children are theirs and yours. My mother is making a gift to you-- I am not doing it. I shouldn't say _gift_. She is trying to pay a debt that she owes you."

A sob broke from Joel. He caught John's hand and stared into his eyes. "I now know why Tilly still loves you," he gulped. "She loves you because you are more of God than man. I don't know what to say to you further, but I will say this--and as the Almighty is my witness I mean it. I'll do my duty as the father of my children, as the husband _before the law_ of my wife, and as the manager of your mother's property, but I'll never try to win my wife's heart from you."

John's arm slid around the neck of the bowed and broken man. He started to speak, but his voice clogged with a pain that was delicious. It was as if both he and his companion somehow had stood aside from their bodies and were floating among the trees in the dim starlight.

Presently, and without a word, Joel turned and walked away. He plunged again into the wood as if to avoid contact with any one from the streets of the town. On he went, his face turned homeward. There was a hill to ascend, a vale to cross. He reached the top of the hill. His step had become sluggish. He groaned aloud. He folded his arms and stood staring into the moonlight.

"It is incomplete--unfinished, not rounded out," he muttered. "It cannot remain as it is. I haven't the strength to put it through. I know where I'd fail. I'd continue to suffer, and so would he. He is noble to the core of his being. He is doing his best to help me and her, but he is giving more than he is getting, and that isn't fair. After all, after all, _there is one thing that I can do for him that he could not do for me_!"

THE END

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End of Project Gutenberg's The Cottage of Delight, by Will N. Harben