CHAPTER XVII

The two friends arrived at Ridgeville the following morning at ten o'clock and at once started for their homes. To John's surprise, at the end of the first street Cavanaugh did not turn toward his home, as would have been natural, but kept on in the direction John was to go.

"You are out of your beat, aren't you?" John asked.

"I am and I ain't," Cavanaugh smiled. "I want to show you something—a little house and lot that I hold a mortgage on. You know the cottage I built for Pete Carrol, this side of your mother's house? Well, he couldn't pay for it and it is on my hands. He went West, you know, and left all his furniture in it. I've had a rent-sign on it for two months, but haven't had a single applicant for it. I'd like to take a peep at it."

The cottage was in quite an isolated spot, near the end of the street railway, in full view of the lots containing shanties in which negroes and the very poorest whites lived. Above the tree-tops, not far away, could be seen the patched roof of John's ramshackle home.

"I hid the key under the door-step," Cavanaugh said, as they entered the small front gate, and, bending down, he secured it. Then he crossed the tiny, newly painted front porch and unlocked and opened the door.

There was a little hallway with rooms on each side of it, a tiny parlor on the right which, on entering, they found neatly equipped with plain oak furniture, and a rug or two on the floor, which was covered with straw matting. They next entered the dining-room, which was furnished in similar style. There was a small sideboard holding a modest supply of table-linen, dishes, and glassware.

"Pete's wife was awfully particular, and she left things in apple-pie order," Cavanaugh said, as they went into the kitchen adjoining. This room, too, was supplied with all necessary utensils, a neat stove and a sink with running water. Next they saw the bedroom. It held a table with a lamp on it, and an oak bedstead in neat order with unsoiled pillows and white coverlet. There was a bureau with a wide plate-glass mirror, also a wash-stand with a white ewer and basin. The floor was covered with new matting.

"A snug little nest, eh?" Cavanaugh asked, with a slow and rather automatic smile. "Looks like somebody ought to rent it, cheap as I hold it and ready furnished—only fifteen a month."

"It is all right," John answered, indifferently. "You ought to rent it in the fall, anyway, when business picks up."

"I want to rent it by the time we finish the court-house, anyway"—Cavanaugh continued to smile—"and I'd like to rent it to somebody that would take care of it— I mean somebody that I know about. Gee! wouldn't this be a snug little nest for a pair of new-married turtle-doves? Think of a fellow coming back from his day's work at night to a cottage like this, with a little wife to meet him in a white bib and tucker and a kiss and a glad smile?"

John had a sudden flash of comprehension, and he flushed from head to foot. His great mouth made a failure of a smile, and that he was pleased Cavanaugh did not doubt. "You think you have a joke on me," John said. "Well, well, go it, Sam! I'm game for a little thing like that."

"You may call it a joke, but I don't," the contractor said, quite seriously. "You see, I've got an ax to grind—two, in fact, for in the first place I want to rent this house for enough to pay the taxes and insurance, and in the next I want to tie you down to Ridgeville. I am too old to move now, and I need you mighty bad. Say, you and I can become partners before long."

"Well, what has that got to do with your—your other damn foolishness?" John's face was averted as he spoke. They were back in the bedroom now, and he made a pretense of examining the new sash-cords of the window. He drew one of the weights up in its hidden groove and lowered it again. He had never before examined a detail of a building so minutely. He looked closely at the paint on the mullions and searched for flaws in the glass.

"It has got this to do with it," Cavanaugh went on, now steadily and without a vestige of his former smile. "I'm no fool, my boy. I know as well as I stand here that you are not going to leave that sweet little girl up there to do the drudgery for that irritable old hog and his obedient wife. If you did I'd lose respect for you. You are making good pay and you will make even better. In a little nook like this you could make her as happy as the day is long. She could do all the housework and not work a fourth as hard as she does now. Why, I saw her in the corn-field the other day, toiling like an old-time slave with a heavy hoe, while her rotten old daddy was in the house picking out passages in the Bible to pin down some particular argument of his."

"I guess—I guess—" John stammered, "that the—the girl would have something to say on the subject."

"How can she, in the name of all possessed"—Cavanaugh snorted and laughed—"unless she is asked? I'm no fool. I know what two smudges of red about the cheek-bones of a pretty girl mean when they never come in sight till a big, hulking feller in overalls appears on the scene. I know, too, that things have taken place that you haven't heard about. I know that I've turned myself into a contractor of flesh and blood instead of brick and mortar. Them old folks simply agreed one night, in a talk with me, that I might run it. I told them I'd stand for you in every way, and they— Well, haven't you noticed for the last week that they have slid off to bed early and left you and Tilly out under the trees or on the porch, together? Well, that was my doings. The old man was for having you come to him and state your intentions in plain words, but I advised him against it. I told him that you could make a speech on internal revenue, political economy, or any other big subject to an audience a thousand strong, but that you'd fall down in an attempt to tell a girl's daddy that you wanted to provide her grub and clothes. I did have a big tussle, though, to keep one certain thing out of the discussion, and that was your religion, or rather your lack of it. He kept saying that he wanted to know what particular brand of theology you'd impress on his daughter at your fireside. He said he never had failed to see women go with their husbands sooner or later, and he was afraid you hadn't been converted yet. However, I got him quiet on that line. I told him, you see, that while you hadn't yet made an open profession, I knew you well enough to be sure you'd end up all right and make as good a citizen as any man I know."

"You have heard about a certain fellow by the name of Eperson, haven't you?" John asked, as he strove manfully to quench the glad lights in his eyes. "Well, he and Tilly have been sweethearts ever since they were children."

"He has, but she hasn't." Cavanaugh emphasized the "he." "I know all about it. He is as near dead as a man can be from disappointment. She might have thought she cared for him, at one time, but when you came all that was off. Now I'm going home to my old woman. Talking to you on these lines makes me want to see her mighty bad. I feel younger, and I'll bet she will look that way to me, too. But remember this, when we get back to Cranston, sail right in and tell Tilly how you feel. She knows, anyway, but you tell her straight out, like a man with a load of hay to sell, and be done with it. I want to rent this house and I'm going to do it."

They were outside the cottage now. Cavanaugh had closed the door and was on his knees, hiding the key under the step. John stood over him.

"I wish you knew what you are talking about, Sam," he said, and it was the first even indirect confession of the sacred tumult within him. "I'll say that much. I wish—I wish it could be like you say it is. My God! Sam, when I dare to think of it I go all to pieces. It is too good to be true. Nothing has ever come my way that amounted to much in this life. How could as big a thing as that be for me?"

"Well, it just is." Cavanaugh stood up, his fine face working in sympathy. "The Lord has fixed it that way, my boy. You have had a hard time, but your day is dawning. And listen to me. Under your full joy you are going to wake up into a gratitude to the Creator for His great gifts. You've been bitter—so bitter, for one reason or another, that you've denied even God's existence, but with a believing wife like Tilly at your side, and with children to bring up right, you will be different. You are just a boy, anyway—a great, big, awkward, stumbling boy, but you are going to make a man, and a good one."

CHAPTER XVIII

"Asleep, I reckon," she said, busy with the pink sash of one of her legless ladies, the tinseled hat of which was pinned askew over a pair of eyes formed of green beads. "They've only been home about an hour. Aunt Jane is sick. Your ma said she fainted at the party and they all thought she was dead for a while."

"Those are not good dolls," John said, from the depths of his turbulent joy. "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll buy you a real wax one with yellow hair and blue eyes. I saw one in a show-window as I came along just now. It had on shoes and stockings and held a parasol in its little hand."

"All talk—all wind, hot air!" the child said, indifferently, and she had evidently picked up the expressions from her elders. "A drummer—the fellow with the striped shirts that is always whistling and sells cloaks—he told me he was going to get me a doll and a baby-carriage, but he never came back—changed his rowt, so Aunt Jane said. But this doll's all right. Don't you think so, brother John?"

"It will do till I get the other," he answered, and then he felt an impulse that he had never felt before. He bent down and put his hand caressingly on the almost matted hair, and she, not understanding, impatiently shook it off and went on with her work, her mouth now full of pins.

There was a chair near by and he sat down in it, bending toward the child. Seldom had his boyishness been so apparent. He wanted to open his cramped heart to some one—why not to her? He wanted to hear his own voice applauding the things that were leaping, singing, shouting in the penetralia of his being.

"Say, Dora," he began, clasping his warm hands between his knees, "can you keep a secret?"

"A secret?" she repeated, letting her doll lie for an instant in her ragged lap and staring straight at him with growing interest. "Have you got one—a real one?"

He had. His smile and generous nod admitted it. "Can you keep your mouth shut, that is what I want to know?"

"Yes, yes!" she exclaimed, eagerly. "You ask Aunt Jane if I ever let your ma know—let her know—but never mind. I can keep one. Try me—that is if you are not kidding. I don't want any foolishness from you or anybody else. Life is too short."

"Well, listen!" he began, and something in the blaze of his eyes, the tremolo of his erstwhile brusk voice, the warm look of his face, caught and held her attention. "Did you ever think the day would come when I'd go with a girl?"

"Who, you?" Dora sniffed. "Now I know you are kidding."

"No, I'm not," he went on, riding the tide of his joyous self-emptying. "I have done it often since I went to Cranston. I got acquainted with one up there. Sam and I board with her pa and ma. You ought to see her, Dora. She is all right—as nice and pretty as any stuck-up girl in this town. Folks up there are different—very, very different from these down here who don't know that you and I are alive. They are polite and decent and civilized. Lord! somehow it makes me sick to think of living on here, but I reckon I will. Say, did you ever notice the stunning little cottage that Sam put up for Pete Carrol on the right-hand side of the street as you go down? But never mind that. What would you think if I was to tell you that before very long I might—" John was stalled. How could he express by mere lip and tongue the transcendental thing which so completely filled him?

"What are you trying to get through yourself?" It was another of the child's picked-up expressions, and she leaned toward him with a slow leer of wonder. "What is your great secret?"

"I was coming to it," he said, his words falling steadily now. "But you mustn't tell it to a living soul. Kid, I'm thinking about getting married."

"Married—you? Huh!" Dora laughed incredulously as she plucked a pin from her lips. "Why, you are too young! I heard your ma say it would be ten years before you ever thought of it, even if you did then, you old goody-goody poke of a boy."

"I'm not too young." John flared up resentfully. "Sam says I'm not, and he ought to know. It isn't settled yet, but it will be when I get back up there. Sam says it is as good as settled now, and Sam is in a position to know. Oh, she is all right, kid—believe me, she is a wonder! I wish you could see her. She wouldn't turn up her nose at you like some folks do around here. She is sweet and kind and gentle. They are working her to death up there—her folks are, but all that will be off when I bring her down here?"

"Are you in earnest—really dead in earnest?" Dora asked, her face still blank.

"I am, and I don't want a word said about it. It is none of my mother's business, you understand. She might try to pry into it and I want her to keep out of it. This is my affair—mine and nobody's else. Sam knows it, and you, but that's all."

"I won't tell it," Dora, now convinced, declared earnestly. "I'll never tell it till you let me. Have you got a picture of her?"

"No, she's got some, but she never gave me one— I never asked for it. They are not good enough, nohow. They make her look too glum and pinched about the eyes. To know what she is like, you have to see her and hear her talk, or read the Bible out loud at prayer-time. She isn't big; her hands and feet are nearly as little as yours are; but above all else in the world, kid, she is good. The neighbors all love her. She waits on them when they are sick. Away late at night not long ago a farmer come to get her to go stay with his sick wife, and Tilly—that's her name—was away till sunup, and then came home and milked the cows and worked around the kitchen. She needs a long rest and she shall have it. I'll see that she gets it, and plenty of clothes and pretty things, besides. She is having an awfully hard time and that is one reason I don't feel so bad about asking her to—to come with just me. I am going into partnership with Sam later, and he and I will both make more money and I'll buy things for her. She plays an organ. I'll get her one. She shall tote the pocket-book, too. She has been skimped all her life. I know. I've had my eyes open up there. She never buys a thing, even a bit of ribbon, without her old daddy fingering it and calling her down for spending money for show, and it was her money, too, bless your life! She sells butter and eggs, takes them to the store herself. She has a little garden-patch all her own, and I've seen her out in it even in the rain, picking beans and peas to sell."

"If she is like that"—Dora was precociously and pessimistically wise for one so young, the fact being due, no doubt, to the tutelage of the two worldly women who were her sole companions—"if she is like that, it looks like some lazy feller would have got her before this. Aunt Jane says it takes money and clothes and lots of things to keep any man coming regular."

"There is—there was another fellow," John put in, unctuously, "but she turned him down. Lord! Lord! it broke him all to pieces! She just somehow couldn't tie to him. She told me so out of her own mouth."

"What is she like?" Dora then demanded. "What does she look like?"

"Don't ask me," John smiled. "I can't tell you. When we walk together she strikes me about here," his hand on his left shoulder. "She has blue eyes, brown wavy hair, a pretty mouth, and a nose with a cute little tilt to it. There are bits of brown freckles on her wrists and cheeks, but they don't matter. If anything, I like them. I wouldn't rub them off. Folks don't say she is pretty—even Sam don't; but why I can't see, for she is simply stunning, and you'll say so, kid, when you see her."

"Well, I won't tell— I won't tell," Dora promised, returning with lowered interest to her rag things after the flight with him into his empyrean.

Here a voice sounded from the window of Mrs. Trott's room up-stairs.

"Dora, is that John down there?"

"Yes'm. He's just got back."

"Well, tell him to come up here right away."

The order did not need repeating. John stood up, the old practical frown settling on his face. "I wonder what the —— she wants?" he growled, with fierce emphasis on the omitted word. "I thought she was asleep."

"Come on up, John; I want to see you," Mrs. Trott's querulous voice rang out again, and without replying he turned away. He wore his best suit of clothes, had recently shaved the fuzz from his face, and looked rather more manly than formerly as he strode through the doorway and up the rickety old stairs. Reaching the upper floor, he turned into his mother's room, unceremoniously pushing the door open and standing on the threshold, just as Mrs. Trott, in a soiled wrapper, was getting back into bed after having been to the window. Her hair was in curl-papers, and the little bristling tufts gave to her face an uncouth, bleak look and left her penciled brows to a barren waste of forehead. Her cheeks were still rouged from the night before. A brazen necklace, recently doffed, had left dark streaks on her powdered bust.

"Why didn't you come on in?" Mrs. Trott demanded, irritably. "What did you sit down there and talk with that brat for?"

"Oh, I don't know. What do you want?" He frowned in his turn, and all but growled.

Mrs. Trott kicked the light covering down over her feet and wadded the pillow so that her head was raised higher. "I've been short of money ever since you went off," she explained, pettishly. "When you were here you always had some on Saturday nights, but after you went off you didn't send as much and Jane and I both got in a hole."

"Well, what do you want now?" he asked. "How much?"

"I'll have to think," Mrs. Trott said. "I borrowed five from Jane yesterday. We were playing a little game and I lost. I was about to drop out when Jane backed me. I lost again. My luck was against me, and her, too. Jane needs the five. She is sick and will have to have a doctor. You know they insist on cash—they won't come here, the silly fools, unless you shake the money in their faces, though they run the accounts of other people for years on a stretch."

"I haven't got that much with me," he gave in, wearily, "but I'm going to the bank after dinner and will get it."

"How much have you got there?" Mrs. Trott inquired.

"That's my business, not yours," he said, with an oath, for under that roof it had always seemed natural for him to swear. "And don't you be nosing into my business, either. You went there once and tried to get money on my name, but don't you do it again. I've turned over a new leaf. I have to. You throw money away like water, on cards, whisky, beer, and what not. I can't keep that up, and I won't. I have to draw the line somewhere."

She raised her head a little higher and fixed her eyes, in their puffy sockets, on him in a sort of groping wonder.

"Why, what has got into you?" she asked, stupidly, and all at once he seemed older to her, older and more dignified, more business-like, more like his dead father, to whom she had been flagrantly untrue.

"Common sense, I reckon," he jerked out. "If I've been a fool I don't always have to stay one. I'm going to need money—for myself, for my own self, do you understand? I—I don't intend to live on here always, either. I'll be of age before long. I've thought it all over. I'm willing to set aside a reasonable amount to help you along, but I'm done with these big drafts on me."

"John, what ails you?" There was a touch of shrinking fear in the almost childish appeal. "You have never talked like this before."

"Well, I might as well begin," he sniffed. "You have to be told. I've seen how other folks live away from here, and I want a change. I'm sick of it all—you and Jane and the gang you hang out with."

"John Trott," his mother gasped, "you sha'n't talk to me this way. I won't stand it."

"Well, then, think it all over," he answered. "I know my business. You can look out for yours. I know when I've had enough, and I have had enough."

He turned and left her. She heard him in his room, the sordid cubbyhole he had occupied since he was a child, and somehow now she pictured its narrow confines and condition as being unsuited to the new and unaccountable dignity into which he had grown in his short absence. What could it mean? What?

She got up, slid her silk-dressed feet into a dainty pair of black-satin slippers, drew her wrapper about her, and went into Jane Holder's darkened room.

"Are you asleep, Jane?" she inquired, half timidly.

"How could I be, with you yelling out of your window to John at the top of your lungs?" Jane turned on her side as she answered. "Then it was wow-wow-wow! in your room after he came up. Oh, I'm sick, sick, sick! You let that sneaking Kelly mix those last drinks on me. I heard you snickering when he did it."

"Never mind; it will go off," Mrs. Trott said, and she sat down on the edge of the bed. "It always does. Listen to me, Jane. Something has happened to John."

"Happened? What do you mean?" Jane softly moaned and gagged, her hand at her thin throat.

"Why, I don't know! That's what I want to see you about. Somebody must have been meddling—talking to him. He has a queer look in the eyes. He fairly glared at me and spoke to me— Well, he never did the like before. I was—was actually afraid of him. It looked to me once as if he was going to pounce on me. Do you remember how Judge Manis talked to us the day he remitted our fine, dismissed the court, and talked to us in private?"

"My God! woman," Jane groaned, desperately, "what are you—"

"John looked and talked like the judge did," Mrs. Trott ran on, with a little impatient wave of her hand. "I was glad he went to his room. There is no telling what he would have said about us both. Somebody has been meddling, I tell you, putting notions in the boy's head. Oh, he has changed—changed!"

"Spoiled, by that new job, I reckon," Jane Holder whined. "The new outfit Sam Cavanaugh gave him has stuck him up. Boys turn like that all of a sudden when they reach the gosling stage. He has been dreamy all his life, and he is getting his eyes open and thinks he is the whole show. You will have to put up with it, that's all."

"I don't know what to make of it— I don't, I don't!" Mrs. Trott stood up, sighed heavily, yawned, and left the room. Outside she met Dora coming from John's room.

"I asked him what he wanted for dinner," the child remarked, "but he said he wasn't going to eat here. He's going down to the restaurant—said he didn't want me to cook and drudge for him. He is funny, Mrs. Trott. He is not one bit like he used to be."

"I don't care where he eats," Mrs. Trott answered, wearily. "We haven't much in the safe, anyway. Is the flour all gone?"

"Yes'm, and the coffee and bacon. I used the last sprinkling of flour for the batter-cakes yesterday."

"Well, stop the grocery-wagon the next time it goes by," Mrs. Trott concluded. "Tell the boy I'll have that money for him to-day. You left a great litter out in the yard. Go clean it up. If you have to play, play in the back yard. People passing will talk about the way you look."

CHAPTER XIX

"Well, for one thing I didn't feel at liberty to do it." Cavanaugh floundered in his slow surprise. "The two were just sorter getting under headway, as you might say, and nothing had been decided on positively. I don't think the final word has been said yet, either, and—"

"Oh, then there is still time— I mean—" But Mrs. Cavanaugh, avoiding her husband's blank stare, suddenly broke off what she was saying and sat gazing fixedly into her coffee-cup.

"Oh, there will be no slip between the lip and the dipper in this case, if that's what is bothering you," the contractor said. "They will get married now, for they are both simply crazy about each other."

"Listen to me, Sam Cavanaugh," Mrs. Cavanaugh threw out quickly. "I want to get down to the rock bottom of this thing without any ifs and ands. I want to know one thing. It may make you mad, because you said once that I was meddling in John's business, but I want to know if—if them folks up there—the girl's daddy and mammy, and the girl herself—I want to know if they know about—about John's mother and Jane Holder, and—and—"

"Make me mad?" Cavanaugh actually got up, drew his chair out, and grasped the back of it angrily. "You knew it would make me mad. You have always made me mad by fetching that poor, unsuspecting boy into the dirty ways of them two women. He's never had his eyes open about that, nohow. He is too pure-minded, too busy with his work, too dreamy to stop and compare his folks, bad as they are, with others. But if you think that I am going to take up a bucketful of slime—and other folks' slime at that—and dash it into the blooming faces of that happy, innocent pair of sweethearts, you don't know me. A catty old maid would go a thousand miles to get a chance to do it, but no man with sound blood in his veins and a heart in his chest would do it for high pay. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for thinking of it—even for letting it dirty your mind for a minute."

Mrs. Cavanaugh, unconvinced and with a ponderous shrug, began to pile the dishes together. "You are a man and can't understand," she said. "Any woman would know what I mean."

"And she'd know more than you mean, too, if she was a woman," Samuel sneered, testily.

His wife received this in dead silence. She pushed her gold-rimmed spectacles up into her flowsy gray hair and let them rest there, and, as if regretful of his heat, Cavanaugh added, more gently, "It is a pity for you and me to fly up like this when I've just got home."

"You and me?" she answered, mildly and with a tantalizing smile. "Huh! how high do you think I flew, Sam Cavanaugh? I've certainly been on a dead level, but you went over the church steeples like a hot-air balloon in a wind-storm. I'm on the ground, flat-footed, and I'm going to stay on it. I look beyond the end of my nose, and you don't, that's all. You can build houses, but you can't start families out right in a town like this one. Now listen to me. What do you think that poor girl will do in Pete Carrol's house all by herself? Who will go to see her? What church will she attend? What will she do—in the name of all possessed, what will she do with her mother-in-law?"

Cavanaugh, as he sat down again, slid lower into defeat than he had been for many a day. "Listen to me," he began, resting his folded hands on the table and clearing his throat, for his voice was husky. "Now you have hit on something, and I'm going to be plain about it. I don't often speak about my terrible struggles over spiritual matters and the things I sometimes have to settle between me and my Maker, but I'm going to admit that I did let all that business bother me at first. I got so keyed up over it up there at Cranston that I couldn't hardly think of anything else for quite a while. I had private talks with this Bible student and that in a roundabout way to see if I couldn't arrive at a decision, but couldn't seem to get anywhere. They all said the clean must be kept away from the unclean—that you couldn't handle manure without smelling of it, and that goats stink and cows don't. But one night, while I was lying in my hot bed, unable to doze off, and thinking—thinking whether I ought to tell that hard-faced old hypocrite, Whaley, the thing that I was sure would kill poor John's chances to get his first happiness in his own little cottage—I was lying there, I say, when the thought come to me, as sudden as a streak of lightning, that an all-wise God created Liz Trott and Jane Holder and permitted temptation to meet them. The same God made John's daddy and let him go to his grave with a lowered head. The same Power fetched John into the world in that joint of hell over there and put one of the soundest heads on his shoulders that I ever run across. The same Power caused me to see the boy loafing about town and shooting craps with the negroes, and induced me to hire him. I never regretted it. I love to see him climb as much as if he was my own flesh and blood, and—and I simply love the little hard-working girl he has picked out. All that flashed on me, and I got up and prayed. Right there I laid the whole thing before God, and something seemed to tell me that Jesus was right when he said we must first get the beam out of our eyes before using a spy-glass on the eyes of others. That was enough for me. The subject hasn't bothered me since. Them folks up there at Cranston will never hear about Liz Trott and her doings from me."

Mrs. Cavanaugh shrugged again. She went for her dish-pan and began to put the dishes into the hot water it contained.

"Well, what have you got to say?" her husband demanded.

"You and me," she replied, gingerly testing the heat of the water with her finger-tips, "never could agree on one thing. You contend that God uses wrong for a purpose, but I say He has nothing to do with it. Say, Sam, look away back to our own wedding. When you fetched me here, your ma and pa gave us a big infare, and all the kin from everywhere was invited, and come, too, with presents and good things to eat, and no end of nice folks called to see me. I was proud. I wrote back home all about it and mentioned the names of all of them. I told them about the big, rich river-bottom farm your uncle Ted owned and begged us to visit. I told them about the deputy sheriff that was your cousin and was such a brave man in the White-cap raids. I told them to hurry on my church letter, that the Methodists was begging me to join them. I told them a lot more, but I want you to stop and think what that poor child up there in Tennessee will have to write back home, and stop and think how she herself is going to feel when she learns the full truth. Sam Cavanaugh, outside of me—and I'm too old to count—I don't believe a single woman will go to see her—not one. They are all like sheep and have to have a leader. Even the fellows that work with John won't send their wives; even if they did ask them, the women wouldn't go."

Cavanaugh's shaggy head sank lower over his inert hands. His lower lip hung as if torn by pain from its fellow. A deep shadow lay in the kindly eyes beneath the heavy brows now lowering in grim perplexity.

"I never thought of all that." He all but winced as he spoke. "That sort o' puts the shoe on the other foot, doesn't it? Poor little Tilly! It will be rough on her, won't it?"

The conversation rested there. Cavanaugh bore the new phase of his dilemma out to the front porch, where he sat down by himself and pondered deeply. Now he would utter an ejaculation as if some thought had stabbed him to the quick; again he would fervently mutter snatches of prayers for light, for mercy. Were his prayers answered? He wondered, and reasonably, too, for, else, why the sudden and soothing appearance of his wife with that calm, far-reaching ultimatum, as she seated herself by his side and put her hand gently on his knee?

"I've thought it over, Sam," she said, as smoothly as the flowing of deep water. "There is nothing else to be done and you are not to blame. We will let the young folks come and we'll leave them in the hands of God. As I see it, that is our duty."

Cavanaugh choked down his glad emotion, reached out, took her crinkled hand in his, and pressed it. "Yes, yes, we'll do that," he agreed, "and we'll hope for the best—we'll pray for the best. God bless them—they shall have their little home, and I'll do all I can to help them."

CHAPTER XX

"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."

CHAPTER XXI

With his usual stinginess and contempt of show, Whaley had allowed his daughter little for her trousseau, and her apparel was most simple, and so scant that her small trunk was scarcely filled. As they were to take a train immediately after the wedding supper, she wore a plain traveling-dress of dark gray which made her look as demure as a young Quakeress. As for John, he had considered his new suit as good enough and under Cavanaugh's advice had not bought another.

"I'll tell you one thing you've got to do," Cavanaugh said to him as he was tying John's cravat in John's room before the ceremony, "you've just got to stand up straighter. Here lately, when you are with Tilly, you hump yourself over, or sag down with one leg crooked like you was ashamed of being tall. If there is a time in a fellow's life when he ought to stand straight and look folks square in the eyes it is when he's having the cheek to take to himself a sweet young bride. Stand up, throw your shoulders back, and let them all know that you've got a job before you and that you are going to do your level best to put it through."

"Give me a danger-sign if you see me making any breaks," John smiled. "I do feel shaky and weak-kneed and I might have folded up like a pocket-rule if you hadn't cautioned me."

John went down and mingled with the guests before Tilly joined them. He was near the door when Martha Jane Eperson came in, accompanied by her mother, who went at once to a seat proffered by Cavanaugh, leaving her daughter with John, to whom she had barely nodded.

"You must excuse my mother," Martha Jane said, plaintively, as she shook hands with John. "She is very unhappy over the way Joel is taking it. He simply could not come to-night."

"I understand, and I am awfully sorry," John contrived to say.

"Oh, but you can't understand, Mr. Trott," the girl protested. "You don't know my poor, dear brother as we do. This thing is actually killing him. He is a mere shadow of his old self. You see, he and Tilly were very dear to each other until you came. I don't blame Tilly; my mother doesn't, either. She has the right to decide for herself; but poor Joel! He simply allowed himself to love Tilly all along till this thing came like death itself, or worse. He is very manly about it, though. Don't understand me otherwise. I think he intended to come to-night till almost the last minute, and then decided not to do it. I watched him through the window as he hitched the horse to the buggy for us, and I broke down and cried."

Some others were entering, and Martha Jane, with a little parting nod, moved on to a place by her mother's side. As for John, he could not give much thought to his defeated rival, for a commotion in the room indicated that the bride was descending the steps. She did not, however, come into the parlor just then, but turned into the sitting-room opposite.

"Come"—Cavanaugh came and touched John on the arm—"the preacher is in there with Tilly. He may want to give you both a few lessons on what to do and say."

It was the old minister whom John had heard preach, and he stood stroking Tilly's hand in a paternal way. He paused and greeted John with rather cold formality. "I hope you realize the great prize you have won, my young brother," he said. "I've known this sweet child a long time and love her as if she were my own."

John was chagrined beyond measure, for he found his tongue an unusable appendage. He felt the blood rush in a flood to his face. He stammered out something, he knew not what, and stood fumbling his hands. He disliked the man and his profession, and could have told him so easier than to have uttered some trivial insincerity even on that occasion. John's attitude of sheer helplessness touched Tilly. She put her hand on his arm and smiled up in his face. It was as if she were saying, "I understand, and it is all right."

"Where is your father?" the minister asked of Tilly. "He must give the bride away."

"He refuses to do it," Tilly informed him. "He says it is a silly, new style, and he doesn't believe in it."

"Well, Mr. Trott," the old man said, still distantly, "you will have to bring her in on your arm after I get to my place at the end of the room. I never marry with a ring. That belongs to the Episcopalian service. Now"—looking at his watch—"it is about time."

He walked from the room, leaving John and Tilly alone now, standing ready, arm in arm. John had not seen her in her new hat and dress before, and somehow now she seemed the same and yet not exactly the same Tilly who had worn such plain frocks in her work about the house. A chill of suspended delight was on him. It seemed a dream of some transcendental event, worked through the alchemy of love. He could not have uttered a word had he tried. How could she look so placid, so fearless, while the very earth seemed unstable under his feet, the skies ready to drop further glories about him and her?

Cavanaugh suddenly thrust his head in at the door. "The parson is ready," he called out, with a laugh swelling with expectancy. "He says send you in. That bunch in there is crazy to see the bride. I tried to get somebody to play a march on the organ, but nobody is able. Now move along. Stand up straight, John. My Lord! you are not a jack-knife! Lift your feet! Quit sliding them along! Look how Tilly walks—as light and dainty as a pigeon on a clean barn floor."

Tilly laughed almost merrily, but John felt the far-reaching gravity of the moment too deeply even to smile. He wondered how he could meet the curious faces packed together in the adjoining room. His whole frame was in a tremor, but he was sure that Tilly's hand and wrist on his arm were as steady as they had ever been. He was seeing her from a new angle, and admired her more than ever.

"Come on," she said, simply, and she it was who led into the parlor.

It was soon over. The minister kept them standing before him only a few minutes. The women pressed forward to kiss the bride, and John found himself quite ignored. His place was by her side at that moment, surely, but, blind to custom, as usual, he extricated himself from the throng and joined Cavanaugh in the hall.

"What are you doing here?" the contractor demanded, as he shook hands warmly and congratulated him. "They will expect you in there with the bride. I know that is where I stayed when I went through it."

"I am all right here," John replied, doggedly. "I don't want to talk to all that mob."

At this juncture Whaley appeared—Whaley, of all others. He was chewing tobacco and nonchalantly wiped his lips on a clean, folded handkerchief. John felt more than he had ever felt before the man's intuitive dislike for him, and it was significant now that Whaley should address Cavanaugh rather than him.

"I'm sorry you are going off," he said. "I've had some pretty fair talks with you off and on, though we are still wide apart on doctrine. Do you know a man like me can learn to handle his own theories by arguing even with a fellow that lies down at every point, as you'll have to admit you've done time after time."

"That's so, but this is a wedding," Cavanaugh smiled, "and I'm here to tell you, old horse, that this young man is going to make you proud some day."

"We'll hope so—we'll hope so." Whaley frowned till his heavy brows clashed. "I'm relying on your opinion. You've known him longer than I have."

Hearing this and being infuriated by it, John shrugged his shoulders, sniffed audibly, and went out on the veranda, fully aware that by his act he had shown contempt for his father-in-law. Outside the yard, a heap of pine-knots was being burned to furnish light for the unhitching and hitching of horses, and the red, smoke-broken rays fell over the street and house. Through the window John saw the throng within the parlor. Tilly and her mother stood side by side, surrounded by friends. Never had he felt more alien from his surroundings than on this most successful night. What was wrong with him? he asked himself. Why was he unlike all other men? Why was he forced to feel like an unwilling interloper among people he could not understand and who did not understand him? But what did it matter? Tilly was his, all his, and in a short while he would be bearing her away. In a short while he and she would be left unmolested in their cozy home. He and she alone, away from all that gaping, meddling throng. What happiness! But how could it be?

Cavanaugh came to him out of breath. "Good gracious! Where have you been?" the old man cried. "I'll be hanged if I wasn't afraid you'd got scared, turned tail, and run off and hid. You oughtn't to have treated the old man like that right on the start. You and him will have to sort of pull together in future. He is thick-skinned, but he looked sort of flabbergasted when you whisked off just now with that snort of yours. Come on. They are going out to supper, and there will be no end of talk if you don't take part. They've got a lot of lemonade in there, and somebody may want to drink your health. If they do, for the Lord's sake stand up like a man and say, 'Thank you,' if nothing more. Remember how well you done when the corner-stone was laid."

John smiled faintly, and the two went back into the parlor as the guests were filing out into the dining-room. Tilly was waiting for him at the door.

"I'm hungry. Aren't you?" she asked. "I want some of that chicken salad. I know it is good, for I made it."

The dining-room was furnished with two long impromptu tables made of rough boards covered with white cloths and flanked by rows of chairs, stools, benches, and inverted boxes. Whaley stood at the head of one of the tables, his wife at the head of the other. Near the center of one two bows of white ribbons marked the seats reserved for the bride and bridegroom. Tilly called John's attention to them and somehow he managed to lead her to them, but he failed to do what he ought to have done. He did not draw Tilly's chair back and place it for her use, but stood staring helplessly while she did it herself. Then he sat down beside her. All were seated now and Whaley rapped on the edge of his plate, producing a tinkling sound that invoked silence.

"Now," he said, solemnly, "it is our duty to ask the blessing of our Creator on what we are about to receive, and as the parson had to leave, I'll call on Brother Cavanaugh to perform this rite for us."

Cavanaugh, who sat opposite John and Tilly, actually paled, and then he flushed. He was silent for a moment, glancing appealingly first at Whaley, then his wife, and finally at Tilly, as if for succor from overwhelming disaster.

"Why, I—I'm not a good hand at it," he stammered. "I don't believe in doing things half-way, especially on what you might call a gala occasion like this. Brother Whaley, in my opinion—and I'm sure all the rest feel the same—you are the man who is best qualified for the job. I know I'd enjoy hearing you do it to-night more than I would to sit and listen to my own voice."

"Why not let Tilly do it?" a young wag farther down the table asked, merrily. "Any bride these days ought to be thankful to get a square meal on the first day of her married life, if never afterward."

"You will all excuse me, I know," Tilly said, simply, and with a sweet, half-forced smile.

Thereupon her father, who was getting the opportunity he wanted, cleared his throat, tapped on his plate for silence, and with lowered head prayed long and unctuously. He touched on the duties of the newly married to God and the Church, that they might be examples for the generations who were to follow them. He hinted—and John knew what was meant—that there were young men of the present age who were indifferent to the full meaning of a Christian life and its forms, and upon all such delinquents he implored the mercy of a long-suffering and patient God.

John's eyes were on his plate. He imagined that every one present was taking note of the veiled rebuke to him. How odd that he should hate Tilly's father so profoundly and feel like striking the cold face between the spiritless eyes. How strange that he should feel almost the same toward that silent, didactic copy of her husband, his mother-in-law, who now seemed to be weighing so judiciously the subtle charges against him, the new member of the family!

The prayer was over; a great clatter swept from end to end of the tables. Everybody was eating, proffering food, laughing, and jesting in munching, mouthful tones. Suddenly, and before she had turned up her plate, John felt Tilly's little hand steal into his.

"Never mind what he said." She smiled as she pressed his fingers. "That was in him. It has rankled a long time and he had to get it out."

"It doesn't matter," John responded, defiantly. "He has the upper hand and he uses it like all men of his brand."

The supper went off merrily, and when it was ended the guests began to depart. All said good-by to Tilly. Some shook hands with John and congratulated him, but that there was a certain restraint between him and all those present he as well as they did not doubt. A few thought that he was "stuck up," but the more penetrating attributed his attitude to his youth and the belief that men of his trade were really not so refined as farmers, who were more or less like the slaveholding planters of the past, from whom the countryside had inherited its manners.

Cavanaugh had provided a livery-stable trap to convey the bride, the bridegroom, and himself to the station, and as the time was up he hurried John and Tilly away. Mrs. Whaley kissed her daughter coldly on the cheek, as if unaccustomed to open affection, and Whaley simply shook hands with her and his son-in-law. The trap contained only two seats, and Cavanaugh sat with the negro driver on the front one, giving the rear seat to John and Tilly.

"Now don't mind me and this chap here," he said, his eyes fixed on the back of the horse as they started on. "We are not going to look, and you can hold hands and hug and kiss all you want to."

Tilly laughed cheerily. "You backed out to-night; you know you did," she bantered him. "You said you were going to kiss the bride, but failed to do it."

"I wanted to, mighty bad, but I was afraid they would all think I was powerful cheeky." Then the contractor fell into talk with the negro, and John heard Tilly sigh.

"What is the matter?" he inquired.

"Oh, I'm sorry for mother," she explained. "I was just thinking that the poor old thing will get up as usual in the morning before daylight and start in to do my work as well as hers. Father won't hire any one to help her and she will have a hard time from now on."

John found himself unable to properly respond, for he didn't care how hard his mother-in-law worked. He would see to it, however, that Tilly should have a rest from the slave-toil which had been her lot since childhood.

It was nine o'clock when the station was reached, and they got down to await the train. Only the station-master and a switchman with a lantern swinging in his hand were in sight. Cavanaugh paid the negro, and with a low bow and scraping of the feet he got into his trap and drove away.

They had not long to wait. From the distance of a mile they heard the whistle of the approaching locomotive, and in a few minutes it was slowing up at the long, unroofed platform.

"You two go sit in the chair-car," Cavanaugh directed. "I've got a cigar, and I'll try the smoker. I'll come back and see you before we get to Chattanooga."

John led Tilly to the luxurious car in question and helped her in. How strange it was! But now for the first time, as he saw her seated in the big revolving-chair in the almost empty car, she seemed all at once to be in reality his wife. He put his bag and hers into the brass rack overhead and adjusted the footstool so that she might rest her feet on it. No living psychologist could have fathomed his emotions. That had become his which seemed to belong to some outside, ethereal existence.

The train started. John took a chair facing Tilly. When he was not at work his hands seemed extraneous members, and they now hung down between his knees as limply as if they had lost all animation.

"You are already homesick," he said, banteringly, though the placid expression of Tilly's face belied his words.

"No, I am not," she said, a thoughtful smile capturing her mouth and eyes. "How could I be? John, I'm simply crazy to see that little house. I've always wanted a home of my own, all my own."

He locked his twisting fingers in sheer delight, and the blood of his joy warmed his eager face to tenderness. "There is a surprise ahead of us," he said, chuckling. "I say surprise, for Sam thinks I don't know it. He has stocked the pantry full of supplies as our wedding-present. I got on to it by accident. I happened to see one of the bills. Old Sam doesn't do things by halves. Do you know, he is the best man I ever knew?"

A newsboy passed through the car, selling magazines and candies. John bought two flashy periodicals and a box of fresh caramels and put them into Tilly's lap. With a smile she began to look at the pictures. Some of the leaves were uncut and he took out his big workman's knife and clumsily slit them apart. She opened the box of candy, daintily pressed back the lacelike paper covering, and proffered some to him. He shook his head. "I never eat it," he said, and then in brooding confusion he remembered that he had not thanked her.

"I'll never do that kind of thing—never!" he said to himself, in reckless disgust. "All that tomfoolery is for Joel Eperson and his sort. I am of a different breed of dogs."

However, his discomfiture was soon dispelled. The rapid rush of the train through the mountain woodland seemed to brush it away as a thing unworthy of his vast surging happiness. He adored the lashes of Tilly's eyes, which seemed to thwart his efforts to probe the eyes themselves; the sweet curve of her lips; the hair which fell so gracefully over her smooth white brow; the tiny brown freckles on her cheeks; the little feet in the somewhat plain new shoes that shyly peeped out from beneath the new gray skirt. A colored porter brought in some soft pillows, and John secured one and placed it behind Tilly's head.

"There," he said, gently enough, "lean back on it. I'll bet you are fagged out, after all you've done since you got up this morning."

"You mustn't make a baby of me," she mildly protested. "Remember I'm a farmer's daughter who never has been petted."

"It is time you were coddled up a little, then," he answered, fervently. "Somehow you look like a child to me, and a lonely one, too, going off like this with a big no-account hulk of a man whom you have known only a little while."

Tilly beamed at this. It was the quality she loved most in her husband. She had a new purse and card-case combined in her lap, and he opened it, finding only a few dimes and quarters in its immaculate interior.

"That will never do." He laughed, took from his own purse two five-dollar bills and put them into hers as he added: "I never want you to have to run to me for change. I despise that in any man, no matter how long he's been married. A fellow's wife should be as free with the money that comes in as he is. I've felt like knocking a man down many a time for that very thing. I don't believe a delicate woman feels like asking for every cent she spends. I'll watch this pocket-book, and if I don't keep that much or more in it all the time it will be because I'm dead broke, too sick to work, or unable to borrow it."

Tilly's face shed a smile that was tender and full of thought. "You are the best man in the world," she said. "I don't believe many men, even the ones that pretend to be polished and educated, would have thought of that."