"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
Shortly after the return of Cavanaugh and John to their work on the court-house, John's fate was permanently decided. His chats with Tilly took place every evening, either on the veranda, in the yard, or in strolls along the mountain roads. One warm evening they had seated themselves on a log on a lonely road on a hillside. Below them in the twilight loomed up the hamlet with its lights and slow, blue smoke from the chimney-tops. In the distance a dog was barking and a farmer calling to his hogs. A church-bell was clanging for prayer-meeting. They sat close together. She had a fan, and, as the mosquitoes were troublesome, he had taken the fan and, novice that he was, he was awkwardly beating them away.
"Don't bother," she said. "You are tired after your day's work," and with a pretty air of male management she took the fan and fanned his flushed face. He was perspiring from the walk up the hill, and with her own dainty handkerchief she wiped his broad, tanned brow. He had never kissed her. He had hardly dared even to think of it, but he kissed her now. He was afraid she would rise resentfully and start for home, but she took it as a matter of course and allowed him to draw her head to his shoulder. For half an hour, in sheer bliss, he was unable to speak, and Tilly seemed to understand. When he recovered his voice it occurred to him that he must now ask her to be his wife, but he found himself unable to formulate the prodigious thing in words. However, he accomplished it indirectly, for he began telling her about the cottage Pete Carrol had left so neatly furnished, and which Cavanaugh wanted him to rent. Tilly listened as eagerly as a petted child who knows its privileges. She frankly asked about the furniture, the curtains, the rugs, the dishes, and, as he held his cheek against hers, he told her everything he could think of in regard to the place. Suddenly she laughed out happily, teasingly.
"You haven't even asked me to marry you," she said, voluntarily kissing him and then playfully stroking his lips with her soft, pliant fingers.
"You are very strange, John. I always know what you feel--what you think--but you don't say them right out."
"I was afraid," he suddenly confessed. "I've been afraid all along--afraid of something, I don't know what, but afraid you'd refuse me--as--as you did Joel Eperson."
"Refuse you!" kissing him again, and nestling back into his arms. "How could you have thought that?"
"I don't know--but _will_ you--_will_ you?" he asked. "Will you say it to-night in plain words, Tilly? Will you be my wife, and go to Ridgeville with me and live in that little house?"
"How could you doubt it?" she asked, raising her head and looking at him trustfully and admiringly.
"I don't know, but I was afraid," he returned. "Somehow I can't feel that such a big thing could come my way. I want you--God knows I want you, but somehow you seem miles and miles above me. You know so much that I don't know. Every day it seems to me you teach me something I never knew before but--but if you will come with me I'll do everything in my power to make you happy. Will you?"
"Of course I will!" And Tilly kissed him again, and held him at arm's-length for an instant and looked at him proudly. "I am the one that ought to have been afraid," she smiled. "Men pass along and make love to country girls and never see them again. In fact, Sally Teasdale said the other day to me--she is mad on account of me and Joel--she said that you were just a flirt, amusing yourself while you are here. Those are the things a girl has to put up with, John. Sally had her eyes on you at first. She is dying to get married. She thought you were handsome and wonderful in every way till you got to going with me, and now she sniffs and turns up her nose and tries to make me doubt you."
"I never liked her, and she knew it," John said. "But let's not talk about her or any one else. There is no one I care a pin about except you and Sam and his wife."
"Nobody else--nobody?" Tilly asked, slowly. "Why, you told me once that your mother is living, that she is a widow and that you help take care of her!"
Here John's stiff fingers relaxed in their clasp on Tilly's small hand, and with averted face he sat still, silent, and gloomily reminiscent.
Tilly edged herself around till her eyes met his again. "Yes, I knew your mother was living, John," she went on, "and I'm going to confess something. I'm going to confess that I've been worrying more since you got back from your home than I did before. John, I thought if you really intended to ask me to marry you, that you would tell your mother about it, and that you would naturally tell me what she said--that is, if she was willing for you to marry me. But as you have never mentioned her since you got back, I thought--well, I thought she might have other plans for you and that you didn't want to hurt my feelings by telling me what she said."
John stared helplessly for an instant; then he shrugged his great shoulders. "She has got nothing to do with me or what I do," he blurted out. "She goes her way and I go mine."
"But surely," Tilly said, groping for his meaning, "she knows about me--you have told her--"
"No," John broke in, in a mood like that of his old impatience over work that was badly done by his assistants, "I haven't told her, and what is more, I shall not tell her. It is no business of hers. I did tell her that from now on I'd not supply her with as much money as I have been doing, but I didn't tell her why. She throws money away--she burns it in solid wads. She is--is foolish. She is not like your mother or any of these plain, sensible folks up here. She is on the go all the time, to parties, dances, and what not."
"I see," Tilly said, in a mystified tone. "Then she must be young. How old is she, John?"
"I don't know; I haven't the least idea," was John's prompt reply. "Let me think. Seems to me I heard Jane Holder say she was very young when I was born. That would put her at, well, near forty. But what does that matter? I don't care anything about her or her age."
"John, you speak so strangely," Tilly intoned, reproachfully. "You pretend that you don't love her. Why, I'll love her always and with all my heart if for nothing else than that she is your mother."
"Rubbish!" John sniffed. "You won't love her; you won't even like her. I tell you she is--is different from what you think. She is--is giddy, silly, complaining, quarrelsome--up all hours of the night and asleep all day or moping about with bloated eyes."
"I see. She is fond of society," Tilly returned, with a little self-deprecating sigh. "Ridgeville is a rather big town and there must be plenty of women like her there. I won't blame her for that. I shall love her, and I shall make her love me, too, if I possibly can. She will be old some day and she will need us both."
For some reason inexplicable to him, John was impatient with the trend of the talk. He was vaguely angry, and yet was trying to curb the impulse. For the first time he was finding Tilly unreasonable. Since the very inception of the plan to marry Tilly and reside in the little cottage he had pictured himself and her as being completely cut off from his old life. Since his visit to his home the sheer thought of the sordid old house and its inmates had jarred on him to the point of repulsiveness. He had learned to like the orderly simplicity of the circle in which Tilly had her being, and to wish that his might have been like unto it.
It was now time to return home, and they started back. Tilly hung lovingly on his arm. "We sha'n't quarrel about your mother," she said, soothingly. "I shall win her love if I can, and if I can't it won't be my fault. I am a plain, home-loving person, though, and she may not take to me at all. I'd like to help that little girl Dora, too. You say she can't read or write. I could teach her."
Here John's interest was roused. He bent toward Tilly's upturned face.
"That would be nice," he said. "The poor little rat needs something of the sort. Yes, we must, between us, do something for that kid. She has the making of a fine woman in her."
CHAPTER XXI
The court-house was finished, even to the last touches of putting on the brass locks and window-fastenings. The commissioners formerly accepted the building as meeting with all the contracted requirements, and a large check was handed to Cavanaugh by the Ordinary of the county.