"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."
CHAPTER XXII
The train, which was slightly delayed, reached Ridgeville at two o'clock the following morning. With his usual thoughtfulness Cavanaugh had ordered a street-cab to be on hand to take the couple to their home, and it was found waiting in the care of a half-asleep negro.
"Here is the key to the house," Cavanaugh said, as he handed it in to them after they were seated in the ramshackle little vehicle. "I'd go on with you and help you light up, but I'm anxious to see how my old lady is. She's sick abed, you know, and will be worrying about the train being late."
The negro driver on the seat outside started his horse, and the cab trundled through the darkness of the unlighted streets. They were now wholly alone for the first time since their marriage, and it seemed quite natural to him to put his arm around her and draw her head to his shoulder. Another moment and he had kissed her.
"I wonder," he asked, almost beneath his breath, that the driver might not hear--"I wonder if you are happy?"
She started to speak, but decided not to do so. Her reply consisted of a voluntary lifting of her hand to his neck, the raising of her lips to his, after which she nestled back on his shoulder and was silent.
He also started to speak, but there was nothing to say, and with her hand in one of his they sat still and silent till the cab stopped at the gate of the cottage. The driver opened the door and John helped Tilly out. He tipped the man, and he drove away as they entered the gate.
John opened the door and lighted the gas in the diminutive hall. Tilly had never seen a gas-jet before, and he explained its use, and the danger of leaving it open when unlighted. From the little hall they went into the parlor, then into the dining-room and kitchen, and thence to the bedroom.
"Sam's wife has swept and cleaned the whole house," John said, appreciatively. "It is as clean as a new pin."
"I knew some good housekeeper had been over it," Tilly said, giving free vent to her delight over everything. "I didn't dream, from what you said, that it would be as nice as this," she declared. "Why, it is simply wonderful! But you say you think Mrs. Cavanaugh looked after it.
Then--then you don't think that your mother--" She hesitated, and with a faint shadow in her face she broke off and stood looking at the floor.
"No." There was a companion shadow on his face as he answered, rather lamely, she thought. "She'd never think of it--even if--if she was expecting us."
"Not expecting us?" Tilly said, gropingly. "Then she doesn't know. You didn't write to her that we were to be married?"
"No"--John's glance wavered as he slowly released the word--"I didn't write her. I didn't care whether she knew it or not."
"I think I understand now," Tilly said to herself. "They have had some sort of family disagreement and are not on speaking terms."
"Never mind," she said, aloud, seeing a cloud on his face. "All that will come out right. In time I'll win her love--you see if I don't."
His frown deepened, but he said nothing. Their bags had been left in the little hall, and he went to get them. When he returned she was standing before the wide mirror of the new-fashioned bureau. She had taken off her hat and the elevated gas-jet on the wall threw a blaze of light into her beautiful hair. He put down the bags and stood gazing at her with eyes full of timid reverence and worship.
"Poor, dear little Tilly!" he said, almost huskily. "You look so lonely, here just with me like this, away from your home and friends. I am not worthy of you, little girl--no man is. I feel that. I know it down deep inside of me. Until I met you I never knew what a good, pure girl was like. Oh, you are so different from all the women I've ever known.
Somehow you seem to have dropped down from the skies."
She didn't fully understand him. How could she? And yet his look and tone went straight to her heart. She stood staring at him for a moment and then she advanced to him. She put her hands on his shoulders and looked up into his eyes.
"You say I'm different from other girls, John. Well, you are different from all other men. Oh, it is so very sweet of you--your silly fear that you can't make me happy--your continual reference to that absurdity.
Why, John, I am so happy that I can't express it. No one else could have made me so. I am the luckiest girl in the world."
Her throbbing lips invited it, and he bent down and kissed them. He drew her into his arms. She felt his great breast quiver and heard him sigh.
Not yet was she comprehending him--not yet was he quite able to comprehend himself.
CHAPTER XXIII
Among the men of John's trade it was deemed an effeminate thing for a laboring-man to allow his marriage to cut into his duties to his daily work. And as Cavanaugh already had a job waiting, which was the erection of a fine brick residence on a near-by plantation, John joined him, ready for work, on the day following the one of his arrival home. This left Tilly all alone in the cottage. At first she was so absorbed by the changes she was making about the house--the moving of this article or that and the rehanging of the cheap pictures and curtains, that she had little time for self-analysis or a study of her environment.