"All right now, boss," the negro laughed. "I got erhold of 'em."
"Well, what do you think?" Cavanaugh's gray eyes were twinkling with delight. "Lord! Lord! My boy, I feel like flying! I've laid awake many a night over this, and now it is ours. Gee! I could dance! I told Jim Luce about it at the post-office just now. He is going to write it up in his paper. Gosh! I'm glad this house is finished! We are foot-loose now and can set in up there whenever we like."
It was like John Trott to make no comments. He was watching the workers on the roof with a restless eye. The air resounded with the clatter of the hammers and the grating of the slates one against the other as they were selected and put down.
"You are an odd boy," Cavanaugh said, with a pleased chuckle. "What are you looking at up there?"
"They are not on to that job." John frowned. "Those coons work like they were at a corn-shucking. They don't drive the nails right. They are breaking a lot of slate and losing enough nails to shingle a barn."
"Oh, they are all right." Cavanaugh spat and chewed unctuously. "Gee!
What if they do break a few slates? We are in the swim, my boy, and we'll give that county the prettiest court-house in the state, and the people will appreciate it." Therewith, Cavanaugh put his hand on John's arm and the look of merriment passed. "I've got to say it, my boy, and be done with it. You kept me from making a dern fool of myself and losing the little I have saved up. If it hadn't been for you--"
"Oh, cut it out, Sam!" There was an expression of embarrassed irritation on the young man's face. He was turning to leave, but Cavanaugh, still holding his arm, drew him back.
"I won't cut it out!" He all but gulped, cleared his throat, and went on: "I owe you my thanks and an apology. Only yesterday I got weak-kneed because I hadn't heard from up there, and told Renfro and some others who wanted to know about the bid that I had done wrong to listen to as young a man as you are. I said that, and even talked to my wife about it the same way, and now we all see you was right. John, I don't intend to let you keep on at your old wages. You are not getting enough by a long shot, and from now on I'll give you a third more. I'm going to make some money out of this deal and you deserve something for what you have done."
John looked pleased. "Oh, I'll take the raise, all right," he said, with one of his rare smiles. "I can find a use for the money."
"Say, John"--Cavanaugh pressed his arm affectionately--"this will be our first jaunt away any distance together. We can have a lot o' fun. I'm going to order me a new suit of clothes, and I am going to make you a present of one, too. You needn't kick," as John drew back suddenly, "it will be powerful small pay for all the figuring you did at night when you was plumb fagged out."
"Well, I'll take the suit, too," John said, and smiled again. "You are liberal, Sam, but you always was that way."
"Well, we'll go to the tailor shop together at noon," Cavanaugh said, delightedly. "You can help me pick out mine and I'll see that Parker fits you. You have got some shape to you, my boy, and you will cut a shine up there."
Leaving his employer, John ascended to the roof again, this time through the interior of the almost finished house, and out by a dormer window.
The old town stretched out beneath him. To the east the hills and mountains rose majestically in their blue and green robe under the mellow rays of the sun. A fresh breeze fanned John's face. A man near him broke a slate by an unskilful stroke of the hammer and raised an abashed glance to John.
"It is all right, Tim," he said. "I'm no good at slating myself. You are doing pretty well for a new hand. Say, Sam's landed that court-house contract."
The nailers and their assistants had heard. The hammers ceased their clatter. Cavanaugh was seen standing in the middle of the road, looking up at them. A man raised a cheer. Hats and hammers were waved and three resounding cheers rang out. Cavanaugh took off his straw hat and stood bowing, smiling, and waving.
"Lucky old duck!" Tim, who was a white man, said, "and he was afraid it would fall through."
John's glance roved over the town, the only spot he had ever known.
Beyond the outskirts ran the creeks in which he had fished and bathed as a ragged boy. Toward the south rose the graveyard a mile away. He could see the dim roof of the ramshackle house in which he had lived since he was five years of age. John looked at his watch.
"Get a move on you, boys," he said, in his old tone. "Say, that last line is an eighth too low at this end. Lift it up. Take off the three slates this way and nail 'em back. Damn it! Take 'em off, even if you break 'em. I won't have a line like that in this job. It shows plain from this window."
CHAPTER V
Two weeks later Cavanaugh and John left for Cranston, the Tennessee village where the new building was to be erected. They had on their new clothes and were smoking cigars which Cavanaugh had bought. Some of the negroes and whites who had worked under them came to the depot to see them off, and they all stood on the platform, waiting for the train.
There was much mild gaiety and frequent jests. Cavanaugh was quite talkative, but John, as usual, was silent. The men had jested with the contractor about his new clothes, but no one dared to allude to John's.
Indeed, John seemed unconscious of his change of appearance. But for his coarse red hands, his rough, tanned face, and stiff, unkempt hair, he would have appeared rather distinguished-looking. A bevy of young ladies of the best social set of the town, accompanied by several of their young men associates, had gathered to see one of their number off. They passed close to John, but paid not the slightest attention to him, and they made no impression on him. That there was such a thing as social lines and castes had never occurred to him. He saw the young lawyer who stealthily visited Jane Holder join the group and stand chatting, but even this gave him no food for reflection. In regard to extraneous matters John Trott seemed asleep, but in all things pertaining to his work he was wide awake. His mental ability, strength of will, and dearth of opportunity would have set a psychologist to speculating on his future, but there were no psychologists in Ridgeville. Ministers, editors, teachers, fairly well-read citizens, met John Trott almost daily and passed him without even a thought of the complex conditions of his life and of the inevitable awakening ahead of him.
When the train came, John and Cavanaugh said good-by to their friends and got aboard. They threw their cigars away and found seats in the best car on the train. It was the first trip of any length that John had ever taken, and yet he did not deport himself like a novice. Cavanaugh bought peanuts, candy, and a newspaper from the train "butcher," but John declined them. His employer had spoken to him about some inside walls and partitions which had to be so arranged in the new building as to admit of some alcoves and recesses not down in the specifications, and John was turning the matter over in his mind.
A few miles from Ridgeville a young couple got on the train and came into the car. The young man was little older than John and looked like a farmer in his best clothes. He was flushed and nervous. His companion was a dainty girl in a new traveling-dress. They sat near an open window and through it came showers of rice, a pair of old slippers, and merry jests from male and female voices outside.
"Bride and groom," Cavanaugh whispered, nudging his companion. "She is a cute little trick, ain't she? My, my! how that takes me back!"
The entire car was staring at the self-conscious pair, who were trying to appear unconcerned. The train moved on. John was no longer thinking of his work. His whole being was aflame with a new thought. Strange, but the idea of marriage as pertaining to himself had never come to him before. The sight of the pair side by side, the strong masculine neck and shoulders, and the slender neck and pretty head of the girl with the tender blue eyes, fair skin, and red lips appealed to him as nothing had ever done before.
"That is the joy due every healthy pair in the world," Cavanaugh went on, reminiscently. "Life isn't worth a hill of beans without it. These young folks will settle down in some neat little cottage filled with pure delight--that's what it will be, a cottage of delight for them.
He'll work in the field and she will be at home ready for him when he gets back. Look how they lean against each other! I can't see from here, but I will bet you he is holding her little soft hand."
For the next half an hour the couple was under John's observation. He found himself unable to think of anything aside from his own mind-pictures of their happiness.
Cavanaugh was full of the idea also. "It is ahead of you, too, my boy,"
he said. "You are old enough and are now making enough money to start out on. Pick you some good, sweet, industrious girl. There are plenty of the right sort, and they will love a man to death if he treats 'em right. Look, she's got her head on his shoulder, but she's not going to sleep. She's just playing 'possum. There, by gum! he kissed her! If he didn't I am powerfully mistaken. Well, who has a better right?"
The pair left the train at a station in the woods where there were no houses and two wagon-roads crossed and where a buggy and a horse stood waiting. Through the window John saw the bridegroom leading the bride toward it. Beyond lay mountain ranges against the clear sky, fields filled with waving corn and yellowing wheat. The near-by forests looked dank, dense, and cool.
"It is ahead of you, too, my boy!" The old man's words rang again in his ears as the train moved on and the pair and their warm faces were lost to view. John took out some notes he had made in regard to the masonry of a vault in the new building and tried to fix his mind on them, but it was difficult to do. The mental picture of that young couple filled his whole being with a strange titillating warmth. Within an hour his view of life had broadened wonderfully. He was not devoid of imagination and it was now being directed for the first time away from the details of his occupation. He could not have analyzed his state of mind, but he had taken his first step into what was a veritable new birth.
"It is ahead of you, too, my boy!" Nothing Cavanaugh had ever said to him could have meant so much as those words. A home, a wife all his own.
Why had he never thought of it before? He was conscious of a sort of filial love for the old contractor that was as new as the other feeling.
He was conscious, too, of a new sense of manhood, and a pride in his professional ability that was bound to help him forward.
It was three o'clock in the afternoon when they arrived at Cranston. The Ordinary of the county, at Cavanaugh's request, had arranged board for the two men at the house of a farmer, there being no hotel in the village where board could be had by the week at a rate low enough for a laborer's pocket. So at the station they were met by the farmer himself, Richard Whaley, who stepped forward from a group of staring mountaineers and stiffly introduced himself.
He was a man of sixty-five, bald, gray as to hair and beard, and slightly bent from rheumatism. His skin was yellowish and had the brown splotches which indicate general physical decay.
"My old woman is looking for you," he said, coldly. "She made the arrangement. I have nothing to do with it. She and my daughter do all the cooking and housework. If they want to make a little extra money I can't object. The whole county is excited over the new court-house. They act and talk like it was Solomon's temple, and will look on you two as divine agents of some sort. Folks are fools, as you no doubt know."
"A little bit--from experience," Cavanaugh joked. "The Ordinary tells me you are a Methodist. That's what I am, brother, and I'll love to live under a Methodist roof once more."
"Yes, thank God! that's what I am," Whaley said. "My wife is, too. I'll show you our meeting-house when we pass it. I've got a Bible-class. It is the biggest in the county--twenty-two members."
"That is a whopper," Cavanaugh said. "I'd like to set and listen sometimes. I've had fresh light given me many a day by other men's interpretations of passages I'd overlooked."
"We are very thorough," Whaley responded, warming up to the subject.
Then he turned to John. "What church do you belong to?" he asked, rather sharply.
"I haven't joined any yet," John answered. He was slightly embarrassed and yet could not have told why.
"Oh, he will come around all right before long," Cavanaugh thrust in, quickly. "I've got him in charge."
"Well, he is old enough to affiliate somewhere," the farmer said, crisply. "It is getting entirely too common these days to meet young folks that think they can get along without divine guidance. That is our meeting-house there. We are laying off to put a fresh coat of paint on it in the fall."
They passed the little steepled structure and walked on down the thinly inhabited street which was as much a country road as a street, till they came to a two-story house with a small farm behind it. A tall, thin woman in a gingham dress sat on the long veranda and rose at their approach.
"This is the house and that's my wife," Whaley explained. "The property isn't mine. I'm just a renter, but I can keep it as long as I want to.
We've been here ten years." He opened the gate and let the new-comers enter ahead of him. They were introduced. Mrs. Whaley shook hands as stiffly as had her husband.