They found their places at the table and sat down. The Ordinary, a genial man of middle age, with a full brown beard, had a big jug of fresh cider in front of him and was filling some tin cups with the amber fluid.
"We are going to drink to the health and success of these two gentlemen," he announced, when every one at the table had received his cup of the beverage. "They are both agreeable men and are an honor to our community. Moreover, I am satisfied that they are going to give us the finest public building for the money in the state."
They all drank standing, and, as they resumed their seats, they glanced at Cavanaugh as if expecting a response from him.
"I am much obliged," Cavanaugh stammered. "I can't make a speech or I'd tell you how tickled I am by your compliment, and my young friend on my right is, too. We are combining business and pleasure on this jaunt and are having a fine time."
John was gloomily unconscious of the fact that he, too, was expected to say something. Seeing Cavanaugh sit down, he did likewise. He was watching Eperson and Tilly, who at one of the long tables near by sat facing him. Eperson was bending eagerly toward her, smiling and saying something in her ear. Tilly seemed to be listening, for she was smiling also. Farther down the same table sat her father and mother. Whaley had a plate heaped high with the meat and its accompanying peppery relish, and was eating voraciously. Mrs. Whaley was chatting with a woman at her side and scarcely eating at all. The brass band was playing, there was a great clatter of knives and forks and tin cider-cups. John was in one of his surliest moods. He was really hungry enough to have enjoyed the feast, but his thoughts kept him from doing so. Presently he managed to slip away from the table, and found himself alone. He wandered aimlessly about the foundation of the new building, trying to make himself believe that he was inspecting the work already done. The band had ceased playing. The crowd of white citizens was thinning out, and the negroes were falling into the vacant places at the tables. John saw Cavanaugh and the elder Whaleys trudging homeward. Where was Tilly? he wondered. Then he saw Eperson driving a poor horse drawing a ramshackle buggy around from the public hitching-rack. Tilly stood waiting for him alone on the edge of the sidewalk. Eperson got out, helped her into the seat, and then got in beside her and drove her homeward.
John lingered about the foundations for half an hour. Then he saw Eperson returning in the buggy alone. He had to pass close to where John stood, but John refused to look up as he went by and turned into the country road. There was a vague look of placid content on the earnest face of the man which portended things John dared not think about.
CHAPTER VIII
The work on the new building went on apace. John was always tired when night came, but a new expectation at the end of each day had come into his hitherto uneventful life. It was not often that he saw Tilly alone, but he had come to look forward eagerly even for the mere sight of her in the evening, at the supper-table, on the veranda, or in the yard with the others. Both he and Cavanaugh immediately changed their clothing when the day's work was over, and this formality was a new and pleasant thing for the young mason. The change always made him feel more respectable. It gave him the sense of throwing off the grime and toil of the day. It was the first ordering of his life on any social plane, and it charmed him.
"You are certainly a wonder," the old man remarked to him one afternoon as they were dressing in John's room.
"In what way?" John asked, curiously.
"Why, you are different, that's all"--the contractor laughed--"as different from what you used to be down at home as night from day. You used to have a grouch on you nearly all the time, but now you are as pleasing as a basket of chips. Your mind seems brighter. You often say funny things, and you ain't as rough with the boys that work under you as you used to be. If they are a little slow with brick or mortar you don't fuss so much, and--say--you have mighty nigh quit cursing. I'm glad of that, too, I must say I am, for taking the Lord's name in vain never helped a man get ahead. You see it is a slap in the face to so many well-meaning folks. Gee! ain't we having a fine time? It is about as hard to understand myself as to understand you--I mean this combination picnic and hard labor we are at. There is one point about it that I wouldn't dare tell my wife. By gum! I don't know that I'm ready to admit it even to myself yet, but it is a queer notion."
"What is that?" John asked, only half attentively, for he was listening to the sounds in the kitchen below and picturing Tilly at work.
"Why"--the old man stared gravely as he answered--"it is a fact that I don't miss Mandy at all--hardly at all, and it has set me wondering--wondering. I know I love her, you see; that fact is as solid and plain to me as that brush you've got in your hand, and why I don't miss her more I don't know. I lay in bed awake between four and five this morning, turning it over in my mind, but to no effect. However, it may be this way: a man and a woman may actually be--well, almost too well suited to each other, if such a thing is possible."
"You are getting tangled up." John laughed as he tied afresh a new cravat he had just bought and thrust a cheap, gaudy pin into its folds.
"You may think so, but I hain't," Cavanaugh denied. "I mean this, John.
A couple may live together so long and become so near alike that nothing exciting happens to either one of 'em, and along with that may come a sort of strain of marriage responsibility. Down at Ridgeville somehow I was always wondering what Mandy would want done and what not, but up here when my day's work is over I can slap on a clean shirt and my best suit, brush my shoes, light my pipe, and sit around till bedtime and have a good free evening of it. And I sleep--I'll admit it--I even sleep sounder and seem to get more out of it. At home I lie with one eye open, you might say. If Mandy has a bad cold, I can hear her sniffling, and if she has an attack of rheumatism I can smell the liniment she rubs on. I don't mind it, you understand, oh no, not one bit! but the--the very worry about her upsets me. She's the same about me. I know it is a fair deal between us, for she takes it powerful hard even if I come home with a cut or any little injury. I said that it was a fair deal on both sides, but I'll take that back. It is not. The woman gets the worst of married life, and I reckon that's what is bothering my conscience. I sent mine off once for a week at a big camp-meeting over in Canton. She sewed and fixed and packed and cooked for three weeks to get ready, and was gone just two days and a night. She hired a special team to fetch her back, and come acting like she'd been off for a year and had escaped from ten thousand ills and misfortunes. You see, she just couldn't live without her pans and pots and chickens and the cow and calf which she was afraid I wouldn't feed--and, I don't know, maybe--me. And that's what hurts. She keeps writing now about what I'm fed on, how my duds are washed and mended, and how long it will be before I get back home. All that when I'm cracking jokes and arguing with old Whaley over some of his hidebound Bible views about the end of the world. Why, he couldn't predict the outcome of a county election, and yet he knows to the day and hour when him and some more are going to be lifted up on a cloud of glory and all the rest of us stand looking on, wringing our hands like the bunch Noah left without a thing to cling to. But don't you let anything I say about marriage influence you against it, my boy. It is the greatest institution in the world to-day, and while I don't somehow miss my wife, I'd die if I lost her. I know that as well as I know I'm alive. There must be such a thing as loving folks you don't want to be with all the time."
CHAPTER IX
That evening a wonderful thing happened to John. It was a moonlit night and Cavanaugh took the two older Whaleys down to see the progress on the new building. That left John and Tilly on the veranda together. At first the poor boy's tongue was tied, but under the influence of Tilly's calm self-possession he soon found himself conversing with her quite easily.
There was a sort of commotion in the chicken-house near the barn and they started down there to see what had caused it. He had seen young men of the better class at Ridgeville walking with young ladies, holding to their arms at night, and in no little perturbation he wondered if he ought to offer Tilly his arm. He did not know, and he wondered what Joel Eperson would do in the circumstances. Finally he plunged into the matter. "Won't you take my arm?" he asked, so naturally that he was surprised at himself.
She did so, although the path was clear and the distance short, and the gentle pressure of her hand on his arm sent an inexplicable thrill through him. She even leaned slightly and confidently against his shoulder, and that, too, was a wonderful experience. He was filled with ecstatic emotion. He slowed down his step and clumsily adapted his long stride to her shorter one. There was a vast, swelling joy in his throat.
At the barn-yard gate she released his arm and opened it, and at once he had a fear that he had made a mistake in not forestalling her. He was flooded with shame at the thought that Joel Eperson would have known what was proper and have acted quicker.
"Excuse me," the poor fellow stammered, his eyes on hers. He had never used such words before and they sounded as strange to him as if they had belonged to a foreign tongue.
"Excuse you, why?" she inquired, perplexed.
"Because--because I didn't open the gate for you," he replied. "I wasn't thinking."
"Oh, that doesn't matter," she answered, evidently pleased, and there was something in her eyes that he had never seen there before. Her face seemed to fill with a warm light, and her pretty lips were slightly parted. They walked on. The chicken-house, a shack with a lean-to roof against the barn, was near and he stood by her as she looked in at the open door.
"One of the planks they roost on fell down," she explained. "Too many of them got on it. They will huddle together, warm as it is."
"I can fix it," he proposed, "but I'd have to have a light."
Tilly hesitated, looking again into the shack. There was a low chirping from the perches overhead.
"Never mind to-night," she said. "They have found new places and will soon settle down."
She turned back, facing him, and slowly they started toward the house.
This time she took his arm without being asked, and the act gave him additional delight. He allowed the natural weight of his arm to gently press her hand against his side and she did not resent it. In fact, he felt as if her touch was responsive. The moonlight fell on her bare head and played in her wonderful hair, upon which the moisture of the night was settling. Half-way between the barn and the house there was an empty road-wagon. Its massive tongue stood out straight a foot or so above the ground. To his wonderment, Tilly sat down on it, thrusting her little feet out in front of her.
"Let's sit here," she said. "They won't be back for some time yet."
He complied, his wonder and delight growing. They were silent. Finally she spoke again.
"You are the strangest man I ever saw," she said, looking into his face with her calm, probing eyes.
"Am I?" he asked. "Why, how so?"
"I don't know," she made answer, thoughtfully, and she locked her little hands in her lap and looked down. "I can't make you out. You are so--so gentle and tender with me. You are a mystery, a deep mystery. You don't seem to take to women in general, and yet, and yet with me--" She sighed and broke off abruptly.
In his all but dazed delight he could not supply the words she had failed to summon, though he knew what he would have said could he but have untangled his enthralled tongue.
"Oh, I'm no mystery!" He tried to laugh away his awkwardness. "I'm as plain as an old shoe; no frills about me. You ask the boys that work with me."
She was unconvinced. He saw her shake her wise little head and twist her fingers together as she answered:
"A girl I know who saw you on the platform that day said she'd bet you'd had an unfortunate love-affair. She said nothing else would make as--as fine a young man as you are shun all the girls like you do. She even hinted that maybe you were--were married down in Georgia and for some reason or other was not telling it."
"Oh no, I'm not married," he laughed. "Gee! Sam would think that is funny. Me married!"
"Then you _have_ had a--a love-affair with some girl, and--"
"Wrong again!" he laughed, deep in the throat of his ebullient joy.
"I've just been a sort of stay-at-home, pretty busy, you know. I've had my hands full of night work, figuring, writing, and planning, and through the day I've been hard at it, as a general thing. No, I'm just, I reckon, not a natural ladies' man." How could he explain to her what he had never understood or even tried to fathom, the reason why he was different from other young men of his age whose manner of life he had only superficially observed?
Tilly seemed still unconvinced. "That girl was Sally Teasdale," she went on. "She was here yesterday. You may remember her--the tall, dark-haired girl that sang in the choir that day and turned my music for me once.
She is going to have a party at her house down the road Wednesday night.
She is--is dead set on having you there. She says all the girls want to get acquainted with you, and she--she wanted me to--to take you to it."
"To take me to it?" he repeated, hardly understanding what was really meant, for how could a young lady be asking him to a party at her house when no home of that sort had ever been open to him? How could that be true, and that another girl of Tilly's social rank should really be inviting him to escort her?
"I see, you don't want to go," Tilly said, with a touch of mild resentment. "Well, that is for you to decide, and I would not have asked you but there was no way out of it. Even mother advised me to mention it."