Winter came and passed swiftly. Throughout it Jason was on the night
shift, and day for him was turned into night. Throughout it Mavis
taught her school, and she reached home just about the time Jason was
going to work, for school hours are long in the hills. Meanwhile, the
railroad crept through the county-seat up the river, and the branch
line up the Hawn creek to the mines was ready for it. And just before
the junction was made, there was an event up that creek in which Mavis
shared proudly, for the work in great part was Jason's own. Throughout
the winter, coke-ovens had sprung up like great beehives along each
side of the creek, and the battery of them was ready for firing. Into
each, shavings and kindlings were first thrust and then big sticks of
wood. Jason tied packing to the end of a pole, saturated it with
kerosene, lighted it, and handed it to Mavis. Along the batteries men
with similar poles waited for her. The end of the pole was a woolly
ball of oily flames, writhing like little snakes when she thrust it
into the first oven, and they leaped greedily at the waiting feast and
started a tiny gluttonous roar within. With a yell a grinning darky
flourished another mass of little flames at the next oven, and down the
line the balls of fire flashed in the dusk and disappeared, and Mavis
and Jason and his mother stood back and waited. Along came eager men
throwing wood and coal into the hungry maws above them. Little black
clouds began to belch from them and from the earth packed around, and
over them arose white clouds of steam. The swirling smoke swooped down
the sides of the batteries and drove the watching three farther back.
Flames burst angrily from the oven doors and leaped like yellow
lightning up through the belching smoke. Behind them was the odor of
the woods, fresh and damp and cool, and the sound of the little creek
in its noisy way over rocks and stray fallen timbers. Down from the
mines came mules with their drivers, their harness rattling as they
trotted past, and from the houses poured women and children to see the
first flaming signs of a great industry. And good cheer was in the air
like wine, for times were good, and work and promise of work a-plenty.
Exultant Jason felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to find the big
superintendent smiling at him.
"You go on the day shift after this," he said. "Go to bed now."
The boy's eyes glistened, for he had been working for forty-eight
hours, and with Mavis and his mother he walked up the hill. At the
cottage he went inside and came out with a paper in his hand which he
handed to Mavis without a word. Then he went back and with his clothes
on fell across his bed.
Mavis walked down the spur with her step-mother home. She knew what the
paper contained for two days before was the date fixed for the
wedding-day of Marjorie and Gray Pendleton, and Gray had written Jason
and Marjorie had written her, begging them both to come. By the light
of a lamp she read the account, fulsome and feminine, aloud: the line
of carriages and motor-cars sweeping from the pike gate between two
rows of softly glowing, gently swinging Japanese lanterns, up to the
noble old Southern home gleaming like a fairy palace on the top of a
little hill; the gay gathering of the gentlefolk of the State; the
aisle made through them by two silken white ribbons and leading to the
rose-canopied altar; the coming down that aisle of the radiant bride
with her flowers, and her bridesmaids with theirs; the eager waiting of
the young bridegroom, the bending of two proud, sunny heads close
together, and the God-sealed union of their hearts and lives. And then
the silent coming of a great gleaming motor-car, the showers of rice,
the showering chorus of gay good wishes and good-bys, and then they
shot away in the night for some mysterious bourne of the honeymoon. And
behind them the dance went on till dawn. The paper dropped in Mavis's
lap, and Martha Hawn sighed and rose to get ready for bed.
"My, but some folks is lucky!"
On the porch Mavis waited up awhile, with no envy in her heart. The
moon was soaring over the crest of the Cumberland, and somewhere,
doubtless, Marjorie and Gray, too, had their eyes lifted toward it. She
looked toward the little gap in the western hills where Gray's star had
gone down.
"I'm so glad they're happy," she whispered.
The moon darkened just then, and beyond and over the dark spur flashed
a new light in the sky, that ran up the mounting clouds like climbing
roses of flame. The girl smiled happily. Under it tired Jason was
asleep, but the light up there was the work of his hands below, and it
hung in the heavens like a pillar of fire.