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.
"Come right in," she said, smiling. "I know you've had a hot, dusty
train-ride, and I reckon you will want to rest."
They put down their bags in the little bare-looking hallway from which a
narrow flight of stairs ascended, and followed her into a big parlor on
the right. Here they took chairs. The afternoon sun shone in through six
wide windows and fell on the clean, carpetless floor. A wide fireplace
was filled with the boughs of mountain cedar, and the hearth had been
freshly whitewashed. There was a table in the center of the room, a tiny
cottage organ between two windows, and some crude and gaudy print
pictures in mahogany frames on the walls. The four individuals formed an
awkward, purposeless group, and no one seemed able to think of anything
to say. John was wondering what could possibly happen next, when Mrs.
Whaley said:
"I know you both must be thirsty. I'll get Tilly to fetch in some fresh
water from the well."
She rose stiffly and left the room. "Oh, Tilly! Tilly! where are you?"
they heard her calling in the back part of the house. "Leave the
churning a minute and draw up a bucket of fresh water. They are here."
Through the open windows from the shaded back yard John heard a girlish
voice answering, "I'm coming, mother." Then there was a whir of a loose
wooden windlass and the dull thump of a bucket as it struck the surface
of the water. This was followed by the slow creaking of the windlass and
a sound of pouring water.
"We didn't come here to be waited on like a couple of nabobs," Cavanaugh
jested. "Let's go out to the well. We ought to begin right and be done
with it. The last time I boarded in the country I chopped my own
fire-wood and toted it in. I'd have washed the dishes I messed up, but
the women of the house wouldn't let me."
Without protest Whaley got up and led the way through the sitting-room,
dining-room, and kitchen to the well in the yard where Mrs. Whaley and
her daughter, a girl of about eighteen years of age, stood filling some
glasses on a tray.
"My daughter Tilly," Whaley said, indifferently. "The only one I have
left. Her two sisters married and moved off West. Her brother Tom died
awhile back."
The girl seemed shy, and scarcely lifted her eyes as she advanced and
held out her hand first to Cavanaugh and then to John. She was slight of
build, not above medium height, and had blue eyes and abundant chestnut
hair.
"Pass the water 'round," her mother instructed her, but both John and
Cavanaugh stepped forward and helped themselves. For a moment Tilly
stood hesitating, and then she turned to her churn at the kitchen door
and began to raise and lower the dasher. She had rolled up her sleeves,
and John, who was covertly watching her, saw her round white wrists and
shapely fingers. The way her unbound hair fell about her neck and lay
quivering on her moving shoulders caught and held his fancy. How
gloriously different she seemed from the only girls he had ever met, the
bedizened creatures whom he sometimes saw at his home with his mother
and Jane Holder! And, strange to say, he almost pitied Tilly for being
bound as she was to the two unemotional old people who seemed to rule
her as with a rod of iron. What a patient little sentient machine she
seemed!
"You'll want to see your rooms, I reckon," Whaley said. "Amelia'll show
you up-stairs. The Ordinary said he didn't think you'd be
over-particular. They have plenty of air and light."
John was delighted with his room. It was palatial compared to the sordid
den he inhabited at home in its constant disorder and dirt. As he
glanced about him, noted the snowy whiteness of the towels at the
wash-stand, the freshly laundered white window-curtains, and the clean
pillows and coverlet of the great wide bed, he had a sense of meeting a
new experience in life that was vastly gratifying. He heard Cavanaugh
clattering about in his room across the narrow passage, and smiled. The
old man's words, "A cottage filled with pure delight," rang in his ears
like a haunting strain of music.