"I hid the key under the door-step," Cavanaugh said, as they entered the small front gate, and, bending down, he secured it. Then he crossed the tiny, newly painted front porch and unlocked and opened the door.
There was a little hallway with rooms on each side of it, a tiny parlor on the right which, on entering, they found neatly equipped with plain oak furniture, and a rug or two on the floor, which was covered with straw matting. They next entered the dining-room, which was furnished in similar style. There was a small sideboard holding a modest supply of table-linen, dishes, and gla.s.sware.
"Pete"s wife was awfully particular, and she left things in apple-pie order," Cavanaugh said, as they went into the kitchen adjoining. This room, too, was supplied with all necessary utensils, a neat stove and a sink with running water. Next they saw the bedroom. It held a table with a lamp on it, and an oak bedstead in neat order with unsoiled pillows and white coverlet. There was a bureau with a wide plate-gla.s.s mirror, also a wash-stand with a white ewer and basin. The floor was covered with new matting.
"A snug little nest, eh?" Cavanaugh asked, with a slow and rather automatic smile. "Looks like somebody ought to rent it, cheap as I hold it and ready furnished--only fifteen a month."
"It is all right," John answered, indifferently. "You ought to rent it in the fall, anyway, when business picks up."
"I want to rent it by the time we finish the court-house, anyway"--Cavanaugh continued to smile--"and I"d like to rent it to somebody that would take care of it-- I mean somebody that I know about.
Gee! wouldn"t this be a snug little nest for a pair of new-married turtle-doves? Think of a fellow coming back from his day"s work at night to a cottage like this, with a little wife to meet him in a white bib and tucker and a kiss and a glad smile?"
John had a sudden flash of comprehension, and he flushed from head to foot. His great mouth made a failure of a smile, and that he was pleased Cavanaugh did not doubt. "You think you have a joke on me," John said.
"Well, well, go it, Sam! I"m game for a little thing like that."
"You may call it a joke, but I don"t," the contractor said, quite seriously. "You see, I"ve got an ax to grind--two, in fact, for in the first place I want to rent this house for enough to pay the taxes and insurance, and in the next I want to tie you down to Ridgeville. I am too old to move now, and I need you mighty bad. Say, you and I can become partners before long."
"Well, what has that got to do with your--your other d.a.m.n foolishness?"
John"s face was averted as he spoke. They were back in the bedroom now, and he made a pretense of examining the new sash-cords of the window. He drew one of the weights up in its hidden groove and lowered it again. He had never before examined a detail of a building so minutely. He looked closely at the paint on the mullions and searched for flaws in the gla.s.s.
"It has got this to do with it," Cavanaugh went on, now steadily and without a vestige of his former smile. "I"m no fool, my boy. I know as well as I stand here that you are not going to leave that sweet little girl up there to do the drudgery for that irritable old hog and his obedient wife. If you did I"d lose respect for you. You are making good pay and you will make even better. In a little nook like this you could make her as happy as the day is long. She could do all the housework and not work a fourth as hard as she does now. Why, I saw her in the corn-field the other day, toiling like an old-time slave with a heavy hoe, while her rotten old daddy was in the house picking out pa.s.sages in the Bible to pin down some particular argument of his."
"I guess--I guess--" John stammered, "that the--the _girl_ would have something to say on the subject."
"How _can_ she, in the name of all possessed"--Cavanaugh snorted and laughed--"unless she is _asked_? I"m no fool. I know what two smudges of red about the cheek-bones of a pretty girl mean when they never come in sight till a big, hulking feller in overalls appears on the scene. I know, too, that things have taken place that you haven"t heard about. I know that I"ve turned myself into a contractor of flesh and blood instead of brick and mortar. Them old folks simply agreed one night, in a talk with me, that I might run it. I told them I"d stand for you in every way, and they-- Well, haven"t you noticed for the last week that they have slid off to bed early and left you and Tilly out under the trees or on the porch, together? Well, that was my doings. The old man was for having you come to him and state your intentions in plain words, but I advised him against it. I told him that you could make a speech on internal revenue, political economy, or any other big subject to an audience a thousand strong, but that you"d fall down in an attempt to tell a girl"s daddy that you wanted to provide her grub and clothes. I did have a big tussle, though, to keep one certain thing out of the discussion, and that was your religion, or rather your lack of it. He kept saying that he wanted to know what particular brand of theology you"d impress on his daughter at your fireside. He said he never had failed to see women go with their husbands sooner or later, and he was afraid you hadn"t been converted yet. However, I got him quiet on that line. I told him, you see, that while you hadn"t yet made an open profession, I knew you well enough to be sure you"d end up all right and make as good a citizen as any man I know."
"You have heard about a certain fellow by the name of Eperson, haven"t you?" John asked, as he strove manfully to quench the glad lights in his eyes. "Well, he and Tilly have been sweethearts ever since they were children."
"He has, but she hasn"t." Cavanaugh emphasized the "he." "I know all about it. He is as near dead as a man can be from disappointment. She might have thought she cared for him, at one time, but when you came all that was off. Now I"m going home to my old woman. Talking to you on these lines makes me want to see her mighty bad. I feel younger, and I"ll bet she will look that way to me, too. But remember this, when we get back to Cranston, sail right in and tell Tilly how you feel. She knows, anyway, but you tell her straight out, like a man with a load of hay to sell, and be done with it. I want to rent this house and I"m going to do it."
They were outside the cottage now. Cavanaugh had closed the door and was on his knees, hiding the key under the step. John stood over him.
"I wish you knew what you are talking about, Sam," he said, and it was the first even indirect confession of the sacred tumult within him.
"I"ll say that much. I wish--I wish it could be like you say it is. My G.o.d! Sam, when I dare to think of it I go all to pieces. It is too good to be true. Nothing has ever come my way that amounted to much in this life. How could as big a thing as that be for me?"
"Well, it just is." Cavanaugh stood up, his fine face working in sympathy. "The Lord has fixed it that way, my boy. You have had a hard time, but your day is dawning. And listen to me. Under your full joy you are going to wake up into a grat.i.tude to the Creator for His great gifts. You"ve been bitter--so bitter, for one reason or another, that you"ve denied even G.o.d"s existence, but with a believing wife like Tilly at your side, and with children to bring up right, you will be different. You are just a boy, anyway--a great, big, awkward, stumbling boy, but you are going to make a man, and a good one."
CHAPTER XVIII
They parted outside the little gate, agreeing to meet at the Square in the afternoon, and John pursued his way homeward. The very ground seemed to fall away from his feet as he put them down. His whole body felt like an imponderable thing over which he had little control. The swelling joy within him fairly choked him.
"My G.o.d! My G.o.d!" he said several times, aloud. "Sam"s a fool. Sam"s a fool. It can"t be so. My Lord! how could it? And that little house. It is a beauty and most women would like to run it and keep it in order. I wonder if she would with me. I wonder."
He found Dora under an apple-tree in the front yard, playing with some rag dolls she had made from sc.r.a.ps of finery cast off by her aunt and Mrs. Trott. A brick represented a table, and on it were arranged bits of china for plates. Other pieces of make-believe furniture were constructed of cardboard cut and bent into shape. She glanced up as he swung open the gate, smiled a welcome from a soiled face, and wiped her itching nose on the back of her slender hand. She did not rise or make any sort of physical demonstration by way of greeting.
"Where are the folks?" he asked, glancing into the house through the open doorway.
"Asleep, I reckon," she said, busy with the pink sash of one of her legless ladies, the tinseled hat of which was pinned askew over a pair of eyes formed of green beads. "They"ve only been home about an hour.
Aunt Jane is sick. Your ma said she fainted at the party and they all thought she was dead for a while."
"Those are not good dolls," John said, from the depths of his turbulent joy. "I"ll tell you what I"ll do. I"ll buy you a real wax one with yellow hair and blue eyes. I saw one in a show-window as I came along just now. It had on shoes and stockings and held a parasol in its little hand."
"All talk--all wind, hot air!" the child said, indifferently, and she had evidently picked up the expressions from her elders. "A drummer--the fellow with the striped shirts that is always whistling and sells cloaks--he told me he was going to get me a doll and a baby-carriage, but he never came back--changed his rowt, so Aunt Jane said. But this doll"s all right. Don"t you think so, brother John?"
"It will do till I get the other," he answered, and then he felt an impulse that he had never felt before. He bent down and put his hand caressingly on the almost matted hair, and she, not understanding, impatiently shook it off and went on with her work, her mouth now full of pins.
There was a chair near by and he sat down in it, bending toward the child. Seldom had his boyishness been so apparent. He wanted to open his cramped heart to some one--why not to her? He wanted to hear his own voice applauding the things that were leaping, singing, shouting in the penetralia of his being.
"Say, Dora," he began, clasping his warm hands between his knees, "can you keep a secret?"
"A secret?" she repeated, letting her doll lie for an instant in her ragged lap and staring straight at him with growing interest. "Have you got one--a real one?"
He had. His smile and generous nod admitted it. "Can you keep your mouth shut, that is what I want to know?"
"Yes, yes!" she exclaimed, eagerly. "You ask Aunt Jane if I ever let your ma know--let her know--but never mind. I can keep one. Try me--that is if you are not kidding. I don"t want any foolishness from you or anybody else. Life is too short."
"Well, listen!" he began, and something in the blaze of his eyes, the tremolo of his erstwhile brusk voice, the warm look of his face, caught and held her attention. "Did you ever think the day would come when I"d go with a girl?"
"Who, you?" Dora sniffed. "Now I _know_ you are kidding."
"No, I"m not," he went on, riding the tide of his joyous self-emptying.
"I have done it often since I went to Cranston. I got acquainted with one up there. Sam and I board with her pa and ma. You ought to see her, Dora. She is all right--as nice and pretty as any stuck-up girl in this town. Folks up there are different--very, very different from these down here who don"t know that you and I are alive. They are polite and decent and civilized. Lord! somehow it makes me sick to think of living on here, but I reckon I will. Say, did you ever notice the stunning little cottage that Sam put up for Pete Carrol on the right-hand side of the street as you go down? But never mind that. What would you think if I was to tell you that before very long I might--" John was stalled. How could he express by mere lip and tongue the transcendental thing which so completely filled him?
"What are you trying to get through yourself?" It was another of the child"s picked-up expressions, and she leaned toward him with a slow leer of wonder. "What is your great secret?"
"I was coming to it," he said, his words falling steadily now. "But you mustn"t tell it to a living soul. Kid, I"m thinking about getting married."
"Married--you? Huh!" Dora laughed incredulously as she plucked a pin from her lips. "Why, you are too young! I heard your ma say it would be ten years before you ever thought of it, even if you did then, you old goody-goody poke of a boy."
"I"m not too young." John flared up resentfully. "Sam says I"m not, and he ought to know. It isn"t settled yet, but it will be when I get back up there. Sam says it is as good as settled now, and Sam is in a position to know. Oh, she is all right, kid--believe me, she is a wonder! I wish you could see her. She wouldn"t turn up her nose at you like some folks do around here. She is sweet and kind and gentle. They are working her to death up there--her folks are, but all that will be off when I bring her down here?"
"Are you in earnest--really dead in earnest?" Dora asked, her face still blank.
"I am, and I don"t want a word said about it. It is none of my mother"s business, you understand. She might try to pry into it and I want her to keep out of it. This is my affair--mine and n.o.body"s else. Sam knows it, and you, but that"s all."
"I won"t tell it," Dora, now convinced, declared earnestly. "I"ll never tell it till you let me. Have you got a picture of her?"
"No, she"s got some, but she never gave me one-- I never asked for it.
They are not good enough, nohow. They make her look too glum and pinched about the eyes. To know what she is like, you have to see her and hear her talk, or read the Bible out loud at prayer-time. She isn"t big; her hands and feet are nearly as little as yours are; but above all else in the world, kid, she is good. The neighbors all love her. She waits on them when they are sick. Away late at night not long ago a farmer come to get her to go stay with his sick wife, and Tilly--that"s her name--was away till sunup, and then came home and milked the cows and worked around the kitchen. She needs a long rest and she shall have it.
I"ll see that she gets it, and plenty of clothes and pretty things, besides. She is having an awfully hard time and that is one reason I don"t feel so bad about asking her to--to come with just me. I am going into partnership with Sam later, and he and I will both make more money and I"ll buy things for her. She plays an organ. I"ll get her one. She shall tote the pocket-book, too. She has been skimped all her life. I know. I"ve had my eyes open up there. She never buys a thing, even a bit of ribbon, without her old daddy fingering it and calling her down for spending money for show, and it was her money, too, bless your life! She sells b.u.t.ter and eggs, takes them to the store herself. She has a little garden-patch all her own, and I"ve seen her out in it even in the rain, picking beans and peas to sell."
"If she is like that"--Dora was precociously and pessimistically wise for one so young, the fact being due, no doubt, to the tutelage of the two worldly women who were her sole companions--"if she is like that, it looks like some lazy feller would have got her before this. Aunt Jane says it takes money and clothes and lots of things to keep any man coming regular."
"There is--there _was_ another fellow," John put in, unctuously, "but she turned him down. Lord! Lord! it broke him all to pieces! She just somehow couldn"t tie to him. She told me so out of her own mouth."