Chapter XIX

That night at the supper-table Cavanaugh took his wife into his confidence and told her of the love-affair which was culminating in such a satisfactory way to him as well as to John. "You see," he said, "when it first flared up between them, I was dead afraid that the boy might settle up there, or move away, and I'd lose him as a future partner, and a good one at that, but I clinched all that to-day." Cavanaugh laughed slyly as he told of the Carrol cottage and how pleased John had been with it. The old man talked at considerable length, but suddenly noticed that his wife, seated in the lamplight across the table, had not uttered a word, which struck him as being truly remarkable. Of all things in the dull routine of her life, engagements and weddings of young persons hitherto had interested her most.

"Well, well," the contractor said, suddenly. "What do you think of it? You don't, somehow, look glad. I always thought you liked John, and all this time I've been thinking how tickled you'd be to hear about him and his girl."

Mrs. Cavanaugh blinked. Her face was very grave, her fat chin set firm in accordance with her resolute jaws.

"Why didn't you write me about it, along with all the rest of the stuff you had to say?" she asked, in a tone of actual accusation. "This is the first intimation to me of it."

"Well, for one thing I didn't feel at liberty to do it." Cavanaugh floundered in his slow surprise. "The two were just sorter getting under headway, as you might say, and nothing had been decided on positively. I don't think the final word has been said yet, either, and--"

"Oh, then there is still time-- I mean--" But Mrs. Cavanaugh, avoiding her husband's blank stare, suddenly broke off what she was saying and sat gazing fixedly into her coffee-cup.

"Oh, there will be no slip between the lip and the dipper in this case, if that's what is bothering you," the contractor said. "They will get married now, for they are both simply crazy about each other."

"Listen to me, Sam Cavanaugh," Mrs. Cavanaugh threw out quickly. "I want to get down to the rock bottom of this thing without any ifs and ands. I want to know one thing. It may make you mad, because you said once that I was meddling in John's business, but I want to know if--if them folks up there--the girl's daddy and mammy, and the girl herself--I want to know if they know about--about John's mother and Jane Holder, and--and--"

"Make me mad?" Cavanaugh actually got up, drew his chair out, and grasped the back of it angrily. "You knew it would make me mad. You have always made me mad by fetching that poor, unsuspecting boy into the dirty ways of them two women. He's never had his eyes open about that, nohow. He is too pure-minded, too busy with his work, too dreamy to stop and compare his folks, bad as they are, with others. But if you think that I am going to take up a bucketful of slime--and other folks' slime at that--and dash it into the blooming faces of that happy, innocent pair of sweethearts, you don't know me. A catty old maid would go a thousand miles to get a chance to do it, but no man with sound blood in his veins and a heart in his chest would do it for high pay. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for thinking of it--even for letting it dirty your mind for a minute."

Mrs. Cavanaugh, unconvinced and with a ponderous shrug, began to pile the dishes together. "You are a man and can't understand," she said. "Any woman would know what I mean."

"And she'd know _more_ than you mean, too, if she was a woman," Samuel sneered, testily.

His wife received this in dead silence. She pushed her gold-rimmed spectacles up into her flowsy gray hair and let them rest there, and, as if regretful of his heat, Cavanaugh added, more gently, "It is a pity for you and me to fly up like this when I've just got home."

"You and _me_?" she answered, mildly and with a tantalizing smile. "Huh! how high do you think _I_ flew, Sam Cavanaugh? I've certainly been on a dead level, but you went over the church steeples like a hot-air balloon in a wind-storm. I'm on the ground, flat-footed, and I'm going to stay on it. I look beyond the end of my nose, and you don't, that's all. You can build houses, but you can't start families out right in a town like this one. Now listen to me. What do you think that poor girl will do in Pete Carrol's house all by herself? Who will go to see her? What church will she attend? What will she do--in the name of all possessed, what will she do with her mother-in-law?"

Cavanaugh, as he sat down again, slid lower into defeat than he had been for many a day. "Listen to me," he began, resting his folded hands on the table and clearing his throat, for his voice was husky. "Now you have hit on something, and I'm going to be plain about it. I don't often speak about my terrible struggles over spiritual matters and the things I sometimes have to settle between me and my Maker, but I'm going to admit that I did let all that business bother me at first. I got so keyed up over it up there at Cranston that I couldn't hardly think of anything else for quite a while. I had private talks with this Bible student and that in a roundabout way to see if I couldn't arrive at a decision, but couldn't seem to get anywhere. They all said the clean must be kept away from the unclean--that you couldn't handle manure without smelling of it, and that goats stink and cows don't. But one night, while I was lying in my hot bed, unable to doze off, and thinking--thinking whether I ought to tell that hard-faced old hypocrite, Whaley, the thing that I was sure would kill poor John's chances to get his first happiness in his own little cottage--I was lying there, I say, when the thought come to me, as sudden as a streak of lightning, that an all-wise God created Liz Trott and Jane Holder and permitted temptation to meet them. The same God made John's daddy and let him go to his grave with a lowered head. The same Power fetched John into the world in that joint of hell over there and put one of the soundest heads on his shoulders that I ever run across. The same Power caused me to see the boy loafing about town and shooting craps with the negroes, and induced me to hire him. I never regretted it. I love to see him climb as much as if he was my own flesh and blood, and--and I simply love the little hard-working girl he has picked out. All that flashed on me, and I got up and prayed. Right there I laid the whole thing before God, and something seemed to tell me that Jesus was right when he said we must first get the beam out of our eyes before using a spy-glass on the eyes of others. That was enough for me. The subject hasn't bothered me since. Them folks up there at Cranston will never hear about Liz Trott and her doings from me."

Mrs. Cavanaugh shrugged again. She went for her dish-pan and began to put the dishes into the hot water it contained.

"Well, what have you got to say?" her husband demanded.

"You and me," she replied, gingerly testing the heat of the water with her finger-tips, "never could agree on one thing. You contend that God uses wrong for a purpose, but I say He has nothing to do with it. Say, Sam, look away back to our own wedding. When you fetched me here, your ma and pa gave us a big infare, and all the kin from everywhere was invited, and come, too, with presents and good things to eat, and no end of nice folks called to see me. I was proud. I wrote back home all about it and mentioned the names of all of them. I told them about the big, rich river-bottom farm your uncle Ted owned and begged us to visit. I told them about the deputy sheriff that was your cousin and was such a brave man in the White-cap raids. I told them to hurry on my church letter, that the Methodists was begging me to join them. I told them a lot more, but I want you to stop and think what that poor child up there in Tennessee will have to write back home, and stop and think how she herself is going to feel when she learns the full truth. Sam Cavanaugh, outside of me--and I'm too old to count--I don't believe a single woman will go to see her--not one. They are all like sheep and have to have a leader. Even the fellows that work with John won't send their wives; even if they did ask them, the women wouldn't go."

Cavanaugh's shaggy head sank lower over his inert hands. His lower lip hung as if torn by pain from its fellow. A deep shadow lay in the kindly eyes beneath the heavy brows now lowering in grim perplexity.

"I never thought of all that." He all but winced as he spoke. "That sort o' puts the shoe on the other foot, doesn't it? Poor little Tilly! It will be rough on her, won't it?"

The conversation rested there. Cavanaugh bore the new phase of his dilemma out to the front porch, where he sat down by himself and pondered deeply. Now he would utter an ejaculation as if some thought had stabbed him to the quick; again he would fervently mutter snatches of prayers for light, for mercy. Were his prayers answered? He wondered, and reasonably, too, for, else, why the sudden and soothing appearance of his wife with that calm, far-reaching ultimatum, as she seated herself by his side and put her hand gently on his knee?

"I've thought it over, Sam," she said, as smoothly as the flowing of deep water. "There is nothing else to be done and you are not to blame. We will let the young folks come and we'll leave them in the hands of God. As I see it, that is our duty."

Cavanaugh choked down his glad emotion, reached out, took her crinkled hand in his, and pressed it. "Yes, yes, we'll do that," he agreed, "and we'll hope for the best--we'll pray for the best. God bless them--they shall have their little home, and I'll do all I can to help them."