As a physical exertion, walking was not hard after our day's labor. It was a change and a rest, and we must all have felt the soothing refreshment in the breath of cool air which was moving down the river, and in the soft light of the early evening, which brought out in new loveliness the curves of the opposite hills and deepened the shades of blue and green. My own appreciation of all this and more would have been livelier but for two overpowering appetites, which were asserting themselves with unsuspected strength. I was hungry, not with the hunger which comes from a day's shooting, and which whets your appetite to the point of nice discriminations in an epicure's dinner, but with a ravenous hunger which fits you to fight like a beast for your food, and to eat it raw in brutal haste for gratification. But more than hungry, I was thirsty. Cold water had been in abundant supply at the works, and we drank as often and as freely as we chose. But water had long since ceased to satisfy. My mouth and throat were burning with the action of the lime-dust, and the physical craving for something to quench that strange thirst was an almost overmastering passion. I knew of no drink quite strong enough. I have never tasted gin, but I remembered in one of Froude's essays a reference to it as much in use among working-men, and as being seasoned to their taste by a dash of vitriol, and eagerly I longed for that.
Half-way down the road we met some young women in smart dog-carts driving to the sunset parade at the post. In the delicate fabric and color of summer dress they seemed to us the embodiment of the cool of the evening. Suddenly I looked with a keener interest. With her fingers outstretched she was shading her eyes from the horizontal rays of the setting sun, and she did not see us, rather saw through us, as through something transparent, the familiar objects on the roadside. I had seen her last in town at a wedding at St. Thomas's, and fate unkindly sent her up the aisle on the arm of another usher. I laughed aloud, a short, harsh laugh, that escaped me before I was aware, and that had in it so odd a quality that it gave me an uncomfortable feeling of unacquaintance with myself. The two old Irishmen turned inquiring glances at me, and appeared disturbed at my serious look.
My room, when I reached it, was, in spite of wide-opened windows, like Nero's bath at Baiæ. The ceiling and walls glowed with stored-up heat. Jim was there making ready for supper, and I could hear Jerry and Pete in their room in similar preparation.
When I put my hands into the cold water, I could scarcely feel them; but the pain of cleansing grew sharp, and yet, when I had thoroughly washed them, although the fingers felt double their normal size, they were really less swollen, and were far on the way to comfort.
The reaction had set in now, and I could feel it in great, cooling waves of physical well-being. The table was heaped with supper, huge slices of juicy sirloin, and dishes of boiled potatoes and cabbage and beans, from which the steam rose in fragrant clouds. By each plate was a large cup of tea, so strong and hot that it bit like lye, and it soon washed away the burning lime-dust.
We sat down with our coats and waistcoats off. The men were in the best of good-humor, and the conversation ran into friendly talk. They asked me how I liked my job. I thought much better of it by this time, and I tried to wear the air of critical content. They may have had their own notions about my previous experience of manual labor, but certainly they did not obtrude these with any show of suspicion. They accepted me as a working-man on perfectly natural terms. Until Wilson came I was the only unskilled laborer among them, but my different grade was no barrier to our intercourse, and we met and talked with the freedom of men whose experience is innocent of conventional restraints.
Long after supper we sat on the porch, smoking in the twilight. A deep physical comfortableness possessed us. Each mouthful of meat and drink had wrought miraculous healing, and had restored wasted energy in measures that could be felt. My muscles were sore, but the very pain turned to pleasure in the ease of relaxation.
The men were town artisans, skilled laborers, attracted here by the abundance of work. Jerry was a plasterer, and Pete a bricklayer, and Jim a stone-mason. A short, slender figure, a smooth-shaven face with small, sharp, regular features, black hair, and gray eyes, is a sufficient outline of Jerry's personality. His air was that of a cynic, and there was a cynical flavor in his speech, but the sting of it was gone at the sight of his soft gray eyes, full of generous reserve of human kindness.
Pete was a well-set-up young fellow, of twenty-five, perhaps, plainly of German parentage. Like Jerry, he was smooth-shaven, and there was a striking contrast between his dark hair and his singularly fair skin and blue eyes. He was a bricklayer, and ambitious of promotion. He spoke hopefully of an appointment in the Navy Yard as a result of a recent examination.