The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills

The whistle of the mill had scarcely awakened Cottontown the next morning before Archie B., hatless and full of excitement, came over to the Bishop with a message from his mother. No one was astir but Mrs. Watts, and she was sweeping vigorously.

“What's the matter, Archie B.?” asked the old man when he came out.

“Uncle Dave Dickey is dyin' an' maw told me to run over an' tell you to hurry quick if you wanted to see the old man die.”

“Oh, Uncle Dave is dyin', is he? Well, we'll go, Archie B., just as soon as Ben Butler can be hooked up. I've got some more calls to make anyway.”

Ben Butler was ready by the time the children started for the mill. Little Shiloh brought up the rear, her tiny legs bravely following the others. Archie B. looked at them curiously as the small wage-earners filed past him for work.

“Say, you little mill-birds,” he said, “why don't you chaps come over to see me sometimes an' lem'me show you things outdoors that's made for boys an' girls?”

“Is they very pretty?” asked Shiloh, stopping and all ears at once. “Oh, tell me 'bout 'em! I am jus' hungry to see 'em. I've learned the names of three birds myself an' I saw a gray squirrel onct.”

“Three birds—shucks!” said Archie B., “I could sho' you forty, but I'll tell you what's crackin' good fun an' it'll test you mor'n knowin' the birds—that's easy. But the hard thing is to find their nests an' then to tell by the eggs what bird it is. That's the cracker-jack trick.”

Shiloh's eyes opened wide: “Why, do they lay eggs, Archie B.? Real eggs like a hen or a duck?”

Archie B. laughed: “Well, I should say so—an' away up in a tree, an' in the funniest little baskets you ever saw. An' some of the eggs is white, an' some blue, and some green, an' some speckled an' oh, so many kind. But I'll tell you a thing right now that'll help you to remember—mighty nigh every bird lays a egg that's mighty nigh like the bird herself. The cat bird's eggs is sorter blue—an' the wood-pecker's is white, like his wing, an' the thrasher's is mottled like his breast.”

Ben Butler was hitched to the old buggy and the Bishop drove up. He had a bunch of wild flowers for Shiloh and he gave it with a kiss. “Run along now, Baby, an' I'll fetch you another when I come back.”

They saw her run to catch up with the others and breathlessly tell them of the wonderful things Archie B. had related. And all through the day, in the dust and the lint, the thunder and rumble of the Steam Thing's war, Shiloh saw white and blue and mottled eggs, in tiny baskets, with homes up in the trees where the winds rocked the cradles when the little birds came; and young as she was, into her head there crept a thought that something was wrong in man's management of things when little birds were free and little children must work.

As she ran off she waved her hand to her grandfather.

“I'll fetch you another bunch when I come back, Pet,” he called.

“You'd better fetch her somethin' to eat, instead of prayin' aroun' with old fools that's always dyin',” called Mrs. Watts to him from the kitchen door where she was scrubbing the cans.

“The Lord will always provide, Tabitha—he has never failed me yet.”

She watched him drive slowly over the hill: “That means I had better get a move on me an' go to furagin',” she said to herself.

“Hillard Watts has mistuck me for the Almighty mighty nigh all his life. It's about time the blackberries was a gittin' ripe anyway.”

The Bishop found the greatest distress at Uncle Dave Dickey's. Aunt Sally Dickey, his wife, was weeping on the front porch, while Tilly, Uncle Dave's pretty grown daughter, her calico dress tucked up for the morning's work, showing feet and ankles that would grace a duchess, was lamenting loudly on the back porch. A coon dog of uncertain lineage and intellectual development, tuned to the howling pitch, doubtless, by the music of Tilly's sobs, joined in the chorus.

“Po' Davy is gwine—he's most gone—boo—boo-oo!” sobbed Aunt Sally.

“Pap—Pap—don't leave us,” echoed Tilly from the back porch.

“Ow—wow—oo—oo,” howled the dog.

The Bishop went in sad and subdued, expecting to find Uncle Davy breathing his last. Instead, he found him sitting bolt upright in bed, and sobbing even more lustily than his wife and daughter. He stretched out his hands pitiably as his old friend went in.

“Most gone”—he sobbed—“Hillard—the old man is most gone. You've come jus' in time to see your old friend breathe his las' an' to witness his will,” and he broke out sobbing afresh, in which Aunt Sally and Tilly and the dog, all of whom had followed the Bishop in, joined.

The Bishop took in the situation at a glance. Then he broke into a smile that gradually settled all over his kindly face.

“Look aheah, Davy, you ain't no mo' dyin' than I am.”

“What—what?” said Uncle Davy between his sobs—“I ain't a dyin', Hillard? Oh, yes, I be. Sally and Tilly both say so.”

“Now, look aheah, Davy, it ain't so. I've seed hundreds die—yes, hundreds—strong men, babes—women and little tots, strong ones, and weak and frail ones, given to tears, but I've never seed one die yet sheddin' a single tear, let alone blubberin' like a calf. It's agin nature. Davy, dyin' men don't weep. It's always all right with 'em. It's the one moment of all their lives, often, that everything is all right, seein' as they do, that all life has been a dream—all back of death jes' a beginnin' to live, an' so they die contented. No—no, Davy, if they've lived right they want to smile, not weep.”

There was an immediate snuffing and drying of tears all around. Uncle Davy looked sheepishly at Aunt Sally, she passed the same look on to Tilly, and Tilly passed it to the coon dog. Here it rested in its birthplace.

“Come to think of it, Hillard,” said Uncle Dave after a while, “but I believe you are right.”

Tilly came back, and she and Aunt Sally nodded their heads: “Yes, Hillard, you're right,” went on Uncle Davy, “Tilly and Sally both say so.”

“How come you to think you was dyin' anyway?” asked the Bishop.

“Hillard,—you kno', Hillard—the old man's been thinkin' he'd go sudden-like a long time.” He raised his eyes to heaven: “Yes, Lord, thy servant is even ready.”

“Last night I felt a kind o' flutterin' of my heart an' I cudn't breathe good. I thought it was death—death,—Hillard, on the back of his pale horse. Tilly and Sally both thought so.”

The Bishop laughed. “That warn't death on the back of a horse, Davy—that was jus' wind on the stomach of an ass.”

This was too much for Uncle Davy—especially when Tilly and Sally made it unanimous by giggling outright.

“You et cabbages for supper,” said the Bishop.

Uncle Davy nodded, sheepishly.

“Then I sed my will an' Tilly writ it down an', oh, Hillard, I am so anxious to hear you read it. I wanter see how it'ull feel fer a man to have his will read after he is dead—an'—an' how his widder takes it,” he added, glancing at Aunt Sally—“an' his friends. I wanter heah you read it, Hillard, in that deep organ way of yours,—like you read the Old Testament. In that In-the-Beginning-God-Created-the-Heaven-an'-the-Earth-Kinder voice! Drap your voice low like a organ, an' let the old man hear it befo' he goes. I fixed it when I thought I was a-dyin'.”

“Makin' yo' will ain't no sign you're dyin',” said the Bishop.

“But Tilly an' Aunt Sally both said so,” said Uncle Davy, earnestly.

“All yo' needs,” said the Bishop going to his saddle bags, “is a good straight whiskey. I keep a little—a very, very little bit in my saddle bags, for jes' sech occasions as these. It's twenty years old,” he said, “an' genuwine old Lincoln County. I keep it only for folks that's dyin',” he winked, “an' sometimes, Davy, I feel mighty like I'm about to pass away myself.”

He poured out a very small medicine glass of it, shining and shimmering in the morning light like a big ruby,—and handed it to Uncle Davy.

“You say that's twenty years old, Hillard?” asked Uncle Davy as he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and again held the little glass out entreatingly:

“Hillard, ain't it mighty small for its age—'pears to me it orter be twins to make it the regulation size. Don't you think so?”

The Bishop gave him another and took one himself, remarking as he did so, “I was pow'ful flustrated when I heard you was dyin' again, Davy, an' I need it to stiddy my nerves. Now, fetch out yo' will, Davy,” he added.

As he took it the Bishop adjusted his big spectacles, buttoned up his coat, and drew himself up as he did in the pulpit. He blew his nose to get a clear sonorous note:

“I've got a verse of poetry that I allers tunes my voice up to the occasion with,” he said. “I do it sorter like a fiddler tunes up his fiddle. It's a great poem an' I'll put it agin anything in the Queen's English for real thunder music an' a sentiment that Shakespeare an' Milton nor none of 'em cud a writ. It stirs me like our park of artillery at Shiloh, an' it puts me in tune with the great dead of all eternity. It makes me think of Cap'n Tom an' Albert Sidney Johnston.”

Then in a deep voice he repeated:

“Now give me yo' will.”

Uncle Davy sat up solemnly, keenly, expectantly. Tilly and Aunt Sally sat subdued and sad, with that air of solemn importance and respect which might be expected of a dutiful daughter and bereaved widow on such an occasion. It was too solemn for Uncle Davy. He began to whimper again: “I didn't think I would ever live to see the day when I'd hear my own will read after I was dead, an' Hillard a-readin' it around my own corpse. It's Tilly's handwrite,” he explained, as he saw the Bishop scrutinizing the testament closely. “I can't write, as you kno', but I've made my mark at the end, an' I want you to witness it.”

Pitching his voice to organ depths, the Bishop read:

“'In the name of God, amen: I, Davy Dickey, of the County of ——, and State of Alabama, being of sound mind and retentive memory, but knowing the uncertainty of life and the certainty of death, do hereby make and ordain this—my last will and testamen—'”

Uncle Davy had lain back, his eyes closed, his hands clasped, drinking it all in.

“O, Hillard—Hillard, read it agin—it makes me so happy! It does me so much good. It sounds like the first chapter of Genesis, an' Daniel Webster's reply to Hayne an' the 19th Psalm all put together.”

The Bishop read it again.

“So happy—so happy—” sobbed Uncle Davy, in which Aunt Sally and Tilly and the coon dog joined.

“'First,'” read on the Bishop, following closely Tilly's pretty penmanship; “'Concerning that part of me called the soul or spirit which is immortal, I will it back again to its Maker, leaving it to Him to do as He pleases with, without asking any impertinent questions or making any fool requests.'”

The Bishop paused. “That's a good idea, Davy—Givin' it back to its Maker without asking any impert'n'ent questions.”

“'Second,'” read the Bishop, “'I wills to be buried alongside of Dan'l Tubbs, on the Chestnut Knob, the same enclosed with a rock wall, forever set aside for me an' Dan'l and running west twenty yards to a black jack, then east to a cedar stump three rods, then south to a stake twenty yards and thence west back to me an' Dan'l. I wills the fence to be built horse high, bull strong and pig tight, so as to keep out the Widow Simmon's old brindle cow; the said cow having pestered us nigh to death in life, I don't want her to worry us back to life after death.

“'Third. All the rest of the place except that occupied as aforesaid by me an' Dan'l, and consisting of twenty acres, more or less, I will to go to my dutiful wife, Sally Ann Dickey, providing, of course, that she do not marry again.'”

“David?” put in Aunt Sallie, promptly, wiping her eyes, “I think that last thing mout be left out.”

“Well, I don't kno',” said Uncle Davy—“you sho'ly ain't got no notion of marryin' agin, have you, Sally?”

“No—no—” said Aunt Sallie, thoughtfully, “but there aint no tellin' what a po' widder mout have to do if pushed to the wall.”

“Well,” sagely remarked Uncle Davy, “we'll jes' let it stan' as it is. It's like a dose of calomel for disorder of the stomach—if you need it it'll cure you, an' if you don't it won't hurt you. This thing of old folks fallin' in love ain't nothin' but a disorder of the stomach anyhow.”

Aunt Sally again protested a poor widow was often pushed to the wall and had to take advantage of circumstances, but Uncle Davy told the Bishop to read on.

At this point Tilly got up and left the room.

“'Fourth. I give and bequeath to my devoted daughter, Tilly, and her husband, Charles C. Biggers, all my personal property, including the crib up in the loft, the razor my grandfather left me, the old mare and her colt, the best bed in the parlor, and—'”

The Bishop stopped and looked serious.

“Davy, ain't you a trifle previous in this?” he asked.

“Not for a will,” he said. “You see this is supposed to happen and be read after you're dead. You see Charles has been to see her twice and writ a poem on her eyes.”

The Bishop frowned: “You'll have to watch that Biggers boy—he is a wild reckless rake an' not in Tilly's class in anything.”

“He's pow'ful sweet on Tilly,” said Aunt Sallie.

“Has he asked her to marry him?” asked the Bishop astonished.

“S-h-h—not yet,” said Uncle Davy, “but he's comin' to it as fast as a lean hound to a meat block. He's got the firs' tech now—silly an' poetic. After a while he'll get silly an' desperate, an' jes' 'fo' he kills hisse'l Tilly'll fix him all right an' tie him up for life. The good Lord makes every man crazy when he is ripe for matrimony, so he can mate him off befo' he comes to.”

The Bishop shook his head: “I am glad I came out here to-day—if for nothin' else to warn you to let that Biggers boy alone. He don't study nothin' but fast horses an' devilment.”

“I never seed a man have a wuss'r case,” said Aunt Sally. “Won't Tilly be proud of herse'f as the daughter of Old Judge Biggers? An' me—jes' think of me as the grandmother of Biggerses—the riches' an' fines' family in the land.”

“An' me?—I'll be the gran'pap of 'em—won't I, Sally?”

“You forgit, Davy,” said Aunt Sally—“this is yo' will—you'll be dead.”

“I did forgit,” said Uncle Davy sadly—“but I'd sho' love to live an' take one of them little Biggerses on my knees an' think his gran'pap had bred up to this. Me an' old Judge Biggers—gran'paws of the same kids! Now, you see, Hillard, he met Tilly at a party an' he tuck her in to supper. The next day he writ her a poem, an' I think it's a pretty good start on the gran'pap business.”

The Bishop smiled: “It does look like he loves her,” he added, dryly. “If I was the devil an' wanted to ketch a woman I'd write a poem to her every day an' lie between heats. Love lives on lies.”

“Now, I've ca'culated them things out,” said Uncle Davy, “an' it'll be this away: Tilly is as pretty as a peach an' Charlie is gittin' stuck wus'n wus'n every day. By the time I am dead they will be married good an' hard. I am almost gone as it is, the ole man he's liable to drap off any time—yea, Lord, thy servant is ready to go—but I do hope that the good master will let me live long enough to hold one of my Biggers grandboys on my knees.”

“All I've got to say,” said the Bishop, “is jus' to watch yo' son-in-law. Every son-in-law will stan' watchin' after the ceremony, but yours will stan' it all the time.”

“'Lastly,'” read the Bishop, “'I wills it that things be left just as they be on the place—no moving around of nothing, especially the well, it being eighty foot deep, and with good cool water; and finally I leave anything else I've got, mostly my good will, to the tender mercies of the lawyers and courts.'”

The Bishop witnessed it, gave Uncle Davy another toddy, and, after again cautioning him to watch young Biggers closely, rode away.

CHAPTER XV

EDWARD CONWAY

Across the hill the old man rode to Millwood, and as he rode his head was bent forward in troubled thought.

He had heard that Edward Conway had come to the sorest need—even to where he would place his daughters in the mill. None knew better than Hillard Watts what this would mean socially for the granddaughters of Governor Conway.

Besides, the old preacher had begun to hate the mill and its infamous system of child labor with a hatred born of righteousness. Every month he saw its degradation, its slavery, its death.

He preached, he talked against it. He began to be pointed out as the man who was against the mill. Ominous rumors had come to his ears, and threats. It was whispered to him that he had better be silent, and some of the people he preached to—some of those who had children in the mill and were supported in their laziness by the life blood of their little ones—these were his bitterest enemies.

To-day, the drunken proprietor of Millwood sat in his accustomed place on the front balcony, his cob-pipe in his mouth and ruin all around him.

Like others, he had a great respect for the Bishop—a man who had been both his own and his father's friend. Often as a lad he had hunted, fished, and trapped with the preacher-overseer, who lived near his father's plantation. He had broken all of the stubborn colts in the overseer's care; he had ridden them even in some of their fiercest, hardest races, and he had felt the thrill of victory at the wire and known the great pride which comes to one who knows he has the confidence of a brave and honest man.

The old trainer's influence over Edward Conway had always been great.

To-day, as he saw the Bishop ride up, he thought of his boyhood days, and of Tom Travis. How often had they gone with the old man hunting and fishing! How he reverenced the memory of his gentleness and kindness!

The greatest desire of Hillard Watts had been to reform Edward Conway. He had prayed for him, worked for him. In spite of his drunkenness the old man believed in him.

“God'll save him yet,” he would say. “I've prayed for it an' I kno' it—tho' it may be by the crushing of him. Some men repent to God's smile, some to His frown, and some to His fist. I'm afraid it will take a blow to save Ned, po' boy.”

For Ned was always a boy to him.

Conway was drunker than usual to-day. Things grew worse daily, and he drank deeper.

It is one of the strangest curses of whiskey that as it daily drags a man down, deeper and deeper, it makes him believe he must cling to his Red God the closer.

He met the old overseer cordially, in a half drunken endeavor to be natural. The old man glanced sadly up at the bloated, boastful face, and thought of the beautiful one it once had been. He thought of the fine, brilliant mind and marveled that with ten years of drunkenness it still retained its strength. And the Bishop remembered that in spite of his drinking no one had ever accused Edward Conway of doing a dishonorable thing. “How strong is that man's character rooted for good,” he thought, “when even whiskey cannot undermine it.”

“Where are the babies, Ned?” he asked, after he was seated.

The father called and the two girls came running out.

The old man was struck with the developing beauty of Helen—he had not seen her for a year. Lily hunted in his pockets for candy, as she had always done—and found it—and Helen—though eighteen and grown, sat thoughtful and sad, on a stool by his side.

The old man did not wonder at her sadness.

“Ned,” he said, as he stroked Helen's hand, “this girl looks mo' like her mother every day, an' you know she was the handsomest woman that ever was raised in the Valley.”

Conway took his pipe out of his mouth. He dropped his head and looked toward the distant blue hills. What Memory and Remorse were whispering to him the old man could only guess. Silently—nodding—he sat and looked and spoke not.

“She ain't gwineter be a bit prettier than my little Lil, when she gits grown,” said a voice behind them.

It was Mammy Maria who, as usual, having dressed the little girl as daintily as she could, stood nearby to see that no harm befell her.

“Wal, Aunt Maria,” drawled the Bishop. “Whar did you come from? I declar' it looks like ole times to see you agin'.”

There is something peculiar in this, that those unlettered, having once associated closely with negroes, drop into their dialect when speaking to them. Perhaps it may be explained by some law of language—some rule of euphony, now unknown. The Bishop unconsciously did this; and, from dialect alone, one could not tell which was white and which was black.

Aunt Maria had always been very religious, and the Bishop arose and shook her hand gravely.

“Pow'ful glad to see you,” said the old woman.

“How's religion—Aunt Maria,” he asked.

“Mighty po'ly—mighty po'ly”—she sighed. “It looks lak the Cedars of Lebanon is dwarfed to the scrub pine. The old time religin' is passin' away, an' I'm all that's lef' of Zion.”

The Bishop smiled.

“Yes, you see befo' you all that's lef' of Zion. I'se been longin' to see you an' have a talk with you—thinkin' maybe you cud he'p me out. You kno' me and you is Hard-shells.”

The Bishop nodded.

“We 'blieves in repentince an' fallin' from grace, an' backslidin' an' all that,” she went on. “Well, they've lopped them good ole things off one by one an' they don't 'bleeve in nothin' now but jes' jin'in'. They think jes' jin'in' fixes 'em—that it gives 'em a free pass into the pearly gates. So of all ole Zion Church up at the hill, sah, they've jes' jined an' jined around, fust one church an' then another, till of all the ole Zion Church that me an' you loved so much, they ain't none lef' but Parson Shadrack, the preacher, sister Tilly, an' me—We wus Zion.”

“Pow'ful bad, pow'ful bad,” said the Bishop—“and you three made Zion.”

“We wus,” said Aunt Maria, sadly—“but now there ain't but one lef'. I'm Zion. It's t'arrable, but it's true. As it wus in the days of Lot, so it is to-day in Sodom.”

“Why, how did that happen?” asked the Bishop.

Aunt Maria's eyes kindled: “It's t'arrable, but it's true—last week Parson Shadrack deserts his own wife an' runs off with Sis Tilly. It looked lak he mouter tuck me, too, an' kept the fold together as Abraham did when he went into the Land of the Philistines. But thank God, if I am all that's lef', one thing is mighty consolin'—I can have a meetin' of Zion wherever I is. If I sets down in a cheer to meditate I sez to myself—'Be keerful, Maria, for the church is in session.' When I drink, it is communion—when I bathes, it is baptism, when I walks, I sez to myself: 'Keep a straight gait, Maria, you are carryin' the tabbernackle of all goodness.' Aunt Tilly got the preacher, but thank God, I got Zion.”

“But I mus' go. Come on, Lily,” she said to the little girl,—“let ole Zion fix up yo' curls.”

She took her charge and curtsied out, and the Bishop knew she would die either for Zion or the little girl.

The old man sat thinking—Helen had gone in and was practising a love song.

“Ned,” said the Bishop, “I tell you a man ain't altogether friendless when he's got in his home a creature as faithful as she is. She'd die for that child. That one ole faithful 'oman makes me feel like liftin' my hat to the whole nigger race. I tell you when I get to heaven an' fail to see ole Mammy settin' around the River of Life, I'll think somethin' is wrong.”

The Bishop was silent a while, and then he asked: “Ned, it can't be true that you are goin' to put them girls in the factory?”

“It's all I can do,” said Conway, surlily—“I'll be turned out of home soon—out in the public road. Everything I've got has been sold. I've no'where to go, an' but for Carpenter's offer from the Company of the cottage, I'd not have even a home for them. The only condition I could go on was that—”

“That you sell your daughters into slavery,” said the Bishop quietly.

“You don't seem to think it hurts your's,” said Conway bluntly.

“If I had my way they'd not work there a day,”—the old man replied hastily. “But it's different with me, an' you know it. My people take to it naturally. I am a po' white, an underling by breedin' an' birth, an' if my people build, they must build up. But you—you are tearing down when you do that. Po' as I am, I'd rather starve than to see little children worked to death in that trap, but Tabitha sees it different, and she is the one bein' in the world I don't cross—the General”—he smiled—“she don't understand, she's built different.”

He was silent a while. Then he said: “I am old an' have nothin'.”

He stopped again. He did not say that what little he did have went to the poor and the sorrow-stricken of the neighborhood. He did not add that in his home, besides its poverty and hardness, he faced daily the problem of far greater things.

“If I only had my health,” said Conway, “but this cursed rheumatism!”

“Some of us has been so used to benefits,” said the old man, “that it's only when they've withdrawn that we miss 'em. We're always ready to blame God for what we lose, but fail to remember what He gives us. We kno' what diseases an' misfortunes we have had, we never know, by God's mercy, what we have escaped. Death is around us daily—in the very air we breathe—and yet we live.

“I'll talk square with you, Ned—though you may hate me for it. Every misfortune you have, from rheumatism to loss of property, is due to whiskey. Let it alone. Be a man. There's greatness in you yet. You'd have no chance if you was a scrub. But no man can estimate the value of good blood in man or hoss—it's the unknown quantity that makes him ready to come again. For do the best we can, at last we're in the hands of God an' our pedigree.”

“Do you think I've got a show yet?” asked Conway, looking up.

“Do I? Every man has a chance who trusts God an' prays. You can't down that man. Your people were men—brave an' honest men. They conquered themselves first, an' all this fair valley afterwards. They overcame greater obstacles than you ever had, an' in bringin' you into the world they gave you, by the very laws of heredity, the power to overcome, too. Why do you grasp at the shadow an' shy at the form? You keep these hound dogs here, because your father rode to hounds. But he rode for pleasure, in the lap of plenty, that he had made by hard licks. You ride, from habit, in poverty. He rode his hobbies—it was all right. Your hobbies ride you. He fought chickens for an hour's pastime, in the fullness of the red blood of life. You fight them for the blood of the thing—as the bred-out Spaniards fight bulls. He took his cocktails as a gentleman—you as a drunkard.”

The old man was excited, indignant, fearless.

Conway looked at him in wonder akin to fear. Even as the idolaters of old looked at Jeremiah and Isaiah.

“Why—why is it”—went on the old man earnestly, rising and shaking his finger ominously—“that two generations of cocktails will breed cock-fighters, and two generations of whiskey will breed a scrub? Do you know where you'll end? In bein' a scrub? No, no—you will be dead an' the worms will have et you—but”—he pointed to the house—“you are fixin' to make scrubs of them—they will breed back.

“Go back to the plough—quit this whiskey and be the man your people was. If you do not,” he said rising to go—“God will crush you—not kill you, but mangle you in the killin'.”

“He has done that already,” said Conway bitterly. “He has turned the back of His hand on me.”

“Not yet”—said the Bishop—“but it will fall and fall there.” He pointed to Helen, whose queenly head could be seen in the old parlor as she trummed out a sad love song.

Conway blanched and his hand shook. He felt a nameless fear—never felt before. He looked around, but the old man was gone. Afterwards, as he remembered that afternoon, he wondered if, grown as the old man had in faith, God had not also endowed him with the gift of prophecy.

CHAPTER XVI

HELEN'S DESPAIR

An hour afterward, the old nurse found Helen at the piano, her head bowed low over the old yellow keys. “It's gittin' t'wards dinner time, chile,” she said tenderly, “an' time I was dressin' my queen gal for dinner an sendin' her out to get roses in her cheeks.”

“Oh, Mammy, don't—don't dress me that way any more. I am—I am to be—after this—just a mill girl, you know?”

There was a sob and her head sank lower over the piano.

“You may be for a while, but you'll always be a Conway”—and the old woman struck an attitude with her arms akimbo and stood looking at the portraits which hung on the parlor wall.

“That—that—makes it worse, Mammy.” She wiped away her tears and stood up, and her eyes took on a look Aunt Maria had not seen since the old Governor had died. She thought of ghosts and grew nervous before it.

“If my father sends me to work in that place—if he does—” she cried with flaming eyes—“I shall feel that I am disgraced. I cannot hold my head up again. Then you need not be surprised at anything I do.”

“It ain't registered that you're gwine there yet,” and Mammy Maria stroked her head. “But if you does—it won't make no difference whar you are nor what you have to do, you'll always be a Conway an' a lady.”

An hour afterwards, dressed as only Mammy Maria could dress her, Helen had walked out again to the rock under the wild grape vine.

How sweet and peaceful it was, and yet how changed since but a short time ago she had sat there watching for Harry!

“Harry”—she pulled out the crumpled, tear-stained note from her bosom and read it again. And the reading surprised her. She expected to weep, but instead when she had finished she sat straight up on the mossy rock and from her eyes gleamed again the light before which the political enemies of the old dead Governor had so often quailed.

Nor did it change in intensity, when, at the sound of wheels and the clatter of hoofs, she instinctively dropped down on the moss behind the rock and saw through the grape leaves one of Richard Travis's horses, steaming hot, and stepping,—right up to its limit—a clipping gait down the road.

She had dropped instinctively because she guessed it was Harry. And instinctively, too, she knew the girl with the loud boisterous laugh beside him was Nellie.

The buggy was wheeled so rapidly past that she heard only broken notes of laughter and talk. Then she sat again upon her rock, with the deep flush in her eyes, and said:

“I hate—him—I hate him—and oh—to think—”

She tore his note into fragments, twisted and rolled them into a ball and shot it, as a marble, into the gulch below.

Then, suddenly she remembered, and reaching over she looked into a scarred crevice in the rock. Twice that summer had Clay Westmore left her a quaint love note in this little rock-lined post-office. Quaint indeed, and they made her smile, for they had been queer mixtures of geology and love. But they were honest—and they had made her flush despite the fact that she did not love him.

Still she would read them two or three times and sigh and say: “Poor Clay—” after every reading.

“Surely there will be one this afternoon,” she thought as she peeped over.

But there was not, and it surprised her to know how much she was disappointed.

“Even Clay has forgotten me,” she said as she arose hastily to go.

A big sob sprang up into her throat and the Conway light of defiance, that had blazed but a few moments before in her eyes, died in the depths of the cloud of tears which poured between it and the open.

A cruel, dangerous mood came over her. It enveloped her soul in its sombre hues and the steel of it struck deep.

She scarcely remembered her dead mother—only her eyes. But when these moods came upon Helen Conway—and her life had been one wherein they had fallen often—the memory of her mother's eyes came to her and stood out in the air before her, and they were sombre and sad, and full, too, of the bitterness of hopes unfulfilled.

All her life she had fought these moods when they came. But now—now she yielded to the subtle charm of them—the wild pleasure of their very sinfulness.

“And why not,” she cried to herself when the consciousness of it came over her, and like a morphine fiend carrying the drug to his lips, she knew that she also was pressing there the solace of her misery.

“Why should I not dissipate in the misery of it, since so much of it has fallen upon me at once?

“Mother?—I never knew one—only the eyes of one, and they were the eyes of Sorrow. Father?”—she waved her hand toward the old home—“drunk-wrecked—he would sell me for a quart of whiskey.

“Then I loved—loved an image which is—mud—mud”—she fairly spat it out. “One poor friend I had—I scorned him, and he has forgotten me, too. But I did know that I had social standing—that my name was an honored one until—now.”

“Now!”—she gulped it down. “Now I am a common mill girl.”

She had been walking rapidly down the road toward the house. So rapidly that she did not know how flushed and beautiful she had become. She was swinging her hat impatiently in her hand, her fine hair half falling and loose behind, shadowing her face as rosy sunset clouds the temple on Mt. Ida. A face of more classic beauty, a skin of more exquisite fairness, flushed with the bloom of youth, Richard Travis had never before seen.

And so, long before she reached him, he reined in his trotters and sat silently watching her come. What a graceful step she had—what a neck and head and hair—half bent over with eyes on the ground, unconscious of the beauty and grace of their own loveliness.

She almost ran into his buggy—she stopped with a little start of surprise, only to look into his clean-cut face, smiling half patronizingly, half humorously, and with a look of command too, and of patronage withal, of half-gallant heart-undoing.

It was the look of the sharp-shinned hawk hovering for an instant, in sheer intellectual abandon and physical exuberance, above the unconscious oriole bent upon its morning bath.

He was smiling down into her eyes and repeating half humorously, half gallantly, and altogether beautifully, she thought, Keats' lines:

Even Helen could not tell how it was done nor why she had consented....

“No—no—you are hot and tired and you shall not walk.... I will give you just a little spin before Mammy Maria calls you to dinner.... Yes, Lizzette and Sadie B. always do their best when a pretty girl is behind them.”

How refreshing the air—hot and tired as she was. And such horses—she had never before ridden behind anything so fine. How quickly he put her at her ease—how intellectual he was—how much of a gentleman. And was it not a triumph—a social triumph for her? A mill girl, in name, to have him notice her? It made her heart beat quickly to think that Richard Travis should care enough for her to give her this pleasure and at a time when—when she always saw her mother's eyes.

Timidly she sat by him scarce lifting her eyes to speak, but conscious all the time that his eyes were devouring her, from her neck and hair to her slippered foot, sticking half way out from skirts of old lace-trimmed linen.

She reminded him at last that they should go back home.

No—he would have her at home directly. Yes, he'd have her there before the old nurse missed her.

She knew the trotters were going fast, but she did not know just how fast, until presently, in a cloud of whirling dust they flew around a buggy whose horse, trot as fast as it could, seemed stationary to the speed the pair showed as they passed.

It was Harry and Nellie. She glanced coldly at him, and when he raised his hat she cut him with a smile of scorn. She saw his jaw drop dejectedly as Richard Travis sang out banteringly:

“Sweets to the sweet, and good-bye to the three-minute class.”

It was a good half hour, but it seemed but a few minutes before he had her back at the home gate, her cheeks burning with the glory of that burst of speed, and rush of air.

He had helped her out and stood holding her hand as one old enough to be her father. He smiled and, looking down at her glowing face, and hair, and neck, repeated:

Then he changed as she thanked him, and said: “When you go into the mill I shall have many pleasant surprises for you like this.”

He bent over her and whispered: “I have arranged for your pay to be double—we are neighbors, you know—your father and I,—and a pretty girl, like you, need not work always.”

She started and looked at him quickly.

The color went from her cheeks. Then it came again in a crimson tide, so full and rich, that Richard Travis, like Titian with his brush, stood spellbound before the work he had done.

Fearing he had said too much, he dropped his voice and with a twinkle in his eye said:

“For there is Harry—you know.”

All her timidity vanished—her hanging of the head, her silence, her blushes. Instead, there leaped into her eyes that light which Richard Travis had never seen before—the light of a Conway on mettle.

“I hate him.”

“I do not blame you,” he said. “I shall be a—father to you if you will let me.”

He pressed her hand, and raising his hat, was gone.

As he drove away he turned and looked at her slipping across the lawn in the twilight. In his eyes was a look of triumphant excitement.

“To own her—such a creature—God—it were worth risking my neck.”

The mention of Harry brought back all her bitter recklessness to Helen. She was but a child and her road, indeed, was hard. And as she turned at the old gate and looked back at the vanishing buggy she said:

“Had he asked me this evening I'd—yes—I'd go to the end of the world with him. I'd go—go—go—and I care not how.”