Richard Travis was in a jolly mood at the supper table that night, and Harry became jolly also, impertinently so. He had not said a word about his cousin being with Helen, but it burned in his breast, and he awaited his chance to mention it.
“I have thought up a fable since I have been at supper, Cousin Richard. Shall I tell you?”
“Oh”—with a cynical smile—“do!”
“Well,” began Harry unabashed, and with many sly winks and much histrionic effort, “it is called the 'Fox and the Lion.' Now a fox in the pursuit ran down a beautiful young doe and was about to devour her when the lion came up and with a roar and a sweep of his paw, took her saying ...”
“'Get out of the way, you whelp,'” said his cousin, carrying the fable on, “for I perceive you are not even a fox, but a coyote, since no fox was ever known to run down a doe.”
The smile was gradually changed on his face to a cruel sneer, and Harry ceased talking with a suddenness that was marked.
CHAPTER XVII
THE WHIPPER-IN
When the mill opened the next day, there was work for Jud Carpenter. He came in and approached the superintendent's desk briskly.
“Well, suh, hu' many to-day?” he asked.
Kingsley looked over his list of absentees.
“Four, and two of them spinners. Carpenter, you must go at once and see about it. They are playing off, I am sure.”
“Lem'me see the list, suh,”—and he ran his eye over the names.
“Bud Billings—plague his old crotchety head—. He kno's that machine's got to run, whether no. Narthin's the matter with him—bet a dollar his wife licked him last night an' he's mad about it.”
“That will do us no good,” said Kingsley—“what he is mad about. That machine must be started at once. The others you can see afterwards.”
Carpenter jerked his slouch hat down over his eyes and went quickly out.
In half an hour he was back again. His hat was off, his face was red, his shaggy eyebrows quivered with angry determination, as, with one hand in the collar of the frightened Bud, he pulled the slubber into the superintendent's presence.
Following her husband came Mrs. Billings—a small, bony, wiry, black-eyed woman, with a firmly set mouth and a perpetual thunder-cloud on her brow—perhaps the shadow of her coarse, crow-black hair.
While Jud dragged him, she carried a stick and prodded Bud in the rear. Nor was she chary in abuse.
Jerked into the superintendent's presence, Bud's scared eyes darted here and there as if looking for a door to break through, and all the time they were silently protesting. His hands, too, joined in the protest; one of them wagged beseechingly behind appealing to his spouse to desist—the other went through the same motion in front begging Jud Carpenter for mercy.
But not a word did he utter—not even a grunt did he make.
They halted as quickly as they entered. Bud's eyes sought the ceiling, the window, the floor,—anywhere but straight ahead of him.
His wife walked up to the superintendent's desk—she was hot and flushed. Her small black eyes, one of which was cocked cynically, flashed fire, her coarse hair fell across her forehead, or was plastered to her head with perspiration.
It was pathetic to look at Bud, with his deep-set, scared eyes. Kingsley had never heard him speak a word, nor had he even been able to catch his eye. But he was the best slubber in the mill—tireless, pain-staking. His place could not be filled.
Bud was really a good-natured favorite of Kingsley and when the superintendent saw him, scared and panting, his tongue half out, with Jud Carpenter's hand still in his collar, he motioned to Jud to turn him loose.
“Uh—uh—” grunted Jud “—he will bolt sho!”
Kingsley noticed that Bud's head was bound with a cloth.
“What's the matter, Bud?” he asked kindly.
The slubber never spoke, but glanced at his wife, who stood glaring at him. Then she broke out in a thin, drawling, daring, poor-white voice—a ring of impertinence and even a challenge in it:
“I'll tell you'uns what's the matter with Bud. Bud Billings is got what most men needs when they begin to raise sand about their vittels for nothin'. I've busted a plate over his head.”
She struck an attitude before Kingsley which plainly indicated that she might break another one. It was also an attitude which asked: “What are you going to do about it?”
Bud nodded emphatically—a nod that spoke more than words. It was a positive, unanimous assertion on his part that the plate had been broken there.
“Ne'ow, Mister Kingsley, you know yo'se'f that Bud is mighty slow mouthed—he don't talk much an' I have to do his talkin' fur him. Ne'ow Bud don't intend for to be so mean”—she added a little softer—“but every month about the full of the moon, Bud seems to think somehow that it is about time fur him to make a fool of hisse'f again. He wouldn't say nothin' fur a month—he is quiet as a lam' an' works steady as a clock—then all to once the fool spell 'ud hit him an' then some crockery 'ud have to be wasted.
“They ain't no reason for it, Mister Kingsley—Bud cyant sho' the rappin' of yo' finger fur havin' sech spells along towards the full of the moon. Bud cyant tell you why, Mister Kingsley, to save his soul—'cept that he jes' thinks he's got to do it an' put me to the expense of bustin' crockery.
“I stood it mighty nigh two years arter Bud and me was spliced, thinkin' maybe it war ther bed-bugs a-bitin' Bud, long towards the full of the moon. So I watched that pint an' killed 'em all long towards the first quarter with quicksilver an' the white of an egg. Wal, Bud never sed a word all that month. He never opened his mouth an' he acted jes' lak a puf'fec' gentleman an' a dutiful dotin' husband—(Bud wiped away a tear)—until the time come for the fool spell to hit 'im, an 'all to once you never seed sech a fool spell hit a man befo'.
“What you reckin' Bud done, Mister Kingsley? Bud Billins thar, what did he do? Got mad about his biscuits—it's the funny way the fool spell allers hits him, he never gits mad about anything but his biscuits. Why I cud feed Bud on dynamite an' he'd take it all right if he cu'd eat it along with his biscuits. Onct I put concentrated lye in his coffee by mistake. I'd never knowed it if the pup hadn't got some of it by mistake an' rolled over an' died in agony. I rushed to the mill thinkin' Bud ud' be dead, sho'—but he wa'nt. He never noticed it. I noticed his whiskers an' eyebrows was singed off an' questioned 'im 'bout it and he 'lowed he felt sorter quare arter he drunk his coffee, an' full like, an' he belched an' it sot his whiskers an' eyebrows a-fiah, which ther same kinder puzzled him fur a while; but it must be biscuits to make him raise cain. It happened at the breakfas' table. Mind you, Mister Kingsley, Bud didn't say it to my face—no, he never says anything to my face—but he gits up an' picks up the cat an' tells ther cat what he thinks of me—his own spliced an' wedded wife—sland'in' me to the cat.”
She shook her finger in his face—“You know you did, Bud Billins—an' what you reckin he told ther cat, Mister Kingsley—told her I was a—a—”
She gasped—she clinched her fist. Bud dodged an' tried to break away.
“Told him I was a—a—heifer!”
Bud looked sheepishly around—he tried even to run, but Jud Carpenter held him fast. She shook her finger in his face. “I heard you say it, Bud Billins, you know I did an' I busted a plate over yo' head.”
“But, my dear Madam,” said Kingsley, “that was no reason to treat him so badly.”
“Oh, it wa'nt?” she shrieked—“to tattle-tale to the house-cat about yo' own spliced an' wedded wife? In her own home an' yard—her that you've sworn to love an' cherish agin bed an' board—ter call her a heifer?”
She slipped her hand under her apron and produced a deadly looking blue plate of thick cheap ware. Her eyes blazed, her voice became husky with anger.
“An' you don't think that was nothin'?” she shrieked.
“You don't understand me, my dear Madam,” said Kingsley quickly. “I meant that it was no reason why you should continue to treat him so after he has suffered and is sorry. Of course you have got to control Bud.”
She softened and went on.
“Wal it was mighty nigh a year befo' Bud paid any mo' 'tention to the cat. The full moon quit 'fectin' him—he even quit eatin' biscuits. Then the spell commenced to come onct a year an' he cu'dn't pass over blackberry winter to save his life. Mind you he never sed anything to me about it, but one day he ups an' gits choked on a chicken gizzerd an' coughs an' wheezes an' goes on so like a fool that I ups with the cheer an' comes down on his head a-thinkin' I'd make him cough it up. I mout a bin a little riled an' hit harder'n I orter, but I didn't mean anything by it, an' he did cough it up on my clean floor, an' I'm willin' to say agin' I was a little hasty, that's true, in callin' him a lop-sided son of a pigeon-toed monkey, for Bud riled me mighty. But what you reckin he done?”
She shook her finger in his face again. Bud tried to run again.
“You kno' you done it, Bud Billins—I followed you an' listened when you tuck up the cat an' you whispered in the cat's year that your spliced an' wedded wife was a—a—she devil!”
“It tuck two plates that time, Mister Kingsley—that's the time Bud didn't draw no pay fur two weeks.
“Wal, that was over a year ago, an' Bud he's been a behavin' mighty well, untwell this mornin'. It's true he didn't say much, but he sed 'nuff fur me to see ther spell was acomin' on an' I'd better bust it up befo' it got into his blood an' sot 'im to cultivate the company of the cat. I seed I had to check the disease afore it got too strong, fur I seed Bud was tryin' honestly to taper off with them spells an' shake with the cat if he cu'd, so when he kinder snorted a little this mornin' because he didn't have but one aig an' then kinder began to look aroun' as if he was thinkin' of mice, I busted a saucer over his head an' fotched 'im too, grateful la'k an' happy, to be hisse'f agin. I think he's nearly c'wored an' I'm mighty glad you is, Bud Billins, fur it's costin' a lot of mighty good crockery to c'wore you.
“Now you all jes' lem'me 'lone, Mister Kingsley—lem'me manage Bud. He's slo' mouthed as I'm tellin' you, but he's gittin' over them spells an' I'm gwinter c'wore him if I hafter go into the queensware bus'ness on my own hook. Now, Bud Billins, you jes' go in there now an' go to tendin' to that slubbin' machine, an' don't you so much as look at a cat twixt now an' next Christmas.”
Bud needed no further admonition. He bolted for the door and was soon silently at work.
CHAPTER XVIII
SAMANTHA CAREWE
But Jud Carpenter did not finish his work by starting the slubbing machine. Samantha Carewe, one of the main loom women, was absent. Going over to her cottage, he was told by her mother, a glinty-eyed, shrewd looking, hard featured woman—that Samantha was “mighty nigh dead.”
“Oh, she's mighty nigh dead, is she,” said Jud with a tinge of sarcasm—“I've heurn of her bein' mighty nigh dead befo'. Well, I wanter see her.”
The mother looked at him sourly, but barred the doorway with her form. Jud fixed his hard cunning eyes on her.
“Cyant see her; I tell you—she's mighty po'ly.”
“Well, cyant you go an' tell her that Mister Jud Cyarpenter is here an' 'ud like to kno' if he can be of any sarvice to her in orderin' her burial robe an' coffin, or takin' her last will an' testerment.”
With that he pushed himself in the doorway, rudely brushing the woman aside. “Now lem'me see that gyrl—” he added sternly—“that loom is got to run or you will starve, an' if she's sick I want to kno' it. I've seed her have the toe-ache befo'.”
The door of the room in which Samantha lay was open, and in plain view of the hall she lay with a look of pain, feigned or real, on her face. She was a woman past forty—a spinster truly—who had been in the mill since it was first started, and, as she came from a South Carolina mill to the Acme, had, in fact, been in a cotton mill, as she said—“all her life.” For she could not remember when, as a child even, she had not worked in one.
Her chest was sunken, her shoulders stooped, her whole form corded and knotted with the fight against machinery. Her skin, bronzed and sallow, looked not unlike the hard, fine wood-work of the loom, oiled with constant use.
Jud walked in unceremoniously.
“What ails you, Samanthy?” he asked, with feigned kindness.
“Oh, I dunno, Jud, but I've got a powerful hurtin' in my innards.”
“The hurtin' was so bad,” said her mother, “that I had to put a hot rock on her stomach, last night.”
She motioned to a stone lying on the hearth. Jud glanced at it—its size staggered him.
“Good Lord! an' you say you had that thing on her stomach? Why didn't you send her up to the mill an' let us lay a hot steam engine on her?”
“What you been eatin', Samanthy?” he asked suddenly.
“Nuthin', Jud—I aint got no appetite at all!”
“No, she aint eat a blessed thing, hardly, to-day,” said her mother—“jes' seemed to have lost her appetite from a to izzard.”
“I wish the store'd keep wild cherry bark and whiskey—somethin' to make us eat. We cyant work unless we can eat,” said Samantha, woefully.
“Great Scott,” said Jud, “what we want to do is to keep you folks from eatin' so much. Lem'me see,” he added after a pause, as if still thinking he'd get to the source of her trouble—“Yistidday was Sunday—you didn't have to work—now what did you eat for breakfast?”
“Nothin'—oh, I aint got no appetite at all”—whined Miss Samantha.
“Well, what did you eat—I wanter find out what ails you?”
“Well, lem'me see,” said Miss Samantha, counting on her fingers—“a biled mackrel, some fried bacon, two pones of corn bread—kinder forced it down.”
“Ur-huh—” said Jud, thoughtfully—“of course you had to drink, too.”
“Yes”—whined Miss Samantha woefully—“two glasses of buttermilk.”
Jud elevated his eyebrows “An' for dinner?”
“O, Lor'. Jes' cu'dn't eat nothin' fur dinner,” she wailed. “If the Company'd only get some cherry bark an' whiskey”—
“At dinner,” said Mrs Carewe, stroking her chin—“we had some sour-kraut—she eat right pe'rtly of that—kinder seemed lak a appetizer to her. She mixed it with biled cabbage an' et right pe'rtly of it.”
“An' some mo' buttermilk—it kinder cools my stomach,” whined Miss Samantha. “An' hog-jowl, an' corn-bread—anything else Maw?”
“A raw onion in vinegar,” said her mother—“It's the only thing that seems to make you want to eat a little. An' reddishes—we had some new reddishes fur dinner—didn't we, Samanthy?”
“Good Lord,” snapped Jud—“reddishes an' buttermilk—no wonder you needed that weight on your stomach—it's all that kept you from floatin' in the air. Cyant eat—O good Lord!”
They were silent—Miss Samantha making wry faces with her pain.
“Of course you didn't eat no supper?” he asked.
“No—we don' eat no supper Sunday night,” said Mrs. Carewe.
“Didn't eat none at all,” asked Jud—“not even a little?”
“Well, 'bout nine o'clock I thought I'd eat a little, to keep me from gittin' hungry befo' day, so I et a raw onion, an' some black walnuts, and dried prunes, an'—an'—”
“A few apples we had in the cellar,” added her mother, “an' a huckleberry pie, an' buttermilk—”
Jud jumped up—“Good Lord, I thought you was a fool when you said you put that stone on her stomach, but now I know you done the right thing—you might have anchored her by a chain to the bed post, too, in case the rock didn't hold her down. Now look here,” he went on to Mrs. Carewe, “I'll go to the sto' an' send you a half pound of salts, a bottle of oil an' turbb'ntine. Give her plenty of it an' have her at the mill by to-morrow, or I'll cut off all your rations. As it is I don't see that you need them, anyway, to eat”—he sneered—“for you 'aint got no appetite at all.'”
From the Carewe cottage Jud went to a small yellow cottage on the farthest side of the valley. It was the home of John Corbin, and Willis, his ten-year-old son, was one of the main doffers. The father was lounging lazily on the little front verandah, smoking his pipe.
“What's the matter with Willis?” asked Jud after he had come up.
“Why, nothin'—” drawled the father. “Aint he at the mill?”
“No—the other four children of your'n is there, but Willis aint.”
The man arose with more than usual alacrity. “I'll see that he is there—” he declared—“it's as much as we can do to live on what they makes, an' I don't want no dockin' for any sickness if I can he'p it.”
Willis, a pale over-worked lad, was down with tonsillitis. Jud heard the father and mother in an angry dispute. She was trying to persuade him to let the boy stay at home. In the end hot words were used, and finally the father came out followed by the pale and hungry-eyed boy.
“He'd better die at the mill at work than here at home,” the father added brutally, as Jud led him off, “fur then the rest of us will have that much ahead to live on.”
He settled lazily back in his chair, and resumed his smoking.
CHAPTER XIX
A QUICK CONVERSION
It happened that morning that the old Bishop was on his daily round, visiting the sick of Cottontown. He went every day, from house to house, helping the sick, cheering the well, and better than all things else, putting into the hearts of the disheartened that priceless gift of coming again.
For of all the gifts the gods do give to men, that is the greatest—the ability to induce their fallen fellow man to look up and hope again. The gift to spur others onward—the gift to make men reach up. His flock were all mill people, their devotion to him wonderful. In the rush and struggle of the strenuous world around them, this humble old man was the only being to whom they could go for spiritual help.
To-day in his rounds, one thing impressed him more sadly than anything else—for he saw it so plainly when he visited their homes—and that was that with all their hard work, from the oldest to the youngest, with all their traffic in human life, stealing the bud along with the broken and severed stem—as a matter of fact, the Acme mills paid out to the people but very little money. Work as they might, they seldom saw anything but an order on a store, for clothes and provisions sold to them at prices that would make a Jew peddler blush for shame.
The Bishop found entire families who never saw a piece of money the year round.
There are families and families, and some are more shiftless than others.
In one of the cottages the old man found a broken down little thing of seven, sick. For just such trips he kept his pockets full of things, and such wonderful pockets they would have been to a healthful natural child! Ginger cakes—a regular Noah's Ark, and apples, red and yellow. Sweet gum, too, which he had himself gathered from the trees in the woods. And there were even candy dolls and peppermints.
“Oh, well, maybe I can help her, po' little thing,” the Bishop said when the mother conducted him in. But one look at her was enough—that dead, unmeaning look, not unconscious, but unmeaning—deadened—a disease which to a robust child would mean fever and a few days' sickness—to this one the Bishop knew it meant atrophy and death. And as the old man looked at her, he thought it were better that she should go. For to her life had long since lost its individuality, and dwarfed her into a nerveless machine—the little frame was nothing more than one of a thousand monuments to the cotton mill—a mechanical thing, which might cease to run at any time.
“How old is she?” asked the Bishop, sitting down by the child on the side of the bed.
“We put her in the mill two years ago when she was seven,” said the mother. “We was starvin' an' had to do somethin'.” She added this with as much of an apologetic tone as her nature would permit. “We told the mill men she was ten,” she added. “We had to do it. The fust week she got two fingers mashed off.”
The Bishop was silent, then he said: “It's bes' always to tell the truth. Liar is a fast horse, but he never runs but one race.”
Although there were no laws in Alabama against child labor, the mill drew the lines then as now, if possible, on very young children. Not that it cared for the child—but because it could be brought to the mill too young for any practical use, unless it was wise beyond its age.
He handed the little thing a ginger man. She looked at it—the first she had ever seen,—and then at the giver in the way a wild thing would, as if expecting some trick in the proffered kindness; but when he tried to caress her and spoke kindly, she shrank under the cover and hid her head with fear.
It was not a child, but a little animal—a wild being of an unknown species in a child's skin—the missing link, perhaps; the link missing between the natural, kindly instinct of the wild thing, the brute, the monkey, the anthropoid ape, which protects its young even at the expense of its life, and civilized man of to-day, the speaking creature, the so-called Christian creature, who sells his young to the director-Devils of mills and machinery and prolongs his own life by the death of his offspring.
Biology teaches that many of the very lowest forms of life eat their young. Is civilized man merely a case, at last, of reversion to a primitive type?
She hid her head and then peeped timidly from under the cover at the kindly old man. He had seen a fox driven into its hole by dogs do the same thing.
She did not know what a smile meant, nor a caress, nor a proffered gift. Tremblingly she lay, under the dirty quilt, expecting a kick, a cuff.
The Bishop sat down by the bedside and took out a paper. “It'll be an hour or so I can spend,” he said to the mother—“maybe you'd like to be doin' about a little.”
“Come to think of it, I'm pow'ful obleeged to you,” she said. “I've all my mornin' washin' to do yit, only I was afraid to leave her alone.”
“You do yo' washin'—I'll watch her. I'm a pretty good sort of a hoss doctor myse'f.”
The child had nodded off to sleep, the Bishop was reading his paper, when a loud voice was heard in the hallway and some rough steps that shook the little flimsily made floor of the cottage, and made it rock with the tramp of them. The door opened suddenly and Jud Carpenter, angry, boisterous, and presumptuous, entered. The child had awakened at the sound of Carpenter's foot fall, and now, frightened beyond control, she trembled and wept under the cover.
There are natural antipathies and they are God-given. They are the rough cogs in the wheel of things. But uneven as they are, rough and grating, strike them off and the wheel would be there still, but it would not turn. It is the friction of life that moves it. And movement is the law of life.
Antipathies—thank God who gave them to us! But for them the shepherd dog would lie down with the wolf.
The only man in Cottontown who did not like the Bishop was Jud Carpenter, and the only man in the world whom the Bishop did not love was Jud Carpenter. And many a time in his life the old man had prayed: “O God, teach me to love Jud Carpenter and despise his ways.”
Carpenter glared insolently at the old man quietly reading his paper, and asked satirically. “Wal, what ails her, doctor?”
“Mill-icious fever,” remarked the Bishop promptly with becoming accent on the first syllable, and scarcely raising his eyes from the paper.
Carpenter flushed. He had met the Bishop too often in contests which required courage and brains not to have discovered by now that he was no match for the man who could both pray and fight.
“They aint half as sick as they make out an' I've come to see about it,” he added. He felt the child's pulse. “She ain't sick to hurt. That spinner is idle over yonder an' I guess I'll jes' be carryin' her back. Wuck—it's the greatest tonic in the worl'—it's the Hostetter's Bitters of life,” he added, trying to be funny.
The Bishop looked up. “Yes, but I've knowed men to get so drunk on bitters they didn't kno' a mill-dam from a dam'-mill!”
Carpenter smiled: “Wal, she ain't hurt—guess I'll jes' git her cloze on an' take her over”—still feeling the child's wrist while she shuddered and hid under the cover. Nothing but her arm was out, and from the nervous grip of her little claw-like fingers the old man could only guess her terrible fear.
“You sho'ly don't mean that, Jud Carpenter?” said the Bishop, with surprise in his heretofore calm tone.
“Wal, that's jus' what I do mean, Doctor,” remarked Carpenter dryly, and in an irritated voice.
“Jud Carpenter,” said the old man rising—“I am a man of God—it is my faith an' hope. I'm gettin' old, but I have been a man in my day, an' I've still got strength enough left with God's he'p to stop you. You shan't tech that child.”
In an instant Carpenter was ablaze—profane, abusive, insolent—and as the old man stepped between him and the bed, the Whipper-in's anger overcame all else.
The child under the cover heard a resounding whack and stuck her head out in time to see the hot blood leap to the old man's cheeks where Carpenter's blow had fallen. For a moment he paused, and then the child saw the old overseer's huge fist gripping spasmodically, and the big muscles of his arms and shoulders rolling beneath the folds of his coat, as a crouching lion's skin rolls around beneath his mane before he springs.
Again and again it gripped, and relaxed—gripped and relaxed again. Mastering himself with a great effort, the old man turned to the man who had slapped him.
“Strike the other cheek, you coward, as my Master sed you would.”
Even the child was surprised when Carpenter, half wickedly, in rage, half tauntingly slapped the other cheek with a blow that almost sent the preacher reeling against the bed. Again the great fist gripped convulsively, and the big muscles that had once pitched the Mountain Giant over a rail fence worked—rolled beneath their covering.
“What else kin I do for you at the request of yo' Master?” sneered Carpenter.
“As He never said anything further on the subject,” said the old man, in a dry pitched voice that told how hard he was trying to control himself, “I take it He intended me to use the same means that He employed when He run the thieves an' bullies of His day out of the temple of God.”
The child thought they were embracing. It was the old hold and the double hip-thrust, by which the overseer had conquered so often before in his manhood's prime. Nor was his old-time strength gone. It came in a wave of righteous indignation, and like the gust of a whirlwind striking the spars of a rotting ship. Never in his life had Carpenter been snapped so nearly in two. It seemed to him that every bone in his body broke when he hit the floor.... It was ten minutes before his head began to know things again. Dazed, he opened his eyes to see the Bishop sitting calmly by his side bathing his face with cold water. The blood had been running from his nose, for the rag and water were colored. His head ached.
Jud Carpenter had one redeeming trait—it was an appreciation of the humorous. No man has ever been entirely lost or entirely miserable, who has had a touch of humor in him. As the Bishop put a pillow under his head and then locked the door to keep any one else out, the ridiculousness of it all came over him, and he said sillily:
“Wal, I reckin you've 'bout converted me this time.”
“Jud Carpenter,” said the Bishop, his face white with shame, “for God's sake don't tell anybody I done that—”
Jud smiled as he arose and put on his hat. “I can stan' bein' licked,” he added good naturedly—“because I remember now that I've run up agin the old champion of the Tennessee Valley—ain't that what they useter call you?—but it does hurt me sorter, to think you'd suppose I'd be such a damned fool as to tell it.”
He felt the child's wrist again. “'Pears lak she's got a little fever since all this excitement—guess I'll jes' let her be to-day.”
“I do think it 'ud be better, Jud,” said the Bishop gently.
And Jud pulled down his hat and slipped quietly out.
The mother never did understand from the child just what happened. When she came in the Bishop had her so much better that the little thing actually was playing with his ginger cake dolls, and had eaten one of them.
It was bed time that night before the child finally whispered it out: “Maw, did you ever see two men hug each other?”
“No—why?”
“Why, the Bishop he hugged Jud Carpenter so hard he fetched the bleed out of his nose!”
It was her first and last sight of a ginger-man. Two days later she was buried, and few save the old Bishop knew she had died; for Cottontown did not care.
CHAPTER XX
A LIVE FUNERAL
The next Sunday was an interesting occasion—voted so by all Cottontown when it was over. There was a large congregation out, caused by the announcement of the Bishop the week before.
“Nex' Sunday I intend to preach Uncle Dave Dickey's funeral sermon. I've talked to Dave about it an' he tells me he has got all kinds of heart disease with a fair sprinklin' of liver an' kidney trouble an' that he is liable to drap off any day.
“I am one of them that believes that whatever bouquets we have for the dead will do 'em mo' good if given while they can smell; an' whatever pretty things we've got to say over a coffin had better be said whilst the deceased is up an' kickin' around an' can hear—an' so Dave is pow'ful sot to it that I preach his fun'ral whilst he's alive. An' I do hope that next Sunday you'll all come an' hear it. An' all the bouquets you expect to give him when he passes away, please fetch with you.”
To-day Uncle Dave was out, dressed in his long-tail jeans frock suit with high standing collar and big black stock. His face had been cleanly shaved, and his hair, coming down to his shoulders, was cut square away around his neck in the good old-fashioned way. He sat on the front bench and looked very solemn and deeply impressed. On one side of him sat Aunt Sally, and on the other, Tilly; and the coon dog, which followed them everywhere, sat on its tail, well to the front, looking the very essence of concentrated solemnity.
But the coon dog had several peculiar idiosyncrasies; one of them was that he was always very deeply affected by music—especially any music which sounded anything like a dinner horn. As this was exactly the way Miss Patsy Butts' organ music sounded, no sooner did she strike up the first notes than the coon dog joined in, with his long dismal howl—much to the disgust of Uncle Dave and his family.
This brought things to a standstill, and all the Hillites to giggling, while Archie B. moved up and took his seat with the mourners immediately behind the dog.
Tilly looked reproachfully at Aunt Sally; Aunt Sally looked reproachfully at Uncle Dave, who passed the reproach on to the dog.
“There now,” said Uncle Dave—“Sally an' Tilly both said so! They both said I mustn't let him come.”
He gave the dog a punch in the ribs with his huge foot. This hushed him at once.
“Be quiet Dave,” said the Bishop, sitting near—“it strikes me you're pow'ful lively for a corpse. It's natural for a dog to howl at his master's fun'ral.”
The coon dog had come out intending to enter fully into the solemnity of the occasion, and when the organ started again he promptly joined in.
“I'm sorry,” said the Bishop, “but I'll have to rise an' put the chief mourner out.”
It was unnecessary, for the chief mourner himself arose just then, and began running frantically around the pulpit with snaps, howls and sundry most painful barks.
Those who noticed closely observed that a clothes-pin had been snapped bitingly on the very tip end of his tail, and as he finally caught his bearing, and went down the aisle and out of the door with a farewell howl, they could hear him tearing toward home, quite satisfied that live funerals weren't the place for him.
What he wanted was a dead one.
“Maw!” said Miss Patsy Butts—“I wish you'd look after Archie B.”
Everybody looked at Archie B., who looked up from a New Testament in which he was deeply interested, surprised and grieved.
The organ started up again.
But it grew irksome to Miss Samantha Carewe seated on the third bench.
“Ma,” she whispered, “I've heard o' fun'rals in Irelan' where they passed around refreshments—d'ye reckin this is goin' to be that kind? I'm gittin' pow'ful hungry.”
“Let us trust that the Lord will have it so,” said her mother devoutly.
Amid great solemnity the Bishop had gone into the pulpit and was preaching:
“It may be a little onusual,” he said, “to preach a man's fun'ral whilst he's alive, but it will certn'ly do him mo' good than to preach it after he's dead. If we're goin' to do any good to our feller man, let's do it while he's alive.
“Kind words to the livin' are more than monuments to the dead.
“Come to think about it, but ain't we foolish an' hypocritical the way we go on over the dead that we have forgot an' neglected whilst they lived?
“If we'd reverse the thing how many a po' creature that had given up the fight, an' shuffled off this mortal coil fur lack of a helpin' han' would be alive to-day!
“How many another that had laid down an' quit in the back stretch of life would be up an' fightin'! Why, the money spent for flowers an' fun'rals an' monuments for the pulseless dead of the world would mighty nigh feed the living dead that are always with us.
“What fools we mortals be! Why, we're not a bit better than the heathen Chinee that we love to send missionaries to and call all kinds of hard names. The Chinee put sweet cakes an' wine an' sech on the graves of their departed, an' once one of our missionaries asked his servant, Ching Lu, who had just lost his brother an' had put all them things on his grave, when he thought the corpse 'ud rise up an' eat them; an' Ching Lu told him he thought the Chinee corpse 'ud rise up an' eat his sweetmeats about the same time that the Melican man's corpse 'ud rise up an' smell all the bouquets of sweet flowers spread over him.
“An' there we are, right on the same footin' as the heathen an' don't know it.
“David Dickey, the subject of this here fun'ral discourse, was born on the fourth day of July, 1810, of pious, godly parents. Dave as a child was always a good boy, who loved his parents, worked diligently and never needed a lickin' in his life”—
“Hold on, Bishop,” said Uncle Davy, rising and protesting earnestly—“this is my fun'ral an' I ain't a-goin' to have nothin' told but the exact facts: Jes' alter that by sayin' I was a tollerbul good boy, tollerbul diligent, with a big sprinklin' o' meanness an' laziness in me, an' that my old daddy,—God bless his memory for it—in them days cleared up mighty nigh a ten acre lot of guv'ment land cuttin' off the underbrush for my triflin' hide.”
Uncle Dave sat down. The Bishop was confused a moment, but quickly said: “Now bretherin, there's another good p'int about preachin' a man's fun'ral whilst he's alive. It gives the corpse a chance to correct any errors. Why, who'd ever have thought that good old Uncle Dave Dickey was that triflin' when he was young? Much obliged, Dave, much obliged, I'll try to tell the exact facts hereafter.”
Then he began again:
“In manner Uncle Dave was approachable an' with a kind heart for all mankind, an' a kind word an' a helpin' han' for the needy. He was tollerbul truthful”—went on the Bishop—with a look at Uncle Davy as if he had profited by previous interruptions.
“Tell it as it was, Hillard,”—nodded Uncle Dave, from the front bench—“jes' as it was—no lies at my fun'ral.”
“Tollerbul truthful,” went on the Bishop, “on all subjects he wanted to tell the truth about. An' I'm proud to say, bretherin, that after fifty odd years of intermate acquantance with our soon-to-be-deceased brother, you cu'd rely on him tellin' the truth in all things except”—
“Tell it as it was, Hillard—no—filigree work at my fun'ral—” said Uncle Dave.
—“Except,” went on the Bishop, “returnin' any little change he happen'd to borry from you, or swoppin' horses, or tellin' the size of the fish he happened to ketch. On them p'ints, my bretherin, the lamented corpse was pow'ful weak; an' I'm sorry to have to tell it, but I've been warned, as you all kno', to speak the exact facts.”
“Hillard Watts,” said Uncle Dave rising hotly—“that's a lie an' you know it!”
“Sit down, Dave,” said the Bishop calmly, “I've been preachin' fun'rals fur fifty years an' that is the fus' time I ever was sassed by a corpse. You know it's so an' besides I left out one thing. You're always tellin' what kinder weather it's gwinter be to-morrow an' missin' it. You burnt my socks off forty years ago on the only hoss-trade I ever had with you. You owe me five dollars you borrowed ten years ago, an' you never caught a half pound perch in yo' life that you didn't tell us the nex' day it was a fo' pound trout. So set down. Oh, I'm tellin' the truth without any filigree, Dave.”
Aunt Sally and Tilly pulled Uncle Dave down while they conversed with him earnestly. Then he arose and said:
“Hillard, I beg yo' pardon. You've spoken the truth—Sally and Tilly both say so. I tell yo', bretherin,” he said turning to the congregation—“it'd be a good thing if we c'ud all have our fun'ral sermon now and then correctly told. There would be so many points brought out as seen by our neighbors that we never saw ourselves.”
“The subject of this sermon”—went on the Bishop—“the lamented corpse-to-be, was never married but once—to his present loving widow-to-be, and he never had any love affair with any other woman—she bein' his fust an' only love—”
“Hillard,” said Uncle Dave rising, “I hate to—”
“Set down, David Dickey,” whispered Aunt Sally, hotly, as she hastily jerked him back in his seat with a snap that rattled the teeth in his head:
“If you get up at this time of life to make any post-mortem an' dyin' declaration on that subject in my presence, ye'll be takin' out a corpse sho' 'nuff!”
Uncle Dave very promptly subsided.
“An' the only child he's had is the present beautiful daughter that sits beside him.”
Tilly blushed.
“David, I am very sorry to say, had some very serious personal faults. He always slept with his mouth open. I've knowed him to snore so loud after dinner that the folks on the adjoining farm thought it was the dinner horn.”
“Now Hillard,” said Uncle Dave, rising—“do you think it necessary to bring in all that?”
“A man's fun'ral,” said the Bishop, “ain't intended to do him any good—it's fur the coming generation. Boys and girls, beware of sleepin' with yo' mouth open an' eatin' with yo' fingers an' drinkin' yo' coffee out of the saucer, an' sayin' them molasses an' I wouldn't choose any when you're axed to have somethin' at the table.
“Dave Dickey done all that.
“Brother Dave Dickey had his faults as we all have. He was a sprinklin' of good an' evil, a mixture of diligence an' laziness, a brave man mostly with a few yaller crosses in him, truthful nearly always, an' lyin' mostly fur fun an' from habit; good at times an' bad at others, spiritual at times when it looked like he cu'd see right into heaven's gate, an' then again racked with great passions of the flesh that swept over him in waves of hot desires, until it seemed that God had forgotten to make him anything but an animal.
“Come to think of it, an' that's about the way with the rest of us?
“But he aimed to do right, an' he strove constantly to do right, an' he prayed constantly fur help to do right, an' that's the main thing. If he fell he riz agin, fur he had a Hand outstretched in his faith that cu'd lift him up, an' knew that he could go to a Father that always forgave—an' that's the main thing. Let us remember, when we see the faults and vices of others—that we see only what they've done—as Bobby Burns says, we don't kno' what they have resisted. Give 'em credit for that—maybe it over-balances. Balancin'—ah, my bretherin, that's a gran' thing. It's the thing on which the whole Universe hangs—the law of balance. The pendulum every whar swings as fur back as it did furra'd, an' the very earth hangs in space by this same law. An' it holds in the moral worl' as well as the t'other one—only man is sech a liar an' so bigoted he can't see it. But here comes into the worl' a man or woman filled so full of passion of every sort,—passions they didn't make themselves either—regular thunder clouds in the sky of life. Big with the rain, the snow, the hail—the lightning of passion. A spark, a touch, a strong wind an' they explode, they fall from grace, so to speak. But what have they done that we ain't never heard of? All we've noticed is the explosion, the fall, the blight. They have stirred the sky, whilst the little white pale-livered untempted clouds floated on the zephyrs—they've brought rain that made the earth glad, they've cleared the air in the very fall of their lightnin'. The lightnin' came—the fall—but give 'em credit fur the other. The little namby-pamby, white livered, zephyr clouds that is so divine an' useless, might float forever an' not even make a shadow to hide men from the sun.
“So credit the fallen man or woman, big with life an' passion, with the good they've done when you debit 'em with the evil. Many a 'oman so ugly that she wasn't any temptation even for Sin to mate with her, has done more harm with her slanderin' tongue an' hypocrisy than a fallen 'oman has with her whole body.
“We're mortals an' we can't he'p it—animals, an' God made us so. But we'll never fall to rise no mo' 'less we fail to reach up fur he'p.
“What then is our little sins of the flesh to the big goodness of the faith that is in us?
“For forty years Uncle Dave has been a consistent member of the church—some church—it don't matter which. For forty years he has trod the narrer path, stumpin' his toe now an' then, but allers gettin' up agin, for forty years he has he'ped others all he cu'd, been charitable an' forgivin', as hones' as the temptation would permit, an' only a natural lie now an' then as to the weather or the size of a fish, trustin' in God to make it all right.
“An' now, in the twilight of life, when his sun is 'most set an' the dews of kindness come with old age, right gladly will he wake up some mornin' in a better lan', the scrub in him all bred out, the yaller streak gone, the sins of the flesh left behind. An' that's about the way with the most of us,—no better an' maybe wuss—Amen!”
Uncle Dave was weeping:
“Oh, Hillard—Hillard,” he said, “say all that over agin about the clouds an' the thunder of passion—say all the last part over agin—it sounds so good!”
The congregation thronged around him and shook his hand. They gave him the flowers they had brought; they told him how much they thought of him, how sorry they would be to see him dead, how they had always intended to come to see him, but had been so busy, and to cheer up that he wasn't dead yet.
“No”—said Uncle Dave, weeping—“no, an' now since I see how much you all keer fur me I don't b'lieve—I—I wanter die at all.”