Some one touched his arm. It was Jack: “Bishop, Bishop, time's up! We're ready. Do you hear the bell clanging?”
The Bishop nodded, dazed:
“Here, you're kinder feeble, weak an', an' sorter silly. Why, Bishop, you're recitin' poetry—” said Jack apologetically. “A man's gone when he does that—here!”
He had gone to the old man's saddle bags, and brought out his ancient flask.
“Jes' a swaller or two, Bishop,” he said coaxingly, as one talking to a child—“Quick, now, you're not yo'self exactly—you've dropped into poetry.”
“I guess I am a little teched, Jack, but I don't need that when I can get poetry, sech poetry as is now in me. Jack, do you want to hear the gran'est verse ever writ in poetry?”
“No—no, Bishop, don't! Jack Bracken's yo' friend, he'll freeze to you. You'll be all right soon. It's jes' a little spell. Brace up an' drop that stuff.”
The old man smiled sadly as if he pitied Jack. Then he repeated slowly:
Feebly he leaned on Jack, the tears ran down his cheek: “'Tain't weakness, Jack, 'tain't that—it's joy, it's love of God, Whose done so much for me. It's the glory, glory of them lines—Oh, God—what a line of poetry!”
Ben Butler stood ready, the bell clanged again. Jack helped him into the sulky; never had he seen the old man so feeble. Travis was already at the post.
They got the word immediately, but to the old man's dismay, Travis's mare shot away like a scared doe, trotting as frictionless as a glazed emery wheel.
The old man shook up Ben Butler and wondered why he seemed to stand so still. The old horse did his best, he paced as he never had before, but the flying thing like a red demon flitted always just before him, a thing with tendons of steel and feet of fire.
“Oh, God, Ben Butler, what is it—what? Have you quit on me, ole hoss?—you, Ben Butler, you that come in answer to prayer? My God, Cap'n Tom, Shiloh!”
And still before him flew the red thing with wings.
At the half, at the three-quarters: “Now ole hoss!” And the old horse responded gamely, grandly. He thundered like a cyclone bursting through a river-bed. Foot by foot, inch by inch, he came up to Travis's mare. Nose to nose they flew along. There was a savage yell—a loud cracking of Travis' whip in the blind horse's ears. Never had the sightless old horse had such a fright! He could not see—he could only hear the terrible, savage yell. Frightened, he forgot, he dodged, he wavered—
“Steady, Ben Butler, don't—oh—”
It was a small trick of Travis', for though the old pacer came with a rush that swept everything before it, the drive had been made too late. Travis had the heat won already.
Still there was no rule against it. He could yell and crack his whip and make all the noise he wished, and if the other horse was frightened, it was the fault of his nerves. Everybody who knew anything of racing knew that.
A perfect tornado of hisses met Travis at the grand-stand.
But he had won the heat! What did he care? He could scarcely stop his mare. She seemed like a bird and as fresh. He pulled her double to make her turn and come back after winning, and as she came she still fought the bit.
As he turned, he almost ran into the old pacer jogging, broken-hearted behind. The mare's mouth was wide open, and the Bishop's trained eye fell on the long tusk-like lower teeth, flashing in the sun.
Startled, he quivered from head to foot. He would not believe his own eyes. He looked closely again. There was no doubt of it—she was eight years old!
In an instant he knew—his heart sank, “We're robbed, Cap'n Tom—Shiloh—my God!”
Travis drove smilingly back, amid hisses and cheers and the fluttering of ladies' handkerchiefs in the boxes.
“How about the gloves and candy now?” he called to them with his cap in his hand.
Above the judges had hung out:
6th Heat: Lizzette, 1st; Ben Butler, 2nd. Time, 2:14.
When Flecker of Tennessee saw the time hung out, he jumped from his seat exclaiming: “Six heats and the last heat the fastest? Who ever heard of a tired mare cutting ten seconds off that way? By the eternal, but something's wrong there.”
“Six heats an' the last one the fastest—By gad, sah,” said Col. Troup. “It is strange. That mare Lizzette is a wonder, an' by gad, sah, didn't the old pacer come? By gad, but if he'd begun that drive jus' fifty yards sooner—our money”—
Flecker groaned: “We're gone, Colonel—one thousand we put up and the one we hedged with.”
“By gad, sah, but, Flecker, don't you think Lizzette went smoother that last heat? She had a different stride, a different gait.”
Flecker had not noticed it. “But it was a small thing,” he said—“to frighten the old horse. No rule against it, but a gentleman—”
The Colonel smiled: “Damn such gentlemen, sah. They're a new breed to me.”
The old man went slowly back to the stable. He said nothing. He walked dazed, pale, trembling, heart-broken. But never before had he thought so keenly.
Should he expose Travis?—Ruin him, ruin him—here? Then there passed quickly thoughts of Cap'n Tom—of Miss Alice. What a chance to straighten every thing out, right every wrong—to act for Justice, Justice long betrayed—for God. For God? And had not, perhaps, God given him this opportunity for this very purpose? Was not God,—God, the ever merciful but ever just, behind it all? Was it not He who caused him to look at the open mouth of the first mare? Was it not He giving him a chance to right a wrong so long, so long delayed? If he failed to speak out would he not be doing every man in the race a wrong, and Cap'n Tom and Shiloh, and even Miss Alice, so soon to marry this man—how it went through him!—even God—even God a wrong!
He trembled; he could not walk. He sat down; Jack and Bud had the horse, the outlaw's eyes flashing fire as he led him away. But Bud, poor Bud, he was following, broken-hearted, blubbering and still saying between his sobs: “Great—hoss—he skeered him!”
The grand-stand sat stupefied, charged to the explosive point with suppressed excitement. Six terrible heats and no horse had won three. But now Lizzette and Ben Butler had two each—who would win the next, the decisive heat. God help the old preacher, for he had no chance. Not after the speed that mare showed.
Colonel Troup came up: “By gad, sah, Bishop—don't give up—you've got one mo' chance. Be as game as the ole hoss.”
“We are game, sir—but—but, will you do as I tell you an' swear to me on yo' honor as a gentleman never to speak till I say the word? Will you swear to keep sacred what I show you, until I let you tell?”
The Colonel turned red: “What do you mean, sah?”
“Swear it, swear it, on yo' honor as a gentleman—”
“On my honor as a gentleman, sah? I swear it.”
“Go,” said the old man quickly, “an' look in the mouth of the mare they are jes' bringin' in—the mare that won that heat. Go, an' remember yo' honor pledged. Go an' don't excite suspicion.”
The old man sat down and, as he waited, he thought. Never before had he thought so hard. Never had such a burden been put upon him. When he looked up Colonel Troup stood pale and silent before him—pale with close-drawn lips and a hot, fierce, fighting gleam in his eyes.
“You've explained it, sah—” he said. Then he fumbled his pistol in his pocket. “Now—now, give me back my promise, my word. I have two thousand dollars at stake, and—and clean sport, sah,—clean sport. Give me back my word.”
“Sit down,” said the old man quietly.
The Colonel sat down so still that it was painful. He was calm but the Bishop saw how hard the fight was.
Then the old man broke out: “I can't—O God, I can't! I can't make a character, why should I take one? It's so easy to take a word—a nod—it is gone! And if left maybe it 'ud come agin. Richard Travis—it looks bad—he may be bad—but think what he may do yet—if God but touch him? No man's so bad but that God can't touch him—change him. We may live to see him do grand and noble things—an' God will touch him,” said the old man hotly, “he will yet.”
“If you are through with me,” said Colonel Troup, coolly, “and will give me back my promise, I'll go and touch him—yes, damn him, I'll shoot him as he should be.”
“But I ain't gwine to give it back,” smiled the old man.
Colonel Troup flushed: “What'll you do, then? Let him rob you an' me, sah? Steal my two thousand, and Flecker's? Your purse that you've already won—yours—yours, right this minute? Rob the public in a fake race, sah? You've won the purse, it is yours, sah. He forfeited it when he brought out that other mare. Think what you are doing, sah!”
“Cap'n Tom an' Shiloh, too”—winced the old man. “But I forgot—you don't kno'—yes”—and he smiled triumphantly. “Yes, Col'nel, I'll let him do all that if—if God'll let it be. But God won't let it be!”
Colonel Troup arose disgusted—hot. “What do you mean, old man. Are you crazy, sah? Give me back my word—”
“Wait—no—no,” said the Bishop. “Col'nel, you're a man of yo' word—wait!”
And he arose and was gone.
The Colonel swore soundly. He walked around and damned everything in sight. He fumbled his pistol in his pocket, and wondered how he could break his word and yet keep it.
There was no way, and he went off to take a drink.
Bud, the tears running down his cheeks—was rubbing Ben Butler down, and saying: “Great hoss—great hoss!”
Of all, he and the Bishop had not given up.
“I'm afeard we'll have to give it up, Bishop,” said Jack.
“Me, me give it up, Jack? Me an' Ben Butler quit like yeller dogs? Why, we're jes' beginnin' to fight—with God's help.”
Then he thought a moment: “Fetch me some cotton.”
He took it and carefully packed it in the old horse's ears.
“It was a small trick, that yellin' and frightening the ole hoss,” said Jack.
“Ben Butler,” said the old man, as he stepped back and looked at the horse, “Ben Butler, I've got you now where God's got me—you can't see an' you can't hear. You've got to go by faith, by the lines of faith. But I'll be guidin' 'em, ole hoss, as God guides me—by faith.”
The audience sat numbed and nerveless when they scored for the last heat. The old pacer's gallant fight had won them all—and now—now after winning two heats, with only one more to win—now to lose at last. For he could not win—not over a mare as fresh and full of speed as that mare now seemed to be. And she, too, had but one heat to win.
But Col. Troup had been thinking and he stopped the old man as he drove out on the track.
“Been thinkin', parson, 'bout that promise, an' I'll strike a bargain with you, sah. You say God ain't goin' to let him win this heat an' race an' so forth, sah.”
The Bishop smiled: “I ain't give up, Col'nel—not yet.”
“Well, sah, if God does let Travis win, I take it from yo' reasoning, sah, that he's a sorry sort of a God to stand in with a fraud an' I'll have nothin' to do with Him. I'll tell all about it.”
“If that's the way you think—yes,” said the old man, solemnly—“yes—tell it—but God will never stan' in with fraud.”
“We'll see,” said the Colonel. “I'll keep my word if—if—you win!”
Off they went as before, the old pacer hugging the mare's sulky wheels like a demon. Even Travis had time to notice that the old man had done something to steady the pacer, for how like a steadied ship did he fly along!
Driving, driving, driving—they flew—they fought it out. Not a muscle moved in the old man's body. Like a marble statue he sat and drove. Only his lips kept moving as if talking to his horse, so close that Travis heard him: “It's God's way, Ben Butler, God's way—faith,—the lines of faith—'He leadeth me—He leadeth me'!”
Up—up—came the pacer fearless with frictionless gait, pacing like a wild mustang-king of the desert, gleaming in sweat, white covered with dust, rolling like a cloud of fire. The old man sang soft and low:
Inch by inch he came up. And now the home stretch, and the old pacer well up, collaring the flying mare and pacing her neck to neck.
Travis smiled hard and cruel as he drew out his whip and circling it around his head, uttered again, amid fierce crackling, his Indian yell: “Hi—hi—there—ho—ha—ho—hi—hi—e—e!”
But the old pacer swerved not a line, and Travis, white and frightened now with a terrible, bitter fear that tightened around his heart and flashed in his eyes like the first swift crackle of lightning before the blow of thunder, brought his whip down on his own mare, welting her from withers to rump in a last desperate chance.
Gamely she responded and forged ahead—the old pacer was beaten!
They thundered along, Travis whipping his mare at every stride. She stood it like the standard-bred she was, and never winced, then she forged ahead farther, and farther, and held the old pacer anchored at her wheels, and the wire not fifty feet away!
There was nothing left for the old man to do—with tears streaming down his cheeks he shouted—“Ben Butler, Ben Butler—it's God's way—the chastening rod—” and his whip fell like a blade of fire on the old horse's flank.
It stung him to madness. The Bishop striking him, the old man he loved, and who never struck! He shook his great ugly head like a maddened bull and sprang savagely at the wire, where the silken thing flaunted in his face in a burst of speed that left all behind. Nor could the old man stop him after he shot past it, for his flank fluttered like a cyclone of fire and presently he went down on his knees—gently, gently, then—he rolled over!
His driver jumped to the ground. It was all he knew except he heard Bud weeping as he knelt on the ground where the old horse lay, and saying: “Great hoss—great hoss!”
Then he remembered saying: “Now, Bud, don't cry—if he does die, won't it be glorious, to die in harness, giving his life for others—Cap'n Tom—Shiloh? Think of it, Bud, to die at the wire, his race won, his work finished, the crown his! O Bud, who would not love to go like Ben Butler?”
But he could not talk any more, for he saw Jack Bracken spring forward, and then the gleam of a whiskey flask gleamed above Ben Butler's fluttering nostrils and Jack's terrible gruff voice said: “Wait till he's dead fust. Stand back, give him air,” and his great hat fluttered like a windmill as he fanned the gasping nostrils of the struggling horse.
The old man turned with an hysterical sob in his throat that was half a shout of joy.
Travis stood by him watching the struggles of the old horse for breath.
“Well, I've killed him,” he said, laconically.
There was a grip like a vise on his shoulders. He turned and looked into the eyes of the old man and saw a tragic light there he had never seen before.
“Don't—for God's sake don't, Richard Travis, don't tempt me here, wait till I pray, till this devil goes out of my heart.”
And then in his terrible, steel-gripping way, he pulled Richard Travis, with a sudden jerk up against his own pulsing heart, as if the owner of The Gaffs had been a child, burying his great hardened fingers in the man's arm and fairly hissing in a whisper these words: “If he dies—Richard Travis—remember he died for you ... it tuck both yo' mares to kill him—no—no—don't start—don't turn pale ... you are safe ... I made Col'nel Troup give me his word ... he'd not expose you ... if Ben Butler won an' he saved his money. I knew what it 'ud mean ... that last heat ... that it 'ud kill him ... but I drove it to save you ... to keep Troup from exposin' yo' ... I've got his word. An' then I was sure ... as I live, I knew that God will touch you yet ... an' his touch will be as quickening fire to the dead honor that is in you ... Go! Richard Travis.... Go ... don't tempt me agin....”
He remembered later feeling very queer because he held so much gold in a bag, and it was his. Then he became painfully acute to the funny thing that happened, so funny that he had to sit down and laugh. It was on seeing Ben Butler rising slowly to his feet and shaking himself with that long powerful shake he had seen so often after wallowing. And the funniest thing!—two balls of cotton flew out of his ears, one hitting Flecker of Tennessee on the nose, the other Colonel Troup in the eye.
“By Gad, sah,” drawled Colonel Troup, “but now, I see. I thought he cudn't ah been made of flesh an' blood, sah, why damme he's made of cotton! An' you saved my money, old man, an' that damned rascal's name by that trick? Well, you kno' what I said, sah, a gentleman an' his word—but—but—” he turned quickly on the old man—excitedly, “ah, here—I'll give you the thousand dollars I hedged now ... if you'll give me back my promise—damned if I don't! Won't do it? No? Well, it's yo' privilege. I admire yo' charity, it's not of this world.”
And then he remembered seeing Bud sitting in the old cart driving Ben Butler home and telling everybody what they now knew: “Great hoss—G-r-e-a-t hoss!”
And the old horse shuffled and crow-hopped along, and Jack followed the Bishop carrying the gold.
And then such a funny thing: Ben Butler, frightened at a mule braying in his ear, ran away and threw Bud out!
When the old man heard it he sat down and laughed and cried—to his own disgust—“like a fool, sissy man,” he said, “a sissy man that ain't got no nerve. But, Lord, who'd done that but Ben Butler?”
It was after dark when the old man, pale, and his knees still shaking with the terrible strain and excitement of it all, reached his cabin on the mountain. The cheers of the grand-stand still echoed in his ears, and, shut his eyes as he would, he still saw Ben Butler, stretched out on the track struggling for the little breath that was in him.
Jack Bracken walked in behind the old man carrying a silken sack which sagged and looked heavy.
The grandfather caught up Shiloh first and kissed her. Then he sat down with the frail form in his arms and looked earnestly at her with his deep piercing eyes.
“Where's the ole hoss,” began his wife, her eyes beginning to snap. “You've traded him off an' I'll bet you got soaked, Hillard Watts—I can tell it by that pesky, sheepish look in yo' eyes. You never cu'd trade horses an' I've allers warned you not to trade the ole roan.”
“Wal, yes,” said the Bishop. “I've traded him for this—” and his voice grew husky with emotion—“for this, Tabitha, an', Jack, jes' pour it out on the table there.”
It came out, yellow waves of gold. The light shone on them, and as the tired eyes of little Shiloh peeped curiously at them, each one seemed to throw to her a kiss of hope, golden tipped and resplendent.
The old woman stood dazed, and gazing sillily. Then she took up one of the coins and bit it gingerly.
“In God's name, Hillard Watts, what does all this mean? Why, it's genuwine gold.”
“It means,” said the old man cheerily, “that Shiloh an' the chillun will never go into that mill ag'in—that old Ben Butler has give 'em back their childhood an' a chance to live. It means,” he said triumphantly, “that Cap'n Tom's gwinter have the chance he's been entitled to all these years—an' that means that God'll begin to unravel the tangle that man in his meanness has wound up. It means, Tabitha, that you'll not have to wuck anymo' yo'self—no mo', as long as you live—”
The old woman clutched at the bed-post: “Me?—not wuck anymo'? Not hunt 'sang an' spatterdock an' clean up an' wash an' scour an' cook an'—”
“No, why not, Tabitha? We've got a plenty to—”
He saw her clutch again at the bed-post and go down in a heap, saying:—
“Lemme die—now, if I can't wuck no mo'.”
They lifted her on the bed and bathed her face. It was ten minutes before she came around and said feebly:
“I'm dyin', Hillard, it's kilt me to think I'll not have to wuck any mo'.”
“Oh, no, Tabitha, I wouldn't die fur that,” he said soothingly. “It's terrible suddent like, I kno', an' hard fur you to stan', but try to bear it, honey, fur our sakes. It's hard to be stricken suddent like with riches, an' I've never seed a patient get over it, it is true. You'll be wantin' to change our cabin into an ole Colonial home, honey, an' have a carriage an' a pair of roached mules, an' a wantin' me to start a cotton factory an' jine a whis'-club, whilst you entertain the Cottontown Pettico't Club with high-noon teas, an' cut up a lot o' didoes that'll make the res' of the town laugh. But you mus' fight ag'in it, Tabitha, honey. We'll jes' try to live as we've allers lived an' not spend our money so as to have people talk about how we're throwin' it at the ducks. You can get up befo' day as usual an' hunt 'sang on the mountain side, and do all the other things you've l'arnt to do befo' breakfast.”
This was most reassuring, and the old woman felt much better. But the next morning she complained bitterly:
“I tested ever' one o' them yaller coins las' night, they mout a put a counterfeit in the lot, an' see heah, Hillard—” she grinned showing her teeth—“I wore my teeth to the quick a testin' 'em!”
The next week, as the train took the Bishop away, he stood on the rear platform to cry good-bye to Shiloh and Jack Bracken who were down to see him off. By his side was a stooped figure and as the old man jingled some gold in his pocket he said, patting the figure on the back:
“You'll come back a man, Cap'n Tom—thank God! a man ag'in!”
The autumn had deepened—the cotton had been picked. The dry stalks, sentinelling the seared ground, waved their tattered remnants of unpicked bolls to and fro—summer's battle flags which had not yet fallen.
Millwood was astir early that morning—what there was of it. One by one the lean hounds had arisen from their beds of dry leaves under the beeches, and, shaking themselves with that hound-shake which began at their noses and ended in a circular twist of their skeleton tails, had begun to hunt for stray eggs and garbage. Yet their master was already up and astir.
He came out and took a long drink from the jug behind the door. He drank from the jug's mouth, and the gurgling echo sounded down the empty hall: Guggle—guggle—gone! Guggle—guggle—gone! It said to Edward Conway as plainly as if it had a voice.
“Yes, you've gone—that's the last of you. Everything is gone,” he said.
He sat down on his favorite chair, propped his feet upon the rotten balcony's rim and began to smoke.
Within, he heard Lily sobbing. Helen was trying to comfort her.
Conway glanced into the room. The oldest sister was dressed in a plain blue cotton gown—for to-day she would begin work at the mill. Conway remembered it. He winced, but smoked on and said nothing.
“'Tain't no use—'tain't no use,” sobbed the little one—“My mammy's gone—gone!”
Such indeed was the fact. Mammy Maria had gone. All that any of them knew was that only an hour before another black mammy had come to serve them, and all she would say was that she had come to take Mammy Maria's place—gone, and she knew not where.
Conway winced again and then swore under his breath. At first he had not believed it, none of them had. But as the morning went on and Mammy Maria failed to appear, he accepted it, saying: “Jus' like a niggah—who ever heard of any of them havin' any gratitude!”
Helen was too deeply numbed by the thought of the mill to appreciate fully her new sorrow. All she knew—all she seemed to feel—was, that go to the mill she must—go—go—and Lily might cry and the world might go utterly to ruin—as her own life was going:
“I want my mammy—I want my mammy,” sobbed the little one.
Then the mother instinct of Helen—that latent motherhood which is in every one of her sex, however young—however old—asserted itself for the first time.
She soothed the younger child: “Never mind, Lily, I am going to the mill only to learn my lesson this week—next week you shall go with me. We will not be separated after that.”
“I want my mammy—oh, I want my mammy,” was all Lily could say.
Breakfast was soon over and then the hour came—the hour when Helen Conway would begin her new life. This thought—and this only—burned into her soul: To-day her disgrace began. She was no longer a Conway. The very barriers of her birth, that which had been thrown around her to distinguish her from the common people, had been broken down. The foundation of her faith was shattered with it.
For the last time, as a Conway, she looked at the fields of Millwood—at the grim peak of Sunset Rock above—the shadowed wood below. Until then she did not know it made such a difference in the way she looked at things. But now she saw it and with it the ruin, the abandonment of every hope, every ambition of her life. As she stood upon the old porch before starting for the mill, she felt that she was without a creed and without a principle.
“I would do anything,” she cried bitterly—“I care for nothing. If I am tempted I shall steal, I know I shall—I know I shall”—she repeated.
It is a dangerous thing to change environments for the worse. It is more dangerous still to break down the moral barrier, however frail it may be, which our conscience has built between the good and the evil in us. Some, reared under laws that are loose, may withstand this barrier breaking and be no worse for the change; but in the case of those with whom this barrier of their moral belief stands securely between conscience and forbidden paths, let it fall, and all the best of them will fall with it.
For with them there are no degrees in degradation—no caste in the world of sin. Headlong they rush to moral ruin. And there are those like Helen Conway, too blinded by the environment of birth to know that work is not degradation. To them it is the lowering of every standard of their lives, standards which idleness has erected. And idleness builds strange standards.
If it had occurred to Helen Conway—if she had been reared to know that to work honestly for an honest living was the noblest thing in life, how different would it all have been!
And so at last what is right and what is wrong depend more upon what has gone before than what follows after. It is more a question of pedigree and environment than of trials and temptations.
“I shall steal,” she repeated—“oh, I know I shall.”
And yet, as her father drove her in the old shambling buggy across the hill road to the town, there stood out in her mind one other picture which lingered there all day and for many days. She could not forget it nor cast it from her, and in spite of all her sorrow it uplifted her as she had been uplifted at times before when, reading the country newspaper, there had blossomed among its dry pages the perfume of a stray poem, whose incense entered into her soul of souls.
It was a young man in his shirt sleeves, his face flushed with work, his throat bare, plowing on the slope of the hillside for the fall sowing of wheat.
What a splendid picture he was, silhouetted in the rising sun against the pink and purple background of sunbeams!
It was Clay Westmore, and he waved his hand in his slow, calm forceful way as he saw her go by.
It was a little thing, but it comforted her. She remembered it long.
The mill had been running several hours when Kingsley looked up, and saw standing before him at his office window a girl of such stately beauty that he stood looking sillily at her, and wondering.
He did not remember very clearly afterwards anything except this first impression; that her hair was plaited in two rich coils upon her head, and that never before had he seen so much beauty in a gingham dress.
He remembered, too, that her eyes, which held him spellbound, wore more an expression of despair and even desperation than of youthful hope. He could not understand why they looked that way, forerunners as they were of such a face and hair.
And so he stood, sillily smiling, until Richard Travis arose from his desk and came forward to meet her.
She nodded at him and tried to smile, but Kingsley noticed that it died away into drawn, hard lines around her pretty mouth.
“It is Miss Conway,” he said to Kingsley, taking her hand familiarly and holding it until she withdrew it with a conscious touch of embarrassment.
“She is one of my neighbors, and, by the way, Kingsley, she must have the best place in the mill.”
Kingsley continued to look sillily at her. He had not heard of Helen—he did not understand.
“A place in the mill—ah, let me see,” he said thoughtfully.
“I've been thinking it out,” went on Travis, “and there is a drawing-in machine ready for her. I understand Maggie is going to quit on account of her health.”
“I, ah—” began Kingsley—“Er—well, I never heard of a beginner starting on a drawing-in machine.”
“I have instructed Maggie to teach her,” said Travis shortly. Then he beckoned to Helen: “Come.”
She followed Richard Travis through the mill. He watched her as she stepped in among the common herd of people—the way at first in which she threw up her head in splendid scorn. Never had he seen her so beautiful. Never had he desired to own her so much as then.
“The exquisite, grand thing,” he muttered. “And I shall—she shall be mine.”
Then her head sank again with a little crushed smile of helpless pity and resignation. It touched even Travis, and he said, consolingly, to her:
“You are too beautiful to have to do this and you shall not—for long. You were born to be queen of—well, The Gaffs, eh?”
He laughed and then he touched boldly her hair which lay splendidly around her temples.
She looked at him resignedly, then she flushed to her eyes and followed him.
The drawer-in is to the loom what the architect is to the building. And more—it is both architect and foundation, for as the threads are drawn in so must the cloth be.
The work is tedious and requires skill, patience, quickness, and that nicety of judgment which comes with intellect of a higher order than is commonly found in the mill. For that reason the drawer-in is removed from the noise of the main room—she sits with another drawer-in in a quiet, little room nearby, and, with her trained fingers, she draws in through the eyelets the threads, which set the warp.
Maggie was busy, but she greeted him with a quaint, friendly little smile. Helen noticed two things about her at once: that there was a queer bright light in her eyes, and that beneath them glowed two bright red spots, which, when Travis approached, deepened quickly.
“Yes, I am going to leave the mill,” she said, after Travis had left them together. “I jus' can't stan' it any longer. Mother is dead, you know, an' father is an invalid. I've five little brothers and sisters at home. I couldn't bear to see them die in here. It's awful on children, you know. So I've managed to keep 'em a-goin' until—well—I've saved enough an' with the help of—a—a—friend—you see—a very near friend—I've managed to get us a little farm. We're all goin' to it next week. Oh, yes, of course, I'll be glad to teach you.”
She glanced at Helen's hands and smiled: “Yo' hands don't look like they're used to work. They're so white and beautiful.”
Helen was pleased. Her fingers were tapering and beautiful, and she knew her hands were the hands of many generations of ladies.
“I have to make a living for myself now,” she said with a dash of bitterness.
“If I looked like you,” said Maggie, slyly and yet frankly, “I'd do something in keeping with my place. I can't bear to think of anybody like you bein' here.”
Helen was silent and Maggie saw that the tears were ready to start. She saw her half sob and she patted her cheek in a motherly way as she said:
“Oh, but I didn't mean to hurt you so. Only I do hate so to see—oh, I am silly, I suppose, because I am going to get out of this terrible, terrible grind.”
Her pale face flushed and she coughed, as she bent over her work to show Helen how to draw in the threads.
“Now, I'm a good drawer-in, an' he said onct”—she nodded at the door from which Travis had gone out—“that I was the best in the worl'; the whole worl'.” She blushed slightly. “But, well—I've made no fortune yet—an' somehow, in yo' case now—you see—somehow I feel sorter 'fraid—about you—like somethin' awful was goin' to happen to you.”
“Why—what—” began Helen, surprised.
“Oh, it ain't nothin',” she said trying to be cheerful—“I'll soon get over this ... out in the air. I'm weak now and I think it makes me nervous an' skeery.... I'll throw it off that quick,” she snapped her fingers—“out in the open air again—out on the little farm.” She was silent, as if trying to turn the subject, but she went back to it again. “You don't know how I've longed for this—to get away from the mill. It's day in an' day out here an' shut up like a convict. It ain't natural—it can't be—it ain't nature. If anybody thinks it is, let 'em look at them little things over on the other side,” and she nodded toward the main room. “Why, them little tots work twelve hours a day an' sometimes mo'. Who ever heard of children workin' at all befo' these things come into the country? Now, I've no objection to 'em, only that they ought to work grown folks an' not children. They may kill me if they can,” she laughed,—“I am grown, an' can stan' it, but I can't bear to think of 'em killin' my little brothers an' sisters—they're entitled to live until they get grown anyway.”
She stopped to cough and to show Helen how to untangle some threads.
“Oh, but they can't hurt me,” she laughed, as if ashamed of her cough; “this is bothersome, but it won't last long after I get out on the little farm.”
She stopped talking and fell to her work, and for two hours she showed Helen just how to draw the threads through, to shift the machine, to untangle the tangled threads.
It was nearly time to go home when Travis came to see how Helen was progressing. He came up behind the two girls and stood looking at them work. When they looked up Maggie started and reddened and Helen saw her tighten her thin lips in a peculiar way while the blood flew from them, leaving a thin white oval ring in the red that flushed her face.
“You are doing finely,” he said to Helen—“you will make a swift drawer-in.” He stooped over and whispered: “Such fingers and hands would draw in anything—even hearts.”
Helen blushed and looked quickly at Maggie, over whose face the pinched look had come again, but Maggie was busy at her machine.
“I remember when I came here five years ago,” went on Maggie after Travis had left, “I was so proud an' happy. I was healthy an' well an' so happy to think I cu'd make a livin' for the home-folks—for daddy an' the little ones. Oh, they would put them in the mill, but I said no, I'll work my fingers off first. Let 'em play an' grow. Yes, they've lived on what I have made for five years—daddy down on his back, too, an' the children jus' growin', an' now they are big enough and strong enough to he'p me run the little farm—instead”—she said after a pause—“instead of bein' dead an' buried, killed in the mill. That was five years ago—five years”—she coughed and looked out of the window reflectively.
“Daddy—poor daddy—he couldn't help the tree fallin' on his back an' cripplin' him; an' little Buddy, well, he was born weakly, so I done it all. Oh, I am not braggin' an' I ain't complainin', I'm so proud to do it.”
Helen was silent, her own bitterness softened by the story Maggie was telling, and for a while she forgot herself and her sorrow.
It is so always. When we would weep we have only to look around and see others who would wail.
“When I come I was as rosy as you,” Maggie went on; “not so pretty now, mind you—nobody could be as pretty as you.”
She said it simply, but it touched Helen.
“But I'll get my color back on the little farm—I'll be well again.” She was silent a while. “I kno' you are wonderin' how I saved and got it.” Helen saw her face sparkle and the spots deepen. “Mr. Travis has been so kind to me in—in other ways—but that's a big secret,” she laughed, “I'm to tell you some day, or rather you'll see yo'self, an' then, oh—every thing will be all right an' I'll be ever so much happier than I am now.”
She jumped up impulsively and stood before Helen.
“Mightn't I kiss you once,—you're so pretty an' fresh?” And she kissed the pretty girl half timidly on the cheek.
“It makes me so happy to think of it,” she went on excitedly, “to think of owning a little farm all by ourselves, to go out into the air every day whenever you feel like it and not have to work in the mill, nor ask anybody if you may, but jus' go out an' see things grow—an' hear the birds sing and set under the pretty green trees an' gather wild flowers if you want to. To keep house an' to clean up an' cook instead of forever drawin'-in, an' to have a real flower garden of yo' own—yo' very own.”
They worked for hours, Maggie talking as a child who had found at last a sympathetic listener. Twilight came and then a clang of bells and the shaft above them began to turn slower and slower. Helen looked up wondering why it had all stopped so suddenly. She met the eyes of Travis looking at her.
“I am to take you home,” he said to her, “the trotters are at the door. Oh,” as he looked at her work—“why, you have done first rate for the day.”
“It's Maggie's,” she whispered.
He had not seen Maggie and he stood looking at Helen with such passionate, patronizing, commanding, masterful eyes, that she shrank for a moment, sideways.
Then he laughed: “How beautiful you are! There are queens born and queens made—I shall call you the queen of the mill, eh?”
He reached out and tried to take her hand, but she shrank behind the machine and then—
“Oh, Maggie!” she exclaimed—for the girl's face was now white and she stood with a strained mouth as if ready to sob.
“Oh, Maggie's a good little girl,” said Travis, catching her hand.
“Oh, please don't—please”—said Maggie.
Then she walked out, drawing her thin shawl around her.