He came in as naturally as if the house were still inhabited, though he saw the emptiness of it all, and guessed the cause. But when he saw Helen, a flushed surprise beamed through his eyes and he gave her his hand.
“Helen!—why, this is unexpected—quite unusual, I must say.”
She did not speak, as she gave him her hand, but smiled sadly. It meant: “Mr. Travis will tell you all. I know nothing. It is all his planning.”
Clay sat down in an old chair by the fire and warmed his hands, looking thoughtfully at the two, now and then, and wonderingly. He was not surprised when Travis said:
“I sent for you hurriedly, as one who I knew was a friend of Miss Conway. A crisis has arisen in her affairs to-day in which it is necessary for her friends to act.”
“Why, yes, I suppose I can guess,” said Clay thoughtfully and watching Helen closely all the while as he glanced around the empty room. “I was only waiting. Why, you see—”
Helen flushed scarlet and looked appealingly at Travis. But he broke in on Clay without noticing her.
“Yes, I knew you were only waiting. I think I understand you, but you know the trouble with nearly every good intention is that it waits too long.”
Clay reddened.
Helen arose and, coming over, stood by Travis, her face pale, her eyes shining. “I beg—I entreat—please, say no more. Clay,” she said turning on him with flushed face, “I did not know you were coming. I did not know where you were. Like all the others, I supposed you too had—had deserted me.”
“Why, I was sent off in a hurry to—” he started.
“Mr. Travis told me to-night,” she interrupted. “I understand now. But really, it makes no difference to me now. Since—since—”
“Now look here,” broke in Travis with feigned lightness,—“I am not going to let you two lovers misunderstand each other. I have planned it all out and I want you both to make me happy by listening to one older, one who admires you both and sincerely wishes to see you happy. Things have happened at your house,” he said addressing Clay—“things which will surprise you when you reach home—things that affect you and me and Miss Conway. Now I know that you love her, and have loved her a long time, and that only—”
“Only our poverty,” said Clay thankfully to Travis for breaking the ice for him.
Helen stood up quickly—a smile on her lips: “Don't you both think that before this bargain and sale goes further you had better get the consent of the one to be sold?” She turned to Clay.
“Don't you think you have queer ideas of love—of winning a woman's love—in this way? And you”—she said turning to Travis—“Oh you know better.”
Travis arose with a smile half joyous, half serious, and Clay was so embarrassed that he mopped his brow as if he were plowing in the sun.
“Why, really, Helen—I—you know—I have spoken to you—you know, and but for my—”
“Poverty”—said Helen taking up the word—“And what were poverty to me, if I loved a man? I'd love him the more for it. If he were dying broken-hearted, wrecked—even in disgrace,—”
Travis flushed and looked at her admiringly, while the joyous light flashed yet deeper in his eyes.
“Come,” he said. “I have arranged all. I am not going to give you young people an excuse to defer your happiness longer.” He turned to Clay: “I shall show you something which you have been on the track of for some time. I have my lantern in the buggy, and we will have to walk a mile or more. But it is pleasant to-night, and the walk will do us all good. Come.”
They both arose wonderingly—Helen came over and put her hand on his arm: “I will go,” she whispered, “if there be no more of that talk.”
He smiled. “You must do as I say. Am I not now your guardian? Bring your leathern sack with your hammer and geological tools,” he remarked to Clay.
Clay arose hastily, and they went out of the old house and across the fields. Past the boundaries of Millwood they walked, Travis silently leading, and Clay following with Helen, who could not speak, so momentous it all seemed. She saw only Travis's fine square shoulders, and erect, sinewy form, going before them, into the night of shadows, of trees, of rocks, of the great peak of the mountain, silent and dark.
He did not speak. He walked in silent thought. They passed the boundary line of Millwood, and then down a slight ravine he led them to the ragged, flinty hill, on which the old preacher's cabin stood on their right.
“Now,” he said stopping—“if I am correct, Clay, this hill is the old Bishop's,” pointing to his right where the cabin stood, “and over here is what is left of Westmoreland. This gulch divides them. This range really runs into Westmoreland,” he said with a sweep of his hand toward it. “Get your bearings,” he smiled to Clay, “for I want you to tell whose fortune this is.”
He lit his lantern and walking forward struck away some weeds and vines which partially concealed the mouth of a small opening in the hillside caused by a landslide. It was difficult going at first, but as they went further the opening grew larger, and as the light flashed on its walls, Clay stopped in admiration and shouted:
“Look—look—there it is!”
Before them running right and left—for the cave had split it in two, lay the solid vein of coal, shining in the light, and throwing back splinters of ebony, to Clay more beautiful than gold.
Travis watched him with an amused smile as he hastily took off his satchel and struck a piece off the ledge. Helen stood wondering, looking not at Clay, but at Travis, and her eyes shone brilliantly and full of proud splendor.
Clay forgot that they were there. He measured the ledge. He chipped off piece after piece and examined it closely. “I never dreamed it would be here, in this shape,” he said at last. “Look!—and fully eight feet, solid. This hill is full of it. The old preacher will find it hard to spend his wealth.”
“But that is not all,” said Travis; “see how the dip runs—see the vein—this way.” He pointed to the left.
Clay paled: “That means—it is remarkable—very remarkable. Why, this vein should not have been here. It is too low to be in the Carboniferous.” He suddenly stopped: “But here it is—contrary to all my data and—and—why really it takes the low range of the poor land of Westmoreland. It—it—will make me rich.”
“You haven't seen all,” said Travis—“look!” He turned and walked to another part of the small cave, where the bank had broken, and there gleamed, not the black, but the red—the earth full of rich ore.
Clay picked up one eagerly.
“The finest iron ore!—who—who—ever heard of such a freak of nature?”
“And the lime rock is all over the valley,” said Travis, “and that means, coal, iron and lime—”
“Furnaces—why, of course—furnaces and wealth. Helen, I—I—it will make Westmoreland rich. Now, in all earnestness—in all sincerity I can tell you—”
“Do not tell me anything, Clay—please do not. You do not understand. You can never understand.” Her eyes were following Travis, who had walked off pretending to be examining the cave. Then she gave a shriek which sounded frightfully intense as it echoed around.
Travis turned quickly and saw standing between him and them a gaunt, savage thing, with froth in its mouth and saliva-dripping lips. At first he thought it was a panther, so low it crouched to spring; but almost instantly he recognized Jud Carpenter's dog. Then it began to creep uncertainly, staggeringly forward, toward Clay and Helen, its neck drawn and contracted in the paroxysms of rabies; its deadly eyes, staring, unearthly yellow in the lantern light. Within two yards of Clay, who stood helpless with fear and uncertainty, it crouched to spring, growling and snapping at its own sides, and Helen screamed again as she saw Travis's quick, lithe figure spring forward and, grasping the dog by the throat from behind, fling himself with crushing force on the brute, choking it as he fell.
Total darkness—for in his rush Travis threw aside his lantern—and it seemed an age to Helen as she heard the terrible fight for life going on at her feet, the struggles and howls of the dog, the snapping of the huge teeth, the stinging sand thrown up into her face. Then after a while all was still, and then very quietly from Travis:
“A match, Clay—light the lantern! I have choked him to death.”
Under the light he arose, his clothes torn with tooth and fang of the gaunt dog, which lay silent. He stood up hot and flushed, and then turned pallid, and for a moment staggered as he saw the blood trickling from his left arm.
Helen stood by him terror-eyed, trembling, crushed,—with a terrible sickening fear.
“He was mad,” said Travis gently, “and I fear he has bitten me, though I managed to jump on him before he bit you two.”
He took off his coat—blood was on his shirt sleeve and had run down his arm. Helen, pale and with a great sob in her throat, rolled up the sleeve, Travis submitting, with a strange pallor in his face and the new light in his eyes.
His bare arm came up strong and white. Above the elbow, near the shoulder, the blood still flowed where the fangs had sunk.
“There is only one chance to save me,” he said quietly, “and that, a slim one. It bleeds—if I could only get my lips to it—”
He tried to expostulate, to push her off, as he felt her lips against his naked arm. But she clung there sucking out the virus. He felt her tears fall on his arm. He heard her murmur:
“My dying lion—my dying lion!”
He bent and whispered: “You are risking your own life for me, Helen! Life for life—death for death!”
It was too much even for his great strength, and when he recovered himself he was sitting on the sand of the little cave. How long she had clung to his arm he did not know, but it had ceased to pain him and her own handkerchief was tied around it.
He staggered out, a terrible pallor on his face, as he said: “Not this way—not to go this way. Oh, God, your blow—I care not for death, but, oh, not this death?”
“Clay,” he said after a while—“Take her—take her to your mother and sister to-night. I must bid you both good-night, ay, and good-bye. See, you walk only across the field there—that is Westmoreland.”
He turned, but he felt some one clinging to his hand, in the dark. He looked down at her, at the white, drawn face, beautiful with a terrible pain: “Take me—take me,” she begged—“with you—to the end of the world—oh, I love you and I care not who knows.”
“Child—child”—he whispered sadly—“You know not what you say. I am dying. I shall be mad—unless—unless what you have done—”
“Take me,” she pleaded—“my lion. I am yours.”
He stooped and kissed her and then walked quickly away.
It was nearly time for the mill to close when Mammy Maria, her big honest face beaming with satisfaction at the surprise she had in store for Helen, began to wind her red silk bandana around her head. She had several bandanas, but when Lily saw her put on the red silk one, the little girl knew she was going out—“dressin' fur prom'nade”—as the old lady termed it.
“You are going after Helen,” said the little girl, clapping her hands.
She sat on her father's lap: “And we want you to hurry up, Mammy Maria,” he said, “I want all my family here. I am going to work to-morrow. I'll redeem Millwood before my two years expire or I am not a Conway again.”
Mammy Maria was agitated enough. She had been so busy that she had failed to notice how late it was. In her efforts to surprise Helen she had forgotten time, and now she feared the mill might close and Helen, not knowing they had moved, would go back to Millwood. This meant a two mile tramp and delay. She had plenty of time, she knew, before the mill closed; but the more she thought of the morning's scene at the mill and of Jud Carpenter, the greater her misgivings. For Mammy Maria was instinctive—a trait her people have. It is always Nature's substitute when much intellect is wanting.
All afternoon she had chuckled to herself. All afternoon, the three of them,—for even Major Conway joined in, and helped work and arrange things—talked it over as they planned. His face was clear now, and calm, as in the old days. Even the old servant could see he had determined to win in the fight.
“Marse Ned's hisse'f ag'in,” she would say to him encouragingly—“Marse Ned's hisse'f—an' Zion's by his side, yea, Lord, the Ark of the Tabbernackle!”
For the last time she surveyed the little rooms of the cottage. How clean and fresh it all was, and how the old mahogany of Millwood set them off! And now all was ready.
It was nearly dark when she reached the mill. It had not yet closed down, and lights began to blaze first from one window, then another. She could hear the steam and the coughing of the exhaust pipe.
This was all the old woman had hoped—to be in time for Helen when the mill closed.
But one thing was in her way, or she had taken her as she did Lily: She did not know where Helen's room was in the mill. There was no fear in the old nurse's heart. She had taken Lily, she would take Helen. She would show the whole tribe of them that she would! But in which room was the elder sister?
So she walked again into the main office, fearless, and with her head up. For was she not Zion, the Lord's chosen, the sanctified one, and the powers of hell were naught?
No one was in the office but Jud Carpenter, and to her surprise he treated her with the utmost courtesy. Indeed, his courtesy was so intense that any one but Zion, who, being black, knew little of irony and less of sarcasm, might have seen that Jud's courtesy was strongly savored of the two.
“Be seated, Madam,” he said with a profound bow. “Be seated, Upholder of Heaven, Chief-cook-an'-bottle-washer in the Kingdom to come! An' what may have sent the angel of the Lord to honor us with another visit?”
The old woman's fighting feathers arose instantly:—
“The same that sent 'em to Sodom an' Gomarrer, suh,” she replied.
“Ah,” said Jud apologetically, “an' I hope we won't smell any brimstone to-night.”
“If you don't smell it to-night, you'll smell it befo' long. And now look aheah, Mister White Man, no use for you an' me to set here a-jawin' an' 'spu'tin'. I've come after my other gyrl an' you know I'm gwine have her!”
“Oh, she'll be out 'torectly, Mrs. Zion! Jes' keep yo' robes on an' hol' yo' throne down a little while. She'll be out 'torectly.”
There was a motive in this lie, as there was in all others Jud Carpenter told.
It was soon apparent. For scarcely had the old woman seated herself with a significant toss of her head when the mill began to cease to hum and roar.
She sat watching the door keenly as they came out. What creatures they were, lint-and-dust-covered to their very eyes. The yellow, hard, emotionless faces of the men, the haggard, weary ones of the girls and women and little children! Never had she seen such white people before, such hollow eyes, with dark, bloodless rings beneath them, sunken cheeks, tanned to the color of oiled hickory, much used. Dazed, listless, they stumbled out past her with relaxed under-jaws and faces gloomy, expressionless—so long bent over looms, they had taken on the very looks of them—the shapes of them, moving, walking, working, mechanically. Women, smileless, and so tired and numbed that they had forgotten the strongest instinct of humanity—the romance of sex; for many of them wore the dirty, chopped-off jackets of men, their slouched black hats, their coarse shoes, and talked even in the vulgar, hard irony of the male in despair.
They all passed out—one by one—for in them was not even the instinct of the companionship of misery.
Every moment the old nurse expected Helen to walk out, to walk out in her queenly way, with her beautiful face and manners, so different from those around her.
Jud Carpenter sat at his desk quietly cutting plug tobacco to fill his pipe-bowl, and watching the old woman slyly.
“Oh, she'll be 'long 'torectly—you see the drawer-in bein' in the far room comes out last.”
The last one passed out. The mill became silent, and yet Helen did not appear.
The old nurse arose impatiently: “I reck'n I'll go find her,” she said to Carpenter.
“I'd better sho' you the way, old 'oman,” he said, lazily shuffling off the stool he was sitting on pretending to be reading a paper—“you'll never fin' the room by yo'self.”
He led her along through the main room, hot, lint-filled and evil-smelling. It was quite dark. Then to the rear, where the mill jutted on the side of a hill, he stopped in front of a door and said: “This is her room; she's in there, I reckin—she's gen'ly late.”
With quickening heart the old woman entered and, almost immediately, she heard the door behind her shut and the key turn in the bolt. The room was empty and she sprang back to the door, only to find it securely locked, and to hear Jud Carpenter's jeers from without. She ran to the two small windows. They were high and looked out over a ravine.
She did not utter a word. Reared as she had been among the Conways, she was too well bred to act the coward, and beg and plead in undignified tones for relief. At first she thought it was only a cruel joke of the Whipper-in, but when he spoke, she saw it was not.
“Got you where I want you, Mother of Zion,” he said through the key hole. “I guess you are safe there till mornin' unless the Angel of the Lord opens the do' as they say he has a way of doin' for Saints—ha—ha—ha!”
No word from within.
“Wanter kno' what I shet you up for, Mother of all Holiness? Well, listen: It's to keep you there till to-morrow—that's good reason, ain't it? You'll find a lot of cotton in the fur corner—a mighty good thing for a bed. Can't you talk? How do you like it? I guess you ain't so independent now.”
There was a pause. The old woman sat numbly in Helen's chair. She saw a bunch of violets in her frame, and the odor brought back memories of her old home. A great fear began to creep over her—not for herself, but for Helen, and she fell on her knees by the frame and prayed silently.
Jud's voice came again: “Want to kno' now why you'll stay there till mornin'? Well, I'll tell you—it'll make you pass a com'f'table night—you'll never see Miss Helen ag'in—”
The old nurse sprang to her feet. She lost control of herself, for all day she had felt this queer presentiment, and now was it really true? She blamed herself for not taking Helen that morning.
She threw herself against the door. It was strong and secure.
Jud met it with a jeering laugh.
“Oh, you're safe an' you'll never see her agin. I don't mind tellin' you she has run off with Richard Travis—they'll go North to-night. You'll find other folks can walk off with yo' gals—'specially the han'sum ones—besides yo'se'f.”
The old nurse was stricken with weakness. Her limbs shook so she sat down in a heap at the door and said pleadingly:—“Are you lyin' to me, white man? Will—will he marry her or—”
“Did you ever hear of him marryin' anybody?” came back with a laugh. “No, he's only took a deserted young 'oman in out of the cold—he'll take care of her, but he ain't the marryin' kind, is he?”
The reputation of Richard Travis was as well known to Mammy Maria as it was to anyone. She did not know whether to believe Jud or not, but one thing she knew—something—something dreadful was happening to Helen. The old nurse called to mind instantly things that had happened before she herself had left Millwood—things Helen had said—her grief, her despair, her horror of the mill, her belief that she was already disgraced. It all came to the old nurse now so plainly. Tempted as she was, young as she was, deserted and forsaken as she thought she was, might not indeed the temptation be too much for her?
She groaned as she heard Jud laugh and walk off.
“O my baby, my beautiful baby!” she wept, falling on her knees again.
The mill grew strangely silent and dark. On a pile of loose cotton she fell, praying after the manner of her race.
An hour passed. The darkness, the loneliness, the horror of it all crept into her superstitious soul, and she became frantic with religious fervor and despair.
Pacing the room, she sang and prayed in a frenzy of emotional tumult. But she heard only the echo of her own voice, and only the wailings of her own songs came back. Negro that she was, she was intelligent enough to know that Jud Carpenter spoke the truth—that not for his life would he have dared to say this if it had not had some truth in it. What?—she did not know—she only knew that harm was coming to Helen.
She called aloud for help—for Edward Conway. But the mill was closed tight—the windows nailed.
Another hour passed. It began to tell on the old creature's mind. Negroes are simple, religious, superstitious folks, easily unbalanced by grief or wrong.
She began to see visions in this frenzy of religious excitement, as so many of her race do under the nervous strain of religious feeling. She fell into a trance.
It was most real to her. Who that has ever heard a negro give in his religious experience but recognizes it? She was carried on the wings of the morning down to the gates of hell. The Devil himself met her, tempting her always, conducting her through the region of darkness and showing her the lakes of fire and threatening her with all his punishment if she did not cease to believe. She overcame him only by constant prayer. She fled from him, he followed her, but could not approach her while she prayed.... She was rescued by an angel—an angel from heaven ... an angel with a flaming sword. Through all the glories of heaven this angel conducted her, praised her, and bidding her farewell at the gate, told her to go back to earth and take this: It was a torch of fire!
“Burn! burn!” said the angel—“for I shall make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire on a sheaf. And they shall devour all the people around about, on the right hand and the left; and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem.”
She came out of the trance in a glory of religious fervor: “Jerusalem shall be inhabited ag'in!—the Angel has told me—told me—Burn—burn,” she cried. “Oh Lord—you have spoken and Zion has ears to hear—Amen.”
Quickly she gathered up the loose cotton and placed it at the door, piling it up to the very bolt. She struck a match, swaying and rocking and chanting: “Yea, Lord, thy servant hath heard—thy servant hath heard!”
The flames leaped up quickly enveloping the door. The room began to fill with smoke, but she retreated to a far corner and fell on her knees in prayer. The panels of the door caught first and the flames spreading upward soon heated the lock around which the wood blazed and crackled. It burned through. She sprang up, rushed through the blinding smoke, struck the door as it blazed, in a broken mass, and rushed out. Down the long main room she ran to a low window, burst it, and stepped out on the ground:
“Jerusalem shall be inhabited again,” she shouted as she ran breathless toward home.
Edward Conway sat on the little porch till the stars came out, wondering why the old nurse did not return. Sober as he was and knew he would ever be, it seemed that a keen sensitiveness came with it, and a feeling of impending calamity.
“Oh, it's the cursed whiskey,” he said to himself—“it always leaves you keyed up like a fiddle or a woman. I'll get over it after a while or I'll die trying,” and he closed his teeth upon each other with a nervous twist that belied his efforts at calmness.
But even Lily grew alarmed, and to quiet her he took her into the house and they ate their supper in silence.
Again he came out on the porch and sat with the little girl in his lap. But Lily gave him no rest, for she kept saying, as the hours passed: “Where is she, father—oh, do go and see!”
“She has gone to Millwood through mistake,” he kept telling her, “and Mammy Maria has doubtless gone after her. Mammy will bring her back. We will wait awhile longer—if I had some one to leave you with,” he said gently, “I'd go myself. But she will be home directly.”
And Lily went to sleep in his lap, waiting.
The moon came up, and Conway wrapped Lily in a shawl, but still held her in his arms. And as he sat holding her and waiting with a fast-beating heart for the old nurse, all his wasted life passed before him.
He saw himself as he had not for years—his life a failure, his fortune gone. He wondered how he had escaped as he had, and as he thought of the old Bishop's words, he wondered why God had been as good to him as He had, and again he uttered a silent prayer of thankfulness and for strength. And with it the strength came, and he knew he could never more be the drunkard he had been. There was something in him stronger than himself.
He was a strong man spiritually—it had been his inheritance, and the very thought of anything happening to Helen blanched his cheek. In spite of the faults of his past, no man loved his children more than he, when he was himself. Like all keen, sensitive natures, his was filled to overflowing with paternal love.
“My God,” he thought, “suppose—suppose she has gone back to Millwood, found none of us there, thinks she had been deserted, and—and—”
The thought was unbearable. He slipped in with the sleeping Lily in his arms and began to put her in bed without awakening her, determined to mount his horse and go for Helen himself.
But just then the old nurse, frantic, breathless and in a delirium of religious excitement, came in and fell fainting on the porch.
He revived her with cold water, and when she could talk she could only pronounce Helen's name, and say they had run off with her.
“Who?”—shouted Conway, his heart stopping in the staggering shock of it.
The old woman tried to tell Jud Carpenter's tale, and Conway heard enough. He did not wait to hear it all—he did not know the mill was now slowly burning.
“Take care of Lily”—he said, as he went into his room and came out with his pistol buckled around his waist.
Then he mounted his horse and rode swiftly to Millwood.
He was astonished to find a fire in the hearth, a lamp burning, and one of Helen's gloves lying on the table.
By it was another pair. He picked them up and looked closely. Within, in red ink, were the initials: R. T.
He bit his lips till the blood came. He bowed his head in his hands.
Sometimes there comes to us that peculiar mental condition in which we are vaguely conscious that once before we have been in the same place, amid the same conditions and surroundings which now confront us. We seem to be living again a brief moment of our past life, where Time himself has turned back everything. It came that instant to Edward Conway.
“It was here—and what was it? Oh, yes:—'Some men repent to God's smile, some to His frown, and some to His fist?'”—He groaned:—“This is His fist. Never—never before in all the history of the Conway family has one of its women—”
He sat down on the old sofa and buried, again, his face in his hands.
Edward Conway was sober, but he still had the instincts of the drunkard—it never occurred to him that he had done anything to cause it. Drunkenness was nothing—a weakness—a fault which was now behind him. But this—this—the first of all the Conway women—and his daughter—his child—the beautiful one. He sat still, and then he grew very calm. It was the calmness of the old Conway spirit returning. “Richard Travis,” he said to himself, “knows as well what this act of his means in the South,—in the unwritten law of our land—as I do. He has taken his chance of life or death. I'll see that it is death. This is the last of me and my house. But in the fall I'll see that this Philistine of Philistines dies under its ruins.”
He arose and started out. He saw the lap robe in the hall, and this put him to investigating. The mares and buggy he found under the shed. It was all a mystery to him, but of one thing he was sure: “He will soon come back for them. I can wait.”
Choosing a spot in the shadow of a great tree, he sat down with his pistol across his knees. The moon had arisen and cast ghostly shadows over everything. It was a time for repentance, for thoughts of the past with him, and as he sat there, that terrible hour, with murder in his heart, bitterness and repentance were his.
He was a changed man. Never again could he be the old self. “But the blow—the blow,” he kept saying, “I thought it would fall on me—not on her—my beautiful one—not on a Conway woman's chastity—not my wife's daughter—”
He heard steps coming down the path. His heart ceased a moment, it seemed to him, and then beat wildly. He drew a long breath to relieve it—to calm it with cool oxygen, and then he cocked the five chambered pistol and waited as full of the joy of killing as if the man who was now walking down the path was a wolf or a mad dog—down the path and right into the muzzle of the pistol, backed by the arm which could kill.
He saw Richard Travis coming, slowly, painfully, his left arm tied up, and his step, once so quick and active, so full of strength and life, now was as if the blight of old age had come upon it.
In spite of his bitter determination Conway noticed the great change, and instinct, which acts even through anger and hatred and revenge and the maddening fury of murder,—instinct, the ever present—whispered its warning to his innermost ear.
Still, he could not resist. Rising, he threw his pistol up within a few yards of Richard Travis's breast, his hand upon the trigger. But he could not fire, although Travis stood quietly under its muzzle and looked without surprise into his face.
Conway glanced along the barrel of his weapon and into the face of Richard Travis. And then he brought his pistol down with a quick movement.
The face before him was begging him to shoot!
“Why don't you shoot?” said Travis at last, breaking the silence and in a tone of disappointment.
“Because you are not guilty,” said Conway—“not with that look in your face.”
“I am sorry you saw my face, then,” he smiled sadly—“for it had been such a happy solution for it all—if you had only fired.”
“Where is my child?”
“Do you think you have any right to ask—having treated her as you have?”
Conway trembled, at first with rage, then in shame:
“No,”—he said finally. “No, you are right—I haven't.”
“That is the only reply you could have made me that would make it obligatory on my part to answer your question. In that reply I see there is hope for you. So I will tell you she is safe, unharmed, unhurt.”
“I felt it,” said Conway, quietly, “for I knew it, Richard Travis, as soon as I saw your face. But tell me all.”
“There is little to tell. I had made up my mind to run off with her, marry her, perhaps, since she had neither home nor a father, and was a beautiful young thing which any man might be proud of. But things have come up—no, not come up, fallen, fallen and crushed. It has been a crisis all around—so I sent for Clay—a fine young fellow and he loves her—I had him meet me here and—well, he has taken her to Westmoreland to-night. You know she is safe there. She will come to you to-morrow as pure as she left, though God knows you do not deserve it.”
Something sprang into Edward Conway's throat—something kin to a joyous shout. He could not speak. He could only look at the strange, calm, sad man before him in a gratitude that uplifted him. He stared with eyes that were blinded with tears.
“Dick—Dick,” he said, “we have been estranged, since the war. I misjudged you. I see I never knew you. I came to kill, but here—” He thrust the grip of his pistol toward Travis—“here, Dick, kill me—shoot me—I am not fit to live—but, O God, how clearly I see now; and, Dick—Dick—you shall see—the world shall see that from now on, with God's help, as Lily makes me say—Dick, I'll be a Conway again.”
The other man pressed his hand: “Ned, I believe it—I believe it. Go back to your little home to-night. Your daughter is safe. To-morrow you may begin all over again. To-morrow—”
“And you, Dick—I have heard—I can guess, but why may not you, to-morrow—”
“There will be no to-morrow for me,” he said sadly. “Things stop suddenly before me to-night as before an abyss—”
He turned quickly and looked toward the low lying range of mountains. A great red flush as of a rising sun glowed even beyond the rim of them, and then out of it shot tinges of flame.
Conway saw it at the same instant:
“It's the mill—the mill's afire,” he said.
It was a great fire the mill made, lighting the valley for miles. All Cottontown was there to see it burn, hushed, with set faces, some of anger, some of fear—but all in stricken numbness, knowing that their living was gone.
It was not long before Jud Carpenter was among them, stirring them with the story of how the old negro woman had burned it—for he knew it was she. Indeed, he was soon fully substantiated by others who heard her when she had run home heaping her maledictions on the mill.
Soon among them began the whisper of lynching. As it grew they became bolder and began to shout it: Lynch her!
Jud Carpenter, half drunk and wholly reckless, stood on a stump, and after telling his day's experience with Mammy Maria, her defiance of the mill's laws, her arrogance, her burning of the mill, he shouted that he himself would lead them.
“Lynch her!” they shouted. “Lead us, Jud Carpenter! We will lynch her.”
Some wanted to wait until daylight, but “Lynch her—lynch her now,” was the shout.
The crowd grew denser every moment.
The people of Cottontown, hot and revengeful, now that their living was burned; hill dwellers who sympathized with them, and coming in, were eager for any excitement; the unlawful element which infests every town—all were there, the idle, the ignorant, the vicious.
And a little viciousness goes a long way.
There had been so many lynchings in the South that it had ceased to be a crime—for crime, the weed, cultivated—grows into a flower to those who do the tending.
Many of the lynchings, it is true, were honest—the frenzy of outraged humanity to avenge a terrible crime which the law, in its delay, often had let go unpunished. The laxity of the law, the unscrupulousness of its lawyers, their shrewdness in clearing criminals if the fee was forthcoming, the hundreds of technicalities thrown around criminals, the narrowness of supreme courts in reversing on these technicalities. All these had thrown the law back to its source—the people. And they had taken it in their own hands. In violent hands, but deadly sure and retributory.
If there was ever an excuse for lynching, the South was entitled to it. For the crime was the result of the sudden emancipation of ignorant slaves, who, backed by the bayonets of their liberators, and attributing a far greater importance to their elevation than was warranted, perpetuated an unnameable crime as part of their system of revenge for years of slavery. And the South arose to the terribleness of the crime and met it with the rifle, the torch and the rope.
Why should it be wondered at? Why should the South be singled out for blame? Is it not a fact that for years in every newly settled western state lynch-law has been the unchallenged, unanimous verdict for a horse thief? And is not the honor of a white woman more than the hide of a broncho?
But from an honest, well intentioned frenzy of justice outraged to any pretext is an easy step. From the quick lynching of the rapist and murderer—to be sure that the lawyers and courts did not acquit them—was one step. To hang a half crazy old woman for burning a mill was another, and the natural consequence of the first.
And so these people flocked to the burning—they who had helped lynch before—the negro-haters, who had never owned a negro and had no sympathy—no sentiment for them. It is they who lynch in the South, who lynch and defy the law.
The great mill was in ruins—its tall black smokestacks alone stood amid its smoking, twisted mass of steel and ashes—a rough, blackened, but fitting monument of its own infamy.
They gathered around it—the disorderly, the vicious, the lynchers of the Tennessee Valley.
Fitful flashes of flame now and then burst out amid the ruins, silhouetting the shadows of the lynchers into fierce giant forms with frenzied faces from which came first murmurs and finally shouts of:
“Lynch her! Lynch her!”
Above, in the still air of the night, yet hung the pall of the black smoke-cloud, from whose heart had come the torch which had cost capital its money, and the mill people their living.
They were not long acting. Mammy Maria had flown to the little cottage—a crazy, hysterical creature—a wreck of herself—over-worked in body and mind, and frenzied between the deed and the promptings of a blind superstitious religion.
Lily hung to her neck sobbing, and the old woman in her pitiful fright was brought back partly to reason in the great love of her life for the little child. Even in her feebleness she was soothing her pet.
There were oaths, curses and trampling of many feet as they rushed in and seized her. Lily, screaming, was held by rough arms while they dragged the old nurse away.
Into a wood nearby they took her, the rope was thrown over a limb, the noose placed around her neck.
“Pray, you old witch—we will give you five minutes to pray.”
The old woman fell on her knees, but instead of praying for herself, she prayed for her executioners.
They jeered—they laughed. One struck her with a stick, but she only prayed for them the more.
“String her up,” they shouted—“her time's up!”
“Stand back there!”
The words rang out even above the noise of the crowd. Then a man, with the long blue deadly barrel of the Colt forty-four, pushed his way through them—his face pale, his fine mouth set firm and close, and the splendid courage of many generations of Conways shining in his eyes.
“Stand back!—” and he said it in the old commanding way—the old way which courage has ever had in the crises of the world.
“O Marse Ned!—I knowed you'd come!”
He had cut the rope and the old woman sat on the ground clasping his feet.
For a moment he stood over her, his pale calm face showing the splendor of determination in the glory of his manhood restored. For a moment the very beauty of it stopped them—this man, this former sot and drunkard, this old soldier arising from the ashes of his buried past, a beautiful statue of courage cut out of the marble of manhood. The moral beauty of it—this man defending with his life the old negro—struck even through the swine of them.
They ceased, and a silence fell, so painful that it hurt in its very uncanniness.
Then Edward Conway said very clearly, very slowly, but with a fitful nervous ring in his voice: “Go back to your homes! Would you hang this poor old woman without a trial? Can you not see that she has lost her mind and is not responsible for her acts? Let the law decide. Shall not her life of unselfishness and good deeds be put against this one insane act of her old age? Go back to your homes! Some of you are my friends, some my neighbors—I ask you for her but a fair trial before the law.”
They listened for a moment and then burst into jeers, hoots, and hisses:
“Hang her, now! That's the way all lawyers talk!”
And one shouted above the rest: “He's put up a plea of insanity a-ready. Hang her, now!”
Edward Conway flashed hot through his paleness and he placed himself before the bowed and moaning form while the crowd in front of him surged and shouted and called for a rope.
He felt some one touch his arm and turned to find the sheriff by his side—one of those disreputables who infested the South after the war, holding office by the votes of the negroes.
“Better let 'em have her,—it ain't worth the while. You'll hafter kill, or be killed.”
“You scallawag!” said Conway, now purple with anger—“is that the way you respect your sworn oath? And you have been here and seen all this and not raised your hand?”
“Do you think I'm fool enuff to tackle that crowd of hillbillies? They've got the devil in them—fur they've got a devil leadin' 'em—Jud Carpenter. Better let 'em have her—they'll kill you. We've got a good excuse—overpowered—don't you see?”
“Overpowered? That's the way all cowards talk,” said Conway. “Do one thing for me,” he said quickly—“tell them you have appointed me your deputy. If you do not—I'll fall back on the law of riots and appoint myself.”
“Gentlemen,” said the sheriff, turning to the crowd, and speaking half-shamedly—“Gentlemen, it's better an' I hopes you all will go home. We don't wanter hurt nobody. I app'ints Major Conway my deputy to take the prisoner to jail. Now the blood be on yo' own heads. I've sed my say.”
A perfect storm of jeers met this. They surged forward to seize her, while the sheriff half frightened, half undecided, got behind Conway and said:—“It's up to you—I've done all I cu'd.”
“Go back to your homes, men”—shouted Conway—“I am the sheriff here now, and I swear to you by the living God it means I am a Conway again, and the man who lays a hand on this old woman is as good as dead in his tracks!”
For an instant they surged around him cursing and shouting; but he stood up straight and terribly silent; only his keen grey eyes glanced down to the barrel of his pistol and he stood nervously fingering the small blue hammer with his thumb and measuring the distance between himself and the nearest ruffian who stood on the outskirts of the mob shaking a pistol in Conway's face and shouting: “Come on, men, we'll lynch her anyway!”
Then Conway acted quickly. He spoke a few words to the old nurse, and as she backed off into the nearby wood, he covered the retreat. To his relief he saw that the sheriff, now thoroughly ashamed, had hold of the prisoner and was helping her along.
In the edge of the wood he felt safe—with the trees at his back. And he took courage as he heard the sheriff say:
“If you kin hold 'em a little longer I'll soon have my buggy here and we'll beat 'em to the jail.”
But the mob guessed his plans, and the man who had been most insolent in the front of the mob—a long-haired, narrow-chested mountaineer—rushed up viciously.
Conway saw the gleam of his pistol as the man aimed and fired at the prisoner. Instinctively he struck at the weapon and the ball intended for the prisoner crushed spitefully into his left shoulder. He reeled and the grim light of an aroused Conway flashed in his eyes as he recovered himself, for a moment, shocked, blinded. Then he heard some one say, as he felt the blood trickling down his arm and hand:
“Marse Ned! Oh, an' for po' ole Zion! Don't risk yo' life—let 'em take me!”
Dimly he saw the mob rushing up; vaguely it came to him that it was kill or be killed. Vaguely, too, that it was the law—his law—and every other man's law—against lawlessness. Hazily, that he was the law—its representative, its defender, and then clear as the blue barrel in his hand,—all the dimness and uncertainty gone,—it came to him, that thing that made him say: “I am a Conway again!”
Then his pistol leaped from the shadow by his side to the gray light in front, and the man who had fired and was again taking aim at the old woman died in his tracks with his mouth twisted forever into the shape of an unspoken curse.
It was enough. Stricken, paralyzed, they fell back before such courage—and Conway found himself backing off into the woods, covering the retreat of the prisoner. Then afterward he felt the motion of buggy wheels, and of a galloping drive, and the jail, and he in the sheriff's room, the old prisoner safe for the time.