When Richard Travis came to himself after that terrible night, they told him that for weeks he had lain with only a breath between him and death.
“It was not my skill that has saved you,” said the old surgeon who had been through two wars and who knew wounds as he did maps of battlefields he had fought on. “No,” he said, shaking his head, “no, it was not I—it was something beyond me. That you miraculously live is proof of it.”
He was in his room at The Gaffs, and everything looked so natural. It was sweet to live again, for he was yet young and life now meant so much more than it ever had. Then his eyes fell on the rug, wearily, and he remembered the old setter.
“The dog—and that other one?”
He sat up nervously in bed, trembling with the thought. The old surgeon guessed and bade him be quiet.
“You need not fear that,” he said, touching his arm. “The time has passed for fear. You were saved by the shadow of death and—the blood letting you had—and, well, a woman's lips, as many a man has been saved before you. You'd better sleep again now....”
He slept, but there were visions as there had been all along. And two persons came in now and then. One was Tom Travis, serious and quiet and very much in earnest that the patient might get well.
Another was Tom's wife, Alice, who arranged the wounded man's pillows with a gentleness and deftness as only she could, and who gave quiet orders to the old cook in a way that made Richard Travis feel that things were all right, though he could not speak, nor even open his eyes long enough to see distinctly.
A month afterward Richard Travis was sitting up. His strength came very fast. For a week he had sat by the fire and thought—thought. But no man knew what was in his mind until one day, after he had been able to walk over the place, he said:
“Tom, you and Alice have been kinder to me—far kinder—than I have deserved. I am going away forever, next week—to the Northwest—and begin life over. But there is something I wish to say to you first.”
“Dick,” said his cousin, and he arose, tall and splendid, before the firelight—“there is something I wish to say to you first. Our lives have been far apart and very different, but blood is blood and you have proved it, else I had not been here to-night to tell it.”
He came over and put his hand affectionately on the other's shoulder. At its touch Richard Travis softened almost to tears.
“Dick, we two are the only grandsons that bear his name, and we divide this between us. Alice and I have planned it. You are to retain the house and half the land. We have our own and more than enough. You will do it, Dick?”
Richard Travis arose, strangely moved. He grasped his cousin's hand. “No, no, Tom, it is not fair. No Travis was ever a welcher. It is all yours—you do not understand—I saw the will—I do not want it. I am going away forever. My life must lead now in other paths. But—”
The other turned quickly and looked deep into Richard Travis's eyes. “I can see there is no use of my trying to change your mind, Dick, though I had hoped—”
The other shook his head. It meant a Travis decision, and his cousin knew it.
“But as I started to say, Tom, and there is no need of my mincing words, if you'll raise that boy of mine—” he was silent awhile, then smiling: “He is mine and more of a Travis to-day than his father ever was. If you can help him and his aunt—”
“He shall have the half of it, Dick, and an education, under our care. We will make a man of him, Alice and I.”
Richard Travis said no more.
The week before he left, one beautiful afternoon, he walked over to Millwood for the last time. For Edward Conway was now sheriff of the county, and with the assistance of the old bishop, whose fortune now was secured, he had redeemed his home and was in a fair way to pay back every dollar of it.
A new servant ushered Travis in, for the good old nurse had passed away, the strain of that terrible night being too much, first, for her reason, and afterwards, her life.
Edward Conway was away, but Helen came in presently, and greeted him with such a splendid high-born way, so simple and so unaffected that he marveled at her self-control, feeling his own heart pulsing strangely at sight of her. In the few months that had elapsed how changed she was and how beautiful! This was not the romantic, yet buffeted, beautiful girl who had come so near being the tragedy of his old life? How womanly she now was, and how calm and at her ease! Could independence and the change from poverty and worry, the strong, free feeling of being one's self again and in one's sphere, make so great a difference in so short a while? He wondered at himself for not seeing farther ahead. He had come to bid her good-bye and offer again—this time in all earnestness and sincerity, to take her with him—to share his life—but the words died in his mouth.
He could no more have said them than he could have profanely touched her.
When he left she walked with him to the parting of the ways.
The blue line of tremulous mountain was scrolled along a horizon that flamed crimson in the setting sun. A flock of twilight clouds—flamingos of the sky—floated toward the sunset as if going to roost. Beyond was the great river, its bosom as wan, where it lay in the shadow of the mountain, as Richard Travis's own cheek; but where the sunset fell on it the reflected light turned it to pink which to him looked like Helen's.
The wind came down cool from the frost-tinctured mountain side, and the fine sweet odor of life everlasting floated in it—frost-bitten—and bringing a wave of youth and rabbit hunts and of a life of dreams and the sweet unclouded far-off hope of things beautiful and immortal. And the flow of it hurt Richard Travis—hurt him with a tenderness that bled.
The girl stopped and drank in the beauty of it all, and he stood looking at her, “the picture for the frame”—as he said to himself.
It had rained and the clouds were scattered, yet so full that they caught entirely the sunset rays and held them as he would that moment have loved to hold her. Something in her—something about her thrilled him strangely, as he had often been thrilled when looking at the great pictures in the galleries of the old world. He repeated softly to her, as she stood looking forward—to him—into the future:
She turned and held out her hand.
“I must bid you good-bye now and I wish you all happiness—so much more than you have ever had in all your life.”
He took it, but he could not speak. Something shook him strangely. He knew nothing to say. Had he spoken, he knew he had stammered and blundered.
Never had the Richard Travis of old done such a thing.
“Helen—Helen—if—if—you know once I asked you to go with me—once—in the old, awful life. Now, in the new—the new life which you can make sweet—”
She came up close to him. The sun had set and the valley lay in silence. When he saw her eyes there were tears in them—tears so full and deep that they hurt him when she said:
“It can never—never be—now. You made me love you when you could not love; and love born of despair is mateless ever; it would die in its realization. Mine, for you, was that—” She pointed to the sunset. “It breathed and burned. I saw it only because of clouds, of shadow. But were the clouds, the shadows, gone—”
“There would be no life, no burning, no love,” he said. “Ah, I think I understand,” and his heart sank with pain. What—why—he could not say, only he knew it hurt him, and he began to wonder.
“You do not blame me,” she said as she still held his hand and looked up into his eyes in the old way he had seen, that terrible night at Millwood.
For reply he held her hand in both of his and then laid it over his heart. She felt his tears fall on it, tears, which even death could not bring, had come to Richard Travis at last, and he wondered. In the old life he never wondered—he always knew; but in this—this new life—it was all so strange, so new that he feared even himself. Like a sailor lost, he could only look up, by day, helplessly at the sun, and, by night, helplessly at the stars.
“Helen—Helen,” he said at last, strangely shaken in it all,—“if I could tell you now that I do—that I could love—”
She put her hand over his mouth in the old playful way and shook her head, smiling through her tears: “Do not try to mate my love with a thing that balks.”
It was simply said, and forceful. It was enough. Richard Travis blushed for very shame.
“Do you not see,” she said, “how hopeless it is? Do you not know that I was terribly tempted—weak—maddened—deserted that night? That now I know what Clay's love has been? Oh, why do we not learn early in life that fire will burn, that death will kill, that we are the deed of all we think and feel—the wish of all we will to be?”
Travis turned quickly: “Is that true? Then let me wish—as I do, Helen; let me wish that I might love you as you deserve.”
She saddened: “Oh, but you have wished—you have willed—too often—too differently. It can never be now.”
“I understand you,” he said. “It is natural—I should say it is nature—nature, the never-lying. I but reap my own folly, and now good-bye forever, Helen, and may God bless you and bring you that happiness you have deserved.”
“Do you know,” she said calmly, “that I have thought of all that, too. There are so many of us in the world, and so little happiness that like flowers it cannot go around—some must go without.”
She held his hand tightly as if she did not want him to go.
“My child, I must go out of your life—go—and stay. I see—I see—and I only make you wretched. And I have no right to. It is ignoble. It is I who should bear this burden of sorrow—not you. You who have never sinned, who are so young and so beautiful. In time you will love a nobler man—Clay—”
She looked at him, but said nothing. She knew for the first time the solution of her love's problem. She was silent, holding his hand.
“Child,” he said again. “Helen, you must do as I say. There is happiness for you yet when I am gone—when I am out of your life and the memory and the pain of it cease. Then you will marry Clay—”
“Do you really think so? Oh, and he has loved me so and is so splendid and true.”
Travis was silent, waiting.
“Now let me go,” she said—“let me forget all my madness and folly in learning to love one whose love was made for mine. In time I shall love him as he deserves. Good-bye.”
Then she broke impulsively away, and he watched her walk back through the shadows and under the clouds.
At the turning of the path across the meadow, he saw another shadow join her. It was Clay, and the two went through the twilight together.
Travis turned. “It is right—it is the solution—he alone deserves her. I must reap my past, reap it and see my harvest blighted and bound with rotten twine. But, oh, to know it when it is too late—to know that I might love her and could be happy—then to have to give it up—now—now—when I need it most. The Deed,” he said—“we are the deed of all we think and feel.”
The discovery of coal and iron made both the old Bishop and Westmoreland rich. Captain Tom sent James Travis to West Point and Archie B. to Annapolis, and their records were worthy of their names.
And now, five years after the great fire, there might be seen in Cottontown, besides two furnaces, whose blazing turrets lighted the valley with Prosperity's torch—another cotton mill, erected by the old Bishop.
Long and earnestly he thought on the subject before building the mill. Indeed, he first prayed over it and then preached on the subject, and this is the sermon he preached to his people the Sunday before he began the erection of The Model Cotton Mill:
“Now, it's this way, my brethren: God made cotton for a mill. You can't get aroun' that; and the mill is to give people wuck an' this wuck is to clothe the worl'. That's all plain an' all good, because it's from God. Man made the bad of it—child labor, and overwuck and poor pay and the terrible everlastin' grind and foul air an' dirt an' squaller an' death.
“The trouble with the worl' to-day is that it don't carry God into business. Why should we not be kinder an' mo' liberal with each other in business matters? We are unselfish in everything but business. All social life is based on unselfishness. To charity we give of our tears an' our money. For the welfare of mankind an' the advancement of humanity you can always count us on the right side. Even to those whose characters are rotten an' whose very shadows leave dark places in life, we pass the courtesies of the hour or the palaverin' compliments of the day. But let the struggler for the bread of life come along and ask us to share our profits with him, let the dollar be the thing involved an' business shrewdness the principle at stake, an' then all charity is forgotten, every man for himse'f, an' the chief aim of man seems to be to get mo' out of the trade than his brother.
“Now the soul of trade is Selfishness, an' Charity never is invited over her doorway.
“I have known men with tears in their eyes to give to the poor one day an' rob them the nex' in usurious interest an' rent, as cheerful as they gave the day befo'. I have known men to open their purses as wide as the gates of hades for some church charity, an' then close them the nex' day, in a business transaction, as they called it—with some helpless debtor or unexperienced widder. The graveyard is full of unselfish, devoted fathers an' husbands who worked themselves to death for the comfort an' support of their own families, yet spendin' their days on earth tryin' to beat their neighbors in the same game.
“It's funny how we're livin'. It's amusin', it is—our ethics of Christianity. We've baptised everything but business. We give to the church an' rob the poor. We weep over misfortune an' steal from the unfortunate. We give a robe to Charity one day and filch it the nex'. We lay gifts at the altar of the Temple of Kindness for the Virgin therein, but if we caught her out on the highways of trade an' commerce we'd steal her an' sell her into slavery. An' after she was dead we'd go deep into our pockets to put up a monument over her!
“We weep an' rob, an' smile an' steal, an' laugh an' knife, an' wring the hand of friendship while we step on her toes with our brogans of business. Can't we be hones' without bein' selfish, fair without graspin', make a profit without wantin' it all? Is it possible that Christ's religion has gone into every nook an' corner of the worl' an' yet missed the great highway of business, the everyday road of dollars an' cents, profit an' loss!
“So I am goin' to build the mill an' run it like God intended it should be run, an' I am goin' to put, for once, the plan of salvation into business, if it busts me an' the plan too! For if it can't stand a business test it ought to bust!”
He planned it all himself, and, aided by Captain Tom, and Alice, the beautiful structure went up. Strong and airy and with every comfort for the workers. “For it strikes me,” said the old man, “that the people who wuck need mo' comforts than them that don't—at least the comforts of bein' clean. The fust thing I learned in geography was that God made three times as much water on the surface of the earth as he did dirt. But you wouldn't think so to look at the human race. It takes us a long time to take a hint.”
The big mountain spring settled the point, and when the mill was finished there were hot and cold baths in it for the tired workers. “For there's nothin' so good,” said the old man, “for a hot man or a hot hoss as a warm body-wash. It relaxes the muscles an' makes them come ag'in. An' the man that comes ag'in is the man the worl' wants.”
In the homes of the workers, too, he had baths placed, until it grew to be a saying of the good old man “that it was easier to take a bath in Cottontown than to take a drink.”
The main building was lofty between floor and ceiling, letting in all the light and air possible, and the floors were of hard-wood and clean. As the greatest curse of the cotton lint was dust, atomizers for spraying the air were invented by Captain Tom. These were attached to the machinery and could be turned off or on as the operators desired. It was most comfortable now to work in the mill, and tired and hot employees, instead of lounging through their noon, bathed in the cool spring water which came down from the mountain side and flowed into the baths, not only in the mill, but through every cottage owned by the mill. And as the bath is the greatest civilizer known to man, a marked difference was soon noticed in every inhabitant of Cottontown. They were cleanly, and cleanliness begets a long list of other virtues, beginning with cleaner and better clothes and ending with ambition and godliness.
But it was the old Bishop's policy for the wage-earners, which put the ambition there—a system never heard of before in the ranks of capital, and first tested and proved in his Model Cotton Mill.
“There are two things in the worl',” said the Bishop, “that is as plain as God could write them without tellin' it Himself from the clouds. The first is that the money of the worl' was intended for all the worl' that reaches out a hand an' works for it.
“The other is that every man who works is entitled to a home.
“It was never intended for one man, or one corporation or one trust or one king or one anything else, to own more than his share of the money of the worl', no matter how they get it. Every man who piles up mo' money than he needs—actually needs—in life, robs every other man or woman or child in the worl' that pinches and slaves and starves for it in vain. Every man who makes a big fortune leaves just that many wrecked homes in his path.”
In carrying out this idea the old bishop had the mill incorporated at one hundred thousand dollars, which included all his fortune, except enough to live on and educate his grandchildren; for he never changed his home, and the only luxury he indulged in was a stable for Ben Butler.
The stock was divided into shares of ten dollars each, which could be acquired only by those who worked in the mill, to be held only during life-time, and earned only in part payment for labor, given according to proficiency and work done, and credited on wages. In this way every employee of the mill became a stockholder—a partner in the mill, receiving dividends on his stock in addition to his regular wages, and every year he worked in the mill added both to his stock and dividends. At death it reverted again to The Model Cotton Mill Company, to be obtained again, in turn, by other mill workers coming on up the line. This made every mill worker a partner in the mill and spurred them on to do their best.
But the home idea of the bishop was the more original one, and a far greater boon to the people. Instead of paying rent to the mill for their homes, as they had before, every married mill worker was deeded a home in the beginning, a certain per cent of his wages being appropriated each month in part payment; in addition, ten per cent of the stock acquired, as above, by each individual home owner, went to the payment of the home, and the whole was so worked out and adjusted that by the time a faithful worker had arrived at middle age, the home, as paid for, was absolutely his and his children's, and when he arrived at old age the dividends of the stock acquired were sufficient to support him the balance of his life.
In this way the mill was virtually resolved into a corporation or community of interests, running perpetually for the maintenance and support of those who worked in it. The only property actually acquired by the individual was a home, his savings in wages, and the dividends on his stock acquired by long service and work.
Some wanted the old man to run a general store on the same plan of community of interest, the goods and necessities of life to be bought at first cost and only the actual expenses of keeping the store added. But he wisely shook his head, saying: “No, that will not do; that's forming a trust ag'in the tillers of the earth an' the workers in every other occupation. That's cuttin' in on hones' competition, an' if carried out everywhere would shut off the rest of the worl' from a livin'. We're makin' our livin'—let them make theirs.”
The old bishop was proud of the men he selected to carry out his plans. Captain Tom was manager of the Model Mill.
“Now,” said the old man, after the mill had run two years and declared a semi-annual dividend, both years, of eight per cent each, “now you all see what it means to run even business by the Golden Rule. Here is this big fortune that I accidentally stumbled on, as everybody does who makes one—put out like God intended it sh'ud, belonging to nobody and standing there, year after year, makin' a livin' an' a home an' life an' happiness for over fo' hundred people, year in an' year out, an' let us pray God, forever. It was not mine to begin with—it belonged to the worl'. God put the coal and iron in the ground, not for me, but for everybody. An' so I've given it to everybody. Because I happened to own the lan' didn't make the treasure God put there mine, any mo' than the same land will be mine after I've passed away. We're only trustees for humanity for all we make mo' than we need, jus' as we're only tenants of God while we live on the earth.”
As for children, the bishop settled that quickly and effectively. His rule was that no boy or girl under sixteen should be permitted to work in the mill, and to save any parents, weakly inclined, from the temptation, he established a physical standard in weight, height and health.
He found afterwards there was really small need of his stringent rule, for under this system of management the temptations of child labor were removed.
Among the good features of the mill, established by Alice Travis, was a library, a pretty little building in the heart of Cottontown. It was maintained yearly by the mill, together with donations, and proved to be the greatest educational and refining influence of the mill. It was kept, for one week at a time, by each girl in the mill over twenty, the privilege always being given by the mill's physician to the girl who seemed most in need of a week's rest. It came to be a great social feature also, and any pretty afternoon, and all Saturday afternoon,—for the mill never ran then—could be seen there the young girls and boys of Cottontown.
To this was afterwards added a Cottontown school for the younger children, who before had been slaves to the spinner and doffer carts.
And so it ran on several years, but still the Bishop could see that something was lacking—that there was too much sickness, that in spite of only eight hours his people, year in and year out, grew tired and weak and disheartened, and with his great good sense he put his finger on it.
“Now, it's this away,” he said to his directors, “God never intended for any people to work all the time between walls an' floors. Tilling the soil is the natural work of man, an' there is somethin' in the very touch of the ground to our feet that puts new life in our bodies.
“The farmin' instinct is so natural in us that you can't stop it by flood or drought or failure. Year in an' year out the farmer will plant an' work his crop in spite of failure, hopin' every year to hit it the nex' time. Would a merchant or manufacturer or anybody else do that? No, they'd make an assignment the second year of failure. But not so with the farmer, and it shows God intended he shu'd keep at it.
“Now, I'm goin' to give this mill a chance to raise its own cotton, besides everything else its people needs to eat. I figger we can raise cotton cheaper than we can buy it, an' keep our folks healthy, too.”
Near Cottontown was an old cotton plantation of four thousand acres. It had been sadly neglected and run down. This the bishop purchased for the company for only ten dollars an acre, and divided it into tracts of twenty acres each, building a neat cottage, dairy and barn, and other outhouses on each tract—but all arranged for a family of four or five, and thus sprang up in a year a new settlement of two hundred families around Cottontown. It was no trouble to get them, for the fame of The Model Mill had spread, and far more applied yearly for employment than could be accommodated. This large farm, when equipped fully, represented fifty thousand dollars more, or an investment of ninety thousand dollars, and immediately became a valuable asset of the mill.
It was divided into four parts, each under the supervision of a manager, a practical and experienced cotton farmer of the valley, and the tenants were selected every year from among all the workers of the mill, preference always being given to the families who needed the outdoor work most, and those physically weak from long work in the mill. It was so arranged that only fifty families, or one-fourth of the mill, went out each year, staying four years each on the farm. And thus every four years were two hundred families given the chance in the open to get in touch with nature, the great physician, and come again. After four years they went back to the mill, sunburnt, swarthy, and full of health, and what is greater than health,—cheerfulness—the cheerfulness that comes with change.
On the farm they received the same wages as when in the mill, and each family was furnished with a mule, a cow, and poultry, and with a good garden.
To reclaim this land and build up the soil was now the chief work of the old man; but having been overseer on a large cotton plantation, he knew his business, and set to work at it with all the zeal and good sense of his nature.
He knew that cotton was one of the least exhaustive crops of the world, taking nearly all its sustenance from the air, and that it was also one of the most easily raised, requiring none of the complicated and expensive machinery necessary for wheat and other smaller grains. He knew, too, that under the thorough preparation of the soil necessary for cotton, wheat did best after it, and with clover sown on the wheat, he would soon have nature's remedy for reclaiming the soil. He also knew that the most expensive feature of cotton raising was the picking—the gathering of the crop—and in the children of Cottontown, he saw at once that he had a quick solution—one which solved the picking problem and yet gave to each growing boy and girl three months, in the cool, delightful fall, of healthful work, with pay more than equal to a year of the old cheap labor behind the spinners. For,—as it proved, at seventy-five cents per hundred pounds for the seed cotton picked,—these children earned from seventy-five cents to a dollar and a half a day. The first year, only half of the land was put in cotton, attention being given to reclaiming the other half. But even this proved a surprise for all, for nearly one thousand bales of cotton were ginned, at a total cost to the mill of only four cents per pound, while Cottontown had been fed during summer with all the vegetables and melons needed—all raised on the farm.
That fall, the land, under the clean and constant plowing necessary to raise the cotton, was ready to sow in wheat, which in February was followed with clover—nature's great fertilizer—the clover being sown broadcast on the wheat, behind a light harrow run over the wheat. The wheat crop was small, averaging less than ten bushels to the acre, but it was enough to keep all Cottontown in bread for a year, or until the next harvest time, and some, even, to sell. Behind the wheat, after it was mowed, came the clover, bringing in good dividends. After two years, it was turned under, and then it was that the two thousand acres of land produced fifteen hundred bales of cotton at a total cost of four cents per pound, or twenty dollars per bale. And this included everything, even the interest on the money and the paying of seventy-five cents per hundred pounds to the Cottontown children for picking and storing the crop.
In a few years, under this rotation, the farm produced all the cotton necessary to run The Model Mill, besides raising all its vegetables, fruit, and bread for all the families of Cottontown.
But the most beautiful sight to the old man was to see the children every fall picking the cotton. Little boys and girls, who before had worked twelve hours a day in the old, hot, stifling, ill-smelling mill, now stood out in the sunshine and in the frosty air of the mornings, each with sack to side, waist deep in pure white cotton, flooded in sunshine and health and sweetness.
They were deft with their fingers—the old mill had taught many of them that—and their pay, daily, ran from seventy-five cents to a dollar and a half—as much as some of them had earned in a week of the old way. And, oh, the health of it, the glory of air and sky and sunshine, the smell of dew on the bruised cotton-heads, the rustle of the mountain breeze cooling the heated cheeks; the healthy hunger, and the lunches in the shade by the cool spring; the shadows of evening creeping down from the mountains, the healthy fatigue—and the sweet home-going in the twilight, riding beneath the silent stars on wagons of snowy seed cotton, burrowing in bed of down and purest white—this snow of a Southern summer—with the happy laughter of childhood and the hunger of home-coming, and the glory and freedom of it all!