The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills
he give up Miss Alice for the flag he loved an' his old grand sire
an' The Gaffs an' all of us that loved him--you call that a traitor?"
"You never heard," said Jack, "how old Gen'l Travis charged the
breastworks at Franklin and hit the line where Cap'n Tom's battery
stood. Nine times they had charged Cap'n Tom's battery that
night--nine times he stood his ground an' they melted away around it.
But when he saw the line led by his own grandsire the blood in him
was thicker than water and----"
"An' whut?" gasped the Bishop.
"Well, why they say it was a drunken soldier in his own battery who
struck him with the heavy hilt of a sword. Any way I found the old
Gen'l cryin' over him: 'My Irish Gray--my Irish Gray,' he kept
sayin'. 'I might have known it was you,' and the old Gen'l charged on
leaving him for dead. An' so I found him an' tuck him in my arms an'
carried him to my own cabin up yonder on the mountain--carried him
an'----"
"An' whut?"--asked the old man, grasping the outlaw's
shoulder--"Didn't he die? We've never been able to hear from him."
Jack shook his head. "It 'ud been better for him if he had"--and he
touched his forehead significantly.
"Tell me, Jack--quick--tell it all," exclaimed the old man, still
gripping Jack's shoulder.
"There's nothin' to tell except that I kept him ever
sence--here--right here for two years, with little Jack an' Ephrum,
the young nigger that was his body servant--he's been our cook an'
servant. He never would leave Cap'n Tom, followed me offen the field
of Franklin. An' mighty fond of each other was all three of 'em."
The old man turned pale and his voice trembled so with excitement he
could hardly say:
"Where is he, Jack? My God--Cap'n Tom--he's been here all this time
too--an' me awonderin'--"
"Right here, Bishop--kind an' quiet and teched in his head, where the
sword-hilt crushed his skull. All these years I've cared for him--me
an' Ephrum, my two boys as I called 'em--him an' little Jack. An'
right here he staid contented like till little Jack died last
night--then--"
"In God's name--quick!--tell me--Jack--"
"That's the worst of it--Bishop--when he found little Jack was dead
he wandered off--"
"When?" almost shouted the old man.
"To-day--this even'. I have sent Eph after him--an' I hope he has
found him by now an' tuck him somewhere. Eph'll never stop till he
does."
"We must find him, Jack. Cap'n Tom alive--thank God--alive, even if
he is teched in his head. Oh, God, I might a knowed it--an' only
to-day I was doubtin' You."
He fell on his knees and Jack stood awed in the presence of the great
emotion which shook the old man.
Finally he arose. "Come--Jack--let us go an' hunt for Cap'n Tom."
But though they hunted until the moon went down they found no trace
of him. For miles they walked, or took turn about in riding the old
blind roan.
"It's no use, Bishop," said Jack. "We will sleep a while and begin
to-morrow. Besides, Eph is with him. I feel it--he'll take keer o'
him."
That is how it came that at midnight, that Saturday night, the old
Bishop brought home a strange man to live in the little cabin in his
yard.
That is how, a week later, all the South was stirred over the
strange return of a fortune to the different corporations from which
it had been taken, accompanied by a drawling note from Jack Bracken
saying he returned ill-gotten gain to live a better life.
It ended laconically:
"_An' maybe you'd better go an' do likewise._"
The dim starlight was shining faintly through the cracks of the
outlaw's future home when the old man showed him in.
"Now, Jack," he said, "it's nearly mornin' an' the old woman may be
wild an' raise sand. But learn to lay low an' shoe hosses. She was
bohn disapp'inted--maybe because she wa'n't a boy," he whispered.
There was a whinny outside, in a small paddock, where a nearby stable
stood: "That's Cap'n Tom's horse," said the old man--"I mus' go see
if he's hungry."
"I've kept his horse these ten years, hopin' maybe he'd come back
agin. It's John Paul Jones--the thoroughbred, that the old General
give him."
"I remember him," said Jack.
The great bloodlike horse came up and rubbed his nose on the old
man's shoulder.
"Hungry, John Paul?"
"It's been a job to get feed fur him, po' as I've
been--but--but--he's Cap'n Tom's. You kno'--"
"An' Cap'n Tom will ride him yet," said Jack.
"Do you believe it, Jack?" asked the old man huskily "God be
praised!"
That Saturday night was one never to be forgotten by others beside
Jack Bracken and the old preacher of Cottontown.
When Helen Conway, after supper, sought her drunken father and
learned that he really intended to have Lily and herself go into the
cotton mills, she was crushed for the first time in her life.
An hour later she sent a boy with a note to The Gaffs to Harry
Travis.
He brought back an answer that made her pale with wounded love and
grief. Not even Mammy Maria knew why she had crept off to bed. But in
the night the old woman heard sobs from the young girl's room where
she and her sister slept.
"What is it, chile?" she asked as she slipped from her own cot in the
adjoining little room and went in to Helen's.
The girl had been weeping all night--she had no mother--no one to
whom she could unbosom her heart--no one but the old woman who had
nursed her from her infancy. This kind old creature sat on the bed
and held the girl's sobbing head on her lap and stroked her cheek.
She knew and understood--she asked no questions:
"It isn't that I must work in the mill," she sobbed to the old
woman--"I can do that--anything to help out--but--but--to think that
Harry loves me so little as to give me up for--for--that."
"Don't cry, chile," said Mammy soothingly--"It ain't registered that
you gwine wuck in that mill yit--I ain't made my afferdavit yit."
"But Harry doesn't love me--Oh, he doesn't love me," she wept. "He
would not give me up for anything if he did."
"I'm gwine give that Marse Harry a piece of my mind when I see
him--see if I don't. Don't you cry, chile--hold up yo' haid an' be a
Conway. Don't you ever let him know that yo' heart is bustin' for him
an' fo' the year is out we'll have that same Marse Harry acrawlin' on
his very marrow bones to aix our forgiveness. See if we won't."
It was poor consolation to the romantic spirit of Helen Conway.
Daylight found her still heart-broken and sobbing in the old woman's
lap.
PART THIRD--THE GIN
CHAPTER I
ALICE WESTMORE
It is remarkable how small a part of our real life the world
knows--how little our most intimate friends know of the secret
influences which have proven to be climaxes, at the turning points of
our existence.
There was no more beautiful woman in Alabama than Alice Westmore; and
throughout that state, where the song birds seem to develop,
naturally, along with the softness of the air, and the gleam of the
sunshine, and the lullaby of the Gulf's soft breeze among the pine
trees, there was no one, they say, who could sing as she sang.
And she seemed to have caught it from her native mocking-birds, so
natural was it. Not when they sing in the daylight, when everything
is bright and joyous and singing is so easy; but when they waken at
midnight amid the _arbor vitae_ trees, and under the sweet, sad
influence of a winter moon, pour out their half awakened notes to the
star-sprays which fall in mist to blend and sparkle around the soft
neck of the night.
For like the star-sprays her notes were as clear; and through them
ran a sadness as of a mist of moonlight. And just as moonbeams, when
they mingle with the mist, make the melancholy of night, so the
memory of a dead love ran through everything Alice Westmore sang.
And this made her singing divine.
Why should it be told? What right has a blacksmith to pry into a
grand piano to find out wherein the exquisite harmony of the
instrument lies? Who has the right to ask the artist how he blended
the colors that crowned his picture with immortality, or the poet to
explain his pain in the birth of a mood which moved the world?
Born in the mountains of North Alabama, she grew up there and
developed this rare voice; and when her father sent her to Italy to
complete her musical education, the depth and clearness of it
captured even that song nation of the world.
The great of all countries were her friends and princes sought her
favors. She sang at courts and in great cathedrals, and her genius
and beauty were toasts with society.
"Still, Mademoiselle will never be a great singer, perfect as her
voice is,"--said her singing master to her one day--a famous Italian
teacher, "until Mademoiselle has suffered. She is now rich and
beautiful and happy. Go home and suffer if you would be a great
singer," he said, "for great songs come only with great suffering."
If this were true, Alice Westmore was now, indeed, a great singer;
for now had she suffered. And it was the death of a life with her
when love died. For there be some with whom love is a separate life,
and when love dies all that is worth living dies with it.
From childhood she and Cousin Tom--Captain Thomas Travis he lived to
be--had been sweethearts. He was the grandson of Colonel Jeremiah
Travis of "The Gaffs," and Tom and Alice had grown up together. Their
love was one of those earthly loves which comes now and then that we
may not altogether lose our faith in heaven.
Both were of a romantic temperament with high ideals, and with keen
and sensitive natures.
Their love was the poem of their lives.
And though a toast in society, and courted by the nobility of the old
world, Alice Westmore remembered only a moon-lighted night when she
told Cousin Tom good-bye. For though they had loved each other all
their lives, they had never spoken of it before that night. To them
it had been a thing too sacred to profane with ordinary words.
Thomas Travis had just graduated from West Point, and he was at home
on vacation before being assigned to duty. To-night he had ridden
John Paul Jones--the pick of his grandfather's stable of
thoroughbreds--a present from the sturdy old horse-racing,
fox-hunting gentleman to his favorite grandson for graduating first
in a class of fifty-six.
How handsome he looked in his dark blue uniform! And there was the
music of the crepe-myrtle in the air--the music of it, wet with the
night dew--for there are flowers so delicate in their sweetness that
they pass out of the realm of sight and smell, into the unheard world
of rhythm. Their very existence is the poetry of perfume. And this
music of the crepe-myrtle, pulsing through the shower-cooled leaves
of that summer night, was accompanied by a mocking-bird from his nest
in the tree.
Never did the memory of that night leave Alice Westmore. In after
years it hurt her, as the dream of childhood's home with green fields
about, and the old spring in the meadow, hurts the fever-stricken one
dying far away from it all.
How long they sat on the rustic bench under the crepe-myrtle they did
not know. At parting there was the light clasp of hands, and Cousin
Tom drew her to him and put his lips reverently to hers. When he had
ridden off there was a slender ring on her finger.
There was nothing in Italy that could make her forget that night,
though often from her window she had looked out on Venice,
moon-becalmed, while the nightingale sang from pomegranate trees in
the hedgerows.
Where a woman's love is first given, that, thereafter, is her heart's
sanctuary.
Alice Westmore landed at home again amid drum beats. War sweeps even
sentiment from the world--sentiment that is stronger than common
sense, and which moves the world.
On the retreat of the Southern army from Fort Donelson, Thomas