The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills
"Here," he said, lifting his arm, and showing the coat of the Captain
of Artillery--"this is what made me jine 'em. This is the coat of
Cap'n Tom, that saved my life at the risk of his own an' that was
struck down at Franklin; an' no common man of clay, as I be, ever
befo' had so God-like a man of marble to pattern after. I saw him in
the thick of the fight with his guns parked an' double-shotted, stop
our victorious rush almos' up to the river bank an' saved Grant's
army from defeat an' capture. I was on the other side, an' chief of
scouts for Albert Sidney Johnston, but I see him now in his blue
Yankee coat, fightin' his guns like the hero that he was. I was
foolish an' rushed in. I was captured an' in a prison pen, I drawed
the black ball with 'leven others that was sentenced to be shot. It
was Cap'n Tom who came to me in the early dawn of the day of the
execution an' said: 'They shall not shoot you, Bishop--put on my blue
coat an' go through the lines. I owe much to my country--I am giving
it all.
"'I owe something to you. They shall not shoot you like a dog. I will
tell my colonel what I have done to-morrow. If they think it is
treason they may shoot me instead. I have nothing to live for--you,
all. Go.'
"I have never seed him sence.
"We are mortals and must think as mortals. If we conceive of God, we
can conceive of Him only as in human form. An' I love to think that
the blessed an' brave an' sweet Christ looked like Cap'n Tom looked
in the early dawn of that morning when he come an' offered
himself,--captain that he was--to be shot, if need be, in my
place--so gran', so gentle, so brave, so forgivin', so like a
captain--so like God."
His voice had dropped lower and lower still. It died away in a
sobbing murmur, as a deep stream purls and its echo dies in a deeper
eddy.
"It was his church an' I jined it. This was his coat, an' so, let us
pray."
CHAPTER VII
MARGARET ADAMS
There passed out of the church, after the service, a woman leading a
boy of twelve.
He was a handsome lad with a proud and independent way about him. He
carried his head up and there was that calmness that showed good
blood. There was even a haughtiness which was pathetic, knowing as
the village did the story of his life.
The woman herself was of middle age, with neat, well-fitting clothes,
which, in the smallest arrangement of pattern and make-up, bespoke a
natural refinement.
Her's was a sweet face, with dark eyes, and in their depths lay the
shadow of resignation.
Throughout the sermon she had not taken her eyes off the old man in
the pulpit, and so interested was she, and so earnestly did she drink
in all he said, that any one noticing could tell that, to her, the
plain old man in the pulpit was more than a pastor.
She sat off by herself. Not one of them in all Cottontown would come
near her.
"Our virtue is all we po' fo'ks has got--if we lose that we ain't got
nothin' lef'," Mrs. Banks of grass-widow fame had once said, and
saying it had expressed Cottontown's opinion.
Mrs. Banks was very severe when the question of woman's purity was
up. She was the fastest woman at the loom in all Cottontown. She was
quick, with a bright, deep-seeing eye. She had been pretty--but now
at forty-five she was angular and coarse-looking, with a sharp
tongue.
The Bishop had smiled when he heard her say it, and then he looked at
Margaret Adams sitting in the corner with her boy. In saying it, Mrs.
Banks had elevated her nose as she looked in the direction where sat
the Magdalene.
The old man smiled, because he of all others knew the past history of
Mrs. Banks, the mistress of the loom.
He replied quietly: "Well, I dun'no--the best thing that can be said
of any of us in general is, that up to date, it ain't recorded that
the Almighty has appinted any one of us, on account of our supreme
purity, to act as chief stoner of the Universe. Mighty few of us,
even, has any license to throw pebbles."
Of all his congregation there was no more devoted member than
Margaret Adams--"an' as far as I kno'," the old man had often said,
"if there is an angel on earth, it is that same little woman."
When she came into church that day, the old man noticed that even the
little Hillites drew away from her. Often they would point at the
little boy by her side and make faces at him. To-day they had carried
it too far when one of them, just out in the church yard, pushed him
rudely as he walked proudly by the side of his mother, looking
straight before him, in his military way, and not so much as giving
them a glance.
"Wood's-colt," sneered the boy in his ear, as he pushed him.
"No--thoroughbred"--came back, and with it a blow which sent the
intruder backward on the grass.
Several old men nodded at him approvingly as he walked calmly on by
the side of his mother.
"Jimmie--Jimmie!" was all she said as she slipped into the church.
"I guess you must be a new-comer," remarked Archie B. indifferently
to the boy who was wiping the blood from his face as he arose from
the ground and looked sillily around. "That boy Jim Adams is my
pardner an' I could er tole you what you'd git by meddlin' with him.
He's gone in with his mother now, but him an' me--we're in
alliance--we fights for each other. Feel like you got enough?"--and
Archie B. got up closer and made motions as if to shed his coat.
The other boy grinned good naturedly and walked off.
To-day, just outside of the church Ben Butler had been hitched up and
the Bishop sat in the old buggy.
Bud Billings stood by holding the bit, stroking the old horse's neck
and every now and then striking a fierce attitude, saying
"Whoa--whoa--suh!"
As usual, Ben Butler was asleep.
"Turn him loose, Bud," said the old man humoring the slubber--"I've
got the reins an' he can't run away now. I can't take you home
to-day--I'm gwinter take Margaret, an' you an' Jimmie can come along
together."
No other man could have taken Margaret Adams home and had any
standing left, in Cottontown.
And soon they were jogging along down the mountain side, toward the
cabin where the woman lived and supported herself and boy by her
needle.
To-day Margaret was agitated and excited--more than the Bishop had
ever known her to be. He knew the reason, for clean-shaved and neatly
dressed, Jack Bracken passed her on the road to church that morning,
and as they rode along the Bishop told her it was indeed Jack whom
she had seen, "an' he loves you yet, Margaret," he said.
She turned pink under her bonnet. How pretty and fresh she
looked--thought the Bishop--and what purity in a face to have such a
name.
"It _was_ Jack, then," she said simply--"tell me about him, please."
"By the grace of God he has reformed," said the old
man--"and--Margaret--he loves you yet, as I sed. He is going under
the name of Jack Smith, the blacksmith here, an' he'll lead another
life--but he loves you yet," he whispered again.
Then he told her what had happened, knowing that Jack's secret would
be safe with her.
When he told her how they had buried little Jack, and of the father's
admission that his determination to lead the life of an outlaw had
come when he found that she had been untrue to him, she was shaken
with grief. She could only sit and weep. Not even at the gate, when
the old man left her, did she say anything.
Within, she stopped before a picture which hung over the mantle-piece
and looked at it, through eyes that filled again and again with
tears. It was the picture of a pretty mountain girl with dark eyes
and sensual lip.
Margaret knelt before it and wept.
The boy had come and stood moodily at the front gate. The hot and
resentful blood still tinged in his cheek. He looked at his
knuckles--they were cut and swollen where he had struck the boy who
had jeered him. It hurt him, but he only smiled grimly.
Never before had any one called him a wood's-colt. He had never heard
the word before, but he knew what it meant. For the first time in his
life, he hated his mother. He heard her weeping in the little room
they called home. He merely shut his lips tightly and, in spite of
the stoicism that was his by nature, the tears swelled up in his
eyes.
They were hot tears and he could not shake them off. For the first
time the wonder and the mystery of it all came over him. For the
first time he felt that he was not as other boys,--that there was a
meaning in this lonely cabin and the shunned woman he called mother,
and the glances, some of pity, some of contempt, which he had met all
of his life.
As he stood thinking this, Richard Travis rode slowly down the main
road leading from the town to The Gaffs. And this went through the
boy successively--not in words, scarcely--but in feelings:
"What a beautiful horse he is riding--it thrills me to see it--I love
it naturally--oh, but to own one!
"What a handsome man he is--and how like a gentleman he looks! I like
the way he sits his horse. I like that way he has of not noticing
people. He has got the same way about him I have got--that I've
always had--that I love--a way that shows me I'm not afraid, and that
I have got nerve and bravery.
"He sits that horse just as I would sit him--his head--his face--the
way that foot slopes to the stirrup--why that's me--"
He stopped--he turned pale--he trembled with pride and rage. Then he
turned and walked into the room where Margaret Adams sat. She held
out her arms to him pleadingly.
But he did not notice her, and never before had she seen such a look
on his face as he said calmly:
"Mother, if you will come to the door I will show you my father."
Margaret Adams had already seen. She turned white with a hidden shame
as she said:
"Jimmie--Jimmie--who--who--?"
"No one," he shouted fiercely--"by God"--she had never before heard
him swear--"I tell you no one--on my honor as a Travis--no one! It
has come to me of itself--I know it--I feel it."
He was too excited to talk. He walked up and down the little room,
his proud head lifted and his eyes ablaze.
"I know now why I love honesty, why I despise those common things
beneath me--why I am not afraid--why I struck that boy as I did this
morning--why--" he walked into the little shed room that was his own
and came back with a long single barrel pistol in his hand and
fondled it lovingly--"why all my life I have been able to shoot this
as I have--"
He held in his hand a long, single barrel, rifle-bored duelling
pistol--of the type used by gentlemen at the beginning of the
century. Where he had got it she did not know, but always it had been
his plaything.
"O Jimmie--you would not--" exclaimed the woman rising and reaching
for it.
"Tush--" he said bitterly--"tush--that's the way Richard Travis
talks, ain't it? Does not my very voice sound like his? No--but I
expect you now, mother"--he said it softly--"tell me--tell me all
about it."
For a moment Margaret Adams was staggered. She only shook her head.
He looked at her cynically--then bitterly. A dangerous flash leaped
into his eyes.
"Then, by God," he cried fiercely, "this moment will I walk over to
his house with this pistol in my hand and I will ask him. If he fails
to tell me--damn him--I dare him--"
She jumped up and seized him in her arms.
"Promise me that if I tell you all--all, Jimmy, when you are
fifteen--promise me--will you be patient now--with poor mother, who
loves you so?" And she kissed him fondly again and again.
He looked into her eyes and saw all her suffering there.
The bitterness went out of his.
"I'll promise, mother," he said simply, and walked back into his
little room.
CHAPTER VIII
HARD-SHELL SUNDAY
"This bein' Hard-shell Sunday," said the Bishop that afternoon when