The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills
Appomattox and Atlanta were grouped against her. Bull Run slept at her
feet and Seven Days lay, half way over on his bobbin cart, so tired that
he went to sleep as he tried to climb into it.
In other parts of the mill, other little ones slept and even large girls
and boys, after eating, dozed or chatted. Spoolers, weavers, slubbers,
warpers, nearly grown but all hard-faced, listless--and many of them
slept on shawls and battings of cotton.
They were awakened by the big whistle at twenty minutes to one o'clock.
At the same time, Jud Carpenter, the foreman, passed down the aisles and
dashed cold water in the sleeping faces. Half laughingly he did it, but
the little ones arose instantly, and with stooped forms, and tired,
cowed eyes, in which the Anglo-Saxon spirit of resentment had been
killed by the Yankee spirit of greed, they looked at the foreman, and
then began their long six hours' battle with the bobbins.
Three o'clock! The warm afternoon's sun poured on the low flat tin roof
of the mill and warmed the interior to a temperature which was
uncomfortable.
Shiloh grew sleepy--she dragged her stumbling little feet along, and had
she stopped but a moment, she had paid the debt that childhood owes to
fairy-land. The air was close--stifling. Her shoulders ached--her head
seemed a stuffy thing of wood and wooly lint.
As it was she nodded as she walked, and again the song of the bluebird
peeped dreamily from out the unoiled spindle. She tried to sing to keep
awake, and then there came a strange phantasy to mix with it all, and
out of the half-awake world in which she now staggered along she caught
sight of something which made her open her eyes and laugh outright.
_Was it--could it be? In very truth it was--_
_Dolls!_
_And oh, so many! And all in a row dressed in matchless gowns of snowy
white. She would count them up to ten--as far as she had learned to
count.... But there were ten,--yes, and many more than ten-- ... and
just to think of whole rows of them-- ... all there-- ... and waiting
for her to reach out and fondle and caress._
_And she--never in her life before had she been so fortunate as to own
one...._
A smile lit up her dreaming eyes. _Rows upon rows of dolls.... And not
even Appomattox and Atlanta had ever seen so many before; and now how
funny they acted, dancing around and around and bobbing their quaint
bodies and winking and nodding at her.... It was Mayday with them and
down the long line of spindles these cotton dolls were dancing around
their May Queen, and beckoning Shiloh to join them...._
_It was too cute--too cunning--! they were dancing and drawing her
in--they were actually singing-- ... humming and chanting a May
song...._
_O lovely--lovely dolls!..._
Jud Carpenter found her asleep in the greasy aisle, her head resting
on her arm, a smile on her little face--a hand clasping a rounded
well-threaded doll-like bobbin to her breast.
It is useless to try to speak in a room in which the Steam Beast's
voice drowns all other voices. It is useless to try to awaken one by
calling. One might as well stand under Niagara Falls and whistle to
the little fishes. No other voice can be heard while the Steam Beast
speaks.
Shiloh was awakened by a dash of cold water and a rough kick from the
big boot of that other beast who called himself the overseer. He did
not intend to jostle her hard, but Shiloh was such a little thing
that the kick she got in the side accompanied by the dash of water
shocked and frightened her instantly to her feet, and with scared
eyes and blanched face she darted down to the long line of bobbins,
mending the threads.
If, in the great Mystic Unknown,--the Eden of Balance,--there lies no
retributive Cause to right the injustice of that cruel Effect, let us
hope there is no Here-after; that we all die and rot like dogs, who
know no justice; that what little kindness and sweetness and right,
man, through his happier dreams, his hopeful, cheerful idealism, has
tried to establish in the world, may no longer stand as mockery to
the Sweet Philosopher who long ago said: "_Suffer the little children
to come unto me._..."
They were more dead than alive when, at seven o'clock, the Steam
Beast uttered the last volcanic howl which said they might go home.
Outside the stars were shining and the cool night air struck into
them with a suddenness which made them shiver. They were children,
and so they were thoughtless and did not know the risk they ran by
coming out of a warm mill, hot and exhausted, into the cool air of an
Autumn night. Shiloh was so tired and sleepy that Bull Run and Seven
Days had to carry her between them.
Everybody passed out of the mill--a speechless, haggard, over-worked
procession. Byrd Boyle, with a face and form which seemed to belong
to a slave age, carried his twins in his arms.
Their heads lay on his shoulders. They were asleep.
Scarcely had the children eaten their supper of biscuit and bacon,
augmented with dandelion salad, ere they, too, were asleep--all but
Shiloh.
She could not sleep--now that she wanted to--and she lay in her
grandfather's lap with flushed face and hot, over-worked heart. The
strain was beginning to tell, and the old man grew uneasy, as he
watched the flush on her cheeks and the unusual brightness in her
eyes.
"Better give her five draps of tub'bentine an' put her to bed," said
Mrs. Watts as she came by. "She'll be fittin' an' good by mornin'."
The old man did not reply--he only sang a low melody and smoothed her
forehead.
It was ten o'clock, and now she lay on the old man's lap asleep from
exhaustion. A cricket began chirping in the fireplace, under a
hearth-brick.
"What's that, Pap?" asked Shiloh half asleep.
"That's a cricket, Pet," smiled the old man.
She listened a while with a half-amused smile on her lips:
"Well, don't you think his spindles need oilin', Pap?"
There was little but machinery in her life.
Another hour found the old man tired, but still holding the sleeping
child in his arms:
"If I move her she'll wake," he said to himself. "Po' little Shiloh."
He was silent a while and thoughtful. Then he looked up at the shadow
of Sand Mountain, falling half way down the valley in the moonlight.
"The shadow of that mountain across that valley," he said, "is like
the shadow of the greed of gain across the world. An' why should it
be? What is it worth? Who is happier for any money more than he needs
in life?"
He bowed his head over the sleeping Shiloh.
"Oh, God," he prayed--"You, who made the world an' said it might
have a childhood--remember what it means to have it filched away.
It's like stealin' the bud from the rose-bush, the dew from the
grass, hope from the heart of man. Take our manhood--O God--it is
strong enough to stand it--an' it has been took from many a strong
man who has died with a smile on his lips. Take our old age--O
God--for it's jus' a memory of Has Beens. But let them not steal that
from any life that makes all the res' of it beautiful with dreams of
it. If, by some inscrutable law which we po' things can't see
through, stealin' in traffic an' trade must go on in the world, O
God, let them steal our purses, but not our childhood. Amen."
CHAPTER XIV
UNCLE DAVE'S WILL
The whistle of the mill had scarcely awakened Cottontown the next
morning before Archie B., hatless and full of excitement, came over
to the Bishop with a message from his mother. No one was astir but
Mrs. Watts, and she was sweeping vigorously.
"What's the matter, Archie B.?" asked the old man when he came out.
"Uncle Dave Dickey is dyin' an' maw told me to run over an' tell you
to hurry quick if you wanted to see the old man die."
"Oh, Uncle Dave is dyin', is he? Well, we'll go, Archie B., just as
soon as Ben Butler can be hooked up. I've got some more calls to make
anyway."
Ben Butler was ready by the time the children started for the mill.
Little Shiloh brought up the rear, her tiny legs bravely following
the others. Archie B. looked at them curiously as the small
wage-earners filed past him for work.
"Say, you little mill-birds," he said, "why don't you chaps come over
to see me sometimes an' lem'me show you things outdoors that's made
for boys an' girls?"
"Is they very pretty?" asked Shiloh, stopping and all ears at once.
"Oh, tell me 'bout 'em! I am jus' hungry to see 'em. I've learned
the names of three birds myself an' I saw a gray squirrel onct."
"Three birds--shucks!" said Archie B., "I could sho' you forty, but
I'll tell you what's crackin' good fun an' it'll test you mor'n
knowin' the birds--that's easy. But the hard thing is to find their
nests an' then to tell by the eggs what bird it is. That's the
cracker-jack trick."
Shiloh's eyes opened wide: "Why, do they lay eggs, Archie B.? Real
eggs like a hen or a duck?"
Archie B. laughed: "Well, I should say so--an' away up in a tree, an'
in the funniest little baskets you ever saw. An' some of the eggs is
white, an' some blue, and some green, an' some speckled an' oh, so
many kind. But I'll tell you a thing right now that'll help you to
remember--mighty nigh every bird lays a egg that's mighty nigh like
the bird herself. The cat bird's eggs is sorter blue--an' the
wood-pecker's is white, like his wing, an' the thrasher's is mottled
like his breast."
Ben Butler was hitched to the old buggy and the Bishop drove up. He
had a bunch of wild flowers for Shiloh and he gave it with a kiss.
"Run along now, Baby, an' I'll fetch you another when I come back."
They saw her run to catch up with the others and breathlessly tell
them of the wonderful things Archie B. had related. And all through
the day, in the dust and the lint, the thunder and rumble of the
Steam Thing's war, Shiloh saw white and blue and mottled eggs, in
tiny baskets, with homes up in the trees where the winds rocked the
cradles when the little birds came; and young as she was, into her
head there crept a thought that something was wrong in man's
management of things when little birds were free and little children
must work.
As she ran off she waved her hand to her grandfather.
"I'll fetch you another bunch when I come back, Pet," he called.
"You'd better fetch her somethin' to eat, instead of prayin' aroun'
with old fools that's always dyin'," called Mrs. Watts to him from
the kitchen door where she was scrubbing the cans.
"The Lord will always provide, Tabitha--he has never failed me yet."
She watched him drive slowly over the hill: "That means I had better
get a move on me an' go to furagin'," she said to herself.
"Hillard Watts has mistuck me for the Almighty mighty nigh all his
life. It's about time the blackberries was a gittin' ripe anyway."
The Bishop found the greatest distress at Uncle Dave Dickey's. Aunt
Sally Dickey, his wife, was weeping on the front porch, while Tilly,
Uncle Dave's pretty grown daughter, her calico dress tucked up for
the morning's work, showing feet and ankles that would grace a
duchess, was lamenting loudly on the back porch. A coon dog of
uncertain lineage and intellectual development, tuned to the howling
pitch, doubtless, by the music of Tilly's sobs, joined in the chorus.
"Po' Davy is gwine--he's most gone--boo--boo-oo!" sobbed Aunt Sally.
"Pap--Pap--don't leave us," echoed Tilly from the back porch.
"Ow--wow--oo--oo," howled the dog.
The Bishop went in sad and subdued, expecting to find Uncle Davy
breathing his last. Instead, he found him sitting bolt upright in
bed, and sobbing even more lustily than his wife and daughter. He
stretched out his hands pitiably as his old friend went in.
"Most gone"--he sobbed--"Hillard--the old man is most gone. You've
come jus' in time to see your old friend breathe his las' an' to