The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills
"Hillard Watts," said Uncle Dave rising hotly--"that's a lie an' you
know it!"
"Sit down, Dave," said the Bishop calmly, "I've been preachin'
fun'rals fur fifty years an' that is the fus' time I ever was sassed
by a corpse. You know it's so an' besides I left out one thing.
You're always tellin' what kinder weather it's gwinter be to-morrow
an' missin' it. You burnt my socks off forty years ago on the only
hoss-trade I ever had with you. You owe me five dollars you borrowed
ten years ago, an' you never caught a half pound perch in yo' life
that you didn't tell us the nex' day it was a fo' pound trout. So set
down. Oh, I'm tellin' the truth without any filigree, Dave."
Aunt Sally and Tilly pulled Uncle Dave down while they conversed with
him earnestly. Then he arose and said:
"Hillard, I beg yo' pardon. You've spoken the truth--Sally and Tilly
both say so. I tell yo', bretherin," he said turning to the
congregation--"it'd be a good thing if we c'ud all have our fun'ral
sermon now and then correctly told. There would be so many points
brought out as seen by our neighbors that we never saw ourselves."
"The subject of this sermon"--went on the Bishop--"the lamented
corpse-to-be, was never married but once--to his present loving
widow-to-be, and he never had any love affair with any other
woman--she bein' his fust an' only love--"
"Hillard," said Uncle Dave rising, "I hate to--"
"Set down, David Dickey," whispered Aunt Sally, hotly, as she hastily
jerked him back in his seat with a snap that rattled the teeth in his
head:
"If you get up at this time of life to make any post-mortem an' dyin'
declaration on that subject in my presence, ye'll be takin' out a
corpse sho' 'nuff!"
Uncle Dave very promptly subsided.
"An' the only child he's had is the present beautiful daughter that
sits beside him."
Tilly blushed.
"David, I am very sorry to say, had some very serious personal
faults. He always slept with his mouth open. I've knowed him to snore
so loud after dinner that the folks on the adjoining farm thought it
was the dinner horn."
"Now Hillard," said Uncle Dave, rising--"do you think it necessary to
bring in all that?"
"A man's fun'ral," said the Bishop, "ain't intended to do him any
good--it's fur the coming generation. Boys and girls, beware of
sleepin' with yo' mouth open an' eatin' with yo' fingers an' drinkin'
yo' coffee out of the saucer, an' sayin' _them molasses_ an' _I
wouldn't choose any_ when you're axed to have somethin' at the table.
"Dave Dickey done all that.
"Brother Dave Dickey had his faults as we all have. He was a
sprinklin' of good an' evil, a mixture of diligence an' laziness, a
brave man mostly with a few yaller crosses in him, truthful nearly
always, an' lyin' mostly fur fun an' from habit; good at times an'
bad at others, spiritual at times when it looked like he cu'd see
right into heaven's gate, an' then again racked with great passions
of the flesh that swept over him in waves of hot desires, until it
seemed that God had forgotten to make him anything but an animal.
"Come to think of it, an' that's about the way with the rest of us?
"But he aimed to do right, an' he strove constantly to do right, an'
he prayed constantly fur help to do right, an' that's the main thing.
If he fell he riz agin, fur he had a Hand outstretched in his faith
that cu'd lift him up, an' knew that he could go to a Father that
always forgave--an' that's the main thing. Let us remember, when we
see the faults and vices of others--that we see only what they've
done--as Bobby Burns says, we don't kno' what they have resisted.
Give 'em credit for that--maybe it over-balances. Balancin'--ah, my
bretherin, that's a gran' thing. It's the thing on which the whole
Universe hangs--the law of balance. The pendulum every whar swings as
fur back as it did furra'd, an' the very earth hangs in space by
this same law. An' it holds in the moral worl' as well as the t'other
one--only man is sech a liar an' so bigoted he can't see it. But here
comes into the worl' a man or woman filled so full of passion of
every sort,--passions they didn't make themselves either--regular
thunder clouds in the sky of life. Big with the rain, the snow, the
hail--the lightning of passion. A spark, a touch, a strong wind an'
they explode, they fall from grace, so to speak. But what have they
done that we ain't never heard of? All we've noticed is the
explosion, the fall, the blight. They have stirred the sky, whilst
the little white pale-livered untempted clouds floated on the
zephyrs--they've brought rain that made the earth glad, they've
cleared the air in the very fall of their lightnin'. The lightnin'
came--the fall--but give 'em credit fur the other. The little
namby-pamby, white livered, zephyr clouds that is so divine an'
useless, might float forever an' not even make a shadow to hide men
from the sun.
"So credit the fallen man or woman, big with life an' passion, with
the good they've done when you debit 'em with the evil. Many a 'oman
so ugly that she wasn't any temptation even for Sin to mate with her,
has done more harm with her slanderin' tongue an' hypocrisy than a
fallen 'oman has with her whole body.
"We're mortals an' we can't he'p it--animals, an' God made us so. But
we'll never fall to rise no mo' 'less we fail to reach up fur he'p.
"What then is our little sins of the flesh to the big goodness of the
faith that is in us?
"For forty years Uncle Dave has been a consistent member of the
church--some church--it don't matter which. For forty years he has
trod the narrer path, stumpin' his toe now an' then, but allers
gettin' up agin, for forty years he has he'ped others all he cu'd,
been charitable an' forgivin', as hones' as the temptation would
permit, an' only a natural lie now an' then as to the weather or the
size of a fish, trustin' in God to make it all right.
"An' now, in the twilight of life, when his sun is 'most set an' the
dews of kindness come with old age, right gladly will he wake up some
mornin' in a better lan', the scrub in him all bred out, the yaller
streak gone, the sins of the flesh left behind. An' that's about the
way with the most of us,--no better an' maybe wuss--Amen!"
Uncle Dave was weeping:
"Oh, Hillard--Hillard," he said, "say all that over agin about the
clouds an' the thunder of passion--say all the last part over
agin--it sounds so good!"
The congregation thronged around him and shook his hand. They gave
him the flowers they had brought; they told him how much they thought
of him, how sorry they would be to see him dead, how they had always
intended to come to see him, but had been so busy, and to cheer up
that he wasn't dead yet.
"No"--said Uncle Dave, weeping--"no, an' now since I see how much you
all keer fur me I don't b'lieve--I--I wanter die at all."
CHAPTER XXI
JACK AND THE LITTLE ONES
No one would ever have supposed that the big blacksmith at the
village was Jack Bracken. All the week he worked at his trade--so
full of his new life that it shone continually in his face--his face
strong and stern, but kindly. With his leathern apron on, his sleeves
rolled up, his hairy breast bare and shining in the open collar,
physically he looked more like an ancient Roman than a man of to-day.
His greatest pleasure was to entice little children to his shop,
talking to them as he worked. To get them to come, he began by
keeping a sack of ginger snaps in his pockets. And the villagers used
to smile at the sight of the little ones around him, especially after
sunset when his work was finished. Often a half dozen children would
be in his lap or on his knees at once, and the picture was so
beautiful that people would stop and look, and wonder what the big
strong man saw in all those noisy children to love.
They did not know that this man had spent his life a hunted thing;
that the strong instinct of home and children had been smothered in
him, that his own little boy had been taken, and that to him every
child was a saint.
But they soon learned that the great kind-hearted, simple man was a
tiger when aroused. A small child from the mill, sickly and timid,
was among those who stopped one morning to get one of his cakes.
Not knowing it was a mill child on its way to work, Jack detained it
in all the kindness of his heart, and the little thing was not in a
hurry to go. Indeed, it forgot all about the mill until its father
happened along an hour after it should have been at work. His name
was Joe Hopper, a ne'er-do-well whose children, by working at the
mill, supported him in idleness.
Catching the child, he berated it and boxed its ears soundly. Jack
was at work, but turning, and seeing the child chastised, he came at
the man with quiet fury. With one huge hand in Joe Hopper's collar,
he boxed his ears until he begged for mercy. "Now go," said Jack, as
he released him, "an' know hereafter how it feels for the strong to
beat the weak."
Of all things, Jack wanted to talk with Margaret Adams; but he could
never make up his mind to seek her out, though his love for this
woman was the love of his life. Often at night he would slip away
from the old preacher's cabin and his cot by Captain Tom's bed, to go
out and walk around her little cottage and see that all was safe.
James, her boy, peculiarly interested Jack, but it was some time
before he came to know him. He knew the boy was Richard Travis's son,
and that he alone had stood between him and his happiness. That but
for him--the son of his mother--he would never have been the outlaw
that he was, and even now but for this son he would marry her. But
outlaw that he was, Jack Bracken had no free-booting ideas of love.
Never did man revere purity in woman more than he--that one thing
barred Margaret Adams forever from his life, though not from his
heart.
He felt that he would hate James Adams; but instead he took to the
lad at once--his fine strange ways, his dignity, courage, his very
aloofness and the sorrow he saw there, drew him to the strange,
silent lad.
One day while at work in his shop he looked up and saw the boy
standing in the door watching him closely and with evident
admiration.
"Come in, my lad," said Jack, laying down his big hammer. "What is
yo' name?"
"Well, I don't know that that makes any difference," he replied
smiling, "I might ask you what is yours."
Jack flushed, but he pitied the lad.
He smiled: "I guess you an' I could easily understan' each other,
lad--what can I do for you?"
"I wanted you to fix my pistol for me, sir--and--and I haven't
anything to pay you."
Jack looked it over--the old duelling pistol. He knew at once it was
Colonel Jeremiah Travis's. The boy had gotten it somehow. The
hair-spring trigger was out of fix. Jack soon repaired it and said:
"Now, son, she's all right, and not a cent do I charge you."
"I didn't mean that," said the boy, flushing. "I have no money, but I
want to pay you, for I need this pistol--need it very badly."
"To shoot rabbits?" smiled Jack.
The boy did not smile. He ran his hand in his pocket and handed Jack
a thin gold ring, worn almost to a wire; but Jack paled, and his hand
shook when he took it, for he recognized the little ring he himself
had given Margaret Adams years ago.
"It's my mother's," said the boy, "and some man gave it to her
once--long ago--for she is foolish about it. Now, of late, I think I
have found out who that man was, and I hate him as I do hell itself.
I am determined she shall never see it again. So take it, or I'll
give it to somebody else."
"If you feel that way about it, little 'un," said Jack kindly, "I'll
keep it for you," and he put the precious relic in his pocket.
"Now, look here, lad," he said, changing the subject, "but do you