The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills
know you've got an' oncommon ac'rate gun in this old weepon?"
The boy smiled--interested.
"It's the salt of the earth," said Jack, "an' I'll bet it's stood
'twixt many a gentleman and death. Can you shoot true, little 'un?"
"Only fairly--can you?"
"Some has been kind enough to give me that character"--he said
promptly. "Want me to give you a few lessons?"
The boy warmed to him at once. Jack took him behind the shop, tied a
twine string between two trees and having loaded the old pistol with
cap and powder and ball, he stepped off thirty paces and shot the
string in twain.
"Good," said the boy smiling, and Jack handed him the pistol with a
boyish flush of pride in his own face.
"Now, little 'un, it's this away in shootin' a weepon like this--it's
the aim that counts most. But with my Colts now--the self-actin'
ones--you've got to cal'c'late chiefly on another thing--a kinder
thing that ain't in the books--the instinct that makes the han' an'
the eye act together an' 'lowin', at the same time, for the leverage
on the trigger." The lad's face glowed with excitement. Jack saw it
and said: "Now I'll give you a lesson to-day. Would you like to shoot
at that tree?" he asked kindly.
"Do you suppose I could hit the string?" asked the boy innocently.
Jack had to smile. "In time--little 'un--in time you might. You're a
queer lad," he said again laughing. "You aim pretty high."
"Oh, then I'll never hit below my mark. Let me try the string,
please."
To humor him, Jack tied the string again, and the boy stepped up to
the mark and without taking aim, but with that instinct which Jack
had just mentioned, that bringing of the hand and eye together
unconsciously, he fired and the string flew apart.
"You damned little cuss," shouted Jack enthusiastically, as he
grabbed the boy and hugged him--"to make a sucker of me that way! To
take me in like that!"
"Oh," said the boy, "I do nothing but shoot this thing from morning
till night. It was my great grandfather's."
And from that time the two were one.
But another thing happened which cemented the tie more strongly. One
Saturday afternoon Jack took a crowd of his boy friends down to the
river for a plunge. The afternoon was bright and warm; the frost of
the morning making the water delightful for a short plunge. It was
great sport. They all obeyed him and swam in certain places he marked
off--all except James Adams. He boldly swam out into the deep current
of the river and came near losing his life. Jack plunged in in time
to reach him, but had to dive to get him, he having sunk the third
time. It required hard work to revive him on the bank, but the man
was strong and swung the lad about by the heels till he got the water
out of his lungs, and his circulation started again. James opened his
eyes at last, and Jack said, smiling: "That's all right, little 'un,
but I feared onct, you was gone."
He took the boy home, and then it was that for the first time for
fifteen years he saw and talked to the woman he loved.
"Mother," said the boy, "this is the new blacksmith that I've been
telling you about, and he is great guns--just pulled me out of the
bottom of the Tennessee river."
Jack laughed and said: "The little 'un ca'n't swim as well as he can
shoot, ma'am."
There was no sign of recognition between them, nothing to show they
had ever seen each other before, but Jack saw her eyes grow tender at
the first word he uttered, and he knew that Margaret Adams loved him
then, even as she had loved him years ago.
He stayed but a short while, and James Adams never saw the silent
battle that was waged in the eyes of each. How Jack Bracken devoured
her with his eyes,--the comely figure, the cleanliness and sweetness
of the little cottage--his painful hungry look for this kind of peace
and contentment--the contentment of love.
And James noticed that his mother was greatly embarrassed, even to
agitation, but he supposed it was because of his narrow escape from
drowning, and it touched him even to caressing her, a thing he had
never done before.
It hurt Jack--that caress. Richard Travis's boy--she would have been
his but for him. He felt a terrible bitterness arising. He turned
abruptly to go.
Margaret had not spoken. Then she thanked him and bade James change
his clothes. As the boy went in the next room to do this, she
followed Jack to the little gate and stood pale and suffering, but
not able to speak.
"Good-bye," he said, giving her his hand--"you know, Margaret, my
life--why I am here, to be near you,--how I love you, have loved
you."
"And how I love you, Jack," she said simply.
The words went through him with a fierce sweetness that shook him.
"My God--don't say that--it hurts me so, after--what you've done."
"Jack," she whispered sadly--"some day you'll know--some day you'll
understand that there are things in life greater even than the
selfishness of your own heart's happiness."
"They can't be," said Jack bitterly--"that's what all life's
for--heart happiness--love. Why, hunger and love, them's the fust
things; them's the man an' the woman; them's the law unto theyselves,
the animal, the instinct, the beast that's in us; the things that
makes God excuse all else we do to get them--we have to have 'em. He
made us so; we have to have 'em--it's His own doin'."
"But," she said sweetly--"suppose it meant another to be despised,
reviled, made infamous."
"They'd have to be," he said sternly, for he was thinking of Richard
Travis--"they'd have to be, for he made his own life."
"Oh, you do not understand," she cried. "And you cannot now--but
wait--wait, and it will be plain. Then you'll know all and--that I
love you, Jack."
He turned bitterly and walked away.
CHAPTER XXII
THE BROKEN THREAD
For the first time in years, the next Sunday the little church on the
mountain side was closed, and all Cottontown wondered. Never before
had the old man missed a Sabbath afternoon since the church had been
built. This was to have been Baptist day, and that part of his
congregation was sorely disappointed.
For an hour Bud Billings had stood by the little gate looking down
the big stretch of sandy road, expecting to see the familiar
shuffling, blind old roan coming:
"Sum'pins happened to Ben Butler," said Bud at last--and at thought
of such a calamity, he sat down and shed tears.
His simple heart yearned for pity, and feeling something purring
against him he picked up the cat and coddled it.
"You seem to be cultivatin' that cat again, Bud Billings," came a
sharp voice from the cabin window.
Bud dropped the animal quickly and struck out across the mountain for
the Bishop's cabin.
But he was not prepared for the shock that came to his simple heart:
Shiloh was dying--the Bishop himself told him so--the Bishop with a
strange, set, hard look in his eyes--a look which Bud had never seen
there before, for it was sorrow mingled with defiance--in that a
great wrong had been done and done over his protest. It was culpable
sorrow too, somewhat, in that he had not prevented it, and a
heart-hardening sorrow in that it took the best that he loved.
"She jes' collapsed, Bud--sudden't like--wilted like a vi'let that's
stepped on, an' the Doctor says she's got no sho' at all, ther' bein'
nothin' to build on. She don't kno' nothin'--ain't knowed nothin'
since last night, an' she thinks she's in the mill--my God, it's
awful! The little thing keeps reaching out in her delirium an' tryin'
to piece the broken threads, an' then she falls back pantin' on her
pillow an' says, pitful like--'_the thread--the thread is broken!_'
an' that's jes' it, Bud--the thread _is_ broken!"
Tears were running down the old man's cheeks, and that strange thing
which now and then came up in Bud's throat and stopped him from
talking came again. He walked out and sat under a tree in the yard.
He looked at the other children sitting around stupid--numbed--with
the vague look in their faces which told that a sorrow had fallen,
but without the sensitiveness to know or care where. He saw a big
man, bronzed and hard-featured, but silent and sorrowful, walking to
and fro. Now and then he would stop and look earnestly through the
window at the little still figure on the bed, and then Bud would hear
him say--"_like little Jack--like little Jack_."
The sun went down--the stars came up--but Bud sat there. He could do
nothing, but he wanted to be there.
When the lamp was lighted in the cabin he could see all within the
home and that an old man held on a large pillow in his lap a little
child, and that he carried her around from window to window for air,
and that the child's eyes were fixed, and she was whiter than the
pillow. He also saw an old woman, lantern-jawed and ghostly, tidying
around and she mumbling and grumbling because no one would give the
child any turpentine.
And still Bud sat outside, with that lump in his throat, that thing
that would not let him speak.
Late at night another man came up with saddle bags, and hitching his
horse within a few feet of Bud, walked into the cabin.
He was a kindly man, and he stopped in the doorway and looked at the
old man, sitting with the sick child in his lap. Then he pulled a
chair up beside the old man and took the child's thin wrist in his
hand. He shook his head and said:
"No use, Bishop--better lay her on the bed--she can't live two
hours."
Then he busied himself giving her some drops from a vial.
"When you get through with your remedy and give her up," said the old
man slowly--"I'm gwinter try mine."
The Doctor looked at the old man sorrowfully, and after a while he
went out and rode home.
Then the old man sent them all to bed. He alone would watch the
little spark go out.
And Bud alone in the yard saw it all. He knew he should go
home--that it was now past midnight, but somehow he felt that the
Bishop might need him.
He saw the moon go down, and the big constellations shine out
clearer. Now and then he could see the old nurse reach over and put
his ear to the child's mouth to see if it yet breathed. But Bud
thought maybe he was listening for it to speak, for he could see the
old man's lips moving as he did when he prayed at church. And Bud
could not understand it, but never before in his life did he feel so
uplifted, as he sat and watched the old man holding the little child
and praying. And all the hours that he sat there, Bud saw that the
old man was praying as he had never prayed before. The intensity of
it increased and began to be heard, and then Bud crept up to the
window and listened, for he dearly loved to hear the Bishop, and amid
the tears that ran down his own cheek, and the quick breathing which
came quicker and quicker from the little child in the lap, Bud heard:
"_Save her, oh, God, an' if I've done any little thing in all my po'
an' blunderin' life that's entitled to credit at Yo' han's, give it
now to little Shiloh, for You can if You will. If there's any credit
to my account in the Book of Heaven, hand it out now to the little
one robbed of her all right up to the door of death. She that is
named Shiloh, which means rest. Do it, oh, God,--take it from my
account if she ain't got none yet herse'f, an' I swear to You with
the faith of Abraham that henceforth I will live to light a
fire-brand in this valley that will burn out this child slavery,
upheld now by ignorance and the greed of the gold lovers. Save
little Shiloh, for You can._"
Bud watched through the crisis, the shorter and shorter breaths, the
struggle--the silence when, only by holding the lighted candle to her
mouth, could the old man tell whether she lived or not. And Bud stood
outside and watched his face, lit up like a saint in the light of the