The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills
others from the town--ne'er-do-wells, who hung around the bar--and
others from the mill.
And so they drank and sang and danced and played cards and drank
again, and threw dice for more drinks.
It was nearly nine o'clock before the Bacchanal laugh began to ring
out at intervals--so easily distinguished from the sober laugh, in
that it carries in its closing tones the queer ring of the maniac's.
Only the mill men had any cash. The village loafers drank at their
expense, and on credit.
"And why should we not drink if we wish," said one of them. "Our
children earned the money and do we not own the children?"
Twice only were they interrupted. Once by the wife of a weaver who
came in and pleaded with her husband for part of their children's
money. Her tears touched the big-hearted Billy Buch, and as her
husband was too drunk to know what he was doing, Billy took what
money he had left and gave it to the wife. She had a sick child, she
told Billy Buch, and what money she had would not even buy the
medicine.
Billy squinted the corner of one eye and looked solemnly at the
husband: "He ha'f ten drinks in him ag'in, already. I vill gif you
pay for eet all for the child. An' here ees one dollar mo' from Billy
Buch. Now go, goot voman."
The other interruption was the redoubtable Mrs. Billings; her
brother, also a slubber, had arrived early, but had scarcely taken
two delightful, exquisite drinks before she came on the scene, her
eyes flashing, her hair disheveled, and her hand playing familiarly
with something under her apron.
Her presence threw them into a panic.
"Mine Gott!" said Billy, turning pale. "Eet es Meeses Billings an'
her crockery."
Half a dozen jubilants pointed out a long-haired man at a center
table talking proudly of his physical strength and bravery.
"Cris Ham?" beckoned Mrs. Billings, feeling nervously under her
apron. "Come with me!"
"I'll be along t'orectly, sis."
"You will come now," she said, and her hands began to move ominously
beneath her apron.
"To be sho'," he said as he walked out with her. "I didn't know you
felt that away about it, sis."
It was after ten o'clock when the quick roll of a buggy came up to
the door, and Richard Travis and Charley Biggers alighted.
They had both been drinking. Slowly, surely, Travis was going down in
the scale of degeneracy. Slowly the loose life he was leading was
lowering him to the level of the common herd. A few years ago he
would not have thought of drinking with his own mill hands. To-night
he was there, the most reckless of them all. Analyzed, it was for the
most part conceit with him; the low conceit of the superior intellect
which would mingle in infamy with the lowest to gain its ignorant
homage. For Intellect must have homage if it has to drag it from the
slums.
Charley Biggers was short and boyish, with a fat, round face. When he
laughed he showed a fine set of big, sensual teeth. His eyes were
jolly, flighty, insincere. Weakness was written all over him, from a
derby hat sitting back rakishly on his forehead to the small,
effeminate boot that fitted so neatly his small effeminate foot. He
had a small hand and his little sensual face had not a rough feature
on it. It was set off by a pudgy, half-formed dab of a nose that let
his breath in and out when his mouth happened to be shut. His eyes
were the eyes of one who sees no wrong in anything.
They came in and pulled off their gloves, daintily. They threw their
overcoats on a chair. Travis glanced around the circle of the four or
five who were left and said pompously:
"Come up, gentlemen, and have something at my expense." Then he
walked up to the bar.
They came. They considered it both a pleasure and an honor, as Jud
Carpenter expressed it, to drink with him.
"It is a good idea to mingle with them now and then," whispered
Travis to Charley. "It keeps me solid with them--health, gentlemen!"
Charley Biggers showed his good-natured teeth:
"Health, gentlemen," he grinned.
Then he hiccoughed through his weak little nose.
"Joe Hopper can't rise, gentlemen, Joe is drunk, an'--an' a widderer,
besides," hiccoughed Joe from below.
Joe had been a widower for a year. His wife, after being the mother
of eleven children, who now supported Joe in his drunkenness, had
passed away.
Then Joe burst into tears.
"What's up, Joe?" asked Jud kindly.
"Liza's dead," he wailed.
"Why, she's been dead a year," said Jud.
"Don't keer, Jud--I'm jes'--jes' beginnin' to feel it now"--and he
wept afresh.
It was too much for Charley Biggers, and he also wept. Travis looked
fixedly at the ceiling and recited portions of the Episcopal burial
service. Then Jud wept. They all wept.
"Gentlemen," said Travis solemnly, "let us drink to the health of the
departed Mrs. Hopper. Here's to her!"
This cheered all except Joe Hopper--he refused to be comforted. They
tried to console him, but he only wept the more. They went on
drinking and left him out, but this did not tend to diminish his
tears.
"Oh, Mister Hopper, shet up," said Jud peremptorily--"close up--I've
arranged for you to marry a grass-widder."
This cheered him greatly.
"O Jud--Jud--if I marry a grass-widder whut--whut'll I be then?"
"Why? a grasshopper, sure," said Travis.
They all roared. Then Jud winked at Travis and Travis winked at the
others. Then they sat around a table, all winking except poor Joe,
who continued to weep at the thought of being a grasshopper. He did
not quite understand how it was, but he knew that in some way he was
to be changed into a grasshopper, with long green wings and legs to
match.
"Gentlemen," said Jud seriously--"it is our duty to help out po' Joe.
Now, Joe, we've arranged it for you to marry Miss Kate Galloway--the
grass-widder."
"Not Miss Kate," said Travis with becoming seriousness.
"Why not her, Mr. Travis?" asked Jud, winking.
"Because his children will be Katydids," said Travis.
This brought on thundering roars of laughter and drinks all around.
Only Joe wept--wept to think his children would be katydids.
"Now, Joe, it's this way. I've talked it all over and arranged it.
That's what we've met for to-night--ain't it, gents?" said Jud.
"Sure--sure," they all exclaimed.
"Now, Joe, you mus' dry yo' tears an' become reconciled--we've got a
nice scheme fixed for you."
"I'll never be reconciled--never," wailed Joe. "Liza's dead an'--I'm
a grasshopper."
"Now, wait till I explain to you--but, dear, devoted friend,
everything is ready. The widder's been seen an' all you've got to do
is to come with us and get her."
"She's a mighty handsome 'oman," said Jud, winking his eye.
"Dear--dear frien's--all--I'm feelin' reconciled already"--said Joe.
They all joined in the roar. Jud winked. They all winked. Jud went
on:
"Joe, dear, dear Joe--we have had thy welfare at heart, as the books
say. We wanted thee to become a millionaire. Thou hast eleven
children to begin with. They pay you--"
"Eighteen dollars a week, clear,"--said Joe proudly.
"Well, now, Joe--it's all arranged--you marry the widder an' in the
course of time you'll have eleven mo'. That's another eighteen
dollars--or thirty-six dollars a week clear in the mills."
"Now, but I hadn't thought of that," said Joe
enthusiastically--"that's a fact. When--when did you say the
ceremony'd be performed?"
"Hold on," said Jud, "now, we've studied this thing all out for you.
You're a Mormon--the only one of us that is a Mormon--openly."
They all laughed.
"Openly--" he went on--"you've j'ined the Mormon church here up in
the mountains."
"But we don't practise polygamy--now"--said Joe.
"That's only on account of the Grand Jury and the law--not yo'
religion. You see--you'll marry an' go to Utah--but--es the kids come
you'll sen' 'em all down here to the mills--every one a kinder livin'
coupon. All any man's got to do in this country to git rich is to
marry enough wives."
"Can I do that--do the marryin' in Utah an' keep sendin' the--the
chilluns down to the mill?" His eyes glittered.
"Sart'inly"--said Jud--"sure!"
"Then there's Miss Carewe"--he went on--"you haf'ter cal'clate on
feedin' several wives in one, with her. But say eleven mo' by her.
That's thirty-seven mo'."
Joe jumped up.
"Is she willin'?"
"Done seen her," said Jud; "she say come on."
"Hold on," said Travis with feigned anger. "Hold on. Joe is fixin' to
start a cotton-mill of his own. That'll interfere with the Acme.
No--no--we must vote it down. We mustn't let Joe do it."
Joe had already attempted to rise and start after his wives. But in
the roar of laughter that followed he sat down and began to weep
again for Liza.
It was nearly midnight. Only Travis, Charley Biggers and Jud remained
sober enough to talk. Charley was telling of Tilly and her wondrous
beauty.
"Now--it's this way," he hiccoughed--"I've got to go off to
school--but--but--I've thought of a plan to marry her first, with a
bogus license and preacher."
There was a whispered conversation among them, ending in a shout of
applause.
"What's the matter with you takin' yo' queen at the same time?" asked
Jud of Travis.
Travis, drunk as he was, winced to think that he would ever permit
Jud Carpenter to suggest what he had intended should only be known to
himself. His tongue was thick, his brain whirled, and there were gaps
in his thoughts; but through the thickness and heaviness he thought
how low he had fallen. Lower yet when, despite all his vanishing
reserve, all his dignity and exclusiveness, he laughed sillily and
said:
"Just what I had decided to do--two queens and an ace."
They all cheered drunkenly.
CHAPTER VII
MRS. WESTMORE TAKES A HAND
"What are you playing, Alice?"
The daughter arose from the piano and kissed her mother, holding for
a moment the pretty face, crowned with white hair, between her two
palms.
"It--it is an old song which Tom and I used to love to sing."
The last of the sentence came so slowly that it sank almost into
silence, as of one beginning a sentence and becoming so absorbed in
the subject as to forget the speech. Then she turned again to the
piano, as if to hide from her mother the sorrow which had crept into
her face.
"You should cease to think of that. Such things are dreams--at
present we are confronted by very disagreeable realities."
"Dreams--ah, mother mine"--she answered with forced cheeriness--"but
what would life be without them?"
"For one thing, Alice"--and she took the daughter's place at the
piano and began to play snatches of an old waltz tune--"it would be
free from all the morbid unnaturalness, the silliness, the froth of
things. There is too much hardness in every life--in the world--in
the very laws of life, for such things ever to have been part of the
original plan. For my part, I think they are the product of man and
wine or women or morphine or some other narcotic."
"We make the dreams of life, but the realities of it make us," she
added.
"Oh, no, mother. 'Tis the dreams that make the realities. Not a great
established fact exists but it was once the vision of a dreamer. Our
dreams to-day become the realities of to-morrow."
"Do you believe Tom is not dead--that he will one day come back?"
asked her mother abruptly.
It was twilight and the fire flickered, lighting up the library. But
in the flash of it Mrs. Westmore saw Alice's cheek whiten in a
hopeless, helpless, stricken way.
Then she walked to the window and looked out on the darkness fast
closing in on the lawn, clustering denser around the evergreens and
creeping ghostlike toward the dim sky line which shone clear in the
open.
The very helplessness of her step, her silence, her numbed, yearning
look across the lawn told Mrs. Westmore of the death of all hope