The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills
unopened. Twice had he gone to Westmoreland to see her. Mrs. Westmore
met him at the door, cordial, sympathetic, but with a nervous jerk in
the little metallic laugh. His first glance at her told him she knew
everything--and yet, knew nothing. Alice was locked in her room and
would not see him.
"But, oh, Richard," and again she laughed her little insincere,
unstable, society laugh, beginning with brave frankness in one corner
of her mouth and ending in a hypocritical wave of forgetfulness
before it had time to finish the circle, but fluttering out into a
cynical twitching of a thing which might have been a smile or a
sneer--
"True love--you know--dear Richard--you must remember the old
saying."
She pressed his hand sympathetically. The mouth said nothing, but the
hand said plainly: "Do not despair--I am working for a home at The
Gaffs."
He pitied her, for there was misery in her eyes and in her laugh and
in the very touch of her hand. Misery and insincerity, and that
terrible mental state when weakness is roped up between the two and
knows, for once in its life, that it has no strength at all.
And she pitied him, for never before on any human face had she seen
the terrible irony of agony. Agony she had often seen--but not this
irony of it--this agony that saw all its life's happiness blasted and
knew it deserved it.
Richard Travis, when he left Westmoreland, knew that he left it
forever.
"The Queen is dead--long live the Queen," he said bitterly.
And then there happened what always happens to the thing in the
mud--he sank deeper--desperately deeper.
Now--now he would have Helen Conway. He would have her and own her,
body and soul. He would take her away--as he had planned, and keep
her away. That was easy, too--too far away for the whisper of it ever
to come back. If he failed in that he would marry her. She was
beautiful--and with a little more age and education she would grace
The Gaffs. So he might marry her and set her up, a queen over their
heads.
This was his determination when he went to the mill the first of the
week. All the week he watched her, talked with her, was pleasant,
gallant and agreeable. But he soon saw that Helen was not the same.
There was not the dull wistful resignation in her look, and despair
had given way to a cheerfulness he could not understand. There was a
brightness in her eyes which made her more beautiful.
The unconscious grip which the shamelessness of it all had over him
was evidenced in what he did. He confided his plans to Jud Carpenter,
and set him to work to discover the cause.
"See what's wrong," he said significantly. "I am going to take that
girl North with me, and away from here. After that it is no affair of
yours."
"Anything wrong?" He had reached the point of his moral degradation
when right for Helen meant wrong for him.
Jud, with a characteristic shrewdness, put his finger quickly on the
spot.
Edward Conway was sober. Clay saw her daily.
"But jes' wait till I see him ag'in--down there. I'll make him drunk
enough. Then you'll see a change in the Queen--hey?"
And he laughed knowingly. With a little more bitterness she would go
to the end of the world with him.
It was that day he held her hands in the old familiar way, but when
he would kiss her at the gate she still fled, crimson, away.
The next morning Clay Westmore walked with her to the mill, and
Travis lilted his eyebrows haughtily:
"If anything of that kind happens," he said to himself, "nothing can
save me."
He watched her closely--how beautiful she looked that day--how
regally beautiful! She had come wearing the blue silk gown, with the
lace and beads which had been her mother's. In sheer delight Travis
kept slipping to the drawing-in room door to watch her work. Her
posture, beautifully Greek, before the machine, so natural that it
looked not unlike a harp in her hand; her half-bent head and graceful
neck, the flushed face and eyes, the whole picture was like a Titian,
rich in color and life.
And she saw him and looked up smiling.
It was not the smile of happiness. He did not know it because, being
blind, he could not know. It was the happiness of work--achievement.
He came in smiling. "Why are you so much happier than last week?"
"Would you really like to know?" she said, looking him frankly in the
eyes.
He touched her hair playfully. She moved her head and shook it
warningly.
"It is because I am at work and father is trying so hard to reform."
"I thought maybe it was because you had found out how much I love
you."
It was his old, stereotyped, brazen way, but she did not know it and
blushed prettily.
"You are kind, Mr. Travis, but--but that mustn't be thought of.
Please, but I wish you wouldn't talk that way."
"Why, it is true, my queen--of The Gaffs?" he said smiling.
She began to work again.
He came over to her and bent low:
"You know I am to take you Monday night"--
Her hands flew very rapidly--her cheeks mantled into a rich glow. One
of the threads snapped. She stopped, confused.
Travis glanced around. No one was near. He bent and kissed her hair:
"My queen," he whispered, "my beautiful queen."
Then he walked quickly out. He went to his office, but he still saw
the beautiful picture. It thrilled him and then there swept up over
him another picture, and he cried savagely to himself:
"I'll make her sorry. She shall bow to that fine thing yet--my
queen."
Nor would it leave him that day, and into the night he dreamed of
her, and it was the same Titian picture in a background of red
sunset. And her machine was a harp she was playing. He wakened and
smiled:
"Am I falling in love with that girl? That will spoil it all."
He watched her closely the next day, for it puzzled him to know why
she had changed so rapidly in her manner toward him. He had ridden to
Millwood to bring her to the mill, himself; and he had some exquisite
roses for her--clipped in the hot-house by his own hands. It was with
an unmistakable twitch of jealousy that he learned that Clay Westmore
had already come by and gone with her.
"I know what it is now," he said to Jud Carpenter at the mill that
morning; "she is half in love with that slow, studious fellow."
Jud laughed: "Say, excuse me, sah--but hanged if you ain't got all
the symptoms, y'self, boss?"
Travis flushed:
"Oh, when I start out to do a thing I want to do it--and I'm going to
take her with me, or die trying."
Jud laughed again: "Leave it to me--I'll fix the goggle-eyed fellow."
That night when the door bell rang at Westmoreland, Jud Carpenter was
ushered into Clay's workshop. He sat down and looked through his
shaggy eyebrows at the lint and dust and specimens of ore. Then he
spat on the floor disgustedly.
"Sorry to disturb you, but be you a surveyor also?"
The big bowed glasses looked at him quietly and nodded affirmatively.
"Wal, then," went on Jud, "I come to git you to do a job of surveying
for the mill. It's a lot of timber land on the other side of the
mountain--some twenty miles off. The Company's bought five thousand
acres of wood and they want it surveyed. What'll you charge?"
Clay thought a moment: "Going and coming, on horse-back--it will take
me a week," said Clay thoughtfully. "I shall charge a hundred
dollars."
"An' will you go right away--to-morrow mornin'?"
Clay nodded.
"Here's fifty of it," said Jud--"the Company is in a hurry. We want
the survey by this day week. Let me see, this is Sat'dy--I'll come
next Sat'dy night."
Clay's face flushed. Never before had he made a hundred dollars in a
week.
"I'll go at once."
"To-morrow at daylight?" asked Jud, rising.
Clay looked at him curiously. There was something in the tone of the
man that struck him as peculiar, but Jud went on in an easy way.
"You see we must have it quick. All our winter wood to run the mill
is there an' we can't start into cordin' till it's surveyed an' the
deed's passed. Sorry to hurry you"--
Clay promised to start at daylight and Jud left.
He looked at his watch. It was late. He would like to tell Helen
about it--he said aloud: "Making a hundred dollars a week. If I could
only keep up that--I'd--I'd--"
He blushed. And then he turned quietly and went to bed. And that was
why Helen wondered the next day and the next, and all the next week
why she did not see Clay, why he did not come, nor write, nor send
her a message. And wondering the pang of it went into her hardening
heart.
CHAPTER XII
IN THYSELF THERE IS WEAKNESS
It was the middle of Saturday afternoon, and all the week Edward
Conway had fought against the terrible thirst which was in him. Not
since Monday morning had he touched whiskey at all, and now he walked
the streets of the little town saying over and over to himself: "I am
a Conway again."
He had come to town to see Jud Carpenter about the house which had
been promised him--for he could not expect to hold Millwood much
longer. With his soberness some of his old dignity and manhood
returned, and when Carpenter saw him, the Whipper-in knew
instinctively what had happened.
He watched Edward Conway closely--the clear eye, the haughty turn of
his head, the quiet, commanding way of the man sober; and the
Whipper-in frowned as he said to himself:
"If he keeps this up I'll have it to do all over."
And yet, as he looked at him, Jud Carpenter took it all in--the
weakness that was still there, the terrible, restless thirst which
now made him nervous, irritable, and turned his soul into a very
tumult of dissatisfaction.
Carpenter, even as he talked to him, could see the fight which was
going on; and now and then, in spite of it and his determination, he
saw that the reformed drunkard was looking wistfully toward the
bar-room of Billy Buch.
And so, as Jud talked to Edward Conway about the house, he led him
along toward the bar-room. All the time he was complimenting him on
his improved health, and telling how, with help from the mill, he
would soon be on his feet again.
At the bar door he halted:
"Let us set down here an' res', Majah, sah, it's a good place on this
little porch. Have somethin'? Billy's got a mighty fine bran' of old
Tennessee whiskey in there."
Jud watched him as he spoke and saw the fire of expectancy burn in
his despairing eyes.
"No--no--Carpenter--no--I am obliged to you--but I have sworn never
to touch another drop of it. I'll just rest here with you." He threw
up his head and Jud Carpenter saw how eagerly he inhaled the odor
which came out of the door. He saw the quivering lips, the tense
straining of the throat, the wavering eyes which told how sorely he
was tempted.
It was cool, but the sweat stood in drops on Edward Conway's temple.
He gulped, but swallowed only a dry lump, which immediately sprang
back into his throat again and burned as a ball of fire.
"No--no--Carpenter," he kept saying in a dazed, abstracted
way--"no--no--not any more for me. I've promised--I've promised."
And yet even while saying it his eyes were saying: "For God's
sake--bring it to me--quick--quick."
Jud arose and went into the bar and whispered to Billy Buch. Then he
came back and sat down and talked of other things. But all the time
he was watching Edward Conway--the yearning look--turned half
pleadingly to the bar--the gulpings which swallowed nothing.
Presently Jud looked up. He heard the tinkle of glasses, and Billy
Buch stood before them with two long toddies on a silver waiter. The
ice tinkled and glittered in the deep glasses--the cherries and
pineapple gleamed amid it and the whiskey--the rich red whiskey!
"My treat--an' no charges, gentlemen! Compliments of Billy Buch."
Conway looked at the tempting glass for a moment in the terrible