The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills

Jack drew her down and kissed her. And as his eyes grew dim, a figure, tall and in military clothes, stood before him, shaken with grief and saying, "Jack--Jack, my poor friend--" Jack's mind was wandering, but a great smile lit up his face as he said: "_Bishop--Bishop--is--is--it Cap'n Tom, or--or--Jesus Christ?_" And so he passed out. And up above them all in the belfry, lying prone, but still gripping his rifle's stock which, sweeping the jail with its deadly protruding barrel, had held back hundreds of men, they found Richard Travis, a softened smile on his lips as if he had just entered into the glory of the great Sweet Silence of Things. And by him sat the old preacher, where he had sat since Richard Travis's last shot had saved the jail and the defenders; sat and bound up his wound and gave him the last of his old whiskey out of the little flask, and stopped the flow of blood and saved the life which had nearly bubbled out. And as they brought the desperately wounded man down to the surgeon and to life, the old governor raised his hat and said: "The Travis blood--the Irish Gray--when it's wrong it is hell--when it's right it is heaven." But the old preacher smiled as he helped carry him tenderly down and said: "He is right, forever right, now, Gov'nor. God has made him so. See that smile on his lips! He has laughed before--that was from the body. He is smiling now--that is from the soul. His soul is born again." The old governor smiled and turned. Edward Conway, wounded, was sitting up. The governor grasped his hand: "Ned, my boy, I've appointed you sheriff of this county in place of that scallawag who deserted his post. Stand pat, for you're a Conway--no doubt about that. Stand pat." Under the rock wall, they found a man, dead on his knees, leaning against the wall; his gun, still cocked and deadly, was resting against his shoulder and needing only the movement of a finger to sweep with deadly hail the cotton-bales. His scraggy hair topped the rock fence and his staring eyes peeped over, each its own way. And one of them looked forward into a future which was Silence, and the other looked backward into a past which was Sin. CHAPTER XXV THE SHADOWS AND THE CLOUDS When Richard Travis came to himself after that terrible night, they told him that for weeks he had lain with only a breath between him and death. "It was not my skill that has saved you," said the old surgeon who had been through two wars and who knew wounds as he did maps of battlefields he had fought on. "No," he said, shaking his head, "no, it was not I--it was something beyond me. That you miraculously live is proof of it." He was in his room at The Gaffs, and everything looked so natural. It was sweet to live again, for he was yet young and life now meant so much more than it ever had. Then his eyes fell on the rug, wearily, and he remembered the old setter. "The dog--and that other one?" He sat up nervously in bed, trembling with the thought. The old surgeon guessed and bade him be quiet. "You need not fear that," he said, touching his arm. "The time has passed for fear. You were saved by the shadow of death and--the blood letting you had--and, well, a woman's lips, as many a man has been saved before you. You'd better sleep again now...." He slept, but there were visions as there had been all along. And two persons came in now and then. One was Tom Travis, serious and quiet and very much in earnest that the patient might get well. Another was Tom's wife, Alice, who arranged the wounded man's pillows with a gentleness and deftness as only she could, and who gave quiet orders to the old cook in a way that made Richard Travis feel that things were all right, though he could not speak, nor even open his eyes long enough to see distinctly. A month afterward Richard Travis was sitting up. His strength came very fast. For a week he had sat by the fire and thought--thought. But no man knew what was in his mind until one day, after he had been able to walk over the place, he said: "Tom, you and Alice have been kinder to me--far kinder--than I have deserved. I am going away forever, next week--to the Northwest--and begin life over. But there is something I wish to say to you first." "Dick," said his cousin, and he arose, tall and splendid, before the firelight--"there is something I wish to say to you first. Our lives have been far apart and very different, but blood is blood and you have proved it, else I had not been here to-night to tell it." He came over and put his hand affectionately on the other's shoulder. At its touch Richard Travis softened almost to tears. "Dick, we two are the only grandsons that bear his name, and we divide this between us. Alice and I have planned it. You are to retain the house and half the land. We have our own and more than enough. You will do it, Dick?" Richard Travis arose, strangely moved. He grasped his cousin's hand. "No, no, Tom, it is not fair. No Travis was ever a welcher. It is all yours--you do not understand--I saw the will--I do not want it. I am going away forever. My life must lead now in other paths. But--" The other turned quickly and looked deep into Richard Travis's eyes. "I can see there is no use of my trying to change your mind, Dick, though I had hoped--" The other shook his head. It meant a Travis decision, and his cousin knew it. "But as I started to say, Tom, and there is no need of my mincing words, if you'll raise that boy of mine--" he was silent awhile, then smiling: "He is mine and more of a Travis to-day than his father ever was. If you can help him and his aunt--" "He shall have the half of it, Dick, and an education, under our care. We will make a man of him, Alice and I." Richard Travis said no more. The week before he left, one beautiful afternoon, he walked over to Millwood for the last time. For Edward Conway was now sheriff of the county, and with the assistance of the old bishop, whose fortune now was secured, he had redeemed his home and was in a fair way to pay back every dollar of it. A new servant ushered Travis in, for the good old nurse had passed away, the strain of that terrible night being too much, first, for her reason, and afterwards, her life. Edward Conway was away, but Helen came in presently, and greeted him with such a splendid high-born way, so simple and so unaffected that he marveled at her self-control, feeling his own heart pulsing strangely at sight of her. In the few months that had elapsed how changed she was and how beautiful! This was not the romantic, yet buffeted, beautiful girl who had come so near being the tragedy of his old life? How womanly she now was, and how calm and at her ease! Could independence and the change from poverty and worry, the strong, free feeling of being one's self again and in one's sphere, make so great a difference in so short a while? He wondered at himself for not seeing farther ahead. He had come to bid her good-bye and offer again--this time in all earnestness and sincerity, to take her with him--to share his life--but the words died in his mouth. He could no more have said them than he could have profanely touched her. When he left she walked with him to the parting of the ways. The blue line of tremulous mountain was scrolled along a horizon that flamed crimson in the setting sun. A flock of twilight clouds--flamingos of the sky--floated toward the sunset as if going to roost. Beyond was the great river, its bosom as wan, where it lay in the shadow of the mountain, as Richard Travis's own cheek; but where the sunset fell on it the reflected light turned it to pink which to him looked like Helen's. The wind came down cool from the frost-tinctured mountain side, and the fine sweet odor of life everlasting floated in it--frost-bitten--and bringing a wave of youth and rabbit hunts and of a life of dreams and the sweet unclouded far-off hope of things beautiful and immortal. And the flow of it hurt Richard Travis--hurt him with a tenderness that bled. The girl stopped and drank in the beauty of it all, and he stood looking at her, "the picture for the frame"--as he said to himself. It had rained and the clouds were scattered, yet so full that they caught entirely the sunset rays and held them as he would that moment have loved to hold her. Something in her--something about her thrilled him strangely, as he had often been thrilled when looking at the great pictures in the galleries of the old world. He repeated softly to her, as she stood looking forward--to him--into the future: "What thou art we know not, What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see, As from thy presence showers a rain of melody." She turned and held out her hand. "I must bid you good-bye now and I wish you all happiness--so much more than you have ever had in all your life." He took it, but he could not speak. Something shook him strangely. He knew nothing to say. Had he spoken, he knew he had stammered and blundered. Never had the Richard Travis of old done such a thing. "Helen--Helen--if--if--you know once I asked you to go with me--once--in the old, awful life. Now, in the new--the new life which you can make sweet--" She came up close to him. The sun had set and the valley lay in silence. When he saw her eyes there were tears in them--tears so full and deep that they hurt him when she said: "It can never--never be--now. You made me love you when you could not love; and love born of despair is mateless ever; it would die in its realization. Mine, for you, was that--" She pointed to the sunset. "It breathed and burned. I saw it only because of clouds, of shadow. But were the clouds, the shadows, gone--" "There would be no life, no burning, no love," he said. "Ah, I think I understand," and his heart sank with pain. What--why--he could not say, only he knew it hurt him, and he began to wonder. "You do not blame me," she said as she still held his hand and looked up into his eyes in the old way he had seen, that terrible night at Millwood. For reply he held her hand in both of his and then laid it over his heart. She felt his tears fall on it, tears, which even death could not bring, had come to Richard Travis at last, and he wondered. In the old life he never wondered--he always knew; but in this--this new life--it was all so strange, so new that he feared even himself. Like a sailor lost, he could only look up, by day, helplessly at the sun, and, by night, helplessly at the stars. "Helen--Helen," he said at last, strangely shaken in it all,--"if I could tell you now that I do--that I could love--" She put her hand over his mouth in the old playful way and shook her head, smiling through her tears: "Do not try to mate my love with a thing that balks." It was simply said, and forceful. It was enough. Richard Travis blushed for very shame. "Do you not see," she said, "how hopeless it is? Do you not know that I was terribly tempted--weak--maddened--deserted that night? That now I know what Clay's love has been? Oh, why do we not learn early in life that fire will burn, that death will kill, that we are the deed of all we think and feel--the wish of all we will to be?" Travis turned quickly: "Is that true? Then let me wish--as I do, Helen; let me wish that I might love you as you deserve." She saddened: "Oh, but you have wished--you have willed--too often--too differently. It can never be now." "I understand you," he said. "It is natural--I should say it is nature--nature, the never-lying. I but reap my own folly, and now good-bye forever, Helen, and may God bless you and bring you that happiness you have deserved."