The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills
And so the old woman would go over all her treasures. Then, in a few
days the gossipy and astounded neighbors would behold Helen and Lily,
dressed, each, in a gown of white brocaded satin, with a dinner gown
of black velvet, and for Sunday, old point lace, with petticoats of
finest hand-made Irish linen and silk stockings--all modernized with
matchless deft and skill.
"I guess my gals will shine as long as the old chist lasts," she
would say, "an' I ain't started on 'em yet. I'm a-savin' some for
their weddin', bless Gord, if I ever sees a man fitten for 'em."
It was an hour yet before dinner, and Aunt Maria had dressed Helen,
this Saturday afternoon, with great care--for after a little frost,
each day and night in Alabama becomes warmer and warmer until the
next frost.
Mammy Maria knew things by intuition, and hence her care to see that
Helen looked especially pretty to-day.
There was no sun save where he streamed his ribbon rays from behind
Sunset Rock, and threw them in pearl and ivory fan handles--white and
gold and emerald, across the mackerel sky beyond.
Helen's silk skirt fitted her well, and one of those beautiful old
ribbons, flowered in broad leaf and blossoms, wound twice around her
slender waist and fell in broad streamers nearly to the ground. The
bodice was cut V-shaped at the throat--the corsage being taken from
one of her grandmother's made in 1822, and around her neck was a long
chain of pure gold beads.
She was a type of Southern beauty obtained only after years of gentle
dames and good breeding.
Her face was pure and fine, rather expressionless at her age, with a
straight nose and rich fine lips. Her heavy hair was coiled
gracefully about her head and fell in a longer coil, almost to her
shoulders. She was tall with a sloping, angular form, the flat
outlines of which were not yet filled with that fullness that time
would soon add.
Her waist was well turned, her shoulders broad and slightly rounded,
with that fullness of chest and breast which Nature, in her hour of
generosity, gives only to the queenly woman. The curves of her
sloping neck were perfect and carried not a wave-line of grossness.
It was as unsensual as a swan's.
Her gown, low cut, showed slight bony shoulders of classic turn and
whiteness, waiting only for time to ripen them to perfection; and the
long curved lines which ran up to where the deep braid of her rich
brown hair fell over them, together with the big joints of her arms
and the long, fine profile of her face were forerunners of a beauty
that is strong--like that of the thoroughbred brood mare after a
year's run on blue-grass.
Her eyes were her only weakness. They were deep and hazel, and given
to drooping too readily with that feigned modesty wherein vanity
clothes boldness. Down in their depths, also, shone that bright,
penetrating spark of a taper by which Folly lights, in woman, the
lamp of ambition.
Her forehead was high--her whole bearing the unconscious one of a
born lady.
Romance--girlish, idealized romance--was her's to-day. A good
intentioned, but thoughtless romance--and therefore a weak one. And
worse still, one which, coupled with ambition, might be led to ruin.
Down through the tangled box-planted walks she strolled, swinging her
dainty hat of straw and old lace in her hand; on through the small
gate that bound the first yard, then through the shaded lawn, unkept
now and rank with weeds, but still holding the old trees which, in
other days, looked down over the well kept lawn of grass beneath. Now
gaunt hogs had rooted it up and the weeds had taken it, and the limbs
of the old trees, falling, had been permitted to lie as they fell.
The first fence was down. She walked across the road and took a path
leading through a cottonfield, which, protected on all sides by the
wood, and being on the elevated plateau on which the residence stood,
had escaped the severer frosts.
And so she stopped and stood amid it, waist high.
The very act of her stopping showed the romance of her nature.
She had seen the fields of cotton all her life, but she could never
pass through one in bloom and in fruit--the white and purple
blossoms, mingled with the green of the leaves and all banked over
billows of snowy lint,--that she did not stop, thrilled with the same
childhood feeling that came with the first reading of the Arabian
Nights.
She had seen the field when it was first plowed, in the spring, and
the small furrows were thrown up by the little turning shovels. Then,
down the entire length of the ridge the cotton-planter had followed,
its two little wheels straddling the row, while the small bull-tongue
in front opened the shallow furrow for the linty, furry, white seeds
to fall in and be covered immediately by the mold-board behind. She
had seen it spring up from one end of the ridge to the other, like
peas, then chopped out by the hoe, the plants left standing, each the
width of the hoe apart. Then she had watched it all summer, growing
under the Southern sun, throwing out limb above limb of beautiful
delicate leaves, drawing their life and sustenance more from the air
and sunshine above than from the dark soil beneath. Drawing it from
the air and sunshine above, and therefore cotton, silken, snowy
cotton--with the warmth of the sun in the skein of its sheen and the
purity of heaven in the fleece of its fold.
Child of the air and the sky and sun; therefore, cotton--and not
corn, which draws its life from the clay and mud and decay which
comes from below.
She had seen the first cream-white bloom come.
She had found it one sweet day in July, early in the morning, on the
tip end of the eldest branch of the cotton stalk nearest the ground.
It hung like the flower of the cream-white, pendulous abutilon, with
pollen of yellow stars beaded in dew and throwing off a rich,
delicate, aromatic odor, smelt nowhere on earth save in a
cottonfield, damp with early dew and warmed by the rays of the rising
sun. Cream-white it was in the morning, but when she had visited it
again at nightfall, it hung purple in the twilight.
Then had she plucked it.
Through the hot month of July she had watched the boll grow and
expand, until in August the lowest and oldest one next to the ground
burst, and shone through the pale green leaves like the image of a
star reflected in waters of green. And every morning new cream-white
blooms formed to the very top, only to turn purple by twilight, while
beneath, climbing higher and higher as the days went by and the cool
nights came, star above star of cotton arose and stood twinkling in
its sky of green and purple, above the dank manger where, in early
spring, the little child-seed had lain.
To-day, touched by the great frost, the last purple bloom in the very
tip-top seemed to look up yearningly and plead with the sun for one
more day of life; that it, too, might add in time its snowy tribute
to the bank of white which rolled entirely across the field, one big
billow of cotton.
And in the midst of it the girl stood dreaming and wondering.
She plucked a purple blossom and pinned it to her breast. Then, with
a deep sigh of saddened longing--that this should be the last--she
walked on, daintily lifting her gown to avoid the damp stars of
cotton, now fast gathering the night dew.
Across the field, a vine of wild grape ran over the top of two small
hackberry trees, forming a natural umbrella-shaped arbor above two
big moss-covered boulders which cropped out of the ground beneath,
making two natural rustic seats. On one of these she sat down. Above
her head glowed the impenetrable leaves of the grape-vine and the
hackberry, and through them all hung the small purple bunches of wild
grapes, waiting for the frost of affliction to convert into sugar the
acid of their souls.
She was in plain view of Millwood, not a quarter of a mile away, and
in the glow of the blazing red sunset, shining through its broken
shutters and windows, she could see Mammy Maria busy about their
dinner.
She looked up the road anxiously--then, with an impatient gesture she
took the cotton bloom from her bosom and began to pluck the petals
apart, one by one, saying aloud:
"One, I love--two, I love--
Three, I love, I say.
Four, I love with all my heart,
And five, I cast away--"
She stopped short and sighed--"O, pshaw! that was Harry; why did I
name it for him?"
Again she looked impatiently up the road and then went on:
"Six, he loves, seven, she loves,
Eight, both love--"
She turned quickly. She heard the gallop of a saddle horse coming.
The rider sprang off, tied his horse and sat on the rock by her side.
She appeared not to notice him, and her piqued face was turned away
petulantly.
It was a handsome boyish face that looked at her for a moment
mischievously. Then he seized and kissed her despite her struggles.
For this she boxed his ears soundly and sat off on another rock.
"Harry Travis, you can't kiss me every time you want to, no matter if
we are engaged."
It was a strong and rather a masculine voice, and it grated on one
slightly, being scarcely expected from so beautiful a face. In it was
power, self-will, ambition--but no tenderness nor that voice, soft
and low, which "is an excellent thing in woman."
He laughed banteringly.
"Did you ever hear that love is not love if it is a minute late? Just
see how long I have waited here for you?"
She sat down by his side and looked fondly up into his face, flushed
with exercise and smiling half cynically. It was the same smile seen
so often on the face of Richard Travis.
"Oh, say," he said, dolefully, "but don't start the
hubby-come-to-taw-business on me until we are married. I was late
because I had to steal the Gov'nor's new mare--isn't she a beauty?"
"Oh, say," he went on, "but that is a good one--he has bought her for
somebody he is stuck on--can't say who--and I heard him tell Jim not
to let anybody get on her back.
"Well,"--he laughed--"she certainly has a fine back. I stole her out
and galloped right straight here.
"You ought to own her,"--he went on flippantly--pinching playfully at
the lobe of her ear--"her name is Coquette."
Then he tried to kiss her again.
"Harry!" she said, pulling away--"don't now--Mammy Maria said I was
never to--let you kiss me."
"Oh," he said with some iciness--"Listen to her an' you will die an
old maid. Besides, I am not engaged to Mammy Maria."
"Do you think I am a coquette?" she asked, sitting down by him again.
"Worst I ever saw--I said to Nellie just now--I mean--" he stopped
and laughed.
She looked at him, pained.
"Then you've stopped to see Nellie, and that is why you are late? I
do not care what she says--I am true to you, Harry--because--because
I love you."
He was feigning anger, and tapping his boot with his riding whip:
"Well--kiss me yourself then--show me that Mammy Maria does not boss
my wife."
She laughed and kissed him. He received it with indifference and some
haughtiness.
Then his good nature returned and they sat and talked, watching the
sunset.
"Don't you think my dress is pretty?" she asked after a while, with a
becoming toss of her head.
"Why, I hadn't noticed it--stunning--stunning. If there is a queen on
earth it is you,"--he added.
She flushed under the praise and was silent.
"Harry,"--she said after a while, "I hate to trouble you now, but I
am so worried about things at home."
He looked up half frowning.
"You know I have always told you I could not marry you now. I would
not burden you with Papa."
"Why, yes," he answered mechanically, "we're both young and can wait.
You see, really, Pet--you know I am dependent at present on the
Gov'nor an'--"
"I understand all that," she said quickly--"but"--