The Bishop of Cottontown Part 42

"Pow'ful glad to see you," said the old woman.

"How's religion--Aunt Maria," he asked.

"Mighty po'ly--mighty po'ly"--she sighed. "It looks lak the Cedars of Lebanon is dwarfed to the scrub pine. The old time religin' is pa.s.sin' away, an' I'm all that's lef' of Zion."

The Bishop smiled.

"Yes, you see befo' you all that's lef' of Zion. I'se been longin' to see you an' have a talk with you--thinkin' maybe you cud he'p me out.

You kno' me and you is Hard-sh.e.l.ls."

The Bishop nodded.

"We 'blieves in repentince an' fallin' from grace, an' backslidin'

an' all that," she went on. "Well, they've lopped them good ole things off one by one an' they don't 'bleeve in nothin' now but jes'

jin'in'. They think jes' jin'in' fixes 'em--that it gives 'em a free pa.s.s into the pearly gates. So of all ole Zion Church up at the hill, sah, they've jes' jined an' jined around, fust one church an'

then another, till of all the ole Zion Church that me an' you loved so much, they ain't none lef' but Parson Shadrack, the preacher, sister Tilly, an' me--We wus Zion."

"Pow'ful bad, pow'ful bad," said the Bishop--"and you three made Zion."

"We _wus_," said Aunt Maria, sadly--"but now there ain't but one lef'. _I'm Zion._ It's t'arrable, but it's true. As it wus in the days of Lot, so it is to-day in Sodom."

"Why, how did that happen?" asked the Bishop.

Aunt Maria's eyes kindled: "It's t'arrable, but it's true--last week Parson Shadrack deserts his own wife an' runs off with Sis Tilly. It looked lak he mouter tuck me, too, an' kept the fold together as Abraham did when he went into the Land of the Philistines. But thank G.o.d, if I am all that's lef', one thing is mighty consolin'--I can have a meetin' of Zion wherever I is. If I sets down in a cheer to meditate I sez to myself--'Be keerful, Maria, for the church is in session.' When I drink, it is communion--when I bathes, it is baptism, when I walks, I sez to myself: 'Keep a straight gait, Maria, you are carryin' the tabbernackle of all goodness.' Aunt Tilly got the preacher, but thank G.o.d, I got Zion."

"But I mus' go. Come on, Lily," she said to the little girl,--"let ole Zion fix up yo' curls."

She took her charge and curtsied out, and the Bishop knew she would die either for Zion or the little girl.

The old man sat thinking--Helen had gone in and was practising a love song.

"Ned," said the Bishop, "I tell you a man ain't altogether friendless when he's got in his home a creature as faithful as she is. She'd die for that child. That one ole faithful 'oman makes me feel like liftin' my hat to the whole n.i.g.g.e.r race. I tell you when I get to heaven an' fail to see ole Mammy settin' around the River of Life, I'll think somethin' is wrong."

The Bishop was silent a while, and then he asked: "Ned, it can't be true that you are goin' to put them girls in the factory?"

"It's all I can do," said Conway, surlily--"I'll be turned out of home soon--out in the public road. Everything I've got has been sold.

I've no'where to go, an' but for Carpenter's offer from the Company of the cottage, I'd not have even a home for them. The only condition I could go on was that--"

"That you sell your daughters into slavery," said the Bishop quietly.

"You don't seem to think it hurts your's," said Conway bluntly.

"If I had my way they'd not work there a day,"--the old man replied hastily. "But it's different with me, an' you know it. My people take to it naturally. I am a po' white, an underling by breedin' an'

birth, an' if my people build, they must build up. But you--you are tearing down when you do that. Po' as I am, I'd rather starve than to see little children worked to death in that trap, but Tabitha sees it different, and she is the one bein' in the world I don't cross--the General"--he smiled--"she don't understand, she's built different."

He was silent a while. Then he said: "I am old an' have nothin'."

He stopped again. He did not say that what little he did have went to the poor and the sorrow-stricken of the neighborhood. He did not add that in his home, besides its poverty and hardness, he faced daily the problem of far greater things.

"If I only had my health," said Conway, "but this cursed rheumatism!"

"Some of us has been so used to benefits," said the old man, "that it's only when they've withdrawn that we miss 'em. We're always ready to blame G.o.d for what we lose, but fail to remember what He gives us.

We kno' what diseases an' misfortunes we have had, we never know, by G.o.d's mercy, what we have escaped. Death is around us daily--in the very air we breathe--and yet we live.

"I'll talk square with you, Ned--though you may hate me for it. Every misfortune you have, from rheumatism to loss of property, is due to whiskey. Let it alone. Be a man. There's greatness in you yet. You'd have no chance if you was a scrub. But no man can estimate the value of good blood in man or hoss--it's the unknown quant.i.ty that makes him ready to come again. For do the best we can, at last we're in the hands of G.o.d an' our pedigree."

"Do you think I've got a show yet?" asked Conway, looking up.

"Do I? Every man has a chance who trusts G.o.d an' prays. You can't down that man. Your people were men--brave an' honest men. They conquered themselves first, an' all this fair valley afterwards. They overcame greater obstacles than you ever had, an' in bringin' you into the world they gave you, by the very laws of heredity, the power to overcome, too. Why do you grasp at the shadow an' shy at the form?

You keep these hound dogs here, because your father rode to hounds.

But he rode for pleasure, in the lap of plenty, that he had made by hard licks. You ride, from habit, in poverty. He rode his hobbies--it was all right. Your hobbies ride you. He fought chickens for an hour's pastime, in the fullness of the red blood of life. You fight them for the blood of the thing--as the bred-out Spaniards fight bulls. He took his c.o.c.ktails as a gentleman--you as a drunkard."

The old man was excited, indignant, fearless.

Conway looked at him in wonder akin to fear. Even as the idolaters of old looked at Jeremiah and Isaiah.

"Why--why is it"--went on the old man earnestly, rising and shaking his finger ominously--"that two generations of c.o.c.ktails will breed c.o.c.k-fighters, and two generations of whiskey will breed a scrub? Do you know where you'll end? In bein' a scrub? No, no--you will be dead an' the worms will have et you--but"--he pointed to the house--"you are fixin' to make scrubs of them--they will breed back.

"Go back to the plough--quit this whiskey and be the man your people was. If you do not," he said rising to go--"G.o.d will crush you--not kill you, but mangle you in the killin'."

"He has done that already," said Conway bitterly. "He has turned the back of His hand on me."

"Not yet"--said the Bishop--"but it will fall and fall there." He pointed to Helen, whose queenly head could be seen in the old parlor as she trummed out a sad love song.

Conway blanched and his hand shook. He felt a nameless fear--never felt before. He looked around, but the old man was gone. Afterwards, as he remembered that afternoon, he wondered if, grown as the old man had in faith, G.o.d had not also endowed him with the gift of prophecy.

CHAPTER XVI

HELEN'S DESPAIR

An hour afterward, the old nurse found Helen at the piano, her head bowed low over the old yellow keys. "It's gittin' t'wards dinner time, chile," she said tenderly, "an' time I was dressin' my queen gal for dinner an sendin' her out to get roses in her cheeks."

"Oh, Mammy, don't--don't dress me that way any more. I am--I am to be--after this--just a mill girl, you know?"

There was a sob and her head sank lower over the piano.

"You may be for a while, but you'll always be a Conway"--and the old woman struck an att.i.tude with her arms akimbo and stood looking at the portraits which hung on the parlor wall.

"That--that--makes it worse, Mammy." She wiped away her tears and stood up, and her eyes took on a look Aunt Maria had not seen since the old Governor had died. She thought of ghosts and grew nervous before it.

"If my father sends me to work in that place--if he does--" she cried with flaming eyes--"I shall feel that I am disgraced. I cannot hold my head up again. Then you need not be surprised at anything I do."

"It ain't registered that you're gwine there yet," and Mammy Maria stroked her head. "But if you does--it won't make no difference whar you are nor what you have to do, you'll always be a Conway an' a lady."

An hour afterwards, dressed as only Mammy Maria could dress her, Helen had walked out again to the rock under the wild grape vine.