The Bishop of Cottontown Part 20

"To-day--this even'. I have sent Eph after him--an' I hope he has found him by now an' tuck him somewhere. Eph'll never stop till he does."

"We must find him, Jack. Cap'n Tom alive--thank G.o.d--alive, even if he is teched in his head. Oh, G.o.d, I might a knowed it--an' only to-day I was doubtin' You."

He fell on his knees and Jack stood awed in the presence of the great emotion which shook the old man.

Finally he arose. "Come--Jack--let us go an' hunt for Cap'n Tom."

But though they hunted until the moon went down they found no trace of him. For miles they walked, or took turn about in riding the old blind roan.

"It's no use, Bishop," said Jack. "We will sleep a while and begin to-morrow. Besides, Eph is with him. I feel it--he'll take keer o'

him."

That is how it came that at midnight, that Sat.u.r.day night, the old Bishop brought home a strange man to live in the little cabin in his yard.

That is how, a week later, all the South was stirred over the strange return of a fortune to the different corporations from which it had been taken, accompanied by a drawling note from Jack Bracken saying he returned ill-gotten gain to live a better life.

It ended laconically:

"_An' maybe you'd better go an' do likewise._"

The dim starlight was s.h.i.+ning faintly through the cracks of the outlaw's future home when the old man showed him in.

"Now, Jack," he said, "it's nearly mornin' an' the old woman may be wild an' raise sand. But learn to lay low an' shoe hosses. She was bohn disapp'inted--maybe because she wa'n't a boy," he whispered.

There was a whinny outside, in a small paddock, where a nearby stable stood: "That's Cap'n Tom's horse," said the old man--"I mus' go see if he's hungry."

"I've kept his horse these ten years, hopin' maybe he'd come back agin. It's John Paul Jones--the thoroughbred, that the old General give him."

"I remember him," said Jack.

The great bloodlike horse came up and rubbed his nose on the old man's shoulder.

"Hungry, John Paul?"

"It's been a job to get feed fur him, po' as I've been--but--but--he's Cap'n Tom's. You kno'--"

"An' Cap'n Tom will ride him yet," said Jack.

"Do you believe it, Jack?" asked the old man huskily "G.o.d be praised!"

That Sat.u.r.day night was one never to be forgotten by others beside Jack Bracken and the old preacher of Cottontown.

When Helen Conway, after supper, sought her drunken father and learned that he really intended to have Lily and herself go into the cotton mills, she was crushed for the first time in her life.

An hour later she sent a boy with a note to The Gaffs to Harry Travis.

He brought back an answer that made her pale with wounded love and grief. Not even Mammy Maria knew why she had crept off to bed. But in the night the old woman heard sobs from the young girl's room where she and her sister slept.

"What is it, chile?" she asked as she slipped from her own cot in the adjoining little room and went in to Helen's.

The girl had been weeping all night--she had no mother--no one to whom she could unbosom her heart--no one but the old woman who had nursed her from her infancy. This kind old creature sat on the bed and held the girl's sobbing head on her lap and stroked her cheek.

She knew and understood--she asked no questions:

"It isn't that I must work in the mill," she sobbed to the old woman--"I can do that--anything to help out--but--but--to think that Harry loves me so little as to give me up for--for--that."

"Don't cry, chile," said Mammy soothingly--"It ain't registered that you gwine wuck in that mill yit--I ain't made my afferdavit yit."

"But Harry doesn't love me--Oh, he doesn't love me," she wept. "He would not give me up for anything if he did."

"I'm gwine give that Ma.r.s.e Harry a piece of my mind when I see him--see if I don't. Don't you cry, chile--hold up yo' haid an' be a Conway. Don't you ever let him know that yo' heart is bustin' for him an' fo' the year is out we'll have that same Ma.r.s.e Harry acrawlin' on his very marrow bones to aix our forgiveness. See if we won't."

It was poor consolation to the romantic spirit of Helen Conway.

Daylight found her still heart-broken and sobbing in the old woman's lap.

PART THIRD--THE GIN

CHAPTER I

ALICE WESTMORE

It is remarkable how small a part of our real life the world knows--how little our most intimate friends know of the secret influences which have proven to be climaxes, at the turning points of our existence.

There was no more beautiful woman in Alabama than Alice Westmore; and throughout that state, where the song birds seem to develop, naturally, along with the softness of the air, and the gleam of the suns.h.i.+ne, and the lullaby of the Gulf's soft breeze among the pine trees, there was no one, they say, who could sing as she sang.

And she seemed to have caught it from her native mocking-birds, so natural was it. Not when they sing in the daylight, when everything is bright and joyous and singing is so easy; but when they waken at midnight amid the _arbor vitae_ trees, and under the sweet, sad influence of a winter moon, pour out their half awakened notes to the star-sprays which fall in mist to blend and sparkle around the soft neck of the night.

For like the star-sprays her notes were as clear; and through them ran a sadness as of a mist of moonlight. And just as moonbeams, when they mingle with the mist, make the melancholy of night, so the memory of a dead love ran through everything Alice Westmore sang.

And this made her singing divine.

Why should it be told? What right has a blacksmith to pry into a grand piano to find out wherein the exquisite harmony of the instrument lies? Who has the right to ask the artist how he blended the colors that crowned his picture with immortality, or the poet to explain his pain in the birth of a mood which moved the world?

Born in the mountains of North Alabama, she grew up there and developed this rare voice; and when her father sent her to Italy to complete her musical education, the depth and clearness of it captured even that song nation of the world.

The great of all countries were her friends and princes sought her favors. She sang at courts and in great cathedrals, and her genius and beauty were toasts with society.

"Still, Mademoiselle will never be a great singer, perfect as her voice is,"--said her singing master to her one day--a famous Italian teacher, "until Mademoiselle has suffered. She is now rich and beautiful and happy. Go home and suffer if you would be a great singer," he said, "for great songs come only with great suffering."

If this were true, Alice Westmore was now, indeed, a great singer; for now had she suffered. And it was the death of a life with her when love died. For there be some with whom love is a separate life, and when love dies all that is worth living dies with it.

From childhood she and Cousin Tom--Captain Thomas Travis he lived to be--had been sweethearts. He was the grandson of Colonel Jeremiah Travis of "The Gaffs," and Tom and Alice had grown up together. Their love was one of those earthly loves which comes now and then that we may not altogether lose our faith in heaven.