The Bishop of Cottontown Part 36

He walked into Harry's room and lit the lamp there. He smiled when he glanced around the walls. There were hunting scenes and actresses in scant clothing. Tobacco pipes of all kinds on the tables, and stumps of ill-smelling cigarettes, and over the mantel was a crayon picture of Death shaking the dice of life. Two old cutla.s.ses crossed underneath it.

On his writing desk Travis picked up and read the copy of the note written to Helen the day before.

He smiled with elevated eyebrows. Then he laughed ironically:

"The little yellow cur--to lie down and quit--to throw her over like that! d.a.m.n him--he has a yellow streak in him and I'll take pleasure in pulling down the purse for him. Why, she was born for me anyway!

That kid, and in love with Helen! Not for The Gaffs would I have him mix up with that drunken set--nor--nor, well, not for The Gaffs to have him quit like that."

And yet it was news to him. Wrapped in his own selfish plans, he had never bothered himself about Harry's affairs.

But he kept on saying, as if it hurt him: "The little yellow cur--and he a Travis!" He laughed: "He's got another one, I'll bet--got her to-night and by now is securely engaged. So much the better--for my plans."

Again he went into the hall and walked to and fro in the dim light.

But the Davenport and the pillow instantly formed themselves again into Maggie and the casket, and he turned in disgust to walk into his own room.

Above his head over the doorway in the hall, on a pair of splendid antlers--his first trophy of the chase,--rested his deer gun, a clean piece of Damascus steel and old English walnut, imported years before. The barrels were forty inches and choked. The small bright hammers rested on the yellow bra.s.s caps deep sunk on steel nippers.

They shone through the hammer slit fresh and ready for use.

He felt a cold draught of air blow on him and turned in surprise to find the hall window, which reached to the veranda floor, open; and he could see the stars s.h.i.+ning above the dark green foliage of the trees on the lawn without.

At the same instant there swept over him a nervous fear, and he reached for his deer gun instinctively. Then there arose from the Davenport coffin a slouching unkempt form, the fine bright eyes of which, as the last rays of the moonlight fell on them, were the eyes of his dead cousin, Captain Tom, and it held out its hands pleadingly to him and tenderly and with much effort said:

"_Grandfather, forgive. I've come back again._"

Travis's heart seemed to freeze tightly. He tried to breathe--he only gasped--and the corners of his mouth tightened and refused to open.

He felt the blood rush up from around his loins, and leave him paralyzed and weak. In sheer desperation he threw the gun to his shoulder, and the next instant he would have fired the load into the face of the thing with its voice of the dead, had not something burst on his head with a staggering, overpowering blow, and despite his efforts to stand, his knees gave way beneath him and it seemed pleasant for him to lie p.r.o.ne upon the floor....

When he awakened an hour afterwards, he sat up, bewildered. His gun lay beside him, but the window was closed securely and bolted. No night air came in. The Davenport and pillow were there as before. His head ached and there was a bruised place over his ear. He walked into his own room and lit the lamp.

"I may have fallen and struck my head," he said, bewildered with the strangeness of it all. "I may have," he repeated--"but if I didn't see Tom Travis's ghost to-night there is no need to believe one's senses."

He opened the door and let in two setters which fawned upon him and licked his hand. All his nervousness vanished.

"No one knows the comfort of a dog's company," he said, "who does not love a dog?"

Then he bathed his face and head and went to sleep.

It was after midnight when Jack Bracken led Captain Tom in and put him to bed.

"A close shave for you, Cap'n Tom," he said--"I struck just in time.

I'll not leave you another night with the door unlocked." Then: "But poor fellow--how can we blame him for wandering off, after all those years, and trying to get back again to his boyhood home."

CHAPTER XII

A MIDNIGHT GUARD

Jack Bracken rolled himself in his blanket on the cot, placed in the room next to Captain Tom, and prepared to sleep again.

But the excitement of the night had been great; his sudden awakening from sleep, his missing Captain Tom, and finding him in time to prevent a tragedy, had aroused him thoroughly, and now sleep was far from his eyes.

And so he lay and thought of his past life, and as it pa.s.sed before him it shook him with nervous sleeplessness.

It hurt him. He lay and panted with the strong sorrow of it.

Perhaps it was that, but with it were thoughts also of little Jack, and the tears came into the eyes of the big-hearted outlaw.

He had his plans all arranged--he and the Bishop--and now as the village blacksmith he would begin the life of an honest man.

Respected--his heart beat proudly to think of it.

Respected--how little it means to the man who is, how much to the man who is not.

"Why," he said to himself--"perhaps after a while people will stop and talk to me an' say as they pa.s.s my shop: 'Good mornin', neighbor, how are you to-day?' Little children--sweet an' innocent little children--comin' from school may stop an' watch the sparks fly from my anvil, like they did in the poem I onct read, an' linger aroun' an' talk to me, shy like; maybe, after awhile I'll get their confidence, so they will learn to love me, an' call me Uncle Jack--Uncle Jack," he repeated softly.

"An' I won't be suspectin' people any mo' an' none of 'em will be my enemy. I'll not be carryin' pistols an' havin' buckets of gold an'

not a friend in the worl'."

His heart beat fast--he could scarcely wait for the morning to come, so anxious was he to begin the life of an honest man again. He who had been an outlaw so long, who had not known what it was to know human sympathy and human friends.h.i.+p--it thrilled him with a rich, sweet flood of joy.

Then suddenly a great wave swept over him--a wave of such exquisite joy that he fell on his knees and cried out: "O G.o.d, I am a changed man--how happy I am! jus' to be human agin an' not hounded! How can I thank You--You who have given me this blessed Man the Bishop tells us about--this Christ who reaches out an' takes us by the han' an' lifts us up. O G.o.d, if there is divinity given to man, it is given to that man who can lift up another, as the po' outlaw knows."

He lay silent and thoughtful. All day and night--since he had first seen Margaret, her eyes had haunted him. He had not seen her before for many years; but in all that time there had not been a day when he had not thought of--loved--her.

Margaret--her loneliness--the sadness of her life, all haunted him.

She lived, he knew, alone, in her cottage--an outcast from society.

He had looked but once in her eyes and caught the lingering look of appeal which unconsciously lay there. He knew she loved him yet--it was there as plain as in his own face was written the fact that he loved her. He thought of himself--of her. Then he said:

"For fifteen years I have robbed--killed--oh, G.o.d--killed--how it hurts me now! All the category of crime in bitter wickedness I have run. And she--once--and now an angel--Bishop himself says so."

"I am a new man--I am a respectable and honest man,"--here he arose on his cot and drew himself up--"I am Jack Smith--Mr. Jack Smith, the blacksmith, and my word is my bond."

He slipped out quietly. Once again in the cool night, under the stars which he had learned to love as brothers and whose silent paths across the heavens were to him old familiar footpaths, he felt at ease, and his nervousness left him.

He had not intended to speak to Margaret then--for he thought she was asleep. He wished only to guard her cabin, up among the stunted old field pines--while she slept--to see the room he knew she slept in--the little window she looked out of every day.

The little cabin was a hallowed spot to him. Somehow he knew--he felt that whatever might be said--in it he knew an angel dwelt. He could not understand--he only knew.

There is a moral sense within us that is a greater teacher than either knowledge or wisdom.

For an hour he stood with his head uncovered watching the little cabin where she lived. Everything about it was sacred, because Margaret lived there. It was pretty, too, in its neatness and cleanliness, and there were old-fas.h.i.+oned flowers in the yard and old-fas.h.i.+oned roses clambered on the rock wall.

He sat down in the path--the little white sanded path down which he knew she went every day, and so made sacred by her footsteps.

"Perhaps, I am near one of them now," he said--and he kissed the spot.