The Bishop of Cottontown Part 64

The very barriers of her birth, that which had been thrown around her to distinguish her from the common people, had been broken down. The foundation of her faith was shattered with it.

For the last time, as a Conway, she looked at the fields of Millwood--at the grim peak of Sunset Rock above--the shadowed wood below. Until then she did not know it made such a difference in the way she looked at things. But now she saw it and with it the ruin, the abandonment of every hope, every ambition of her life. As she stood upon the old porch before starting for the mill, she felt that she was without a creed and without a principle.

"I would do anything," she cried bitterly--"I care for nothing. If I am tempted I shall steal, I know I shall--I know I shall"--she repeated.

It is a dangerous thing to change environments for the worse. It is more dangerous still to break down the moral barrier, however frail it may be, which our conscience has built between the good and the evil in us. Some, reared under laws that are loose, may withstand this barrier breaking and be no worse for the change; but in the case of those with whom this barrier of their moral belief stands securely between conscience and forbidden paths, let it fall, and all the best of them will fall with it.

For with them there are no degrees in degradation--no caste in the world of sin. Headlong they rush to moral ruin. And there are those like Helen Conway, too blinded by the environment of birth to know that work is not degradation. To them it is the lowering of every standard of their lives, standards which idleness has erected. And idleness builds strange standards.

If it had occurred to Helen Conway--if she had been reared to know that to work honestly for an honest living was the n.o.blest thing in life, how different would it all have been!

And so at last what is right and what is wrong depend more upon what has gone before than what follows after. It is more a question of pedigree and environment than of trials and temptations.

"I shall steal," she repeated--"oh, I know I shall."

And yet, as her father drove her in the old shambling buggy across the hill road to the town, there stood out in her mind one other picture which lingered there all day and for many days. She could not forget it nor cast it from her, and in spite of all her sorrow it uplifted her as she had been uplifted at times before when, reading the country newspaper, there had blossomed among its dry pages the perfume of a stray poem, whose incense entered into her soul of souls.

It was a young man in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves, his face flushed with work, his throat bare, plowing on the slope of the hillside for the fall sowing of wheat.

What a splendid picture he was, silhouetted in the rising sun against the pink and purple background of sunbeams!

It was Clay Westmore, and he waved his hand in his slow, calm forceful way as he saw her go by.

It was a little thing, but it comforted her. She remembered it long.

The mill had been running several hours when Kingsley looked up, and saw standing before him at his office window a girl of such stately beauty that he stood looking sillily at her, and wondering.

He did not remember very clearly afterwards anything except this first impression; that her hair was plaited in two rich coils upon her head, and that never before had he seen so much beauty in a gingham dress.

He remembered, too, that her eyes, which held him spellbound, wore more an expression of despair and even desperation than of youthful hope. He could not understand why they looked that way, forerunners as they were of such a face and hair.

And so he stood, sillily smiling, until Richard Travis arose from his desk and came forward to meet her.

She nodded at him and tried to smile, but Kingsley noticed that it died away into drawn, hard lines around her pretty mouth.

"It is Miss Conway," he said to Kingsley, taking her hand familiarly and holding it until she withdrew it with a conscious touch of embarra.s.sment.

"She is one of my neighbors, and, by the way, Kingsley, she must have the best place in the mill."

Kingsley continued to look sillily at her. He had not heard of Helen--he did not understand.

"A place in the mill--ah, let me see," he said thoughtfully.

"I've been thinking it out," went on Travis, "and there is a drawing-in machine ready for her. I understand Maggie is going to quit on account of her health."

"I, ah--" began Kingsley--"Er--well, I never heard of a beginner starting on a drawing-in machine."

"I have instructed Maggie to teach her," said Travis shortly. Then he beckoned to Helen: "Come."

She followed Richard Travis through the mill. He watched her as she stepped in among the common herd of people--the way at first in which she threw up her head in splendid scorn. Never had he seen her so beautiful. Never had he desired to own her so much as then.

"The exquisite, grand thing," he muttered. "And I shall--she shall be mine."

Then her head sank again with a little crushed smile of helpless pity and resignation. It touched even Travis, and he said, consolingly, to her:

"You are too beautiful to have to do this and you shall not--for long. You were born to be queen of--well, The Gaffs, eh?"

He laughed and then he touched boldly her hair which lay splendidly around her temples.

She looked at him resignedly, then she flushed to her eyes and followed him.

The drawer-in is to the loom what the architect is to the building.

And more--it is both architect and foundation, for as the threads are drawn in so must the cloth be.

The work is tedious and requires skill, patience, quickness, and that nicety of judgment which comes with intellect of a higher order than is commonly found in the mill. For that reason the drawer-in is removed from the noise of the main room--she sits with another drawer-in in a quiet, little room nearby, and, with her trained fingers, she draws in through the eyelets the threads, which set the warp.

Maggie was busy, but she greeted him with a quaint, friendly little smile. Helen noticed two things about her at once: that there was a queer bright light in her eyes, and that beneath them glowed two bright red spots, which, when Travis approached, deepened quickly.

"Yes, I am going to leave the mill," she said, after Travis had left them together. "I jus' can't stan' it any longer. Mother is dead, you know, an' father is an invalid. I've five little brothers and sisters at home. I couldn't bear to see them die in here. It's awful on children, you know. So I've managed to keep 'em a-goin'

until--well--I've saved enough an' with the help of--a--a--friend--you see--a very near friend--I've managed to get us a little farm. We're all goin' to it next week. Oh, yes, of course, I'll be glad to teach you."

She glanced at Helen's hands and smiled: "Yo' hands don't look like they're used to work. They're so white and beautiful."

Helen was pleased. Her fingers were tapering and beautiful, and she knew her hands were the hands of many generations of ladies.

"I have to make a living for myself now," she said with a dash of bitterness.

"If I looked like you," said Maggie, slyly and yet frankly, "I'd do something in keeping with my place. I can't bear to think of anybody like you bein' here."

Helen was silent and Maggie saw that the tears were ready to start.

She saw her half sob and she patted her cheek in a motherly way as she said:

"Oh, but I didn't mean to hurt you so. Only I do hate so to see--oh, I am silly, I suppose, because I am going to get out of this terrible, terrible grind."

Her pale face flushed and she coughed, as she bent over her work to show Helen how to draw in the threads.

"Now, I'm a good drawer-in, an' he said onct"--she nodded at the door from which Travis had gone out--"that I was the best in the worl'; the whole worl'." She blushed slightly. "But, well--I've made no fortune yet--an' somehow, in yo' case now--you see--somehow I feel sorter 'fraid--about you--like somethin' awful was goin' to happen to you."

"Why--what--" began Helen, surprised.

"Oh, it ain't nothin'," she said trying to be cheerful--"I'll soon get over this ... out in the air. I'm weak now and I think it makes me nervous an' skeery.... I'll throw it off that quick," she snapped her fingers--"out in the open air again--out on the little farm." She was silent, as if trying to turn the subject, but she went back to it again. "You don't know how I've longed for this--to get away from the mill. It's day in an' day out here an' shut up like a convict. It ain't natural--it can't be--it ain't nature. If anybody thinks it is, let 'em look at them little things over on the other side," and she nodded toward the main room. "Why, them little tots work twelve hours a day an' sometimes mo'. Who ever heard of children workin' at all befo' these things come into the country? Now, I've no objection to 'em, only that they ought to work grown folks an' not children. They may kill me if they can," she laughed,--"I am grown, an' can stan'

it, but I can't bear to think of 'em killin' my little brothers an'

sisters--they're ent.i.tled to live until they get grown anyway."

She stopped to cough and to show Helen how to untangle some threads.

"Oh, but they can't hurt me," she laughed, as if ashamed of her cough; "this is bothersome, but it won't last long after I get out on the little farm."

She stopped talking and fell to her work, and for two hours she showed Helen just how to draw the threads through, to s.h.i.+ft the machine, to untangle the tangled threads.