The Bishop of Cottontown Part 73

"If you really should make it a rule to refuse all children under twelve," she added, "tell me how many would go out of your mill."

"In other words, how many under twelve do we work there?" he asked.

She nodded.

He thought a while and then said: "About one hundred and twenty-five."

She started: "That is terrible--terrible! Couldn't you--couldn't you bring the subject up before the directors for--for--"

"Your sake--yes"--he said, admiringly.

"Humanity's--G.o.d's--Right's--helpless, ignorant, dying children!"

"Do you know," he added quickly, "how many idle parents these hundred and twenty-five children support--actually support? Why, about fifty.

Now do you see? The whole influence of these fifty people will be to violate the law--to swear the children are twelve or over. Yes, I am opposed to it--so is Kingsley--but we are powerless."

"My enthusiasm has been aroused, of late, on the subject," Alice went on, "by the talks and preaching of my old friend, Mr. Watts."

Travis frowned: "The old Bishop of Cottontown," he added ironically--"and he had better stop it--he will get into trouble yet."

"Why?"

"Because he is doing the mill harm."

"And I don't suppose one should do a corporation harm," she said quickly,--"even to do humanity good?"

"Oh, Alice, let us drop so disagreeable a subject," said her mother.

"Come, Richard and I want some music."

"Any way," said Alice, rising, "I do very much hope you will bring the subject up in your visit to the directors. It has grown on me under the talks of the old Bishop and what I have seen myself--it has become a nightmare to me."

"I don't think it is any of our business at all," spoke up Mrs.

Westmore quickly.

Alice turned her big, earnest eyes and beautiful face on her mother.

"Do you remember when I was six years old?" she asked.

"Of course I do."

"Suppose--suppose--that our poverty had come to us then, and you and papa had died and left brother and me alone and friendless. Then suppose we had been put into that mill to work fourteen hours a day--we--your own little ones--brother and I"--

Mrs. Westmore sprang up with a little shriek and put her hands over her daughter's mouth.

Richard Travis shrugged his shoulders: "I had not thought of it that way myself," he said. "That goes home to one."

Richard Travis was always uplifted in the presence of Alice. It was wonderful to him what a difference in his feelings, his behavior, his ideas, her simple presence exerted. As he looked at her he thought of last night's debauch--the bar-room--the baseness and vileness of it all. He thought of his many amours. He saw the purity and grandeur of her in this contrast--all her queenliness and beauty and simplicity.

He even thought of Maggie and said to himself: "Suppose Alice should know all this.... My G.o.d! I would have no more chance of winning her than of plucking a star from the sky!"

He thought of Helen and it made him serious. Helen's was a different problem from Maggie's. Maggie was a mill girl--poor, with a bed-ridden father. She was nameless. But Helen--she was of the same blood and caste of this beautiful woman before him, whom he fully expected to make his wife. There was danger in Helen--he must act boldly, but decisively--he must take her away with him--out of the State, the South even. Distance would be his protection, and her pride and shame would prevent her ever letting her whereabouts or her fate be known.

Cold-bloodedly, boldly, and with clear-cut reasoning, all this ran through his mind as he stood looking at Alice Westmore.

We are strangely made--the best of us. Men have looked on the Madonna and wondered why the artist had not put more humanity there--had not given her a sensual lip, perhaps. And on the Cross, the Christ was thinking of a thief.

Two hours later he was bidding her good-bye.

"Next Sunday, do you remember--Alice--next Sunday night you are to tell me--to fix the day, Sweet?"

"Did mother tell you that?" she asked. "She should let me speak for myself."

But somehow he felt that she would. Indeed he knew it as he kissed her hand and bade her good-night.

Richard Travis had ridden over to Westmoreland that Sunday night, and as he rode back, some two miles away, and within the shadows of a dense clump of oaks which bordered the road, he was stopped by two dusky figures. They stood just on the edge of the forest and came out so suddenly that the spirited saddle mare stopped and attempted to wheel and bolt. But Travis, controlling her with one hand and, suspecting robbers, had drawn his revolver with the other, when one of them said:

"Friends, don't shoot."

"Give the countersign," said Travis with ill-concealed irritation.

"Union League, sir. I am Silos, sir."

Travis put his revolver back into his overcoat pocket and quieted his mare.

The two men, one a negro and the other a mulatto, came up to his saddle-skirt and stood waiting respectfully.

"You should have awaited me at The Gaffs, Silos."

"We did, sir," said the mulatto, "but the boys are all out here in the woods, and we wanted to hold them together. We didn't know when you would come home."

"Oh, it's all right," said Travis pettishly--"only you came near catching one of my bullets by mistake. I thought you were Jack Bracken and his gang."

The mulatto smiled and apologized. He was a bright fellow and the barber of the town.

"We wanted to know, sir, if you were willing for us to do the work to-night, sir?"

"Why bother me about it--no need for me to know, Silos, but one thing I must insist upon. You may whip them--frighten them, but nothing else, mind you, nothing else."

"But you are the commander of the League--we wanted your consent."

Travis bent low over the saddle and talked earnestly to the man a while. It was evidently satisfactory to the other, for he soon beckoned his companion and started off into the woods.

"Have you representatives from each camp present, Silos?"

The mulatto turned and came back.

"Yes--but the toughest we could get. I'll not stay myself to see it.

I don't like such work, sir--only some one has to do it for the cause--the cause of freedom, sir."