The Bishop of Cottontown Part 10

"You ought to own her,"--he went on flippantly--pinching playfully at the lobe of her ear--"her name is Coquette."

Then he tried to kiss her again.

"Harry!" she said, pulling away--"don't now--Mammy Maria said I was never to--let you kiss me."

"Oh," he said with some iciness--"Listen to her an' you will die an old maid. Besides, I am not engaged to Mammy Maria."

"Do you think I am a coquette?" she asked, sitting down by him again.

"Worst I ever saw--I said to Nellie just now--I mean--" he stopped and laughed.

She looked at him, pained.

"Then you've stopped to see Nellie, and that is why you are late? I do not care what she says--I am true to you, Harry--because--because I love you."

He was feigning anger, and tapping his boot with his riding whip:

"Well--kiss me yourself then--show me that Mammy Maria does not boss my wife."

She laughed and kissed him. He received it with indifference and some haughtiness.

Then his good nature returned and they sat and talked, watching the sunset.

"Don't you think my dress is pretty?" she asked after a while, with a becoming toss of her head.

"Why, I hadn't noticed it--stunning--stunning. If there is a queen on earth it is you,"--he added.

She flushed under the praise and was silent.

"Harry,"--she said after a while, "I hate to trouble you now, but I am so worried about things at home."

He looked up half frowning.

"You know I have always told you I could not marry you now. I would not burden you with Papa."

"Why, yes," he answered mechanically, "we're both young and can wait.

You see, really, Pet--you know I am dependent at present on the Gov'nor an'--"

"I understand all that," she said quickly--"but"--

"A long engagement will only test our love," he broke in with a show of dignity.

"You do not understand," she went on. "Things have got so bad at home that I must earn something."

He frowned and tapped his foot impatiently. She sat up closer to him and put her hand on his. He did not move nor even return the pressure.

"And so, Harry--if--if to help papa--and Millwood is sold--and I can get a good place in the mill--one off by myself--what they call drawer-in--at good wages,--and, if only for a little while I'd work there--to help out, you know--what would you think?"

He sprang up from his seat and dropped her hand.

"Good G.o.d, Helen Conway, are you crazy?" he said brutally--"why, I'd never speak to you again. Me? A Travis?--and marry a mill girl?"

The color went out of her face. She looked in her shame and sorrow toward the sunset, where a cloud, but ten minutes before, had stood all rosy and purple with the flush of the sunbeams behind it.

Now the beams were gone, and it hung white and bloodless.

In the crisis of our lives such trifles as these flash over us. In the greatness of other things--often turning points in our life--Nature sometimes points it all with a metaphor.

For Nature is the one great metaphor.

Helen knew that she and the cloud were now one.

But she was not a coward, and with her heart nerved and looking him calmly in the face, she talked on and told him of the wretched condition of affairs at Millwood. And as she talked, the setting sun played over her own cheeks, touching them with a halo of such exquisite colors that even the unpoetic soul of Harry Travis was touched by the beauty of it all.

And to any one but Harry Travis the proper solution would have been plain. Not that he said it or even meant it--for she was too proud a spirit even to have thought of it--there is much that a man should know instinctively that a woman should never know at all.

Harry surprised himself by the patience with which he listened to her. In him, as in his cousin--his pattern--ran a vein of tact when the crisis demanded, through and between the stratum of bold sensuousness and selfishness which made up the basis of his character.

And so as he listened, in the meanness and meagerness of his soul, he kept thinking, "I will let her down easy--no need for a scene."

It was narrow and little, but it was all that could come into the soul of his narrowness.

For we cannot think beyond our fountain head, nor can we even dream beyond the souls of the two things who gave us birth. There are men born in this age of ripeness, born with an alphabet in their mouths and reared in the regal ways of learning, who can neither read nor write. And yet had Shakespeare been born without a language, he would have carved his thoughts as pictures on the trees.

Harry Travis was born as so many others are--not only without a language, but without a soul within him upon which a picture might be drawn.

And so it kept running in his mind, quietly, cold-bloodedly, tactfully down the narrow, crooked, slum-alleys of his mind: "I will--I will drop her--now!" She ceased--there were tears in her eyes and her face was blanched whiter even than the cloud.

He arose quickly and glanced at the setting sun: "Oh, say, but I must get the Gov'nor's mare back. Jim will miss her at feeding time."

There was a laugh on his lips and his foot was already in the stirrup. "Sorry to be in such a hurry just now, too--because there is so much I want to say to you on that subject--awful sorry--but the Gov'nor will raise Cain if he knows what I've done. I'll just write you a long letter to-night--and I'll be over, maybe, soon--ta--ta--but this mare, confound her--see how she cuts up--so sorry I can't stay longer--but I'll write--to-night."

He threw her a kiss as he rode off.

She sat dazed, numbed, with the shallowness of it all--the shale of sham which did not even conceal the base sub-stratum of deceit below.

Nothing like it had ever come into her life before.

She dropped down behind the rock, but instead of tears there came steel. In it all she could only say with her lips white, a defiant poise of her splendid head, and with a flash of the eyes which came with the Conway aroused: "Oh, and I kissed him--and--and--I loved him!"

She sat on the rock again and looked at the sunset. She was too hurt now to go home--she wished to be alone.

She was a strong girl--mentally--and with a deep nature; but she was proud, and so she sat and crushed it in her pride and strength, though to do it shook her as the leaves were now being shaken by the breeze which had sprung up at sunset.

She thought she could conquer--that she had conquered--then, as the breeze died away, and the leaves hung still and limp again, her pride went with the breeze and she fell again on her knees by the big rock, fell and buried her face there in the cool moss and cried: "Oh, and I loved that thing!"

Ten minutes later she sat pale and smiling. The Conway pride had conquered, but it was a dangerous conquest, for steel and tears had mingled to make it.