The Bishop of Cottontown Part 9

From old bureau drawers and cedar chests, stored away in the attic and unused rooms of Millwood, where she herself had carefully put them in days long gone--days of plenty and thrift--she brought forth rich gowns of another age, and made them over for Helen and Lily.

"Now, this gown was Miss Clara's," she would say as she took out a bundle of satin and old lace. She looked at it fondly--often with tears in her honest black eyes. "Lor', how well I disremember the night she fust wore it--the night of the ball we give to Jineral Jackson when he first come to see old Marster. This flowered silk with pol'naize she wore at the Gov'nor's ball and the black velvet with cut steel I've seed her wearin' at many an' many a dinner here in this very house."

And so the old woman would go over all her treasures. Then, in a few days the gossipy and astounded neighbors would behold Helen and Lily, dressed, each, in a gown of white brocaded satin, with a dinner gown of black velvet, and for Sunday, old point lace, with petticoats of finest hand-made Irish linen and silk stockings--all modernized with matchless deft and skill.

"I guess my gals will shine as long as the old chist lasts," she would say, "an' I ain't started on 'em yet. I'm a-savin' some for their weddin', bless Gord, if I ever sees a man fitten for 'em."

It was an hour yet before dinner, and Aunt Maria had dressed Helen, this Sat.u.r.day afternoon, with great care--for after a little frost, each day and night in Alabama becomes warmer and warmer until the next frost.

Mammy Maria knew things by intuition, and hence her care to see that Helen looked especially pretty to-day.

There was no sun save where he streamed his ribbon rays from behind Sunset Rock, and threw them in pearl and ivory fan handles--white and gold and emerald, across the mackerel sky beyond.

Helen's silk skirt fitted her well, and one of those beautiful old ribbons, flowered in broad leaf and blossoms, wound twice around her slender waist and fell in broad streamers nearly to the ground. The bodice was cut V-shaped at the throat--the corsage being taken from one of her grandmother's made in 1822, and around her neck was a long chain of pure gold beads.

She was a type of Southern beauty obtained only after years of gentle dames and good breeding.

Her face was pure and fine, rather expressionless at her age, with a straight nose and rich fine lips. Her heavy hair was coiled gracefully about her head and fell in a longer coil, almost to her shoulders. She was tall with a sloping, angular form, the flat outlines of which were not yet filled with that fullness that time would soon add.

Her waist was well turned, her shoulders broad and slightly rounded, with that fullness of chest and breast which Nature, in her hour of generosity, gives only to the queenly woman. The curves of her sloping neck were perfect and carried not a wave-line of grossness.

It was as unsensual as a swan's.

Her gown, low cut, showed slight bony shoulders of cla.s.sic turn and whiteness, waiting only for time to ripen them to perfection; and the long curved lines which ran up to where the deep braid of her rich brown hair fell over them, together with the big joints of her arms and the long, fine profile of her face were forerunners of a beauty that is strong--like that of the thoroughbred brood mare after a year's run on blue-gra.s.s.

Her eyes were her only weakness. They were deep and hazel, and given to drooping too readily with that feigned modesty wherein vanity clothes boldness. Down in their depths, also, shone that bright, penetrating spark of a taper by which Folly lights, in woman, the lamp of ambition.

Her forehead was high--her whole bearing the unconscious one of a born lady.

Romance--girlish, idealized romance--was her's to-day. A good intentioned, but thoughtless romance--and therefore a weak one. And worse still, one which, coupled with ambition, might be led to ruin.

Down through the tangled box-planted walks she strolled, swinging her dainty hat of straw and old lace in her hand; on through the small gate that bound the first yard, then through the shaded lawn, unkept now and rank with weeds, but still holding the old trees which, in other days, looked down over the well kept lawn of gra.s.s beneath. Now gaunt hogs had rooted it up and the weeds had taken it, and the limbs of the old trees, falling, had been permitted to lie as they fell.

The first fence was down. She walked across the road and took a path leading through a cottonfield, which, protected on all sides by the wood, and being on the elevated plateau on which the residence stood, had escaped the severer frosts.

And so she stopped and stood amid it, waist high.

The very act of her stopping showed the romance of her nature.

She had seen the fields of cotton all her life, but she could never pa.s.s through one in bloom and in fruit--the white and purple blossoms, mingled with the green of the leaves and all banked over billows of snowy lint,--that she did not stop, thrilled with the same childhood feeling that came with the first reading of the Arabian Nights.

She had seen the field when it was first plowed, in the spring, and the small furrows were thrown up by the little turning shovels. Then, down the entire length of the ridge the cotton-planter had followed, its two little wheels straddling the row, while the small bull-tongue in front opened the shallow furrow for the linty, furry, white seeds to fall in and be covered immediately by the mold-board behind. She had seen it spring up from one end of the ridge to the other, like peas, then chopped out by the hoe, the plants left standing, each the width of the hoe apart. Then she had watched it all summer, growing under the Southern sun, throwing out limb above limb of beautiful delicate leaves, drawing their life and sustenance more from the air and sunshine above than from the dark soil beneath. Drawing it from the air and sunshine above, and therefore cotton, silken, snowy cotton--with the warmth of the sun in the skein of its sheen and the purity of heaven in the fleece of its fold.

Child of the air and the sky and sun; therefore, cotton--and not corn, which draws its life from the clay and mud and decay which comes from below.

She had seen the first cream-white bloom come.

She had found it one sweet day in July, early in the morning, on the tip end of the eldest branch of the cotton stalk nearest the ground.

It hung like the flower of the cream-white, pendulous abutilon, with pollen of yellow stars beaded in dew and throwing off a rich, delicate, aromatic odor, smelt nowhere on earth save in a cottonfield, damp with early dew and warmed by the rays of the rising sun. Cream-white it was in the morning, but when she had visited it again at nightfall, it hung purple in the twilight.

Then had she plucked it.

Through the hot month of July she had watched the boll grow and expand, until in August the lowest and oldest one next to the ground burst, and shone through the pale green leaves like the image of a star reflected in waters of green. And every morning new cream-white blooms formed to the very top, only to turn purple by twilight, while beneath, climbing higher and higher as the days went by and the cool nights came, star above star of cotton arose and stood twinkling in its sky of green and purple, above the dank manger where, in early spring, the little child-seed had lain.

To-day, touched by the great frost, the last purple bloom in the very tip-top seemed to look up yearningly and plead with the sun for one more day of life; that it, too, might add in time its snowy tribute to the bank of white which rolled entirely across the field, one big billow of cotton.

And in the midst of it the girl stood dreaming and wondering.

She plucked a purple blossom and pinned it to her breast. Then, with a deep sigh of saddened longing--that this should be the last--she walked on, daintily lifting her gown to avoid the damp stars of cotton, now fast gathering the night dew.

Across the field, a vine of wild grape ran over the top of two small hackberry trees, forming a natural umbrella-shaped arbor above two big moss-covered boulders which cropped out of the ground beneath, making two natural rustic seats. On one of these she sat down. Above her head glowed the impenetrable leaves of the grape-vine and the hackberry, and through them all hung the small purple bunches of wild grapes, waiting for the frost of affliction to convert into sugar the acid of their souls.

She was in plain view of Millwood, not a quarter of a mile away, and in the glow of the blazing red sunset, shining through its broken shutters and windows, she could see Mammy Maria busy about their dinner.

She looked up the road anxiously--then, with an impatient gesture she took the cotton bloom from her bosom and began to pluck the petals apart, one by one, saying aloud:

"One, I love--two, I love-- Three, I love, I say.

Four, I love with all my heart, And five, I cast away--"

She stopped short and sighed--"O, pshaw! that was Harry; why did I name it for him?"

Again she looked impatiently up the road and then went on:

"Six, he loves, seven, she loves, Eight, both love--"

She turned quickly. She heard the gallop of a saddle horse coming.

The rider sprang off, tied his horse and sat on the rock by her side.

She appeared not to notice him, and her piqued face was turned away petulantly.

It was a handsome boyish face that looked at her for a moment mischievously. Then he seized and kissed her despite her struggles.

For this she boxed his ears soundly and sat off on another rock.

"Harry Travis, you can't kiss me every time you want to, no matter if we are engaged."

It was a strong and rather a masculine voice, and it grated on one slightly, being scarcely expected from so beautiful a face. In it was power, self-will, ambition--but no tenderness nor that voice, soft and low, which "is an excellent thing in woman."

He laughed banteringly.

"Did you ever hear that love is not love if it is a minute late? Just see how long I have waited here for you?"

She sat down by his side and looked fondly up into his face, flushed with exercise and smiling half cynically. It was the same smile seen so often on the face of Richard Travis.

"Oh, say," he said, dolefully, "but don't start the hubby-come-to-taw-business on me until we are married. I was late because I had to steal the Gov'nor's new mare--isn't she a beauty?"

"Oh, say," he went on, "but that is a good one--he has bought her for somebody he is stuck on--can't say who--and I heard him tell Jim not to let anybody get on her back.

"Well,"--he laughed--"she certainly has a fine back. I stole her out and galloped right straight here.