The Bishop of Cottontown Part 84

Travis puffed at his cigar as he said:

"Don't study me too closely. Things have happened--have happened, I tell you--my G.o.d! we are all double--that is if we are anything--two halves to us--and my half--my other half, got lost till the other night and left this aching, pitiful, womanly thing behind, that bleeds to the touch and has tears. Why, man, I am either an angel, a devil, or both. Don't you go there and touch that little child, nor thrust your d.a.m.ned moral Caliban monstrosity into that sweet isle, nor break up with your seared conscience the glory of that unselfish act. If you do I'll kill you, Jud Carpenter--I'll kill you!"

Jud turned and walked to the water bucket, took a drink and squirted it through his teeth.

He was working for thinking time: "He's crazy--he's sho' crazy--" he said to himself. Coming back, he said:

"Pardon me, Mr. Travis--but the oldes' gyrl--what--what about her, you know?"

"She's mine, isn't she? I've won her--outgeneraled the others--by brains and courage. She should belong to my harem--to my band--as the stallion of the plains when he beats off with tooth and hoof and neck of thunder his rival, and takes his mares."

Jud nodded, looking at him quizzically.

"Well, what about it?" asked Travis.

"Nothin'--only this"--then he lowered his voice as he came nearer--"the ole 'oman will be after her in an hour--an' she'll take her--tell her all. Maybe you'll see somethin' to remind you of Jesus Christ in that."

Travis smiled.

"Well," went on Jud, "you'd better take her now--while the whole thing has played into yo' hands; but she--the oldes' gyrl--she don't know the ole 'oman's come back an' made her a home; that her father is sober an' there with her little sister, that Clay is away an'

ain't deserted her. She don't know anything, an' when you set her out in that empty house, deserted, her folks all deserted her, as she'll think, don't you know she'll go to the end of the worl' with you?"

"Well?" asked Travis as he smiled calmly.

"Well, take her and thank Jud Carpenter for the Queen of the Valley--eh?" and he laughed and tried to nudge Travis familiarly, but the latter moved away.

"I'll take her," at last he said.

"She'll go to The Gaffs with you"--went on Jud. "There she's safe.

Then to-night you can drive her to the train at Lenox, as we told Biggers."

He came over and whispered in Travis's ear.

"That worked out beautifully," said Travis after a while, "but I'll not trust her to you or to Charley Biggers. I'll take her myself--she's mine--Richard Travis's--mine--mine! I who have been buffeted and abused by Fate, given all on earth I do not want, and denied the one thing I'd die for; I'll show them who they are up against. I'll take her, and they may talk and rave and shoot and be d.a.m.ned!"

His old bitterness was returning. His face flushed:

"That's the way you love to hear me talk, isn't it--to go on and say I'll take her and do as I please with her, and if it pleases me to marry her I'll set her up over them all--heh?"

Jud nodded.

"That's one of me," said Travis--"the old one. This is the new." And he opened the back of his watch where a tiny lock of Alice Westmore's auburn hair lay: "Oh, if I were only worthy to kiss it!"

He walked into the mill and down to the little room where Helen sat.

He stood a while at the door and watched her--the poise of the beautiful head, the cheeks flushed with the good working blood that now flowed through them, the hair falling with slight disorder, a stray lock of it dashed across her forehead and setting off the rest of it, darker and deeper, as a cloudlet, inlaid with gold, the sunset of her cheeks.

His were the eyes of a connoisseur when it came to women, and as he looked he knew that every line of her was faultless; the hands slender and beautifully high-born; the fingers tapering with that artistic slope of the tips, all so plainly visible now that they were at work. One foot was thrust out, slender with curved and high instep. He flushed with pride of her--his eyes brightened and he smiled in the old ironical way, a smile of dare-doing, of victory.

He walked in briskly and with a business-like, forward alertness. She looked up, paled, then flushed.

"Oh, I was hoping so you had forgotten," she said tremblingly.

He smiled kindly: "I never forget."

She put up one hand to her cheek and rested her head on it a moment in thought.

He came up and stood deferentially by her side, looking down on her, on her beautiful head. She half crouched, expecting to hear something banteringly complimentary; bold, commonplace--to feel even the touch of his sensual hand on her hair, on her cheek and _My Queen--my Queen!_

After a while she looked up, surprised. The excitement in her eyes--the half-doubting--half-yielding fight there, of ambition, and doubt, and the stubborn wrong of it all, of her hard lot and bitter life, of the hidden splendor that might lie beyond, and yet the terrible doubt, the fear that it might end in a living death--these, fighting there, lit up her eyes as candles at an altar of love. Then the very difference of his att.i.tude, as he stood there, struck her,--the beautiful dignity of his face, his smile. She saw in an instant that sensualism had vanished--there was something spiritual which she had never seen before. A wave of trust, in her utter helplessness, a feeling of respect, of admiration, swept over her.

She arose quickly, wondering at her own decision.

He bowed low, and there was a ringing sweetness in his voice as he said: "I have come for you, Helen--if you wish to go."

"I will go, Richard Travis, for I know now you will do me no harm."

"Do you think you could learn to love me?"

She met his eyes steadily, bravely: "That was never in the bargain.

That is another thing. This is barter and trade--the last ditch rather than starvation, death. This is the surrender of the earthen fort, the other the glory of the ladder leading to the skies.

Understand me, you have not asked for that--it is with me and G.o.d, who made me and gave it. Let it stay there and go back to him. You offer me bread"--

"But may it not turn into a stone, an exquisite, pure diamond?" he asked.

She looked at him sadly. She shook her head.

"Diamonds are not made in a day."

The light Jud Carpenter saw flashed in his eyes: "I have read of one somewhere who turned water into wine--and that was as difficult."

"If--if--" she said gently--"if you had always been this--if you would always be this"--

"A woman knows a man as a rose knows light," he said simply--"as a star knows the sun. But we men--being the sun and the star, we are blinded by our own light. Come, you may trust me, Sweet Rose."

She put her hand in his. He took it half way to his mouth.

"Don't," she said--"please--that is the old way."

He lowered it gently, reverently, and they walked out.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE DYING LION

"Lily has been taken home," he said as she walked out with him. "She is safe and will be cared for--so will be your father. I will explain it to you as we drive to Millwood."