EDWARD CONWAY
Across the hill the old man rode to Millwood, and as he rode his head was bent forward in troubled thought.
He had heard that Edward Conway had come to the sorest need—even to where he would place his daughters in the mill. None knew better than Hillard Watts what this would mean socially for the granddaughters of Governor Conway.
Besides, the old preacher had begun to hate the mill and its infamous system of child labor with a hatred born of righteousness. Every month he saw its degradation, its slavery, its death.
He preached, he talked against it. He began to be pointed out as the man who was against the mill. Ominous rumors had come to his ears, and threats. It was whispered to him that he had better be silent, and some of the people he preached to—some of those who had children in the mill and were supported in their laziness by the life blood of their little ones—these were his bitterest enemies.
To-day, the drunken proprietor of Millwood sat in his accustomed place on the front balcony, his cob-pipe in his mouth and ruin all around him.
Like others, he had a great respect for the Bishop—a man who had been both his own and his father's friend. Often as a lad he had hunted, fished, and trapped with the preacher-overseer, who lived near his father's plantation. He had broken all of the stubborn colts in the overseer's care; he had ridden them even in some of their fiercest, hardest races, and he had felt the thrill of victory at the wire and known the great pride which comes to one who knows he has the confidence of a brave and honest man.
The old trainer's influence over Edward Conway had always been great.
To-day, as he saw the Bishop ride up, he thought of his boyhood days, and of Tom Travis. How often had they gone with the old man hunting and fishing! How he reverenced the memory of his gentleness and kindness!
The greatest desire of Hillard Watts had been to reform Edward Conway. He had prayed for him, worked for him. In spite of his drunkenness the old man believed in him.
“God'll save him yet,” he would say. “I've prayed for it an' I kno' it—tho' it may be by the crushing of him. Some men repent to God's smile, some to His frown, and some to His fist. I'm afraid it will take a blow to save Ned, po' boy.”
For Ned was always a boy to him.
Conway was drunker than usual to-day. Things grew worse daily, and he drank deeper.
It is one of the strangest curses of whiskey that as it daily drags a man down, deeper and deeper, it makes him believe he must cling to his Red God the closer.
He met the old overseer cordially, in a half drunken endeavor to be natural. The old man glanced sadly up at the bloated, boastful face, and thought of the beautiful one it once had been. He thought of the fine, brilliant mind and marveled that with ten years of drunkenness it still retained its strength. And the Bishop remembered that in spite of his drinking no one had ever accused Edward Conway of doing a dishonorable thing. “How strong is that man's character rooted for good,” he thought, “when even whiskey cannot undermine it.”
“Where are the babies, Ned?” he asked, after he was seated.
The father called and the two girls came running out.
The old man was struck with the developing beauty of Helen—he had not seen her for a year. Lily hunted in his pockets for candy, as she had always done—and found it—and Helen—though eighteen and grown, sat thoughtful and sad, on a stool by his side.
The old man did not wonder at her sadness.
“Ned,” he said, as he stroked Helen's hand, “this girl looks mo' like her mother every day, an' you know she was the handsomest woman that ever was raised in the Valley.”
Conway took his pipe out of his mouth. He dropped his head and looked toward the distant blue hills. What Memory and Remorse were whispering to him the old man could only guess. Silently—nodding—he sat and looked and spoke not.
“She ain't gwineter be a bit prettier than my little Lil, when she gits grown,” said a voice behind them.
It was Mammy Maria who, as usual, having dressed the little girl as daintily as she could, stood nearby to see that no harm befell her.
“Wal, Aunt Maria,” drawled the Bishop. “Whar did you come from? I declar' it looks like ole times to see you agin'.”
There is something peculiar in this, that those unlettered, having once associated closely with negroes, drop into their dialect when speaking to them. Perhaps it may be explained by some law of language—some rule of euphony, now unknown. The Bishop unconsciously did this; and, from dialect alone, one could not tell which was white and which was black.
Aunt Maria had always been very religious, and the Bishop arose and shook her hand gravely.
“Pow'ful glad to see you,” said the old woman.
“How's religion—Aunt Maria,” he asked.
“Mighty po'ly—mighty po'ly”—she sighed. “It looks lak the Cedars of Lebanon is dwarfed to the scrub pine. The old time religin' is passin' away, an' I'm all that's lef' of Zion.”
The Bishop smiled.
“Yes, you see befo' you all that's lef' of Zion. I'se been longin' to see you an' have a talk with you—thinkin' maybe you cud he'p me out. You kno' me and you is Hard-shells.”
The Bishop nodded.
“We 'blieves in repentince an' fallin' from grace, an' backslidin' an' all that,” she went on. “Well, they've lopped them good ole things off one by one an' they don't 'bleeve in nothin' now but jes' jin'in'. They think jes' jin'in' fixes 'em—that it gives 'em a free pass into the pearly gates. So of all ole Zion Church up at the hill, sah, they've jes' jined an' jined around, fust one church an' then another, till of all the ole Zion Church that me an' you loved so much, they ain't none lef' but Parson Shadrack, the preacher, sister Tilly, an' me—We wus Zion.”
“Pow'ful bad, pow'ful bad,” said the Bishop—“and you three made Zion.”
“We wus,” said Aunt Maria, sadly—“but now there ain't but one lef'. I'm Zion. It's t'arrable, but it's true. As it wus in the days of Lot, so it is to-day in Sodom.”
“Why, how did that happen?” asked the Bishop.
Aunt Maria's eyes kindled: “It's t'arrable, but it's true—last week Parson Shadrack deserts his own wife an' runs off with Sis Tilly. It looked lak he mouter tuck me, too, an' kept the fold together as Abraham did when he went into the Land of the Philistines. But thank God, if I am all that's lef', one thing is mighty consolin'—I can have a meetin' of Zion wherever I is. If I sets down in a cheer to meditate I sez to myself—'Be keerful, Maria, for the church is in session.' When I drink, it is communion—when I bathes, it is baptism, when I walks, I sez to myself: 'Keep a straight gait, Maria, you are carryin' the tabbernackle of all goodness.' Aunt Tilly got the preacher, but thank God, I got Zion.”
“But I mus' go. Come on, Lily,” she said to the little girl,—“let ole Zion fix up yo' curls.”
She took her charge and curtsied out, and the Bishop knew she would die either for Zion or the little girl.
The old man sat thinking—Helen had gone in and was practising a love song.
“Ned,” said the Bishop, “I tell you a man ain't altogether friendless when he's got in his home a creature as faithful as she is. She'd die for that child. That one ole faithful 'oman makes me feel like liftin' my hat to the whole nigger race. I tell you when I get to heaven an' fail to see ole Mammy settin' around the River of Life, I'll think somethin' is wrong.”
The Bishop was silent a while, and then he asked: “Ned, it can't be true that you are goin' to put them girls in the factory?”
“It's all I can do,” said Conway, surlily—“I'll be turned out of home soon—out in the public road. Everything I've got has been sold. I've no'where to go, an' but for Carpenter's offer from the Company of the cottage, I'd not have even a home for them. The only condition I could go on was that—”
“That you sell your daughters into slavery,” said the Bishop quietly.
“You don't seem to think it hurts your's,” said Conway bluntly.
“If I had my way they'd not work there a day,”—the old man replied hastily. “But it's different with me, an' you know it. My people take to it naturally. I am a po' white, an underling by breedin' an' birth, an' if my people build, they must build up. But you—you are tearing down when you do that. Po' as I am, I'd rather starve than to see little children worked to death in that trap, but Tabitha sees it different, and she is the one bein' in the world I don't cross—the General”—he smiled—“she don't understand, she's built different.”
He was silent a while. Then he said: “I am old an' have nothin'.”
He stopped again. He did not say that what little he did have went to the poor and the sorrow-stricken of the neighborhood. He did not add that in his home, besides its poverty and hardness, he faced daily the problem of far greater things.
“If I only had my health,” said Conway, “but this cursed rheumatism!”
“Some of us has been so used to benefits,” said the old man, “that it's only when they've withdrawn that we miss 'em. We're always ready to blame God for what we lose, but fail to remember what He gives us. We kno' what diseases an' misfortunes we have had, we never know, by God's mercy, what we have escaped. Death is around us daily—in the very air we breathe—and yet we live.
“I'll talk square with you, Ned—though you may hate me for it. Every misfortune you have, from rheumatism to loss of property, is due to whiskey. Let it alone. Be a man. There's greatness in you yet. You'd have no chance if you was a scrub. But no man can estimate the value of good blood in man or hoss—it's the unknown quantity that makes him ready to come again. For do the best we can, at last we're in the hands of God an' our pedigree.”
“Do you think I've got a show yet?” asked Conway, looking up.
“Do I? Every man has a chance who trusts God an' prays. You can't down that man. Your people were men—brave an' honest men. They conquered themselves first, an' all this fair valley afterwards. They overcame greater obstacles than you ever had, an' in bringin' you into the world they gave you, by the very laws of heredity, the power to overcome, too. Why do you grasp at the shadow an' shy at the form? You keep these hound dogs here, because your father rode to hounds. But he rode for pleasure, in the lap of plenty, that he had made by hard licks. You ride, from habit, in poverty. He rode his hobbies—it was all right. Your hobbies ride you. He fought chickens for an hour's pastime, in the fullness of the red blood of life. You fight them for the blood of the thing—as the bred-out Spaniards fight bulls. He took his cocktails as a gentleman—you as a drunkard.”
The old man was excited, indignant, fearless.
Conway looked at him in wonder akin to fear. Even as the idolaters of old looked at Jeremiah and Isaiah.
“Why—why is it”—went on the old man earnestly, rising and shaking his finger ominously—“that two generations of cocktails will breed cock-fighters, and two generations of whiskey will breed a scrub? Do you know where you'll end? In bein' a scrub? No, no—you will be dead an' the worms will have et you—but”—he pointed to the house—“you are fixin' to make scrubs of them—they will breed back.
“Go back to the plough—quit this whiskey and be the man your people was. If you do not,” he said rising to go—“God will crush you—not kill you, but mangle you in the killin'.”
“He has done that already,” said Conway bitterly. “He has turned the back of His hand on me.”
“Not yet”—said the Bishop—“but it will fall and fall there.” He pointed to Helen, whose queenly head could be seen in the old parlor as she trummed out a sad love song.
Conway blanched and his hand shook. He felt a nameless fear—never felt before. He looked around, but the old man was gone. Afterwards, as he remembered that afternoon, he wondered if, grown as the old man had in faith, God had not also endowed him with the gift of prophecy.