The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills
John Stuart Mill · en
Her face did not seem to be a separate thing--apart--as with most
women. For there are women whose hair is one thing and whose face is
another. The hair is beautiful, pure, refined. The face beautiful,
merely. The hair decorous, quiet, unadorned and debauched not by
powder and paint, stands aloof as Desdemona, Ophelia or Rosalind. The
face, brazen, with a sharp-tongued, vulgar queen of a thing in its
center, on a throne, surrounded by perfumed nymphs, under the sensual
glare of two rose-colored lamps, sits and holds a Du Barry court.
They are neighbors, but not friends, and they live in the same
sphere, held together only by the law of gravity which holds to one
spot of earth the rose and the ragwort. And the hair, like the rose,
in all the purity of its own rich sweetness, all the naturalness of
its soul, sits and looks down upon the face as a queen would over the
painted yellow thing thrust by the law of life into her presence.
But the face of Alice Westmore was companion to her hair. The
firelight fell on it; and while the glow from the lamp fell on her
hair in sweet twilight shadows of good night, the rosy, purple beams
of the cheerful firelight lit up her face with the sweet glory of a
perpetual good morning.
Travis stood looking at her forgetful of all else. His lips were
firmly set, as of a strong mind looking on its life-dream, the quarry
of his hunter-soul all but in his grasp. Flashes of hope and little
twists of fear were there; then, as he looked again, she raised, half
timidly, her face as a Madonna asking for a blessing; and around his,
crept in the smile which told of hope long deferred.
Selfish, impure, ambitious, forceful and masterful as he was, he
stood hopeless and hungry-hearted before this pure woman. She had
been the dream of his life--all times--always--since he could
remember.
To own her--to win her!
As he looked up, the hardness of his face attracted even Mrs.
Westmore, smiling by his side at the scene before her. She looked up
at Travis, but when she saw his face the smile went out of hers. It
changed to fear.
All the other passions in his face had settled into one cruel cynical
smile around his mouth--a smile of winning or of death.
For the first time in her life she feared Richard Travis.
"I must go now," said Alice Westmore to the old men--"but I'll sing
you a verse or two."
The overseer leaned back in his chair. Uncle Bisco stooped forward,
his chin resting on his hickory staff.
And then like the clear notes of a spring, dripping drop by drop with
a lengthening cadence into the covered pool of a rock-lined basin,
came a simple Sunday School song the two old men loved so well.
There were tears in the old negro's eyes when she had finished. Then
he sobbed like a child.
Alice Westmore arose to go.
"Now, Bishop--" she smiled at the overseer--"don't keep Uncle Bisco up
all night talking about the war, and if you don't come by the house and
chat with mamma and me awhile, we'll be jealous."