Little by little the Kimper family was made more comfortable and put in
better condition for the coming winter. Broken window-panes were
mended, though frequently only with bits of board closely wedged,
cracks in the wall were stuffed with dried grass and plastered with
mud, and clean straw replaced the dirty substitutes for beds and
mattresses. The head of the family worked hard at the cobbler's shop,
yet did not cease working when he reached home.
Yet week by week Sam looked better than in old times. Conrad Weitz, the
manager of the most popular drinking-place in the town, predicted that
there would soon have to be a change for the worse.
"He ain't drinkin' noding," said Conrad; "and a feller dat's been
drinkin' all his life can't get along midout it afterwards."
The vender of stimulants said this to Deacon Quickset, for the two men
were incessantly arguing over the liquor question, and never lost an
opportunity of bringing up a new point about it when they met by any
chance. Weitz was a public-spirited and intelligent citizen, and the
deacon believed that if his opinions about the moral nature of his
business could be changed there would be a great gain for the
temperance cause in Bruceton. Besides, Weitz was a well-to-do man and
saved a great deal of money, some of which the deacon had invested for
him, and all of which the deacon desired to handle, for he was a man of
many enterprises, and, like most other men of the kind, always had more
ways than money.
"You're all wrong about that, Weitz," said the deacon, sitting upon an
empty beer-barrel in front of the liquor-store. The deacon was
accustomed to say, with a grim smile, that he was one of the very few
men in business whose reputation would allow him to sit upon a
beer-barrel without giving rise to any suspicions.
"Deacon," said the liquor-dealer, "you hadn't ought to talk about vat
you don't understand. How long since you stopped drinkin'?"
"Now, see here, Weitz, what do you mean, to ask me a question like
that? You ought to know well enough that I never drank in my life. If I
haven't told you so again and again, I should think other people could
have done it."
"Never drank anyding, eh? never in your life? Vell, vell!" said the
proprietor, caressing the beer-shop cat for a moment, "dat explains a
good many dings about you dat I never understood before. I tell you vat
I tink, deacon: if you'd been brought up in my country, mit all de
brains you've got in your head, and yoost could'a'had a lot of German
beer put inside of you besides, you'd been about de finest man in de
United States now. Den, besides dat, of course, you ought to belong to
my shurch, too."
"Your church!" sneered the deacon.
"Come, now, deacon," said the shopkeeper, abruptly dropping the cat,
"you can turn up your nose at my ideas all you vant, but you mustn't
turn it up at my shurch. I don't do dat to you, and don't you forget
it, eider."
"That's all right, Conrad; I didn't mean to do it. Of course, every man
will believe the way he is brought up. But I hope you won't go to
telling anybody else in this town that that poor convict ought to be
drinking and will have to do it again; because it might get to his
ears, you know, and if it did it might break him down, and then he'd go
to lying and stealing and loafing and fighting again, and there is no
knowing whose chicken-coops and wood-piles would have to suffer. Yours
might be one of the first of the lot."
"Vell," said the German, "is dat de vay you look at the question?"
"It's a fact, isn't it?"
"Yes, I s'pose it is. But I didn't tink dat vas de first ding for a man
like you to tink about ven you vas talkin' about a feller dat has broke
off all his bad habits and is tryin' to be yoost right."
The deacon felt awkward for a moment. He did not like to be reminded of
any of his faults by a neighbor, much less by one who belonged to a
church so widely different from his own.
"Why, of course not," said he; "of course, I am thinking about the
man's eternal salvation and about his future; but, to tell you the
truth, I haven't got much faith in his professions. A man that don't
get any further than he has done, and that don't seem willing to learn
from them that's his betters and has gone into such things a good deal
deeper than he has, ain't very likely to hold out. And the last
condition of that man will be worse than the first."
"Vell," said the shop-keeper, "a good deal depends on dat. You vas a
member of von shurch and I vas a member of anoder, deacon, and we can
talk togeder like brudders,--a little vay, anyhow. Now, I tell you vat
it is: dere's a good many men in dis town dat's behavin' very decent
dat don't belong to any shurch at all, and you'd yoost as lief discount
deir notes as you vould any oder man's, and you'd go into business mit
dem yoost as qvick, and you'd take deir word for anyding yoost as
qvick. If dat's de vay mit dem men, vy isn't it true dat Sam Kimper is
a good deal better off mit vat he's got dan he vould be midout anyding
at all in de vay of religion?"
"Oh, Conrad," said the deacon, "you were brought up in darkness and
error! You don't understand. I've got that Sam Kimper on my mind so
much that I'm just keeping our minister after him all the time."
"Vell," said the shopkeeper, "I tell you vat I'll do, deacon. You let
your minister do all he can mit him, and ven he finds he can't do
noding yoost you come an' tell me, an' den I'll send our priest after
him. He's a good man. You can't say noding against him; you know you
can't. Neider can anybody else in dis town."
"No," said the deacon, "I don't mind saying, for I've said it a good
many times before, that if Father Black belonged to my church, instead
of the one he does, I couldn't find a single thing to say or think
against him. He is certainly a very good man, and doing a great deal of
good among a lot of people that I didn't suppose ever could be kept out
of mischief; but--"
"But he didn't keep 'em out of mischief in your vay. Dat's de trouble,
isn't it? Come now, own up, like an honest man, and I von't go tell
nobody else about vat you say. Own up, now; isn't dat de trouble? Dem
people dat you talk about as behavin' demselves is a good deal better
dan some dat's smarter and has got more money an' more advantages an'
more friends, an' dey don't make nobody any trouble, an' yet you ain't
satisfied mit 'em; an' mit deir shurch, yoost because dey don't do
everyding your vay."
"Conrad," said the deacon, putting on a lofty air, "you're a good man
to do business with; you're a respectable citizen, except that you sell
rum. But there's some things you can't understand, and it's no use for
me to waste time talking to you about them. If your mind was clearer,
if it had been enlightened in the true way, you would not be selling
rum, for instance."
"Vouldn't I, dough? Vell, I yoost vant you to understand dere's no
better business in dis town dan I am a-doin' right in dis shop. But if
I didn't tink it vas right, I vouldn't be doin' it at all. You talk in
dis country as if de rum-sellers vas de very vorst people in de vorld.
I vant you to understand over in my country, dat's a good deal older
dan dis, and vere de peoples has had a good deal more experience, a man
don't get no right to sell liquor unless he is a first-class citizen in
every respect. It's a sign dat a man is honest an' sensible an' knows
how to manage oder men, if he gets de right to sell liquor. Dat's more
dan you can say about _your_ business, Deacon Quickset. Any rascal can
go in de business dat you is doin' now."
"Well," said the deacon, beginning to feel that he was on dangerous
ground, "this wasn't what we were talking about, anyhow. We began to
talk about Sam Kimper; and I want you to promise me that you won't talk
to anybody else about his needing liquor, and about his breaking down
in the course of time unless he gets it."
"Of course I von't talk about it, deacon. Do you s'pose I'm a fool? Do
you s'pose I vant to see people get drunk? No, sir; people dat gets
drunk don't come to my shop. Dey know dey couldn't get anyding if dey
did."
Meanwhile Sam Kimper went on, after the humble manner in which he had
begun, to try to bring his family to his new standard of
respectability. He introduced family prayers, much to the disgust of
his son Tom and the amusement of his daughter Mary. The privacy of
family affairs was not entirely respected by the Kimper family, for Sam
soon heard remarks from street loafers, as he passed along, which
indicated that the devotional exercises of the family had been
reported, evidently by his own children, and he heard quotations from
some of his weak and halting prayers pass from mouth to mouth and
elicit peals of coarse laughter.
Nevertheless he found some encouragement. His son Tom was not quite so
much of a cub at home as he had been, and actually took to trying, in a
desultory way, to find work, although his father's offer to teach him
the trade which had been learned in the penitentiary was declined very
sharply and without any thanks whatever. Billy, the younger boy, had an
affectionate streak in his nature, which his father succeeded in
touching to such an extent that complaints of Billy's truancy were
nowhere near so numerous as they had been just after his father's
return. Mary, the youngest daughter, was a less promising subject. Her
precocity was of a very unpleasant order, and caused her father a great
deal of annoyance.
When everything else failed him, Sam had the baby for consolation. The
little wretch had been so utterly uncared for since its appearance that
it seemed surprised for some time by its father's demonstrations of
affection, but finally the meaning of this seemed made known to it,
probably in the way the same meanings are translated to babies
everywhere else, and from being a forlorn and fretful child it
gradually became so cheerful that its own mother began to display some
interest in it and make a plaything of it, to her own manifest
advantage.
But Jane, the elder daughter, who was a woman in stature and already
knew more of the world than is good for women in general, was a
constant source of anxiety to Sam. Many a night the unhappy father
lingered in the neighborhood of the hotel, seeking for an opportunity
to see his daughter and talk with her; not that he had much to say, but
that he hoped by his presence to keep more congenial company away from
her. When he heard any village gossip in the house, he always could
trace it to his daughter Jane. Whenever Mary broke out with some new
and wild expression of longing, he understood who put it into her mind.
Whenever his wife complained that she was not so well dressed as some
other women whose husbands were plain workmen, and expressed a wish for
some tawdry bit of finery, Sam could trace the desire, by very little
questioning, back to his daughter Jane.
He prayed about it, thought about it, groaned over it, wept over it,
and still saw no means within his power to bring the girl back to an
interest in her family and to bring her up so that she should not
disgrace the name which he was trying to rehabilitate. But the more
thought and effort he gave to the subject, the less seemed his chance
of success.