Reynolds Bartram was greatly annoyed by the results of the several
interviews he had imposed upon the new assistant cobbler at Bruceton.
He had silenced, if not conquered, all the other religious
controversialists of the town, and found the weak spots in the armor of
many good people not given to controversy, whom he had beguiled into
talking on religious themes. Why he should want to converse at all upon
such subjects puzzled the people of the town, all of whom had known him
from boyhood as a member of a family so entirely satisfied with itself
that it never desired any aid from other people, to say nothing of
higher powers. Sometimes the Bartrams went to church for social
purposes, but always with an air of conferring a favor upon the power
in whose honor the edifice was erected.
But Bartram had good enough reasons for his sudden interest in
religion. He was in love with Eleanor Prency, and, after the manner of
his family regarding everything that interested them, he was
tremendously in earnest with his wooing. Like a judicious lawyer, he
had endeavored to make his way easier by prepossessing the girl's
parents in his favor; but when he began to pass the lines of pleasing
civility, within which he had long known the judge and his wife, he was
surprised to find an undercurrent of seriousness, the existence of
which in the Prency family he never had suspected. The judge appeared
to estimate everything from the stand-point of religion and
righteousness; so did his wife; so, though in less measure, did the
daughter.
Such nonsense, as the self-sufficient youth regarded it, was annoying.
To visit a pleasant family with the intention of making a general
conquest and find himself confronted by a line of obstacles which he
always had regarded as trifling, yet which he was unable to overcome,
and to be told that religion was a reality because it had changed Sam
Kimper, one of the most insignificant wretches in town, from a lazy,
thievish drunkard to an honest, sober, industrious citizen,--all this
was to make war upon Reynolds Bartram's constitutional opinions as to
the fitness of things.
A change of opinion somewhere was necessary: so it must occur in the
Prency family, and as soon as it could be brought about. This was
Bartram's first conclusion, after an hour of deep thought. He had
started upon a love-making enterprise, and he objected to a
complication of interests. If the Prencys chose to talk theology in the
privacy of their family life, they were welcome to do so, but he wished
none of it, and, unless his head had lost its cunning, he believed he
could devise a method of preventing further inflictions of it.
He convinced himself that his best method would be to discover and
expose the weakness, perhaps hypocrisy, of the wretched cobbler's
professions. Maybe Kimper meant all he said, and thought he believed
something which was essential to religion; but had not scores of other
common fellows in the town done likewise, during "revivals" and other
seasons of special religious effort, only to fall back into their old
ways soon afterwards? It was all a matter of birth and training, argued
Bartram to himself: the feeblest and most excitable intellects, the
world over, were the first to be impressed by whatever seemed
supernatural, whether it were called religion, spiritualism, mesmerism,
or anything else. It was merely a matter of mental excitement: the
stronger the attack, the sooner the relapse. Sam Kimper would lose
faith in his fancies sooner or later; it might be somewhat cruel to
hasten this result, but what was a little more or less of the life of
such a fellow, compared with the lifelong happiness of one of the
Bartrams,--the last of the family, and, as the young man fully
believed, the best? Should the cobbler's fall be hastened, Bartram
would make it right; indeed, he would volunteer in his defense the
first time he should again be arrested for fighting or stealing.
But his plan did not work. Day after day he had made excuses to drop
into the cobbler's shop and worry the ex-convict into a discussion, but
not once did he depart without a sense of defeat. As he said to
himself,--
"What can be done with a man who only believes, and won't argue or go
to the bottom of things? It's confoundedly ridiculous."
During his last visit, he said,--
"Sam, if the power you profess to believe in can really work such a
change as you think He has done in you, He ought to be able to do
almost anything else. Don't you think so?"
"That I do," said the cobbler, working away.
"You believe He has power to any extent, I suppose?"
"You're right again, Mr. Bartram."
"Of course you think he loves you dearly?"
"I'm ashamed to think it,--that any such bein' should love a
good-for-nothin' feller like me. But what else can I think, Mr.
Bartram, after all that's gone on in me, an' what He's said Himself?"
"Very well; then, if He is so powerful and cares so much for you, I
suppose He brings you more work and better prices than any one else in
your business?"
Sam did not reply to this at once, but after a while he said,--
"It amounts to the same thing: He makes me work harder than I ever
knowed how to do before. That brings me more money an' gives me a hope
of gettin' along better after a while."
"Oh, well, you have a family,--quite a large family, I believe. Does He
do as much for your wife and children as for you?"
"Whatever He's doin' for me is done for all of us, Mr. Bartram."
"Just so. But do you mean to say that what you're making enables you to
do for your family all that you should?"
The cobbler's face contracted, under the shade he wore over his eyes.
An evil smile overspread the lawyer's countenance. A little time
passed; the discussion was becoming sport,--such sport as the angler
feels when a wounded fish, a hundred times smaller than he, is
struggling and writhing in agony on his hook.
"You don't seem certain about it, Sam," the tormentor finally said.
"Mr. Bartram," the cobbler answered in a little while, "what He done
for me came about so quiet an' unknown like that I don't know what he
may be doin' for the wife an' children. God knows they need it; an', as
He came to look after them that was needy, I don't believe He can make
a mistake an' pass by my house."
"But I should think you would be sure about it. You're so sure about
your own affairs, you know,--what are called your spiritual affairs."
"I don't know, though," said Sam, simply.
"Have all the children got good shoes and stockings and warm clothes?
Winter is almost here, you know."
"No, sir, they haven't," Sam sharply replied.
The lawyer quickly caught the change of tone, and made haste to
explain:
"I didn't mean to disturb your peace of mind, Sam; I asked only in
order to learn how much foundation there was to your faith. They
haven't them, you say. How will they get them?"
"I'll earn 'em," said the cobbler, with a savage dash of his awl which
one of his fingers barely escaped.
"But suppose you can't; suppose trade slackens, or Larry takes a notion
to a new helper."
"Then I'll beg, rather than have 'em suffer."
"And if folks won't give?"
"Then my folks'll have to go without."
"In spite of your new, loving, strong friend,--your Saviour? If He's
all you take Him to be, aren't you sure He'll look out for your
family?"
"Mr. Bartram," said the cobbler, resting for a moment, and
straightening his weary back, "if I was in trouble,--been doin'
somethin' wrong, for instance, an' was hauled into court, an' had you
for my lawyer,--though of course I couldn't expect to have so smart a
man,--I'd ort to believe that you'd do everythin' that could be done
an' ort to be done, ortn't I?"
"Certainly, Sam, certainly," said the lawyer, with his customary
professional look of assurance.
"But I wouldn't know all about it in advance, would I? Even if you was
to tell me all you meant to do an' how you'd do it, I couldn't take it
in. If I could, I'd be just as smart as you,--the idee!--an' wouldn't
need you at all."
Both suppositions were so wildly improbable that the lawyer indulged in
a sarcastic smile.
"Well, then," continued Sam, "here's somebody helpin' me more than any
man ever could,--somebody that's smarter than any lawyer livin'. I
s'pose you'll own up to that?"
The idea that any being, natural or supernatural, could be wiser than
one of the Bartrams was not pleasing to the lawyer, when suggested so
abruptly, but it was conceded, after a moment of thought, by a
condescending nod of the head.
"Then," Sam continued, "how am I goin' to be supposed to know all that
He's doin' an' not doin' for me, an' when He's goin' to do somethin'
else, or whether He's goin' to do it at all. If I was as smart as a
lawyer, I wouldn't need one; if I was as smart an' good as Him that's
lookin' after me, there wouldn't need to be any God or Saviour, would
there?"
"Then you are satisfied He is God and Saviour, eh? Some wiser men have
believed differently."
"I only know what I was told an' what I've read for myself, sir. The
man that put me up to it told me not to try to believe everythin' that
everybody else did, but to believe as much as I could an' live up to
it, bein' extra particular about the livin' up."
"But you ought to know something--have some distinct idea--as to whom
you're believing in. What do you know about Him, after all?"
"I know," said the cobbler, "just what I've told you before, when
you've asked me the same question. I know He was once in the world, an'
didn't do anybody any harm, an' done a good deal of good, an' taught
folks to do right an' how to do it. Everybody believes that, don't
they?"
"I suppose it's safe to admit that much."
"Well, sir, I'm tryin' to foller Him an' learn of Him. I'm believin' in
Him just like I believe in old Andrew Jackson."
"Is that all?"
"That's enough,--as far as I've got. You're a good deal smarter than I
be, sir: won't you tell me how to go further?"
The lawyer shook his head and departed. The cobbler fell on his knees
and buried his face in his hands. The lawyer, chancing to look in the
window, saw the movement; then he drew his hat down over his eyes and
sauntered off.