Job Slip went down to the water, and it was dark. He walked apart,
and took himself into that solitary place on the wharves which he
remembered, where he had knelt in the rain, one night, and said,
“God,” for Mr. Bayard.
A mackerel keg was there--the same one, perhaps; he overturned it,
and sat down, and tried to understand. Job had not been able to
understand since Mr. Bayard was hurt.
Thought came to him slowly, and with pain like that caused by the
return of congested blood to its channels.
“He is dead,” said Job. “Lord A’mighty, he ain’t alive. Seems I
couldn’t get it into my head. They’ve killed him. He’s goin’ to be
buried.”
Job clenched his gnarled hands together, and shook them at the sky;
then they dropped.
“Seems like shakin’ fists at _him_,” thought Job. “I ain’t a-goin’
to. S’posen he’s up yander. That’s the idee. Lord A’mighty, what do
you mean by it? You didn’t stop to think of us reformed men, did
you, when you let this happen?... For Christ’s sake. Amen,” added
Job, under the impression that he had been giving utterance to a
prayer.
“Mr. Bayard?” called Job aloud. He slipped off the keg and got
upon his knees. As he changed his position, the fisherman vaguely
noticed the headlight of the schooner on which he was to have
taken his trip, that night. “There goes the Tilly E. Salt,” said
Job, interrupting himself; “she’s got to weigh without me, this
time. I’m guard of honor for the--the--I can’t _say_ it!” groaned
Job. “It’s oncredible him bein’ in a--him put in a--Lord, he’s the
livin’est man I ever set my eyes on; he CAN’T die!... Mr. Bayard?
_Mr. Bayard, sir?_”
Job paused, as if he expected to be answered. The water dashed
loudly against the old pier. The distant cry of the buoy came
over the harbor. The splash of retreating oars sounded faintly
somewhere, through the dark.
“He’s livin’ along,” said Job, after some thought. “He can’t
get fur out of Angel Alley. He wouldn’t be happy. He’d miss us,
someways; he’s so used to us; he’s hoverin’ in them hymn-toons and
that gymnasium he set so much by. I’ll bet he is. He’s lingerin’
in us poor devils he’s spent three year makin’ men of.... He’s
a-livin’ _here_.”
Job struck his own broad breast, and then he struck it again. A
shudder passed over his big frame; and then came the storm. He had
not wept before, since Mr. Bayard died. The paroxysm wearied and
weakened him, and it was the piteous fact that these were the next
words which passed the lips of the half-healed drunkard.
“God A’mighty, if I only had a drink!”
* * * * *
Two hours afterwards, Job Slip came up the wharves; he came as he
went, alone; he walked with a steady step; he held his head high in
the dark. He whispered as he walked:--
“I didn’t--no, I didn’t do it.... Bein’ left so--I’ve alwers had
you, sir, before, you know. It makes a sight o’ difference when a
man hain’t anybody but God. He’s a kinder stranger. I didn’t know,
one spell there--but I was goin’ under.... You won’t desert a
fellar, will you--yander? I’ll do you credit, sir, see if I don’t.
I won’t disgrace you, ----d if I will!”
At that moment Job shied suddenly, like a horse, clear from one
side of the wharf to the other. He cried aloud,--
“Why, why, what’s here? What’s got me?” Fingers touched him, but
they were of flesh; little fingers, but they were warm, and curled
confidingly in Job’s big hand.
“Joey? _You?_ Little Joey! Why, father’s sonny boy! You come
just in the right time, Joey. I was kinder lonesome. I miss the
minister. I ain’t--just feelin’ right.”
“Fa--ther,” said Joey pleasantly; “Marm said to find you, for she
said she fought you’d need you little boy.”
“And so I do, my son, and so I do!” cried Job.
With Joey’s little fingers clasped in his, Job walked up Angel
Alley, past the doors of the dens that were closed, and the doors
that were open still; and if the ghost of the dear, dead minister
had swept visibly before Job and Joey, no man could have tempted or
disturbed them less.
* * * * *
In his own chapel, in Angel Alley, Bayard lay in state. It was
such state as the kings of the earth might envy, and its warriors
and its statesmen and its poets do not know. It was said that his
was the happiest dead face that ever rebuked the sadness of the
living; and the fairest that they who wept for him had ever seen.
Death had not marred his noble beauty; and in death or life there
was no comelier man. All the city thronged to show him reverence
who had lived among them baffled, doubted, and sick at heart; and
it appeared that those who had done the least for him then, would
have done most for him now: the people of ease; the imitators; the
conformers, and the church members who never questioned their own
creeds or methods; the summer strangers playing at life upon the
harbor coast, and visitors from a distance where the preacher had
his fame.
But when these superior and respectable persons crowded to give
their tardy tribute to him, they were told that there was no room
for them in the chapel; nay, they could scarcely find footing in
the dust of Angel Alley. For they were held back by the sacred
rights of “nearest mourners”; and Bayard’s mourners claimed him. It
was said that hundreds of sunburnt men had stood waiting in the
street since midnight for the opening of the doors, and the chance
to enter. Then, there had passed up the steps of Christlove Chapel
the great mass of the neglected and the poor, the simple and the
sodden and the heart-broken, and those who had no friends but only
that one man; and God had taken him. The fishermen of Windover, and
the poor girls, the widows of Windover, and her orphaned children,
the homeless, foreign sailors, and the discontented laborers from
the wharves poured in; and the press was great.
He lay among them regally, wrapped in his purple pall. And he and
Helen knew that her bridal roses withered forever out of mortal
sight upon his breast. But she had given him up at this last hour
to his people; he was theirs, and they were his, and what they
willed they did for him, and she did not gainsay them. They covered
him with their wild flowers, after the fashion of the Cape; and
clumsy sailors brought big, hothouse bouquets flaring on wires and
splashed with tears, “to give the minister.” And his dead heart,
like his living one, was found large enough to hold them all.
One poor girl brought no flowers to Bayard’s burial. Lena brought
only sobs instead, and watered his pall with her tears, and hid her
face, and passed on, with her hands before it.
Now, around the bier there stood a guard of honor strange to see;
for it was chosen from the Windover drunkards whom the pastor had
saved and cured. Among them, Job Slip stood proudly in command at
the minister’s head: the piteous type of all that misery which
Bayard had died to lessen, and of that forgotten manliness which he
had lived to save.
There was no dirge sung at Christlove Chapel when he was borne from
it. A girl’s voice from a darkened corner of the gallery started
“the minister’s hymn,” but trembled, and broke quite down. So the
fishermen took it up, and tried to sing,--
“I need thee every hour.”
But they, too, faltered, for they needed him too much; and in
silence, trying not to sob, with bared, bowed heads they passed out
gently (for his spirit was upon them), thinking to be better men.
* * * * *
One of the summer people, a stranger in the town, strolling on the
beach that day, was attracted by an unusual and impressive sight
upon the water, and asked what that extraordinary display of the
signs of public mourning meant.