ROGER OAKLEY had gone to work in the car-shops the day following
his arrival in Antioch. Dan had sought to dissuade him, but he was
stubbornness itself, and the latter realized that the only thing to do
was to let him alone, and not seek to control him.
After all, if he would be happier at work, it was no one's affair but
his own.
It never occurred to the old convict that pride might have to do with
the stand Dan took in the matter.
He was wonderfully gentle and affectionate, with a quaint, unworldly
simplicity that was rather pathetic. His one anxiety was to please Dan,
but, in spite of this anxiety, once a conviction took possession of him
he clung to it with unshaken tenacity in the face of every argument his
son could bring to bear.
Under the inspiration of his newly acquired freedom, he developed in
unexpected ways. As soon as he felt that his place in the shops
was secure and that he was not to be interfered with, he joined the
Methodist Church. Its services occupied most of his spare time. Every
Thursday night found him at prayer-meeting. Twice each Sunday he went
to church, and by missing his dinner he managed to take part in the
Sunday-school exercises. A social threw him into a flutter of pleased
expectancy. Not content with what his church offered, irrespective of
creed, he joined every society in the place of a religious or temperance
nature, and was a zealous and active worker among such of the heathen
as flourished in Antioch. There was a stern Old Testament flavor to
his faith. He would have dragged the erring from their peril by main
strength, and have regulated their morals by legal enactments. Those of
the men with whom he came in contact in the shops treated him with the
utmost respect, partly on his own account, and partly because of Dan.
McClintock always addressed him as “The Deacon,” and soon ceased to
overflow with cheerful profanity in his presence. The old man had early
taken occasion to point out to him the error of his ways and to hint at
what was probably in store for him unless he curbed the utterances of
his tongue. He was not the only professing Christian in the car-shops,
but he was the only one who had ventured to “call down” the
master-mechanic.
Half of all he earned he gave to the church. The remainder of his
slender income he divided again into two equal parts. One of these he
used for his personal needs, the other disappeared mysteriously. He was
putting it by for “Dannie.”
It was a disappointment to him that his son took only the most casual
interest in religious matters. He comforted himself, however, with
the remembrance that at his age his own interest had been merely
traditional. It was only after his great trouble that the awakening
came. He was quite certain “Dannie” would experience this awakening,
too, some day.
Finally he undertook the regeneration of Jeffy. Every new-comer in
Antioch of a philanthropic turn of mind was sure sooner or later to fall
foul of the outcast, who was usually willing to drop whatever he was
doing to be reformed. It pleased him and interested him.
He was firmly grounded in the belief, however, that in his case
the reformation that would really reform would have to be applied
externally, and without inconvenience to himself, but until the
spiritual genius turned up who could work this miracle, he was perfectly
willing to be experimented upon by any one who had a taste for what he
called good works.
After Mrs. Bentick's funeral he had found the means, derived in part
from the sale of Turner Joyce's wardrobe, to go on a highly sensational
drunk, which comprehended what was known in Antioch as “The Snakes.”
Roger Oakley had unearthed him at the gas-house, a melancholy, tattered
ruin. He had rented a room for his occupancy, and had conveyed him
thither under cover of the night. During the week that followed, while
Jeffy was convalescent, he spent his evenings there reading to him from
the Bible.
Jeffy would have been glad to escape these attentions. This new moral
force in the community inspired an emotion akin to awe. Day by day,
as he recognized the full weight of authority in Roger Oakley's manner
towards him, this awe increased, until at last it developed into an
acute fear. So he kept his bed and meditated flight. He even considered
going as far away as Buckhom or Harrison to be rid of the old man. Then,
by degrees, he felt himself weaken and succumb to the other's control.
His cherished freedom--the freedom of the woods and fields, and the
drunken spree variously attained, seemed only a happy memory. But
the last straw was put upon him, and he rebelled when his benefactor
announced that he was going to find work for him.
At first Jeffy had preferred not to take this seriously. He assumed to
regard it as a delicate sarcasm on the part of his new friend. He closed
first one watery eye and then the other. It was such a good joke.
But Roger Oakley only reiterated his intention with unmistakable
seriousness. It was no joke, and the outcast promptly sat up in bed,
while a look of slow horror overspread his face.
“But I ain't never worked, Mr. Oakley,” he whined, hoarsely. “I don't
feel no call to work. The fact is, I am too busy to work. I would be
wasting my time if I done that. I'd be durn thankful if you could reform
me, but I'll tell you right now this ain't no way to begin. No, sir, you
couldn't make a worse start.”
“It's high time you went at something,” said his self-appointed guide
and monitor, with stony conviction, and he backed his opinion with a
quotation from the Scriptures.
Now to Jeffy, who had been prayerfully brought up by a pious mother,
the Scriptures were the fountain-head of all earthly wisdom. To invoke
a citation from the Bible was on a par with calling in the town marshal.
It closed the incident so far as argument was concerned. He was vaguely
aware that there was one text which he had heard which seemed to give
him authority to loaf, but he couldn't remember it.
Roger Oakley looked at him rather sternly over the tops of his
steel-rimmed spectacles, and said, with quiet determination, “I am going
to make a man of you. You've got it in you. There's hope in every human
life. You must let drink alone, and you must work. Work's what you
need.”
“No, it ain't. I never done a day's work in my life. It'd kill me if I
had to get out and hustle and sweat and bile in the sun. Durnation! of
all fool ideas! I never seen the beat!” He threw himself back on the
bed, stiff and rigid, and covered his face with the sheet.
For perhaps a minute he lay perfectly still. Then the covers were
seen to heave tumultuously, while short gasps and sobs were distinctly
audible. Presently two skinny but expressive legs habited in red flannel
were thrust from under the covers and kicked violently back and forth.
A firm hand plucked the sheet from before the outcast's face, and the
gaunt form of the old convict bent grimly above him.
“Come, come, Jeffy, I didn't expect this of you. I am willing to help
you in every way I can. I'll get my son to make a place for you at the
shops. How will you like that?”
“How'll I like it? You ought to know me well enough to know I won't like
it a little bit!” in tearful and indignant protest. “You just reach me
them pants of mine off the back of that chair. You mean well, I'll say
that much for you, but you got the sweatiest sort of a religion; durned
if it ain't all work! Just reach me them pants, do now,” and he half
rose up in his bed, only to encounter a strong arm that pushed him back
on the pillows.
“You can't have your pants, Jeffy, not now. You must stay here until you
get well and strong.”
“How am I going to get well and strong with you hounding me to death?
I never seen such a man to take up with an idea and stick to it against
all reason. It just seems as if you'd set to work to break my spirit,”
plaintively.
Roger Oakley frowned at him in silence for a moment, then he said:
“I thought we'd talked all this over, Jeffy.”
“I just wanted to encourage you. I was mighty thankful to have you take
hold. I hadn't been reformed for over a year. It about seemed to me that
everybody had forgotten I needed to be reformed, and I was willing to
give you a chance. No one can't ever say I ain't stood ready to do that
much.”
“But, my poor Jeffy, you will have to do more than that.”
“Blamed if it don't seem to me as if you was expecting me to do it all!”
The old convict drew up a chair to the bedside and sat down.
“I thought you told me you wanted to be a man and to be respected?” said
this philanthropist, with evident displeasure.
Jeffy choked down a sob and sat up again. He gestured freely with his
arms in expostulation.
“I was drunk when I said that. Yes, sir, I was as full as I could stick.
Now I'm sober, I know rotten well what I want.”
“What do you want, Jeffy?”
“Well, I want a lot of things.”
“Well, what, for instance?”
“Well, sir, it ain't no prayers, and it ain't no Bible talks, and it
ain't no lousy work. It's coming warm weather. I want to lay up along
the crick-bank in the sun and do nothing--what I always done. I've had a
durned hard winter, and I been a-living for the spring.”
A look of the keenest disappointment clouded Roger Oakley's face as
Jeffy voiced his ignoble ambitions. His resentment gave way to sorrow.
He murmured a prayer that he might be granted strength and patience for
his task, and as he prayed with half-closed eyes, the outcast plugged
his ears with his fingers. He was a firm believer in the efficacy of
prayer, and he felt he couldn't afford to take any chances.
Roger Oakley turned to him with greater gentleness of manner than he had
yet shown.
“Don't you want the love and confidence of your neighbors, Jeffy?” he
asked, pityingly.
“I ain't got no neighbors, except the bums who sleep along of me at the
gas-house winter nights. I always feel this way when I come off a spree;
first it seems as if I'd be willing never to touch another drop of
licker as long as I lived. I just lose interest in everything, and I
don't care a durn what happens to me. Why, I've joined the Church lots
of times when I felt that way, but as soon as I begin to get well it's
different. I am getting well now, and what I told you don't count any
more. I got my own way of living.”
“But what a way!” sadly.
“Maybe it ain't your way, and maybe it ain't the best way, but it suits
me bully. I can always get enough to eat by going and asking some one
for it, and you can't beat that. No, sir. You know durn well you can't!”
becoming argumentative. “It just makes me sick to think of paying for
things like vittles and clothes. A feller's got to have clothes,
anyhow, ain't he? You know mighty well he has, or he'll get pinched, and
supposing I was to earn a lot of money, even as much as a dollar a day,
I'd have to spend every blamed cent to live. One day I'd work, and then
the next I'd swaller what I'd worked for. Where's the sense in that? And
I'd have all sorts of ornery worries for fear I'd lose my job.” A look
of wistful yearning overspread his face. “Just you give me the hot days
that's coming, when a feller's warm clean through and sweats in the
shade, and I won't ask for no money. You can have it all!”
That night, when he left him, Roger Oakley carefully locked the door
and pocketed the key, and the helpless wretch on the bed, despairing
and miserable, and cut off from all earthly hope, turned his face to the
white wall and sobbed aloud.