All He Knew(@@), John Habberton [good beach reads .txt] 📗

CHAPTER IX.page 53

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.

CHAPTER IX.page 54

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.

CHAPTER IX.page 55

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."

CHAPTER IX.page 56

"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.

CHAPTER IX.page 57

"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