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.
THEY were standing on the street corner before the hotel. Oakley had just come up-town from the office. He was full of awkward excuses and apologies, but Mr. Emory cut them short.
“I suppose I've a right to be angry at the way you've avoided us, but I'm not. On the contrary, I'm going to take you home to dinner with me.”
If Dan find consulted his preferences in the matter, he would have begged off, but he felt he couldn't, without giving offence; so he allowed the doctor to lead him away, but he didn't appear as pleased or as grateful as he should have been at this temporary release from the low diet of the American House.
Miss Emory was waiting for her father on the porch. An errand of hers had taken him downtown.
She seemed surprised to see Oakley, but graciously disposed towards him. While he fell short of her standards, he was decidedly superior to the local youth with whom she had at first been inclined to class him. Truth to tell, the local youth fought rather shy of the doctor's beautiful daughter. Mr. Burt Smith, the gentlemanly druggist and acknowledged social leader, who was much sought after by the most exclusive circles in such centres of fashion as Buckhorn and Harrison, had been so chilled by her manner when, meeting her on the street, he had attempted to revive an acquaintance which dated back to their childhood, that he was a mental wreck for days afterwards, and had hardly dared trust himself to fill even the simplest prescription.
When the Monday Club and the Social Science Club and the History Club hinted that she might garner great sheaves of culture and enlightenment at their meetings, Constance merely smiled condescendingly, but held aloof, and the ladies of Antioch were intellectual without her abetment. They silently agreed with the Emorys' free-born help, who had seen better days, that she was “haughty proud” and “stuck up.”
Many was the informal indignation meeting they held, and many the vituperate discussion handed down concerning Miss Emory, but Miss Emory went her way with her head held high, apparently serenely unconscious of her offence against the peace and quiet of the community.
It must not be supposed that she was intentionally unkind or arrogant. It was unfortunate, perhaps, but she didn't like the townspeople. She would have been perfectly willing to admit they were quite as good as she. The whole trouble was that they were different, and the merits of this difference had nothing to do with the case. Her stand in the matter shocked her mother and amused her father.
Dr. Emory excused himself and went into the house. Dan made himself comfortable on the steps at Miss Emory's side. In the very nearness there was something luxurious and satisfying. He was silent because he feared the antagonism of speech.
The rest of Antioch had eaten its supper, principally in its shirt-sleeves, and was gossiping over front gates, or lounging on front steps. When Antioch loafed it did so with great singleness of purpose.
Here and there through the town, back yards had been freshly ploughed for gardens. In some of these men and boys were burning last year's brush and litter. The smoke hung heavy and undispersed in the twilight. Already the younger hands from the car-shops had “cleaned up,” and, dressed in their best clothes, were hurrying back down-town to hang about the square and street corners until it was time to return home and go to bed.
Off in the distance an occasional shrill whistle told where the ubiquitous small boy was calling a comrade out to play, and every now and then, with a stealthy patter of bare feet, some coatless urchin would scurry past the Emorys' gate.
It was calm and restful, but it gave one a feeling of loneliness, too; Antioch seemed very remote from the great world where things happened, or were done. In spite of his satisfaction, Dan vaguely realized this. To the girl at his side, however, the situation was absolutely tragic. The life she had known had been so different, but it had been purchased at the expense of a good deal of inconvenience and denial on the part of her father and mother. It was impossible to ask a continuance of the sacrifice, and it was equally impossible to remain in Antioch. She did not want to be selfish, but the day was not far off when it would resolve itself into a question of simple self-preservation. She had not yet reached the point where she could consider marriage as a possible means of escape, and, even if she had, it would not have solved the problem, for whom was she to marry?
There was a tired, fretful look in her eyes. She had lost something of her brilliancy and freshness. In her despair she told herself she was losing everything.
“I was with friends of yours this afternoon, Mr. Oakley,” she said, by way of starting the conversation.
“Friends of mine, here?”
“Yes. The Joyces.”
“I must go around and see them. They have been very kind to my father,” said Dan, with hearty good-will.
“How long is your father to remain in Antioch, Mr. Oakley?” inquired Constance.
“As long as I remain, I suppose. There are only the two of us, you know.”
“What does he find to do here?”
“Oh,” laughed Dan, “he finds plenty to do. His energy is something dreadful. Then, too, he's employed at the shops; that keeps him pretty busy, you see.”
But Miss Emory hadn't known this before. She elevated her eyebrows in mild surprise. She was not sure she understood.
“I didn't know that he was one of the officers of the road,” with deceptive indifference.
“He's not. He's a cabinet-maker,” explained the literal Oakley, to whom a cabinet-maker was quite as respectable as any one else. There was a brief pause, while Constance turned this over in her mind. It struck her as very singular that Oakley's father should be one of the hands. Perhaps she credited him with a sensitiveness of which he was entirely innocent.
She rested her chin in her hands and gazed out into the dusty street.
“Isn't it infinitely pathetic to think of that poor little man and his work?” going back to Joyce. “Do you know, I could have cried? And his wife's faith, it is sublime, even if it is mistaken.” She laughed in a dreary fashion. “What is to be done for people like that, whose lives are quite uncompensated?”
To Oakley this opened up a field for future speculation, but he approved of her interest in Joyce. It was kindly and sincere, and it was unexpected. He had been inclined to view her as a proud young person, unduly impressed with the idea of her own beauty and superiority. It pleased him to think he had been mistaken.
They were joined by the doctor, who had caught a part of what Constance said, and divined the rest.
“You see only the pathos. Joyce is just as well off here as he would be anywhere else, and perhaps a little better. He makes a decent living with his pictures.” As he spoke he crossed the porch and stood at her side, with his hand resting affectionately on her shoulder.
“I guess there's a larger justice in the world than we conceive,” said Oakley.
“But not to know, to go on blindly doing something that is really very dreadful, and never to know!”
She turned to Oakley. “I am afraid I rather agree with your father. He seems happy enough, and he is doing work for which there is a demand.”
“Would you be content to live here with no greater opportunity than he has?”
Oakley laughed and shook his head.
“No. But that's not the same. I'll pull the Huckleberry up and make it pay, and then go in for something bigger.”
“And if you can't make it pay?”
“I won't bother with it, then.”
“But if you had to remain?”
Oakley gave her an incredulous smile.
“That couldn't be possible. I have done all sorts of things but stick in what I found to be undesirable berths; but, of course, business is not at all the same.”
“But isn't it? Look at Mr. Ryder. He says that he is buried here in the pine-woods, with no hope of ever getting back into the world, and I am sure he is able, and journalism is certainly a business, like anything else.”
Oakley made no response to this. He didn't propose to criticise Ryder, but, all the same, he doubted his ability.
“Griff's frightfully lazy,” remarked the doctor. “He prefers to settle down to an effortless sort of an existence rather than make a struggle.”
“Don't you think Mr. Ryder extremely clever, Mr. Oakley?”
“I know him so slightly, Miss Emory; but no doubt he is.”
Mrs. Emory appeared in the doorway, placid and smiling.
“Constance, you and Mr. Oakley come on in; dinner's ready.”
When Dan went home that night he told himself savagely that he would never go to the Emorys' again. The experience had been most unsatisfactory. In spite of Constance's evident disposition towards tolerance where he was concerned, she exasperated him. Her unconscious condescension was a bitter memory of which he could not rid himself. Certainly women must be petty, small-souled creatures if she was at all representative of her sex. Yet, in spite of his determination to avoid Constance, even at the risk of seeming rude, he found it required greater strength of will than he possessed to keep away from the Emorys.
He realized, in the course of the next few weeks, that a new stage in his development had been reached. Inspired by what he felt was a false but beautiful confidence in himself, he called often, and, as time wore on, the frequency of these calls steadily increased. All this while he thought about Miss Emory a great deal, and was sorry for her or admired her, according to his mood.
In Constance's attitude towards him there was a certain fickleness that he resented. Sometimes she was friendly and companionable, and then again she seemed to revive all her lingering prejudices and was utterly indifferent to him, and her indifference was the most complete thing of its kind he had ever encountered.
Naturally Dan and Ryder met very frequently, and when they met they clashed. It was not especially pleasant, of course, but Ryder was persistent and Oakley was dogged. Once he started in pursuit of an object, he never gave up or owned that he was beaten. In some form he had accomplished everything he set out to do; and if the results had not always been just what he had anticipated, he had at least had the satisfaction of bringing circumstances under his control. He endured the editor's sarcasms, and occasionally retaliated with a vengeance so heavy as to leave Griff quivering with the smart of it.
Miss Emory found it difficult to maintain the peace between them, but she admired Dan's mode of warfare. It was so conclusive, and he showed such grim strength in his ability to look out for himself.
But Dan felt that he must suffer by any comparison with the editor. He had no genius for trifles, but rather a ponderous capacity. He had worked hard, with the single determination to win success. He had the practical man's contempt, born of his satisfied ignorance for all useless things, and to his mind the useless things were those whose value it was impossible to reckon in dollars and cents.
He had been well content with himself, and now he felt that somehow he had lost his bearings. Why was it he had not known before that the mere strenuous climb, the mere earning of a salary, was not all of life? He even felt a sneaking envy of Ryder of which he was heartily ashamed.
Men fall in love differently. Some resist and hang back from the inevitable, not being sure of themselves, and some go headlong, never having any doubts. With characteristic singleness of purpose, Dan went headlong; but of course he did not know what the trouble was until long after the facts in the case were patent to every one, and Antioch had lost interest in its speculations as to whether the doctor's daughter would take the editor or the general manager, for, as Mrs. Poppleton, the Emorys' nearest neighbor, sagely observed, she was “having her pick.”
To Oakley Miss Emory seemed to accumulate dignity and reserve in the exact proportion that he lost them, but he was determined she should like him if she never did more than that.
She was just the least bit afraid of him. She knew he was not deficient in a proper pride, and that he possessed plenty of self-respect, but for all that he was not very dexterous. It amused her to lead him on, and then to draw back and leave him to flounder out of some untenable position she had beguiled him into assuming.
She displayed undeniable skill in these manoeuvres, and Dan was by turns savage and penitent. But she never gave him a chance to say what he wanted to say.
Ryder made his appeal to her vanity. It was a strong appeal. He was essentially presentable and companionable. She understood him, and they had much in common, but for all that her heart approved of Oakley. She felt his dominance; she realized that he was direct and simple and strong. Yet in her judgment of him she was not very generous. She could not understand, for instance, how it was that he had been willing to allow his father to go to work in the shops like one of the common hands. It seemed to her to argue such an awful poverty in the way of ideals.
The old convict was another stumbling-block. She had met him at the Joyces', and had been quick to recognize that he and Dan were very much alike—the difference was merely that of age and youth. Indeed, the similarity was little short of painful. There was the same simplicity, the same dogged stubbornness, and the same devotion to what she conceived to be an almost brutal sense of duty. In the case of the father this idea of duty had crystallized in a strangely literal belief in the Deity and expressed itself with rampant boastfulness at the very discomforts of a faith which, like the worship of Juggernaut, demanded untold sacrifices and apparently gave nothing in return.
She tried to stifle her growing liking for Oakley and her unwilling admiration for his strength and honesty and a certain native refinement. Unconsciously, perhaps, she had always associated qualities of this sort with position and wealth. She divined his lack of early opportunity, and was alive to his many crudities of speech and manner, and he suffered, as he knew he must suffer, by comparison with the editor; but, in spite of this, Constance Emory knew deep down in her heart that he possessed solid and substantial merits of his own.
KENYON came to town to remind his Antioch friends and supporters that presently he would be needing their votes.
He was Ryder's guest for a week, and theHeraldrecorded his movements with painstaking accuracy and with what its editor secretly considered metropolitan enterprise. The great man had his official headquarters at theHeraldoffice, a ramshackle two-story building on the west side of the square. Here he was at home to the local politicians, and to such of the general public as wished to meet him. The former smoked his cigars and talked incessantly of primaries, nominations, and majorities—topics on which they appeared to be profoundly versed. Their distinguishing mark was their capacity for strong drink, which was far in excess of that of the ordinary citizen who took only a casual interest in politics. TheHerald'sback door opened into an alley, and was directly opposite that of the Red Star saloon. At stated intervals Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Ryder, followed by the faithful, trailed through this back door and across the alley, where they cheerfully exposed themselves to such of the gilded allurements of vice as the Red Star had to offer.
The men of Antioch eschewed front doors as giving undue publicity to the state of their thirst, a point on which they must have been very sensitive, for though a number of saloons flourished in the town, only a few of the most reckless and emancipated spirits were ever seen to enter them.
Kenyon was a sloppily dressed man of forty-five or thereabouts, who preserved an air of rustic shrewdness. He was angular-faced and smooth-shaven, and wore his hair rather long in a tangled mop. He was generally described in the party papers as “The Picturesque Statesman from Old Hanover.” He had served one term in Congress; prior to that, by way of apprenticeship, he had done a great deal of hard work and dirty work for his party. His fortunes had been built on the fortunes of a bigger and an abler man, who, after a fight which was already famous in the history of the State for its bitterness, had been elected Governor, and Kenyon, having picked the winner, had gone to his reward. Just now he had a shrewd idea that the Governor was anxious to unload him, and that the party leaders were sharpening their knives for him. Their change of heart grew out of the fact that he had “dared to assert his independence,” as he said, and had “played the sneak and broken his promises,” as they said, in a little transaction which had been left to him to put through.
Personally Ryder counted him an unmitigated scamp, but the man's breezy vulgarity, his nerve, and his infinite capacity to jolly tickled his fancy.
He had so far freed himself of his habitual indifference that he was displaying an unheard-of energy in promoting Kenyon's interest. Of course he expected to derive certain very substantial benefits from the alliance. The Congressman had made him endless promises, and Ryder saw, or thought he saw, his way clear to leave Antioch in the near future. For two days he had been saying, “Mr. Brown, shake hands with Congressman Kenyon,” or, “Mr. Jones, I want you to know Congressman Kenyon, the man we must keep at Washington.”
He had marvelled at the speed with which the statesman got down to first names. He had also shown a positive instinct as to whom he should invite to make the trip across the alley to the Red Star, and whom not. Mr. Kenyon said, modestly, when Griff commented on this, that his methods were modern—they were certainly vulgar.
“I guess I'm going to give 'em a run for their money, Ryder. I can see I'm doing good work here. There's nothing like being on the ground yourself.”
It was characteristic of him that he should ignore the work Ryder had done in his behalf.
“You are an inspiration, Sam. The people know their leader,” said the editor, genially, but with a touch of sarcasm that was lost on Kenyon, who took himself quite seriously.
“Yes, sir, they'd 'a' done me dirt,” feelingly, “but I am on my own range now, and ready to pull off my coat and fight for what's due me.”
They were seated before the open door which looked out upon the square. Kenyon was chewing nervously at the end of an unlit cigar, which he held between his fingers. “When the nomination is made I guess the other fellow will discover I 'ain't been letting the grass grow in my path.” He spat out over the door-sill into the street. “What's that you were just telling me about the Huckleberry?”
“This new manager of Cornish's is going to make the road pay, and he's going to do it from the pockets of the employés,” said Ryder, with a disgruntled air, for the memory of his interview with Dan still rankled.
“That ain't bad, either. You know the Governor's pretty close to Cornish. The general was a big contributor to his campaign fund.”
Ryder hitched his chair nearer his companion's.
“If there's a cut in wages at the shops—and I suppose that will be the next move—there's bound to be a lot of bad feeling.”
“Well, don't forget we are for the people.” remarked the Congressman, and he winked slyly.
Ryder smiled cynically.
“I sha'n't. I have it in for the manager, anyhow.”
“What's wrong with him?”
“Oh, nothing, but a whole lot,” answered Griff, with apparent indifference.
At this juncture Dr. Emory crossed the square from the post-office and paused in front of theHeraldbuilding.
“How's Dr. Emory?” said Kenyon, by way of greeting.
Ryder had risen.
“Won't you come in and sit down, doctor?” he inquired.
“No, no. Keep your seat, Griff. I merely strolled over to say how d'ye do?”
Kenyon shot past the doctor a discolored stream. That gentleman moved uneasily to one side.
“Don't move,” said the statesman, affably. “Plenty of room between you and the casing.”
He left his chair and stood facing the doctor, and unpleasantly close. “Say, our young friend here's turned what I intended to be a vacation into a very busy time. He's got me down for speeches and all sorts of things, and it will be a wonder if I go home to Hanover sober. I won't if he can help it, that's dead sure. Won't you come in and have something?—just a little appetizer before supper?”
“No, I thank you.”
“A cigar, then?” fumbling in his vest-pocket with fingers that were just the least bit unsteady.
“No, I must hurry along.”
“We hope to get up again before Mr. Kenyon leaves town,” said Ryder, wishing to head the statesman off. He was all right with such men as Cap Roberts and the Hon. Jeb Burrows, but he had failed signally to take the doctor's measure. The latter turned away.
“I hope you will, Griff,” he said, kindly, his voice dwelling with the least perceptible insistence on the last pronoun.
“Remember me to the wife and daughter,” called out Kenyon, as the physician moved up the street with an unusual alacrity.
It was late in the afternoon, and the men from the car-shops were beginning to straggle past, going in the direction of their various homes. Presently Roger Oakley strode heavily by, with his tin dinner-pail on his arm. Otherwise there was nothing, either in his dress or appearance, to indicate that he was one of the hands. As he still lived at the hotel with Dan, he felt it necessary to exercise a certain care in the matter of dress. As he came into view the Congressman swept him with a casual scrutiny; then, as the old man plodded on up the street with deliberate step, Kenyon rose from his chair and stood in the doorway gazing after him.
“What's the matter, Sam?” asked Ryder, struck by his friend's manner.
“Who was that old man who just went past?”
“That? Oh, that's the manager's father. Why?”
“Well, he looks most awfully like some one else, that's all,” and he appeared to lose interest.
“No, he's old man Oakley. He works in the shops.”
“Oakley?”
“Yes, that's his name. Why?” curiously.
“How long has he been here, anyhow?”
“A month perhaps, maybe longer. Do you know him?”
“I've seen him before. A cousin of mine, John Kenyon, is warden of a prison back in Massachusetts. It runs in the blood to hold office. I visited him last winter, and while I was there a fire broke out in the hospital ward, and that old man had a hand in saving the lives of two or three of the patients. The beggars came within an ace of losing their lives. I saw afterwards by the papers that the Governor had pardoned him.”
Ryder jumped up with sudden alacrity.
“Do you remember the convict's full name?” Kenyon meditated a moment; then he said:
“Roger Oakley.”
The editor turned to the files of theHerald.
“I'll just look back and see if it's the same name. I've probably got it here among the personals, if I can only find it. What was he imprisoned for?” he added.
“He was serving a life sentence for murder, I think, John told me, but I won't be sure.”
“The devil, you say!” ejaculated Ryder. “Yes, Roger Oakley, the name's the same.”
“I knew I couldn't be mistaken. I got a pretty good memory for names and faces. Curious, ain't it, that he should turn up here?”
Ryder smiled queerly as he dropped theHeraldfiles back into the rack.
“His son is manager for Cornish here. He's the fellow I was telling you about.”
Kenyon smiled, too.
“I guess you won't have any more trouble with him. You've got him where you can hit him, and hit him hard whenever you like.”
ROGER OAKLEY carried out his threat to find work for Jeffy. As soon as the outcast was able to leave his bed, he took him down to the car-shops, which were destined to be the scene of this brief but interesting industrial experiment.
It was early morning, and they found only Clarence there. He was sweeping out the office—a labor he should have performed the night before, but, unless he was forcibly detained, he much preferred to let it go over, on the principle that everything that is put off till the morrow is just so much of a gain, and, in the end, tends to reduce the total of human effort, as some task must necessarily be left undone.
As Roger Oakley pushed open the door and entered the office in search of his son, his charge, who slunk and shuffled after him with legs which bore him but uncertainly, cast a long and lingering look back upon the freedom he was leaving. The dignity of labor, on which his patron had been expatiating as they walked in the shortening shadows under the maples, seemed a scanty recompense for all he was losing. A deep, wistful sigh escaped his lips. He turned his back on the out-of-doors and peered over the old man's shoulder at Clarence with bleary eyes. Of course, he knew Clarence. This was a privilege not denied the humblest. Occasionally the urchin called him names, more often he pelted him with stones. The opportunities for excitement were limited in Antioch, and the juvenile population heedfully made the most of those which existed.
Jeffy was a recognized source of excitement. It was not as if one stole fruit or ran away from school. Then there was some one to object, and consequences; but if one had fun with Jeffy there was none to object but Jeffy, and, of course, he didn't count.
“Is my son here, Clarence?” asked Roger Oakley.
“Nope. The whistle ain't blowed yet. I am trying to get the place cleaned up before he comes down,” making slaps at the desks and chairs with a large wet cloth. “What you going to do with him, Mr. Oakley?”
He nodded towards Jeffy, who seemed awed by the unaccustomedness of his surroundings, for he kept himself hidden back of the old man, his battered and brimless straw hat held nervously in his trembling fingers.
“I am going to get work for him.”
“Him work! Him! Why, he don't want no work, Mr. Oakley. He's too strong to work.” And Clarence went off into gales of merriment at the mere idea.
For an instant Jeffy gazed in silence at the boy with quickly mounting wrath, then he said, in a hoarsetremolo:
“You durned little loafer! Don't you give me none of your lip!”
Clarence had sufficiently subsided to remark, casually: “The old man'd like to know what you got for that horse-blanket and whip you stole from our barn. You're a bird, you are! When he was willing to let you sleep in the barn because he was sorry for you!”
“You lie, durn you!” fiercely. “I didn't steal no whip or horse-blanket!”
“Yes, you did, too! The old man found out who you sold 'em to,” smiling with exasperating coolness.
The outcast turned to Roger Oakley. “Nobody's willing to let by-gones be by-gones,” and two large tears slid from his moist eyes. Then his manner changed abruptly. He became defiant, and, step-ing from behind his protector, shook a long and very dirty forefinger in Clarence's face.
“You just tell Chris Berry this from me—I'm done with him. I don't like no sneaks, and you just tell him this—he sha'n't never bury me.”
“I reckon he ain't sweatin' to bury any paupers,” hastily interjected the grinning Clarence. “The old man ain't in the business for his health.”
“And if he don't stop slandering me”—his voice shot up out of its huskiness—“if he don't stop slandering me, I'll fix him!” He turned again to Roger Oakley. “Them Berrys is a low-lived lot! I hope you won't never have doings with 'em. They'll smile in your face and then do you dirt behind your back; I've done a lot for Chris Berry, but I'm durned if I ever lift my hand for him again.”
Perhaps he was too excited to specify the exact nature of the benefits which he had conferred upon the undertaker. Clarence ignored the attack upon his family. He contented himself with remarking, judiciously: “Anybody who can slander you's got a future ahead of him. He's got unusual gifts.”
Here Roger Oakley saw fit to interfere in behalf of his protégé. He shook his head in grave admonition at the grinning youngster. “Jeffy is going to make a man of himself. It's not right to remember these things against him.”
“They know rotten well that's what I'm always telling 'em. Let by-gones be by-gones—that's my motto—but they are so ornery they won't never give me a chance.”
“It's going to be a great shock to the community when Jeffy starts to work, Mr. Oakley,” observed Clarence, politely. “He's never done anything harder than wheel smoke from the gas-house. Where you going to put up, Jeffy, when you get your wages?”
“None of your durn lip!” screamed Jeffy, white with rage.
“I suppose you'll want to return the horse-blanket and whip. You can leave 'em here with me. I'll take 'em home to the old man,” remarked the boy, affably. “I wouldn't trust you with ten cents; you know mighty well I wouldn't,” retorted Jeffy.
“Good reason why—you ain't never had that much.”
Dan Oakley's step was heard approaching the door, and the wordy warfare ceased abruptly. Clarence got out of the way as quickly as possible, for he feared he might be asked to do something, and he had other plans for the morning.
Jeffy was handed over to McClintock's tender mercies, who put him to work in the yards.
It was pay-day in the car-shops, and Oakley posted a number of notices in conspicuous places about the works. They announced a ten-per-cent, reduction in the wages of the men, the cut to go into effect immediately.
By-and-by McClintock came in from the yards. He was hot and perspiring, and his check shirt clung moistly to his powerful shoulders. As he crossed to the water-cooler, he said to Dan:
“Well, we've lost him already. I guess he wasn't keen for work.”
Oakley looked up inquiringly from the letter he was writing.
“I mean Jeffy. He stuck to it for a couple of hours, and then Pete saw him making a sneak through the cornfield towards the crick. I haven't told your father yet.”
Dan laughed.
“I thought it would be that way. Have you seen the notices?”
“Yes,” nodding.
“Heard anything from the men yet?”
“Not a word.”
McClintock returned to the yards. It was the noon hour, and in the shade of one of the sheds he found a number of the hands at lunch, who lived too far from the shops to go home to dinner.
“Say, Milt,” said one of these, “have you tumbled to the notices?—ten per cent, all round. You'll be having to go down in your sock for coin.”
“It's there all right,” cheerfully.
“I knew when Cornish came down here there would be something drop shortly. I ain't never known it to fail. The old skinflint! I'll bet he ain't losing any money.”
“You bet he ain't, not he,” said a second, with a short laugh.
The first man, Branyon by name, bit carefully into the wedge-shaped piece of pie he was holding in his hand. “If I was as rich as Cornish I'm damned if I'd be such an infernal stiff! What the hell good is his money doing him, anyhow?”
“What does the boss say, Milt?”
“That wages will go back as soon as he can put them back.”
“Yes, they will! Like fun!” said Branyon, sarcastically.
“You're a lot of kickers, you are,” commented McClintock, good-naturedly. “You don't believe for one minute, do you, that the Huckleberry or the shops ever earned a dollar?”
“You can gamble on it that they ain't ever cost Cornish a red cent,” said Branyon, as positively as a mouthful of pie would allow.
“I wouldn't be too sure about that,” said the master-mechanic, walking on.
“I bet he ain't out none on this,” remarked Branyon, cynically. “If he was he wouldn't take it so blamed easy.”
The men began to straggle back from their various homes and to form in little groups about the yards and in the shops. They talked over the cut and argued the merits of the case, as men will, made their comments on Cornish, who was generally conceded to be as mean in money matters as he was fortunate, and then went back to their work when the one-o'clock whistle blew, in a state of high good-humor with themselves and their critical ability.
The next day theHeralddealt with the situation at some length. The whole tone of the editorial was rancorous and bitter. It spoke of the parsimony of the new management, which had been instanced by a number of recent dismissals among men who had served the road long and faithfully, and who deserved other and more considerate treatment. It declared that the cut was but the beginning of the troubles in store for the hands, and characterized it as an attempt on the part of the new management to curry favor with Cornish, who was notoriously hostile to the best interests of labor. It wound up by regretting that the men were not organized, as proper organization would have enabled them to meet this move on the part of the management.
When Oakley read the obnoxious editorial his blood grew hot and his mood belligerent. It showed evident and unusual care in the preparation, and he guessed correctly that it had been written and put in type in readiness for the cut. It was a direct personal attack, too, for the expression “the new management,” which was used over and over, could mean but the one thing.
Dan's first impulse was to hunt Ryder up and give him a sound thrashing, but his better sense told him that while this rational mode of expressing his indignation would have been excusable enough a few years back, when he was only a brakeman, as the manager of the Buckhom and Antioch Railroad it was necessary to pursue a more pacific policy.
He knew he could be made very unpopular if these attacks were persisted in. This he did not mind especially, except as it would interfere with the carrying out of his plans and increase his difficulties. After thinking it over he concluded that he would better see Ryder and have a talk with him. It would do no harm, he argued, and it might do some good, provided, of course, that he could keep his temper.
He went directly to theHeraldoffice, and found Griff in and alone. When Dan strode into the office, looking rather warm, the latter turned a trifle pale, for he had his doubts about the manager's temper, and no doubts at all about his muscular development, which was imposing.
“I came in to see what you meant by this, Ryder,” his caller said, and he held out the paper folded to the insulting article. Ryder assumed to examine it carefully, but he knew every word there.
“Oh, this? Oh yes! The story of the reduction in wages down at the car-shops. There! You can take it from under my nose; I can see quite clearly.”
“Well?”
“Well,” repeated Ryder after him, with exasperating composure. The editor was no stranger to intrusions of this sort, for his sarcasms were frequently personal. His manner varied to suit each individual case. When the wronged party stormed into the office, wrathful and loud-lunged, he was generally willing to make prompt reparation, especially if his visitor had the advantage of physical preponderance on his side. When, however, the caller was uncertain and palpably in awe of him, as sometimes happened, he got no sort of satisfaction. With Oakley he pursued a middle course.
“Well?” he repeated.
“What do you mean by this?”
“I think it speaks for itself, don't you?”
“I went into this matter with you, and you know as well as I do why the men are cut. This,” striking the paper contemptuously with his open hand, “is the worst sort of rubbish, but it may serve to make the men feel that they are being wronged, and it is an attack on me.”
“Did you notice that? I didn't know but it was too subtle for you.”
He couldn't resist the gibe at Oakley's expense.
“Disguised, of course, but intended to give the men less confidence in me. Now, I'm not going to stand any more of this sort of thing!”
He was conscious he had brought his remarks to a decidedly lame conclusion.
“And I'll tell you one thing, Mr. Oakley, I'm editor of theHerald, and I don't allow any man to dictate to me what I shall print. That's a point I'll pass on for myself.”
“You know the situation. You know that the general will dispose of his interests here unless they can be made self-sustaining; and, whether you like him or not, he stands as a special providence to the town.”
“I only know what you have told me,” sneeringly.
Oakley bit his lips. He saw it would have been better to have left Ryder alone. He felt his own weakness, and his inability to force him against his will to be fair. He gulped down his anger and chagrin.
“I don't see what you can gain by stirring up this matter.”
“Perhaps you don't.”
“Am I to understand you are hostile to the road?”
“If that means you—yes. You haven't helped yourself by coming here as though you could bully me into your way of thinking. I didn't get much satisfaction from my call on you. You let me know you could attend to your own affairs, and I can attend to mine just as easily. I hope you appreciate that.”
Dan turned on his heel and left the office, cursing himself for his stupidity in having given the editor an opportunity to get even.