Chapter 6

As the summer lengthened into early autumn, Sam Kimper became more and more troubled by the necessities of his family. He had been working day after day in the shop of his acquaintance the shoemaker, when there was work enough for two, and earned enough to pay for the plainest food. But casual pay was not sufficient to all the necessities of a family as large as that for which Sam was responsible, particularly as the return of the head of the family had reminded every one, from the mother down to the youngest child except the baby, of a number of needs of which no one seemed to have thought before.

Mrs. Kimper herself, who was a feeble creature at best, shivered at every wind that penetrated the broken windows, and insisted that unless she had some warm clothing very soon she would fall into a decline. Tom, who had not yet got his growth, was protruding physically from the ends of his shirts and trousers, and assured his father that he never again could get into his last winter's jacket without subjecting himself to a series of remarks by the boys in the town, which would make him feel very uncomfortable. Billy, who had gone barefooted all summer, as was the custom with the boys in town, came home late one evening and announced triumphantly,--

"Dad, you needn't bother yourself about me any more about shoes. I've got a pair. See here!"

The head of the family took the new shoes into his hand and examined them. Then he dropped them with a sort of shiver, for they were of a well-remembered pattern,--that upon which he had worked for two years in the penitentiary.

"How did you get 'em, Billy?" the father asked, at length.

"Oh, I found 'em," said the boy, with a wink at his elder brother,--a wink which was returned to him in the shape of an evil leer.

"Found 'em! Where? Tell me all about it," said the father, very sharply and sternly, for he remembered a time when he had "found" things himself.

Billy looked appealingly at his brother Tom, but the elder brother put on a hang-dog look and sauntered out of the room and was afterwards seen disappearing rapidly through the back yard.

"Well," said Billy, at last, with the air of one who was entirely unbosoming himself, "I'll tell you how it was, dad. Down at Price's store there's a long string of shoes out at the door. They use 'em as a sign, don't you know?"

"Yes," said the father carelessly; "I've seen such signs. Go on."

"Well, I need shoes awfully, you know, an' I've been tellin' the mother about it for a week or ten days, an' she said she was tellin' you. But my feet gets awful cold late at nights and early in the mornin's. An' I didn't want to bother you, knowin' that you hadn't any money to spare, 'cause the mother told me 'bout that too, an' cried about it. Well, it blowed like ev'rythin' this afternoon as I was goin' towards Price's, an' that string of shoes just whirled around like a kite-tail, an' at last the bottom pair flew off into the street. An' I picked 'em up."

"Findin's is keepin's," said Mrs. Kimper.

"Give me them shoes, my boy," said the ex-convict.

"You're goin' to take 'em away from me? Have I got to have cold feet some more?" said Billy, appealingly.

Sam thrust his hand into his trousers-pocket, took out a very thin wad of green paper, looked at it, and finally said, "No, I s'pose not." Nevertheless he and the shoes disappeared from the house.

In a short time Mr. Price, the owner of one of the village stores, received a call from the ex-convict, who said,--

"Mr. Price, one o' my boys found a pair o' shoes in the street in front o' your store this afternoon durin' the hard blow, an', as they just fitted him, I came around to pay you for them. How much are they?"

Several men were standing about the stove in Price's store, the fire having just started for the autumn and winter season, and, as they heard Sam's remark, one of them uttered a long combination of word and whistle that sounded very much like "Whew-w?" Sam turned quickly, recognized the man as one whom he knew to be not over-honest, and said,--

"When _you_ pay for ev'rythin' you get it'll be time to make fun of somebody else. But, Mr. Price, what I asked you was, what's the price o' them shoes?"

The storekeeper was so astonished at such a question from a member of the Kimper family that, looking at shoes of the same quality which were lying in a box behind the counter, he actually mistook the cost-mark for the selling-price, and replied, "Only a dollar and a quarter, Mr. Kimper."

Sam laid down the money, received some change, and departed, while the men who were lounging about the store began an active conversation as to whether that man was the fool he looked or whether he was not perhaps a regular sharper whose natural abilities and inclinations had been cultivated during the two years he was in State prison. They understood, those evening loafers, that prisons were nominally for the purpose of reforming criminals, but they had known a great many criminals themselves, and their astonishment at seeing one who apparently desired to do better than in his past life, and to make amends for the misdeeds of his family, was so great that the conversation which ensued after the exit of the ex-convict was very fragmentary and not at all to the point.

The next morning Sam appeared bright and early at the shoe-shop of Larry Highgetty. He had made an arrangement with the cobbler to do whatever work might be assigned him and to accept as full payment one-half the money which would be charged, most of it being for repairs. As nearly as he could discover by a close questioning of the proprietor of the establishment, the entire receipts did not exceed two dollars per day, and the owner had so few responsibilities and so much surplus that he would be quite glad if he might lounge at one or other of the local places of entertainment while some one else should do the work and keep the establishment open. Consequently Sam went at the work with great energy, and little by little nearly all the work came to be done by him.

He had hammered away for a few minutes on a sole to be placed on the bottom of a well-worn shoe belonging to a workingman, when a new customer entered the shop. Sam looked up at him and saw Reynolds Bartram. He offered a short, spasmodic, disjointed prayer to heaven, for he remembered what the judge's wife had said, and he had known Reynolds Bartram as a young man of keen wit and high standing as a debater before Sam's enforced retirement; now, he knew, Bartram had become a lawyer.

"Well, Sam," said Bartram, as he seated himself in the only chair and proceeded to eye the new cobbler, while the blows of the hammer struck the sole more rapidly and vigorously than before,--"well, Sam, I understand that you have been turning things upside down, and instead of coming out of the penitentiary a great deal worse man than when you went in, as most other men do, you have been converted."

"That's my understandin' of it, Mr. Bartram," said the ex-convict, continuing his inflictions upon the bit of leather.

"Sam," said Bartram, "I am a man of business, and I suppose you are from what I see you doing. I wish to make you a proposition: I will pay you cash for two or three hours' time if you will tell me--so that I can understand it--what being converted really amounts to."

The new cobbler did not cease an instant his attention to the work in his hand. He merely said,--

"Mr. Bartram, you're a very smart man, an' I'm a very stupid one. If there's a stupider man in town the Democratic local committee has never yet been able to find him. You want to know what bein' converted means? You'd better go to Deacon Quickset, or the minister of some one of the churches hereabouts. I can't explain anythin', I don't know anythin' but what I feel myself, an' the more I feel it the more I don't know how to talk about it. Deacon Quickset says it don't 'mount to much. I s'pose it don't--to him, he bein' so much smarter than me. But, so far as it goes, I can't be paid for talkin' about it, for it didn't cost me nothin'."

This was not what the visitor had expected; nevertheless, it is a lawyer's business to know more than one way of putting a thing.

"See here, Sam; I need a new pair of shoes,--soft leather, thin soles, good cut; do you suppose you know how to measure me for them?"

"Well, I guess I've found out that much, Mr. Bartram."

"Go ahead, then; don't let me interfere with the measurement; but I want to ask you some questions; tell me what you can as you go along. You've been converted, they say, and you say so too."

"Yes, sir," said Sam, dropping the tape-line for a moment; "what other people say I'm not responsible for, but I say it myself that I'm a different man. That's all I can say, Mr. Bartram; an', as I said before, if you want to know more, you'd better ask somebody that's been in that sort o' life longer than I have."

"Nonsense, Sam! you are too modest. As they say in churches, the newest convert has the strongest opinions. Now, you know what my business is. Strong opinions amount to everything in the legal business, and so I have come to you, just as squarely as I could go to any man in the world about anything else that he understood, to ask you plainly what you know about this new life that you are said to be leading now. Tell it to me, out and out. Don't be afraid to keep back anything. Take all the time you like at it. If you can't say just what you want to, try to put it as clearly as you can. I didn't come in to worry you. Remember that I really want some distinct information on the subject."

Sam looked up keenly, and said, "Mr. Bartram, are you in earnest?"

"Sam Kimper," said the young lawyer, "if I were not in earnest do you suppose I'd come into this shop during the business hours of the day and ask questions of this kind, when there are plenty of other people I could go to and get the information I want, and perhaps a good deal more? No, sir; I have come here to ask you because I thought that whatever you could say you would say in the fewest possible words and say it right to the point."

"But, Mr. Bartram, I'm not used to talkin' to lawyers. I never talked to any but once, you know, an' then I don't think they had very much respect for what I said. I wasn't in a fix where anybody could have any respect for me."

"This hasn't anything to do with those times, Sam," said the lawyer. "A friend of yours, who is a friend of mine, has told me that you talked very straightforward and honestly on this subject a few nights ago. That's more than I have been able to find anybody do in this town in a long time. I don't mind saying to you that, according to what the people who are the most prominent in the church say, I'm a pretty hard character. Therefore whatever you have to say you needn't be afraid to put very plainly. I simply want to know about myself; that's all."

"Mr. Bartram," said the cobbler, "as I've already said, you had a good deal better talked to somebody else. But, seem' you've come to me, I've only this to say to you, an' I hope you can make somethin' out of it, because I give you my word I've made more out of it than ever I did out of anythin' else on the face of the earth. I went to jail for stealin'. I hadn't ever been an honest man in my life. The only reason I hadn't been in jail all my life was that I hadn't been caught. At last I was caught, an' I was sent up, an' I don't mind sayin' that I think my sentence was mighty light, considerin' all the heavy mischief that I'd done durin' my life. While I was in jail I was talked to by a man that used to come through there to talk to the prisoners on Sundays. An' about all he said to me was to read me a lot o' things that Jesus Christ said when He was alive in this world, an' told me to go ahead an' do all them things just as well as I knowed how to, an' if I did 'em all well as far as I could I'd find out a good deal more in the course of time."

"Go on," said the lawyer.

"I haven't anything to go on with, Mr. Bartram," said the cobbler, "except that I took his advice, an' ain't ever been sorry for it, an' I wish I'd got it a good deal sooner. I'm just the same old two-an'-sixpence that I was before I went away. That is, I'm always tired an' always poor an' always wishin' I didn't have to do any work. But when there comes a time when I get a chance to do somethin' wrong an' make somethin' by it, I don't do it, although there was a time when I would have done it. I don't keep from doin' it for anything that I can make, 'cause I always go home a good deal worse off than I might have been. I hope you get something out of what I'm tellin' you, Mr. Bartram?"

"But, Sam, my dear fellow," said the young man, "all this doesn't mean anything; that is, so far as religion goes. You are simply trying to live right, whereas you used to live wrong. Haven't you learned any more than that?"

"Well, Mr. Bartram," said Sam, ceasing to jot down measurements, and looking at his stubby pencil as if he had a question to ask, "that's all I've learned. An' I s'pose you bein' the kind o' man you are,--that is, well born an' well brought up, plenty o' money an' never done nothin' wrong that you know of,--I s'pose that don't seem much to you; but I tell you, Mr. Bartram, it's a complete upset to my old life, an' it's such a big one that I've not been able to get any further since, an' I don't mind talkin' honestly to any fellow-man that talks about it to me. I don't mind sayin' honestly that it's so much more than I'm equal to livin' up to yet that I haven't had any time to think about goin' any further along. See here, Mr. Bartram, can you tell me somethin' I can do besides that?"

"Why, Sam," said the lawyer, "that's an odd question to ask me. I have seen you in church frequently since you were first a young man, ten years older than I. You have been told frequently what else you ought to do; and what I came in particular to ask you was as to how far you've done it, or been able to do it, or were trying to do it."

"You come to the wrong shop, then, Mr. Bartram," said the cobbler. "When a man's been livin' wrong all his life an' has had somethin' put into him to make him feel like turnin' round an' livin' right, the change that's gone on in him is so big that it'll take him about half a lifetime to get to where he can think about anythin' else."

"Pshaw!" said the lawyer.

"You said you wanted these shoes made out of soft leather an' with pretty thin soles, Mr. Bartram?"

"Yes, yes; make them any way you please."

Then the lawyer left the room and closed the door with a crash that caused the new cobbler to look up apprehensively.