A PASTOR PROMISES AID
Four mature throats were simultaneously cleared, and Mr. Sage, being a very unusual sort of minister, abruptly put his hand over his mouth—not quite soon enough, however, to smother a spasmodic chuckle.
Notwithstanding this and other diverting passages, Master Oliver was finally made to realize the vastness of the dark and terrifying shadow that hung over him. He listened to the pronouncement of his own doom, and his warm little heart was beating fast and hard in an ice-cold body that trembled with awe. He suffered his “uncles” to pat him on the shoulder and say they would “stand by” him through thick and thin, and his lip quivered with something far removed from gratitude. He sat up long past his bed-time, and his eyes were bright and shining where ordinarily they would have been dull and heavy.
At last the three hangmen arose to depart. They had frightened the poor boy out of his boots, and now, well-satisfied with their work, were going home to sleep the sleep of the just and beneficent whilst he was doomed to a shivery night in which the gallows they had erected for him was to stand out as if it were real and not a thing of the imagination.
“And, now, Oliver,” said Mr. Sikes consolingly, “you needn’t be afraid of the fortune coming true, because we’re going to see that it don’t. We’re going to watch over you, and tend you, and guide you, and some day we’ll all sit around and laugh ourselves sick over what that infernal lying gypsy woman said. So don’t you worry. Me and your Uncle Silas and Mr. Sage here are going to make it our business to see that you grow up to be a fine, decent, absolutely model young man, and ’long about 1920 or thereabouts we’ll have the doggonedest celebration you ever heard of. We’ll paint the town—”
“How old will I be then?” piped up Oliver wistfully.
“You’ll be thirty and over,” announced Mr. Sikes.
“And how old will you and Uncle Silas be?”
“About the same age as your Pa—couple of years’ difference, maybe, one way or the other.”
“How old will that be?”
Mr. Link, who was quick at figures, replied, but with a most singular hush in his usually jovial voice.
“Why—er—I’ll be seventy-eight, your Pa will be seventy-five, and your Uncle Joe here will be—you’ll be eighty, Joe. By jiminy, I wonder if—”
“I didn’t know anybody ever lived to be as old as that,” said Oliver, so earnestly that three of his listeners frowned. “Except Methusalum. Maybe you’ll all be dead and buried ’fore I’m thirty so what’s going to become of me then?”
“Why—er—we don’t intend to be dead for a long, long time,” explained Mr. Sikes. “I’m figuring on living to be a hundred, and so’s your pa and Uncle Silas. Don’t you worry about us, sonny. We’ll be hanging—I mean, we’ll be moseying around this here town for forty or fifty years longer, sure as you’re alive. Yes, sirree.”
“What an awful thing it would be,” groaned Oliver’s father, “if all three of us was to up and die inside the next eight or ten—”
“If there’s an epidemic like that,” interrupted Mr. Link, scowling at the tactless Mr. Baxter, “it’ll probably take Oliver off too, so don’t be foolish.”
Mr. Sage spoke up, dryly. “It will be quite all right for you to die, gentlemen, whenever the good Lord thinks it most convenient. You seem to forget that I am one of Oliver October’s self-appointed guardians. Permit me to remind you that I will still be a mere youth of sixty when he reaches the age of thirty. So you need not feel the slightest compunction or hesitancy about dying.”
He was stared at very hard by two of his listeners.
“I wish my Ma was here,” said Oliver October, his lip trembling. Despite the sincere if voluble protestations of the three visitors, he still felt miserably in need of a friend and comforter. He could not conceive of his father taking him in his arms and holding him tight; there wasn’t anything soft and warm and cushiony about his father; only his mother could whisper and croon in his ear and snuggle him up close when he was sick or frightened, and she was gone.
“Amen to that,” said Mr. Sage, fervently.
“Amen!” repeated Mr. Link in his most professional voice.
Mr. Sikes coughed uncomfortably and then put on his hat.
“Well, good night,” said he. “Sleep tight, sonny.”
“Say ‘thank you’ to your Uncle Joe, Oliver,” said Mr. Baxter huskily, and then, without rime or reason, gave vent to his nervous cackle.
“Thank you, Uncle Joe,” muttered Oliver.
Mr. Sage laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Do you say your prayers every night, Oliver?”
“Yes, sir—I do.”
“Well—er—if Brother Baxter doesn’t mind and if you gentlemen will excuse me, I think I will go upstairs with Oliver and—and listen to his prayer.”
A little later on, the tall, spare pastor sat on the side of young Oliver’s trundle bed in the room across the hall from old Oliver’s and next to the one in which Annie Sharp, the hired girl, was already sound asleep. The boy had murmured his “Now I lay me” and, for good measure, the Lord’s Prayer. Mr. Sage leaned over and, lowering his voice, said—but not until he had satisfied himself that no one was listening outside the door:
“You believe I am a good man, don’t you, Oliver—a very good man?”
“Yes, sir. You’re a preacher. You got to be good.”
“Ahem! Quite so. You don’t believe I could tell a lie, do you?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, now I am going to tell you something and I want you to believe it. Nobody on this earth can foretell the future. Nobody knows what is going to happen to-morrow, much less what is going to happen years away. It isn’t possible. God does not give any person that miraculous power. Our Lord Jesus Christ could perform miracles, but he was the only one who could do so. Do you think that God would give to all the thieving gypsies in the world the same divine power that he gave to his only Son, the Savior? No! Now, listen. There is not a word of truth in what that old gypsy woman said—not one word, Oliver. You can believe me, you can trust me. I am God’s minister, and I am telling you to pay no attention to anything Mr. Sikes and Mr. Link said to you to-night. If God would only allow me to do so, I would tell you that they are a pair of silly old fools—but that wouldn’t be kind, so I will not say it. You need not be afraid. All that talk about your being hung some day is poppycock—pure poppycock. Don’t you believe a word of it. I came upstairs with you just for the purpose of telling you this—not really to hear your prayers. Now don’t you feel better?”
“But you just said, Uncle Herbert, that nobody could see ahead. How do you know I won’t be—be hung?”
“I am not saying that, my lad. I am merely telling you that the gypsy woman did not have the power to see ahead. There is no such thing as true fortune-telling. She claimed to read the stars. Well, do you suppose that all those millions and millions of stars—any one of them much greater than the earth—are interested in little bits of things like you and me? No, siree, Oliver. They don’t even know we exist. That old gypsy was just lying. They all do. They take your money and then they go away and laugh at you for being such a goose. So you need not worry at all about what you were told to-night. And now I am going to say something to you that will surprise you. It is wrong for me, a minister of the gospel, to tell you this, but I love fighting Christians just as much as I love praying Christians. I do not mean that a man should go about looking for fights. That would be very, very wrong. Wouldn’t it?” He asked the question abruptly.
“Yes, sir,” said Oliver. “It would.”
“You must keep out of fights whenever you can, but if the time comes when you must fight—do it as well as you know how and pray about it afterwards. When your enemy smites you, turn the other cheek like a good Christian boy—but do not let him hit your other cheek if you can help it. Defend yourself. Put up your props, as your Uncle Joe says, and sail into him. You will thus be turning the other cheek, but it does not mean that he may smite it without resistance on your part. The Bible doesn’t seem to be very clear on that point, so I am taking the liberty of telling you just what I think ought to be done when an enemy besets you with his fists. You must not fight if you can help it, Oliver. A soft answer turneth away wrath. Sometimes. When I was your age, I had a good many fights—and you see what I am to-day. A minister of the gospel. If I had an enemy to-day and he was to set upon me, I should defend myself to the best of my strength and ability. Your Uncle Joe and your Uncle Silas are right, however, in counseling you to avoid conflict. No good ever comes of it. As you grow older you will acquire wisdom, and wisdom is a very great thing, Oliver. A wise man does not go about seeking for trouble. He tries to avoid it. And so will you when you are older. But just at present you are no wiser than other boys of your age. You were very foolish to fight with Sammy to-day because Jane egged you on. It is most commendable, of course, to protect a lady in distress. But Jane was not in distress. She did not need protection. Sometimes a woman—But never mind. You understand what I mean, don’t you, Oliver?”
“No, sir,” said the truthful Oliver.
“Well, what I want you to do, Oliver, is to go on leading a—er—regular boy’s life. Do the things that are right and square, be honest and fearless—and no harm will ever come to you. Now, turn over and go to sleep, there’s a good boy. I will put out the light for you. Don’t lie awake worrying about things—because there is nothing to worry about. Good night, Oliver. I have a very great affection for you, my lad, and, so long as God lets me live, I will always help you when—er—evil besets you. As it did to-night.”
He smiled dryly, perhaps a little guiltily, as he turned away and lowered the wick in the lamp that stood on the table near by.
“Don’t blow it out yet, please,” pleaded Oliver October. “I want to ast you a question.”
“Go ahead, my lad. What is it?” said the man, peering over the lamp chimney, at the boy huddled up in the bed.
“If you was me, would you take boxing lessons from Uncle Joe?”
Mr. Sage considered, weighing his words. A little wave of color spread over his pale, ascetic face, and a queer light gleamed in his kindly eye.
“No, I wouldn’t,” he answered after a moment. Then he blew out the light. Instead of departing, he strode over and sat down on the edge of the bed. “I doubt very much if Joe Sikes is a scientific boxer. He strikes me as a rather rough and tumble sort of fellow. You wouldn’t learn much from him, I’m afraid. But I’ll tell you what I will do. I will give you a—er—a few instructions myself, if you will come over to the house, say once a week—secretly, you understand. You must never tell anybody that I am—er—giving you lessons in the manly art of self-defense. It will have to be a very dark secret between us, Oliver. For the present, at any rate.”
He was glad that he had blown out the light. Somehow he knew that the small boy’s eyes were upon him, and that they were filled with the sort of amazement that makes one most uncomfortable. This was proved by the very significant fact that Oliver did not speak. After a moment Mr. Sage went on, a little hurriedly:
“You see, Oliver, when I was in college—that was before I went to the Theological Institute, you know—I went in for the various sports and games. I was on the football team and the baseball team, and so forth. Quite a number of us took up boxing. It is very fine exercise for both the body and the mind. Yes, I will be happy to teach you a few of the tricks of the—er—sport. Of course, I have not boxed since I became a minister, but I—er—I dare say I haven’t forgotten how to feint and block and sidestep and—ahem! Yes, yes—come and see me to-morrow and we will talk it over.”
As he slowly descended the stairs, he consoled himself with the thought that he had given the poor lad something besides the gallows to think about.
The three old men were waiting for him on the porch, and none too amiably it would appear, judging by the glum silence that greeted him as he joined them. Mr. Link and Mr. Sikes spoke a gruff “good night” to Baxter and started off toward the gate at the foot of the slope. The minister paused at the top of the steps to shake hands with Oliver October’s harassed parent.
“Thank you for coming over and helping straighten things out,” said Mr. Baxter. Then he proceeded to commit himself and his two cronies by adding: “Have you heard anything from Josephine lately?”
Now that was the one question that the people of Rumley religiously and resolutely refrained from asking Mr. Sage. They persistently asked it of each other—in an obviously modified form—and they did not hesitate to bother the postmaster from time to time with inquiries; but they never asked it of Josephine’s husband. It was a very delicate matter.
Mrs. Sage, in the sixth year of her married life—her baby was then two years old—surrendered to her ambition. She went on the stage.
And so, it is no wonder that people hesitated about asking Mr. Sage how she was getting along; to most of them it was almost the same as inquiring if he knew how she was getting along in hell.
Besides, it was hard to ask questions of a man whose eyes were dark with unhappiness and whose face was drawn and sad and always wistful.
For nearly four years that very question had been on the tip of Mr. Baxter’s tongue, struggling for release. He had always succeeded in holding it back. And now, before he knew what he was about, he let go and out it came. He was petrified.
“Not lately,” said Mr. Sage, quietly.
Whereupon, for no reason at all, Mr. Baxter cackled inanely.