“Hold on,” interposed Caleb, quietly. He got to his feet and laid a detaining hand on Caine’s arm.
“You mean well,” he said, “an’ I thank you. But I think this is where I do the talkin’, an’ not you. I’ve never made a speech here before,” he went on, raising his voice, “An’ I never expected to. But I’ll ask you people to have patience with me for a minute or two. Because there’s one or two things that’s got to be said here an’ now. An’ I’m the one that’s got to say ’em.”
He glanced about him. Never before in the Arareek Club had orator enjoyed so rapt an audience. The quiet, heavy voice, the brute magnetism of the man, no less than curiosity as to how he would handle so impossible a situation, had already caught everyone’s attention. His wholly masterful manner, his latent strength, lent a force of their own to his rough words as he went on:
“Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that man doubled up on the floor there is my father—I didn’t know till five minutes ago that he was still alive. I hadn’t seen nor heard of him in near twenty-five years; till he came in here, crazy drunk, just now, an’ broke up your party. I’m sorry for what he’s done. If I could make any kind of rep’ration to you for the bother he’s caused, I’d do it. I guess you know that. But I can’t. All I can do is to try to make you look at him less like he was a mangy dog in a fit, an’ more as if he was a human like yourselves. That’s why I’m takin’ the liberty to speak to you now. Will you hear me?”
The unconscious buzz and murmur that all at once swept the room served him for answer; and he continued:
“My father,” with another nod toward the mumbling figure on the floor, “was a risin’, hard workin’ man. He come of decent people, an’ he was a promisin’ young chap that ev’rybody liked. That was the trouble. Too many folks liked him; which is pretty near as bad as bein’ liked by nobody. Nothin’ pers’nal intended. When the Civil War broke out he went to the front. There he learned to starve, to loaf, to forget his business trainin’. An’ he wasn’t the only one, I guess. There’s where he learned to drink, too. When men have to go supperless to bed on the wet ground after an all-day march, a swig of whiskey’s a blessin’. It’s a blessin’, too, when it dulls the mem’ry of the comrade at your side that was blowed to pieces by a shell or ripped open by a bay’net. Can you blame the soldiers if they let the whiskey bless ’em so often that it gets to be a habit?
“After the war my father come home. There’d been bands of music an’ women wavin’ handkerchi’fs an’ noospapers to call him an’ his fellers a lot of hot-air names when they marched off in their bloo uniforms to the war. When the boys came slouchin’ back, footsore, ragged, an’ so thin they looked like walkin’ embalmer advertisements, there wasn’t quite so much cheerin’. My father’d gone away a brisk, fine set-up lad, leavin’ good work behind him. He come back like a good many thousand others, none the better for a four-year course in shiftlessness, booze an’ no reg’lar work.
“The folks who’d cheered him when he went to fight for ’em had cheered away a lot of their spare patri’tism by that time. There wa’nt enough of it left in Granite to give my father a fair start in the world again. Because he’d learned to drink, to loaf, to be uneasy an’ unreliable when he worked, they forgot he’d picked up those tricks while he was defendin’ their country. Heroes was a drug in the market. If any of you fellers know how it feels to get down to work the day after your fortnight’s vacation, maybe you can understand what it meant to him to settle down to a job after four years in the open.”
Conover glanced again at his father. The old man had ceased to mumble and was trying to follow the Fighter’s speech. The slack jaw had tightened; and the huddled form was struggling slowly to its feet.
“He tried to work,” resumed Conover, “but younger, smarter folks with steadier business trainin’ was grabbin’ all the good jobs. Yet he got what he could, an’ for awhile he did the best he knew how. Then he saw a chance to make things easier for my mother an’ me. He’d been used to seein’ his off’cers in the army paddin’ expense accounts an’ gettin’ graft on fodder bills an’ such. He’d seen contractors grow rich by sellin’ the Gov’ment shoddy blankets an’ rotten food. Was it any worse for him to scamp weights on the coal scales? That’s what he done. Not in big quantities as if he was a financier; but a few cents a day as he got the chance.