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.