"Very well, their taxes are paid for this year;let them use that money. They will not suffer, ex-cept in their feelings, and that is where they ought to suffer. Man, you would spoil all the work of the Lord by your selfish tenderness toward sinners!""They aren't sinners."
"Yes, they are -- spiritual sinners, the worst kind in the world. Now --""You don't mean for me to go now?"
"Yes, I do -- now. If you don't go now you never will. Then, afterward, I want you to go home and sit in your best parlor and smoke, and have all your cats in there, too."Jim gasped. "But, Edward! Mis' Adkins --""I don't care about Mrs. Adkins. She isn't as bad as the rest, but she needs her little lesson, too.""Edward, the way that poor woman works to keep the house nice -- and she don't like the smell of tobacco smoke.""Never mind whether she likes it or not. You smoke.""And she don't like cats."
"Never mind. Now you go."
Jim stood up. There was a curious change in his rosy, child-like face. There was a species of quicken-ing. He looked at once older and more alert. His friend's words had charged him as with electricity.
When he went down the street he looked taller.
Amanda Bennet and Alma Beecher, sitting sewing at their street windows, made this mistake.
"That isn't Uncle Jim," said Amanda. "That man is a head taller, but he looks a little like him.""It can't be Uncle Jim," agreed Alma. Then both started.
"It is Uncle Jim, and he is coming here," said Amanda.
Jim entered. Nobody except himself, his nieces, and Joe Beecher ever knew exactly what happened, what was the aspect of the door-mat erected to human life, of the worm turned to menace. It must have savored of horror, as do all meek and down-trodden things when they gain, driven to bay, the strength to do battle. It must have savored of the god-like, when the man who had borne with patience, dignity, and sorrow for them the stings of lesser things because they were lesser things, at last arose and revealed himself superior, with a great height of the spirit, with the power to crush.
When Jim stopped talking and went home, two pale, shocked faces of women gazed after him from the windows. Joe Beecher was sobbing like a child.
Finally his wife turned her frightened face upon him, glad to have still some one to intimidate.
"For goodness' sake, Joe Beecher, stop crying like a baby," said she, but she spoke in a queer whis-per, for her lips were stiff.
Joe stood up and made for the door.
"Where are you going?" asked his wife.
"Going to get a job somewhere," replied Joe, and went. Soon the women saw him driving a neighbor's cart up the street.
"He's going to cart gravel for John Leach's new sidewalk!" gasped Alma.
"Why don't you stop him?" cried her sister.
"You can't have your husband driving a tip-cart for John Leach. Stop him, Alma!""I can't stop him," moaned Alma. "I don't feel as if I could stop anything."Her sister gazed at her, and the same expression was on both faces, making them more than sisters of the flesh. Both saw before them a stern boundary wall against which they might press in vain for the rest of their lives, and both saw the same sins of their hearts.
Meantime Jim Bennet was seated in his best parlor and Susan Adkins was whispering to Mrs.
Trimmer out in the kitchen.
"I don't know whether he's gone stark, staring mad or not," whispered Susan, "but he's in the parlor smoking his worst old pipe, and that big tiger tommy is sitting in his lap, and he's let in all the other cats, and they're nosing round, and Idon't dare drive 'em out. I took up the broom, then I put it away again. I never knew Mr. Bennet to act so. I can't think what's got into him.""Did he say anything?"
"No, he didn't say much of anything, but he said it in a way that made my flesh fairly creep. Says he, 'As long as this is my house and my furniture and my cats, Mis' Adkins, I think I'll sit down in the parlor, where I can see to read my paper and smoke at the same time.' Then he holds the kitchen door open, and he calls, 'Kitty, kitty, kitty!' and that great tiger tommy comes in with his tail up, rubbing round his legs, and all the other cats followed after.
I shut the door before these last ones got into the parlor." Susan Adkins regarded malevolently the three tortoise-shell cats of three generations and vari-ous stages of growth, one Maltese settled in a purring round of comfort with four kittens, and one perfectly black cat, which sat glaring at her with beryl-colored eyes.
"That black cat looks evil," said Mrs. Trimmer.
"Yes, he does. I don't know why I didn't drown him when he was a kitten.""Why didn't you drown all those Malty kittens?""The old cat hid them away until they were too big. Then he wouldn't let me. What do you sup-pose has come to him? Just smell that awful pipe!""Men do take queer streaks every now and then,"said Mrs. Trimmer. "My husband used to, and he was as good as they make 'em, poor man. He would eat sugar on his beefsteak, for one thing.
The first time I saw him do it I was scared. Ithought he was plum crazy, but afterward I found out it was just because he was a man, and his ma hadn't wanted him to eat sugar when he was a boy.
Mr. Bennet will get over it."
"He don't act as if he would."
"Oh yes, he will. Jim Bennet never stuck to anything but being Jim Bennet for very long in his life, and this ain't being Jim Bennet.""He is a very good man," said Susan with a somewhat apologetic tone.
"He's too good."
"He's too good to cats."
"Seems to me he's too good to 'most everybody.
Think what he has done for Amanda and Alma, and how they act!""Yes, they are ungrateful and real mean to him;and I feel sometimes as if I would like to tell them just what I think of them," said Susan Adkins.
