IKNEW David Dean so well and for so many years that I may see a tragedy in what may, after all, be merely an ordinary human life. As I think of him, from the time I first knew him, on through our many years of friendship, I cannot recall that he ever had a greater ambition than to serve his church and his town faithfully. He had a man's desire for happiness, and for the blessings of wife and children, and that they might live without penury; but he was always too full of the wish to be of service to waste thought on himself. Love and care and such little luxuries as the shut-in invalid must have he lavished on 'Thusia, but the lavishment of the luxuries was in the spirit, and not in the quantity. It was lavishness to spend even a few cents for daintier fruit than usual, when David's income and expenses were considered. 'Thusia did not suffer for luxuries, to tell the truth; for Mary and the church ladies sometimes almost overwhelmed her with them, but the occasional special attention from David was, as all wives will appreciate, most necessary.
The Riverbank Presbyterians considered themselves exceedingly fortunate in having David Dean. The rapid succession of Methodist pastors, with the inevitable ups and downs of character and ability, and the explosions of enthusiasm or of anger at each change, made David's long tenure seem a double blessing. His sermons satisfied; his good works were recognized by the entire community; his faith was firm and warming. He was well loved. When Lucille Hardcome finally recognized his worth, there did not remain a member of the congregation who wished a change. It may be put more positively: the entire congregation would have dreaded a change had the thought of one been possible.
A few of the members, Burton among them, may have recognized that David—to put it brutally—was a bargain. He could not be replaced for the money he cost. The other members were content in the thought that their dominie was paid a little more than any minister in Riverbank, nor was it their affair that the other ministers were grossly underpaid. Certainly there was always competition enough for the Methodist pastorate and hundreds of young men would have been glad to succeed David.
When the six months—the term of the note David had given Lucille Hardcome—elapsed he was unable to make any reduction in its amount. Casting up his accounts he found he was not quite able to meet his bills; a new load of debt was accumulating. He went to her with the interest money, feeling all the distress of a debtor, and she laughed at him. From somewhere in her gilded escritoire she hunted out the note, took the new one he proffered, and made the whole affair seem trivial. He mentioned the subscription she had half, or wholly, promised and she reassured him. Some houses she owned somewhere were not rented at the moment; she did not like to promise what she could not perform or could only perform with difficulty. It would be all right; Mr. Burton understood; she had explained it to him. She made it seem a matter of business, with the unrented houses and her talk of taxes, and David was no business man; it was not for him to press matters too strongly if Lucille and Burton had come to an understanding. She turned the conversation to Alice and Ben.
“Lanny Welsh hasn't been down at all, has he?” she asked.
“Yes, once or twice,” David said.
“Alice says he is buying a shop in Derlingport.”
“Has bought it. It is one reason he cannot come down.”
Lucille looked full into David's eyes.
“Tell me!” she smiled. “Don't I deserve to know the whole? Has she said anything!”
“Yes,” said David, “she has said something. She doesn't know what to do. She came to me for advice; I told her to trust her own heart.” Lucille laughed gleefully.
“These girls!” she exclaimed. “Well, you told her exactly the right thing! Mr. Dean, she is in love with Ben! She is in love with both of them, of course, or she is in love with Love, as a young girl should be, and she doesn't know behind which mask, Ben's or Lanny's, Love is hiding. She will never marry Lanny!”
“You are so sure?”
“You wouldn't know the Ben I have made,” said Lucille. “Ben does not know. Six months ago he had no more of the lover in him than a machine has; if any youth was left, it was drying up while he clawed over his business affairs. I think,” she laughed, “if I ever needed a profession I would take up lover-making. What do you think Ben has done?”
David did not hazard a guess.
“Bought a shotgun,” Lucille laughed. “Ben Derling going in for sport! I'd have him learning to dance, if dancing was proper. I believe I am really clever, Mr. Dean! I saw just what Ben lacked, and I had George Tunnison come here—he plays a flute as horribly as anyone can—and I made him talk ducks and quail, until Ben's muscles twitched. If Alice had been a man she would be a duck hunter.”
David smiled now.
“She would,” he admitted.
“So Ben is spending half his spare time banging at a paper target with George, and he brings the targets to show to Alice. He has bought a shanty boat with George. It's romance! Danger! Manliness!”
She laughed again. David smiled, looking full at her with his gray eyes, amusement sparkling in them. He had a little forelock curl that always lay on his forehead. Lucille thought what a boy he was, and then—what a lover he would be; quite another sort from Ben Derling. She drew a deep breath, frightened by the daring thought that flashed across her mind.
At no time, I am sure, was Lucille Hardcome in love with David. The pursuit she began—or it would be better to call it a lively siege—was no more than a wanton trial of her powers. She was a born schemer, an insatiable intrigante, lacking, in Riverbank—since she was now social queen and church dictator—opportunity for the exercise of her ability. It is doubtful whether she ever knew what she wanted with David Dean. There are cooks and chambermaids who glory in their “mashes,” and tell them over with gusto; they collect “mashes” as numismatists collect coins, and display the finer specimens with great pride. It may be that Lucille thought it would be a fine thing to make the finest man she knew fall in love with her. The proof of her power would be all the greater because he was a minister and married, and seemingly proof against her and all other women.
'Thusia was an invalid, and it may have flashed across Lucille's brain that 'Thusia might not live forever; it is more likely that she did not think of a time when David might be free to marry again. She doubtless thought it would be interesting, and in harmony with her character as social queen, to make a conquest of David, and have him dangling. There is no way of telling what she thought or what she wanted beyond what we know: she came to courting him so openly that it made talk. Lucille had sufficient conceit to think that no man could withstand her if she gave her heart to a conquest. She did not hurry matters. She had all the rest of her life, and all the rest of David's, in which to play the game. For a year or two she was satisfied to think that David admired her secretly; that he was struggling with himself, and trying to conceal what he felt, as a man in his position should. Instead, he was unaware that Lucille was trying to do anything unusual. She had her ways and her manners; she was flamboyant and fleshily impressive. That she should coo like a dove-like cow might well be but another of her manifestations. David really had no idea what she was getting at, or that she was getting at anything except—by seeming to be on close terms with the dominie—strengthening her dominance in the church. She had enveloped the elders and the trustees, and now she seemed to wish to envelop the dominie, after which she would grin like the cat that swallowed the canary. David, having a backbone, stiffened it, and it was then Lucille discovered she had teased herself into a state where a conquest of David seemed a necessity to her life's happiness.
Long before she reached this point, she had the satisfaction of knowing that Alice had broken with Lanny, and was engaged to Ben Derling. The break with Lanny came less than a year after Lanny went to Derlingport, and was not sharp and angry but slow and gentle—like the separation of a piece of water-soaked cardboard into parts. Distance and time worked for Lucille; propinquity worked for Ben Derling. Thirty miles and eleven months were too great for Lanny's personal charm to extend without losing vigor, and Lucille groomed Ben, mentally and otherwise, and brought out his best. There was no doubt that Ben would make the best husband for Alice; he was a born husband. No matter what man any girl picked it was safe to say Ben would make a better husband than the man chosen; it would only remain for the girl to be able to get Ben, and to feel that—the world being what it is, and perfection often the dullest thing in it—she wanted a best husband. Alice, aided by Lucille, decided that she did want Ben.
It would be untruthful to deny that David and 'Thusia were pleased. They liked Ben and loved his mother; Lanny's unfortunate father no longer lurked a family menace. With these and other considerations came, unasked but warming, the thought that the future would not hold poverty for all concerned. It was well that Alice need not add her poverty to David's and 'Thusia's, for Roger—well beloved as he was—seemed destined to be helpless in money affairs. The George Tunnison who had been used to tempt Ben Derling to so much sportiness as lay in duck hunting kept a small gun and sporting goods shop—a novelty in Riverbank—and Roger had found a berth there. His ball playing made him a local hero, and he did draw trade, and George gave him five dollars a week. This was to be more when the business could afford it, which would be never.
No time had been set for Alice's wedding. Ben was never in a hurry, and there seemed no reason why the wedding should be hastened. If Ben was slow in other things he was equally slow in changing his mind and, having once asked Alice to marry him, he would marry her, even if she made him wait ten years. Except for their worry over money matters—for Lucille meant to withhold her increased subscription as long as the withholding made the trustees, and especially Burton, fawn a little—David and 'Thusia were quite happy. The engagement had brought Mary Derling closer than ever, and Rose Hinch was always dearer when young love was in the air. She had missed love in her youth, since David was not for her, but her joy in the young love of others was as great as if it had been her own.
The day was early in the spring, and the hour was late in the afternoon. David, just in from some call, had thrown his coat on the hall rack, and entered the study. He was tired, and dropped into his big easy-chair half inclined to steal a wink or two before supper. In the sitting room 'Thusia and Mary Derling, Alice and Rose Hinch, were sewing and talking.
“I'll tell you one thing,” he heard Alice say; “I'm not going to spoil my beautiful blue eyes sewing in this light.”
He heard a match scrape, and a strip of yellow light appeared on his worn carpet. Against it Alice's profile, oddly distorted, showed in silhouette. Mary's voice, asking if Alice saw her scissors, and Alice's reply, came faintly. He closed his eyes.
The jangling of the doorbell awakened him. “Never mind, I'll use Rose's,” he heard Mary say, so brief had been his drowsing, and Alice went to the door.
“Yes, Mrs. Derling is here,” he heard Alice say in reply to a question he could not catch. “Will you come in!”
Evidently not. Alice went into the sitting room. “Someone to see you, Aunt Mary,” she said, for so she called Mary. “He won't come in.”, Mary went to the door. David heard her querying “Yes!” and the mumbling voice of the man at the door and Mary's rapid questions and the answers she received. He reached the door in time to put an arm around her as she crumpled down. She had grown stout in the latter years and her weight was too much for him. He lowered her to the lowest hall step and called: “Rose!” Rose Hinch came, trailing a length of some white material. She cast it aside, and dropped to her knees beside Mary.
“What is it!” she asked, looking up at David. “I think she fainted,” he said. “Ben is dead—is drowned.”
“Ah!” cried Rose in horror and sympathy and put her hand on Mary's heart.
“And Roger,” said David. “Roger, too!”
THE bodies were recovered, had been recovered before George Tunnison started on the long trip back to Riverbank. It seemed that Ben could not swim, and when the skiff turned over he grasped Roger, and they both went down. The river was covered with floating ice. Tunnison, according to his own account, did what he could, but if the two came up it must have been to find the floating ice between them and the air. They were beyond resuscitation when they were found. Of Mary the doctor's verdict was fatty degeneration of the heart; any shock would have killed her.
In the sad days and weeks that followed Rose Hinch was the comforter, offering no words but making her presence a balm. She neither asked nor suggested that she come, but came and made her home in the manse. It is difficult to express how she helped David and 'Thusia and doubly bereaved Alice and querulous old Mr. Fragg over the hard weeks. She was Life Proceeding As It Must. It might almost be said that she was the normal life of the family, continuing from where sorrow had wrenched David and 'Thusia and Alice and the grandfather from it, and, by mute example, urging them to live again. Her presence was comfort. Her manner was a sweet suggestion that life must still be lived. She made the grandfather's bed in Roger's room, for a room vacated by death is an invitation to sorrow; she began the sewing where it had been dropped, and 'Thusia and Alice, because Rose sewed, took their needles. Work was what they needed. They missed Mary every hour, and David missed her most, for she had been his ablest assistant in his town charities, but the greater work thrown on him by her going was the best thing to keep his mind off the loss that caused it, and Rose Hinch intentionally refrained from giving her usual aid in order that the work might fill his time the more. Lucille Hardcome alone—no one could have made Lucille understand—doubled her assistance. The annoyance her ill-considered help caused him was also good for David; it too helped him to forget other things.
Grandfather Fragg died within the year. Rose had long since left the manse, unwilling to be an expense after she was no longer needed, and had taken up her nursing again, for she was always in demand. As each six months ended David carried a new note to Lucille, and had a new battle with her, for she wanted no note; she urged him to consider the loan a gift. This he would not listen to. He had cut his expenses to the lowest possible figure, and was able to pay Lucille a little each time now—fifty dollars, or twenty-five, or whatever sum it was possible to save. He managed to keep out of debt. Alice, who had rightly asked new frocks and this and that when Ben was alive, seemed to want nothing whatever. She did not mope but she seemed to consider her life now ordered, not completed, but to be as it now was. She was dearer to David and 'Thusia than ever, and they did not urge her to desert them. In time she would, they hoped, forget and be young again, but she waited too long, and they let her, and she was never to leave them. Her indifference to things outside the manse and the church permitted David to save a few dollars he might otherwise have spent on her. So few were they that what he was able to pay Lucille represented it.
For some time after the tragedy that had come so suddenly David had no heart to take up the question he had discussed with the banker. Burton, of course, said nothing when not approached, regarding the increase in David's stipend. He did mention to David, however, the desired increase in Lucille's subscription, and with the death of Mary Derling this increase became more desirable than ever. Old Sam Wiggett and, after his death, Mary, had been the most liberal supporters of the church. It was found, when Mary's will was read, that she had left the church ten thousand dollars as an endowment. Of this only the interest could be used, and her contributions, with what Ben gave, had amounted to far more—to several hundred dollars more.
More than ever Lucille loomed large as the most important member of the church. With the wiping out of the last of the Wiggett strain in Riverbank, the Wiggett money went to Derlings in other places, and Lucille became, by promotion, seemingly the wealthiest Presbyterian. Burton wrinkled his brow over the church finances, but, luckily, no repairs were needed, and there was a little money in the bank, and Mary's endowment legacy made his statements look well on paper. I think you can understand how the trustees and the church went ahead placidly, month following month, unworried, because feeling sure Lucille would presently do well by the church. She was like a rich uncle always about to die and leave a fortune, but never dying. It was understood that when her investments were satisfactorily arranged she would act. At first this reason may have been real, but Lucille knew the value of being sought. Like the rich, undying uncle she commanded more respect as a prospective giver than she would have received having given.
It was extremely distasteful to David to have to ask Lucille to give; it seemed like asking her to pay herself what he owed her, and when he had done his duty by asking her several times, he agreed with Burton that the banker could handle the matter best. A year, more or less, after Mary Derling's death the banker was able to announce that Lucille had agreed to give two hundred dollars a year more than she had been giving, and that as soon as she was able she would give more.
She spoke of the two hundred dollars as a trifle. It brought the church income to about where it had been before Mary Derling's death.
Without actually formulating the idea, Lucille had suggested to herself that she would celebrate her conquest of David Dean by increasing her yearly gift to the church to the utmost she could afford. Her blind self-admiration led her to think she was making progress. David was always the kindest of men, gentle and showing the pleasure he felt in having companionship in good works, and Lucille probably mistook this for a narrower, personal admiration. It was inevitable that he should be intimate with her, she directed so many of the church activities. If he were to speak of the choir, the Sunday school, church dinners, any of a dozen things, he must speak to Lucille. They were often together. They walked up the hill from church together, Banker Burton often with them; Lucille, in her low-hung carriage, frequently carried David to visit his sick, and he considered it thoughtful kindness.
Many in Riverbank still remember David Dean, as he sat back against the maroon cushions of the Hardcome carriage, Lucille erect and never silent. He seemed weary during those years—for Lucille courted him slowly—but he never faltered in his work. If anything he was doubly useful to the town, and doubly helpful and inspiring to his church people. Sorrow had mellowed him without breaking him. He had been with Lucille on a visit to a boy, one of the Sunday school lads who had broken a leg, and Lucille had taken a bag of oranges. The house was on the other side of the town, and Lucille drove through the main street, stopping at the post office to let David get his mail. He met some friend in the office, and came out with a smile on his lips, his mail in his hand. Lucille dropped him at the manse. He walked to the little porch and sat there, tearing open the few unimportant letters, and glancing at the contents. There was one paper, and he tore off the wrapper. It was theDeclarator. He tore it twice across, and then curiosity, or a desire to know what he might have to battle against, made him open the sheet and look at the “Briefs.” The column began:
“It is entirely proper for a minister of the gospel to ride hither and yon with whomsoever he chooses, male or female, wife or widow, when his debts are paid. We should love our neighbors.”
“A minister of the gospel is, like Caesar's wife, above suspicion.Honi soit!Shame upon you for thinking evil of the spotless.”
David read to the bottom of the column. It was stupid venom, the slime of a pen grown almost childish, lacking even the sparkle of wit, but it was aimed so directly at him that he burned with resentment. The last line was the vilest: “Who paid the parson's debts?” suggesting the truth that Lucille had paid them, as the rest of the column suggested that she and David were more intimate than they should be. He sat holding the paper until 'Thusia called him. Before he went to her he walked to the kitchen, and burned the paper in the kitchen stove, and washed his hands.
THE following day was Sunday. Lucille, who had received and read theDeclarator, was present at both morning and evening services, as usual, and took her full part in the Sunday school in the afternoon. Welsh's column had annoyed her, undoubtedly, but in another way than it had annoyed David. To David it had seemed the cruel and unfounded spitefulness of a wicked-minded old man; to Lucille it was as if Welsh had guessed close to the truth, but had carried his imagination too far. It had made her furiously angry, as such a thing would, but she felt that it would do her little harm. Welsh was known to be so vile that she had but to hold her head high, and the town and her friends would think none the less of her for the attack. Those who did believe it, if there were any, would by their belief be offering her a sort of incense she coveted.
Several spoke to David about the column, and all with genuine indignation. The story of Welsh's attack had spread, of course, but none of us who knew David Dean thought one iota of truth was in it; the thing was preposterous. It came down to this: David Dean was not the kind of man of which such things were possible. We did not believe it then, and we never believed it. The town did not believe it; even his few enemies knew him better than to believe such a thing; Welsh himself did not believe it. But Lucille Hardcome did, conceit-blinded creature that she was! Some day during the week, Wednesday it may have been, she drove her low-hung carriage to the manse. The driver's seat was a flat affair on X-shaped iron rods, so arranged that it could be turned back out of the way when Lucille wished to drive and dispense with her coachman, and she was driving now. David came to the door, and went in to get his hat. He wished to visit the same broken-legged boy, and the carriage was a grateful assistance. He spread the thin lap robe over his legs, and Lucille touched the horses with the whip.
“Jimmy's first?” she asked, and David assented.
“You have oranges again, I see,” he said. “How he enjoys them!”
“Doesn't he?” Lucille replied, and then: “I'm glad you do not mean to let thatDeclaratorarticle make any difference. I was afraid it might. You are so sensitive, David.”
It was the first time she had called him David. Mary had called him that, and Rose did; he was David to many of us; but the name did not sound right coming from Lucille's mouth. She was so lordly, so queenly, usually so rather grandly aloof, calling even dear Thusia “Mrs. Dean,” and Rose “Miss Hinch.”
“Sensitive! I have never thought that of myself,” he answered.
“Oh, but you are!” she said. “I know you so well, you see. I almost feared that article would frighten you away; make you afraid of me. As if you and I need be afraid of each other!”
“I'm sure we need not be,” David answered, and she glanced at his face. She did not quite like the tone.
“I thought you might not come with me today,” she said. “If you had suggested that, I meant to rebel, naturally. Now, if ever, that would be a mistake. That would be the very thing to make people talk. Your friendship means too much to me to let it be interrupted by what people say.”
“It need not be interrupted,” said David.
“It means so much more to me than you imagine,” Lucille said. “Often I think you don't realize how empty my life was when I began to know you. You are so modest, so self-effacing, you do not know your worth. If you knew the full story of my childhood and girlhood, so empty and loveless, and even my short year of married life, so lacking in love, you would know what your friendship has meant. Just to know a man like you meant so much. It gave life a new meaning.”
Unfortunately you cannot see Lucille Hardcome as David saw her when he turned his face toward her, perplexed by her words, not able to believe what her tone implied, until he saw her face. She had grown heavier in the years she had been in Riverbank, and flabbier—or flabby—for she was not that when she came to the town. She wore one of the flamboyant hats she affected, and she was beautifully overdressed. The red of her cheeks was too deep to be natural. She was artificial and the artificiality extended to her mind and her heart, and could not but be apparent to one so sincere as David Dean. Her very words were artificial, as she spoke. The same words coming from another woman would have been the sincere cry of a heart thankful for the friendship David had given; coming from Lucille they sounded false; they sounded, as they were, the love-making of a shallow woman.
David was frightened; he was as frightened as a boy who suddenly finds himself enfolded in the arms of a lovesick cook, half smothered, and only anxious to kick himself out of the sudden embrace. He saw, as if a dozen curtains of gauze had suddenly been withdrawn, the meaning of many of Lucille's words and actions he had formerly seen through the veils of misunderstanding. There was something comical in his dismay. He wanted to jump from the low-hung carriage and run. He said:
“Yes. I'm quite sure—”
“So it means so much to me that we are not to let anything make a difference,” Lucille continued. “I think we need each other. In your work a woman's sympathy—”
“I think I'll have to get out,” David said. “I'll just run in here and—”
He waved a hand toward a shop at the side of the street. It happened to be a tobacconist's, but he did not notice that. He threw the lap robe from his knees, and put a foot ont of the carriage. Lucille was surprised. She stopped her horses. She thought David might mean to buy a package of tobacco for some old man he had in mind. He stepped to the walk. Once there he felt safer; his wits returned.
“I think I'll walk, if you don't mind,” he said. “I need the exercise. No, really, I'll walk. Thank you.”
Lucille looked after him.
“Well!” she exclaimed, and then: “I'm through with you, Mr. David Dean!”
She thought she was haughtily indifferent, but at heart she was furiously angry. She turned her horses, and drove home. To prove how indifferent she was she told her coachman, in calm tones, to grease the harness and, entering the house, she told her maid to wash the parlor windows. She went to her room quite calmly and thought: “What impudence! He imagined I was making love to him!” and then, as evidence that she was calm and untroubled, she seated herself at her desk, and wrote a calm and businesslike note to David Dean. It said that, as she was in some need of money, she would have to ask that his note be paid as soon as it fell due. She still believed she was not angry, but how does that line go? Is it “Earth hath no fury like a woman scorned”?
WHEN it was announced that Lucille Hardcome was to marry B. C. Burton, Riverbank was interested, but not surprised. The banker went up and down the hill, from and to his business, quite as usual, but with a little warmer and more ready smile for those he met. He accepted congratulations gracefully. After the wedding, which was quite an event, with a caterer from Chicago, and the big house lighted from top to bottom and every coach the town liverymen owned making half a dozen trips apiece, there was a wedding journey to Cuba. When the bridal couple returned to Riverbank Lucille drove B. C. to and from the bank in the low-hung carriage, and B. C. changed his abode from his own house to Lucille's. Otherwise the marriage seemed to make little difference. For Dominie Dean it made this difference: the only trustee who had, of late years, shown any independence lost even the little he had shown. Having married Lucille, he became no more than her representative on the board of trustees.
Never a forceful man, Burton became milder and gentler than ever after his marriage. He had not married Lucille under false colors (Lucille had married B. C.; had reached for him and absorbed him), but, without caring much, she had imagined him a wealthy man. When it developed that he had almost nothing but his standing as a suave and respected banker, Lucille, while saying nothing, gently put him in his place, as her wedded pensioner. She had hoped she would be able to put on him the burden of her rather complicated affairs, but when she guessed his inefficiency as a money-manager for himself, she gave up the thought. Lucille continued to manage her own fortune. She financed the house. All this made of B. C. a very meek and gentle husband. He did nothing to annoy Lucille. He was particularly careful to avoid doing anything to annoy Lucille. He became, more than ever, a highly respectable nonentity. Having, for many years, successfully prevented the town from guessing that he was a mere figurehead for the bank, he had little trouble in preventing it from saying too loudly that he was only not henpecked because he never raised his crest in matters concerning Lucille, except at her suggestion.
Lucille did not marry B. C. to salve her self-conceit only; not solely. She felt the undercurrent of comment that followed Welsh's ugly attack in theDeclarator. She feared that people would say if they said anything: “David Dean is not that kind of man” and “Lucille Hardcome probably thought nothing of the sort, but she is that kind of woman.” Marrying B. C. Burton was her way of showing Riverbank she had never cared for David Dean. It also gave her a secure position of prominence in Riverbank. Her house was now a home, and we think very highly of homes in Riverbank. None the less Lucille still burned with resentment against David Dean. The mere sight of him was an accusation; seeing him afflicted her pride.
The dominie went about his duties as usual Then or later we saw no change in David Dean, although we must have known how Lucille was using every effort to turn the trustees and the church against him. He must have had, too, a sense of undeserved but ineradicable defilement, the result of P. K. Welsh's virulence. You know how such things cling to even the most innocent. If nothing more is said than “It is too bad it happened,” it has its faintly damning effect on us. We won for David at last, but Lucille's fight to drive him away had its effect. At home David hesitated over every penny spent, cut his expenses to the lowest possible, in an effort to pay Lucille as much as he might when the note came due. He had no hope of paying it in full.
Pay it, however, he did. One afternoon Rose Hinch came into his study and closed the door.
“David,” she said, “you surely know that I know you owe Lucille something—some money?”
“I suppose you do, Rose,” he said sadly. “Everyone knows!”
“'Thusia told me long ago,” she said. “I asked her about it again to-day. I would rather you owed it to me, David.”
She had the money with her, and she held it toward him questioningly. He took it. That was all; there was no question of a note or of repayment; no spoken thanks. He was not surprised that Rose had saved so much out of her earnings, neither did he hesitate to take the money from her, for he knew she offered it in all the kindness of her heart. He hoped, too, that by scrimping, as he had been, he could repay her in time.
'Thusia was neither better nor worse in health than she had been. Bright and cheerful, she had learned the great secret of patience.
“If I must go,” David told her when there was no doubt that Lucille had set her heart on driving him from Riverbank, “I will go, of course; but until I know I am not wanted I will do my work as usual,” and 'Thusia was with him in that.
In the long battle, never above the surface, that Lucille carried on, David never openly fought her. He fought by being David Dean, and by doing, day by day, as he had done for years. He visited his sick, preached his sermons, busied himself as always. The weapons Lucille used were those a woman powerful in a congregation has always at hand if she chooses to try to oust her pastor, and in addition she used her husband.
Here and there she dropped hints that David was not as satisfactory as formerly. His sermons were lacking in something. Was it culture or sincerity! she asked—and she questioned the advisability of long tenure of a pulpit. By hint and question she tried to arouse dissatisfaction. It was the custom for ministers to exchange pulpits; she was loud in praise of whatever minister occupied David's pulpit for a day.
Slowly she built up the dissatisfaction, until she felt it could be crystallized into a concrete opposition. She was a year or more doing this. With all the wile of a political boss she spread the seed of discontent, trusting it would fall on fertile soil. There were plenty of toadying women who gave her lip agreement when she uttered her disparagements, and at length she felt she could strike openly. She used B. C. for the purpose.
B. C. did not relish the job. Like most of us he admired David, and had high esteem for him, but Lucille's husband would have been the last man to oppose Lucille. It really seemed an easy task. Lucille was an undisputed ruler in the church; the trustees were nonentities; the older members—those who had loved the young David in his first years in Riverbank—were dead or senile. B. C. spoke of the finances when he broached the matter of getting rid of David, and he had lists and tables to show that the income of the church had been stagnant. He suggested that a younger man, someone livelier, was needed—a money-raiser.
The trustees listened in silence. For some minutes after B. C. had spoken no one answered. Then one man—the last man B. C. would have feared—suggested mildly that Riverbank itself had not grown. He ventured to say that Riverbank, to his notion, had fewer people than five years before, and all the churches were having trouble in keeping their incomes up to their expenses. He said he rather liked David Dean; anyway he didn't think a change need be made right away. They might, he thought, ask some of the church members and get their opinions. He said he did not believe they could get a man equal to David for the same money.
B. C. was taken aback. If he had spoken at once he might have held his control of the board, but he stopped to think of Lucille and what she would wish him to say, and the daring trustee spoke again.
“Seems to me,” he said, “the trouble is not with the dominie. Seems to me we trustees ought to try to get more money from some of the members who can afford to give more.”
He had not aimed at B. C. and Lucille, but B. C. colored. One shame that lurked in his heart was that Lucille had never kept her promise to give more to the church, and that he did not dare ask her to give more now.
“I can assure you,” he said, “I do not feel like giving more—if you mean me—while Dean remains.”
“Oh! I didn't mean anyone in particular,” the trustee said. “I wasn't thinking of you, B. C.” The fact remained imbedded in the brains of the trustees that Lucille and B. C. would give no more unless David was sent away. This leaked, as such things will, and those of us who loved David were properly incensed. Some of us were tired enough of Lucille's high-handed rulership and we said openly what we thought of her carrying it to the point of making herself dictator of the pulpit, to dismiss and call at her will. There was a vast amount of whisper and low-toned wordiness, subsurface complaint and counter-complaint. There was no open flare-up such as had marked the earlier dissensions in the church, but Lucille and her closest friends could not but feel the resentment and her growing unpopularity. A winter rain brought her a fortunate cold, and she turned the Sunday school singing over to one of the younger women. She never took it up again. The same excuse served to allow her to drop out of the management of the church music. Her cold, actually or from policy, hung on for the greater part of that winter, preventing her from attending church. With the next election of trustees B. C. refused reëlection, pleading an increase of work at the bank, and when next Lucille went to church she sat under the Episcopalian minister. Several of her friends followed her; few as they were, their going made a sad hole in the church income and, with the closing of the mills and Riverbank seemingly about to sink into a sort of deserted village condition, there followed years in which the trustees were hard put to it to keep things going. Before the inevitable reduction in David's salary came, he was able to pay Rose Hinch, and that, in the later years, was one of the things he was thankful for.
IGET back to Riverbank but seldom. I have just returned from one of my infrequent visits there, the first in many years. First I had my business to attend to; later, at the office of the lawyer and on the street, I met many of those I had known when I lived in Riverbank. The faces of most puzzled me, being not quite remembered. My memory had to struggle to recognize them, as if it saw the faces through a ground glass on which it had to breathe before they became clear. Many seemed glad to see me again and that was a great pleasure to me. It was almost like a game of “hidden faces” but with faces of living men and women to be guessed. This all happened in the first hour or so after I had finished my business, and rapidly, and then I turned from one of these resurrected faces to find a young girl standing waiting to speak to me.
“You don't remember me,” she said with a smile, because she saw my puzzled face. “I was a baby when you went away. Dora Graham. You wouldn't remember me. Mack Graham is my father. I dared to speak to you because father has spoken of you so often—of you and Mr. Dean.”
“Oh, I do remember Mack!” I exclaimed. “I must see him if I can before I go.”
“Please,” she said. “It would mean so much to him.”
She was not too well-dressed. She reminded me of Alice Dean in the days when Lanny was courting her, making the bravest show she could with her cheap, neat hat and neat, inexpensive garments. I guessed that Mack Graham was not one of the town's new rich men.
“I'll see him if I have to stay over a day,” I told her. “And our dominie, Dominie Dean, you can tell me how to get to his house!”
“I'm just from there,” she said. “Are you going to see him? He will be so pleased; he spoke about you. You know he is very poor? It's pitiful; it makes my heart ache every time I go there.”
“But I thought—” I said.
“About his being made pastor emeritus? Yes, they did that for him. Father made them do that, when they were going to drop him out of the church as they always used to drop the old men. Father fought for that. We were so proud of father, mother and I. He was like a rock, like a mountain of rock, about it. They were afraid of him. But the money was nothing, almost nothing.”
“How much?” I asked, but she did not know that. She only knew that it must be very little; the new dominie would not come for what had been paid David; there had not been much to spare for a discarded and worn-out old man.
I walked up the hill and over the hill and down the other side, to where the cheap little cottages stand in a row facing the deserted brickyard which will, some day, be town lots. I found David on the little porch, sitting in the sun, and he arose as I entered the gate, and stood waiting to grasp my hand, although he could not yet see me distinctly enough to recognize me; his eyes were failing, he told me.
He was very feeble, but as gently cheerful as ever, still striving to keep an even mind under all circumstances. Alice came out when she heard us talking; she looked older, in worry, than her father. It was evident they were very poor.
I went up to see 'Thusia. I did not mind the narrow stairs nor the low-ceiled room in which I found her, for a home and happiness may be anywhere, but I felt a hot, personal shame that anything quite so mean should be the reward of our David.
It was harder to speak cheerfully with 'Thusia than with David. I would not have known her, so little of her was there left, the blue veins standing out under the skin of her shrunken hands, and her face not at all that of the 'Thusia I had known when I was a child. I talked of myself and of my family and of my little successes, and all the while I felt that she must see through me, and that she must know I was chattering to hide the pain I felt at seeing these dear friends so changed, and so deep in poverty. In this I was mistaken. Her only thought was gratitude that I had found time to come to them, and pleasure to know all was well with me.
“You'll come when you come to Riverbank again,” she said when I had to leave her, “It has done me so much good to see you. Now go down and give David the rest of your visit.”
She raised her hand for me to take in farewell.
“God has been very good to us,” she said.
When I went down Alice had brought her sewing to the porch, and had carried out a chair for me—such a shabby chair—and Rose Hinch was there. She hurriedly hid a paper parcel behind her skirt when she arose to greet me, but it toppled over and a raw potato rolled out. I pretended to be unaware of it. I knew then that our David still had one friend, and guessed who reminded the older church members that David and 'Thusia might some days go hungry, unless they received such alms as were given to the very poor.
I sat for an hour, talking with David and Rose and Alice, and for an hour tried to forget that this poverty was David's reward for a life spent in serving God and his people, and then Rose and I left, and I walked over the hill with her. We talked of David, and when I told her I was going to see Mack Graham she said she would go with me.
The small real estate office, on a second floor, was not as shabby as I had expected, nor was Mack Graham as shabby.
“Big family, that's all the matter with me,” he told me cheerfully. “I want you to come up to dinner if you can and meet my brood. So you've been up to see our David! How is he to-day!”
“Mack,” I said, “can't something be done! Can't someone here start something! I know how a place gets in a rut—how we forget the things we have with us day by day. If you could go away, as I went, and come back to see our David as he is now, poor, discarded, neglected—”
“Rose, what do you mean, neglecting our David!” Mack asked, almost gayly.
Rose smiled sadly.
“Well, I'll tell you,” Mack said, reaching for an envelope on his desk. “Our church is changed. Most of the old people are gone now. I felt the way you did about it—it was a pity our David wasn't a horse instead of a man; then we could have shot him when we had worn him out and were through with him. Folks forget things, don't they! Well—”
He drew a letter from the envelope and passed it to me.
When I had read the letter I was not quite as ashamed of my kind as I had been a moment before. The letter did not promise much. It seemed there was not a great deal of money available and the calls were many, but, after all, there was a Fund and it could spare something for David, as much, perhaps, as a child could earn picking berries in a season each year. But it would mean all the difference between penury and dread of the poorhouse on the one hand and safety on the other to David. I thought how glad David would be and how grateful. I handed the letter to Rose Hinch.
She read it in silence and when she looked up there were tears in her eyes.
“I am so glad—for 'Thusia,” she said. “She has worried so for fear David might have to go to the poorhouse—alone! She has been afraid to die; David would have been so lonely in the poor-house.”
“Well, it is great anyway!” said Mack more noisily than necessary. “So come up to the house to dinner. You, too, Rose. We'll give our dominie the letter. We'll have him come to dinner, too, and Alice, and we'll celebrate—”
Rose smiled, as she used to smile in the days when I first knew her.
“No, Mack,” she said. “We will give him the letter when he has put on his hat and coat, and is going home. He will want 'Thusia to be the first to be glad with him.”
So that was how it was done.