“David, you must not think unkindly of her; Alice is such a child – such a dear girl! She has no worldliness; how should she have with you and me for her parents! I think I am to blame if she has chosen wrongly. I am afraid I have neglected her, David.”
“What an idea, ‘Thusia! That is preposterous. Of course, I do not think unkindly of her; but I do think she has chosen foolishly, as girls sometimes will.”
“Yes, but I mean what I say, David. I am tied here, of course, but I have given her so much freedom. I have trusted to her instinct to choose suitable companions, when I should have remembered how careless and foolish I was when I was her age.”
“What nonsense, dear!” said David. “If anyone is to blame it is myself. How could you do any more than you have done, kept close here as you are? How serious is it, ‘Thusia?”
“I have hardly had time to decide; I am afraid it is very serious. She was all ecstasy and happiness until she saw I was not as happy as she was. I am afraid I let her see it too plainly. We must not let her think we are angry with her, David; she is very much in love with him. Oh, she praised him as a girl will praise a lover – her first lover!”
“I suppose she met him through Roger,” said David thoughtfully.
“No,” ‘Thusia said. “I imagine Alice rather scorns Roger’s ball-playing friends. I think Lanny Welsh called something after her one evening when she was passing the Eagle office – passing the alley there. He thought she was some other girl, I suppose. She was furious; she thought it was the rudest thing she had ever known, but the next time she passed he stopped her and apologized. She thinks it was noble of him. After that he tipped his hat whenever she passed, and she nodded to him. Then Roger introduced them. Lanny Welsh asked him to, I suppose. Now they are engaged.”
David rested his head on his hand, and was silent. ‘Thusia watched his face.
“It is unfortunate; most unfortunate,” he said wearily.
“David, do you know anything about him!” ‘Thusia asked.
“Only hearsay,” he answered.
“Has he been a bartender!”
“I have heard that. You know what his father is – little better than a blackmailer.”
“David, what can we do?” asked ‘Thusia.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “No doubt she would give him up if we asked it.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” said ‘Thusia. “She is a good girl, but you do not realize how she loves the boy – or thinks she loves him. She might think we were unjust to him.”
What she implied David knew. Alice was, above all else, loyal. The very intimation that Lanny Welsh lacked friends might strengthen her partisanship, for she was like her father in having always a kindly feeling for the under dog. The most uncompromised earthly happiness is not the portion of those who feel for the under dog, for some dog is always under. If a person is to take any interest in the world’s dog fights, and seek enjoyment therefrom, he must be thoroughly callous, and not care a snap of his fingers what happens to the under dog. This hard-hearted placidity must yield those who possess it a fund of unvexed joy; most of us find our joy alloyed by our pity for Fortune’s unfavorites. A fair amount of carelessness regarding the under dog is necessary for the most complete worldly success; and our dominie, seeking to know himself, felt that if he had desired to prosper greatly in a worldly way he should have been born without his keen desire to see the under dog on top for a while, or at least without his inclination to prevent all dog fights.
On the whole he did not think, however, that the callous-hearted got the best out of life. The tough tympanum of a bass drum yields one sound, and the tom-tom may be a fine instrument for war or joy dances, but a delicately attuned violin quivers with more varied vibrations, and even the minor chords must satisfy some of its fibers. In the museum of eternity the tom-tom may have a place as a curiosity – as the musical instrument of a crude people – but even a child can imagine its one note; the fingers of the virtuoso tingle to touch the glass-enclosed violin, and the imagination pleasures in the thought of the notes of joy and sorrow it has given forth in its day.
Youth – as Alice – when born and brought up with a pity for the despised is apt to carry the good quality over the line so far that it becomes unreasonable. There is such a thing as innate devilishness that deserves chastisement; some of the things other men scorn deserve our scorn also; some men and women, too. But a girl in love, as Alice was, or thought she was, is not a very reasonable being. With her love as a certainty, she scorns the past and sees perfection in the future. Young lovers are all egotists to the extent of thinking: “If I chose him he must be good at heart and, no doubt, his past weakness was because he had not known me.” In herself she sees his needed opportunity, and her loyalty to her ideal of herself and to him resents the interference of those who would interpose obstacles. Alice, being by nature loyal, and by nature and training inclined to pity, might easily be driven to a blind and gently berserk, but none the less everlasting, battle for Lanny Welsh by the very opposition that sought to win her away from him.
David was the less inclined to do anything instantly because his sense of justice was so strong. He knew too little about Lanny Welsh to condemn the young man in his own mind without further facts. Had he had the giving he would not have presented Alice to anyone like Lanny, for he would have chosen some youth he knew better – and that meant Mary Derling’s boy Ben – but, having his innate desire to do justice to all men, and as Alice had already chosen Lanny, David felt he should learn more about Lanny before he made an absolute decision to oppose his daughter’s choice. He knew enough of men and life to believe the tags the world put on young fellows were not always the proper tags. If the match was to be opposed the method of opposition to be adopted would depend on his knowledge of Lanny’s character and circumstances, and as yet he knew little – too little to base an active opposition upon.
“What have you said to her, ‘Thusia!” he asked.
“I told her I was surprised, and that I must speak to you before I could be sure what to say.”
This was close enough to the fact. The saying had taken an hour or more and had been flavored by affectionate weepings and embraces, but in what she told David ‘Thusia did not miss the fact far.
“I’m glad of that,” he said. “I’ll ask Alice to come in.”
She came, rosy-cheeked and tremulously happy, and the interview left her happy and less tremulous. Of her father’s affection she was sure, and of his justice she never had a doubt. She was not surprised that he should wish to know more of Lanny before he ventured to feel enthusiastic about the engagement, and she was so sure Lanny was the best of men that she had no fear of the final result of her father’s gentle investigations. From an interview so kindly, and permeated with affection, she went back to the kitchen happily.
“I imagine you’ll have very little trouble in finding out all about him,” ‘Thusia said, and then, her bravery shattering itself a little against her motherly ambition: “David, I’m sure it is a mistake! I’m sure she should not marry him!”
“I am afraid Alice has been too hasty,” said David.
They both meant the same thing: nothing more unfortunate could have happened. ‘Thusia gave words to one of the reasons when she added: “Mary will be so disappointed!”
Not a word had ever been said on the subject, but the tacit hope had long been existent in the hearts of Mary and the two Deans that Alice and Ben Derling might become lifemates. Until Alice had dropped the bombshell of her engagement into the placidly intrenched hope everything had seemed trending that way. There was no question that Ben admired Alice, and Alice had seemed fond enough of Ben.
Although David had never allowed the filmy intuition to become an actual thought, the gossamer suggestion had floated across his mind more than once that it would be a good thing if Alice and Ben married. He thought, boldly enough, that it would be a suitable match in some ways – marrying in the same faith; marrying one who would be a good husband; marrying one whose social position in Riverbank would increase rather than lower David’s own capacity for good in the community. Of the marriage as a financial matter beneficial to himself and ‘Thusia he refused to think, but that gossamer ghost of thought would come floating by at times: an alliance with the Derling wealth would make old age less to be dreaded; somewhere there would be food and winter warmth and a nook by the fireside, where he and ‘Thusia might end their days without dire penury in case, as is so often the case with ministers, he outlived his usefulness. He felt the thought, gossamer light as it was, to be unworthy, but it came unbidden, and there was comfort in it. And no man is a worse man for not wishing to end his life in an almshouse. Certainly no man is a better man for wishing to end his days on the Riverbank Poor Farm. The youth, Roger, unluckily, seemed little likely to be able to support himself; if Alice married into poverty, or worse, the state of the family in days to come threatened to be sad indeed.
But David went back to his study in hopefulness, for all that. Lanny Welsh might be better than he feared, and if Lucille Hardcome subscribed even half what she had suggested David might be able to keep even with the world or even save a little. He had hardly entered his study before Lanny Welsh and Alice came tapping on his door.
XVI. AN INTERVIEW
IN a small town men find themselves tagged far sooner and far more permanently than in the large cities. Let a young fellow attend church for a few weeks, behave decently for a year, and get a job as soon as one offers, and he is tagged as a “good” young man; thereafter it requires quite a little rascality to convince people he is otherwise. The small town is like a pack of cards; the rank of the components being once established, it is vain for them to attempt other values. Let young Bud Smith start out as a Jack-of-all-trades, and he is expected to remain one; and when he attempts steady work of one kind, his efforts are talked about as something phenomenal. If Bill Jones, the contractor, gives Bud a job it is considered a bit of eccentricity on Jones’ part; what reason can a man have for taking on a Jack-of-all-trades as a steady carpenter! It might be just as well to be a little careful in making contracts with Jones; it looks as if he was a little too easy-going! Thus Jones gets his tag, and Bud Smith does not lose his. They cling.
Something of this sort had happened to Lanny Welsh. His father, old P. K. Welsh, was an oldtime character in Riverbank. For years he had been a familiar figure, trudging about town with his stooped shoulders, his long and greasy black coat and his long and pointed beard. His head was a little too large for his body, and his eyes, seen through his spectacles, were apparently too large for his face. They were blue. His hair often hung down upon his collar. Once a year or so he had it cut, and when he had it cut he had it cut short enough to last awhile. The change was as noticeable as if a large building had been tom down from one of the prominent Main Street comers.
In the side pockets of old P. K. Welsh’s coat were always bundles of folded newspapers – his pockets bulged with them. He was a newspaper man. Day after day and year after year, old P. K. Welsh trudged up and down the two business streets of Riverbank, from eight in the morning until four or five in the afternoon, and so he had trudged for years. Thursday was an exception, for on Thursday he “published,” running off the one or two hundred copies of the Declarator that constituted his edition. The paper was a weekly, five cents a copy, one dollar a year, and the total income from subscriptions was probably never more than one hundred dollars. This did not pay for his paper and ink, and he tried to make up the difference in advertising income; but as an advertising medium the Declarator was not worth the paper on which it was printed, and everyone knew it. He spent his life nagging the merchants into throwing him crumbs of petty patronage. His credit was nil, he never had any cash, he gave all his advertising in exchange for trade. When he sallied forth in the morning he carried a list of the groceries his wife needed; getting them for her meant nagging some grocer until he agreed to send up the groceries in exchange for a few inches of unwanted advertising space in the Declarator. Old P. K. grew wise in wiles. He knew the hour when Beemer’s drivers came back to the store with their orders for the day, when Beemer and all his clerks would be madly measuring and tying and filling baskets. That was when old P. K. would appear. To get rid of him the grocer would often scribble down his order, and figure the bill as sufficiently repaid by the time saved through getting rid of old P. K. so easily.
The Declarator itself was an example of a good idea gone wrong through stress of necessity. The sheet was small, four pages, often filled with plate matter, and the original matter was set in the most amateurish manner. The old type from which it was set was worn until some of the letters were mere smudges of black. From time to time old P. K., being in funds, would buy a few pounds of cast-off type from the Eagle, and this mixed with his worn supply, gave the paper a bizarre, hit-and-miss appearance. Old P. K. did not bother about reading proof. The paper came out with all the errors, with letters of one font mixed with letters of another font, and with some paragraphs set in large type and some in small. It was the column headed “Briefs,” however, that tagged the Declarator.
It was known that old P. K. had come from somewhere in Kansas, and it was understood that he had known John Brown, the famous John Brown, whose soul goes marching on in the ballad. Welsh came to Riverbank in the years following the war, and started his little paper in opposition to the Eagle, which was then scarcely larger. Riverbank was once more Democratic. The Declarator was violently Republican and violently pro-negro. Across the first page, just under the title, P. K. ran the motto “All men – white or black – are equal.” He knew his Bible by heart and scattered Biblical quotations through his pages, each chosen because of its sting. There were but a dozen or twenty negroes in the town, and the negro question did not worry anyone, and P. K. Welsh’s loyalty was an asset. Although the Republicans were in a helpless minority they were glad to have an organ, and the Declarator did fairly well.
Time passed and the Eagle blossomed from a weekly into a daily. It contracted for telegraph news of the outside world. A group of Republicans started the Daily Star, staunchly but sanely Republican, and the Declarator slumped into the position of an unneeded, unwanted sheet. A few of the old-time, grit-incrusted Republicans, who believed every Democrat was destined for hell fire, still took the Declarator; the other subscribers dropped it. Old P. K. grew bitter; his subscription book became his list of friends and enemies. Those whose names once appeared on the list, or had ever appeared on it, and who canceled their subscriptions, became the recipients of his hatred. Welsh brooded over them and waited. Sooner or later he spat venom at them in the column headed “Briefs.”
To anyone not acquainted with Welsh the Declarator appeared to be a blackmail sheet. It was not. Old P. K. was firm in the belief that he was doing God’s work and that the Declarator was meant to be God’s instrument. He quoted Scripture in his columns to declare that those who were not with him were against him, and that those who were against him were against God. One by one he took up propaganda that he believed righteous, and took them up with all the violence of a fanatic. He was the first man in Riverbank to cry aloud for prohibition, but he was also the first to shriek anti-Catholicism. He held up good, old Father Moran as an Antichrist, and pleaded that he be driven from town. He was continually advocating violence in words that to-day would have landed him in prison. With his abusive “Briefs” and his inflammatory editorials he became, in a small way, a nuisance to the town; with his nagging for advertisements he became a nuisance to the merchants. His wife was a simple-minded, easy-going creature, wrinkled and with a brown wig inclosed in a hair net. The wig looked less like a head covering than some sort of brown-hair pudding. On the whole, ridiculous as the wig was, it was better than nothing, for Mrs. Welsh was as bald as a billiard ball.
These were the parents of Lanny Welsh; they might well have served as an excuse for worthlessness in the boy, but this may be said for Riverbank – it does not damn the child because of the parents. Lanny Welsh won his own tag; at any rate it was given him through what the town knew of the boy, and not through what it knew of old P. K. and Lanny’s mother.
You may imagine Lanny Welsh with bright, blue eyes and curly, brown hair, slender, lithe and a little taller than the average. He had a smile that would charm the heart out of a misanthrope. When he smiled his eyes brightened, the corners of his lips seemed to become alight with good nature, and a dimple flickered in his left cheek. As a boy he was needlessly cruel, but perhaps no more than the average boy, and charmingly sweet in his ways and words when he was not cruel. His mother let him tread on her in everything; old P. K. seemed hardly to know the boy was alive except when he arose in Biblical wrath over some escapade, and beat the boy outrageously with a leathern strap. Lanny howled when he was being beaten, and forgot the admonitions that accompanied them as soon as he was safe outside the woodshed.
He smiled his way through school, graduated, and went into his father’s printing office as a matter of course. He worked there six or eight months, and left because he could not earn anything either for himself or for his father. The old man hardly missed him until, some months later, he learned that Lanny was working in a billiard room. He took the boy to the woodshed and Lanny knocked him down, not unkindly but firmly, and the old man cursed him in good, round, Old Testament phrases, and disowned him then and there. It did not worry Lanny in the least. He simply declined to take any stock in the curse or the casting off, and probably old P. K. himself soon forgot it. Lanny continued to live at home.
He worked in Dan Reilly’s saloon. All told he worked for Dan Reilly three weeks. Two weeks he swept out the place, polished brasses and glasses and did odd jobs. One week he stood behind the bar. One week was enough of it. The week was in August, and Dan Reilly’s saloon was on the sunny side of the street; there was no hotter place in Riverbank on a sunny August afternoon, and Lanny simply threw up the job on account of the discomfort. The one week, however, was enough; he was tagged. He was “old crank Welsh’s son, the bartender fellow.”
Lanny loafed awhile, and then the Eagle planned and put to press the first town directory of Riverbank, and during the preparation of the book Lanny found a place in the Eagle rooms setting type. There he remained. The typesetters were an easy-going lot; the side door of the composing room opened on an alley, and Dan Reilly’s saloon was just across the alley. The little printer’s devil was kept busy on hot days running back and forth with a tin beer pail. The Eagle was a morning paper, and between the blowing of the shrill six o’clock whistle and the time when the reporters turned in their late copy the printers were in the habit of sitting in the alley near the street, eating a snack, sipping beer and teasing the girls who passed. It was nothing particularly bad, but it was sufficiently different from what the bank clerks and counter-jumpers did to impress some Riverbankers with the idea that the printers were a bad lot. Thus Lanny grew up.
The town had a baseball craze just then, and the Eagle boys formed a nine. Van Dusen, the owner of the Eagle, gave them suits – red, with Eagle Nine in white letters on the shirts – and Lanny, tall, slim and quick-witted, was the pitcher. And he could pitch! It was not long before he was gathered into the Riverbank Grays when critical games were to be played, and he was the first man in Riverbank to receive money for playing ball; the Grays gave him five dollars for each game he pitched for them. It was when he began pitching for the Grays that Lanny became well acquainted with Roger Dean, who was generally known among the ball players as “Old Pop Dean,” a compliment to his ball-playing ability, since “Old Pop” Anson was then king of the game, and the baseball hero.
Young Roger had been meant for the church, and David and ‘Thusia had dreamed of seeing him fill a pulpit, but he seemed destined to be an idler. The money David had saved with infinite pains to provide a college education was thrown away. The boy departed for college with blessings enough to carry him through, but he was a born idler – good-natured and lovable, but an idler – and long before his course was completed it was known that he had come home and, before long, it was known he was not going back. The more kindly people said he preferred a business career to the ministry; others said he was too lazy. He was not a bad boy and had never been; as a young man he had no bad habits or desires; he had no ambition.
Had David been a farmer Roger would have been a model son; on a farm he would have milked the cows for his father, cut the grain for his father, done a man’s work for his father. Had David been a merchant Roger would have sold goods behind the counter for his father, as well as any other man could have sold them, and would have stood in the sun at the door in his shirt sleeves when idle, making friends that would have meant custom. But in a minister’s work there are no cows to milk for father, and no goods to sell for father; a minister’s son must be bitten by ambition or his place in the world is hard to find. He cannot learn his father’s trade by working at it; and Roger was the sort of youth who does only what is easily at hand to do. When he had been home a few weeks he was most often to be found on the back lot playing ball with smaller and far younger boys, and he was always the first taken when sides were being chosen. He was big, and a natural ball player, as Lanny was. His place was behind the bat, catching, but he was equally good when at the bat. The “curve” and “down shoot” and “up shoot” were just coming into the game, but they held no mysteries for Roger. He hit them all.
Henry Fragg, ‘Thusia’s father, now an old man, had given up the agency for the packet company he had long held, and now had a small coal office on the levee. He took Roger in with him, giving him the utmost the business could afford, a meager four dollars weekly – more than Roger was worth in the business, which was dead in the summer – and Roger transferred his ball playing to the levee, where bigger youths played a more spirited game. Before the end of that season Roger was wearing a baseball suit, one of the dozen presented by Jacob Cohen, the clothier, in consideration of permission to have the shirts bear the words Jacob Cohen Riverbank Grays, and Roger was a member of the nine, and its catcher. Thereafter, he gave more time than usual to baseball. In the rather puritanical community a minister’s son playing ball was at first something of a shock, but Roger did not play on Sunday and the Grays would not play without Roger when the game promised to be close, so the result was less Sunday ball. Roger received the credit and baseball came to be less frowned on. David himself attended one or two of the Saturday games, but some of his church members felt he should not, and, as he cared nothing for the game, he went no more. Alice went occasionally when the game was important enough to draw large crowds and other nice girls were sure to be present.
It is remarkable how easily mortals accept genial incapacity as normal. In a year Roger was accepted as a satisfactorily conducted young man, permanently dropped into his proper place, and even David and ‘Thusia no longer fretted about him. He was always present at meals; he was no different one day than another; he was cheerful and happy and contented. Henry Fragg said he did his work well, which was true enough, but there was very little work; once a day or so Roger came in from the sandy ball ground, weighed a load of coal, jotted down the figures and went back to his “tippy-up” game. There was always the hope that the business would grow, and that Roger would eventually succeed his grandfather in the coal business and prosper. Neither was there any reason why he should not.
