The unimportant two months had for David Dean several vastly important littlenesses. Lucille, preliminary to her “evenings,” asked David to run in and hear how well her amateurs were progressing, and she asked Mary Derling, too. She had in mind a trial of the effect of a family grouping, as if the presence of Mary and David would be an unwitting approval of growing intimacy of Ben and Alice. David, always music hungry, enjoyed the evenings of practice; Mary did not care much for music, and cared a little less for Lucille. She made excuses. After one evening she declined and went to the manse instead; she enjoyed being with ‘Thusia. At the far end of Lucille’s rather spacious parlor David and Lucille sat, while Ben and Alice tried their music. Lucille talked of everything that might interest David. She adopted the fiction that she and the dominie were in close confidence, and attuned her conversation to the fiction. She was continually saying, “But you and I know – ” and, “You and I, however – ” David as consistently declined to share the appearance of close confidence, but how could he be too harsh when the twin thoughts of what Lucille was doing for Alice and what he owed Lucille in cash (and hoped to get from her in subscription) were always present! The two eventless months also brought the note sixty days nearer due. They did not bring the subscription Lucille had hinted. Now and then a flush of worry ran through David – how would he be able to reduce the amount of the note when the six months were up? Certainly not out of any savings; his expenses seemed to be running a little in advance of his salary, as usual.
For ‘Thusia’s father the two months brought closer and clearer the certainty that he could not keep the coal business intact much longer. After the January settlements, or after the April settlements, at latest, the bank would see that his affairs were hopeless. Concerning his business, all he hoped now was that he could keep things going until Mary Ann died. He had an idea, hazy and which he dared not think into concreteness, that – once out of business – he might make a living doing something. At the same time he knew he could do nothing of the sort; he had not the health. He was merely trying to avoid admitting to himself that he was about to become a charge on David Dean.
The crash – and it was a very gentle crash, and well deadened by the bank which did not want unprofitable reverberations – came in April. As the fact reached the newspapers and the public, it appeared that Mr. Fragg was selling out on account of his failing health, and that before embarking in another business he would rest and recuperate. His books showed that when everything was turned into cash he would still be indebted to the bank, and the coal mines or factors, something over four thousand dollars. The house was gone, of course. Mary Ann had died in December, and Mr. Fragg had not tried to replace her; for several months he had been boarding. It was evident to him and to David that the old man could not board much longer; there was no money to pay the board bills. There was one room vacant at the manse, the room that had been “fixed up” for a maid, under the roof, used now as a storage place since Alice did the work of the dismissed maid. Here old Mr. Fragg took the few belongings the room would accommodate.
For many years after this the old man was often seen in Riverbank. Bad days he was unable to go out; on bright days he walked slowly downtown. He had his friends, merchants who were glad, or at least willing, to have him sit in their offices, and with them he spent the days. Now and then ‘Thusia gave him a little money – a dollar or two, all that could be afforded – and so his life ran to a close. He would have been quite happy if he could have paid his own way. Love and kindness enveloped him in David’s home; he was the dearly loved grandfather. He would have been quite happy, without paying his way, if he had not known how hard it was for even David to live on his salary. He worried about that constantly.
XXII. A TRAGEDY
I KNEW 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!”
XXIII. SCANDAL
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 the Declarator. 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.”
