In the self-centered little town there were good people and bad and, as is the case everywhere, fewer actively vicious than we are pleased to assume. David cherished a philosophy of pity for these. If old Wiggett had so much good in him, and ‘Thusia, who was now as faithful a wife and mother as Riverbank could boast, had once been on the verge of being cold-shouldered into a life of triviality, if not of shame, no doubt all these others, if they had been properly guided in the beginning, might have been as normal as old Mrs. Grelling, or the absolutely colorless Mr. Prell. With all this willingness to make allowances for the sinner, David had a hard, uncompromising, Presbyterian hatred for the sin. In one of his sermons he put it thus: “To sin is human; the sin is of the devil.” It was in this spirit David began his long fight against Mac-dougal Graham’s personal devil.
When David Dean came to Riverbank Mack Graham had been a bright-eyed, saucy, curly-haired little fellow of five or six; a “why!” sort of boy – “Why do you wear a white necktie? Why do you have to stand in the pulpit! Why did Mr. Wiggett get up and go out! Why’s that horse standing on three legs!” Certain ladies of the church made a great pet of Mack and helped spoil him, for he was as handsome as he was saucy. An only son, born late in his parents’ lives, they prepared the way for his disgrace. It may be well enough, as Emerson advises, to “cast the bantling on the rocks,” but leaving an only son to his own devices on the theory that he is the finest boy in creation and can do no wrong does not work out as well. At nineteen Mack was wild, unruly and drinking himself to ruin.
David’s first knowledge of the state into which Mack had fallen came from ‘Thusia. There had been one of those periodical church squabbles in which the elder members had locked horns with the younger and more progressive over some unimportant question that had rapidly grown vital, and David had, for a while, been busy impoverishing the little conflagration so that it might burn out the more quickly. The church was subject to these little affairs. In the fifteen years of his ministry David had seen the church change slowly as a natural result of children reaching maturity, and the passing of the aged. Some, who liked David’s sermons left other churches and joined the congregation, and there were a few accretions of newcomers, but from the first the older members had resented any interference with their management on the part of new and younger members. A change in the choir, an effort to have the dingy interior of the church redecorated, any one of a thousand petty matters would, if suggested by the newer members, throw the older men into a line of battle.
It was, in a way, a quarrelsome church. It was, indeed, not only in Riverbank but throughout the country, a quarrelsome time. The first rills of broader doctrine were beginning to permeate the hot rock of petrified religion and where they met there was sure to be steam and boiling water and discomfort for the minister, whether he held with one side or the other, or tried to be neutral. The Riverbank church, because of the conservatism of the older members, was particularly prone to petty quarrels, and this was one of David’s greatest distresses. At heart he was with those who favored the broader view, but he was able to appreciate the fond jealousy of the older men and women for old thoughts and ways.
It was after one of these quarrels, when he had found himself unduly busied healing wounds, that ‘Thusia came running across from the Mannings’, opposite the manse, and tapped on David’s study door.
“Yes! Come in!” he said.
“David! It’s Mack – Mack Graham – he is drunk!”
“Mack drunk!” David cried, for he could not believe he had heard aright. “Not our Mack!”
David, his lanky form slid down in his great chair so that he was sitting on the small of his back, had been thinking over his sermon for the next Sunday. No one could sit in David’s great chair without sliding down and down and down into comfort or into extreme discomfort. It had taken David a long time to become part of the chair, so that he could feel the comfort of utter relaxation of body it demanded. In time the chair grew to be a part of the David we all knew. Those of us who knew him best can never forget him as he was when he sat in that old chair, his feet on the floor, his knees almost as high as his chin, his hands loosely folded over his waist, so that his thin, expressive thumbs could tap together in, emphasis as he talked, and his head forward so that his chin rested on the bosom of his shirt. Slumped down like this in the great chair, he talked to us of things we talked of nowhere else. We could talk religion with David when he was in his chair quite as if it were an interesting subject. Many of us can remember his smile as he listened to our feeble objections to his logic, or how he ran his hand through his curls and tossed one knee on top of the other when it was time to bring the full battery of his mind against us. It was while slumped into his great chair that David had most of his famous word battles with old Doc Benedict, and there, his fine brow creased, he listened when Rose Hinch told of someone in need or in trouble. When we happened in and David was out and we waited for him in his study that chair was the emptiest chair man ever saw in the world. The hollows of the threadbare old green rep always seemed to hunger for David as no other chair ever hungered for any other man. No other man or woman ever fitted the chair. I always felt like an overturned turtle in it, with my neck vainly trying to get my head above the engulfing hollow. Only David and little children felt comfortable in the chair, for in it little children – David’s own or others – could curl up as comfortably as a kitten in a rug.
It was out of this chair David scrambled, full of fight, when ‘Thusia brought him the news that Mack was drunk.
What ‘Thusia had to tell David was clear enough and sad enough. From his great chair, when David raised his eyes, he could see the Mannings’ house across the way, white with green blinds, cool in the afternoon shadows. Sometimes Amy Manning and sometimes her mother and sometimes both sat on the porch, busied with the trifles of needlework women love. It was always a pleasant picture, the house framed between the trunks of two great maples, the lawn crisply cut and mottled with sunshine and shadow, and at one side of the house a spot of geranium glowing red in the sun with, at the other side, a mass of shrubbery against which a foliage border of red and green fell, in the afternoons, just within the shadow and had all the quality of rich Italian brocade.
Sometimes ‘Thusia would run across to visit a few minutes with Amy Manning, and sometimes Amy – her needlework gathered in her apron – would come running across to sit awhile with ‘Thusia. The two were very fond. ‘Thusia had reached the age when she was always humorously complaining about having to let out the seams of her last year’s dresses, and Amy was hardly more than a girl, but propinquity or some contrast or similarity of disposition had made them the best of friends. Perhaps ‘Thusia had never lost all her girlish qualities, and certainly Amy had been something of a woman even as a child. For all the years that divided them they were more nearly of an age than many who reckoned from the same birth year. Such friendships are far from rare and are often the best and most lasting.
David had seen Amy grow; had seen her fall bumping – a little ball of white – down the Manning porch steps and had heard (and still heard) the low-voiced and long lasting farewells she and Mack exchanged at the Mannings’ gate, young love making the most of itself, and making a twenty-four hour tragedy out of a parting. The girl had been tall at fourteen and even then had certain womanly gestures and manners. She had always been a sweet girl, frank, gentle, even-tem-pered, with clear eyes showing she had a good brain back of their blue. She was always, as the saying is in Riverbank, “interested in church.” Her religion was something real and vital. She accepted her faith in full and lived it, not bothering with the artificial agonies of soul that some youngsters find necessary. From a girl of this kind she had grown into a young woman, calm, clean, sterling. She had a healthy love of pleasure in any of the unforbidden forms, and, before Mack Graham slipped a ring on her finger, she liked to have half a dozen young whipper-snappers showing attention, quite like any other girl. She even liked, after that, to see that two or three of the whipper-snappers were jealous of Mack.
Mack was never jealous and could not be. He was one of the laughing, conquering hero kind. Amy was his from the moment he decided she was the finest girl in the world; he never considered any rival worth a worry. In olden days he would have been a carefree, swashbuckling D’Artagnan sort of fellow, and this, in nose-to-grindstone Riverbank, made him a great favorite and it led him to consort with a set of young fellows of the gayer sort with whom he learned to crook his elbow over a bar and continue to crook it until the alcohol had tainted his blood and set up its imperative cry for more. When David took up the fight for Mack this alcohol yearning had become well intrenched, and the conquering hero trait in the young fellow’s character made the fight doubly hard, for Mack – more than any man I have ever known – believed in himself and that he could “stop off short” whenever he really wished.
The thing that, more than all else, kept Mack from rapid ruin was his engagement. Love has a certain power, and there are some men it will reform or hold from evil, but it could not hold Mack. The yearning for alcohol had found its place in his system before Amy had found her place in his heart. The very night of his engagement was celebrated in Dan Reilly’s; Amy’s kiss was hardly dry on his lips before he moistened them with whisky, and it probably never occurred to him that he was doing wrong. Before he had received all the congratulations that were pushed over the bar, however, he was sickeningly intoxicated. Amy’s father, returning home from a late session with a trial balance, ran across Mack and two of his companions swaying perilously on the curb of Main Street, each maudlinly insisting that he was sober and should see the other two safely home. It was ridiculous and laughable, but Mr. Manning did not laugh; he knew Amy was more than fond of Mack. He told Amy about Mack before she had a good opportunity to tell him of her engagement. This was the next morning.
Mack, of course, came to see Amy that evening. In spite of a full day spent in trying to remove the traces of the night’s spree he showed evidences that he had taken one or two drinks to steady his nerves before seeing Amy. He was a little too hilarious when he met her at the door, not offensive, but too talkative. It was a cruel position for the girl. She loved Mack and loved him tremendously, but she had more than common sense. She knew she had but one life to live, and she had set her ideals of happiness long before. A drunken husband was not one of them.
She talked to Mack. She did not have, to help her, an older woman’s experience of the world, and she had against her the love that urged her to throw herself in Mack’s arms and weep away the seriousness of the affair. She had against her, too – for it was against her with a man like Mack – her overflowing religious eagerness which would have led another girl to press the church and prayer upon him as a cure. No doubt it was a strange conglomeration of love, religion and common sense she gave him, but the steel frame of it all was that she could not marry a man who drank. She left no doubt of that.
“Why, that’s all right, Amy, that’s all right!” Mack said. “I’ll quit the stuff. I can quit whenever I want to. Last night I just happened to meet the boys and I was feeling happy – say, no fellow ever had a bigger right to feel happy! – and maybe I took one or two too many. No more for little Mack!”
They left it that way and went into the dining room, where Mr. and Mrs. Manning were, to announce the engagement formally. It was two months before Mack toppled again. This was the first ‘Thusia and David knew of it. ‘Thusia and Amy had been sitting on the Mannings’ porch when Mack came up. Anyone would have known he was intoxicated, he was so intoxicated he swayed. He talked, but his lips refused to fully form the words he tried to use. He had come up, he said, to convince the little rascal – meaning Amy – that it was all nonsense not to be married right away. When he tried to say “nonsense” he said, “nom-nom-nomsemse, all nomsemse.”
“Mack and I want to have a talk, ‘Thusia,” Amy said, and ‘Thusia gathered up her sewing and fled to David.
When ‘Thusia had told David all she knew, David walked to the window, his thin hands clasped behind his back, and looked across toward the Mannings’. Amy had taken Mack into the house to hide his shame from chance passers-by. For several minutes David stood at the window while ‘Thusia waited. He turned at last.
“It is my fault,” he said. “I should have thought of him.”
That was like David Dean. His shoulders were always overloaded with others’ burdens, and it was like David to blame himself for having overlooked one burden more.
VIII. THE GREATER GOOD
MACK was not the only weak creature David was trying to help. Helpfulness was his life. I do not want you to think of David as eager for overwork, or as eager for greater burdens. He was always loaded down with others’ fights against poverty, passion and sin because something within him always said: “This is one case in which you can be of actual help.” Before he was aware he would be enlisted in these individual battles, with all the close personal details that made them living sorrows.
Inside the broad fight the church was making to strengthen character and maintain morality these individual battles were fought. How could David stand aloof from the battle of old Mrs. Miggs against poverty, with her penchant for spending the alms she received for flummery dress; or from the battle of old Wickham Reid against his insane inclination to suicide; or from the battles of all the backsliders of one kind and another; or from the battle of the Rathgebers against starvation; the battle of young Ross Baldwin against the trains of thought that were urging him to unbelief; or all the battles against alcohol! These were lame dogs David was helping over stiles. There were battles David won in an hour; there were other battles that lengthened into sieges, where sin and sinners “dug in” and struggled for years.
In some of these ‘Thusia could help David, and she did help, most willingly, but ‘Thusia had her own battles. Like most ministers’ wives she had a constant battle to make David’s inadequate salary meet the household expenses. When, after one of the usual church quarrels, those in favor of putting the choir in surplices won, ‘Thusia was sorry she was not in the choir; her worn Sunday gown would not then be a weekly humiliation. Her hats, poor things! were problems as difficult to finance as a war. The grocer’s bill was a monthly catastrophe; “the wood is low again, David,” was an announcement ‘Thusia felt was almost unkind. She spent five times as long turning a dress that was no pleasure after it was turned than she should have had to spend getting a new one. The lack of a few dollars to “do with” is the greatest waster of a faithful home-keeper’s time.
The hope of a call to a church that will pay enough to supply those few dollars is one many ministers’ wives cherish.
David picked up his hat and waited on his own porch until he saw Mack come from the Mannings’ door; then he crossed the street.
“‘Lo, dominie!” Mack said unsteadily. “Little girl’s been giving me Hail Columbia. She’s all right, dominie; fine little girl. I’m ashamed of myself. Told you so, didn’t I, little girl?”
David put his hand on Mack’s shoulder.
“She is a fine girl, Mack,” he said. “There’s no finer girl in America than Amy. Suppose we take a walk, Mack, a good long walk out into the country and tell each other just how fine Amy is.” Mack smiled knowingly. He put a hand on David’s shoulder, so that the two men stood like some living statue of “United we stand.”
“Couldn’t tell all about how fine a little girl she is in one walk,” he said.
“Come!” said David.
He put his arm through Mack’s, and thus he led him away. The assistance was necessary, for Mack was drunker than he had seemed. David led him to the country roads by the shortest route, that passing the cemetery, and when they were beyond the town he walked Mack hard. He let Mack do the talking and kept him talking of Amy, for of what would a lover, drunk or sober, rather talk than of his sweetheart! It was dark and long past David’s supper hour when they reached the town again, and David drew Mack into the manse for a “bite.” After they had eaten he led him into the study.
Mack was well past the unpleasant stage of his intoxication now, and with ‘Thusia sewing in her little, low rocker and Mack in a comfortable chair and David slumped down in his own great chair, they talked of Amy and of a hundred things David knew how to make interesting. It was ten when ‘Thusia bade them good-night and went out of the study.
“The Mannings are still up,” said David, and Mack turned and looked out of the window.
“God, but I am a beast!” said Mack.
“You are worse than that, Mack, because you are a man,” said David.
“Yes, I’m worse than a beast,” said Mack. He meant it. David, deep in his chair, his eyes on Mack’s face, tapped his thumbs slowly together.
“Mack,” he asked, “just how much of a hold has this drink got on you!”
“Oh, I can stop any time I – ”
“Yes, so can Doc Benedict,” said David. “He stops whenever he has had his periodical and his nerves stop their howling for the alcohol. I don’t mean that, Mack. Just how insistent is the wish for the stuff, when you haven’t had it for a while, if it makes you forget Amy as you did to-day!”
“Well, it is pretty insistent,” Mack admitted. “I don’t mean to get the way I was this afternoon, dominie. Something starts me and I keep going.”
David’s thumbs tapped more and more slowly.
“You still have the eyes of a man, Mack,” he said, “and you are still able to look me in the eyes like a man, Mack,” he said. “We ought to be able to beat this thing. Now go over and say good-night to Amy. She’ll sleep better for seeing you as you are now.”
The next day David learned more, and so did ‘Thusia. What David learned was that the two months that had elapsed between Mack’s engagement spree and his next was the longest period the young fellow had been sober for some time, and that Mack had already been docketed in the minds of those who knew him best as a hard and reckless drinker. It meant the fight would be harder and longer than David had hoped. What ‘Thusia learned was that Amy had had a long talk with Mack after he had left David.
“She did not tell him, David, but she told me, that she could not marry him if he let this happen. She can’t marry a drunkard; no one would want her to; but if she throws him over he will be gone, David. She’ll give him his chance, and she will help us – or let us help her – but when she is sure he is beyond help she will send him away. And when she sends him away – ”
“If she sends him away one great influence will be lost,” said David. “She must not send him away.”
“If he comes to her drunk again,” said ‘Thusia, as one who has saved the worst tidings until last, “she will have no more to do with him.”
In less than a week Mack fell again, and Amy, her heart well-nigh broken, gave him back his ring, and ended the engagement. Then, indeed, began the hardest fight David ever made for a man against that man’s self. There were nights when David walked the streets with Mack until the youth fell asleep as he walked, and days when Mack lay half stupid in David’s great chair while the dominie scribbled his sermon notes at the desk beneath the spatter-work motto: “Keep an even mind under all circumstances.” Often David and old Doc Benedict sat in the same study and discussed Mack. David from the stand of one who wanted to save the young fellow, and Benedict as one who knew the alcohol because it had conquered him.
“Now, in my case,” the doctor would say, quite as if he were discussing another person; and, “but on the other hand I had this gnawing pain in my stomach, while – ” and so on.
There were weeks when David felt he was making great progress and other weeks when he felt he was not holding his own, and some frightful weeks when Mack threw everything aside and plunged into unbridled dissipation. The periods after these sprees were deceptive. During them Mack seemed to want no liquor and vaunted his strength of will. He boasted he would never touch another drop.
There were also periods of overwhelming defeat, and periods when Mack was never drunk but never sober. Little by little, however, David felt he was making progress. It was slow and there were no “Cures” to work a sudden change, as there are now, but under the tottering structure of Mack’s will David was slowly building a foundation of serious thought. Mack was changing. His dangerous and illusive bravado was bit by bit yielding to a desire to do what David wished.
It was slow work. Rather by instinct than by logic David saw that to save Mack he must make Mack like him better than he liked anyone in Riverbank. Our David had none of that burly magnetism that draws men in a moment; those of us who liked him best were those who had known him longest, and he was not the man a youth like Mack would instinctively choose as a dearest friend and most frequent companion. In David’s mind the idea probably formed itself thus: “I must make Mack come to me as often as possible,” and, “Mack won’t come unless he likes me.” He set about making Mack like him, and making him like ‘Thusia and little Roger and baby Alice, and making him like the manse and all that was in it. With Amy turning her face from Mack, and Mack’s mother varying between shrewish scolding and maudlin tears, and Mack’s father wielding no weapon but a threat of disinheritance, it became necessary that Mack should have someone he wished to please, someone he liked and respected and wished to please more than he wished to please his insistent nerves. Each touch of eagerness added to Mack’s face as he came up the manse walk David counted a gain.
And ‘Thusia, beside what she did for Mack in making Mack love the manse and all those in it, worked with Amy and kept alive the flame of her love.
They were dear people, our Dominie Davy and his wife. In time little Roger became as eager to see Mack as Mack was to see David, and Mack became “Ungel Mack” to the child. The boy would climb the gate and cry, “Here cometh Ungel Mack!” with all the eagerness of joyful childhood. Sometimes when Mack was drunk, but not too drunk, David would lead Roger into the study, and the boy would say, “Poor Ungel Mack, you thick?” It all helped.
Together Mack and David made the fight. Amy, according to her light, did her part, too. She never fled from David’s little porch when she happened to be there and saw Mack coming up the street. She always gave Mack her hand in frank and friendly manner. She did not let the other young fellows pay her attentions. It was as if Mack had never courted her; as if they were bound by a friendship that had never ripened into anything warmer but that might some day. Mack was fine about it; eager as he was to have Amy he held himself in check. Eventually it was a great thing for them both; it was as if they were living the difficult “getting acquainted” year that follows the honeymoon before the honeymoon itself. They got to know each other better, perhaps, than any Riverbank lovers had ever known one another.
It was one Sunday afternoon during this stage of Mack’s fight, while Mack and ‘Thusia and Amy were on the porch and David taking his between-sermon nap in his great chair, that the great opportunity came to David’s door. It came in the form of a man of sixty years, silk-hatted and frock-coated. He walked slowly up the street from the direction of the town, and when he reached David’s gate he paused and read the number painted on the riser of the porch step, opened the gate and entered. He removed his hat and extended his hand to ‘Thusia.
