DAVID had won. Except for the defection of the Hardcomes--who left
behind them a feeling that they were trouble-makers and were not greatly
regretted--the church continued its even tenor. It must always be a
question, however, whether David would not have done better by losing.
Riverbank grew in population, as shown by the census, but the growth was
not one to prosper the Presbyterian Church at Riverbank. The sawmills
brought nearly all the newcomers--immigrants from Germany almost
entirely--and these had their own churches. The increase in population
offered little material with which to build up David's congregation.
At that time but few farmers, grown wealthy, moved into town. The town
hardly realized, until the lumber business died, how contracted was
the circle of its industries. The few men of wealth were all
firmly affiliated with one church or another--as were also all the
well-to-do--and, with no available new blood, it was inevitable that the
numbers in the existing churches should remain almost stationary.
Liberality was not a trait of the wealthy of Riverbank at that day. Like
old Sam Wiggett, those with money had had their hard grubbing at first
and knew almost too well the value of a dollar. The ministers of the
various churches in Riverbank were paid but paltry sums and their
salaries were often in arrears.
Had David lost his fight and been driven from Riverbank he might, and
probably would, have gone far. He preached well and was still young.
It is hardly possible that he would have felt for a new church the
affection he felt for the church at Riverbank, and he might have gone
from church to church until he was in some excellent metropolitan
pulpit. For Riverbank he felt, coming here so young, something of the
affection of a man for his birthplace.
In the years following the church quarrel David began to feel the pinch
of an inadequate remuneration. After little Roger was born 'Thusia was,
for a year, more or less of an invalid, and a maid was a necessity. The
additional drains on David's income, slight as they were, meant real
hardship when he had with difficulty kept out of debt before. Two
years later little Alice was born, and 'Thusia was kept to her bed, an
invalid, longer than before. They were sad days for David. For a month
'Thusia hung between life and death, and Mary Derling and Rose Hinch,
with old Dr. Benedict, spared neither time nor affection.
Rose Hinch put aside all remunerative calls and nursed 'Thusia night
and day. Dr. Benedict was equally faithful, and the women of David's
congregation deluged the manse with jellies, flowers, bowls of “floating
island” and other dainties, but when 'Thusia was up and about again
David faced a debt of nearly three hundred dollars. As soon as 'Thusia
was able to stand the strain the church gave David a donation party.
Pickles and preserves predominated, but a purse made a part of the
donation and left David only some hundred and seventy or eighty dollars
in debt.
This is no great sum nor did any of his creditors press him unduly for
payment. His bills were small and scattered. He tried to pay them, but
in spite of 'Thusia's greatest efforts each salary period saw an
unpaid balance seldom smaller, and sometimes slightly greater, than
the original debt. This debt worried David and 'Thusia far more than it
worried his creditors--who worried not at all--but before long it seemed
to become, as such things do, a part of life. David's bills, paid at one
end and increased at the other, were never over three months in arrears.
In Riverbank at that day this was considered unusually prompt pay.
Accounts were usually rendered once a year. But the debt was always
there.
The year her boy was three Mary Derling divorced her husband. For some
time one of Derling's flirtations had been more serious than Mary had
imagined. When she heard the truth she talked the matter over calmly
with her father and her husband. All three were of one mind. Derling's
father had consistently refused to give the son money and Sam Wiggett
had again and again put his hand in his pocket to make good sums lost
by Derling in ill-considered business ventures. The truth was that
Derling's flirtations were costing too much, and he spent more than he
could afford. Wiggett, to be rid of this constant drain, gave Derling a
good lump sum and Mary kept the child. The divorce was granted quietly,
no one knowing anything about it until it was all over. There was
no scandal whatever. Derling went back to Derlingport and was soon
forgotten, and Mary resumed her maiden name. More than ever, now, she
took part in David's work, and her purse was always at his service for
his works of charity. David, Rose Hinch and Mary were a triumvirate
working together for the good.
At thirty-seven Dominie Dean was as fully a man as he ever would be. He
was fated to cling always to his boyish optimism; never to age into a
heavily authoritative head of a flock, with a smooth paunch over which
to pass a plump hand as if blessing a satisfactory digestive apparatus.
To the last day of his life he remained youthfully slender, and his
clear gray eyes and curly hair, even when the latter turned gray,
suggested something boyish.
It is inevitable that fifteen years of ministry shall either make or mar
the man inside the minister. David Dean had ripened without drying into
a hack of church routine. At thirty he had, without being aware of the
fact, entered a new period of his ministry, and at thirty-seven, like
a pilot who knows his ship, he was no longer prone to excitement over
small difficulties. If he was no longer a flash of fire, he was a
steadier flame.
In fifteen years David had come to love Riverbank, even to having
a half-quizzical and smilingly philosophical love for the Wiggetts,
Grims-bys and others who had once been thorns in his flesh. Their simple
closefistedness, generosity based on ambition and transparent, harmless,
hypocrisy were, after all, human traits, and while not exactly pleasant
neither more nor less than part of the world in which David had his work
to do. Wherever one went, or whatever work one undertook, there were
Wiggetts and Hardcomes and Grimsbys. They were part of life. They
were irritants, but it rested with David whether he should feel their
irritation as a scratch or a tickle. Until he was thirty he had often
smarted; now he smiled.
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.