IN spite of all his efforts David could not shake off his pitiful little
burden of debt. After little Alice 'Thusia bore him two more children;
they died before the month, and the last left 'Thusia an invalid, and
even Doctor Benedict lacked the skill to aid her. A maid--hired girl,
we called them in Riverbank--became a necessity. The church did what it
thought it could, gave David a few more dollars yearly, and sympathized
with him.
To David the misfortune of 'Thusia's invalidism came so gradually
that he felt the weight of it bit by bit and not as a single great
catastrophe. She was “not herself” and then “not quite well” and then,
before he was fully aware, he was happy when she had a “good” day.
'Thusia did not complain. With her whole heart she wished she was well
and strong, but she did not allow her troubles to sour her mind or
heart. Mary Derling and Rose Hinch came oftener to see her. 'Thusia,
unable to do her own housework, had more time to use her hands. Once,
when some petty bill worried David, she asked if she could not take
in sewing, but David would not hear of it. There are some things a
dominie's wife cannot be allowed to do to help her husband. About this
time 'Thusia did much sewing for the poor, who probably worried less
over their finances than David worried over his, and who, as likely as
not, criticized the stitches 'Thusia took with such loving good will.
David was then a fine figure of a man in the forties. Always slender, he
reached his greatest weight then; a little later worry and work wore
him down again. If his kindly cheerfulness was at all forced we never
guessed it. He was the same big-hearted, friendly Davy he had always
been, better because more mature. As a preacher he was then at his best.
It was at this time Lucille Hardcome's life first brought her in touch
with David.
Lucille was a widow. Seth Hardcome and his wife, Ellen, had long since
left our church in a huff, going to another congregation and staying
there. Lucille was, in some sort, Seth's cousin-in-law, however that may
be. She came to Riverbank jingling golden bracelets and rustling silken
garments, and for a while attended services with Seth and his wife, but
something did not suit her and she came to us. We counted her a great
acquisition, for she had taken the old Ware house on the hill--one of
the few big “mansions” the town boasted.
In a few weeks after her arrival Lucille Hardcome was well known in
Riverbank. She had money. Her husband--and Riverbank never knew anything
else about him---had been an old man when she married him. He had died
within the year. No doubt, having had that length of time in which to
become acquainted with Lucille's vagaries, he was willing enough to
go his way. Within a month after she had installed herself in the Ware
house Lucille had her “hired man”--they were not called “coachmen”
until Lucille came to Riverbank--and a fine team of blacks. Her low-hung
carriage was for many years thereafter a common sight in Riverbank. As
Lucille furnished it her house seemed to us palatial in its elegance.
It overpowered those who saw its interior; she certainly managed to get
everything into the rooms that they would hold--even to a grand piano
and a huge gilded harp on which she played with a great show of plump
arms. All this mass of furnishings and bric-à-brac was without taste,
but to Riverbank it was impressive. She had, I remember, a huge cuckoo
clock she had bought in Switzerland, but which, being of unvarnished
wood, did not suit her taste, so she had it gilded, and hung it against
a plaque of maroon velvet. She painted a little, on china, on velvet and
on canvas, and her rooms soon held a hundred examples of her work, all
bad. Unless you were nearsighted, however, you could tell her roses from
her landscapes even from across the room, for she painted large. It was
the day of china plaques, and Lucille had the largest china plaque in
Riverbank. It was three feet across. It was much coveted.
On her body she crowded clothes as she crowded her house with
furnishings. She was permanently overdressed. She was of impressive size
and she made herself larger with ruffles and frills. Her hair was always
overdone--she must have spent hours on it--and if a single hair managed
to exist unwaved, uncurled or untwisted it was not Lucille's fault. Yet
somehow she managed to make all this flummery and curliness impressive;
in her heart she hoped the adjective “queenly” was applied to her,
and it was! That was before the days of women's clubs, but Lucille had
picked up quite a mass of impressive misinformation on books, painting
and like subjects. In Riverbank she was able to make this tell.
With all this she was politely overbearing. She let people know she
wanted to have her way--and then took it! From the first she pushed her
way into prominence in church matters, choosing the Sunday school as
the door. The Sunday school fell entirely under her sway in a very short
time, partly because Mrs. Prell, the wife of the superintendent, had
social ambitions, and urged Mr. Prell to second Lucille's wishes, and
partly through Lucille's mere desire to lead. She began as leader of the
simple Sunday school music, standing just under the pulpit and beating
out the time of
“Little children, little children,
Who love their Redeemer--”
with an arm that jingled with bracelets as her horses' bridles jingled
with silver-plated chains.
Her knowledge of music was slight--she could just about pick out a tune
on her harp by note--but she called in Professor Schwerl and made him
pound further knowledge into her head. The hot-tempered old German did
it. He swore at her, got red in the face, perspired. It was like pouring
water on a duck's back, but some drops clung between the feathers, and
Lucille knew how to make a drop do duty as a pailful. She took charge of
the church music, reorganized the choir, and made the church think the
new music was much better, than the old.
And so it was. She added Professor Schwerl and his violin to the organ.
Theoretically this was to increase the volume of sweet sounds; in effect
it made old Schwerl the hidden director of the choir, with Lucille as
the jingling, rustling figurehead. So, step by step, Lucille became a
real power in the church. The trustees and elders had little faith in
her wisdom; they had immense respect for her ability to have her own
way, whether it was right or wrong.
Lucille, having won her place in the church, set about creating a
“salon.” Her first idea was to make her parlor the gathering place of
all the wit and wisdom of Riverbank, as Madame de Staël made her salon
the gathering place of the wit and wisdom of Paris. Perhaps nothing
gives a better insight into the character of Lucille than this:
her attempt to create a salon--of which she should be the star--in
Riverbank. She soon found that the wit and wisdom of our small Iowa town
was not willing to sit in a parlor and talk about Michael Angelo. The
women were abashed before the culture they imagined Lucille to have.
The men simply did not come. Not to be defeated, Lucille organized a
“literary society.” By including only a few of her church acquaintances
she gave the suggestion that the organization was “exclusive.” By
setting as the first topic the poems of Matthew Arnold--then hardly
heard of in Riverbank--she suggested that the society was to be erudite.
The combination did all she had hoped. Admission to Lucille's literary
society became Riverbank's most prized social plum.
Few in Riverbank had any real affection for Lucille, but affection was
not what she sought. She wanted prominence and power, and even the
men who had scorned her salon idea soon found she had become, in some
mysterious way, an “influence.” The State senator, when he came to
Riverbank, always “put up” at Lucille's mansion instead of at a hotel as
formerly. When the men of the town wished signatures to a petition,
or money subscriptions to any promotion scheme--such as the new street
railway--the first thought was: “Get Lucille Hardcome to take it up;
she'll put it through.” In such affairs she did not bother with the
lesser names; some fifteen or twenty of the “big” men she would write on
her list and for a few days her blacks and her low-hung carriage would
be seen standing in front of prominent doors, and Lucille would have
secured all, or nearly all, the signatures she sought.
At first Lucille paid little attention to David. She treated him much as
she treated the colorless Mr. Prell, _our_ Sunday school superintendent:
as if he were a useful but unimportant church attachment, but otherwise
not amounting to much. It was not until the affair of the church
organist showed her that David was a worthy antagonist that Lucille
thought of David as other than a sort of elevated hired man.
Far back in the days when David came to Riverbank, Miss Hurley (Miss
Jane Hurley, not Miss Mary) had volunteered to play the organ when Mrs.
Dougal gave it up because of the coming of the twins. That must have
been before the war; and the organ was a queer little box of a thing
that could be carried about with little trouble. It was hardly better
than a pitch pipe. It served to set the congregation on (or off) the
key, and was immediately lost in the rough bass and shrill treble of
the congregational vocal efforts. Later, when the Hardcomes came to
Riverbank and Ellen Hardcome's really excellent soprano suggested a
quartet choir, the “new” organ had been bought. It was thought to be a
splendid instrument. In appearance it was a sublimated parlor organ,
a black walnut affair that had Gothic aspirations and arose in
unaccountable spires and points. We Presbyterians were properly proud of
it. With our choir of four, our new organ and Miss Hurley learning a
new voluntary or offertory every month or so, we felt we had reached the
acme in music. We used to gather around Miss Hurley after one of her
new “pieces” and congratulate her, quite as we gathered around David and
congratulated him when he gave us a sermon we liked especially well.
The Episcopalians gave us our first shock when they built their little
church--spireless, indeed, so that their bell had to be set on a
scaffold in the back yard--but with a pipe organ actually built into the
church. We figured that seven, at least, of our congregation went over
to the Episcopalians on account of the pipe organ. The Methodists
were but a year or two later. I do not remember whether the
Congregationalists were a year before or a year after the Methodists,
but the net result was that we Presbyterians and the United Brethren
were the last to lag along, and the United Brethren had neither our size
nor wealth. Not that our wealth was much to brag of.
After her typhoid Ellen Hardcome's voice broke--the disease “settled in
her throat,” as we said then--and she stepped out of the choir to
make way for little Mollie Mitchell, who sang like a bird and had a
disposition like one of Satan's imps. Hardly had Lucille Hardcome taken
charge of our church music than she began her campaign for a pipe organ.
By that time the “new” organ was the “old” organ and actually worse
than the old “old” organ had ever been. It was in the habit of emitting
occasional uncalled-for groans and squeaks and at times all its efforts
were accompanied by a growl like the drone of a bagpipe. The blind piano
tuner had long since refused to have anything more to do with it, and
Merkle, the local gun and lock smith, tinkered it nearly every week. It
was comical to see old Schwerl roll his eyes in agony as he played his
violin beside it.
As Merkle said, repairing musical instruments was not his business, and
he had to “study her up from the ground.” He did his best, but probably
the logic of his repair work was based on a wrong premise. We never
knew, when Merkle entered the church on a Saturday to correct the
trouble that evolved during Friday night's choir practice, what the old
black walnut monstrosity would do on Sunday.
All through this period, as through her struggles with the old “old”
organ, Miss Hurley labored patiently. “I couldn't do so and so,” old
Merkle used to tell her, “so you want to look out and not do so and so.”
Perhaps it meant she must pump with one foot, or not touch some three or
four of the “stops.” She did her best and, but for the rankling thought
that the other churches were listening to glorious pipe organ strains, I
dare say we would have been satisfied well enough. I always loved to
see the gentle little lady seat herself on the narrow bench, arrange her
skirts, place her music on the rack and then look up to catch the back
of Dominie Dean's curly-haired head in her little mirror.
When Lucille Hardcome announced that she just couldn't stand the squeaky
old organ any longer and that the church must have a pipe organ if she
had to work night and day for it, we knew the church would have a pipe
organ, for Lucille--as a rule--got whatever she set her heart on.
Lucille's announcement threw little Miss Jane into a flutter of
excitement. It was as if someone gave a gray wren a thimbleful of
champagne. Miss Jane was all chirps of joy and tremblings of the hand.
She hardly knew whether to be jauntily joyous or crushed with fear. Her
eyes were unwontedly bright, and her cheeks, which had not glowed for
years, burned red. The very Friday night that Lucille condemned the
old organ and proclaimed a new one Miss Jane, walking beside David Dean
(although she felt more like skipping for joy), asked David a daring
question.
“Won't it be wonderful to have a real organ--a pipe organ!” she
exclaimed. “It means so much in the musical service, Mr. Dean. I try to
make the old organ praise the Lord but--of course I don't mean anything
I shouldn't--but sometimes I think there is no praise left in the old
thing! I can do so much more if we have a pipe organ!”
“I imagine you sometimes think the Old Harry is in the old walnut case,
Miss Jane,” said David.
“Oh, I would never think that!” cried Miss Jane, and then she laughed
a shamed little laugh. “That is just what sister Mary said last Sunday
when the bass growled so!”
She walked a few yards in silence, nerving herself to ask the question.
“Mr. Dean,” she said, “do you think it would be all right--do you think
it would be proper--if I asked Mademoiselle Moran to give me a few
lessons?”
She almost held her breath waiting for David's answer. It seemed to her,
after the question had left her mouth, that it had been a bold, almost
brazen, thing to ask David. It seemed almost shameful to ask the dominie
such a question, for, you understand, Mademoiselle Moran was a Catholic,
and not only a Catholic but the niece of Father Moran, the priest, and
his housekeeper, and the organist of St. Bridget's. The lessons would
mean that Miss Jane must go to St. Bridget's; they would be given on the
great organ there, with the image of the Virgin, and of St. Bridget,
and the gaunt crucifix, and the pictures portraying the Stations of the
Cross, and the confessionals, and all else, close at hand. To ask the
dominie if one might voluntarily venture into the midst of all that!
“Have you spoken to her yet?” asked David, surprisingly unshocked.
“No! Oh, no! I would not until I had asked you, of course!” gasped Miss
Jane. “Why, I haven't had time! I only knew we were going to have a pipe
organ this evening!”
“Perhaps you had better let me arrange it,” said David. “I think perhaps
Doctor Benedict can manage it, although Mademoiselle is giving up
her pupils, Benedict says. Father Moran is worried about her health;
Benedict says Mademoiselle is trying to do too much. She is giving
up all but her two or three most promising pupils. But in a case like
this--Shall I speak to Benedict?”
“Oh, will you? Will you?” cried little Miss Jane ecstatically. “Oh, if
you will!”
David smiled in the darkness. But a day or two before, when Doc Benedict
had dropped into the manse to sit awhile in David's study under the
motto “Keep an even mind under all circumstances,” David had scolded him
whimsically for unfaithfulness.
“I don't see you once in a blue moon any more, Benedict,” he had said.
“I grow stale for someone to wrangle with. You're a false and fickle
friend. Who is your latest passion? Father Moran?”
“Don't you say anything against Father Moran!” Benedict threatened.
“It's a pity you're not both Presbyterians, or both Catholics, Davy.
You'd love each other. You'd have some beautiful fights. I can't hold
my own against him; he's too much for me. He's a fine old man, Davy,” he
added, and then, smiling, “and he knows good sherry and good cigars.”
“What do you talk about, over your good sherry and good cigars?” asked
David.
“Last night,” said Benedict, “it was music. He had me there, Davy. No
man has a right to know as much about as many things as Father Moran
knows. Of course, if I had a niece like Mademoiselle I might know about
Beethoven and Chopin and all those fellows. He scolded me about our
church music. I went for him, of course, on that; bragged about our
choir. 'Ah, yes I' he smiled through that thick, brown beard of his;
'and I 'ave heard of your organ!' He gave me an imitation of it through
his nose. Then he called Mademoiselle and took me into the church and
made her play a thing or two--an 'Elevation' and an 'Ave Maria.' He had
me, all right, Davy. It was holy music, Davy!”
So David, remembering, spoke to Benedict about Miss Jane's desire, and
Benedict spoke to Father Moran. The old doctor knew just how to handle
the good-natured priest, whose eyes were deep in crow's-feet from
countless quizzical smiles.
“Why, Father, you yourself were howling and complaining about our church
music the other night! Scolding me, you were. And now I give you a
chance to better the thing you scolded me about, and you hesitate! Oh,
tut! about Mademoiselle's health! Let her give up another of her fancy,
arts-and-graces pupils. I prescribe Miss Hurley for Mademoiselle's
health. And don't you dare go against her physician's orders!”
Father Moran chuckled in his black beard and his eyes twinkled. He loved
to have anyone pretend to bulldoze him; he was a beloved autocrat among
his own people.
“You're afraid!” declared Benedict. “You're afraid that when we get our
new organ and Miss Hurley learns to play it your Mademoiselle will be
overshadowed. We'll show you!”
“Afraid!” chuckled Father Moran. “You heard Mademoiselle play, and
you say I am afraid! _Bon!_ Ex-cellent! Come, we will interview
Mademoiselle!”
So it was arranged. Mademoiselle would take no remuneration. She patted
little Miss Hurley on the thin shoulder and smiled, but she would not
hear of payment.
“N', no!” she declared. “I teach you because I like you, because I like
all praise music shall be good music. N', no! We will not think about
money; we will think about great, grand music. You will be my leetle St.
Cecilia; yes?” Not until she had consulted David, and had been assured
that accepting such a favor from the niece of the priest was not at
all wrong, would Miss Hurley agree. Then the lessons began, Miss Hurley
always “my leetle St. Cecilia” to Mademoiselle. They were a strongly
contrasted pair: Mademoiselle Moran stout, black-haired, with powerful
arms and fingers; Miss Hurley a mere wisp of humanity, hair already
gray, and with scarce strength to handle the stops and keys.
When first she entered the huge St. Bridget's Miss Hurley cringed, as if
she entered a forbidden place. The great stained windows permitted but
little light to enter; here and there some woman knelt low on the floor,
crossing herself. Mademoiselle walked to the organ loft with a brisk,
businesslike tread and Miss Hurley followed her timidly. From somewhere
Father Moran appeared, smiling, and patted Miss Hurley's shoulder. No
man had patted Miss Hurley's shoulder for many years, but she was far
from resenting it. It was like a good wish. Then Mademoiselle reached up
and drew the soft green curtains across the front of the organ loft and
lo! they were alone. The lesson began.
It needed but that one first lesson to tell Mademoiselle that her
“leetle St. Cecilia” would never play “great, grand music” on a
large pipe organ. It was as if you were to undertake to teach a child
trigonometry and discovered he did not know the multiplication table
beyond seven times five. Miss Hurley hardly knew the rudiments of music;
harmony, thoroughbass and all the deeper things, that Mademoiselle had
learned so long ago that they were part of her nature now, were absolute
Greek to Miss Hurley. But, worse than all this, Miss Hurley had not the
physique of an organist. She was physically inadequate.
Such news invariably leaks out. Long before Lucille Hardcome had managed
to coax the pipe organ out of Sam Wiggett's purse it was known that
Miss Hurley was “taking lessons” from Mademoiselle and that she was
not strong enough to play a pipe organ properly. For her part, had Miss
Hurley been any other person, Mademoiselle would have thrown up her
hands and turned her back on the impossible task, but she liked Miss
Jane sincerely. I think she loved the little old maid. It must be
remembered that St. Bridget's was Irish and in those days many of the
Irish in Riverbank were fresh from the peat bogs and potato fields, and
Mademoiselle, before coming to care for her uncle's house, had lived in
the midst of France's best. It is no wonder she craved even such crambs
of culture as Miss Hurley had gathered or that she loved the little
woman. In return she gave Miss Jane all she could.
There were intricacies of stops and keys, foot pedaling and fingering,
that must be explained and practiced, but Mademoiselle early told Miss
Hurley:
“St. Cecilia, you are not, remembair, the grand organist; you are
the sweet organist. For me”--she made the organ boom with a tumult of
sound--“for me, yes! I am beeg and strong. But, for you”--she played
some deliciously dainty bit--“because you are gentle and sweet!”
And all the while Miss Jane and Mademoiselle were having their little
love affair and their struggles with stops and pedals and keys, behind
the green curtain of St. Bridget's organ loft, Lucille Hardcome was
bringing all her diplomacy to bear against old Sam Wiggett's pocket. For
her own part she made a direct assault: “Mr. Wiggett, you're going to
give us a pipe organ!” She kept this up day in and day out: “Have you
decided to give us that pipe organ?” and, “I haven't seen the pipe organ
you are going to give us. Where is it?” Old Wiggett, who liked Lucille,
chuckled. Perhaps he knew from the first that he would give the
organ. Lucille set his daughter, Mary Derling, to coaxing, and primed
unsuspecting old ladies to speak to Mr. Wiggett as if the organ was a
certainty. She had Mort Walsh, the architect, prepare a plan for taking
out a portion of the rear wall of the church without disturbing the
regular services. She took a group of ladies to Derlingport to hear the
pipe organ in the Presbyterian Church there. They returned enthusiastic
advocates of an organ for our church, and Lucille, knowing Sam Wiggett,
and sure the old fellow would love to have his name attached forever to
some one big thing in the church, set the ladies to raising money for a
pipe organ. This was a hopeless task and Lucille knew it. It was done to
frighten Mr. Wiggett and make him hurry with his gift, lest he lose the
opportunity.
One result of the trip to Derlingport can be stated in the words of
Mrs. Peter Minch, uttered as she came down the steps of the Derlingport
church:
“Well, Lucille, if we have an organ like that we will have to have more
of an organist than Jane Hurley!”
“Of course!” Lucille had said. “Jane Hurley and a pipe organ would be
ridiculous!”
So this was added to David's worries. The choir of four and Lucille--as
musical dictator of the church--spoke to David almost immediately about
the retirement of Miss Hurley. It would be better to say perhaps, that
they spoke to him about the manner in which money could be raised to
pay a satisfactory organist. They did not consider Miss Hurley as a
possibility at all. She had done well enough with the old organ, and it
had been pleasant for her, and well for the church, that she had been
permitted to play the squeaky old instrument without pay, but she simply
would not do when it came to the new organ. David listened, his head
resting in his hand and one long finger touching his temple. He saw at
once that a quarrel was in the air.
“You did not know,” he asked, “that Miss Hurley has been taking lessons
from Mademoiselle Moran for a month or more!”
“Oh, that!” said Lucille. “That's nonsense! If she wants to play
'Onward, Christian Soldiers' for the Sunday school, I don't object; but
church music! We have heard the organist at Derlingport!”
“I think,” said David, “that for a while at least, if we get a pipe
organ, Miss Hurley should be our organist. She is looking forward to it.
She is taking lessons with that in view!”
Lucille said nothing, but in her eyes David saw the resolve to be rid of
Miss Hurley.
“Miss Jane understands, I think,” David said, “that she is to continue
as our organist. At no advance in salary,” he smiled.
Lucille closed her mouth firmly. As clearly as if she had spoken, David
read in her face: “Well, if that's who is to play the pipe organ, I
shan't try to get one!” He did not wait for her to speak.
“I feel,” he said, “that if Miss Hurley is to be thrown out after
so many years of patient and faithful struggling with the miserable
instruments she has had to do with, it would be better to let the whole
idea of having a pipe organ drop. At any rate, the chance of getting one
seems small.”
“Oh, we're going to have one!” exclaimed Lucille, caught in the trap he
had prepared for her spirit of opposition. “I get what I go after, Mr.
Dean.”