IN a small town men find themselves tagged far sooner and far more
permanently than in the large cities. Let a young fellow attend church
for a few weeks, behave decently for a year, and get a job as soon
as one offers, and he is tagged as a “good” young man; thereafter it
requires quite a little rascality to convince people he is otherwise.
The small town is like a pack of cards; the rank of the components being
once established, it is vain for them to attempt other values. Let
young Bud Smith start out as a Jack-of-all-trades, and he is expected
to remain one; and when he attempts steady work of one kind, his efforts
are talked about as something phenomenal. If Bill Jones, the contractor,
gives Bud a job it is considered a bit of eccentricity on Jones' part;
what reason can a man have for taking on a Jack-of-all-trades as a
steady carpenter! It might be just as well to be a little careful
in making contracts with Jones; it looks as if he was a little too
easy-going! Thus Jones gets his tag, and Bud Smith does not lose his.
They cling.
Something of this sort had happened to Lanny Welsh. His father, old P.
K. Welsh, was an oldtime character in Riverbank. For years he had been
a familiar figure, trudging about town with his stooped shoulders, his
long and greasy black coat and his long and pointed beard. His head
was a little too large for his body, and his eyes, seen through his
spectacles, were apparently too large for his face. They were blue. His
hair often hung down upon his collar. Once a year or so he had it cut,
and when he had it cut he had it cut short enough to last awhile. The
change was as noticeable as if a large building had been tom down from
one of the prominent Main Street comers.
In the side pockets of old P. K. Welsh's coat were always bundles of
folded newspapers--his pockets bulged with them. He was a newspaper man.
Day after day and year after year, old P. K. Welsh trudged up and down
the two business streets of Riverbank, from eight in the morning until
four or five in the afternoon, and so he had trudged for years. Thursday
was an exception, for on Thursday he “published,” running off the one or
two hundred copies of the _Declarator_ that constituted his edition. The
paper was a weekly, five cents a copy, one dollar a year, and the total
income from subscriptions was probably never more than one hundred
dollars. This did not pay for his paper and ink, and he tried to make up
the difference in advertising income; but as an advertising medium
the _Declarator_ was not worth the paper on which it was printed, and
everyone knew it. He spent his life nagging the merchants into throwing
him crumbs of petty patronage. His credit was nil, he never had any
cash, he gave all his advertising in exchange for trade. When he sallied
forth in the morning he carried a list of the groceries his wife needed;
getting them for her meant nagging some grocer until he agreed to send
up the groceries in exchange for a few inches of unwanted advertising
space in the _Declarator_. Old P. K. grew wise in wiles. He knew the
hour when Beemer's drivers came back to the store with their orders for
the day, when Beemer and all his clerks would be madly measuring and
tying and filling baskets. That was when old P. K. would appear. To get
rid of him the grocer would often scribble down his order, and figure
the bill as sufficiently repaid by the time saved through getting rid of
old P. K. so easily.
The _Declarator_ itself was an example of a good idea gone wrong through
stress of necessity. The sheet was small, four pages, often filled with
plate matter, and the original matter was set in the most amateurish
manner. The old type from which it was set was worn until some of the
letters were mere smudges of black. From time to time old P. K., being
in funds, would buy a few pounds of cast-off type from the _Eagle_, and
this mixed with his worn supply, gave the paper a bizarre, hit-and-miss
appearance. Old P. K. did not bother about reading proof. The paper came
out with all the errors, with letters of one font mixed with letters
of another font, and with some paragraphs set in large type and some
in small. It was the column headed “Briefs,” however, that tagged the
_Declarator_.
It was known that old P. K. had come from somewhere in Kansas, and it
was understood that he had known John Brown, the famous John Brown,
whose soul goes marching on in the ballad. Welsh came to Riverbank in
the years following the war, and started his little paper in opposition
to the _Eagle_, which was then scarcely larger. Riverbank was once more
Democratic. The _Declarator_ was violently Republican and violently
pro-negro. Across the first page, just under the title, P. K. ran the
motto “All men--white or black--are equal.” He knew his Bible by heart
and scattered Biblical quotations through his pages, each chosen because
of its sting. There were but a dozen or twenty negroes in the town, and
the negro question did not worry anyone, and P. K. Welsh's loyalty was
an asset. Although the Republicans were in a helpless minority they were
glad to have an organ, and the _Declarator_ did fairly well.
Time passed and the _Eagle_ blossomed from a weekly into a daily.
It contracted for telegraph news of the outside world. A group of
Republicans started the _Daily Star_, staunchly but sanely Republican,
and the _Declarator_ slumped into the position of an unneeded, unwanted
sheet. A few of the old-time, grit-incrusted Republicans, who believed
every Democrat was destined for hell fire, still took the _Declarator_;
the other subscribers dropped it. Old P. K. grew bitter; his
subscription book became his list of friends and enemies. Those whose
names once appeared on the list, or had ever appeared on it, and who
canceled their subscriptions, became the recipients of his hatred. Welsh
brooded over them and waited. Sooner or later he spat venom at them in
the column headed “Briefs.”
To anyone not acquainted with Welsh the _Declarator_ appeared to be a
blackmail sheet. It was not. Old P. K. was firm in the belief that he
was doing God's work and that the _Declarator_ was meant to be God's
instrument. He quoted Scripture in his columns to declare that those who
were not with him were against him, and that those who were against
him were against God. One by one he took up propaganda that he believed
righteous, and took them up with all the violence of a fanatic. He was
the first man in Riverbank to cry aloud for prohibition, but he was also
the first to shriek anti-Catholicism. He held up good, old Father
Moran as an Antichrist, and pleaded that he be driven from town. He was
continually advocating violence in words that to-day would have landed
him in prison. With his abusive “Briefs” and his inflammatory editorials
he became, in a small way, a nuisance to the town; with his nagging for
advertisements he became a nuisance to the merchants. His wife was
a simple-minded, easy-going creature, wrinkled and with a brown wig
inclosed in a hair net. The wig looked less like a head covering than
some sort of brown-hair pudding. On the whole, ridiculous as the
wig was, it was better than nothing, for Mrs. Welsh was as bald as a
billiard ball.
These were the parents of Lanny Welsh; they might well have served as
an excuse for worthlessness in the boy, but this may be said for
Riverbank--it does not damn the child because of the parents. Lanny
Welsh won his own tag; at any rate it was given him through what the
town knew of the boy, and not through what it knew of old P. K. and
Lanny's mother.
You may imagine Lanny Welsh with bright, blue eyes and curly, brown
hair, slender, lithe and a little taller than the average. He had a
smile that would charm the heart out of a misanthrope. When he smiled
his eyes brightened, the corners of his lips seemed to become alight
with good nature, and a dimple flickered in his left cheek. As a boy
he was needlessly cruel, but perhaps no more than the average boy, and
charmingly sweet in his ways and words when he was not cruel. His mother
let him tread on her in everything; old P. K. seemed hardly to know the
boy was alive except when he arose in Biblical wrath over some escapade,
and beat the boy outrageously with a leathern strap. Lanny howled when
he was being beaten, and forgot the admonitions that accompanied them as
soon as he was safe outside the woodshed.
He smiled his way through school, graduated, and went into his father's
printing office as a matter of course. He worked there six or eight
months, and left because he could not earn anything either for himself
or for his father. The old man hardly missed him until, some months
later, he learned that Lanny was working in a billiard room. He took the
boy to the woodshed and Lanny knocked him down, not unkindly but firmly,
and the old man cursed him in good, round, Old Testament phrases, and
disowned him then and there. It did not worry Lanny in the least. He
simply declined to take any stock in the curse or the casting off, and
probably old P. K. himself soon forgot it. Lanny continued to live at
home.
He worked in Dan Reilly's saloon. All told he worked for Dan Reilly
three weeks. Two weeks he swept out the place, polished brasses and
glasses and did odd jobs. One week he stood behind the bar. One week was
enough of it. The week was in August, and Dan Reilly's saloon was on the
sunny side of the street; there was no hotter place in Riverbank on a
sunny August afternoon, and Lanny simply threw up the job on account of
the discomfort. The one week, however, was enough; he was tagged. He was
“old crank Welsh's son, the bartender fellow.”
Lanny loafed awhile, and then the _Eagle_ planned and put to press the
first town directory of Riverbank, and during the preparation of the
book Lanny found a place in the _Eagle_ rooms setting type. There he
remained. The typesetters were an easy-going lot; the side door of the
composing room opened on an alley, and Dan Reilly's saloon was just
across the alley. The little printer's devil was kept busy on hot days
running back and forth with a tin beer pail. The _Eagle_ was a morning
paper, and between the blowing of the shrill six o'clock whistle and the
time when the reporters turned in their late copy the printers were
in the habit of sitting in the alley near the street, eating a
snack, sipping beer and teasing the girls who passed. It was nothing
particularly bad, but it was sufficiently different from what the bank
clerks and counter-jumpers did to impress some Riverbankers with the
idea that the printers were a bad lot. Thus Lanny grew up.
The town had a baseball craze just then, and the _Eagle_ boys formed a
nine. Van Dusen, the owner of the _Eagle_, gave them suits--red, with
Eagle Nine in white letters on the shirts--and Lanny, tall, slim and
quick-witted, was the pitcher. And he could pitch! It was not long
before he was gathered into the Riverbank Grays when critical games were
to be played, and he was the first man in Riverbank to receive money for
playing ball; the Grays gave him five dollars for each game he pitched
for them. It was when he began pitching for the Grays that Lanny became
well acquainted with Roger Dean, who was generally known among the ball
players as “Old Pop Dean,” a compliment to his ball-playing ability,
since “Old Pop” Anson was then king of the game, and the baseball hero.
Young Roger had been meant for the church, and David and 'Thusia had
dreamed of seeing him fill a pulpit, but he seemed destined to be
an idler. The money David had saved with infinite pains to provide a
college education was thrown away. The boy departed for college
with blessings enough to carry him through, but he was a born
idler--good-natured and lovable, but an idler--and long before his
course was completed it was known that he had come home and, before
long, it was known he was not going back. The more kindly people said
he preferred a business career to the ministry; others said he was too
lazy. He was not a bad boy and had never been; as a young man he had no
bad habits or desires; he had no ambition.
Had David been a farmer Roger would have been a model son; on a farm he
would have milked the cows for his father, cut the grain for his father,
done a man's work for his father. Had David been a merchant Roger would
have sold goods behind the counter for his father, as well as any other
man could have sold them, and would have stood in the sun at the door
in his shirt sleeves when idle, making friends that would have meant
custom. But in a minister's work there are no cows to milk for father,
and no goods to sell for father; a minister's son must be bitten by
ambition or his place in the world is hard to find. He cannot learn his
father's trade by working at it; and Roger was the sort of youth who
does only what is easily at hand to do. When he had been home a few
weeks he was most often to be found on the back lot playing ball with
smaller and far younger boys, and he was always the first taken when
sides were being chosen. He was big, and a natural ball player, as Lanny
was. His place was behind the bat, catching, but he was equally good
when at the bat. The “curve” and “down shoot” and “up shoot” were just
coming into the game, but they held no mysteries for Roger. He hit them
all.
Henry Fragg, 'Thusia's father, now an old man, had given up the agency
for the packet company he had long held, and now had a small coal office
on the levee. He took Roger in with him, giving him the utmost the
business could afford, a meager four dollars weekly--more than Roger
was worth in the business, which was dead in the summer--and Roger
transferred his ball playing to the levee, where bigger youths played
a more spirited game. Before the end of that season Roger was wearing a
baseball suit, one of the dozen presented by Jacob Cohen, the clothier,
in consideration of permission to have the shirts bear the words Jacob
Cohen Riverbank Grays, and Roger was a member of the nine, and its
catcher. Thereafter, he gave more time than usual to baseball. In the
rather puritanical community a minister's son playing ball was at first
something of a shock, but Roger did not play on Sunday and the Grays
would not play without Roger when the game promised to be close, so the
result was less Sunday ball. Roger received the credit and baseball came
to be less frowned on. David himself attended one or two of the Saturday
games, but some of his church members felt he should not, and, as he
cared nothing for the game, he went no more. Alice went occasionally
when the game was important enough to draw large crowds and other nice
girls were sure to be present.
It is remarkable how easily mortals accept genial incapacity as normal.
In a year Roger was accepted as a satisfactorily conducted young man,
permanently dropped into his proper place, and even David and 'Thusia
no longer fretted about him. He was always present at meals; he was no
different one day than another; he was cheerful and happy and contented.
Henry Fragg said he did his work well, which was true enough, but there
was very little work; once a day or so Roger came in from the sandy ball
ground, weighed a load of coal, jotted down the figures and went back to
his “tippy-up” game. There was always the hope that the business would
grow, and that Roger would eventually succeed his grandfather in the
coal business and prosper. Neither was there any reason why he should
not.
But Lanny and Alice are still tapping on David Dean's door.
“Father, this is Lanny,” Alice said, and fled. The dominie looked up to
see a tall, slender, curly-haired youth with eyes as dear and bright
as stars. There was no bashfulness in him, and no overconfident
forwardness. David liked him, and he was sorry to like him so well. He
had a halfformed hope that Lanny would show himself at first glance to
be impossible. He was not that so far as his exterior was concerned.
“I don't think we have ever met, Mr. Dean,” he said, extending his hand,
“but of course I feel as if I knew you--everyone does. Alice told you
I want to marry her. Well, I do. I suppose I should have spoken to you
before I spoke to her--that's the right way, isn't it?--but I didn't
think of that until afterward. I asked her sooner than I meant. I made
up my mind I'd wait a year--in another year I'll have saved enough to
begin housekeeping right--but it came out of itself, almost. I liked her
so much I just couldn't help it; I guess that's the answer.”
“Yes, Alice told me you had asked her,” said David. “She also told me
she had accepted.”
“Yes,” said Lanny, taking the chair David indicated. “I can't tell you,
Mr. Dean, how much I think of her--how much--well, I never thought for
a minute she would have me. Or, I did and I didn't. I thought she would,
but I didn't believe it would be true. Of course she liked me, but a
dominie's daughter, and she's such a nice girl--”
“You felt she was not in your class, is that it?” said David.
“That's it,” said Lanny with relief. “You know I tended bar once.”
“So I have heard,” said David.
“That was a mistake,” said Lanny, “and I'm glad I got sick of it when I
did. It's no business for a man in a town like this, or any town, if he
wants to be anybody. If you can't be a preacher or a lawyer or a doctor
you've got to be in business. I'm going to get into business as soon
as I can. I think there's room in this town for a good job office--job
printing. A live man ought to make good money. That's what I have in
mind--an up-to-date job office--as soon as I can raise the money. I'm
doing pretty well now,” he added, and he mentioned his wage. “I can
support a wife on that.”
David nodded. He had had no idea compositors were so well paid. He was
constantly being surprised to learn how many men in the trades were
receiving more than he himself was paid.
“Yes,” said Lanny, returning to what seemed uppermost in his mind, “you
hit it when you said Alice was not in my class.”
“But I did not say that,” said David. “I only formulated your own
thought for you.”
“Yes, that's it,” said Lanny. “I suppose, being a minister, you don't
take as much stock in classes as some folks do. You care more whether
a man is good or bad. But I figure a man has got to take some stock in
such things in this world. I can feel I'm not in Alice's class--yet. My
folks are not like you and Mrs. Dean. I don't know, but I guess if I was
marrying a girl out of my family I'd want to feel I was marrying her out
of the family, not marrying myself into it. That's what worried me, Mr.
Dean, when I thought of having to talk to you about Alice. I'm making
good wages, and I'm good for a job any time, and since I've been a compo
I've been clean enough to be a dominie's son-in-law, but I know I'm not
in your class. If I was I wouldn't be wanting to get into it. I'd be in.
But I guess you know a man can't be blamed for the kind of parents he
has. But, just the same, he is.”
“Have you spoken to your parents!” David asked.
“To mother. Father don't care whether I'm alive or not. Mother--well,
I'll tell you: I've been giving her part of my wages. She wasn't any
more pleased than she had to be.”
“Alice says you don't think of being married for a year,” said David.
“Well, I thought that was best,” said Lanny. “We talked it over and--I
guess you know we've seen some thin picking at our house, Mr. Dean. It
makes everything go wrong. I don't like it, and I made up my mind long
ago that if ever I married it wouldn't be until I had at least enough in
the bank to carry me over the between-jobs times. I've got three hundred
in the bank now, but I don't want to chance it on that. Alice and I both
think it is safer to wait a year. I don't know what I can save, but it
will be every cent I can.”
David appreciated the exclusion of his own home from the example of
those that had thin picking, although it was evident enough that the
loverly confidences had included Alice's experience with lack of ready
money. David arose and gave Lanny his hand again.
“I think the year of waiting is a wise idea, Mr. Welsh,” he said.
“Either of you may have a change of mind.”
“If I thought that,” said Lanny with a smile, “I'd want to get married
right away,” and he moved to the door. “It's mighty kind of you to talk
to me without throwing me out of the door,” he added. “I know how much
nerve I have, picking Alice for a wife.”
David was aware of a sudden flood of affection for the boy. He put his
hand on Lanny's shoulder.
“Welsh,” he said, “I can say what I must say without offending you, I
see.”
Lanny drew his breath sharply, and looked into David's eyes. The hand
tightened a little on his shoulder. It stilled the fear that the dominie
was about to tell him he could not have Alice, and his eyes smiled, for
if Alice was not refused him outright no task would be too difficult to
undertake, whatever it might be her father was about to propound.
“We don't know you yet,” said David. “You understand that, of course--it
is all so unexpected. I'll say frankly, my boy, that I like you; and
that Alice likes you and has chosen you means much. You have not asked
me for her out and out, but that is what you meant, of course. Will you
let me reserve my word temporarily?”
“Well, that's right,” said Lanny. “You ought to look me up and find out
something about me before you give me anything as precious as Alice. If
she was mine I wouldn't give her to anyone, no matter how good he was.
I'll tell you, Mr. Dean, I don't pretend to be good enough for her; I
don't expect you to find that I am; but I hope you don't find that I'm
too bad for her.”
“And might it not be as well,” said David, “that the engagement be not
widely heralded at present!”
Lanny's face fell.
“I've told mother,” he said. “There is no telling who she has told by
now.”
“I cannot object to your having told your mother,” said David. “But let
us tell no others for the present. Unless you wish to tell your father,”
he added. Then: “Good-by, Mr. Welsh. You understand you will be welcome
here any time.”
David hastened the departure because he saw Lucille Hardcome's low-hung
carriage at his gate, and Lucille descending from it in state. Outside
the door Lanny met Alice and to her query he said:
“He was fine, Alice! He's a fine man. All he wants is time to look me up
a little.”
“The idea!” exclaimed Alice. “And when I have looked you up already,”
but it was said joyfully and she tempered it with a kiss, quite clearly
seen by Lucille Hardcome through the colorless glass of the upper panel
of the front door.