WHEN the _Declarator_ for that week appeared, David found a copy in his
box at the post office, for Welsh made it a practice to let his victims
see how they were handled. He had given nearly all the space in
the “Briefs” column to David. The dominie did not open the paper
immediately. He had a couple of letters to read, and one or two
denominational papers to glance through, and he was well up the hill
before he tore the wrapper from the _Declarator_, and looked into it. As
he read he stopped short, and stood until he had read every word in the
column. Then he tore the sheet to bits, and threw it into the gutter.
His first thought was that 'Thusia must not see the paper, or hear how
Welsh had attacked him in it. The attack was less harmful than venomous.
It was a tirade against “The Spiritual Dead Beat”--for so he chose
to dub David--mentioning no name, but pointing clearly enough at the
dominie. Choice bits:
“Who is this hypocrite who preaches right living, and owes his butcher,
his grocer, his baker, his shoe man, and can't or won't pay?”
“I can't skin my grocer; he knows I'm a dead beat. I'm a fool; I ought
to have set up as a parson.”
There was an entire column of it. David's thought, after 'Thusia, was
thankfulness that he owed not a tradesman in Riverbank.
And this was to be Alice's father-in-law!
Lanny came to the house that evening; he asked to see David in the
study.
“Of course you saw the _Declarator_, Mr. Dean,” he said when they were
alone. “I don't know what to do about it. I saw father, and if he hadn't
been my father I would have knocked him down with my fist. It's a dirty
piece of business. I know what's the matter with him: he's sore because
I'm going to marry somebody decent, when no decent person will have
anything to do with him. Mother told him I'm engaged to Alice. I talked
to him straight; you can believe that! I would have taken it out of
his hide if I hadn't thought how it would look. You wouldn't want a
son-in-law that was in jail for beating up his own father. What can I do
about it, Mr. Dean?”
David said nothing could be done about it; he said he was glad Lanny
had not attacked his father with physical violence, and he urged him to
avoid words with his father.
“He has had a hard life; you and I do not know how hard. It has
embittered him; he is not rightly responsible.”
“But why should he attack you, of all men?” Lanny cried. “Or if he don't
like you what kind of a father is it that tries to spoil things for
me--that's what he's trying to do. It's meanness.”
“He has had a hard life,” David repeated. “You don't think I ought to do
anything? You can't suggest anything for me to do?”
“Avoid quarreling with him,” said David. There was no other advice to
give; it was unfortunate that Alice should have chosen to love a man
with such a father; there was nothing Lanny or any other person could
do. Welsh was a town nuisance.
The next week the _Declarator_ retracted, in the manner in which it
always retracted when a retraction was necessary. The item in the
“Briefs” was headed “An Apology!!!” and ran: “We apologize. The
Spiritual Dead Beat has paid his debts. We wonder who lent him the
money?” The banker-trustee, Burton, meeting David, spoke to him of this.
“I see our respected fellow townsman, Welsh, is touching you up,
dominie,” he said. “It is a pity we can't run the fellow out of town.
Worthless cur! He gave me his attention last year; I put an ad in his
paper and he shut up. What do you suppose ever started him against you?”
“He is an embittered man; his hand is against the whole world.”
“That's probably so,” agreed the banker. “A sort of Donnybrook Fair; if
you see a head, hit it. Well, I don't know what we can do about it. He
keeps inside the law.” He hesitated. “Dominie,” he said, “you'll not
feel offended if I say something? I guess you know I'm only thinking
of the good of the church and of your own good. You don't suppose Welsh
knows who lent you the money he's talking about, do you? I'll tell
you--I imagine you make no secret of it--I know who lent it! I couldn't
help knowing--”
“It was entirely a business transaction; I stipulated that,” said David.
“Certainly. We know that; anyone would know it that knew you, dominie.
Well, I've no scruples about borrowing and lending; it is my business,
I'm a banker. I'll make a guess that Lucille Hardcome came to you with
the loan idea, and that you didn't go to her; and I'll make another
guess that before you were willing to borrow the money from her you
heard her say she was going to increase her subscription, maybe five
hundred dollars, and maybe a thousand. Am I right? I thought so! Because
it wouldn't be like you to borrow unless you saw where you could pay it
back, and I told you that if Lucille raised her subscription you'd get
your share. It's all right! The only thing--you won't mind if I say it?”
“I can imagine what it is,” said David.
“Yes. If this man Welsh knows what he is talking about--if he isn't
just guessing--he can be very nasty about it. I can't imagine why he is
picking on you, but if he wants to keep it up, and knows you borrowed
money from Lucille Hardcome, he can make it--well, he'll make it sound
as if there was something wrong about it. He'll twist some false meaning
into it--invalid wife and gay widow and money passing. I hate to say
this, but people are always looking for a chance to jump on a
minister--some people are, that is. I don't know how we can get at
Welsh--he's so low he's threat-proof. I was going to suggest that you
let me put in an application for a loan at our bank, say for the amount
you borrowed from Lucille Hardcome. Borrow the money from us and pay
her, and then let us get after Welsh.”
David thought a moment.
“It might offend her,” he said. “She was extremely insistent. I might
almost say she predicated her possible increase of subscription on my
accepting the loan. I felt so or I would have refused her.”
“Let me handle her,” urged Burton. “I'll say nothing until the bank
agrees to the loan, anyway. You'll let me make the application for you!”
David agreed. It was, if the bank was willing, the wisest course, or so
it seemed at the moment.
David went about his duties as usual, and it was not for several days
that he heard from Burton. The bank's discount committee had declined
the loan.
Lucille, in the meantime, had not been idle. She set herself the task
of saving Alice from Lanny Welsh, and she went about it in a manner that
would have done credit to an experienced diplomat. One of the men she
had tried hardest to induce to become a frequenter of the “salon” she
had attempted to create was Van Dusen, the owner of the _Eagle_, and in
a certain satirically smiling way he admired Lucille. He had once had
literary ambitions and, like most small town editors, he had his share
of political hopefulness, especially with reference to a post office;
and he recognized in Lucille a power such as Riverbank had not
previously possessed. She knew congressmen and senators, and dined them
when they came to town; and they seemed to think her worth knowing.
A word from her might, at the right moment, throw an office from one
applicant to another. Van Dusen cultivated her friendship. He was a good
talker and a great reader, and Lucille enjoyed him. He was a busy and
a sadly overworked man, hard to draw from his home after his day's work
was done, but he did accept Lucille's invitations. His presence at her
house meant much; the town considered him one of its illustrious men.
Lucille jingled into his office one morning, rustled into a chair and
leaned her arms on his desk.
“Are you going to do something for me, like a good man?” she began.
Van Dusen leaned back in his chair and smiled.
“To the half of my kingdom,” he said.
“That's less than I expected, but I suppose I'll have to make it do,”
she returned playfully. “Isn't there, Mr. Van Dusen, some newspaper or
printing office in Derlingport that pays more than you pay! Some place
where a deserving young man could better himself?”
“Some of them pay more than the _Eagle,_” he admitted.
“And you could get a young man a place there?”
“I might. The _Gazette_ might do it for me; Bender is an old friend of
mine.”
“Then I want you to do it,” said Lucille. “You won't ask why, will you?
Just do it for me?”
“What position does your protégé want?” Van Dusen asked, drawing a
scratch pad toward him, and poising a pencil.
“Compositor--isn't that it--when a man sets type? It's Lanny Welsh; I
want him to have a better job than he has--in Derlingport.” She saw Van
Dusen frown. “I think I'll tell you all about it,” she said; “I know I
can trust you.”
“With your innermost secrets, on my honor as a bearded old editor,”
smiled Van Dusen.
“Then it is this,” said Lucille and she told about Lanny and Alice.
Van Dusen demurred a little. He said Lanny was good enough for any girl,
dominie's daughter or king's daughter, no matter whose daughter.
“And have you seen the _Declarator?_” Lucille demanded. “Is the
editor of the _Declarator_ good enough to be a dominie's daughter's
father-in-law?”
Van Dusen admitted that this was another matter, and good-naturedly let
Lucille have her way. When she had departed, he wrote to Bender of the
_Gazette_. A few days later Lanny came to the manse, half elated and
half displeased.
“Old Van is all right!” he told David. “I can't blame him for bouncing
me when there's no work for me to do, and there's not one man in a
thousand that would take the trouble to look up another job for me,
and hand it to me with my blue envelope. I'm going up to work on the
_Gazette_, at Derlingport, Mr. Dean. It just rips me all up to go that
far from Alice, even for a little while, but I've got to do it. If we're
going to be married in a year I need every day's work I can put in, and
when you think that the _Gazette_ job will pay more than my _Eagle_ job,
I guess you'll admit I've simply got to grab it.”
“When are you going?” asked David. “To-morrow,” said Lanny. “These jobs
don't wait; you've got to take them while they're empty. Between you and
me, Mr. Dean, I think I wouldn't have had a chance in the world if it
hadn't been for Mr. Van Dusen. He's that sort, though.”
To David, knowing nothing of Lucille's having a hand in this, it seemed
almost providential, this removal of Lanny to another town.
“I've got another idea, too,” Lanny said. “I think maybe I can get
father to come to Derlingport. He's dead sore on Riverbank, I know, and
mother will be anxious to be where I am. I may be able to make father
think there is a better field for the _Declarator_ there than here. I
don't know. After I've been there awhile I'll try it. I wish he would
leave this town, and let people forget about him.”
David heartily wished the same thing, and he was soon to wish it still
more heartily. At the moment he liked Lanny better than he had ever
liked the boy.
“I expect you'll excuse me, now,” Lanny said. “I expect you know I'm
wanting to spend all the time with Alice I can, going in the morning and
all that. And, oh, yes! I'm going to look around up there for a job for
Old Pop--for Roger. I'm pretty sure to get on the Derlingport nine, and
I want Old Pop to be behind the bat when I'm pitching. I think it would
be a good thing for him to get up there, if I can land a job for him.
There's no future in that coal office, Mr. Dean, to my mind. They are a
live lot of men back of the Derlingport nine, and if I want Old Pop to
catch for me, and won't listen to anything else, some of them will
hustle up a job for him. Maybe there is a coal man connected with the
nine someway. I don't know, but in a big place like Derlingport there's
always room for anybody as clean and straight as Roger.”
David was touched. He saw, in imagination, a new Roger winning his
own way, spurred on by the brisker business life of the bigger town,
bettered by the temporary breaking of home ties, inoculated with Lanny's
enthusiasm.
Roger spoke of the chance Lanny might get him, and spoke of it
voluntarily and enthusiastically. It would be a great thing for him, he
said. Grandfather Fragg was all right, of course, but there was nothing
in the way of a future in his coal business. He said he hated to take
money from him when he knew the business was running behind every day.
“Is it as bad as that, Roger!” David asked. “Every bit, father,” Roger
replied. “I don't see how he's going to pull through the winter and keep
the business going.”
“Isn't there anything you can do!”
“Do! It isn't a case of do, it's a case of money. He didn't have enough
capital to start with, and he hasn't any left. Brown & Son have got
all the business. I could get some of it away from them but grandfather
can't supply the coal. He can't buy it; he hasn't the money to do a
big business on, and a small coal business is a losing proposition. The
profit is too small; you've got to do big business or you might as well
quit.”
The talk left David with a new source of worry. 'Thusia's father was
showing his infirmities more plainly each day; if he lost his coal
business--and David knew the loss of the Fragg home was to be included
in that loss--the old man would have but one place to turn to: David's
home. It would mean another mouth to feed, perhaps another invalid to
care for and support.