WHEN it was announced that Lucille Hardcome was to marry B. C. Burton,
Riverbank was interested, but not surprised. The banker went up and down
the hill, from and to his business, quite as usual, but with a
little warmer and more ready smile for those he met. He accepted
congratulations gracefully. After the wedding, which was quite an event,
with a caterer from Chicago, and the big house lighted from top to
bottom and every coach the town liverymen owned making half a dozen
trips apiece, there was a wedding journey to Cuba. When the bridal
couple returned to Riverbank Lucille drove B. C. to and from the bank in
the low-hung carriage, and B. C. changed his abode from his own house to
Lucille's. Otherwise the marriage seemed to make little difference. For
Dominie Dean it made this difference: the only trustee who had, of late
years, shown any independence lost even the little he had shown. Having
married Lucille, he became no more than her representative on the board
of trustees.
Never a forceful man, Burton became milder and gentler than ever after
his marriage. He had not married Lucille under false colors (Lucille
had married B. C.; had reached for him and absorbed him), but, without
caring much, she had imagined him a wealthy man. When it developed that
he had almost nothing but his standing as a suave and respected banker,
Lucille, while saying nothing, gently put him in his place, as her
wedded pensioner. She had hoped she would be able to put on him the
burden of her rather complicated affairs, but when she guessed his
inefficiency as a money-manager for himself, she gave up the thought.
Lucille continued to manage her own fortune. She financed the house.
All this made of B. C. a very meek and gentle husband. He did nothing
to annoy Lucille. He was particularly careful to avoid doing anything
to annoy Lucille. He became, more than ever, a highly respectable
nonentity. Having, for many years, successfully prevented the town
from guessing that he was a mere figurehead for the bank, he had little
trouble in preventing it from saying too loudly that he was only not
henpecked because he never raised his crest in matters concerning
Lucille, except at her suggestion.
Lucille did not marry B. C. to salve her self-conceit only; not solely.
She felt the undercurrent of comment that followed Welsh's ugly attack
in the _Declarator_. She feared that people would say if they said
anything: “David Dean is not that kind of man” and “Lucille Hardcome
probably thought nothing of the sort, but she is that kind of woman.”
Marrying B. C. Burton was her way of showing Riverbank she had never
cared for David Dean. It also gave her a secure position of prominence
in Riverbank. Her house was now a home, and we think very highly of
homes in Riverbank. None the less Lucille still burned with resentment
against David Dean. The mere sight of him was an accusation; seeing him
afflicted her pride.
The dominie went about his duties as usual Then or later we saw no
change in David Dean, although we must have known how Lucille was using
every effort to turn the trustees and the church against him. He must
have had, too, a sense of undeserved but ineradicable defilement, the
result of P. K. Welsh's virulence. You know how such things cling to
even the most innocent. If nothing more is said than “It is too bad it
happened,” it has its faintly damning effect on us. We won for David
at last, but Lucille's fight to drive him away had its effect. At home
David hesitated over every penny spent, cut his expenses to the lowest
possible, in an effort to pay Lucille as much as he might when the note
came due. He had no hope of paying it in full.
Pay it, however, he did. One afternoon Rose Hinch came into his study
and closed the door.
“David,” she said, “you surely know that I know you owe Lucille
something--some money?”
“I suppose you do, Rose,” he said sadly. “Everyone knows!”
“'Thusia told me long ago,” she said. “I asked her about it again
to-day. I would rather you owed it to me, David.”
She had the money with her, and she held it toward him questioningly. He
took it. That was all; there was no question of a note or of repayment;
no spoken thanks. He was not surprised that Rose had saved so much out
of her earnings, neither did he hesitate to take the money from her, for
he knew she offered it in all the kindness of her heart. He hoped, too,
that by scrimping, as he had been, he could repay her in time.
'Thusia was neither better nor worse in health than she had been. Bright
and cheerful, she had learned the great secret of patience.
“If I must go,” David told her when there was no doubt that Lucille had
set her heart on driving him from Riverbank, “I will go, of course; but
until I know I am not wanted I will do my work as usual,” and 'Thusia
was with him in that.
In the long battle, never above the surface, that Lucille carried on,
David never openly fought her. He fought by being David Dean, and
by doing, day by day, as he had done for years. He visited his sick,
preached his sermons, busied himself as always. The weapons Lucille used
were those a woman powerful in a congregation has always at hand if she
chooses to try to oust her pastor, and in addition she used her husband.
Here and there she dropped hints that David was not as satisfactory
as formerly. His sermons were lacking in something. Was it culture or
sincerity! she asked--and she questioned the advisability of long tenure
of a pulpit. By hint and question she tried to arouse dissatisfaction.
It was the custom for ministers to exchange pulpits; she was loud in
praise of whatever minister occupied David's pulpit for a day.
Slowly she built up the dissatisfaction, until she felt it could be
crystallized into a concrete opposition. She was a year or more doing
this. With all the wile of a political boss she spread the seed of
discontent, trusting it would fall on fertile soil. There were plenty
of toadying women who gave her lip agreement when she uttered her
disparagements, and at length she felt she could strike openly. She used
B. C. for the purpose.
B. C. did not relish the job. Like most of us he admired David, and had
high esteem for him, but Lucille's husband would have been the last
man to oppose Lucille. It really seemed an easy task. Lucille was an
undisputed ruler in the church; the trustees were nonentities; the
older members--those who had loved the young David in his first years
in Riverbank--were dead or senile. B. C. spoke of the finances when he
broached the matter of getting rid of David, and he had lists and tables
to show that the income of the church had been stagnant. He suggested
that a younger man, someone livelier, was needed--a money-raiser.
The trustees listened in silence. For some minutes after B. C. had
spoken no one answered. Then one man--the last man B. C. would have
feared--suggested mildly that Riverbank itself had not grown. He
ventured to say that Riverbank, to his notion, had fewer people than
five years before, and all the churches were having trouble in keeping
their incomes up to their expenses. He said he rather liked David Dean;
anyway he didn't think a change need be made right away. They might, he
thought, ask some of the church members and get their opinions. He said
he did not believe they could get a man equal to David for the same
money.
B. C. was taken aback. If he had spoken at once he might have held his
control of the board, but he stopped to think of Lucille and what she
would wish him to say, and the daring trustee spoke again.
“Seems to me,” he said, “the trouble is not with the dominie. Seems to
me we trustees ought to try to get more money from some of the members
who can afford to give more.”
He had not aimed at B. C. and Lucille, but B. C. colored. One shame that
lurked in his heart was that Lucille had never kept her promise to give
more to the church, and that he did not dare ask her to give more now.
“I can assure you,” he said, “I do not feel like giving more--if you
mean me--while Dean remains.”
“Oh! I didn't mean anyone in particular,” the trustee said. “I wasn't
thinking of you, B. C.” The fact remained imbedded in the brains of the
trustees that Lucille and B. C. would give no more unless David was sent
away. This leaked, as such things will, and those of us who loved
David were properly incensed. Some of us were tired enough of Lucille's
high-handed rulership and we said openly what we thought of her carrying
it to the point of making herself dictator of the pulpit, to dismiss
and call at her will. There was a vast amount of whisper and low-toned
wordiness, subsurface complaint and counter-complaint. There was no open
flare-up such as had marked the earlier dissensions in the church, but
Lucille and her closest friends could not but feel the resentment and
her growing unpopularity. A winter rain brought her a fortunate cold,
and she turned the Sunday school singing over to one of the younger
women. She never took it up again. The same excuse served to allow her
to drop out of the management of the church music. Her cold, actually or
from policy, hung on for the greater part of that winter, preventing her
from attending church. With the next election of trustees B. C. refused
reëlection, pleading an increase of work at the bank, and when next
Lucille went to church she sat under the Episcopalian minister. Several
of her friends followed her; few as they were, their going made a
sad hole in the church income and, with the closing of the mills and
Riverbank seemingly about to sink into a sort of deserted village
condition, there followed years in which the trustees were hard put
to it to keep things going. Before the inevitable reduction in David's
salary came, he was able to pay Rose Hinch, and that, in the later
years, was one of the things he was thankful for.