Part 10

He paused a moment while he rubbed his hip. “It wasn't his own money Marty lost,” he said then. “He's taken two thousand dollars of the city money, and I won it.” He stretched out his leg and fumbled in his trousers pocket and brought out a roll of money. “There!” he said; “there is five hundred dollars. I went around today and raised that among the men who come to my room. I can't raise another cent. That's all _I_ can do; what can you do?”

Now David arose and walked the narrow space before Turrill.

“I suppose his bondsmen will make good! He has bondsmen, hasn't he? I don't know much about such things.”

“They'll have to make good what he is short,” said Turrill. “Seth Hardcome will have to make it all good. Tony Porter is on the bond, but he hasn't a cent. If he had a cent he wouldn't have gone on the bond--that's the kind he is. Hardcome is the man that'll have to make good. But he'll see Mart Ware in the penitentiary first.”

“Why!”

Turrill made a gesture with his hand.

“How do I know! Mart says so; Mart went to him. He told Hardcome the whole thing and asked him to see him through--said he would work his hands to the bone to pay it back. Hardcome won't do anything and Porter can't and Marty will kill himself before he goes to the pen. Hardcome is one of your deacons, or whatever you call them, isn't he!”

“No. He is not in my church at all,” said David. “But he is a just man; I am sure he is a just man.”

“He is a hard man,” said Turrill. “The most he would do for me was to say he would keep his mouth shut until the new treasurer goes in. He says he'll send Marty to the pen; he'll kill Marty instead.”

Turrill arose. There was no emotion shown on his inscrutable gambler's face. David stood fingering the money Turrill had handed him, and Turrill moved to the door. From the back he looked like an old, old man.

“You can see what you can do, if you want to,” Turrill said. “I can't do anything.”

“Wait!” David said. “You'll let me thank you for coming to me? You'll let me call on you for help if I need it?”

“Anything!” said Turrill, and with that he went.

'Thusia was in the kitchen and David went there.

“It's Marty Ware,” he said. “He's in trouble, 'Thusia. I'll have to go downtown and let my sermon go. We'll give them another from the bottom of the barrel this time. Do you suppose you can, presently, take Alice and drop in on Marty's mother for a little visit? Are you able?”

“In half an hour?”

“Yes, or in an hour. Marty is in dire trouble, 'Thusia, and I don't know whether he can be pulled out of it. I'm going to do what I can. I've been thinking of his mother; she is so--what's the word!--aloof! isolated! so by herself. If the trouble comes she will need someone, some woman, or she will break. I'd send Rose Hinch, but I think you would be better--you and Alice.”

“Yes, I understand,” 'Thusia said. “'Something not too bright and good for human nature's daily food.' Is Marty's trouble serious!”

David placed his hand on his wife's shoulder. “I can't tell you how serious, 'Thusia,” he said. “I don't want you to know. You'll not let his mother guess we know anything about it!”

“Let me think!” said 'Thusia. “Didn't she give a lemon cake for our last church dinner! I'm sure she did! It will be about that I happen to run in. You'll be back in time for supper, David! Hot rolls, you know!”

“Oh, if it is hot rolls you can depend on me!” David smiled.

Mrs. Ware was a peculiar woman. She was an old woman and alone in the world except for Marty, her only son, who had come late in her life. She was a proud woman. During her husband's life she had rather lorded it (or ladied it) over our mixed “good society” in Riverbank. Ware had been a commission man, now and then plunging on his own hook, as we say, buying heavily and selling when prices went up. He always had abundant money, and Mrs. Ware spent it for him. They built the big house overlooking the river--a palace for Riverbank of those days--and Mrs. Ware held her head very high, with four horses in the stable and a coachman and gardener and two maids and a grand piano and four oil paintings “done by hand” in Europe! And then, when Ware died, there was hardly enough money in the bank to pay for his funeral, no life insurance, and everything mortgaged. Marty was about fourteen then, a bright boy.

For a year or so Mrs. Ware tried to keep the big house, and then it had to go. Instead of the social queen, spending the largest income in Riverbank, she was almost the poorest of women. She moved out of the big house into a little three-room white box of a place on a back street that was then a mere track through the weeds. Her white hands had to do all the housework that was done; she had no maid at all, and hardly enough for herself and Marty to eat. No doubt it was a crushing blow, but she could not bare herself in her poverty to those who had known her in her flaunting prosperity. She shut her door, and became a proud, hard recluse.

Somehow she managed to get Marty through the high school, and then he went to work. He found some minor position in one of our banks and might have held it and have worked up into a better position, for he proved to be a natural accountant, but the “fast set” caught him, and, after it was learned that he spent his nights with the cards, the bank let him go. Until he was twenty-one he skipped from one temporary job to another. Sometimes he was in the freight office, then with a mill, then behind a counter for a few weeks. He had wonderful adaptability and seemed able to step into a position and take up the work of another man in an instant. He seemed destined to become a permanent “temporary assistant,” but he was making more friends all the while and he had hardly passed his majority when he was elected city treasurer. He seemed to have found his proper niche at last.

The salary attached to the treasurership was not large but it was enough, or would have been if Marty had not gambled. One good black winter suit and one good black summer suit will last many years in Riverbank, and Marty always seemed properly dressed in black. He was slender and what we called “natty.” His hair was as black as night. During his second term he began to show the effects of his nights. His face became paler than it should have been, and some mornings he was so tremulous he took a glass of whisky to steady his hands. With all this he was immensely popular, and when the chances of the campaign in which he was finally beaten were discussed Mart Ware was the one man no one believed could be beaten. He lost by twenty votes.

As David walked down the hill toward Main Street and Seth Hardcome's shoe store he thought of these things. Mart Ware was one man, if there were any, who had been thrown out of office through David's part in the campaign. To that extent he was specifically responsible; in the broader sense that he was his “brother's keeper” it was his duty to do all he could to save any man or woman in such trouble as Marty was in.

A year or two earlier Seth Hardcome, his tough old body beginning to feel the draughts and changes of temperature of his long, narrow store, had had Belden, the contractor, partition off an office across the rear, and here David found the old man. He was standing at his tall desk, making out half-yearly bills against the coming of the first of January, and he pushed his spectacles up into his hair and turned to David with the air of a busy man interrupted.

“Well, dominie!”

David put his hand on the back of one of the chairs near the little stove that heated the office.

“Can you sit down for a minute or two!” he asked. “Have you time to talk facts and figures; to give me a business man's good advice!”

“Why, yes,” said Hardcome; “I guess you ain't going to try to sell me any stocks and bonds, eh! I guess you're one man I don't have to be afraid of that with. Facts and figures, eh! Fire away!”

David seated himself and put one knee over the other. The warmth of the stove was grateful after the chill air outside, and he rubbed his palms back and forth against each other.

“Do you know--or, if you don't know exactly, can you guess fairly dose to it--what the campaign we had last month cost our crowd!” David asked.

“County or city!” asked Hardcome. “I guess there wasn't much spent outside the city.”

“I was thinking of the city,” said David.

“Well, we _raised_ pretty close to four thousand dollars,” said Hardcome, “and we _spent_ more than that. We _spent_ more than four thousand dollars. Halls, fireworks, speakers, printing--costs a lot of money! I guess the other fellows spent three times that, so we can't complain. I hear the liquor makers poured a lot of money into Riverbank, and I guess it's so. Wouldn't surprise me at all if they spent ten or twelve thousand.”

“To our four thousand,” said David. “Looking at it that way you couldn't call our money wasted, could you!”

“Wasted! What you talking about! To clean out these saloons! Four thousand dollars wasted, when we've as good as got the saloons closed by spending it! You don't take count of money that way when it's for a thing like that, do you!”

“Money is money,” said David sagely. “A half of four thousand dollars would be a wonderful help to our church. And yours is not too rich, is it! Four thousand dollars would buy the poor how many pairs of shoes! Eight hundred! A thousand!”

“Depends on the kind of shoes,” said Hardcome with a grim smile. “And a lot of good it would do to give them shoes into one hand, when they go right off and spend all they've got, in the saloons, with the other. Ain't they better off with the saloons closed and the money in their pockets to buy their own shoes!”

“Yes, I'll admit that,” said David. “Is that why we made the fight to close the saloons! So they could buy their own shoes! There are not so many poor in this town, Hardcome. You don't see many suffering for shoes. I thought our campaign had something to do with saving a few souls--a few bodies that were going down into the gutter.”

“So it did!” said Hardcome promptly. “I didn't start saying how many shoes the campaign money would buy, did I! I seem to remember you said it first.”

He smiled again, the pleased smile of a man who has got a dominie in a corner in argument. David smiled too.

“I believe I did first mention the campaign in terms of shoes,” he admitted. “I stand corrected. It should be mentioned in terms of souls--human souls, not shoe soles. And, looking at it that way, was it worth the price! Was it worth four thousand dollars!”

“My stars!” exclaimed Hardcome, and stared at David in genuine surprise.

“I mean just that,” insisted David; “was it worth four thousand dollars! How many souls will the campaign actually save! One! Ten! A thousand! Not a thousand. We can't say, offhand, that every man who stepped into a saloon lost his soul, can we! He might be saved later, and in some other way, at less cost. How many in Riverbank have died in the gutter in the last year? How many have killed themselves because of drink?”

“But--” Hardcome began. David raised his hand.

“Because,” he said, “next year we may have this all to do over again. Next year we may need another four thousand dollars, and the next year, and the next year. How many men in Riverbank actually die in the gutter each year!”

Now, there are not many. Riverbank men do not often die in the gutter, and but few of them kill themselves on account of drink. They live on for years, a handful of sodden, stupid, blear-eyed creatures.

“One!” asked David. “Is the average one a year? I don't believe it, but let us say it is one. Is it worth four thousand dollars to save one drunkard from death! To save one drunkard's soul! There is a plain business proposition: Is it worth that much cash! That's what I'm getting at.”

“To save a man!” exclaimed Hardcome, his hard face as near showing horror as it had for many long years. “To save a man and his eternal soul! What do you mean! We don't set prices on souls, that way, do we! My stars! I never heard of such a thing! And from a dominie! You can't count a soul in cash dollars. What if it is but one soul we drag back from hell-fire! What's four thousand, or five thousand, or ten thousand dollars when it comes to a soul!”

“I don't mean your soul, or mine,” said David. “I mean a drunkard's soul, or some soul like that. Is it worth while to spend four thousand dollars to save one soul!”

“Of course it is!” snapped Hardcome. “Couldn't we,” urged David, “save more souls, at a lower cost per soul, if we sent the money to foreign missions!”

“I don't know whether we could or we couldn't,” cried Hardcome. “That's got nothing to do with it. We got to take care of the souls right at home first. I don't care if it costs ten thousand dollars a soul, it's our duty to do it!” David arose and turned and faced the shoe merchant. His face was white. His eyes were like gray steel. He had no smile now.

“Then, if you think souls are worth so much,” he asked tensely, “why are you sending Marty Ware to eternal death for a miserable two thousand dollars! Two thousand! For a miserable fifteen hundred, for here are five hundred a benighted gambler dug up to save the boy!” Hardcome was on his feet too. He had turned as white as David, or whiter.

“Are drunkards' souls the only souls you prize, Seth Hardcome!” asked David. “Don't you know that boy will kill himself if he is exposed and ruined! A fool! Of course he is a fool! You knew he was a gambler--you must have known it--and you let him run his course when you might have brought him up short, threatening to get off his bond. You talk about ten-thousanddollar souls, and you will not turn over your hand to save Marty Ware's soul when it will not cost you a cent!”

“It'll cost me two thousand dollars,” said Hardcome. “That's what it'll cost me!”

“And you call yourself a business man!” laughed David. “A business man! Look!”

He picked up the roll of bank notes he had thrown on the shoe merchant's desk.

“This is what a gambler gave to save Marty,” he exclaimed. “Five hundred dollars! And you talk about it costing you two thousand to save Marty from suicide! Why, man, your two thousand is _gone!_ You are his bondsman, the only responsible one, and you'll have to pay whether he is dead and in eternal fire, or alive and to be saved! Your two thousand is gone, spent, vanished already and it will not cost you a cent more to save Marty Ware's soul. Here, take this five hundred dollars; you can _save_ five hundred dollars by saving Marty Ware's eternal soul!”

Hardcome was dazed. He put out his hand and took the money and looked at it unseeingly, turning it over and over in his fingers. Then he looked up at David, and in David's eyes was a twinkle. The dominie put his hand on the shoe man's arm, and laughed.

“Did I do that well?” he asked.

Hardcome did not smile. He turned his head and peered through the glass of the door into the store room, doubtless to see where his clerk was and whether he had heard, and then he looked back at David.

“Sit down,” he said, still unsmilingly.

David seated himself. Hardcome stood, half leaning against the desk, turning the roll of bills in his hand.

“You don't know why I went on that boy's bond,” he said. “His mother slammed a door in my wife's face, or what amounted to that, or worse. His mother was queen of Riverbank when you came, and for a long while after, so I needn't tell you how high and mighty she was before Ware died. You know, I guess. They came here in 'Fifty-three, and my wife and I came in 'Fifty-one, and I started this shoe business that year. That was on Water Street, in a frame shack where the Riverbank Hotel stands now. I didn't move the store up here until 'Fifty-nine. My wife and I lived at the old Morton House until the bugs drove us out---bugs and roaches, and we couldn't stand them--and there were no houses to be had, so for a while we lived back of the store in the shack, getting along the best we could, waiting for houses to be built.

“The Wares had some money when they came, and Tarvole, who was building the house we hoped to rent, sold it to Ware and they moved in. You know how things are in a new town. Anyway, my wife took her calling cards and called on Mrs. Ware. She didn't find the lady at home, and that evening a boy brought my wife's card back to her. He said Mrs. Ware told him to say she wasn't at home, and wouldn't be, to a cobbler.

“My wife laughed at it, but it made me mad enough. I said I would get even with the Wares, and I meant it. I kept it in mind for years, waiting a chance, but you don't always have a chance. There are some men and women you can't seem to hurt, and the Wares were two of them. He seemed to make plenty of money and keep out of things where I could have done him a bad turn. I got to be a director in the Riverbank National, but he never needed to borrow, so I couldn't hurt him there. His wife was always at the top of things, too. I couldn't hit her.

“Well, Ware died and everything went. The widow was as poor as a church mouse; I don't know how she got along. She was so poor she couldn't be hurt; she was like the dust you walk on--it's dust, and that's an end of it: it can't be anything less. She shut herself up, and was nothing. My wife was dead, anyway, and I couldn't hurt the widow by flaunting my wife and the position she had in the widow's face.

“Then this boy grew up--this Marty. I got him the place in the bank.”

“You did!” David exclaimed.

“It was the only way I could hit at the widow,” said Hardcome. “I thought maybe it would annoy her, to know I was the one that was helping her boy. Maybe it did. I never knew. When the cashier said it wasn't safe to keep him any longer I told Marty to tell his mother not to worry; that I would try to fix it so he could stay. I did manage to get them to keep him a few months longer; then they outvoted me.

“Then I got him the place in the freight office, but he couldn't hold it. A couple of times, when he lost his jobs, I took him in the store here. I knew that would annoy the old dame, and I guess it did. Then some of the Democrats picked him up and ran him for this job he has now. It made me mad that I couldn't say I had been back of that, but when it came to getting a couple of bondsmen I saw another chance to bother the old lady. I went on his bond.”

Hardcome unrolled the money in his hand and smoothed it out.

“You knew my wife, dominie;” he continued slowly. “Some people did not like her, but I did. I never had any complaint to make about her; she was a good wife. So it sort of seemed to me--when Turrill came to me and told me what Marty had done--and I remembered how that woman had slammed her door in my wife's face, so to say--that this was my chance--my chance to get even once for all.”

He stopped, folded the bills, and slipped them into his pocket.

“You see,” he said, “you didn't know the whole story. It would have been something of a windup to send the boy to the penitentiary. I guess that would have taken the old lady off her high horse. But I don't know. I don't want to kill the boy's soul, or anybody's soul. I guess I'll make good what he is short, and take him into the store here again.”

David was ont of his chair and his hand clasped Hardcome's hand. The old man laughed then, a little sheepishly.

“Sort of tickles me!” he said. “Wouldn't the old dame be hopping mad if she knew the cobbler was going to save the Riverbank queen's boy, and his life, and his soul, and the whole caboodle!”

“It would be coals of fire on her head,” smiled David.

“'Twould so!” said Seth Hardcome; “and I reckon the hair is getting pretty thin on the top of her head now, too!”

Then he laughed. And David laughed.

He was still smiling when he stepped out into the street and was told by the first man he met that old Sam Wiggett had just dropped dead in his office.

XII. MONEY MATTERS

LOOKING back, in later years, the death of old Sam Wiggett seemed to David Dean to mark the close of one epoch and the beginning of another, and the day he heard of the engagement of his daughter Alice marked a third.

It was Monday and well past noon and the heat was intense. Although he was late for dinner--noon dinners being the rule in Riverbank--David paused now and then as he climbed the Third Street hill, resting a few moments in the shade and fanning himself with the palm-leaf fan he carried. Where the walk was not shaded by overarching maple trees the heat beat up from the plank sidewalks in appreciable gusts. All spring he had been feeling unaccountably weary, and these hot days seemed to take the sap out of him. He had had a hard morning.

His Sunday had held a disappointment. In one way or another Lucille Hardcome had induced John Gorst, whose fame as a pulpit orator was country-wide, to spend the day at Riverbank and preach morning and evening--in the morning at David's church and in the evening at the union meeting in the court square--and David had looked forward to the day as one that would give _him_ the uplift of communion with one of the great minds of his church. He had dined at Lucille's with John Gorst and had had the afternoon with him, and it had been all a sad disappointment. Instead of finding Gorst a big mind he had found him somewhat shallow and theatrical. Instead of a day of intellectual growth David had suffered a day of shattered ideals. While he disliked to admit it he had to confess that the great John Gorst was tiresome.

He did admit, however, that the two sermons John Gorst preached were masterpieces of pulpit oratory. What he said was not so much, nor did he leave in David's mind so much as a mustard seed of original thought, but the great preacher had held his congregations breathless. He had made them weep and gasp, and he had thrilled them. Hearing him David understood why John Gorst had leaped from a third-rate church in a country village to one of the best churches in a large town, and then to a famous and wealthy church in a metropolis.

David's first duty this Monday morning had been to see John Gorst off on the morning train. Lucille Hardcome and four or five others had been at the station, and John Gorst had glowed under their words of adulation. Well-fed, well-groomed, he had nodded to them from the car window as the train pulled out, and David had turned away to tramp through the hot streets to the East End where, Rose Hinch had sent word, old Mrs. Grelling was close to death. John Gorst, in his parlor car, was on his way to complete his two months' vacation at the camp of a millionaire parishioner in the Wisconsin woods.

Old Mrs. Grelling, senile and maundering, had been weeping weakly, oppressed by a hallucination that she had lost her grasp on Heaven. Her little room was insufferably hot and close, and Rose Hinch sat by the bed fanning the emaciated old woman, turning her pillow now and then, trying to make her comfortable. Her patient had no bodily pain; in an hour, or a day, or a week, she would fall asleep forever and without discomfort, but now she was in dire distress of mind. Grown childish she could not remember that she was at peace with God, and she mourned and would not let Rose Hinch comfort her.

In twelve words David brought peace to the old woman in the bed. It was not logic she wanted, nor oratory such as John Gorst could have given, but the few words of comfort from the man of God in whom she had faith. David knelt by the bed and prayed, and read “The Lord is My Shepherd,” and her doubts no longer troubled her. If David Dean, the dominie she had trusted these many years, assured her she was safe, she could put aside worry and die peacefully. David saw a Book of Psalms on her bedside table, less bulky than the large-typed Bible, and he put it in her hands.

“Hold fast to this,” he said, “it is the sign of your salvation. You will not be afraid again. I must go now, but I will come back again.”