Part 15

“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.

XX. LANNY IS AWAY

TWO weeks in succession, after going to Derlingport, Lanny spent Sunday in River-bank, and Alice enjoyed the visits immensely. Their brief separation gave zest to the mere being together again. The third Sunday Lanny did not come down, but wrote a long letter. The Derlingport nine had jumped at the chance of securing him as a pitcher; they were to give him ten dollars a game. He was mighty sorry, he wrote, that the nine's schedule included Sunday games, but every ten dollars he could pick up in that way made their wedding day come just so much nearer. He guessed, he said, that it would be all right for him to play the Sunday games in Derlingport, and in other towns than Riverbank; if Derlingport played any Sunday games in Riverbank they could get another pitcher for the games. He mentioned Roger; he had talked to the bosses of the nine, and they were willing to find a job for Old Pop, and would do so if Roger would sign up for the season, or what remained of it, but Lanny wrote that he supposed the Sunday game business would shut Roger out of that.

Alice volunteered to let David and 'Thusia read the letter--it was the first out-and-out love letter she had ever received--but they declined, feeling that to do so would be to take an unfair advantage of Alice's dutifulness, and she read them such portions as were not pure love-making. The letter came Saturday. Alice was not greatly disappointed that Lanny was not coming down, for he had suggested that he might not come. She went to church Sunday morning, and Ben Derling walked home with her. The Presbyterian Sabbath school was held in the afternoon, and about the time Lanny was warming up for the first inning of the Derlingport-Marburg ball game Alice was leading her class in singing the closing song. Below the pulpit Lucille Hardcome beat time with her jingling bracelets, and she smiled to see Ben Derling close his hymn book, and edge past his class of boys with a glance in Alice's direction. He hurried out as soon as the benediction was said, and Lucille rightly guessed that he meant to wait for Alice in the lobby, but Lucille captured Alice before she could escape.

“If you are not needed at home, Alice,” she said, “you must come with me. I have the most interesting photographs! Dozens of them, pictures of Europe. My carriage will be here directly.”

The photographs were not new. Lucille had made a flight through Europe as soon as her husband was dead. It was her first use of the money she inherited, and she had bought the photographs then--it was before the days of picture postcards.

For six months after her return she had inflicted the photographs on all her friends and acquaintances, and had then tired of them. They had reposed peacefully in a box ever since, and might have remained there forever, had she not invited Ben Derling to her house.

Lucille played a harp--a great gilded affair, and she asked Ben, who was a fair violinist, to try a duet, suggesting that they might make part of a program when she gave a concert for the church fund. Ben went willingly enough, and played as well as he could, and enjoyed the evening immensely. He found Lucille but an indifferent harpist, but willing to let him make suggestions. She asked him what he thought of a series of musical evenings, and he took to the idea enthusiastically. This was Wednesday.

Lucille's real reason for asking Ben to her house had been to study him a little more closely than she had had opportunity to do before. She mentioned Alice, and Ben was enthusiastic enough to satisfy Lucille that he liked Alice well. If Alice would be willing to try out a few things with him, piano-violin duets, it would be a pleasing part of the musical evenings, he said. Lucille thought so, too. They talked music; and Lucille happened to mention that she had first heard the harp in Paris, and Ben said he had not taken time to hear any music when he was in Europe. It was the first Lucille had heard of Ben's European tour, and she left him in her parlor while she hunted up the photographs.

She was not quite sure where they were. As she rummaged for them she thought Ben over, and almost decided he would not do as a substitute for Lanny Wesh. There was something gayly sparkling about Lanny, and Ben was anything but gay or sparkling. He was short and chunky, serious-minded and sedate. Some ancestor had given him a little greasy knob of a nose, but this was his most unpleasant feature. It is easiest, perhaps, to describe him as a thoroughly bathed young man, smelling of perfumed soap, and with yellowish hair, ever smooth and glistening from recent applications of a well-soaked hair-brush. He had no bad habits unless, in one so young, incessant application to business is a bad habit. He had taken his place in his grandfather's office the week the old man died. Already, from bending over a desk, he was a little rounded in the shoulders. His violin and his Sunday school class were his only relaxations. He was a good boy, and a good son; but Lucille was afraid he was not likely to appeal to the romantic taste of a girl like Alice. When she discovered the photographs she was inclined to leave them where they were, and tell Ben she could not find them, and let the musical evenings be forgotten. The picture that happened to be on top was one that pictured some city or cathedral of which Van Dusen had spoken when last in her home, and more for Van Dusen than for Ben she gathered the pictures in her arms, and carried them downstairs. Ben seized them eagerly.

His trip abroad had been the one great upflaring of his life. He had gone with a “party,” and had raced from place to place, but he had a memory that was infallible. His eyes brightened as he saw the photographs. He talked. He talked well. He made the pictures live. He was in his element: he would have made an admirable stereopticon lecturer had business not claimed him. He remembered dates, historical associations, little incidents that had occurred and that had the foreign tang. Before he had gone one quarter through the pile of pictures, Lucille gathered them up.

“No more to-night!” she laughed. “We young folks must have our beauty sleep,” and she sent him away. “He must show the pictures to Alice,” she said to herself. “She will be made to visit Europe when she hears him tell of it. He is quite another Ben.”

When, Sunday afternoon, Lucille found that Ben, as she had guessed, was waiting in the lobby she hailed him at once, saying:

“How fortunate! I am taking Alice to look at my European pictures. You 'll come, won't you?” Ben was eager. There was room in the carriage for him, crowding a little, which was not unpleasant when it was Alice who was crowded against him. Lucille left them with the photographs while she went to induce the maid to make a pitcher of lemonade. When she returned Ben was talking. He and Alice were seated on a couch by the window, and Alice was holding a photograph in her hands, studying it. Ben sat turned toward her; he leaned to point out some feature of the picture, and Alice asked a question. Lucille placed the pitcher of lemonade on a stand, and went out; they were doing very well without her. She felt she had made an excellent beginning; Lanny banished, and Alice at least interested in what Ben was interested in. When she interrupted them it was to suggest the musical evenings.

“It will be delightful!” Alice exclaimed. She had, for the moment, quite forgotten Lanny. The moment had, in fact, stretched to something like two hours. Ben walked home with her.

XXI. A FAILURE

GUST and September passed, and, in passing, seemed as placid and uneventful as any two months that ever slipped quietly away. To Alice no day and no week held any especial significance; if she had been asked to tell the most important event of the two months, she would probably have said that it was the completion of the set of twelve embroidered doilies, and the centerpiece to match, the first work she had undertaken for her new home--the home to be--since her engagement to Lanny had come about. David Dean could have thought of nothing of particular importance. Old Mrs. Grelling had died, but she had been at death's door so long her final passing through was hardly an event, and nothing else had occurred. Lanny would have said everything was running smoothly; his pitching arm kept in good condition, his work was steady at the _Gazette_ office, and Alice's letters to some extent took the place of the visits to Riverbank which the Sunday ball games made impossible. Old P. K. Welsh seemed to have forgotten his anger against the dominie, and used the “Briefs” to lambaste other Riverbankers. Herwig was still in business and Mary Ann, Mr. Fragg's housekeeper, clung to life. Rose Hinch was still nursing the old housekeeper and getting Fragg's meals. 'Thusia was no better and no worse. The two months were uneventful. They were months of which we are accustomed to say: “Everything is going the same as usual.”

We deceive ourselves. The quiet days build the great catastrophies. The greatest builder and demolisher is Time, and he works toward his ends on quiet days as well as on noisy days; works more rapidly and more insidiously, perhaps. If Time does nothing else to us on quiet days, he makes us a day older each day. To-day I am the indestructible granite; to-morrow a speck of dust touches me and is too small to see; the next day it is a smudge of green; the next it is a lichen; it is a patch of moss that can be brushed away with the hand; it is a cushion of wood violets and oxalis; it is a mat in which a seedling tree takes root; the roots pry and the moisture rots and the granite rock falls apart, and I am dead.

The two months that passed so quietly and happily for Alice Dean were equally happy months for Ben Derling. He was never the youth to make of courtship a hurrah and a race; he hardly considered he was courting Alice--he was seeing her oftener than he had seen her, and enjoying it. Alice was but filling in the days and evenings as pleasantly as possible during Lanny's absence. If Ben had been the eager instigator of their meetings Alice would have drawn back, but Ben instigated nothing; Lucille Hardcome stood between them, and was the reason they met. Alice went to Lucille's because Lucille wished her musical evenings to be a success; Ben was there because he was a part of the proposed programs. The two young people were musicians, not susceptible male and female, and they met as musicians, interested in a common desire to assist Lucille. By the end of the two months Alice had greater respect and liking for Ben than she had ever imagined possible. She had thought him a dull boy; she found him solid, sincere and more than comfortable. By the end of the two months Ben, not aware that Alice was pledged, had decided that she was the girl he wished--but no hurry!--to have as a wife. Lucille was pleased but impatient. Mary Derling, seeing how things were going, was pleased but not impatient.

Alice was unaware of any change in her feeling for Lanny. She wrote him letters that were as loving as love letters should be, and Lanny wrote with equal regularity. He wrote daily. Toward the end of September Alice was not quite as eager in her reading of his letters, mainly because their mere arrival was satisfactory evidence that Lanny still loved her. She wrote a little less frequently; there was not enough news to make letters necessary, except as expressions of affection. Without knowing it, she was reluctant to express her affection as unrestrainedly as at first. She let one of Lanny's letters remain unopened a full day. Once she passed old P. K. Welsh on the street: he did not notice her, probably did not know she was Alice Dean, but Alice felt an irritation; it was too bad Lanny had such a father. Without anything having happened, the end of the two months found this difference in Alice: whereas, at the beginning of August she was in love with Lanny, and eager for the wedding, at the end of September she was in love with him, and not eager for the wedding. Probably if Lanny had made a few trips to Riverbank just then it would have made all the difference possible. He was magnetic; he was not a magnetic correspondent.

The unimportant two months had for David Dean several vastly important littlenesses. Lucille, preliminary to her “evenings,” asked David to run in and hear how well her amateurs were progressing, and she asked Mary Derling, too. She had in mind a trial of the effect of a family grouping, as if the presence of Mary and David would be an unwitting approval of growing intimacy of Ben and Alice. David, always music hungry, enjoyed the evenings of practice; Mary did not care much for music, and cared a little less for Lucille. She made excuses. After one evening she declined and went to the manse instead; she enjoyed being with 'Thusia. At the far end of Lucille's rather spacious parlor David and Lucille sat, while Ben and Alice tried their music. Lucille talked of everything that might interest David. She adopted the fiction that she and the dominie were in close confidence, and attuned her conversation to the fiction. She was continually saying, “But you and I know--” and, “You and I, however--” David as consistently declined to share the appearance of close confidence, but how could he be too harsh when the twin thoughts of what Lucille was doing for Alice and what he owed Lucille in cash (and hoped to get from her in subscription) were always present! The two eventless months also brought the note sixty days nearer due. They did not bring the subscription Lucille had hinted. Now and then a flush of worry ran through David--how would he be able to reduce the amount of the note when the six months were up? Certainly not out of any savings; his expenses seemed to be running a little in advance of his salary, as usual.

For 'Thusia's father the two months brought closer and clearer the certainty that he could not keep the coal business intact much longer. After the January settlements, or after the April settlements, at latest, the bank would see that his affairs were hopeless. Concerning his business, all he hoped now was that he could keep things going until Mary Ann died. He had an idea, hazy and which he dared not think into concreteness, that--once out of business--he might make a living doing something. At the same time he knew he could do nothing of the sort; he had not the health. He was merely trying to avoid admitting to himself that he was about to become a charge on David Dean.

The crash--and it was a very gentle crash, and well deadened by the bank which did not want unprofitable reverberations--came in April. As the fact reached the newspapers and the public, it appeared that Mr. Fragg was selling out on account of his failing health, and that before embarking in another business he would rest and recuperate. His books showed that when everything was turned into cash he would still be indebted to the bank, and the coal mines or factors, something over four thousand dollars. The house was gone, of course. Mary Ann had died in December, and Mr. Fragg had not tried to replace her; for several months he had been boarding. It was evident to him and to David that the old man could not board much longer; there was no money to pay the board bills. There was one room vacant at the manse, the room that had been “fixed up” for a maid, under the roof, used now as a storage place since Alice did the work of the dismissed maid. Here old Mr. Fragg took the few belongings the room would accommodate.

For many years after this the old man was often seen in Riverbank. Bad days he was unable to go out; on bright days he walked slowly downtown. He had his friends, merchants who were glad, or at least willing, to have him sit in their offices, and with them he spent the days. Now and then 'Thusia gave him a little money--a dollar or two, all that could be afforded--and so his life ran to a close. He would have been quite happy if he could have paid his own way. Love and kindness enveloped him in David's home; he was the dearly loved grandfather. He would have been quite happy, without paying his way, if he had not known how hard it was for even David to live on his salary. He worried about that constantly.

XXII. A TRAGEDY

I KNEW David Dean so well and for so many years that I may see a tragedy in what may, after all, be merely an ordinary human life. As I think of him, from the time I first knew him, on through our many years of friendship, I cannot recall that he ever had a greater ambition than to serve his church and his town faithfully. He had a man's desire for happiness, and for the blessings of wife and children, and that they might live without penury; but he was always too full of the wish to be of service to waste thought on himself. Love and care and such little luxuries as the shut-in invalid must have he lavished on 'Thusia, but the lavishment of the luxuries was in the spirit, and not in the quantity. It was lavishness to spend even a few cents for daintier fruit than usual, when David's income and expenses were considered. 'Thusia did not suffer for luxuries, to tell the truth; for Mary and the church ladies sometimes almost overwhelmed her with them, but the occasional special attention from David was, as all wives will appreciate, most necessary.

The Riverbank Presbyterians considered themselves exceedingly fortunate in having David Dean. The rapid succession of Methodist pastors, with the inevitable ups and downs of character and ability, and the explosions of enthusiasm or of anger at each change, made David's long tenure seem a double blessing. His sermons satisfied; his good works were recognized by the entire community; his faith was firm and warming. He was well loved. When Lucille Hardcome finally recognized his worth, there did not remain a member of the congregation who wished a change. It may be put more positively: the entire congregation would have dreaded a change had the thought of one been possible.

A few of the members, Burton among them, may have recognized that David--to put it brutally--was a bargain. He could not be replaced for the money he cost. The other members were content in the thought that their dominie was paid a little more than any minister in Riverbank, nor was it their affair that the other ministers were grossly underpaid. Certainly there was always competition enough for the Methodist pastorate and hundreds of young men would have been glad to succeed David.

When the six months--the term of the note David had given Lucille Hardcome--elapsed he was unable to make any reduction in its amount. Casting up his accounts he found he was not quite able to meet his bills; a new load of debt was accumulating. He went to her with the interest money, feeling all the distress of a debtor, and she laughed at him. From somewhere in her gilded escritoire she hunted out the note, took the new one he proffered, and made the whole affair seem trivial. He mentioned the subscription she had half, or wholly, promised and she reassured him. Some houses she owned somewhere were not rented at the moment; she did not like to promise what she could not perform or could only perform with difficulty. It would be all right; Mr. Burton understood; she had explained it to him. She made it seem a matter of business, with the unrented houses and her talk of taxes, and David was no business man; it was not for him to press matters too strongly if Lucille and Burton had come to an understanding. She turned the conversation to Alice and Ben.

“Lanny Welsh hasn't been down at all, has he?” she asked.

“Yes, once or twice,” David said.

“Alice says he is buying a shop in Derlingport.”

“Has bought it. It is one reason he cannot come down.”

Lucille looked full into David's eyes.