Butler Ellis Parker
Dominie Dean: A Novel

VIII. THE GREATER GOOD

MACK was not the only weak creature David was trying to help. Helpfulness was his life. I do not want you to think of David as eager for overwork, or as eager for greater burdens. He was always loaded down with others’ fights against poverty, passion and sin because something within him always said: “This is one case in which you can be of actual help.” Before he was aware he would be enlisted in these individual battles, with all the close personal details that made them living sorrows.

Inside the broad fight the church was making to strengthen character and maintain morality these individual battles were fought. How could David stand aloof from the battle of old Mrs. Miggs against poverty, with her penchant for spending the alms she received for flummery dress; or from the battle of old Wickham Reid against his insane inclination to suicide; or from the battles of all the backsliders of one kind and another; or from the battle of the Rathgebers against starvation; the battle of young Ross Baldwin against the trains of thought that were urging him to unbelief; or all the battles against alcohol! These were lame dogs David was helping over stiles. There were battles David won in an hour; there were other battles that lengthened into sieges, where sin and sinners “dug in” and struggled for years.

In some of these ‘Thusia could help David, and she did help, most willingly, but ‘Thusia had her own battles. Like most ministers’ wives she had a constant battle to make David’s inadequate salary meet the household expenses. When, after one of the usual church quarrels, those in favor of putting the choir in surplices won, ‘Thusia was sorry she was not in the choir; her worn Sunday gown would not then be a weekly humiliation. Her hats, poor things! were problems as difficult to finance as a war. The grocer’s bill was a monthly catastrophe; “the wood is low again, David,” was an announcement ‘Thusia felt was almost unkind. She spent five times as long turning a dress that was no pleasure after it was turned than she should have had to spend getting a new one. The lack of a few dollars to “do with” is the greatest waster of a faithful home-keeper’s time.

The hope of a call to a church that will pay enough to supply those few dollars is one many ministers’ wives cherish.

David picked up his hat and waited on his own porch until he saw Mack come from the Mannings’ door; then he crossed the street.

“‘Lo, dominie!” Mack said unsteadily. “Little girl’s been giving me Hail Columbia. She’s all right, dominie; fine little girl. I’m ashamed of myself. Told you so, didn’t I, little girl?”

David put his hand on Mack’s shoulder.

“She is a fine girl, Mack,” he said. “There’s no finer girl in America than Amy. Suppose we take a walk, Mack, a good long walk out into the country and tell each other just how fine Amy is.” Mack smiled knowingly. He put a hand on David’s shoulder, so that the two men stood like some living statue of “United we stand.”

“Couldn’t tell all about how fine a little girl she is in one walk,” he said.

“Come!” said David.

He put his arm through Mack’s, and thus he led him away. The assistance was necessary, for Mack was drunker than he had seemed. David led him to the country roads by the shortest route, that passing the cemetery, and when they were beyond the town he walked Mack hard. He let Mack do the talking and kept him talking of Amy, for of what would a lover, drunk or sober, rather talk than of his sweetheart! It was dark and long past David’s supper hour when they reached the town again, and David drew Mack into the manse for a “bite.” After they had eaten he led him into the study.

Mack was well past the unpleasant stage of his intoxication now, and with ‘Thusia sewing in her little, low rocker and Mack in a comfortable chair and David slumped down in his own great chair, they talked of Amy and of a hundred things David knew how to make interesting. It was ten when ‘Thusia bade them good-night and went out of the study.

“The Mannings are still up,” said David, and Mack turned and looked out of the window.

“God, but I am a beast!” said Mack.

“You are worse than that, Mack, because you are a man,” said David.

“Yes, I’m worse than a beast,” said Mack. He meant it. David, deep in his chair, his eyes on Mack’s face, tapped his thumbs slowly together.

“Mack,” he asked, “just how much of a hold has this drink got on you!”

“Oh, I can stop any time I – ”

“Yes, so can Doc Benedict,” said David. “He stops whenever he has had his periodical and his nerves stop their howling for the alcohol. I don’t mean that, Mack. Just how insistent is the wish for the stuff, when you haven’t had it for a while, if it makes you forget Amy as you did to-day!”

“Well, it is pretty insistent,” Mack admitted. “I don’t mean to get the way I was this afternoon, dominie. Something starts me and I keep going.”

David’s thumbs tapped more and more slowly.

“You still have the eyes of a man, Mack,” he said, “and you are still able to look me in the eyes like a man, Mack,” he said. “We ought to be able to beat this thing. Now go over and say good-night to Amy. She’ll sleep better for seeing you as you are now.”

The next day David learned more, and so did ‘Thusia. What David learned was that the two months that had elapsed between Mack’s engagement spree and his next was the longest period the young fellow had been sober for some time, and that Mack had already been docketed in the minds of those who knew him best as a hard and reckless drinker. It meant the fight would be harder and longer than David had hoped. What ‘Thusia learned was that Amy had had a long talk with Mack after he had left David.

“She did not tell him, David, but she told me, that she could not marry him if he let this happen. She can’t marry a drunkard; no one would want her to; but if she throws him over he will be gone, David. She’ll give him his chance, and she will help us – or let us help her – but when she is sure he is beyond help she will send him away. And when she sends him away – ”

“If she sends him away one great influence will be lost,” said David. “She must not send him away.”

“If he comes to her drunk again,” said ‘Thusia, as one who has saved the worst tidings until last, “she will have no more to do with him.”

In less than a week Mack fell again, and Amy, her heart well-nigh broken, gave him back his ring, and ended the engagement. Then, indeed, began the hardest fight David ever made for a man against that man’s self. There were nights when David walked the streets with Mack until the youth fell asleep as he walked, and days when Mack lay half stupid in David’s great chair while the dominie scribbled his sermon notes at the desk beneath the spatter-work motto: “Keep an even mind under all circumstances.” Often David and old Doc Benedict sat in the same study and discussed Mack. David from the stand of one who wanted to save the young fellow, and Benedict as one who knew the alcohol because it had conquered him.

“Now, in my case,” the doctor would say, quite as if he were discussing another person; and, “but on the other hand I had this gnawing pain in my stomach, while – ” and so on.

There were weeks when David felt he was making great progress and other weeks when he felt he was not holding his own, and some frightful weeks when Mack threw everything aside and plunged into unbridled dissipation. The periods after these sprees were deceptive. During them Mack seemed to want no liquor and vaunted his strength of will. He boasted he would never touch another drop.

There were also periods of overwhelming defeat, and periods when Mack was never drunk but never sober. Little by little, however, David felt he was making progress. It was slow and there were no “Cures” to work a sudden change, as there are now, but under the tottering structure of Mack’s will David was slowly building a foundation of serious thought. Mack was changing. His dangerous and illusive bravado was bit by bit yielding to a desire to do what David wished.

It was slow work. Rather by instinct than by logic David saw that to save Mack he must make Mack like him better than he liked anyone in Riverbank. Our David had none of that burly magnetism that draws men in a moment; those of us who liked him best were those who had known him longest, and he was not the man a youth like Mack would instinctively choose as a dearest friend and most frequent companion. In David’s mind the idea probably formed itself thus: “I must make Mack come to me as often as possible,” and, “Mack won’t come unless he likes me.” He set about making Mack like him, and making him like ‘Thusia and little Roger and baby Alice, and making him like the manse and all that was in it. With Amy turning her face from Mack, and Mack’s mother varying between shrewish scolding and maudlin tears, and Mack’s father wielding no weapon but a threat of disinheritance, it became necessary that Mack should have someone he wished to please, someone he liked and respected and wished to please more than he wished to please his insistent nerves. Each touch of eagerness added to Mack’s face as he came up the manse walk David counted a gain.

And ‘Thusia, beside what she did for Mack in making Mack love the manse and all those in it, worked with Amy and kept alive the flame of her love.

They were dear people, our Dominie Davy and his wife. In time little Roger became as eager to see Mack as Mack was to see David, and Mack became “Ungel Mack” to the child. The boy would climb the gate and cry, “Here cometh Ungel Mack!” with all the eagerness of joyful childhood. Sometimes when Mack was drunk, but not too drunk, David would lead Roger into the study, and the boy would say, “Poor Ungel Mack, you thick?” It all helped.

Together Mack and David made the fight. Amy, according to her light, did her part, too. She never fled from David’s little porch when she happened to be there and saw Mack coming up the street. She always gave Mack her hand in frank and friendly manner. She did not let the other young fellows pay her attentions. It was as if Mack had never courted her; as if they were bound by a friendship that had never ripened into anything warmer but that might some day. Mack was fine about it; eager as he was to have Amy he held himself in check. Eventually it was a great thing for them both; it was as if they were living the difficult “getting acquainted” year that follows the honeymoon before the honeymoon itself. They got to know each other better, perhaps, than any Riverbank lovers had ever known one another.

It was one Sunday afternoon during this stage of Mack’s fight, while Mack and ‘Thusia and Amy were on the porch and David taking his between-sermon nap in his great chair, that the great opportunity came to David’s door. It came in the form of a man of sixty years, silk-hatted and frock-coated. He walked slowly up the street from the direction of the town, and when he reached David’s gate he paused and read the number painted on the riser of the porch step, opened the gate and entered. He removed his hat and extended his hand to ‘Thusia.

“You are Mrs. Dean, I know,” he said, smiling. “My name is Benton, and I don’t think you know me. Mr. Dean is in?”

There were many men of many kinds came to David’s door from one end of a year to the other, but never had a man come whose face so quickened ‘Thusia’s heart. It was a strongly modeled face and gave an impression of power. The nose was too large and the lips were too large, so were the brows, so were all the features. It was a face that was too large for itself, it left no room for the eyes, which had to peer out as best they could from between the brows that crowded them from above, and the cheekbones that crowded them from below, but they were kind, keen, sane eyes; they were even twinkling eyes. The man was rather too stout and his skin was coarse-pored, almost as if pitted. ‘Thusia had never seen a homelier man, and yet she liked him from the moment he spoke. It was partly his voice, full, soft and, in some way, satisfying. She felt he was a big man and a good man and an honest man.

“Yes, Mr. Dean is in,” she said. “I think he is napping. If you will just rest a minute until I see – ”

David, as was his habit when his visitors were unknown to him, came to the door. ‘Thusia slipped into the kitchen. The day was hot and Mr. Benton was hot, and there were lemons and ice in the refrigerator, perhaps a pitcher of lemonade all ready to serve with thin cakes.

“Mr. Benton, my wife said, I think!” asked David. “Shall we sit out here or go inside!”

“Might go inside,” said the visitor, and David led the way into the study. Mr. Benton placed his hat on the floor beside the chair David placed for him, unbuttoned his coat and breathed deeply.

“Quite a hill you are perched on here,” he said. “Fat man’s misery on a day like this. I suppose you saw me in church this morning!”

“Yes. I tried to reach you after the service, but you slipped out.”

“I ran away,” admitted Mr. Benton. “I wanted to think that sermon over and cool down after it. It was a good sermon.”

David waited.

“I’m a lawyer,” said Mr. Benton, “and I’m cracked up as quite an orator in one way and another, and I know that some of the things that sound best hot from the lips don’t amount to so much an hour later. That was a good sermon, then and now! It was a remarkable sermon. I want you to come to Chicago and preach that same sermon to us in the Boulevard Church next Sunday, Mr. Dean.”

David, in his great chair, tapped his thumbs together and looked at Mr. Benton. He was trying to keep an even mind under circumstances that made his pulse beat almost wildly.

“You know now, as well as you ever will, why I’m here, I think,” said Mr. Benton. “We are looking for the right man for our church, and I came here to hear you. I think you are the man we want. I can almost say that if you preach as well for us next Sunday as you did to-day we will hardly dare let you come back for your household goods. Matter of fact, the man I select is the man we want.”

“I know the church,” said David slowly. “It is a splendid church.”

“It is a good church,” said Mr. Benton. “It is a strong church and a large church. It is a church that needs a young man and a church in which you will have opportunity for the greater good a man such as you always desires. I jotted down a few figures and so on – ”

Holding the paper in his hand Mr. Benton read the figures; figures of membership, average attendance morning and evening, stipend, growth, details even to the number of rooms in the manse and what the rooms were.

“The church pays the salary of the secretary,” he added.

David’s thumbs were pressed close together. His mind passed in rapid review the patched breeches little Roger wore during the week, the pitiful hat ‘Thusia tried to make respectable, her oft-remodeled gowns. It was comfort to the verge of luxury Mr. Benton was offering, as compared with Riverbank. It was more than this: it was a broader field, a greater chance.

Slumped down in his great chair, his eyes closed, David thought. It would mean freedom from the petty quarrels that vexed the church at Riverbank; it would mean freedom from cares of money. Out of the liberal stipend Mr. Benton had mentioned they might even put aside a goodly bit. It would mean he could start anew with a clean slate and be rid of the stupid interference of all the Hardcome and Grimsby tribe. ‘Thusia would be with him, and Rose Hinch – who had become, in a way, a lay sister of good works, helping him with his charities – could be induced to follow him. Then he thought of old Mrs. Miggs, and of Wickham Reid, of the Rathgebers and Ross Baldwin, and all those whose fight he was fighting in Riverbank. And Mack! What would become of Mack!

Through the window he heard the voices of Mack and Amy.

“It is quite unexpected,” David said, opening his eyes. “I’ll have to – you have no objection to my speaking to my wife?”

The tinkling of ice in a pitcher sounded at the door.

“By all means, speak to her,” said Mr. Benton, and as ‘Thusia tapped David arose and opened the door. ‘Thusia entered.

“‘Thusia,” David said, “Brother Benton is from the Boulevard Church in Chicago. He wants me to preach there next Sabbath and, if the congregation is satisfied, I may be offered the pulpit.” The color slowly mounted from ‘Thusia’s throat to her brow. She stood holding the small tin tray, and the glasses trembled against the pitcher. It did not need the figures Mr. Benton reread to tell ‘Thusia all the opportunity meant. Mr. Benton ceased, and still ‘Thusia stood holding the tray. Her eyes left Mr. Benton’s uncouth face and found David’s eyes.

“It – it’s wonderful, David,” she said steadily, “but of course there’s Mack – and Amy!”

So Mr. Benton and the great opportunity went back to Chicago, after a sip or two of ‘Thusia’s lemonade, and David dropped back into his great chair and his old life of helpfulness, and ‘Thusia went out on the porch and smiled at Amy, and they all had lemonade.

From the day Mr. Benton entered David’s door Mack never touched the liquor again. It was a year before Amy felt sure enough to let him slip the ring on her finger again, but it was as if David’s sacrifice had worked the final cure. Perhaps it did. Perhaps Mack, hearing, as all of us did, of the great chance David had put aside, guessed what none of us guessed – that it was for him David remained in Riverbank. Perhaps that was why, when our church wanted to throw David aside in his old age like a worn-out shoe, Mack Graham fought so hard and successfully to secure for David the honorary title and the pittance.

IX. LUCILLE HARDCOME

IN spite of all his efforts David could not shake off his pitiful little burden of debt. After little Alice ‘Thusia bore him two more children; they died before the month, and the last left ‘Thusia an invalid, and even Doctor Benedict lacked the skill to aid her. A maid – hired girl, we called them in Riverbank – became a necessity. The church did what it thought it could, gave David a few more dollars yearly, and sympathized with him.

To David the misfortune of ‘Thusia’s invalidism came so gradually that he felt the weight of it bit by bit and not as a single great catastrophe. She was “not herself” and then “not quite well” and then, before he was fully aware, he was happy when she had a “good” day.

‘Thusia did not complain. With her whole heart she wished she was well and strong, but she did not allow her troubles to sour her mind or heart. Mary Derling and Rose Hinch came oftener to see her. ‘Thusia, unable to do her own housework, had more time to use her hands. Once, when some petty bill worried David, she asked if she could not take in sewing, but David would not hear of it. There are some things a dominie’s wife cannot be allowed to do to help her husband. About this time ‘Thusia did much sewing for the poor, who probably worried less over their finances than David worried over his, and who, as likely as not, criticized the stitches ‘Thusia took with such loving good will.

David was then a fine figure of a man in the forties. Always slender, he reached his greatest weight then; a little later worry and work wore him down again. If his kindly cheerfulness was at all forced we never guessed it. He was the same big-hearted, friendly Davy he had always been, better because more mature. As a preacher he was then at his best. It was at this time Lucille Hardcome’s life first brought her in touch with David.

Lucille was a widow. Seth Hardcome and his wife, Ellen, had long since left our church in a huff, going to another congregation and staying there. Lucille was, in some sort, Seth’s cousin-in-law, however that may be. She came to Riverbank jingling golden bracelets and rustling silken garments, and for a while attended services with Seth and his wife, but something did not suit her and she came to us. We counted her a great acquisition, for she had taken the old Ware house on the hill – one of the few big “mansions” the town boasted.

In a few weeks after her arrival Lucille Hardcome was well known in Riverbank. She had money. Her husband – and Riverbank never knew anything else about him – had been an old man when she married him. He had died within the year. No doubt, having had that length of time in which to become acquainted with Lucille’s vagaries, he was willing enough to go his way. Within a month after she had installed herself in the Ware house Lucille had her “hired man” – they were not called “coachmen” until Lucille came to Riverbank – and a fine team of blacks. Her low-hung carriage was for many years thereafter a common sight in Riverbank. As Lucille furnished it her house seemed to us palatial in its elegance. It overpowered those who saw its interior; she certainly managed to get everything into the rooms that they would hold – even to a grand piano and a huge gilded harp on which she played with a great show of plump arms. All this mass of furnishings and bric-à-brac was without taste, but to Riverbank it was impressive. She had, I remember, a huge cuckoo clock she had bought in Switzerland, but which, being of unvarnished wood, did not suit her taste, so she had it gilded, and hung it against a plaque of maroon velvet. She painted a little, on china, on velvet and on canvas, and her rooms soon held a hundred examples of her work, all bad. Unless you were nearsighted, however, you could tell her roses from her landscapes even from across the room, for she painted large. It was the day of china plaques, and Lucille had the largest china plaque in Riverbank. It was three feet across. It was much coveted.

On her body she crowded clothes as she crowded her house with furnishings. She was permanently overdressed. She was of impressive size and she made herself larger with ruffles and frills. Her hair was always overdone – she must have spent hours on it – and if a single hair managed to exist unwaved, uncurled or untwisted it was not Lucille’s fault. Yet somehow she managed to make all this flummery and curliness impressive; in her heart she hoped the adjective “queenly” was applied to her, and it was! That was before the days of women’s clubs, but Lucille had picked up quite a mass of impressive misinformation on books, painting and like subjects. In Riverbank she was able to make this tell.

With all this she was politely overbearing. She let people know she wanted to have her way – and then took it! From the first she pushed her way into prominence in church matters, choosing the Sunday school as the door. The Sunday school fell entirely under her sway in a very short time, partly because Mrs. Prell, the wife of the superintendent, had social ambitions, and urged Mr. Prell to second Lucille’s wishes, and partly through Lucille’s mere desire to lead. She began as leader of the simple Sunday school music, standing just under the pulpit and beating out the time of

 
“Little children, little children,
Who love their Redeemer – ”
 

with an arm that jingled with bracelets as her horses’ bridles jingled with silver-plated chains.

Her knowledge of music was slight – she could just about pick out a tune on her harp by note – but she called in Professor Schwerl and made him pound further knowledge into her head. The hot-tempered old German did it. He swore at her, got red in the face, perspired. It was like pouring water on a duck’s back, but some drops clung between the feathers, and Lucille knew how to make a drop do duty as a pailful. She took charge of the church music, reorganized the choir, and made the church think the new music was much better, than the old.

And so it was. She added Professor Schwerl and his violin to the organ. Theoretically this was to increase the volume of sweet sounds; in effect it made old Schwerl the hidden director of the choir, with Lucille as the jingling, rustling figurehead. So, step by step, Lucille became a real power in the church. The trustees and elders had little faith in her wisdom; they had immense respect for her ability to have her own way, whether it was right or wrong.

Lucille, having won her place in the church, set about creating a “salon.” Her first idea was to make her parlor the gathering place of all the wit and wisdom of Riverbank, as Madame de Staël made her salon the gathering place of the wit and wisdom of Paris. Perhaps nothing gives a better insight into the character of Lucille than this: her attempt to create a salon – of which she should be the star – in Riverbank. She soon found that the wit and wisdom of our small Iowa town was not willing to sit in a parlor and talk about Michael Angelo. The women were abashed before the culture they imagined Lucille to have. The men simply did not come. Not to be defeated, Lucille organized a “literary society.” By including only a few of her church acquaintances she gave the suggestion that the organization was “exclusive.” By setting as the first topic the poems of Matthew Arnold – then hardly heard of in Riverbank – she suggested that the society was to be erudite. The combination did all she had hoped. Admission to Lucille’s literary society became Riverbank’s most prized social plum.

Few in Riverbank had any real affection for Lucille, but affection was not what she sought. She wanted prominence and power, and even the men who had scorned her salon idea soon found she had become, in some mysterious way, an “influence.” The State senator, when he came to Riverbank, always “put up” at Lucille’s mansion instead of at a hotel as formerly. When the men of the town wished signatures to a petition, or money subscriptions to any promotion scheme – such as the new street railway – the first thought was: “Get Lucille Hardcome to take it up; she’ll put it through.” In such affairs she did not bother with the lesser names; some fifteen or twenty of the “big” men she would write on her list and for a few days her blacks and her low-hung carriage would be seen standing in front of prominent doors, and Lucille would have secured all, or nearly all, the signatures she sought.

At first Lucille paid little attention to David. She treated him much as she treated the colorless Mr. Prell, our Sunday school superintendent: as if he were a useful but unimportant church attachment, but otherwise not amounting to much. It was not until the affair of the church organist showed her that David was a worthy antagonist that Lucille thought of David as other than a sort of elevated hired man.

Far back in the days when David came to Riverbank, Miss Hurley (Miss Jane Hurley, not Miss Mary) had volunteered to play the organ when Mrs. Dougal gave it up because of the coming of the twins. That must have been before the war; and the organ was a queer little box of a thing that could be carried about with little trouble. It was hardly better than a pitch pipe. It served to set the congregation on (or off) the key, and was immediately lost in the rough bass and shrill treble of the congregational vocal efforts. Later, when the Hardcomes came to Riverbank and Ellen Hardcome’s really excellent soprano suggested a quartet choir, the “new” organ had been bought. It was thought to be a splendid instrument. In appearance it was a sublimated parlor organ, a black walnut affair that had Gothic aspirations and arose in unaccountable spires and points. We Presbyterians were properly proud of it. With our choir of four, our new organ and Miss Hurley learning a new voluntary or offertory every month or so, we felt we had reached the acme in music. We used to gather around Miss Hurley after one of her new “pieces” and congratulate her, quite as we gathered around David and congratulated him when he gave us a sermon we liked especially well.

The Episcopalians gave us our first shock when they built their little church – spireless, indeed, so that their bell had to be set on a scaffold in the back yard – but with a pipe organ actually built into the church. We figured that seven, at least, of our congregation went over to the Episcopalians on account of the pipe organ. The Methodists were but a year or two later. I do not remember whether the Congregationalists were a year before or a year after the Methodists, but the net result was that we Presbyterians and the United Brethren were the last to lag along, and the United Brethren had neither our size nor wealth. Not that our wealth was much to brag of.

After her typhoid Ellen Hardcome’s voice broke – the disease “settled in her throat,” as we said then – and she stepped out of the choir to make way for little Mollie Mitchell, who sang like a bird and had a disposition like one of Satan’s imps. Hardly had Lucille Hardcome taken charge of our church music than she began her campaign for a pipe organ. By that time the “new” organ was the “old” organ and actually worse than the old “old” organ had ever been. It was in the habit of emitting occasional uncalled-for groans and squeaks and at times all its efforts were accompanied by a growl like the drone of a bagpipe. The blind piano tuner had long since refused to have anything more to do with it, and Merkle, the local gun and lock smith, tinkered it nearly every week. It was comical to see old Schwerl roll his eyes in agony as he played his violin beside it.

As Merkle said, repairing musical instruments was not his business, and he had to “study her up from the ground.” He did his best, but probably the logic of his repair work was based on a wrong premise. We never knew, when Merkle entered the church on a Saturday to correct the trouble that evolved during Friday night’s choir practice, what the old black walnut monstrosity would do on Sunday.

All through this period, as through her struggles with the old “old” organ, Miss Hurley labored patiently. “I couldn’t do so and so,” old Merkle used to tell her, “so you want to look out and not do so and so.” Perhaps it meant she must pump with one foot, or not touch some three or four of the “stops.” She did her best and, but for the rankling thought that the other churches were listening to glorious pipe organ strains, I dare say we would have been satisfied well enough. I always loved to see the gentle little lady seat herself on the narrow bench, arrange her skirts, place her music on the rack and then look up to catch the back of Dominie Dean’s curly-haired head in her little mirror.