Ellis Butler - Dominie Dean - A Novel

David was horrified. Again and again he read the letter, seeking to find in it some clew to Mary’s act, but in vain. He hastened to her home, but she would not see him. He wrote, and she replied. It was a calmly sensible letter, but it left him more bewildered than ever. She begged him not to be persistent, and said her mind was made up and she could never marry him. She said he could see that if he forced his attentions or even insisted on making a quarrel of what was not one it would be harder for both, since she was a member of his church and, if he became annoying, one of them must leave.

Before giving up all hope David persuaded Dr. Benedict to see Mary. The good doctor returned somewhat dazed.

“She sat on me, Davy; she sat on me hard,” he said. “My general impression is that she meant to convey the idea that what Samuel Wiggett’s daughter chooses to do is none of a drunken doctor’s infernal business.”

“But would she give you no reason?” asked David.

“Now as to that,” said Benedict, “she implied quite plainly that if you don’t know the reason it is none of your business either. She knows the reason and that’s enough for the three of us.” David wrote again, and finally Mary consented to see him and set the day and hour; but, as if Fate meant to make everything as bad as possible for David, Benedict came that very afternoon to carry him out to Griggs Township to minister to Mrs. Hinch, who had broken down and was near her end. It was not strange that she should ask for David, but the town found in the two or three visits he made the dying woman additional cause for umbrage, and Mary, receiving David’s message telling why he could not keep his appointment, refused to make another.

Through all this David went his way, head high and with an even mind. He felt the change in his people toward him and he felt the changed attitude of the town in general, but until the news reached him through little ‘Thusia Fragg he did not know there was talk in some of the barrooms of riding him out of town on a rail.

He was sitting in his study trying to work on his sermon for the next Sunday morning, but thinking as much of Mary as of his sermon, when ‘Thusia came to the door of the manse. Mary Ann, the old housekeeper, admitted her, leaving her sitting in the shaded parlor while she went to call David. He came immediately, raising one of the window shades that he might better see the face of his visitor, and when he saw it was ‘Thusia he held out his hand. It was the first time ‘Thusia had been inside the manse.

“Well, ‘Thusia!” he queried.

She was greatly agitated. As she talked she began to cry, wringing her hands as she poured out what she had heard. David was in danger; in danger of disgrace and perhaps of bodily harm or even worse. From her father she had heard of the threats; Mr. Fragg had heard the word passed among the loafers who hung out among the saloons on the street facing the river. David was to be ridden out of town on a rail; perhaps tarred and feathered before the ride.

David listened quietly. When ‘Thusia had ended, he sat looking out of the window, thinking.

He knew the men of the town were irritated. For a time all the news from the Union armies had been news of reverses. The war had lasted long and bad news increased the irritation. Riots and lawlessness always occur in the face of adverse reports; news of a defeat embitters the non-combatants and brings their hatred to the surface. At such a time the innocent, if suspected, suffered along with the known enemy.

“And they think I am a Copperhead!” said David at length.

“Because you are friendly with Mr. Hinch,” ‘Thusia repeated. “They don’t know you as I do. It is because you are kind to the Hinches when no one else is. And they say – ” she said, her voice falling and her fingers twisting the fringe of her jacket – “they say you are in love with – with the daughter.”

“It is all because they do not understand,” said David, rising. “I can tell them. When I explain they will understand.”

He had, as yet, no definite plan. A letter to the editor of the daily newspaper occurred to him; he might also make a plain statement in the pulpit before his next Sunday sermon, setting himself right with his congregation. In the meanwhile he must show himself on the street; by word of mouth he could explain what the townspeople did not know. He blamed himself for not having explained before. He stood at the window, looking out, and saw Dr. Benedict drive up. The doctor came toward the house.

David met him at the door.

“Davy,” the doctor said, clasping his hand, “she is dead,” and David knew; he meant Mrs. Hinch.

“And Hinch?”

“He’s taking it hard, Davy. He is in town. He is in that mood of sullen hate again. He will need you – you are the only man that can soften him, Davy. It is hard – we left the girl alone with her dead mother. Some woman is needed there.” ‘Thusia had come to the parlor door.

“Will I do! Can I go!” she asked.

“Yes, and bless you for it!” the doctor exclaimed. “Get in my buggy. You’ll come, David!”

“Of course! But Hinch – he came to town! Why?”

“He had to get the coffin, Davy.”

David hurried into his coat.

“We must find him at once and get him out of town,” he said. “They’re threatening to tar and feather him if he shows his face in town again. We may stop them if we are in time; please God we may stop them!”

They found old Hinch’s wagon tied opposite the post office. They knew it by the coarse pine coffin that lay in the wagon bed. A crowd – a dozen or more men – stood before the bulletin board watching the postmaster post a new bulletin and, as David leaped from the buggy, the men cheered, for the tide had turned and the news was news of victory. As they cheered, old Hinch came out of the post office. He had in his right hand the hickory club he always carried and in the left a letter, doubled over and crushed in his gnarled fingers. He leaned his weight on the club. All the strength seemed gone out of his bent body. Someone saw him and shouted “Here’s the Copperhead!” and before David could reach his side the crowd had gathered around old Hinch.

The old man stood in the doorway, under the flag that hung limply from its pole. His fingers twitched as they grasped the letter in his hand. He glared through his long eyebrows like an angry animal.

“Kill the Copperhead!” someone shouted and an arm shot out to grasp the old man.

“Stop!” David cried. He struggled to fight his way to Hinch, but the old man, maddened out of all reason, raised his club above his head. It caught in the edge of the flag above his head and he uttered a curse – not at the flag, not at his tormentors, but at war and all war had done to him. The knotted end of the club caught the margin of the flag and tore the weather-rotten fabric.

Those in front had stepped back before the menace of the raised club, but one man stood his ground. He held a pistol in his hand and as the flag parted he leveled the weapon at the old man’s head and calmly and in cold blood pulled the trigger.

“That’s how we treat a Copperhead!” he cried, and the old man, a bullet hole in his forehead, fell forward at his feet.

You will not find a word regarding the murder in the Riverbank Eagle of that period. They hustled the murderer out of town until it was safe for him to return; indeed, he was never in any danger. The matter was hushed up; but few knew old Hinch. It was an “incident of the war.” But David, breaking through the crowd one moment too late, dropped to his knees beside the old man’s dead body and raised his head while Benedict made the hurried examination. Some members of the crowd stole away, but other men came running, from all directions and, standing beside the dead man, David told them why old Hinch had damned the war and why he hated it – not because he was a Copperhead but because one son and then another had been taken from life by it – one son killed by a stray Confederate bullet and the other shot while serving in the Union army. He made no plea for himself; it was enough that he told them that old Hinch was not a Copperhead but a grief-maddened father. As he ended Benedict handed him the letter that had slipped from the old man’s hand as he fell. It bore the army frank and was from the colonel of a Kentucky regiment. There was only a few lines, but they told that old Hinch’s oldest son, the last of his three boys, had fallen bravely in battle. It was with this new grief in his mind that the old man had stepped out to confront his tormentors.