Dominie Dean: A Novel

by Ellis Parker Butler

I GET back to Riverbank but seldom. I have just returned from one of my infrequent visits there, the first in many years. First I had my business to attend to; later, at the office of the lawyer and on the street, I met many of those I had known when I lived in Riverbank. The faces of most puzzled me, being not quite remembered. My memory had to struggle to recognize them, as if it saw the faces through a ground glass on which it had to breathe before they became clear. Many seemed glad to see me again and that was a great pleasure to me. It was almost like a game of “hidden faces” but with faces of living men and women to be guessed. This all happened in the first hour or so after I had finished my business, and rapidly, and then I turned from one of these resurrected faces to find a young girl standing waiting to speak to me.

“You don't remember me,” she said with a smile, because she saw my puzzled face. “I was a baby when you went away. Dora Graham. You wouldn't remember me. Mack Graham is my father. I dared to speak to you because father has spoken of you so often—of you and Mr. Dean.”

“Oh, I do remember Mack!” I exclaimed. “I must see him if I can before I go.”

“Please,” she said. “It would mean so much to him.”

She was not too well-dressed. She reminded me of Alice Dean in the days when Lanny was courting her, making the bravest show she could with her cheap, neat hat and neat, inexpensive garments. I guessed that Mack Graham was not one of the town's new rich men.

“I'll see him if I have to stay over a day,” I told her. “And our dominie, Dominie Dean, you can tell me how to get to his house!”

“I'm just from there,” she said. “Are you going to see him? He will be so pleased; he spoke about you. You know he is very poor? It's pitiful; it makes my heart ache every time I go there.”

“But I thought—” I said.

“About his being made pastor emeritus? Yes, they did that for him. Father made them do that, when they were going to drop him out of the church as they always used to drop the old men. Father fought for that. We were so proud of father, mother and I. He was like a rock, like a mountain of rock, about it. They were afraid of him. But the money was nothing, almost nothing.”

“How much?” I asked, but she did not know that. She only knew that it must be very little; the new dominie would not come for what had been paid David; there had not been much to spare for a discarded and worn-out old man.