They came all too soon to a gate giving upon the public road and the
world of the living who make remarks about strange sights they witness.
Still it was a quiet street, and they were accorded no immediate
reception. There stood the pony cart of Miss Juliana, and this, she made
known, they were to enter. It was a lovely vehicle, drawn by a lovely
fat pony, and the Wilbur twin had often envied those privileged to ride
in it. Never had he dreamed so rich a treat could be his. Now it was to
be his, but the thing was no longer a lovely pony cart; it was a
tumbril--worse than a tumbril, for he was going to a fate worse than
death.
The shameful skirt flopped about his bare legs as he awkwardly clambered
into the rear seat beside the sex-muddled creature in a boy's suit and a
girl's hat. Miss Juliana and the godly Merle in the front seat had very
definitely drawn aloof from the outcasts. They chatted on matters at
large in the most polite and social manner. They quite appeared to have
forgotten that their equipage might attract the notice of the vulgar.
When from time to time it actually did this the girl held her head
brazenly erect and shot back stare for stare, but the Wilbur twin bowed
low and suffered.
Sometimes it would merely be astounded adults who paused to regard them,
to point canes or fingers at them. But again it would be the young who
had never been disciplined to restrain their emotions in public. Some of
these ran for a time beside the cart, with glad cries, their clear,
ringing voices raised in comments of a professedly humorous character.
Under Juliana's direction the cart did not progress too rapidly. At one
crossing she actually stopped the thing until Ellis Bristow, who was
blind, had with his knowing cane tapped a safe way across the street.
The Wilbur twin at this moment frankly rejoiced in the infirmity of poor
Ellis Bristow. It was sweet relief not to have him stop and stare and
point. If given the power at this juncture he would have summarily
blinded all the eyes of Newbern Center.
Up shaded streets they progressed, leaving a wake of purest joy astern.
But at last they began the ascent of West Hill, that led to the Whipple
New Place, leaving behind those streets that came alive at their
approach. For the remainder of their dread progress they would elicit
only the startled regard of an occasional adult farmer.
"What'll she do to us?" The Wilbur twin mumbled this under cover of
sprightly talk from the front seat. His brother at the moment was
boasting of his scholastic attainments. He had, it appeared, come on
amazingly in long division.
"She won't do a thing!" replied his companion in shame. "Don't you be
afraid!"
"I am afraid. But I wouldn't be afraid if I had my pants on again,"
explained the Wilbur twin, going accurately to the soul of his panic.
"I'll do it next time," said the girl. "I'll hurry. I won't stop at any
old graveyard."
"Graveyard!" uttered the other, feelingly. "I should say not!" Never
again was he to think of such places with any real pleasure.
"All she wants," explained the girl--"she wants to talk up in her nose
like she was giving a lecture. She loves to. She'll make a vile scene."
Now they were through an imposing gate of masonry, and the pony
languidly drew them along a wide driveway toward the Whipple mansion, an
experience which neither of the twins had ever hoped to brave; but only
one of them was deriving any pleasure from the social elevation. The
Merle twin looked blandly over the wide expanse of lawn and flower beds
and tenderly nursed shrubs, and then at the pile of red brick with its
many windows under gay-striped awnings, and its surmounting white
cupola, which he had often admired from afar. He glowed with rectitude.
True, he suffered a brother lost to all sense of decent human values,
but this could not dim the lustre of his own virtue or his pleasant
suspicion that it was somehow going to be suitably rewarded. Was he not
being driven by a grand-mannered lady up a beautiful roadway past
millions of flowers and toward a wonderful house? It paid to be good.
The Wilbur twin had ceased to regard his surroundings. He gazed stolidly
before him, nor made the least note of what his eyes rested upon. He was
there, helpless. They had him!
The cart drew up beside steps leading to a wide porch shaded by a
striped awning.
"Home at last," cooed Miss Juliana with false welcome.
A loutish person promptly abandoned a lawn mower in the near distance
and came to stand by the head of the languid pony. He grinned horribly,
and winked as the two figures descended from the rear of the cart. For a
moment, halting on the first of the steps, the Wilbur twin became aware
that just beyond him, almost to be grasped, was a veritable rainbow
curved above a whirling lawn sprinkler. And he had learned that a
rainbow is a thing of gracious promise. But probably they have to be
natural rainbows; probably you don't get anything out of one you make
yourself. Even as he looked, the shining omen vanished, somewhere shut
off by an unseen power.
"This way, please," called Miss Juliana, cordially, and he followed her
guiltily up the steps to the shaded porch.
The girl had preceded her. The Merle twin lingered back of them,
shocked, austere, deprecating, and yet somehow bland withal, as if these
little affairs were not without their compensating features.
The bowed Wilbur twin was startled by a gusty torrent of laughter. With
torturing effort, he raised his eyes to a couple of elderly male
Whipples. One sat erect on a cushioned bench, and one had lain at ease
in a long, low thing of wicker. It was this one who made the ill-timed
and tasteless demonstration that was still continuing. Ultimately the
creature lost all tone from his laughter. It went on, soundless but
uncannily poignant. Such was the effect that the Wilbur twin wondered if
his own ears had been suddenly deafened. This Whipple continued to shake
silently. The other, who had not laughed, whose face seemed ill-modelled
for laughing, nevertheless turned sparkling eyes from under shelving
brows upon Juliana and said in words stressed with emotion: "My dear,
you have brightened my whole day."
The first Whipple, now recovered from his unseemly paroxysm, sat erect
to study the newcomers in detail. He was a short, round-chested man with
a round moon face marked by heavy brows like those of the other. He had
fat wrists and stout, blunt fingers. With a stubby thumb he now pushed
up the outer ends of the heavy brows as if to heighten the power of his
vision for this cherished spectacle.
"I seem to recognize the lad," he murmured as if in privacy to his own
hairy ears. "Surely I've seen the rascal about the place, perhaps
helping Nathan at the stable; but that lovely little girl--I've not had
the pleasure of meeting her before. Come, sissy"--he held out
blandishing arms--"come here, Totte, and give the old man a kiss."
Could hate destroy, these had been the dying words of Sharon Whipple.
But the Wilbur twin could manage only a sidelong glare insufficient to
slay. His brother giggled until he saw that he made merry alone.
"What? Bless my soul, the minx is sulky!" roared the wit.
The other Whipple intervened.
"What was our pride and our joy bent upon this time?" he suavely
demanded. "I take it you've thwarted her in some new plot against the
public tranquillity."
"The young person you indicate," said Juliana, "was about to leave her
home forever--going out to live her own life away from these distasteful
surroundings."
"So soon? We should be proud of her! At that tender age, going out to
make a name for herself!"
"I gather from this very intelligent young gentleman here that she had
made the name for herself before even starting."
"It was Ben Blunt," remarked the young gentleman, helpfully.
"Hey!" Sharon Whipple affected dismay. "Then what about this young girl
at his side? Don't tell me she was luring him from his home here?"
"It will surprise you to know," said Juliana in her best style, "that
this young girl before you is not a girl."
Both Whipples ably professed amazement.
"Not a girl?" repeated the suave Whipple incredulously. "You do amaze
me, Juliana! Not a girl, with those flower-like features, those starry
eyes, that feminine allure? Preposterous! And yet, if he is not a girl
he is, I take it, a boy."
"A boy who incited the light of our house to wayward courses by changing
clothes with her."
The harsher Whipple spoke here in a new tone.
"Then she browbeat him into it. Scissors and white aprons--yes, I know
her!"
"He didn't seem browbeaten. They were smoking quite companionably when I
chanced upon them."
"Smoking! Our angel child smoking!"
This from Sharon Whipple in tones that every child present knew as a
mere pretense of horror. Juliana shrugged cynically.
"They always go to the bad after they leave their nice homes," she said.
"Children should never smoke till they are twenty-one, and then they get
a gold watch for it," interjected the orator, Merle. He had felt that he
was not being made enough of. "It's bad for their growing systems," he
added.
"And this?" asked Gideon Whipple, indicating the moralist.
"The brother of that"--Juliana pointed. "He did his best in the way of
advice, I gather, but neither of the pair would listen to him. He seems
to be safely conservative, but not to have much influence over his
fellows."
"Willing to talk about it, though," said Sharon Whipple, pointedly.
The girl now glowered at each of them in turn.
"I don't care!" she muttered. "I will, too, run away! You see!"
"It's what they call a fixed idea," explained Juliana. "She doesn't care
and she will, too, run away. But where is Mrs. Harvey?"
"Poor soul!" murmured Sharon. "Think what a lot she's missed already! Do
call her, my dear!"
Juliana stepped to the doorway and called musically into the dusky hall:
"Mrs. Harvey! Mrs. Harvey! Come quickly, please! We have something
lovely to show you!"
The offenders were still to be butchered to make a Whipple holiday.
"Coming!" called a high voice from far within.
The Wilbur twin sickeningly guessed this would be the cruel stepmother.
Real cruelty would now begin. Beating, most likely. But when, a moment
later, she stood puzzling in the doorway, he felt an instant relief. She
did not look cruel. She was not even bearded. She was a plump, meekly
prettyish woman with a quick, flustered manner and a soft voice. She
brought something the culprits had not found in their other judges.
"Why, you poor, dear, motherless thing!" she cried when she had assured
herself of the girl's identity, and with this she enfolded her. "I'd
like to know what they've been doing to my pet!" she declared,
aggressively.
"The pet did it all to herself," explained Gideon Whipple.
"I will, too, run away!" affirmed the girl, though some deeper
conviction had faded from the threat.
"Still talking huge high," said Sharon. "But at your age, my young
friend, running away is overchancy." Mrs. Harvey Whipple ignored this.
"Of course you will--run away all you like," she soothed. "It's good
for people to run away." Then she turned amazingly to the Wilbur twin
and spoke him fair as a fellow human. "And who is this dear little boy?
I just know he was kind enough to change clothes with you so you could
run away better! And here you're keeping him in that dress when you
ought to know it makes him uncomfortable--doesn't it, little boy?"
The little boy movingly ogled her with a sidelong glance of gratitude
for what at the moment seemed to be the first kind words he had ever
heard.
"You have her give me back my pants!" said he. Then for the first time
he faced his inquisitors eye to eye. "I want my own pants!" he declared,
stoutly. Man spoke to man there, and both the male Whipples stirred
guiltily; feeling base, perhaps, that mere sex loyalty had not earlier
restrained them.
"Indeed, you blessed thing, you shall have them this moment!" said the
cruel stepmother. "You two march along with me."
"And not keep them till Harvey D. comes home?" It was the implacable
Juliana.
"Well"--Mrs. Harvey considered--"I'm sure he would adore to see the
little imps, but really they can't stand it any longer, can you, dears?
It would be bad for their nerves. We'll have to be satisfied with
telling him. Come along quickly!"
"I will, too, run away!"
The girl flung it over her shoulder as she swaggered into the hall. The
Wilbur twin trod incessantly on her heels.
"Wants his pants!" murmured Sharon Whipple. "Prunes and apricots! Wants
his pants!"
"Mistake ever to part with 'em," observed Gideon. "Of course she
browbeat him."
"My young friend here tells me she bribed him," explained Juliana.
"She gave him a lot of money and I'm keeping it for him," said her
self-possessed young friend, and he indicated bulging pockets.
"Looted her bank," said Juliana.
"Forehanded little tike," said Sharon, admiringly. "And smart! She can
outsmart us all any day in the week!"
* * * * *
In a dim upper bedroom in the big house Wilbur Cowan divested himself of
woman's raiment for probably the last time in his life. He hurried more
than he might have, because the room was full of large, strange,
terrifying furniture. It was a place to get out of as soon as he could.
Two buttons at the back of the dress he was unable to reach, but this
trifling circumstance did not for more than a scant second delay his
release. Then his own clothes were thrust in to him by the stepmother,
who embarrassingly lingered to help him button his own waist with the
faded horseshoes to the happily restored pants.
"There, there!" she soothed when he was again clad as a man child, and
amazingly she kissed him.
Still tingling from this novel assault, he was led by the woman along a
dim corridor to a rear stairway. Down this they went, along another
corridor to a far door. She brought him to rest in a small, meagrely
furnished but delightfully scented room. It was scented with a general
aroma of cooked food, and there were many shelves behind glass doors on
which dishes were piled. A drawer was opened, and almost instantly in
his ready hands was the largest segment of yellow cake he had ever
beheld. He had not dreamed that pieces of cake for human consumption
could be cut so large. And it was lavishly gemmed with fat raisins. He
held it doubtfully.
"Let's look again," said the preposterous woman. She looked again,
pushing by a loose-swinging door to do it, and returned with a vast area
of apple pie, its outer curve a full ninety degrees of the circle. "Now
eat!" said the woman.
She was, indeed, a remarkable woman. She had not first asked him if he
were hungry.
"I'm much obliged for my pants and this cake and pie," said the boy, so
the woman said, "Yes, yes," and hugged him briefly as he ate.
Not until he had consumed the last morsel of these provisions and eke a
bumper of milk did the woman lead him back to that shaded porch where he
had lately been put to the torture. But now he was another being, clad
not only as became a man among men but inwardly fortified by food. If
stepmothers were like this he wished his own father would find one. The
girl with her talk about cruelty--he still admired her, but she must be
an awful liar. He faced the tormenting group on the porch with almost
faultless self-possession. He knew they could not hurt him.
"Well, well, well!" roared Sharon Whipple, meaning again to be humorous.
But the restored Wilbur eyed him coldly, with just a faint curiosity
that withered the humorist in him. "Well, well!" he repeated, but in
dry, businesslike tones, as if he had not meant to be funny in the first
place.
"I guess we'll have to be going now," said the Wilbur twin. "And we must
leave all that money. It wouldn't be honest to take it now."
The Merle twin at this looked across at him with marked disfavour.
"Nonsense!" said Miss Juliana.
"Nonsense!" said Sharon Whipple.
"Take it, of course!" said Gideon Whipple.
"He's earned it fairly," said Juliana. She turned to Merle. "Give it to
him," she directed.
This was not as Merle would have wished. If the money had been earned he
was still willing to take care of it, wasn't he?
"A beggarly pittance for what he did," said Gideon Whipple, warmly.
"Wouldn't do it myself for twice the amount, whatever it is," said
Sharon.
Very slowly, under the Whipple regard, the Merle twin poured the price
of his brother's shame into his brother's cupped hands. The brother felt
religious at this moment. He remembered seriously those things they
told you in Sunday-school--about a power above that watches over us and
makes all come right. There must be something in that talk.
The fiscal transaction was completed. The twins looked up to become
aware that their late confederate surveyed them from the doorway. Her
eyes hinted of a recent stormy past, but once more she was decorously
apparelled.
"Your little guests are leaving," said the stepmother. "You must bid
them good-bye."
Her little guests became statues as the girl approached them.
"So glad you could come," she said, and ceremoniously shook the hand of
each. The twins wielded arms rigid from the shoulder, shaking twice down
and twice up. "It has been so pleasant to have you," said the girl.
"We've had a delightful time," said the Merle twin.
The other tried to echo this, but again his teeth were tightly locked,
and he made but a meaningless squeak far back in his throat. He used
this for the beginning of a cough, which he finished with a decent
aplomb.
"You must come again," said the girl, mechanically.
"We shall be so glad to," replied the Merle twin, glancing a bright
farewell to the group.
The other twin was unable to glance intelligently at any one. His eyes
were now glazed. He stumbled against his well-mannered brother and
heavily descended the steps.
"You earned your money!" called Sharon Whipple.
The Wilbur twin was in advance, and stayed so as they trudged down the
roadway to the big gate. With his first free breath he had felt his
importance as the lawful possessor of limitless wealth.
"Bright little skeesicks," said Sharon Whipple.
"But the brother is really remarkable," said Gideon--"so well-mannered,
so sure of himself. He has quite a personality."
"Other has the gumption," declared Sharon.
"I've decided to have one of them for my brother," announced the girl.
"Indeed?" said Gideon.
"Well, everybody said I might have a brother, but nobody does anything
about it. I will have one of those. I think the nice one that doesn't
smoke."
"Poor motherless pet!" murmured the stepmother, helplessly.
"A brother is not what you need most at this time," broke in Juliana.
"It's a barber."
* * * * *
Down the dusty road over West Hill went the twins, Wilbur still
forcefully leading. His brother was becoming uneasy. There was a strange
light in the other's eyes, an unwonted look of power. When they were off
the hill and come to the upper end of shaded Fair Street, Merle advanced
to keep pace beside his brother. The latter's rate of speed had
increased as they neared the town.
"Hadn't I better take care of our money for us?" he at last asked in a
voice oily with solicitude.
"No, sir!"
The "sir" was weighted with so heavy an emphasis that the tactful Merle
merely said "Oh!" in a hurt tone.
"I can take care of my own money for me," added the speeding capitalist,
seeming to wish that any possible misconception as to the ownership of
the hoard might be definitely removed.
"Oh," said Merle again, this being all that with any dignity he could
think of to say. They were now passing the quiet acre that had been the
scene of the morning's unpleasantness. Their pails, half filled with
berries, were still there, but the strangely behaving Wilbur refused to
go for them. He eyed the place with disrelish. He would not again
willingly approach that spot where he had gone down into the valley of
shame. Reminded that the pails were not theirs, he brutally asked what
did he care, adding that he could buy a million pails if he took a
notion to. But presently he listened to reason, and made reasonable
proposals. The Merle twin was to go back to the evil place, salvage the
pails, leave them at the Penniman house, and hasten to a certain
confectioner's at the heart of the town, where a lavish reward would be
at once his. After troubled reflection he consented, and they went their
ways. The Merle twin sped to the quiet nook where Jonas Whipple had been
put away in 1828, and sped away from there as soon as he had the pails.
Not even did he bend a moment above the little new-made grave where lay
a part of all that was mortal of Patricia Whipple. He disliked
graveyards on principle, and he wished his reward.
Wilbur Cowan kept his quick way down Fair Street. He had been lifted to
pecuniary eminence, and incessantly the new wealth pressed upon his
consciousness. The markets of the world were at his mercy. There were
shop windows outside which he had long been compelled to linger in
sterile choosing. Now he could enter and buy, and he was in a hurry to
be at it. Something warned him to seize his golden moment on the wing.
The day was Saturday, and he was pleasantly thrilled by the unwonted
crowds on River Street, which he now entered. Farm horses were tethered
thickly along hitching racks and shoppers thronged the marts of trade.
He threaded a way among them till he stood before the establishment of
Solly Gumble, confectioner. It brought him another thrill that the
people all about should be unaware of his wealth--he, laden with
unsuspected treasure that sagged cool and heavy on either thigh, while
they could but suppose him to be a conventionally impoverished small
boy.
He tried to be cool--to calculate sanely his first expenditure. But he
contrived an air of careless indecision as he sauntered through the
portals of the Gumble place and lingered before the counter of choicest
sweets, those so desirable that they must be guarded under glass from a
loftily sampling public.
"Two of those and two of those and one of them!"
It was his first order, and brought him, for five cents, two cocoanut
creams, two candied plums, and a chocolate mouse. He stood eating these
while he leisurely surveyed the neighbouring delicacies. Vaguely in his
mind was the thought that he might buy the place and thereafter keep
store. His cheeks distended by the chocolate mouse and the last of the
cocoanut creams, he now bartered for a candy cigar. It was of brown
material, at the blunt end a circle of white for the ash and at its
centre a brilliant square of scarlet paper for the glow, altogether a
charming feat of simulation, perhaps the most delightful humoresque in
all confectionery. It was priced at two cents, but what was money now?
Then, his eye roving to the loftier shelves, he spied remotely above him
a stuffed blue jay mounted on a varnished branch of oak. This was not
properly a part of the Gumble stock; it was a fixture, technically,
giving an air to the place from its niche between two mounting rows of
laden shelves.
"How much for that beautiful bird for my father?" demanded the nouveau
riche.
His words were blurred by the still-resistant chocolate mouse, and he
was compelled to point before Solly Gumble divined his wish. The
merchant debated, removing his skullcap, smoothing his grizzled fringe
of curls, fitting the cap on again deliberately. Then he turned to
survey the bird, seemingly with an interest newly wakened. It was indeed
a beautiful bird, brilliantly blue, with sparkling eyes; a bit dusty,
but rarely desirable. The owner had not meant to part with it; still,
trade was trade. He meditated, tapping his cheek with a pencil.
"How much for that beautiful bird for my father?"
He had swallowed strenuously and this time got out the words cleanly.
"Well, now, I don't hardly know. My Bertha had her cousin give her that
bird. It's a costly bird. I guess you couldn't pay such a price. I guess
it would cost a full half dollar, mebbe."
He had meant the price to be prohibitive, and it did shock the
questioner, opulent though he was.
"Well, mebbe I will and mebbe I won't," he said, importantly. "Say, you
keep him for me till I make my mind up. If anybody else comes along,
don't you sell him to anybody else till I tell you, because prob'ly I'll
simply buy him. My father, he loves animals."
Solly Gumble was impressed.
"Well, he's a first-class animal. He's been in that one place goin' on
five years now."
"Give me two of those and two of those and one of them," said the Wilbur
twin, pointing to new heart's desires.
"Say, now, you got a lot of money for a little boy," said Solly Gumble,
not altogether at ease. This might be a case of embezzlement such as he
had before known among his younger patrons. "You sure it's yours--yes?"
"Ho!" The Wilbur twin scorned the imputation. He was not going to tell
how he had earned this wealth, but the ease of his simple retort was
enough for the practical psychologist before him. "I could buy all the
things in this store if I wanted to," he continued, and waved a
patronizing hand to the shelves. "Give me two of those and two of those
and one of them."
Solly Gumble put the latest purchase in a paper bag. Here was a patron
worth conciliating. The patron sauntered to the open door to eat of his
provender with lordly ease in the sight of an envious world. Calmly
elate, on the cushion of advantage, he scanned the going and coming of
lesser folk who could not buy at will of Solly Gumble. His fortune had
gone to his head, as often it has overthrown the reason of the more
mature indigent. It was thus his brother found him, and became instantly
troubled at what seemed to be the insane glitter of his eyes.
He engulfed an entire chocolate mouse from his sticky left hand and with
his right proffered the bag containing two of those and two of those and
one of them. Merle accepted the boon silently. He was thrilled, yet
distrustful. Until now his had been the leading mind, but his power was
gone. He resented this, yet was sensible that no resentment must be
shown. His talent as a tactician was to be sorely tested. He gently
tried out this talent.
"Winona says you ought to come home to dinner."
The magnate replied as from another world.
"I couldn't eat a mouthful," he said, and crowded a cocoanut cream into
an oral cavity already distended by a chocolate mouse.
"She says, now, you should save your money and buy some useful thing
with it," again ventured the parasite. It was the sign of a nicely
sensed acumen that he no longer called it "our" money.
"Ho! Gee, gosh!" spluttered the rich one, and that was all.
"What we going to have next?" demanded the wise one.
"I'll have to think up something." He did not invite suggestions and
none were offered. Merle nicely sensed the arrogance of the newly rich.
"I know," said the capitalist at length--"candy in a lemon."
"One for each?"
"Of course!" It was no time for petty economies.
Solly Gumble parted with two lemons and two sticks of spirally striped
candy of porous fabric. Then the moneyed gourmet dared a new flight.
"Two more sticks," he commanded. "You suck one stick down, then you put
another in the same old lemon," he explained.
"I must say!" exclaimed Merle. It was a high moment, but he never used
strong language.
When the candy had been imbedded in the lemons they sauntered out to the
street, Merle meekly in the rear, the master mind still coerced by brute
wealth. They paused before other shop windows, cheeks hollowed above the
savory mechanism invented by Patricia Whipple. Down one side of River
Street to its last shop, and up the other, they progressed haltingly. At
many of the windows the capitalist displayed interest only of the most
academic character. At others he made sportive threats. Thus before the
jewellery shop of Rapp Brothers he quite unnerved Merle by announcing
that he could buy everything in that window if he wanted to--necklaces
and rings and pins and gold watches--and he might do this. If, say, he
did buy that black marble clock with the prancing gold horse on it,
would Merle take it home for him? He had no intention of buying this
object--he had never found clocks anything but a source of
annoyance--but he toyed with the suggestion when he saw that it agitated
his brother. Thereafter at other windows he wilfully dismayed his
brother by pretending to consider the purchase of objects in no sense
desirable to any one, such as boots, parasols, manicure sets, groceries,
hardware. He played with the feel of his wealth, relishing the power it
gave him over the moneyless.
And then purely to intensify this thrill of power he actually purchased
at the hardware shop and carelessly bestowed upon the mendicant brother
an elaborate knife with five blades and a thing which the vender said
was to use in digging stones out of horses' feet. Merle was quite
overcome by this gift, and neither of them suspected it to be the first
step in the downfall of the capitalist. The latter, be it remembered,
had bought and bestowed the knife that he might feel more acutely his
power over this penniless brother, and this mean reward was abundantly
his. Never before had he felt superior to the Merle twin.
But the penalties of giving are manifold, and he now felt a novel glow
of sheer beneficence. He was a victim to the craze for philanthropy. Too
young to realize its insidious character, he was to embark upon a
ruinous career. Ever it is the first step that costs. That carelessly
given knife--with something to dig stones out of a horse's foot--was to
wipe out, ere night again shrouded Newbern Center, a fortune supposed to
be as lasting as the eternal hills that encircled it.
They again crossed River Street, and stopped in front of the Cut-Rate
Pharmacy. The windows of this establishment offered little to entice
save the two mammoth chalices of green and crimson liquor. But these
were believed to be of fabulous value. Even the Cut-Rate Pharmacy itself
could afford but one of each. Inside the door a soda fountain hissed
provocatively. They took lemon and vanilla respectively, and the lordly
purchaser did not take up his change from the wet marble until he had
drained his glass. He had become preoccupied. He was mapping out a
career of benevolence, splendid, glittering, ostentatious--ruinous.
In a show case near the soda fountain his eye rested upon an object of
striking beauty, a photograph album of scarlet plush with a silver
clasp, and lest its purpose be misconstrued the word "Album" writ in
purest silver across its front. Negotiations resulting in its sale were
brief. The Merle twin was aghast, for the cost of this thing was a
dollar and forty-nine cents. Even the buyer trembled when he counted out
the price in small silver and coppers. But the result was a further
uplift raising him beyond the loudest call of caution. The album was
placed in the ornate box--itself no mean bibelot--and wrapped in paper.
"It's for Winona," the purchaser loftily explained to his white-faced
brother.
"I must say!" exclaimed the latter, strongly moved.
"I'm going to buy a beautiful present for every one," added the now
fatuous giver.
"Every one!" It was all Merle could manage, and even it caused him to
gulp.
"Every one," repeated the hopeless addict.
And even as he said it he was snared again, this time by an immense
advertising placard propped on the counter. It hymned the virtues of the
Ajax Invigorator. To the left sagged a tormented male victim of many
ailments meticulously catalogued below, but in too fine print for
offhand reading by one in a hurry. The frame of the sufferer was bent,
upheld by a cane, one hand poignantly resting on his back. The face was
drawn with pain and despair. "For twenty years I suffered untold
agonies," this person was made to confess in large print. It was
heartrending. But opposite the moribund wretch was a figure of rich
health, erect, smartly dressed, with a full, smiling face and happy
eyes. Surprisingly this was none other than the sufferer. One could
hardly have believed them the same, but so it was. "The Ajax Invigorator
made a new man of me," continued the legend. There were further details
which seemed negligible to the philanthropist, because the pictured hero
of the invigorator already suggested Judge Penniman, the ever-ailing
father of Winona. The likeness was not wholly fanciful. True, the judge
was not so abject as the first figure, but then he was not so
obtrusively vigorous as the second.
"A bottle of that," said Wilbur, and pointed to the card.
The druggist thrust out a bottle already wrapped in a printed cover, and
the price, as became a cut-rate pharmacy, proved to be ninety-eight
cents.
A wish was now expressed that the advertising placard might also be
taken in order that Judge Penniman might see just what sort of new man
the invigorator would make of him. But this proved impracticable; the
placard must remain where it stood for the behoof of other invalids. But
there were smaller portraits of the same sufferer, it seemed, in the
literature inclosing the bottle. It was the Merle twin who carried the
purchases as they issued from the pharmacy. This was fitting,
inevitable. The sodden philanthropist must have his hands free to spend
more money.
They rested again at the Gumble counter--and now they were not alone.
The acoustics of the small town are faultless, and the activities of
this spendthrift had been noised abroad. To the twins, as two of those
and two of those and one of them were being ordered, came four other
boys to linger cordially by and assist in the selections. Hospitality
was not gracefully avoidable. The four received candy cigars and became
mere hangers-on of the rich, lost to all self-respect, fawning, falsely
solicitous, brightly expectant. Chocolate mice were next distributed.
The four guests were now so much of the party as to manifest quick
hostility to a fifth boy who had beamingly essayed to be numbered among
them. They officiously snubbed and even covertly threatened this fifth
boy, who none the less lingered very determinedly by the host, and was
presently rewarded with sticky largesse; whereupon he was accepted by
the four, and himself became hostile to another aspirant.
But mere candy began to cloy--Solly Gumble had opened the second box of
chocolate mice--and the host even abandoned his reënforced lemon, which
was promptly communized by the group. He tried to think of something to
eat that wouldn't be candy, whereupon mounted in his mind the pyramid of
watermelons a block down the street before the Bon Ton Grocery.
"We'll have a watermelon," he announced in tones of quiet authority, and
his cohorts gurgled applause.
They pressed noisily about him as he went to the Bon Ton. They
remembered a whale of a melon they had seen there, and said they would
bet he never had enough money to buy that one. Maybe he could buy a
medium-sized one, but not that. All of them kept a repellent manner for
any passing boy who might be selfishly moved to join them. The
spendthrift let them babble, preserving a rather grim silence. The whale
of a melon was indeed a noble growth, and its price was thirty-five
cents. The announcement of this caused a solemn hush to fall upon the
sycophants; a hush broken by the cool, masterful tones of their host.
"I'll take her," he said, and paid the fearful price from a still
weighty pocket. To the stoutest of the group went the honour of bearing
off the lordly burden. They turned into a cool alley that led to the
rear of the shops. Here in comparative solitude the whale of a melon
could be consumed and the function be unmarred by the presence of
volunteer guests.
"Open her," ordered the host, and the new knife was used to open her.
She proved to be but half ripe, but her size was held to atone for this
defect. A small, unripe melon would have been returned to the dealer
with loud complaining, but it seemed to be held that you couldn't expect
everything from one of this magnitude. It was devoured to the rind,
after which the convives reclined luxuriously upon a mound of excelsior
beside an empty crate.
"Penny grabs!" cried the host with a fresh inspiration, and they cheered
him.
One of the five volunteered to go for them and the money-drunken host
confided the price of three of them to him. The messenger honorably
returned, the pennygrabs were bisected with the new knife, and all of
them but Merle smoked enjoyably. He, going back to his candy and lemon,
admonished each and all that smoking would stunt their growth. It seemed
not greatly to concern any of them. They believed Merle implicitly, but
what cared they?
Now the messenger in buying the pennygrabs had gabbled wildly to another
boy of the sensational expenditures under way, and this boy, though
incredulous, now came to a point in the alley from which he could survey
the fed group. The remains of the whale of a melon were there to
convince him. They were trifling remains, but they sufficed, and the six
fuming halves of pennygrabs were confirmatory. The scout departed
rapidly, to return a moment later with two other boys. One of the latter
led a dog.
The three newcomers, with a nice observance of etiquette, surveyed the
revellers from a distance. Lacking decent provocation, they might not
approach a group so plainly engaged upon affairs of its own--unless they
went aggressively, and this it did not yet seem wise to do. The
revellers became self-conscious under this scrutiny. They were moved to
new displays of wealth.
"I smelled 'em cookin' bologna in the back room of Hire's butcher shop,"
remarked the bringer of the pennygrabs. "It smelt grand."
The pliant host needed no more. He was tinder to such a spark.
"Get a quarter's worth, Howard," and the slave bounded off, to return
with a splendid rosy garland of the stuff, still warm and odorous.
Again the new knife of Merle was used. The now widely diffused scent of
bologna reached the three watchers, and appeared to madden one of them
beyond any restraint of good manners. He sauntered toward them,
pretending not to notice the banquet until he was upon it. He was a
desperate-appearing fellow--dark, saturnine, with a face of sullen
menace.
"Give us a hunk," he demanded.
He should have put it more gently. He should have condescended a little
to the amenities, for his imperious tone at once dried a generous spring
of philanthropy. He was to regret this lack of a mere superficial polish
that would have cost him nothing.
"Ho! Go buy it like we did!" retorted the host, crisply.
"Is that so?" queried the newcomer with rising warmth.
"Yes, sat's so!"
"Who says it's so?"
"I say it's so!"
This was seemingly futile; seemingly it got them nowhere, for the
newcomer again demanded: "Is that so?"
They seemed to have followed a vicious circle. But in reality they were
much farther along, for the mendicant had carelessly worked himself to a
point where he could reach for the half circle of bologna still
undivided, and the treasure was now snatched from this fate by the
watchful legal owner.
"Hold that!" he commanded one of his creatures, and rose quickly to his
feet.
"Is that so?" repeated the unimaginative newcomer.
"Yes, that's so!" affirmed the Wilbur twin once again.
"I guess I got as much right here as you got!"
This was a shifty attempt to cloud the issue. No one had faintly
questioned his right to be there.
"Ho! Gee, gosh!" snapped the Wilbur twin, feeling vaguely that this was
irrelevant talk.
"Think you own this whole town, don't you?" demanded the aggressor.
"Ho! I guess I own it as much as what you do!"
The Wilbur twin knew perfectly that this was not the true issue, yet he
felt compelled to accept it.
"For two beans I'd punch you in the eye."
"Oh, you would, would you?" Each of the disputants here took a step
backward.
"Yes, I would, would you!" This was a try at mockery.
"Yes, you would not!"
"Yes, I would!"
"You're a big liar!"
The newcomer at this betrayed excessive rage.
"What's that? You just say that again!" He seemed unable to believe his
shocked ears.
"You heard what I said--you big liar, liar, liar!"
"You take that back!"
Here the newcomer flourished clinched fists and began to prance. The
Wilbur twin crouched, but was otherwise motionless. The newcomer
continued to prance alarmingly and to wield his arms as if against an
invisible opponent. Secretly he had no mind to combat. His real purpose
became presently clear. It was to intimidate and confuse until he should
be near enough the desired delicacy to snatch it and run. He was an
excellent runner. His opponent perceived this--the evil glance of desire
and intention under all the flourish of arms. Something had to be done.
Without warning he leaped upon the invader and bore him to earth. There
he punched, jabbed, gouged, and scratched as they writhed together. A
moment of this and the prostrate foe was heard to scream with the utmost
sincerity. The Wilbur twin was startled, but did not relax his hold.
"You let me up from here!" the foe was then heard to cry.
The Wilbur twin watchfully rose from his mount, breathing heavily. He
seized his cap and drew it tightly over dishevelled locks.
"I guess that'll teach you a good lesson!" he warned when he had breath
for it.
The vanquished Hun got to his feet, one hand over an eye. He was
abundantly blemished and his nose bled. His sense of dignity had been
outraged and his head hurt.
"You get the hell and gone out of here!" shouted the Wilbur twin, quite
as if he did own the town.
"I must say! Cursing and swearing!" shrilled the Merle twin, but none
heeded him.
The repulsed enemy went slowly to the corner of the alley. Here he
turned to recover a moment of dignity.
"You just wait till I catch you out some day!" he roared back with
gestures meant to terrify. But this was his last flash. He went on his
way, one hand still to the blighted eye.
Now it developed that the two boys who had waited the Hun had profited
cunningly by the brawl. They had approached at its beginning--a fight
was anybody's to watch--they had applauded its dénouement with shrill
and hearty cries, and they now felicitated the victor.
"Aw, that old Tod McNeil thinks he can fight!" said one, and laughed in
harsh derision.
"I bet this kid could lick him any day in the week!" observed his
companion.
This boy, it was now seen, led a dog on a rope, a half-grown dog that
would one day be large. He was now heavily clad in silken wool of richly
mixed colours--brown, yellow, and bluish gray--and his eyes were still
the pale blue of puppyhood.
Both newcomers had learned the unwisdom of abrupt methods of approaching
this wealthy group. They conducted themselves with modesty; they were
polite, even servile, saying much in praise of the warrior twin. The one
with the dog revealed genius for this sort of thing, and insisted on
feeling the warrior's muscle. The flexed bicep appeared to leave him
aghast at its hardness and immensity. He insisted that his companion
should feel it, too.
"Have some bologna?" asked the warrior. He would doubtless have pressed
bologna now on Tod McNeil had that social cull stayed by.
"Oh!" said the belated guests, surprised at the presence of bologna
thereabouts.
They uttered profuse thanks for sizable segments of the now diminished
circle. It was then that the Wilbur twin took pleased notice of the dog.
He was a responsive animal, grateful for notice from any one. Receiving
a morsel of the bologna he instantly engulfed it and overwhelmed the
giver with rough but hearty attentions.
"Knows me already," said the now infatuated Wilbur.
"Sure he does!" agreed the calculating owner. "He's a smart dog. He's
the smartest dog ever I see, and I seen a good many dogs round this
town."
"Have some more bologna," said Wilbur.
"Thanks," said the dog owner, "just a mite."
The dog, receiving another bit, gave further signs of knowing the donor.
No cynic was present to intimate that the animal would instantly know
any giver of bologna.
"What's his name?" demanded Wilbur.
The owner hesitated. He had very casually acquired the animal but a few
hours before; he now attached no value to him, and was minded to be rid
of him, nor had the dog to his knowledge any name whatever.
"His name is Frank," he said, his imagination being slow to start.
"Here, Frank! Here, Frank!" called Wilbur, and the dog leaped for more
bologna.
"See, he knows his name all right," observed the owner, pridefully.
"I bet you wouldn't sell him for anything," suggested Wilbur.
"Sell good old Frank?" The owner was painfully shocked. "No, I couldn't
hardly do that," he said more gently. "He's too valuable. My little
sister just worships him."
The other guests were bored at this hint of commerce. They had no wish
to see good money spent for a dog that no one could eat.
"He don't look to me like so much of a dog," remarked one of these. "He
looks silly to me."
The owner stared at the speaker unpleasantly.
"Oh, he does, does he? I guess that shows what you know about dogs. If
you knew so much about 'em like you say I guess you'd know this kind
always does look that way. It's--it's the way they look," he floundered,
briefly, but recovered. "That's how you can tell 'em," he concluded.
The Wilbur twin was further impressed, though he had not thought the dog
looked silly at all.
"I'll give you a quarter for him," he declared bluntly.
There was a sensation among the guests. Some of them made noises to show
that they would regard this as a waste of money. But the owner was firm.
"Huh! I bet they ain't money enough in this whole crowd to buy that dog,
even if I was goin' to sell him!"
The wishful Wilbur jingled coins in both pockets.
"I guess he wouldn't be much of a fighting dog," he said.
"Fight!" exploded the owner. "You talk about fight! Say, that's all he
is--just a fighter! He eats 'em alive, that's all he does--eats 'em!"
This was for some of them not easy at once to believe, for the dog's
expression was one of simpering amiability. The owner seemed to perceive
this discrepancy. "He looks peaceful, but you git him mad once, that's
all! He's that kind--you got to git him mad first." This sounded
reasonable, at least to the dog's warmest admirer.
"Yes, sir," continued the owner, "you'll be goin' along the street with
George here--"
"George who?" demanded a skeptical guest.
For a moment the owner was disconcerted.
"Well, Frank is his right name, only my little sister calls him George
sometimes, and I get mixed. Anyway, you'll be goin' along the street
with Frank and another dog'll come up and he's afraid of Frank and mebbe
he'll just kind of clear his throat or something on account of feeling
nervous and not meaning anything, but Frank'll think he's growling, and
that settles it. Eats 'em alive! I seen some horrible sights, I want to
tell you!"
"Give you thirty-five cents for him," said the impressed Wilbur.
"For that there dog?" exploded the owner--"thirty-five cents?" He let it
be seen that this jesting was in poor taste.
"I guess he wouldn't be much of a watchdog."
"Watchdog! Say, that mutt watches all the time, day and night! You let a
burglar come sneaking in, or a tramp or someone--wow! Grabs 'em by the
throat, that's all!"
"Fifty cents!" cried the snared Cowan twin. Something told the owner
this would be the last raise.
"Let's see the money!"
He saw it, and the prodigy, Frank, sometimes called George by the
owner's little sister, had a new master. The Wilbur twin tingled through
all his being when the end of the rope leash was placed in his hand.
A tradesman now descried them from the rear door of his shop. He saw
smoke from the relighted pennygrabs and noted the mound of excelsior.
"Hi, there!" he called, harshly. "Beat it outa there! What you want to
do--set the whole town afire?"
Of course nothing of this sort had occurred to them, but only Merle
answered very politely, "No, sir!" The others merely moved off, holding
the question silly. Wilbur Cowan stalked ahead with his purchase.
"I hate just terrible to part with him," said the dog's late owner.
"Come on to Solly Gumble's," said Wilbur, significantly. He must do
something to heal this hurt.
The mob followed gleefully. The Wilbur twin was hoping they would meet
no other dog. He didn't want good old Frank to eat another dog right on
the street.
Back in Solly Gumble's he bought lavishly for his eight guests. The
guests were ideal; none of them spoke of having to leave early, though
the day was drawing in. And none of the guests noted that the almost
continuous stream of small coin flowing to the Gumble till came now but
from one pocket of the host. Yet hardly a guest but could eat from
either hand as he chose. It was a scene of Babylonian profligacy--even
the late owner of Frank joined in the revel full-spiritedly, and it
endured to a certain moment of icy realization, suffered by the host. It
came when Solly Gumble, in the midst of much serving, bethought him of
the blue jay.
"I managed to save him for you," he told the Wilbur twin, and reached
down the treasure. With a cloth he dusted the feathers and tenderly
wiped the eyes. "A first-class animal for fifty cents," he said--"and
durable. He'll last a lifetime if you be careful of him--keep him in the
parlour just to be pretty."
The munching revellers gathered about with interest. There seemed no
limit to the daring of this prodigal. Then there came upon the Wilbur
twin a moment of sinister calculation. A hand sank swiftly into a pocket
and brought up a scant few nickels and pennies. Amid a thickening
silence he counted these remaining coins.
Then in deadly tones he declared to Solly Gumble, "I only got
forty-eight cents left!"
"Oh, my! I must say! Spent all his money!" shrilled the Merle twin on a
note of triumph that was yet bitter.
"Spent all his money!" echoed the shocked courtiers, and looked upon him
coldly. Some of them withdrew across the store and in low tones
pretended to discuss the merits of articles in another show case.
"I guess you couldn't let me have him for forty-eight cents," said the
Wilbur twin hopelessly.
Solly Gumble removed his skullcap, fluffed his scanty ring of curls, and
drew on the cap again. His manner was judicial but not repellent.
"Mebbe I could--mebbe I couldn't," he said. "You sure you ain't got two
cents more in that other pocket, hey?"
The Wilbur twin searched, but it was the most arid of formalities.
"No, sir; I spent it all."
"Spent all his money!" remarked the dog seller with a kind of pitying
contempt, and drew off toward the door. Two more of the courtiers
followed as unerringly as if trained in palaces. Solly Gumble bent above
the counter.
"Well, now, you young man, you listen to me. You been a right good
customer, treating all your little friends so grand, so I tell you
straight--you take that fine bird for forty-eight cents. Not to many
would I come down, but to you--yes."
Wilbur Cowan, overcome, mumbled his thanks. He was alone at the counter
now, Merle having joined the withdrawn courtiers.
"I'm a fair trader," said Solly Gumble. "I can take--I give. Here now!"
And amazingly he extended to the penniless wreck a large and golden
orange, perhaps one of the largest oranges ever grown.
The recipient was again overcome. He blushed as he thanked this
open-handed tradesman. Then with his blue jay, his orange, his dog, he
turned away. Now he first became aware of the changed attitude of his
late dependents. It did not distress him. It seemed wholly natural, this
icy withdrawal of their fellowship. Why should they push about him any
longer? He was, instead, rather concerned to defend his spendthrift
courses.
"Spent all his money!" came a barbed jeer from the Merle twin.
The ruined one stalked by him with dignity, having remembered a fine
speech he had once heard his father make.
"Oh, well," he said, lightly, "easy come, easy go!"
The Merle twin still bore the album and the potent invigorator that was
to make a new man of Judge Penniman. His impoverished brother carried
the blue jay, looking alert and lifelike in the open, the mammoth
orange, gift for Mrs. Penniman--he had nearly forgotten her--and
tenderly he led the dog, Frank. Not to have all his money again would
he have parted with his treasures and the memory of supreme delights.
Not for all his squandered fortune would he have bartered Frank, the
dog. Frank capered at his side, ever and again looking up brightly at
his new master. Never had so much attention been shown him. Never before
had he been confined by a leash, as if he were a desirable dog.
Opposite the Mansion House, Newbern's chief hotel, Frank gave signal
proof of his intelligence. From across River Street he had been espied
by Boodles, the Mansion House dog, a creature of dusty, pinkish white,
of short neck and wide jaws, of a clouded but still definite bull
ancestry. Boodles was a dog about town, wearing many scars of combat, a
swashbuckler of a dog, rough-mannered, raffish; if not actually
quarrelsome, at least highly sensitive where his honour was concerned.
He made it a point to know every dog in town, and as he rose from a
sitting posture, where he had been taking the air before his inn, it
could be observed that Frank was new to him--certainly new and perhaps
objectionable. He stepped lightly halfway across the now empty street
and stopped for a further look. He seemed to be saying, "Maybe it ain't
a dog, after all." But the closer look and a lifted nose wrinkling into
the breeze set him right. He left for a still closer look at what was
unquestionably a dog.
The Wilbur twin became concerned for Boodles. He regarded him highly.
But he knew that Boodles was a fighter, and Frank ate them up. He
commanded Boodles to go back, but though he had slowed his pace and now
halted a dozen feet from Frank, the cannibal, Boodles showed that he was
not going back until he had some better reason. Violence of the
cruellest sort seemed forward. But perhaps Frank might be won from his
loathly practice.
"You, Frank, be quiet, sir!" ordered Wilbur, though Frank had not been
unquiet. "Be still, sir!" he added, and threatened his pet with an open
palm. But Frank had attention only for Boodles, who now approached,
little recking his fate. The clash was at hand.
"Be still, sir!" again commanded Wilbur in anguished tones, whereupon
the obedient Frank tumbled to lie upon his back, four limp legs in air,
turning his head to simper up at Boodles, who stood inquiringly above
him. Boodles then sniffed an amiable contempt and ran back to his hotel.
Frank strained at his leash to follow. His proud owner thought there
could be few dogs in all the world so biddable as this.
The twins went on. Merle was watching his chance to recover that
spiritual supremacy over the other that had been his until the accident
of wealth had wrenched it from him.
"You'll catch it for keeping us out so late," he warned--"and cursing
and fighting and spending all your money!"
The other scarce heard him. He walked through shining clouds far above
an earth where one catches it.