The Penniman house, white, with green blinds, is set back from the
maple-and-elm-shaded street, guarded by a white picket fence. Between
the house and gate a green lawn was crossed by a gravelled walk, with
borders of phlox; beyond the borders, on either side, were flowering
shrubs, and at equal distances from the walk, circular beds of scarlet
tulips and yellow daffodils. Detached from the Penniman house, but still
in the same yard, was a smaller, one-storied house, also white, with
green blinds, tenanted by Dave Cowan and his twins, who--in Newbern
vernacular--mealed with Mrs. Penniman. It had been the Cowan home when
Dave married the Penniman cousin who had borne the twins. There was a
path worn in the grass between the two houses.
On the Penniman front porch the judge was throned in a wicker chair. He
was a nobly fronted old gentleman, with imposing head, bald at the top
but tastefully hung with pale, fluffy side curls. His face was wide and
full, smoothly shaven, his cheeks pink, his eyes a pure, pale blue. He
was clad in a rumpled linen suit the trousers of which were drawn well
up his plump legs above white socks and low black shoes, broad and loose
fitting. As the shadows had lengthened and the day cooled he abandoned a
palm-leaf fan he had been languidly waving. His face at the moment
glowed with animation, for he played over the deciding game in that
day's match at checkers by which, at the harness shop, he had vanquished
an acclaimed rival from over Higgston way. The fellow had been skilled
beyond the average, but supremacy was still with the Newbern champion.
So absorbed was he, achieving again that last bit of strategy by which
he had gained the place to capture two men and reach the enemy's king
row, that his soft-stepping daughter, who had come from the house, had
to address him twice.
"Have you had a good day, father?"
The judge was momentarily confused. He had to recall that his
invalidism, not his checker prowess, was in question. He regained his
presence of mind; he coughed feebly, reaching a hand tenderly back to a
point between his shoulder blades.
"Not one of my real bad days, Winona. I can't really say I've suffered.
Stuff that other cushion in back of me, will you? I got a new pain kind
of in this left shoulder--neuralgia, mebbe. But my sciatica ain't
troubled me--not too much."
Winona adjusted the cushion.
"You're so patient, father!"
"I try to be, Winona," which was simple truth.
A sufferer for years, debarred by obscure ailments from active
participation in our industrial strife, the judge, often for days at a
time, would not complain unless pressed to--quite as if he had forgotten
his pains. The best doctors disagreed about his case, none of them able
to say precisely what his maladies were. True, one city doctor, a
visiting friend of the Pennimans' family physician, had once gone
carefully over him, punching, prodding, listening, to announce that
nothing ailed the invalid; which showed, as the judge had said to his
face, that he was nothing but an impudent young squirt. He had never
revealed this parody of a diagnosis to his anxious family, who always
believed the city doctor had found something deadly that might at any
time carry off the patient sufferer.
The judge was also bitter about Christian Science, and could easily be
led to expose its falsity. He would wittily say it wasn't Christian and
wasn't science; merely the chuckleheadedness of a lot of women. This
because a local adept of the cult had told him, and--what was
worse--told Mrs. Penniman and Winona, that if he didn't quit thinking
he was an invalid pretty soon he would really have something the matter
with him.
And he had incurred another offensive diagnosis: Old Doc Purdy, the
medical examiner, whose sworn testimony had years before procured the
judge his pension as a Civil War veteran, became brutal about it. Said
Purdy: "I had to think up some things that would get the old cuss his
money and dummed if he didn't take it all serious and think he did have
'em!"
The judge had been obliged to abandon all thoughts of a career. Years
before he had been Newbern's justice of the peace, until a gang of
political tricksters defeated the sovereign will of the people. And
perhaps he would again have accepted political honours, but none had
been offered him. Still, the family was prosperous. For in addition to
the pension, Mrs. Penniman kept a neat card in one of the front windows
promising "Plain and Fancy Dressmaking Done Here," and Winona now taught
school.
Having adjusted the cushion, Winona paused before the cage of a parrot
on a stand at the end of the porch. The bird sidled over to her on stiff
legs, cocked upon her a leering, yellow eye and said in wheedling tones,
"Pretty girl, pretty girl!" But then it harshly screeched, "Ha, ha, ha,
ha, ha!" This laughter was discordant, cynical, derisive, as if the bird
relished a tasteless jest.
Winona went to the hammock and resumed an open book. Its title was
"Matthew Arnold--How to Know Him." She was getting up in Matthew Arnold
for a paper. Winona at twenty was old before she should have been. She
was small and dark, with a thin nose and pinched features. Her dark
hair, wound close to her small head, was pretty enough, and her dark
eyes were good, but she seemed to carry almost the years of her mother.
She was an earnest girl, severe in thought, concerned about her culture,
seeking to subdue a nature which she profoundly distrusted to an ideal
she would have described as one of elegance and refinement. The dress
she wore was one of her best--for an exemplary young man would call
that evening, bringing his choice silver flute upon which he would play
justly if not brilliantly to Winona's piano accompaniment--but it was
dull of tint, one of her mother's plain, not fancy, creations. Still
Winona felt it was daring, because the collar was low and sported a
fichu of lace. This troubled her, even as she renewed the earnest effort
to know Matthew Arnold. She doubtfully fingered at her throat a tiny
chain that supported a tiny pendant. She slipped the thing under the
neck of her waist. She feared that with her low neck--she thought of it
as low--the bauble would be flashy.
Mrs. Penniman came from the kitchen and sat on the porch steps. She was
much like Winona, except that certain professional touches of colour at
waist, neck, and wrists made her appear, in spirit at least, the younger
woman. There were times when Winona suffered herself to doubt her
mother's seriousness; times when the woman appeared a slave to levity.
She would laugh at things Winona considered no laughing matters, and her
sympathy with her ailing husband had come to be callous and matter of
fact, almost perfunctory. She longed, moreover, to do fancy dressmaking
for her child; and there was the matter of the silk stockings. The
Christmas before the too downright Dave Cowan, in a low spirit of
banter, had gifted Winona with these. They were of tan silk, and Dave
had challenged her to wear them for the good of her soul.
Winona had been quite unpleasantly shocked at Dave's indelicacy, but her
mother had been frivolous throughout the affair. Her mother said, too,
that she would like to wear silk stockings at all times. But Winona--she
spoke of the gift as hose--put the sinister things away at the bottom of
her third bureau drawer. Once, indeed, she had nearly nerved herself to
a public appearance in them, knowing that perfectly good women often did
this. That had been the day she was to read her paper on Early Greek
Sculpture at the Entre Nous Club. She had put them on with her new tan
pumps, but the effect had been too daring. She felt the ogling eyes.
The stockings had gone back to the third bureau drawer--to the
bottom--and never had her ankles flashed a silken challenge to a public
that might misunderstand.
Yet--and this it was that was making Winona old before her time--always
in her secret heart of hearts she did long abjectly to wear silk
stockings--all manner of sinful silken trifles. Evil yearnings like this
would sweep her. But she took them to be fruits of a natural depravity
that good women must fight. Thus far she had triumphed.
Mrs. Penniman now wielded the palm-leaf fan. She eyed her husband with
an almost hardened glance, then ran a professional eye over the lines of
Winona. Her head moved with quick little birdlike turnings. Her dark
hair was less orderly than Winona's, and--from her kitchen work--two
spots of colour burned high on her cheeks.
"Your locket's slipped inside your waist," she said, not dreaming that
Winona had in shame brought this about.
Winona, who would have been shamed again to explain this, withdrew the
bauble. The fond mother now observed the book above which her daughter
bent, twisting her neck to follow the title.
"Is it interesting?" she asked; and then: "The way to know a man--cook
for him."
Her daughter winced, suffering a swift picture of her too-light mother,
cooking for Mr. Arnold.
"I should think you'd pick out a good novel to read," went on her
mother. "That last one I got from the library--it's about a beautiful
woman that counted the world well lost for love."
Winona murmured indistinctly.
"She didn't--she didn't stop at anything," added the mother, brightly.
"Oh, Mother!"
"I don't care! The Reverend Mallett himself said that novels should be
read for an understanding of life--ever novels with a wholesome sex
interest. The very words he said!"
"Mother, Mother!" protested Winona with a quick glance at her father.
She doubted if any sex interest could be wholesome; and surely, with
both sexes present, the less said about such things the better. To her
relief the perilous topic was abandoned.
"I suppose you both heard the big news today."
Mrs. Penniman spoke ingenuously, but it was downright lying--no less.
She supposed they had not heard the big news. She was certain they had
not. Winona was attentive. Her mother's business of plain and fancy
dressmaking did not a little to make the acoustics of Newbern superior.
From her clients she gleaned the freshest chronicles of Newbern's social
life, many being such as one might safely repeat; many more, Winona
uncomfortably recalled, the sort no good woman would let go any further.
She hoped the imminent disclosure would not be of the latter class, yet
suddenly she wished to hear it even if it were. She affected to turn
with reluctance from her budding acquaintanceship with Matthew Arnold.
"It's the twins," began her mother with a look of pleased horror. "You
couldn't guess in all day what they've been up to."
"You may be sure Wilbur was the one to blame," put in Winona, quick to
defend the one most responsive to her lessons in faith, morals,
etiquette.
"Ought to be soundly trounced," declared the judge. "That's what I
always say."
"This is the worst yet," continued Mrs. Penniman.
She liked the suspense she had created. With an unerring gift for oral
narrative, she toyed with this. She must first tell how she got it.
"You know that georgette waist Mrs. Ed Seaver is having?"
"Have they done something awful?" Winona demanded. "I perfectly well
know it wasn't Merle's fault."
"Well, Mrs. Seaver came in about four o'clock for her final fitting,
and what do you think?"
"For mercy's sake!" pleaded Winona.
"And Ed Seaver had been to the barber shop to have his hair cut--he
always gets it cut the fifteenth of each month--well, he found out all
about it from Don Paley, that they'd had to send for to come to the
Whipple New Place to cut it neatly off after the way it had been sawed
off rough, and she told me word for word. Well, it's unbelievable, and
every one saying something ought to be done about it--you just never
would be able to guess!"
Winona snapped shut the volume so rich in promise and leaned forward to
face her mother desperately. Mrs. Penniman here coughed in a refined and
artificial manner as a final preliminary. The parrot instantly coughed
in the same manner, and--seeming to like it--again became Mrs. Penniman
in a series of mild, throaty preliminary coughs, as if it would
presently begin to tell something almost too good. The real tale had to
be suspended again for this.
"Well," resumed Mrs. Penniman, feeling that the last value had been
extracted from mere suspense, "anyway, it seems that this morning poor
little Patricia Whipple was going by the old graveyard, and the twins
jumped out and knocked her down and dragged her in there away from the
road and simply tore every stitch of clothes off her back and made her
dress up in Wilbur's clothes----"
"There!" gasped the horrified Winona. "Didn't I say it would be Wilbur?"
"And then what did they do but cut off her braid with a knife!"
"Wilbur's knife--Merle hasn't any."
"And the Lord knows what the little fiends would have done next, but
Juliana Whipple happened to be passing, and heard the poor child's
screams and took her away from them."
"That dreadful, dreadful Wilbur!" cried Winona.
"Reform school," spoke the judge, as if he uttered it from the bench.
"But something queer," went on Mrs. Penniman. "Juliana took the twins
home in the pony cart, with Wilbur wearing Patricia's dress--it's a
plaid gingham I made myself--and someone gave him a lot of money and let
him go, and they didn't give Merle any because Ed Seaver saw them on
River Street, and Wilbur had it all. And what did Patricia Whipple say
to Don Paley but that she was going to have one of the twins for her
brother, because no one else would get her a brother, and so she must.
But what would she want one of those little cutthroats for? That's what
puzzles me."
"Merle is not a cutthroat," said Winona with tightening lips. "He never
will be a cutthroat." She left all manner of permissible suspicions
about his brother.
"Well, it just beat me!" confessed her mother. "Maybe they've been
reading Wild West stories."
"Wilbur, perhaps," insisted Winona. "Merle is already very choice in his
reading."
"A puzzle, anyway--why, there they come!"
And the manner of their coming brought more bewilderment to the house of
Penniman. For the criminal Wilbur did not come shamed and slinking, but
with rather an uplift. Behind him gloomily trod the Merle twin. Even at
a distance he was disapproving, accusatory, put upon. It was to be seen
that he washed his hands of the evil.
"Whatever in the world--" began Mrs. Penniman, for Wilbur in the hollow
of his arm bore a forked branch upon which seemed to perch in all
confidence a free bird of the wilds.
"A stuffed bird!" said the peering Winona, and dispelled this illusion.
The twins entered the gate. Midway up the gravelled walk Wilbur Cowan
began a gurgling oration.
"I bet nobody can guess what I brought! Yes, sir--a beautiful present
for every one--that will make a new man of poor old Judge Penniman, and
this lovely orange--that's for Mrs. Penniman--and I bet Winona can't
guess what's wrapped up in this box for her--it's the most beautiful
album, and this first-class animal for my father, and it'll last a
lifetime if he takes care of it good; and I got me a dog to watch the
house." Breathless he paused.
"Spent all his money!" intoned Merle. "And he bought me this knife,
too."
He displayed it, but merely as a count in the indictment for criminal
extravagance. He had gone to the hammock to sit by Winona. He needed
her. He had been too long unconsidered.
The sputtering gift-bringer bestowed the orange upon Mrs. Penniman, the
album upon Winona, and the invigorator upon the now embarrassed judge.
"Thank you, Wilbur, dear!" Mrs. Penniman was first to recover her poise.
"Thanks ever so much," echoed Winona, doubtfully.
She must first know that he had come by this money righteously. The
judge adjusted spectacles to read the label on his gift.
"Thank you, my boy. The stuff may give me temporary relief."
He had felt affronted that any one could suppose one bottle of anything
would make a new man of him; and--inconsistently enough--affronted that
any one should suppose he needed to be made a new man of. He had not
liked the phrase at all.
"And now perhaps you will tell us----" began Winona, her lips again
tightening. But the Wilbur twin could not yet be brought down to mere
history.
"This is an awful fighting dog," he was saying. "He's called Frank, and
he eats them up. Yes, sir, he nearly et up that old Boodles dog just
now. He would of if I hadn't stopped him. He minds awful well."
"Spent all _our_ money!" declaimed Merle in a public-school voice, using
"our" for the first time since his defeat of the morning. Certain of
Winona's support, it had again become their money. "And cursing,
swearing, fighting, smoking!"
"Oh, Wilbur!" exclaimed the shocked Winona; yet there was dismay more
than rebuke in her tone, for she had brought the album to view. "If
you've been a bad boy perhaps I should not accept this lovely gift from
you. Remember--we don't yet know how you obtained all this money."
"Ho! I earned that money good! That old fat Mr. Whipple said I earned it
good. He said he wouldn't of done what I done----"
"Did, dear!"
"--wouldn't of did what I did for twice the money."
"And what was it you did?"
Winona spoke gently, as a friend. But Wilbur rubbed one bare foot
against and over the other. He was not going to tell that shameful
thing, even to these people.
"Oh, I didn't do much of anything," he muttered.
"But what was it?"
The judge interrupted.
"It says half a wineglassful before meals. Daughter, will you bring me
the wineglass?"
The Pennimans kept a wineglass. The judge found a corkscrew attached to
the bottle, and sipped his draft under the absorbed regard of the group.
"It feels like it might give some temporary relief," he admitted,
savoring the last drops.
"You go right down to the drug store and look at that picture; you'll
see then what it'll do for you," urged the donor.
"What else did the Whipples say to you?" wheedled Winona.
The Wilbur twin again hung embarrassed.
"Well--well, there's a cruel stepmother, but now she wasn't cruel to me.
She said I was a nice boy, and gave me back my pants."
"Gave you back--"
Winona enacted surprise.
"I had to have my pants, didn't I? I couldn't go out without any, could
I? And she took me to a pantry and give me a big hunk of cake with
raisins in it, and a big slice of apple pie, and a big glass of milk."
"I must say! And she never gave me a thing!" Merle's bitterness grew.
"And she kissed me twice, and--and said I was a nice boy."
"You already said that," reminded the injured brother.
"And she didn't act cruel to me once, even if she is a stepmother."
"But how did you come to be without your----"
Wilbur was again reprieved from her grilling. The Penniman cat, Mouser,
a tawny, tigerish beast, had leaped to the porch. With set eyes and
quivering tail it advanced crouchingly, one slow step at a time,
noiseless, sinister. Only when poised for its final spring upon the
helpless prey was it seen that Mouser stalked the blue jay on its perch.
Wilbur, with a cry of alarm, snatched the treasure from peril. Mouser
leaped to the porch railing to lick her lips in an evil manner.
"You will, will you?" Wilbur stormed at her. Yet he was pleased, too,
for Mouser's attempt was testimony to the bird's merit. "She thought it
was real," he said, proudly.
"But how did you come to have your clothes----" began Winona sweetly
once more, and again the twin was saved from shuffling answers.
The dog, Frank, sniffing up timidly at Mouser on the porch rail,
displeased her. From her perch she leaned down to curse him hissingly,
with arched back and swollen tail, a potent forearm with drawn claws
curving forward in menace.
"You will, will you?" demanded Wilbur again, freeing his legs from the
leash in which the dismayed dog had entwined them.
Frank now fell on his back with limp paws in air and simpered girlishly
up at his envenomed critic on the railing.
"We got to keep that old cat out the way. He eats 'em up--that's all he
does, eats 'em! It's a good thing I was here to make him mind me."
"But how did you come to have your clothes----" resumed Winona.
This time it was Dave Cowan who thwarted her with a blithe hail from
the gate. Winona gave it up. Merle had been striving to tell her what
she wished to know. Later she would let him.
* * * * *
Dave swaggered up the walk, a gay and gallant figure in his blue cutaway
coat, his waistcoat of most legible plaid, fit ground for the watch
chain of heavy golden links. He wore a derby hat and a fuming calabash
pipe, removing both for a courtly bow to the ladies. His yellow hair had
been plastered low on his brow, to be swept back each side of the part
in a gracious curve; his thick yellow moustache curled jauntily upward,
to show white teeth as he smiled. At first glance he was smartly
apparelled, but below the waist Dave always diminished rapidly in
elegance. His trousers were of another pattern from the coat, not too
accurate of fit, and could have been pressed to advantage, while the
once superb yellow shoes were tarnished and sadly worn. The man was
richly and variously scented. There were the basic and permanent aromas
of printer's ink and pipe tobacco; above these like a mist were the rare
unguents lately applied by Don Paley, the barber, and a spicy odour of
strong drink. As was not unusual on a Saturday night, Dave would have
passed some relaxing moments at the liquor saloon of Herman Vielhaber.
"I hope I see you well, duchess!"
This was for Mrs. Penniman, and caused her to bridle as she fancied a
saluted duchess might. It was the humour of Dave to suppose this lady a
peeress of the old régime, one who had led far too gay a life and, come
now to a dishonoured old age, was yet cynical and unrepentant. Winona
also he affected to believe an ornament of the old noblesse, a creature
of maddening beauty, but without heart, so that despairing suitors slew
themselves for her. His debased fancy would at times further have it
that Judge Penniman was Louis XVIII, though at this moment, observing
that the ladies were preoccupied with one of his sons, he paused by the
invalid and expertly from a corner of his mouth whispered the coarse
words, "Hello, Old Flapdoodle!" From some remnant of sex loyalty he
would not address the sufferer thus when his womenfolk could overhear,
but the judge could never be sure of the jester's discretion. Besides,
Dave was from day to day earnestly tutoring the parrot to say the base
words, and the judge knew that Polly, once master of them, would use no
discretion whatever. He glared at Dave Cowan in hearty but silent rage.
Dave turned from him to kneel at the feet of Winona.
"'A book of verses underneath the bow--'" he began.
Winona shuddered. She knew what was coming; dreadful, licentious stuff
from a so-called poet--far, far different from dear Tennyson, thought
Winona--who sang the joys of profligacy. Winona turned from the
recitationist.
"What? Repulsed again? Ah, well, there's always the river! Duchess, bear
witness, 'twas her coldness drove me to the rash act--she with her
beauty that maddens all be-holders!"
Winona was shocked, yet not unpleasantly, at these monstrous
implications. She dreaded to have him begin--and yet she would have him.
She tried to sign to him now that matters were to the fore too grave for
clumsy fooling, but he only took the book from her hand to read its
title.
"'Matthew Arnold--How to Know Him,'" he read. "Ah, yes! Ah, yes! But is
he worth knowing?"
"Oh!" exclaimed Winona, wincing.
"No respect for God or man," mumbled the judge, meaning that a creature
capable of calling him Old Flapdoodle could be expected to ask if
Matthew Arnold were worth knowing.
The Wilbur twin here thrust the blue jay upon his father with cordial
words. Dave professed to be entranced with the gift. It appeared that he
had always longed for a stuffed blue jay. He curled a finger to it and
called, "Tweet! Tweet!" a bit of comedy poignantly relished by the donor
of the bird.
His father now ceremoniously conducted Mrs. Penniman to what he spoke
of as the banqueting hall. He made almost a minuet of their progress.
Under one arm he carried his bird to place it on the table, where later
during the meal he would convulse the Wilbur twin by affecting to feed
it bits of bread. Winona still hungered for details of the day's
tragedy, but Dave must talk of other things. He talked far too much, the
judge believed. He had just made the invalid uncomfortable by disclosing
that the Ajax Invigorator had an alcoholic content of at least
fifty-five per cent. He said that for this reason it would afford
temporary relief to almost any one. He added that it would be cheap
stuff, and harmful, and that if a man wished to drink he ought to go
straight to Vielhaber's, where they kept an excellent line of Ajax
Invigorators and sold them under their right names. The judge said
"Stuff and nonsense" to this, but the ladies believed, for despite his
levity Dave Cowan knew things. He read books and saw the world. Only the
Wilbur twin still had faith in the invigorator. He had seen the picture.
You couldn't get round that picture.
Having made the judge uncomfortable, Dave rendered Winona so by a brief
lecture upon organic evolution, with the blue jay as his text. He said
it had taken four hundred and fifty million years for man to progress
thus far from the blue-jay stage--if you could call it progress, the
superiority of man's brain to the jay's being still inconsiderable.
Winona was uncomfortable, because she had never been able to persuade
herself that we had come up from the animals, and in any event it was
not talk for the ears of innocent children. She was relieved when the
speaker strayed into the comparatively blameless field of astronomy,
telling of suns so vast that our own sun became to them but a pin point
of light, and of other worlds out in space peopled with beings like Mrs.
Penniman and Winona and the judge, though even here Winona felt that the
lecturer was too daring. The Bible said nothing about these other worlds
out in space. But then Dave had once, in the post office, argued against
religion itself in the most daring manner, with none other than the
Reverend Mallett.
It was not until the meal ended and they were again on the porch in the
summer dusk that Winona made any progress in her criminal
investigations. There, while Dave Cowan played his guitar and sang
sentimental ballads to Mrs. Penniman--these being among the supposed
infirmities of the profligate duchess--Winona drew the twins aside and
managed to gain a blurred impression of the day's tremendous events. She
never did have the thing clearly. The Merle twin was eager to tell too
much, the other determined to tell too little. But the affair had
plainly been less nefarious than reported by Don Paley to Ed Seaver. The
twins persisted in ignoring the social aspects of their adventure. To
them it was a thing of pure finance.
Winona had to give it up at last, for Lyman Teaford came with his flute
in its black case. Dave Cowan finished "In the Gloaming," brazenly,
though it was not thought music by either Lyman or Winona, who would
presently dash into the "Poet and Peasant" overture. The twins begged to
be let to see Lyman assemble his flute, and Dave overlooked the process
with them. Lyman deftly joined the various sections of shining metal.
"He looks like a plumber," said Dave. The twins giggled, but Winona
frowned.
"No respect for God or man," mumbled the judge from his wicker chair.