In the Penniman home it was not merely Sunday morning; it was Sabbath
morning. Throughout the house a subdued bustling, decorous and solemn; a
hushed, religious hurry of preparation for church. In the bathroom Judge
Penniman shaved his marbled countenance with tender solicitude, fitting
himself to adorn a sanctuary. In other rooms Mrs. Penniman and Winona
arrayed themselves in choice raiment for behoof of the godly; in each
were hurried steppings, as from closet to mirror; shrill whisperings of
silken drapery as it fell into place. In the parlour the Merle twin sat
reading an instructive book. With unfailing rectitude he had been the
first to don Sabbath garments, and now lacked merely his shoes, which
were being burnished by his brother in the more informal atmosphere of
the woodshed, to which the Sabbath strain of preparation did not
penetrate.
It was the Wilbur twin's weekly task to do the shoes of himself and
brother and those of the judge. No one could have told precisely why the
task fell to him, and he had never thought to question. The thing simply
was. Probably Winona, asked to wrestle with the problem, would have
urged that Merle was always the first one dressed, and should not be
expected to submit his Sunday suit to the hazards of this toil. She
would have added, perhaps, that anyway it was more suitable work for
Wilbur, the latter being of a rougher spiritual texture. Also, Merle
could be trusted to behave himself in the Penniman parlour, not touching
the many bibelots there displayed, or disarranging the furniture, while
the Wilbur twin would not only touch and disarrange, but pry into and
handle and climb and altogether demoralize. In all the parlour there
was but one object for which he had a seemly respect--the vast painting
of a recumbent lion behind bars. It was not an ordinary picture, such as
may be seen in galleries, for the bars guarding the fierce beast were
real bars set into the frame, a splendid conceit that the Wilbur twin
never tired of regarding. If you were alone in the sacred room you could
go right up to the frame and feel the actual bars and put your hand
thrillingly through them to touch the painted king of the jungle. But
the Merle twin could sit alone in the presence of this prized art
treasure and never think of touching it. He would sit quietly and read
his instructive book and not occasion the absent Winona any anxiety.
Wherefore the Wilbur twin each Sabbath morning in the woodshed polished
three pairs of shoes, and not uncheerfully. He would, in truth, much
rather be there at his task than compelled to sit in the parlour with
his brother present to tell if he put inquiring fingers into the lion's
cage.
He had finished the shoes of his brother and himself, not taking too
much pains about the heels, and now laboured at the more considerable
footgear of the judge. The judge's shoes were not only broad, but of a
surface abounding in hills and valleys. As Dave Cowan said, the judge's
feet were lumpy. But the Wilbur twin was conscientious here, and the
judge's heels would be as resplendent as the undulating toes. The task
had been appreciably delayed by Frank, the dog, who, with a quaint
relish for shoe blacking, had licked a superb polish from one shoe while
the other was under treatment. His new owner did not rebuke him. He
conceived that Frank had intelligently wished to aid in the work, and
applauded him even while securing the shined shoes from his further
assistance.
But one pagan marred this chastened Sabbath harmony of preparation. In
the little house Dave Cowan lolled lordly in a disordered bed, smoked
his calabash pipe beside a disordered breakfast tray, fetched him by the
Wilbur twin, and luxuriated in the merely Sunday--and not
Sabbath--edition of a city paper shrieking with black headlines and
spectacular with coloured pictures; a pleasing record of crimes and
disasters and secrets of the boudoir, the festal diversions of the
opulent, the minor secrets of astronomy, woman's attire, baseball, high
art, and facial creams. As a high priest of the most liberal of all
arts, Dave scanned the noisy pages with a cynical and professional eye,
knowing that none of the stuff had acquired any dignity or power to
coerce human belief until mere typesetters like himself had crystallized
it. Not for Dave Cowan was the printed word of sacred authority. He had
set up too much copy. But he was pleased, nevertheless, thus to while
and doze away a beautiful Sabbath morning that other people made rather
a trial of.
Having finished the last of the judge's shoes, the Wilbur twin took them
and the shoes of Merle to their owners, then hastened with his own to
the little house where he must dress in his own Sunday clothes, wash his
hands with due care--they would be doubtingly inspected by Winona--and
put soap on his hair to make it lie down. Merle's hair would lie
politely as combed, but his own hair owned no master but soap. Lacking
this, it stood out and up in wicked disorder--like the hair of a rowdy,
Winona said.
The rebellious stuff was at last plastered deceitfully to his skull as
if a mere brush had smoothed it, and with a final survey, to assure
himself that he had forgotten none of those niceties of the toilet that
Winona would insist upon, he took his new straw hat and went again to
the Penniman house. For the moment he was in flawless order, as neat, as
compactly and accurately accoutred as the Merle twin, to whom this
effect came without effort. But it would be so only for a few fleeting
moments. He mournfully knew this, and so did Winona. Within five blocks
from home and still five blocks from the edifice of worship, while Merle
appeared as one born to Sunday clothes and shined shoes and a new hat,
the Wilbur twin would be one to whom Sabbath finery was exotic and
unwelcome. The flawless lustre of his shoes would be dulled, even though
he walked sedately the safe sidewalk; his broad collar and blue
polka-dotted cravat would be awry, one stocking would be down, his
jacket yawning, all his magnificence seeming unconquerably alien. Winona
did him the justice to recognize that this disarray was due to no
wilfulness of its victim. He was helpless against a malign current of
his being.
He held himself stiff in the parlour until the Pennimans came rustling
down the stairway. He could exult in a long look at the benignant lion
back of real bars, but, of course, he could not now reach up to touch
the bars. It would do something to his clothes, even if the watchful and
upright Merle had not been there to report a transgression of the rules.
Merle also stood waiting, his hat nicely in one hand.
The judge descended the stairs, monumental in black frock coat, gray
trousers, and the lately polished shoes that were like shining relief
maps of a hill country. He carried a lustrous silk hat, which he now
paused to make more lustrous, his fingers clutching a sleeve of his coat
and pulling it down to make a brush. The hat was the only item of the
judge's regal attire of which the Wilbur twin was honestly envious--it
was so beautiful, so splendid, so remote. He had never even dared to
touch it. He could have been left alone in the room with it, and still
would have surveyed it in all respect from a proper distance.
Mrs. Penniman came next, rustling in black silk and under a flowered hat
that Winona secretly felt to be quite too girlish. Then Winona from the
door of her room above called to the twins, and they ascended the
stairway for a last rite before the start for church, the bestowal of
perfume upon each. Winona stood in the door of her room, as each Sunday
she stood at this crisis, the cut-glass perfume bottle in hand. The
twins solemnly approached her, and upon the white handkerchief of each
she briefly inverted the bottle. The scent enveloped them delectably as
the handkerchiefs were replaced in the upper left pockets, folded
corners protruding correctly. As Wilbur turned away Winona swiftly
moistened a finger tip in the precious stuff and drew it across the
pale brow of Merle. It was a furtive tribute to his inherent social
superiority.
Winona, in her own silk--not black, but hardly less severe--and in a hat
less girlish than her mother's, rustled down the stairs after them.
Speech was brief and low-toned among the elders, as befitted the high
moment. The twins were solemnly silent. Amid the funereal gloom, broken
only by a hushed word or two from Winona or her mother, the judge
completed his fond stroking of the luminous hat, raised it slowly, and
with both hands adjusted it to his pale curls. Then he took up his
gold-headed ebony cane and stepped from the dusk of the parlour into the
light of day, walking uprightly in the pride of fine raiment and
conscious dignity. Mrs. Penniman walked at his side, not unconscious
herself of the impressive mien of her consort.
Followed Winona and Merle, the latter bearing her hymn book and at some
pains keeping step with his companion. Behind them trailed the Wilbur
twin, resolving, as was his weekly rule, to keep himself neat through
church and Sunday-school--yet knowing in his heart it could not be done.
Already he could feel his hair stiffening as the coating of soap dried
upon it. Pretty soon the shining surface would crack and disorder ensue.
What was the use? As he walked carefully now he inhaled rich scent from
the group--Winona's perfume combining but somehow not blending with a
pungent, almost vivid, aroma of moth balls from the judge's frock coat.
They met or passed other family groups, stiffly armoured for the weekly
penance to a bewildering puzzle of mortality. Ceremonious greetings were
exchanged with these. The day was bright and the world all fair, but
there could be no levity, no social small talk, while this grim business
was on. They reached the white house of worship, impressive under its
heaven-pointing steeple, and passed within its portals, stepping softly
to the accompaniment of those silken whisperings, with now and again the
high squeak of new boots whose wearers, profaning the stillness, would
appear self-conscious and annoyed, though as if silently protesting
that they were blameless.
Thus began an hour of acute mental distress for the Wilbur twin. He sat
tightly between Mrs. Penniman and the judge. There was no free movement
possible. He couldn't even juggle one foot backward and forward without
correction. The nervous energy thus suppressed rushed to all the surface
of his body and made his skin tingle maddeningly. He felt each hair on
his head as it broke away from the confining soap. Something was inside
his collar, and he couldn't reach for it; there was a poignant itching
between his shoulder blades, and this could receive no proper treatment.
He boiled with dumb, helpless rage, having to fight this wicked unrest.
He never doubted its wickedness, and considered himself forever shut out
from those rewards that would fall to the righteous who loved church and
could sit still there without jiggling or writhing or twisting or
scratching.
He was a little diverted from his tortures by the arrival of the
Whipples. From the Penniman pew he could glance across to a side pew and
observe a line of repeated Whipple noses, upon which for some moments he
was enabled to speculate forgetfully. Once--years ago, it seemed to
him--he had heard talk of the Whipple nose. This one had the Whipple
nose, or that one did not have the Whipple nose; and it had then been
his understanding that the Whipple family possessed but one nose in
common; sometimes one Whipple had it; then another Whipple would have
it. At the time this had seemed curious, but in no way anomalous. He had
readily pictured a Whipple nose being worn now by one and now by another
of this family. He had visualized it as something that could be handed
about. Later had come the disappointing realization that each Whipple
had a complete nose at all times for his very own; that the phrase by
which he had been misled denoted merely the possession of a certain
build of nose by Whipples.
But even this simple phenomenon offered some distraction from his
present miseries. He could glance along the line of Whipple noses and
observe that they were, indeed, of a markedly similar pattern. It was,
as one might say, a standardized nose, raised by careful selection
through past generations of Whipples to the highest point of efficiency;
for ages yet to come the demands of environment, howsoever capricious,
would probably dictate no change in its structural details. It sufficed.
It was, moreover, a nose of good lines, according to conventional
canons. It was shapely, and from its high bridge jutted forward with
rather a noble sweep of line to the thin, curved nostrils. The high
bridge was perhaps the detail that distinguished it from most good
noses. It seemed to begin to be a nose almost from the base of the brow.
In a world of all Whipple noses this family would have been remarked for
its beauty. In one of less than Whipple noses--with other less claimant
designs widely popularized--it might be said that the Whipple face would
be noted rather for distinction than beauty.
In oblique profile the Wilbur twin could glance across the fronts in
turn of Harvey D. Whipple, of Gideon Whipple, his father; of Sharon
Whipple, his uncle; and of Juliana Whipple, sole offspring of Sharon.
The noses were alike. One had but to look at Miss Juliana to know that
in simple justice this should have been otherwise. She might have kept a
Whipple nose--Whipple in all essentials--without too pressing an
insistence upon bulk. But it had not been so. Her nose was as utterly
Whipple as any. They might have been interchanged without detection.
The Wilbur twin stared and speculated upon and mildly enjoyed this
display, until a species of hypnotism overtook him, a mercifully
deadening inertia that made him slumberous and almost happy. He could
keep still at last, and be free from the correcting hand of Mrs.
Penniman or the warning prod of the judge's elbow. He dozed in a smother
of applied godliness. He was delighted presently to note with an
awakening start that the sermon was well under way. He heard no word of
this. He knew only that a frowning old gentleman stood in a high place
and scolded about something. The Wilbur twin had no notion what his
grievance might be; was sensible only of his heated aspect, his activity
in gesture, and the rhythm of his phrases.
This influence again benumbed him to forgetfulness, so that during the
final prayer he was dramatizing a scene in which three large and savage
dogs leaped upon Frank and Frank destroyed them--ate them up. And when
he stood at last for the doxology one of his feet had veritably gone to
sleep, the one that had been cramped back under the seat, so that he
stumbled and drew unwelcome attention to himself while the foot tingled
to wakefulness.
The ever-tractable Merle had been attentive to the sermon, had sung
beautifully, and was still immaculate of garb, while the Wilbur twin
emerged from the ordeal in rank disorder, seeming to have survived a
scuffle in which efforts had been made to wrench away his Sunday clothes
and to choke him with his collar and cravat. And the coating of soap had
played his hair false. It stood out behind and stood up in front, not
with any system, but merely here and there.
"You are a perfect sight," muttered Winona to him. "I don't see how you
do it." But neither did the offender.
With a graciously relaxed tension the freed congregation made a
leisurely progress to the doors of the church; many lingered here in
groups for greetings and light exchanges. It was here that the Penniman
group coalesced with the Whipple group, a circumstance that the trailing
Wilbur noted with alarm. The families did not commonly affiliate, and
the circumstance boded ominously. It could surely not be without
purpose. The Wilbur twin's alarm was that the Whipple family had
regretted its prodigality of the day before and was about to demand its
money back. He lurked in the shadowy doorway.
The Whipples were surrounding Merle with every sign of interest. They
shook hands with him. They seemed to appraise him as if he were
something choice on exhibition at a fair. Harvey D. was showing the most
interest, bending above the exhibit in apparently light converse. But
the Wilbur twin knew all about Harvey D. He was the banker and wore a
beard. He was to be seen on week days as one passed the First National
Bank, looking out through slender bars--exactly as the Penniman lion
did--upon a world that wanted money, but couldn't have it without some
good reason. He had not been present when the Whipple money was so
thoughtlessly loosened, and he would be just the man to make a fuss
about it now. He would want to take it back and put it behind those bars
in the bank where no one could get it. But he couldn't ever have it
back, because it was spent. Still, he might do something with the
spender.
The Wilbur twin slunk farther into friendly shadows, and not until the
groups separated and the four Whipples were in their waiting carriage
did he venture into the revealing sunlight. But no one paid him any
attention. The judge and Mrs. Penniman walked up the shaded street, for
the Sunday dinner must be prepared. Winona and the Merle twin, both
flushed from the recent social episode, turned back to the church to
meet and ignore him.
"Fortune knocks once at every one's door," Winona was mysteriously
saying.
The Wilbur twin knew this well enough. The day before it had knocked at
his door and found him in.
There was still Sunday-school to be endured, but he did not regard this
as altogether odious. It was not so smothering. The atmosphere was less
strained. One's personality could come a bit to the front without
incurring penalties, and one met one's own kind on a social
plane--subject to discipline, it was true, but still mildly enjoyable.
It was his custom to linger here until the classes gathered, but to-day
the Whipple pony cart was driven up by the Whipple stepmother and the
girl with her hair cut off. Apparently no one made these two go to
church, but they had come to Sunday-school. And the Wilbur twin fled
within at sight of them. The pony cart, vehicle in which he had been
made a public mock, was now a sickening sight to him.
Sunday-school was even less of a trial to him than usual. The twins
were in the class of Winona, and Winona taught her class to-day with
unwonted unction; but the Wilbur twin was pestered with few questions
about the lesson. She rather singled Merle out and made him an
instructive example to the rest of the class, asking Wilbur but twice,
and then in sheerly perfunctory routine: "And what great lesson should
we learn from this?"
Neither time did he know what great lesson we should learn from this,
and stammered his ignorance pitiably, but Winona, in the throes of some
mysterious prepossession, forgot to reprove him, and merely allowed the
more gifted Merle to purvey the desired information. So the Wilbur twin
was practically free to wriggle on his hard chair, to exchange noiseless
greetings with acquaintances in other classes, and to watch Lyman
Teaford, the superintendent, draw a pleasing cartoon of the lesson with
coloured chalk on a black-board, consisting chiefly of a rising yellow
sun with red rays, which was the sun of divine forgiveness Once the
Wilbur twin caught the eye of the Whipple girl--whose bonnet hid her
cropped hair--and she surprisingly winked at him. He did not wink back.
Even to his liberal mind, it did not seem right to wink in a
Sunday-school.
When at last they all sang "Bringing in the Sheaves," and were ably
dismissed by Lyman Teaford, who could be as solemn here as he was gay in
a parlour with his flute, Winona took the Merle twin across the room to
greet the Whipple stepmother and the Whipple girl. Wilbur regarded the
scene from afar. Winona seemed to be showing off the Merle twin, causing
him to display all his perfect manners, including a bow lately acquired.
The Wilbur twin felt no slight in this. He was glad enough to be left
out of Winona's manoeuvres, for he saw that they were manoeuvres and
that Winona was acting from some large purpose. Unless it wanted its
money back, the Whipple family had no meaning for him; it was merely
people with the Whipple nose, though, of course, the stepmother did not
have this. He paused only to wonder if the girl would have it when she
grew up--she now boasted but the rudiments of any nose whatsoever--and
dismissed the tribe from his mind.
He waited for Winona and Merle a block up the street from the church.
Winona was silent with importance, preoccupied, grave, and yet uplifted.
Not until they reached the Penniman gate did she issue from this
abstraction to ask the Wilbur twin rather severely what lesson he had
learned from the morning sermon. The Wilbur twin, with immense
difficulty, brought her to believe that he had not heard a word of the
sermon. This was especially incredible, because it had dealt with the
parable of the prodigal son who spent all his substance in riotous
living. One would have thought, said Winona, that this lesson would have
come home to one who had so lately followed the same bad course, and she
sought now to enlighten the offender.
"And he had to eat with the pigs when his money was all gone," Merle
submitted in an effort to aid Winona.
But the Wilbur twin's perverse mind merely ran to the picture of fatted
calf, though without relish--he did not like fat meat.
It was good to be back in a human atmosphere once more, where he could
hear his father's quips. The Penniman Sunday dinner was based notably on
chicken, as were all other Sunday dinners in Newbern, and his father,
when he entered the house, was already beginning the gayety by pledging
Mrs. Penniman in a wineglass of the Ajax Invigorator. He called it ruby
liquor and said that, taken in moderation, it would harm no one, though
he estimated that as few as three glasses would cause people to climb
trees like a monkey.
The Wilbur twin was puzzled by this and would have preferred that his
present be devoted solely to making a new man of Judge Penniman, but he
laughed loyally with his father, and rejoiced when Mrs. Penniman, in the
character of the abandoned duchess, put her own lips to the glass at his
father's urging. The judge did not enter into this spirit of foolery,
resenting, indeed, that a sound medicinal compound should be thus
impugned. And Winona was even more severe. Not for her to-day were jests
about Madame la Marquise and her heart of adamant. Dave Cowan tried a
few of these without result.
Winona was still silent with importance, or spoke cryptically, and she
lavished upon the Merle twin such attention as she could give from her
own mysterious calculations. One might have gathered that she was
beholding the Merle twin in some high new light. The Wilbur twin ate
silently and as unobtrusively as he could, for table manners were
especially watched by Winona on Sunday. Not until the blackberry pie did
he break into speech, and even then, it appeared, not with the utmost
felicity. His information that these here blackberries had been picked
off the grave of some old Jonas Whipple up in the burying ground caused
him to be regarded coldly by more than one of those about the table; and
Winona wished to be told how many times she had asked him not to say
"these here." Of course he couldn't tell her.
Dinner over, it appeared that Winona would take Merle with her to call
upon poor old Mrs. Dodwell, who had been bedridden for twenty years, but
was so patient with it all. She loved to have Merle sit by her bedside
of a Sunday and tell of the morning's sermon. They would also take her a
custard. The Wilbur twin was not invited upon this excursion, but his
father winked at him when it was mentioned and he was happy. He could in
no manner have edified the afflicted Mrs. Dodwell, and the wink meant
that he would go with his father for a walk over the hills--perhaps to
the gypsy camp. So he winked back at his father, being no longer in
Sunday-school, and was impatient to be off.
In the little house he watched from a window until Winona and Merle had
gone on their errand of mercy--Merle carrying nicely the bowl of custard
swathed in a napkin--and thereupon heartily divested himself of shoes
and stockings. Winona, for some reason she could never make apparent to
him, believed that boys could not decently go barefoot on the Lord's
Day. He did not wish to affront her, but neither would he wear shoes
and stockings with no one to make him. His bare feet rejoiced at the
cool touch of the grass as he waited in the front yard for his father.
He would have liked to change his Sunday clothes for the old ones of a
better feel, but this even he felt would be going too far. You had to
draw the line somewhere.
His father came out, lighting his calabash pipe. He wore a tweed cap now
in place of the formal derby, but he was otherwise attired as on the
previous evening, in the blue coal and vivid waistcoat, the inferior
trousers, and the undesirable shoes. As they went down the street under
shading elms the dog, Frank, capered at the end of his taut leash.
They went up Fair Street to reach the wooded hills beyond the town. The
street was still and vacant. The neat white houses with green blinds set
back in their flowered yards would be at this hour sheltering people who
had eaten heavily of chicken for dinner and now dozed away its benign
effects. Even song birds had stilled their pipings, and made but brief
flights through the sultry air.
Dave Cowan sauntered through the silence in a glow of genial tolerance
for the small town, for Dave knew cities. In Newbern he was but a merry
transient; indeed, in all those strange cities he went off to he was but
a transient. So frequent his flittings, none could claim him for its
own. He had the air of being in the world itself, but a transient, a
cheerful and observant explorer finding entertainment in the manners and
customs of a curious tribe, its foibles, conceits, and quaint standards
of value--since the most of them curiously adhered to one spot even
though the round earth invited them to wander.
Sometimes Dave lingered in Newbern--to the benefit of the _Weekly
Advance_--for as long as three months. Sometimes he declared he would
stay but a day and stayed long; sometimes he declared he would stay a
long time and stayed but a day. He was a creature happily pliant to the
rule of all his whims. He never bothered to know why he dropped into
Newbern, nor bothered to know why he left. On some morning like other
mornings, without plan, he would know he was going and go, stirred by
some vagrant longing for a strange city--and it was so easy to go. He
was unencumbered with belongings. He had no troublesome packing to do,
and took not even the smallest of bags in his farings forth. Unlike the
twins, Dave had no Sunday clothes. What clothes he had he wore, very
sensibly, it seemed to him. He had but to go on and on, equipped with
his union card and his printer's steel rule, the sole machinery of his
trade, and where he would linger he was welcome, for as long as he chose
and at a wage ample for his few needs, to embalm the doings of a queer
world in type. Little wonder he should always obey the wander-bidding.
They passed a place where the head of the clan, having dined, had been
overtaken with lethargy and in a hammock on his porch was asleep in a
public and noisy manner.
"Small-town stuff!" murmured Dave, amiably contemptuous.
The Wilbur twin could never understand why his father called Newbern a
small town. They came to the end of Fair Street, where the white houses
dwindled into open country. The road led away from the river and climbed
the gentle slope of West Hill. The Wilbur twin had climbed that slope
the day before under auspices that he now recalled with disgust. Beyond,
at the top of the hill, its chimneys lifted above the trees and its red
walls showing warmly through the cool green of its shading foliage, was
the Whipple New Place. To the left, across the western end of the little
town and capping another hill, was the Whipple Old Place, where dwelt
Sharon Whipple and his daughter, Juliana. The walls of the Whipple Old
Place were more weathered, of a duller red. The two places looked down
upon the town quite as castles of old looked down upon their
feudatories.
"I was right inside that house yesterday," said the Wilbur twin,
pointing to the Whipple New Place and boasting a little--he would not
have to reveal the dreadful details of his entry. "Right inside of it,"
he added to make sure that his father would get all his importance. But
the father seemed not enough impressed.
"You'll probably go into better houses than that some day," he merely
said, and added: "You learn a good trade like mine and you can always go
anywhere; always make your good money and be more independent than
Whipples or even kings in their palaces. Remember that, Sputterboy."
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
His father never addressed the Merle twin by any but his rightful name,
nor did he ever address the other by the one the dead mother had affixed
to him, miscalling him by a number of titles, among which were
Sputterboy, Gig, Doctor, and Bill.
Before ascending quite to the Whipple New Place they left the dusty road
for a path that led over a lawnlike stretch of upland, starred with
buttercups and tiny anemones, and inhabited by a colony of gophers that
instantly engaged Frank, the dog, now free of his leash, in futile
dashes. They stood erect, with languidly drooped paws, until he was too
near; then they were inexplicably not there. Frank at length divined
that they unfairly achieved these disappearances by descending into
caverns beneath the surface of the earth. At first, with frantic claws
and eager squeals, he tore at the entrances to these until the prey
appeared at exits farther on, only to repeat the disappearance when
dashed at. Frank presently saw the chase to be hopeless. It was no good
digging for something that wouldn't be there.
"There's life for you, Doctor," said Dave Cowan. "Life has to live on
life, humans same as dogs. Life is something that keeps tearing itself
down and building itself up again; everybody killing something else and
eating it. Do you understand that?"
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur, believing he did. Dogs killed gophers if they
caught them, and human beings killed chickens for Sunday dinners.
"Humans are the best killers of all," said Dave. "That's the reason
they came up from monkeys, and got civilized so they wear neckties and
have religion and post offices and all such."
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
They climbed to a green height and reclined on the cool sward in the
shade of a beech tree. Here they could pick out the winding of the quick
little river between its green banks far below, and look across the
roofs of slumbrous Newbern. The Wilbur twin could almost pick out the
Penniman house. Then he looked up, and low in the sky he surprisingly
beheld the moon, an orb of pale bronze dulled from its night shine.
Never before had he seen the moon by day. He had supposed it was in the
sky only at night. So his father lectured now on astronomy and the
cosmos. It seemed that the moon was always there, or about there, a
lonesome old thing, because there was no life on it. Dave spoke
learnedly, for his Sunday paper had devoted a page to something of this
sort.
"Everything is electricity or something," said Dave, "and it crackles
and works on itself until it makes star dust, and it shakes this
together till it makes lumps, and they float round, and pretty soon
they're big lumps like the moon and like this little ball of star dust
we're riding on--and there are millions of them out there all round and
about, some a million times bigger than this little one, and they all
whirl and whirl, the little ones whirling round the big ones and the big
ones whirling round still bigger ones, dancing and swinging and going
off to some place that no one knows anything about; and some are old and
have lost their people; and some are too young to have any people yet;
but millions like this one have people, and on some they are a million
years older than we are, and know everything that it'll take us a
million years to find out; but even they haven't begun to really know
anything--compared with what they don't know. They'll have to go on
forever finding out things about what it all means. Do you understand
that, Bill?"
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
"Do you understand how people like us get on these whirling lumps?"
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
"How do they?"
"No, sir," said Wilbur.
"Well, it's simple enough. This star dust shakes together, and pretty
soon some of it gets to be one chemical and some of it gets to be
another, like water and salt and lime and phosphorus and stuff like
that, and it gets together in little combinations and it makes little
animals, so little you couldn't see them, and they get together and make
bigger animals, and pretty soon they have brains and stomachs--and there
you are. This electricity or something that shook the star dust together
and made the chemicals, and shook the chemicals together and made the
animals--well, it's fierce stuff. It wants to find out all about itself.
It keeps making animals with bigger brains all the time, so it can
examine itself and write books about itself--but the animals have to be
good killers, or something else kills them. This electricity that makes
'em don't care which kills which. It knows the best killer will have the
best brain in the long run; that's all it cares about. It's a good
sporty scheme, all right. Do you understand that, Doctor?"
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
"Everything's got a fair chance to kill; this power shows no favours to
anything. If gophers could kill dogs it would rather have gophers; when
microbes kill us it will rather have microbes than people. It just wants
a winner and don't care a snap which it is."
"Yes, sir."
"Of course, now, you hear human people swell and brag and strut round
about how they are different from the animals and have something they
call a soul that the animals haven't got, but that's just the natural
conceit of this electricity or something before it has found out much
about itself. Not different from the animals, you ain't. This tree I'm
leaning against is your second or third cousin. Only difference, you
can walk and talk and see. Understand?"
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur. "Couldn't we go up to the gypsy camp now?"
Dave refilled the calabash pipe, lighted it, and held the match while it
burned out.
"That fire came from the sun," he said. "We're only burning matches
ourselves--burning with a little fire from the sun. Pretty soon it
flickers out."
"It's just over this next hill, and they got circus wagons and a fire
where they cook their dinners, right outdoors, and fighting roosters,
and tell your fortune."
Dave rose.
"Of course I don't say I know it all yet. There's a catch in it I
haven't figured out. But I'm right as far as I've gone. You can't go
wrong if you take the facts and stay by 'em and don't read books that
leave the facts to one side, like most books do."
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur, "and they sleep inside their wagons and I wish
we had a wagon like that and drove round the country and lived in it."
"All right," said his father. "Stir your stumps."
They followed the path that led up over another little hill winding
through clumps of hazel brush and a sparse growth of oak and beech. From
the summit of this they could see the gypsy camp below them, in an open
glade by the roadside. It was as the Wilbur twin had said: there were
gayly-painted wagons--houses on wheels--and a campfire and tethered
horses and the lolling gypsies themselves. About the outskirts loafed a
dozen or so of the less socially eligible of Newbern. Above a fire at
the camp centre a kettle simmered on its pothook, being stirred at this
moment by a brown and aged crone in frivolous-patterned calico, who wore
gold hoops in her ears and bangles at her neck and bracelets of silver
on her arms--bejewelled, indeed, most unbecomingly for a person of her
years.
The Wilbur twin would have lingered on the edge of the glade with other
local visitors, a mere silent observer of this delightful life; he had
not dreamed of being accepted as a social equal by such exalted beings.
But his father stalked boldly through the outer ring of spectators to
the camp's centre and genially hailed the aged woman, who, on first
looking up from her cookery, held out a withered palm for the silver
that should buy him secrets of his future.
But Dave Cowan merely preened his beautiful yellow moustache at her and
said, "How's business, Mother?" Whereupon she saw that Dave was not a
villager to be wheedled by her patter. She recognized him, indeed, as
belonging like herself to the freemasonry of them that know men and
cities, and she spoke to him as one human to another.
"Business been pretty rotten here," she said as she stirred the kettle's
contents. "Oh, we made two-three pretty good horse trades--nothing much.
We go on to a bigger town to-morrow."
A male gypsy in corduroy trousers and scarlet sash and calico shirt open
on his brown throat came to the fire now, and the Wilbur twin admiringly
noted that his father greeted this rare being, too, as an equal. The
gypsy held beneath an arm a trim young gamecock feathered in rich browns
and reds, with a hint of black, and armed with needle-pointed spurs. He
stroked the neck of the bird and sat on his haunches with Dave before
the fire to discuss affairs of the road; for he, too, divined at a
glance that Dave was here but a gypsy transient, even though he spoke a
different lingo.
The Wilbur twin sat also on his haunches before the fire, and thrilled
with pride as his father spoke easily of distant strange cities that the
gypsies also knew; cities of the North where summer found them, and
cities of the South to which they fared in winter. He had always been
proud of his father, but never so proud as now, when he sat there
talking to real gypsies as if they were no greater than any one. He was
quite ashamed when the gypsies' dog, a gaunt, hungry-looking beast,
narrowly escaped being eaten up by his own dog. But Frank, at the sheer
verge of a deplorable offense, implicitly obeyed his master's command
and forbore to destroy the gypsy mongrel. Again he flopped to his back
at the interested approach of the other dog, held four limp paws aloft,
and simpered at the stranger.
Other gypsies, male and female, came to the group about the fire, and
lively chatter ensued, a continuous flashing of white teeth and shaking
of golden ear hoops and rattling of silver bracelets. The Wilbur twin
fondly noted that his father knew every city the gypsies knew, and even
told them the advantages of some to which they had not penetrated. He
gathered this much of the talk, though much was beyond him. He kept
close to his father's side when the latter took his leave of these new
friends. He wanted these people to realize that he belonged to the
important strange gentleman who had for a moment come so knowingly among
them.
As they climbed out of the sheltering glade he was alive with a new
design. Gypsies notoriously carried off desirable children; this was
common knowledge in Newbern Center. So why wouldn't they carry off him,
especially if he were right round there where they could find him
easily? He saw himself and his dog forcibly conveyed away with the
caravan--though he would not really resist--to a strange and charming
life beyond the very farthest hills. He did not confide this to his
father, but he looked back often. They followed a path and were soon on
a bare ridge above the camp.
Dave Cowan was already talking of other things, seeming not to have been
ever so little impressed with his reception by these wondrous people,
but he had won a new measure of his son's respect. Wilbur would have
lingered here where they could still observe through the lower trees the
group about the campfire, but Dave Cowan seemed to have had enough of
gypsies for the moment, and sauntered on up the ridge, across an alder
swale and out on a parklike space to rest against a fence that bounded a
pasture belonging to the Whipple New Place. Across this pasture, in
which the fat sorrel pony grazed and from which it regarded them from
time to time, there was another grove of beech and walnut and hickory,
and beyond this dimly loomed the red bulk of the Whipple house and
outbuildings. There was a stile through the fence at the point where
they reached it, and Dave Cowan idly lolled by this while the Wilbur
twin sprawled in the scented grass at his feet. He well knew he should
not be on the ground in his Sunday clothes. On the other hand, if the
gypsies stole him they would not be so fussy as Winona about his
clothes. None of them seemed to have Sunday clothes.
He again broached the suggestion about a gypsy wagon for himself and his
father--and Frank, the dog--in which they could go far away, seeing all
those strange cities and cooking their dinner over campfires. His father
seemed to consider this not wholly impracticable, but there were certain
disadvantages of the life, and there were really better ways. It seems
you could be a gypsy in all essentials, and still live in houses like
less adventurous people.
"Trouble with them, they got no trade," said the wise Dave, "and out in
all kinds of weather, and small-town constables telling them to move on,
and all such. You learn a good loose trade, then you can go where you
want to." A loose trade seemed to be one that you could work at any
place; they always wanted you if you knew a loose trade like the
printer's--or, "Now you take barbering," said Dave. "There's a good
loose trade. A barber never has to look for work; he can go into any new
town and always find his job. I don't know but what I'd just as soon be
a barber as a printer. Some ways I might like it better. You don't have
as much time to yourself, of course, but you meet a lot of men you
wouldn't meet otherwise; most of 'em fools to be sure, but some of 'em
wise that you can get new thoughts from. It's a cleaner trade than
typesetting and fussing round a small-town print shop. Maybe you'll
learn to be a good barber; then you can have just as good a time as
those gypsies, going about from time to time and seeing the world."
"Yes, sir," said the Wilbur twin, "and cutting people's hair with
clippers like Don Paley clipped mine with."
"New York, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Omaha, Kansas City, Denver, San
Antone," murmured Dave, and there was unction in his tone as he recited
these advantages of a loose trade--"any place you like the looks of, or
places you've read about that sound good--just going along with your
little kit of razors, and not having to small-town it except when you
want a bit of quiet."
They heard voices back of them. Dave turned about and Wilbur rose from
the grass. Across the pasture came the girl, Patricia Whipple, followed
at a little distance by Juliana. The latter was no longer in church
garb, but in a gray tweed skirt, white blouse, and a soft straw hat with
a flopping brim. There was a black ribbon about the hat and her stout
shoes were of tan leather. The girl was bare-headed, and Don Paley's
repair of yesterday's damage was noticeable. She came at a quickening
pace, while Juliana followed slowly. Juliana looked severe and
formidable. Never had her nose looked more the Whipple nose then when
she observed Dave Cowan and his son at the stile. Yet she smiled
humorously when she recognized the boy, and allowed the humour to reach
his father when she glanced at him. Dave and Miss Juliana had never been
formally presented. Dave had seen Juliana, but Juliana had had until
this moment no sight of Dave, for though there was in Newbern no social
prejudice against a craftsman, and Dave might have moved in its highest
circles, he had chosen to consort with the frankly ineligible. He lifted
his cap in a flourishing salute as Juliana and Patricia came through the
stile.
"And how are you to-day, my young friend?" asked Juliana of Wilbur in
her calm, deep voice.
The Wilbur twin said, "Very well, I thank you," striving instinctively
to make his own voice as deep as Juliana's.
The girl winked at him brazenly as they passed on.
"Gypsies!" she called, exultantly, and Juliana swept him with a tolerant
smile.
Dave Cowan watched them along the path to the ridge above the camp. Here
they paused in most intelligible pantomime. Patricia Whipple wished to
descend to the very heart of the camp, while Juliana could be seen
informing the child that they were near enough. To make this definite
she sat upon the bole of a felled oak beside the path while Patricia
jiggled up and down in eloquent objection to the untimely halt. Dave
read the scene and caressed his thick moustache with practiced thumb and
finger. His glance was sympathetic.
"The poor old maid!" he murmured. "All that Whipple money, and she has
to be just a small-towner! Say, I bet no one has ever kissed that old
girl since her mother died! None of these small-town hicks would ever
have the nerve to. Yes, sir; any one's got a right to be sorry for that
dame. If she had a little enterprise she'd branch out from here and meet
a few people."
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur. "But that girl wants to go down to the camp."
This was plain. Patricia still danced, while Juliana remained firmly
seated.
"I could go take her down," he continued.
"Why don't you?" said his father, again stroking the golden moustache in
sympathy for the unconscious Juliana.
So it befell that the Wilbur twin shyly approached the group by the
felled tree, and the watching father saw the two children, after a
moment's hesitancy on the part of Juliana, disappear from view over the
crest of the ridge. Dave continued to loll by the stile and to watch the
waiting Juliana, thinking of gypsies and the pure joy of wandering. He
began to repeat some verses he had lately happened upon, murmuring them
to a little mass of white clouds far off against the blue of the summer
sky, where the pale bronze moon lonesomely hung. He liked the words and
the moon and gypsies joyously foot-loose, and he again grew sympathetic
for Juliana's small-town plight. He felt a large pagan tolerance for
those warped souls pent in small towns.
After twenty minutes of this he faintly heard a call from Juliana, sent
after the children below her. He saw her stand to beckon commandingly
and watch to see if she were obeyed. Then she turned and came slowly
back up the path that would lead to the stile. Again Dave absently
murmured his verses. Juliana approached the stile, walking briskly now.
She was halted by surprising speech from this rather cheaply debonair
creature who looked so nearly like a gentleman and yet so plainly was
not.
"Wanted to be off with 'em, didn't you?" Dave was saying brightly; "off
and over the edge of the world, all foot-loose and free as wind, going
over strange roads and lying by night under the stars."
"What?" demanded Juliana sharply.
She studied the fellow's face for the first time. He was preening his
yellow moustache and flashing a challenge to her from half-shut eyes.
"Small-towners bound to feel it," he continued, unconscious of any
sharpness in Juliana's "What!" "They want to be off and over the edge of
things, but they don't dare--haven't the nerve. You'd like to, but you
don't dare. You know you don't!"
Juliana almost smiled. The fellow's face, as she paused beside him at
the stile, was set with sheer impudence, yet this was not wholly
unattractive. And amazingly he now broke into verse:
We, too, shall steal upon the spring
With amber sails flown wide;
Shall drop, some day, behind the moon,
Borne on a star-blue tide.
He indicated the present moon with flourishing grace as he named it.
Juliana did not gasp, but it might have been a gasp in one less than a
Whipple. But the troubadour was not to be daunted. Juliana didn't know
Dave Cowan as cities knew him.
Enchanted ports we, too, shall touch;
Cadiz or Cameroon;
Nor other pilot need beside
A magic wisp of moon.
Again he gracefully indicated our lunar satellite, and again Juliana
nearly gasped.
"Of course, you felt it all, watching those people. I don't blame you
for feeling wild."
Juliana lifted one of her stout tan boots toward the stile, and Dave
with doffed cap extended a hand to assist her through. Juliana, dazed
beyond a Whipple calm for almost the first time in her thirty years,
found her own hand perforce upon his.
"You poor thing!" concluded Dave with a swift glance to the ridge where
the children had not yet appeared.
Then amazingly he enfolded the figure of the woman in his arms and upon
her cold, appalled lips he imprinted a swift but accurate kiss.
"There, poor thing!" he murmured.
He lavished one look upon the still frozen Juliana, replaced the cap
upon his yellow hair, once more preened his moustache at her, and turned
away to meet the oncoming children. And in his glance Juliana retained
still the wit to read a gay, cherishing pity. As he turned away she sank
limply against the fence, her first sensation being all of wonder that
she had not cried out at this monstrous assault. And very clearly she
knew at once that she had not cried out or made any protest because,
though monstrous, it was even more absurd. A seasoned sense of humour
had not failed.
The guilty man swaggered on to meet the children, not looking back. For
him the incident was closed. Juliana, a hand supporting her capable
chin, steadily regarded his swaying shoulders and the yellow hair
beneath his cap. In her nostrils was the scent of printer's ink and pipe
tobacco. She reflectively rubbed her chin, for it had been stung with a
day-old beard that pricked like a nettle. Now she was recalling another
woodland adventure of a dozen years before here in this same forest.
Dave Cowan had been wrong when he said that no one had kissed her since
her mother died. Once on a winter's day, when she was sixteen, she had
crossed here, bundled in a red cloak and hood, and a woodchopper, a
merry, laughing foreigner who spoke no English, had hailed her gayly,
and she had stopped and gayly tried to understand him, and knew only
that he was telling her she was beautiful. She at least had thought it
was that, and was certain of it when he had seized and kissed her,
laughing joyously the while. She had not told any one of that, but she
had never forgotten. And now this curious creature, whom she had not
supposed to be gallantly inclined--unshaven, smelling of printer's ink
and tobacco!
"I'm coming on!" said Juliana aloud, and laughed rather grimly.
She watched her prankling blade meet the children and go off down the
ridge with his son, still not looking back. She thought it queer he did
not look back at her just once. She soothed her chin again, sniffing the
air.
Patricia Whipple came leaping up the path, excited with an imminent
question. She halted before the still-reflective Juliana and went at
once to the root of her matter.
"Cousin Juliana, what did that funny man kiss you for?"
This time Juliana in truth did gasp. There was no suppressing it.
"Patricia Whipple--and did that boy see it, too?"
"No, he was too far behind me. But I did. I saw it. I was looking right
at you, and that funny man--all at once he grabbed you round your waist
and he--"
"Patricia, dear, listen! We must promise never to say anything about
it--never to anybody in the world--won't we, dear?"
"Oh, I won't tell if you don't want me to, but what----"
"You promise me--never to tell a soul!"
"Of course! I promise--cross my heart and hope to die--but what did he
do it for?"
Juliana tried humorous evasion.
"Men, my dear, are often tempted by women to such lengths--tempted
beyond their strength. Your question isn't worded with all the tact in
the world. Is it so strange that a man should want to kiss me?"
"Well, I don't know"--Patricia became judicial, scanning the now flushed
countenance of Juliana--"I don't see why not. But what did he do it
for?"
"My dear, you'll be honest with me, and never tell; so I'll be honest
with you. I don't know--I really don't know. But I have an awful
suspicion that the creature meant to be kind to me."
"He looks like a kind man. And he's the father of the boy that I wore
his clothes yesterday when I was running away, and the father of that
other boy that was with him and that I'm going to have one of for my
very own brother, because Harvey D. and grandpa said something of that
kind would have to be done, so what relation will that make us to this
man that was so kind to you?"
"None whatever," said Juliana, shortly. "And never forget your promise
not to tell. Come, we must go back."
They went on through the pasture. The shadows had lengthened and the
moon already glowed a warmer bronze. Juliana glanced at it and murmured
indistinctly.
"What is it?" asked Patricia.
"Nothing," said Juliana. But she had been asking herself: "I wonder
where he gets his verses?"
Her hand went again to her chin.