Dave Cowan went down the ridge to the road, disregarding his gypsy
friends. He trod the earth with a ruffling bravado. The Wilbur twin
lingered as far behind as he dared, loitering provocatively in the sight
of the child stealers. If they meant to do anything about it now was
their chance. But no violence was offered him, and presently, far beyond
the camp where the fire still burned, he was forced to conclude that
they could not mean to carry him off. Certainly they were neglecting a
prize who had persistently flaunted himself at them. They notably lacked
enterprise.
Down over the grassy slope of West Hill they went, the boy still well in
the rear; you never could tell what might happen; and so came to Fair
Street across shadows that lay long to the east. Newbern was still
slumberous. Smoke issued from a chimney here and there, but mostly the
town would partake of a cold supper. The boy came beside his father,
with Frank, the dog, again on his leash of frayed rope. Dave Cowan was
reciting to himself:
Enchanted ports we, too, shall touch;
Cadiz or Cameroon--
Then he became conscious of the silent boy at his side, stepping
noiselessly with bare feet.
"Life is funny," said Dave.
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
"Of course there's a catch in it somewhere."
"Yes, sir."
"That old girl back there, that old maid, she'll have to small-town it
all her life. I feel sorry for her, I do."
"Yes, sir."
But the sorrowing father now began to whistle cheerfully. His grief had
not overborne him. A man who would call Judge Penniman Old Flapdoodle
and question the worth of Matthew Arnold's acquaintance was not to be
long downcast at the plight of one woman. And he had done what man could
for her.
They came to River Street, the street of shops, deserted and sleeping
back of drawn curtains. Only the shop of Solly Gumble seemed to be open
for trade. This was but seeming, however, for another establishment near
by, though sealed and curtained as to front, suffered its rear portal to
yawn most hospitably. This was the place of business of Herman
Vielhaber, and its street sign concisely said, "Lager Bier Saloon."
Dave Cowan turned into the alley just beyond Solly Gumble's, then up
another alley that led back of the closed shops, and so came to the back
door of this refectory. It stood open, and from the cool and shadowy
interior came a sourish smell of malt liquors and the hum of voices.
They entered and were in Herman Vielhaber's pleasant back room, with
sanded floor and a few round tables, at which sat half a dozen men
consuming beer from stone mugs or the pale wine of Herman's country from
tall glasses.
Herman was a law-abiding citizen. Out of deference to a sacred and
long-established American custom he sealed the front of his saloon on
the Sabbath; out of deference to another American custom, equally long
established, equally sacred, he received his Sabbath clientèle at the
rear--except for a brief morning interval when he and Minna, his wife,
attended service at the Lutheran church. Herman's perhaps not too subtle
mind had never solved this problem of American morals--why his beverages
should be seemly to drink on all days of the week, yet on one of them
seemly but if taken behind shut doors and shielding curtains. But he
adhered conscientiously to the American rule. His Lutheran pastor had
once, in an effort to clear up the puzzle, explained to him that the
Continental Sunday would never do at all in this land of his choice; but
it left Herman still muddled, because fixed unalterably in his mind was
a conviction that the Continental Sunday was the best of all Sundays.
Nor was there anything the least clandestine in this backdoor trade of
Herman's on the Sabbath. One had but to know the path to his door, and
at this moment Newbern's mayor, old Doctor Purdy, sat at one of Herman's
tables and sipped from a stone mug of beer and played a game of pinochle
with stout, red-bearded Herman himself, overlooked by Minna, who had
brought them their drink.
This was another thing about Herman's place that Newbern understood in
time. When he had begun business some dozen years before, and it was
known that Minna came downstairs from their living rooms above the
saloon and helped to serve his patrons, the scandal was high. It was
supposed that only a woman without character could, for any purpose
whatever, enter a saloon. But Herman had made it plain that into the
sort of saloon he conducted any woman, however exalted, could freely
enter. If they chose not to, that was their affair. And Minna had in
time recovered a reputation so nearly lost at first news of her service
here.
Herman, indeed, ran a place of distinction, or at least of tone. He did
sell the stronger drinks, it is true, but he sold them judiciously, and
much preferred to sell the milder ones. He knew his patrons, and would
stubbornly not sell drink, even beer or wine, to one he suspected of
abusing the stuff. As for rowdyism, it was known far and wide about
Newbern that if you wanted to get thrown out of Herman's quick you had
only to start some rough stuff, or even talk raw. It was said he juggled
you out the door like you were an empty beer keg. Down by the riverside
was another saloon for that sort of thing, kept by Pegleg McCarron, who
would sell whisky to any one that could buy, liked rough stuff and with
his crutch would participate in it.
When Herman decided that a customer was spending too much money for
drink, that customer had to go to Pegleg's if he bought more. And now
the mayor at the little table connived at a flagrant breach of the law
he had sworn to uphold, quaffing beer from his mug and melding a hundred
aces as casually as if it were a week-day.
The other men at the little tables were also of the substantial
citizenry of Newbern, including the postmaster, the editor of the
_Advance_, and Rapp, Senior, of Rapp Brothers, Jewellery. The last two
were arguing politics and the country's welfare. Rapp, Senior, believed
and said that the country was going to the dogs, because the rich were
getting richer and the poor were getting poorer. The editor of the
_Advance_ disputed this, and the postmaster intervened to ask if Rapp,
Senior, had seen what our exports of wheat and cotton were lately. Rapp,
Senior, said he didn't care anything about that--it was the interests he
was down on. Herman Vielhaber, melding eighty kings, said it was a good
rich-man's country, but also a good poor-man's country, because where
could you find one half as good--not in all Europe--and he now laid down
forty jacks, which he huskily called "yacks."
Dave Cowan greeted the company and seated himself at a vacant table.
"Pull up a chair, Buzzer, and we'll drink to the life force--old
electricity or something."
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur, and seated himself.
Minna left the pinochle game to attend upon them. She was plump and
pink-faced, with thick yellow hair neatly done. A broad white apron
protected her dress of light blue.
"A stein of Pilsener, Minna," said Dave, "and for the boy, let's see.
How would you like, a nice cold bottle of pop, Doctor?"
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur. "Strawberry pop."
Herman looked up from his game, though in the midst of warm utterance in
his native tongue at the immediate perverse fall of the cards.
"I guess you git the young one a big glass milk, mamma--yes? Better than
pop for young ones. Pop is belly wash."
"Yes, ma'am," said Wilbur to Minna, though he would have preferred the
pop by reason of its colour and its vivacious prickling; and you could
have milk at home.
"And I tell you, Minna," said Dave. "Bread and butter and cheese, lots
of it, rye bread and pumpernickel and Schweitzerkase and some pickles
and radishes, _nicht wahr_?"
"Yes," said Minna, "all!" and moved on to the bar. But Dave detained
her.
"Minna!"
She stopped and turned back to him.
"You will?"
"_Sprechen sie Deutsch_, Minna?"
"_Ja_--yes--why not? I should think I do. I always could. Why couldn't
I?"
She went on her mission, grumbling pettishly. Why shouldn't she speak
her own language? What did the man think? He must be a joker!
"Mamma!" Herman called again. "Git also the young one some that _apfel
kuchen_. You make it awful good."
"Yes," called Minna from the bar. "I git it. For why wouldn't I speak my
own language, I like to know?"
Dave Cowan's jest was smouldering faintly within her. She returned
presently with the stein of beer and a glass of milk, and went, still
muttering, for the food that had been commanded. She returned with this,
setting bread and butter and cheese before them, and a blue plate whose
extensive area was all but covered with apple cake, but now she no
longer muttered in bewilderment. She confronted the jester, hands upon
hips, her doll eyes shining with triumph.
"Hah! Now, mister, I ask you something good like you ask me. You git
ready! _Sprechen sie English_?"
Dave Cowan affected to be overcome with confusion, while Minna laughed
loud and long at her sally. Herman laughed with her, his head back and
huge red beard lifted from his chest.
"She got you that time, mister!" he called to Dave. "Mamma's a bright
one, give her a minute so she gits herself on the spot!"
"_Ja! Sprechen sie English_?" taunted Minna again, for a second relish
of her repartee. Effusively, in her triumph, she patted the cheek of the
Wilbur twin. "_Ja_! I could easy enough give your poppa as good like he
sent, yes? _Sprechen sie English, nicht wahr_?"
Again her bulk trembled with honest mirth, and while this endured she
went to the ice box and brought a bone for Frank, the dog. Frank fell
upon it with noisy gurgles.
Dave Cowan affected further confusion at each repetition of Minna's
stinging retort; acted it so convincingly that the victor at length
relented and brought a plate of cookies to the table.
"I show you who is it should be foolish in the head!" she told him
triumphantly.
"You got me, Minna--I admit it."
The victim pretended to be downcast, and ate his bread and cheese
dejectedly. Minna went to another table to tell over the choice bit.
The Wilbur twin ate bread and cheese and looked with interest about the
room. The tables and woodwork were dark, the walls and ceiling also low
in tone. But there were some fine decorative notes that stood brightly
out. On one wall was a lovely gold-framed picture in which a young woman
of great beauty held back a sumptuous curtain revealing a castle on the
Rhine set above a sunny terrace of grapevines. On the opposite wall was
a richly coloured picture of a superb brewery. It was many stories in
height; smoke issued from its chimneys, and before it stood a large
truck to which were hitched two splendid horses. The truck was being
loaded with the brewery's enlivening product. The brewery was red, the
truck yellow, the horses gray, and the workmen were clad in blue, and
above all was a flawless sky of blue. It was a spirited picture, and the
Wilbur twin was instantly enamoured of it. He wished he might have seen
this yesterday, when he was rich. Maybe Mr. Vielhaber would have sold
it. He thought regretfully of Winona's delight at receiving the
beautiful thing to hang on the wall of the parlour, a fit companion
piece to the lion picture. But he had spent his money, and this lovely
thing could never be Winona's.
Discussion of world affairs still went forward between Rapp, Senior, and
the _Advance_ editor. Even in that day the cost of living was said to be
excessive, and Rapp, Senior, though accounting for its rise by the
iniquity of the interests, submitted that the cost of women's finery was
what kept the world poor.
"It's women's tomfool dressing keeps us all down. Look what they pay for
their silks and satins and kickshaws and silly furbelows! That's where
the bulk of our money goes: bonnets and high-heeled slippers and fancy
cloaks. Take the money spent for women's foolish truck and see what
you'd have!" Rapp, Senior, gazed about him, looking for contradiction.
"He's right," said Dave Cowan. "He's got the truth of it. But, my Lord!
Did you ever think what women would be without all that stuff? Look what
it does for 'em! Would you have 'em look like us? Would you have a
beautiful woman wear a cheap suit of clothes like Rapp's got on, and a
hat bought two years ago? Not in a thousand years! We dress 'em up that
way because we like 'em that way."
Rapp, Senior, dusted the lapel of his coat, tugged at his waistcoat to
straighten it, and closely regarded a hat that he had supposed beyond
criticism.
"That's all right," he said, "but look where it gets us!"
Presently the discussion ended--Rapp, Senior, still on the note of
pessimism and in the fell clutch of the interests--for the debaters must
go blamelessly home to their suppers. Only the mayor remained at his
game with Herman, his gray, shaven old face bent above his cards while
he muttered at them resentfully. Dave Cowan ate his bread and cheese
with relish and invoked another stein of beer from Minna, who
vindictively flung her jest at him again as she brought it.
The Wilbur twin had eaten his apple cake and was now eating the cookies,
taking care to drop no crumbs on the sanded floor. After many cookies
dusk fell and he heard the church bells ring for evening worship. But no
one heeded them. The game drew to an excited finish, while Dave Cowan,
his pipe lighted, mused absently and from time to time quoted bits of
verse softly to himself:
Enchanted ports we, too, shall touch;
Cadiz or Cameroon--
The game ended with an explosion of rage from the mayor. The cards had
continued perverse for him. He pushed his soft black hat back from his
rumpled crest of gray hair and commanded Minna Vielhaber to break a
municipal ordinance which had received his official sanction. Herman
cheerily combed his red beard and scoffed at his late opponent.
"It makes dark," Minna reminded him. "You should have light."
Herman lighted two lamps suspended above the tables. Then he addressed
the Wilbur twin, now skillfully prolonging the last of his cookies.
"Well, young one, you like your bread and cheese and milk and cookies
and apfel kuchen, so? Well, I tell you--come here. I show you something
fine."
He went to the front room, where the bar was, and the Wilbur twin
expectantly followed. He had learned that these good people produced all
manner of delights. But this was nothing to eat. The light from the
lamps shone over the partition between back room and front, and there in
a spacious cage beside the wall was a monkey, a small, sad-eyed creature
with an aged, wrinkled face all but human. He crouched in a corner and
had been piling wisps of straw upon his reverend head.
"Gee, gosh!" exclaimed the Wilbur twin, for he had expected nothing so
rare as this.
The monkey at sight of Herman became animated, leaping again and again
the length of the cage and thrusting between its bars a hairy forearm
and a little, pinkish, human hand.
"You like him, hey?" said Herman.
"Gee, gosh!" again exclaimed the Wilbur twin in sheer delight.
"It's Emil his name is," said Herman. "You want out, Emil, hey?"
He unclasped the catch of a door, and Emil leaped to the crook of his
arm, where he nestled, one hand securely grasping a fold of Herman's
beard.
"Ouch, now, don't pull them whiskers!" warned Herman. "See how he knows
his good friend! But he shake hands like a gentleman. Emil, shake hands
nicely with this young one." The monkey timidly extended a paw and the
entranced Wilbur shook it. "Come," said Herman. "I let you give him
something."
They went to the back room, Emil still stoutly grasping the beard of his
protector.
"Now," said Herman, "you give him a nice fat banana. Mamma, give the
young one a banana to give to Emil."
The banana was brought and the Wilbur twin cautiously extended it. Emil,
at sight of the fruit, chattered madly and tried to leap for it. He
appeared to believe that this strange being meant to deprive him of it.
He snatched it when it was thrust nearer, still regarding the boy with
dark suspicion. Then he deftly peeled the fruit and hurriedly ate it, as
if one could not be--with strangers about--too sure of one's supper.
The monkey moved Dave Cowan to lecture again upon the mysteries of
organic evolution.
"About three hundred million years difference between those two," he
said, indicating Herman and his pet with a wave of the calabash. "And
it's no good asking whether it's worth while, because we have to go on
and on. That little beast is your second cousin, Herman."
"I got a Cousin Emil in the old country," said Minna, "but he ain't
lookin' like this last time I seen him. I guess you're foolish in the
head again."
"He came out of the forest and learned to stand up, to walk without
using his hands, and he got a thumb, and pretty soon he was able to be a
small-town mayor or run a nice decent saloon and argue about politics."
"Hah, that's a good one!" said Herman. "You hear what he says, Emil?"
The beast looked up from his banana, regarding them from eyes
unutterably sad.
"See?" said Dave. "That's the life force, and for a minute it's
conscious that it's only a monkey."
They became silent under Emil's gaze of acute pathos--human life aware
of its present frustration. Then suddenly Emil became once more an
animated and hungry monkey with no care but for his food.
"There," said Dave. "I ask you, isn't that the way we do? Don't we stop
to think sometimes and get way down, and then don't we feel hungry and
forget it all and go to eating?"
"Sure, Emil is sensible just like us," said Minna.
"But there's some catch about the whole thing," said Dave. "Say, Doc,
what do you think life is, anyway?"
Purdy scanned the monkey with shrewd eyes, and grinned.
"I only know what it is physiologically," he said. "Physiologically,
life is a constant force rhythmically overcoming a constant resistance."
"Pretty good," said Dave, treasuring the phrase. "The catch must be
right there--it always does overcome the constant resistance."
"When it can't in one plant," said Purdy, "it dismantles it and builds
another, making improvements from time to time."
"Think what it's had to do," said Dave, "to build Herman from a simple,
unimproved plant like Emil! Herman's a great improvement on Emil."
"My Herman has got a soul," said Minna, stoutly--"monkeys ain't."
Dave Cowan and Purdy exchanged a tolerant smile. They were above arguing
that outworn thesis. Dave turned to his son.
"Anyway, Buzzer, if you ever get discouraged, remember we were all like
that once, and cheer up. Remember your ancestry goes straight back to
one of those, and still back of that--"
"To the single cell of protoplasm," said Purdy.
"Beyond that," said Dave, "to star dust."
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
"Foolish in the head," said Minna. "You think you know things better
than the reverent what preaches at the Lutheran church! He could easy
enough tell you what you come from. My family was in Bavaria more than
two hundred years, and was not any monkeys."
"Maybe Emil he got a soul, too, like a human," remarked Herman.
"You bet he has," said Dave Cowan, firmly--"just like a human."
"You put him to bed," directed Minna. "He listen to such talk and go
foolish also in the head."
The Wilbur twin watched Emil put to bed, then followed his father out
into the quiet, starlit streets. He was living over again an eventful
afternoon. They reached the Penniman porch without further talk. Dave
Cowan sat with his guitar in the judge's chair and lazily sounded chords
and little fragments of melody. After a time the Pennimans and the Merle
twin came from church. The Wilbur twin excitedly sought Winona, having
much to tell her. He drew her beside him into the hammock, and was too
eager for more than a moment's dismay when she discovered his bare feet,
though he had meant to put on shoes and stockings again before she saw
him.
"Barefooted on Sunday!" said Winona in tones of prim horror.
"It was so hot," he pleaded; "but listen," and he rushed headlong into
his narrative.
His father knew gypsies, and had been to Chicago and Omaha and--and
Cadiz and Cameroon--and he was sorry for Miss Juliana Whipple because
she was a small-towner and no one had ever kissed her since her mother
died; and if ever gypsies did carry him off he didn't want any one to
worry about him or try to get him back; and the Vielhabers were very
nice people that kept a nice saloon; and Mrs. Vielhaber had given him
lots of apple cake that was almost like an apple pie, but without any
top on it; and they had a lovely picture that would look well beside the
lion picture, but it would probably cost too much money; and they had a
monkey, a German monkey, that was just like a little old man; and once,
thousands of years ago, when the Bible was going on, we were all monkeys
and lived in trees, but a constant force made us stand and walk like
people.
To Winona this was a shocking narrative, and she wished to tell Dave
Cowan that he was having a wretched influence upon the boy, but Dave was
now singing "In the Gloaming," and she knew he would merely call her
Madame la Marquise, the toast of all the court, or something else
unsuitable to a Sabbath evening. She tried to convey to the Wilbur twin
that sitting in a low drinking saloon at any time was an evil thing.
"Anyway," said he, protestingly, "you say I should always learn
something, and I learned about us coming up from the monkeys."
"Why, Wilbur Cowan! How awful! Have you forgotten everything you ever
learned at Sunday-school?"
"But I saw the monkey," he persisted, "and my father said so, and Doctor
Purdy said so."
Winona considered.
"Even so," she warned him, "even if we did come up from the lower
orders, the less said about it the better."
He had regarded his putative descent without prejudice; he was sorry
that Winona should find scandal in it.
"Well," he remarked to relieve her, "anyway, there's some catch in it.
My father said so."