Wilber Cowan went off to bed, only a little concerned by this new-found
flaw in his ancestry. He would have thought it more important could he
have known that this same Cowan ancestry was under analysis at the
Whipple New Place.
There the three existing male Whipples sat about a long,
magazine-littered table in the library and smoked and thought and at
long intervals favoured one another with fragmentary speech. Gideon sat
erect in his chair or stood before the fireplace, now banked with ferns;
black-clad, tall and thin and straight in the comely pleasance of his
sixty years, his face smoothly shaven, his cheekbones jutting above
depressed cheeks that fell to his narrow, pointed chin, his blue eyes
crackling far under the brow, high and narrow and shaded with ruffling
gray hair, still plenteous. His ordinary aspect was severe, almost
saturnine; but he was wont to destroy this effect with his thin-lipped
smile that broke winningly over small white teeth and surprisingly
hinted an alert young man behind these flickering shadows of age. When
he sat he sat gracefully erect; when he stood to face the other two, or
paced the length of the table, he stood straight or moved with supple
joints. He was smoking a cigar with fastidious relish, and seemed to
commune more with it than with his son or his brother. Beside Sharon
Whipple his dress seemed foppish.
Sharon, the round, stout man, two years younger than Gideon, had the
same blue eyes, but they looked from a face plump, florid, vivacious.
There was a hint of the choleric in his glance. His hair had been
lighter than Gideon's, and though now not so plentiful, had grayed less
noticeably. His fairer skin was bedizened with freckles; and when with
a blunt thumb he pushed up the outer ends of his heavy eye-brows or
cocked the thumb at a speaker whose views he did not share, it could be
seen that he was the most aggressive of the three men. Sharon
notoriously lost his temper. Gideon had never been known to lose his.
Sharon smoked and lolled carelessly in a Morris chair, one short, stout
arm laid along its side, the other carelessly wielding the cigar,
heedless of falling ashes. Beside the careful Gideon he looked rustic.
Harvey D., son of Gideon, worriedly paced the length of the room. His
eyes were large behind thick glasses. He smoked a cigarette gingerly,
not inhaling its smoke, but ridding himself of it in little puffs of
distaste. His brown beard was neatly trimmed, and above it shone his
forehead, pale and beautifully modelled under the carefully parted,
already thinning, hair that was arranged in something almost like
ringlets on either side. He was neat-faced. Of the three men he carried
the Whipple nose most gracefully. His figure was slight, not so tall as
his father's, and he was garbed in a more dapper fashion. He wore an
expertly fitted frock coat of black, gray trousers faintly striped, a
pearl-gray cravat skewered by a pear-headed pin, and his small feet were
incased in shoes of patent leather. He was arrayed as befitted a Whipple
who had become a banker.
Gideon, his father, achieved something of a dapper effect in an
old-fashioned manner, but no observer would have read him for a banker;
while Sharon, even on a Sunday evening, in loose tweeds and stout boots,
was but a country gentleman who thought little about dress, so that one
would not have guessed him a banker--rather the sort that makes banking
a career of profit.
Careful Harvey D., holding a cigarette carefully between slender white
fingers, dressed with studious attention, neatly bearded, with shining
hair curled flatly above his pale, wide forehead, was the one to look
out from behind a grille and appraise credits. He never acted hastily,
and was finding more worry in this moment than ever his years of banking
had cost him. He walked now to an ash tray and fastidiously trimmed the
end of his cigarette. With the look of worry he regarded his father, now
before the fireplace after the manner of one enjoying its warmth, and
his Uncle Sharon, who was brushing cigar ash from his rumpled waistcoat
to the rug below.
"It's no light thing to do," said Harvey D. in his precise syllables.
The others smoked as if unhearing. Harvey D. walked to the opposite wall
and straightened a picture, The Reading of Homer, shifting its frame
precisely one half an inch.
"It is overchancy." This from Gideon after a long silence.
Harvey D. paused in his walk, regarded the floor in front of him
critically, and stooped to pick up a tiny scrap of paper, which he
brought to the table and laid ceremoniously in the ash tray.
"Overchancy," he repeated.
"Everything overchancy," said Sharon Whipple after another silence,
waving his cigar largely at life. "She's a self-headed little tike," he
added a moment later.
"Self-headed!"
Harvey D. here made loose-wristed gestures meaning despair, after which
he detected and put in its proper place a burned match beside Sharon's
chair.
"A bright boy enough!" said Gideon after another silence, during which
Harvey D. had twice paced the length of the room, taking care to bring
each of his patent-leather toes precisely across the repeated pattern in
the carpet.
"Other one got the gumption, though," said Sharon.
"Oh, gumption!" said Harvey D., as if this were no rare gift. All three
smoked again for a pregnant interval.
"Has good points," offered Gideon. "Got all the points, in fact. Good
build, good skin, good teeth, good eyes and wide between; nice manners,
polite, lively mind."
"Other one got the gumption," mumbled Sharon, stubbornly. They ignored
him.
"Head on him for affairs, too," said Harvey D. He went to a far corner
of the room and changed the position of an immense upholstered chair so
that it was equidistant from each wall. "Other one--hear he took all his
silver and spent it foolishly--must have been eight or nine
dollars--this one wanted to save it. Got some idea about the value of
money."
"Don't like to see it show too young," submitted Sharon.
"Can't show too young," declared Harvey D.
"Can't it?" asked Sharon, mildly.
"Bright little chap--no denying that," said Gideon. "Bright as a new
penny, smart as a whip. Talks right. Other chap mumbles."
"Got the gumption, though." Thus Sharon once more.
Long silences intervened after each speech in this dialogue.
"Head's good," said Harvey D. "One of those long heads like father's.
Other one's head is round."
"My own head is round." This was Sharon. His tone was plaintive.
"Of course neither of them has a nose," said Gideon.
He meant that neither of the twins had a nose in the Whipple sense, but
no comment on this lack seemed to be required. It would be unfair to
expect a true nose in any but born Whipples.
Gideon Whipple from before the fireplace swayed forward on his toes and
waved his half-smoked cigar.
"The long and short of it is--the Whipple stock has run low. We're dying
out."
"Got to have new blood, that's sure," said Sharon. "Build it up again."
"I'd often thought of adopting," said Harvey D., "in the last two
years," he carefully added.
"This youngster," said Gideon; "of course we should never have heard of
him but for Pat's mad adventure, starting off with God only knows what
visions in her little head."
"She'd have gone, too," said Sharon, dusting ashes from his waistcoat to
the rug. "Self-headed!"
"She demands a brother," resumed Gideon, "and the family sorely needs
she should have one, and this youngster seems eligible, and so--" He
waved his cigar.
"There really doesn't seem any other way," said Harvey D. at the table,
putting a disordered pile of magazines into neat alignment.
"What about pedigree?" demanded Sharon. "Any one traced him back?"
"I believe _his_ father is here," said Harvey D.
"I know him," said Sharon. "A mad, swearing, confident fellow, reckless,
vagrant-like. A printer by trade. Looks healthy enough. Don't seem
blemished. But what about his father?"
"Is the boy's mother known?" asked Harvey D.
"Easy to find out," said Gideon. "Ask Sarah Marwick," and he went to the
wall and pushed a button. "Sarah knows the history of every one,
scandalous and otherwise."
Sarah Marwick came presently to the door, an austere spinster in black
gown and white apron. Her nose, though not Whipple in any degree, was
still eminent in a way of its own, and her lips shut beneath it in a
straight line. She waited.
"Sarah," said Gideon, "do you know a person named Cowan? David Cowan, I
believe it is."
Sarah's mien of professional reserve melted.
"Do I know Dave Cowan?" she challenged. "Do I know him? I'd know his
hide in a tanyard."
"That would seem sufficient," remarked Gideon.
"A harum-scarum good-for-nothing--no harm in him. A great talker--make
you think black is white if you listen. Don't stay here much--in and
out, no one knows where to. Says the Center is slow. What do you think
of that? I guess we're fast enough for most folks."
"What about his father?" said the stock-breeding Sharon. "Know anything
about who he was?"
"Lord, yes! Everybody round here used to know old Matthew Cowan. Lived
up in Geneseo, where Dave was born, but used to come round here
preaching. Queer old customer with a big head. He wasn't a regular
preacher; he just took it up, being a carpenter by trade--like our Lord
Jesus, he used to say in his preaching. He had some outlandish kind of
religion that didn't take much. He said the world was coming to an end
on a certain day, and folks had better prepare for it, but it didn't end
when he said it would; and he went back to carpentering week-days and
preaching on the Lord's Day; and one time he fell off a roof and hit on
his head, and after that he was outlandisher than ever, and they had to
look after him. He never did get right again. They said he died writing
a telegram to our Lord on the wall of his room. This Dave Cowan, he
argued about religion with the Reverend Mallet right up in the post
office one day. He'll argue about anything! He's audacious!"
"But the father was all right till he had the fall?" asked Harvey D. "I
mean he was healthy and all that?"
"Oh, healthy enough--big, strong old codger. He used to say he could
cradle four acres of grain in a day when he was a boy on a farm, or
split and lay up three hundred and fifty rails. Strong enough."
"And this David Cowan, his son--he married someone from here?"
"Her that was Effie Freeman and her mother was a Penniman, cousin to old
Judge Penniman. A sweet, lovely little thing, Effie was, too, just as
nice as you'd want to meet, and so--"
"Healthy?" demanded Sharon.
"Healthy enough till she had them twins. Always puny after that. Took to
her bed and passed on when they was four. Dropped off the tree of life
like an overfruited branch, you might say. Winona and Mis' Penniman been
mothers to the twins ever since."
"The record seems to be fairly clear," said Gideon.
"If he hasn't inherited that queer streak for religion," said Harvey D.,
foreseeing a possible inharmony with what Rapp, Senior, would have
called the interests.
"Thank you, Sarah--we were just asking," said Gideon.
"You're welcome," said Sarah, withdrawing. She threw them a last bit
over her shoulder. "That Dave Cowan's an awful reader--reads library
books and everything. Some say he knows more than the editor of the
_Advance_ himself."
They waited until they heard a door swing to upon Sarah.
"Other has the gumption," said Sharon. But this was going in a circle.
Gideon and Harvey D. ignored it as having already been answered.
"Well," said Harvey D., "I suppose we should call it settled."
"Overchancy," said Gideon, "but so would any boy be. This one is an
excellent prospect, sound as a nut, bright, well-mannered."
"He made an excellent impression on me after church to-day," said Harvey
D. "Quite refined."
"Re-fined," said Sharon, "is something any one can get to be. It's
manners you learn." But again he was ignored.
"Something clean and manly about him," said Harvey D. "I should like
him--like him for my son."
"Has it occurred to either of you," asked Gideon, "that this absurd
father will have to be consulted in such a matter?"
"But naturally!" said Harvey D. "An arrangement would have to be made
with him."
"But has it occurred to you," persisted Gideon, "that he might be absurd
enough not to want one of his children taken over by strangers?"
"Strangers?" said Harvey D. in mild surprise, as if Whipples could with
any justice be thus described.
Gideon, however, was able to reason upon this.
"He might seem both at first, I dare say; but we can make plain to him
the advantages the boy would enjoy. I imagine they would appeal to him.
I imagine he would consent readily."
"Oh, but of course," said Harvey D. "The father is a nobody, and the
boy, left to himself, would probably become another nobody, without
training, without education, without advantages. The father would know
all this."
[Illustration: "'I CAN ALWAYS FIND A LITTLE TIME FOR BANKERS. I NEVER
KEPT ONE WAITING YET AND I WON'T BEGIN NOW.'"]
"Perhaps he doesn't even know he is a nobody," suggested Sharon.
"I think we can persuade him," said Harvey D., for once not meaning
precisely what his words would seem to mean.
"I hope so," said Gideon, "Pat will be pleased."
"I shall like to have a son," said Harvey D., frankly wistful.
"Other one has the gumption," said Sharon, casting a final rain of cigar
ash upon the abused rug at his feet.
"The sands of the Whipple family were running out--we renew them," said
Gideon, cheerily.