The colourful years sped. At fifteen Wilbur Cowan, suddenly alive to
this quick way of time, was looking back to the days of his heedless
youth. That long aisle of years seemed unending, but it narrowed in
perspective until earlier experiences were but queerly dissolving
shapes, wavering of outline, dimly discerned, piquant or sad in the
mind, but elusive when he would try to fix them.
On a shining, full-starred night he stood before the little house in the
Penniman side yard and bade farewell to this youth. A long time he gazed
into the arched splendour above. He had never noticed that the stars
were so many and so bright; and they were always there, by day as well
as by night, so his father said. Many of them, on the same veracious
authority, were peopled; some with people who were yet but monkeys like
the Vielhaber's Emil; some with people now come to be human like
himself; others with ineffable beings who had progressed in measureless
periods of time beyond any human development that even Dave Cowan could
surmise.
The aging boy felt suddenly friendly with all those distant worlds, glad
they were there, so almost sociably near. On more than one of them,
perhaps far off in that white streak they called the Milky Way, there
must be boys like himself, learning useful things about life, to read
good books and all about machinery, and have good habits, and so forth.
Surely on one of those far worlds there was at least one boy like
himself, who was being a boy for the last time and would to-morrow be a
man. For Wilbur Cowan, beneath this starry welter of creation--of worlds
to be or in being, or lifeless hulks that had been worlds and were
outworn--was on this June night uplifted to face the parting of the
ways. His last day had been lived as a boy with publicly bare feet.
No more would he feel the soft run of new grass beneath his soles, or
longer need beware the chance nail or sharp stone in the way. On the
morrow, presumably to be a day inviting to bare feet as had all the
other days of his summers, remembered and forgotten, he would, when he
rose, put on stockings and stout shoes; and he would put them on world
without end through all the new mornings of his life, howsoever urgently
with their clement airs they might solicit the older mode. It was a
solemn thing to reflect upon, under a glittering heaven that held, or
not, those who might feel with him the bigness of the moment. He
suffered a vision of the new shoes, stiffly formidable, side by side at
the foot of his bed in the little house. It left him feeling all his
years.
And he would wear long trousers! With tolerant amusement he saw himself
as of old, barefoot, bare-legged, the knee pants buttoned to the calico
blouse. It was all over. He scanned the stars a last time, dimly feeling
that the least curious of their inhabitants would be aware of this
crisis.
Perhaps on one of those blinking orbs people with a proper concern for
other world events would be saying to one another: "Yes, he's grown up
now. Didn't you hear the big news? Why, to-morrow he's going to begin
driving a truck for Trimble Cushman--got a job for the whole summer."
If the announcement startled less than great news should, the speaker
could surely produce a sensation by adding: "The first automobile truck
in Newbern Center."
And how had this immature being, capable out-of-doors boy though he was,
come to be so exalted above his fellows? Sam Pickering's linotype had
first revealed his gift for machinery. For Sam had installed a linotype,
and Wilbur Cowan had patiently mastered its distracting intricacies.
Dave Cowan had informally reappeared one day, still attired with
decreasing elegance below the waist--his cloth-topped shoes but little
more than distressing memories--and announced that he was now an able
operator of this wondrous machine; and the harried editor of the
_Advance_, stung to enterprise by flitting wastrels who tarried at his
case only long enough to learn the name of the next town, had sought
relief in machinery, even if it did take bread from the mouths of honest
typesetters. Their lack of preference as to where they earned there
bread, their insouciant flights from town to town without notice, had
made Sam brutal. He had ceased to care whether they had bread or not. So
Dave for a summer had brought him surcease from help worries.
The cynical journeyman printer of the moment, on a day when Dave tried
out the new machine, had stood by and said she might set type but she
certainly couldn't justify it, because it took a human to do that, and
how would a paper look with unevenly ending lines? When Dave, seated
before the thing, proved that she uncannily could justify the lines of
type before casting them in metal, the dismayed printer had shuddered at
the mystery of it.
Dave Cowan seized the moment to point out to his admiring son and other
bystanders that it was all the working of evolution. If you couldn't
change when your environment demanded it Nature scrapped you. Hand
compositors would have to learn to set type by machinery or go down in
the struggle for existence. Survival of the fittest--that was it. The
doubting printer was not there to profit by this lecture. Though it was
but five o'clock, he was down on the depot platform moodily waiting for
the six-fifty-eight.
The next number of the _Advance_ was set by linotype, a circumstance of
which one of its columns spoke feelingly, and set, moreover, in the
presence of as many curious persons as could crowd about the operator.
Among these none was so fascinated as Wilbur Cowan. He hung lovingly
about the machine, his fingers itching to be at its parts. When work for
the day was over he stayed by it until the light grew dim in the
low-ceilinged, dusty office. He took liberties with its delicate
structure that would have alarmed its proud owner, playing upon it with
wrench and screw driver, detaching parts from the whole for the pure
pleasure of putting them back. He thus came to an intimate knowledge of
the contrivance. He knew what made it go. He early mastered its mere
operation. Sam Pickering felt fortified against the future.
Then it developed that though Dave Cowan could perform ably upon the
instrument while it retained its health he was at a loss when it
developed ailments; and to these it was prone, being a machine of
temperament and airs, inclined to lose spirit, to sulk, even irritably
to refuse all response to Dave's fingering of the keyboard. Dave was
sincerely startled when his son one day skillfully restored tone to the
thing after it had disconcertingly rebelled. Sam Pickering, on the point
of wiring for the mechanic who had installed his treasure, looked upon
the boy with awe as his sure hands wrought knowingly among the weirdest
of its vitals. Dave was impressed to utter lack of speech, and resumed
work upon the again compliant affair without comment. Perhaps he
reflected that the stern processes of his favourite evolution demanded
more knowledge of this machine than even he had acquired.
* * * * *
There ensued further profitable education for the young mechanic from
the remarkable case of Sharon Whipple's first motor car. Sharon, the
summer before, after stoutly affirming for two years that he would never
have one of the noisy things on the place, even though the Whipple New
Place now boasted two--boasting likewise of their speed and
convenience--and even though Gideon Whipple jestingly called him a
fossilized barnacle on the ship of progress, had secretly bought a motor
car and secretly for three days taken instructions in its running from
the city salesman who delivered it. His intention was to become daringly
expert in its handling and flash upon the view of the discomfited
Gideon, who had not yet driven a car. He would wheel carelessly up the
drive to the Whipple New Place in apparently contemptuous mastery of the
thing, and he would specifically deny ever having received any driving
lessons whatever, thus by falsehood overwhelming his brother with
confusion.
In the stable, therefore, one afternoon he had taken his place at the
wheel. Affecting a jovial ease of mind, he commanded the company of his
stableman, Elihu Titus, on the seat beside him. He wished a little to
show off to Elihu, but he wished even more to be not alone if something
happened. With set jaws and a tight grip of the wheel he had backed from
the stable, and was rendered nervous in the very beginning by the
apparent mad resolve of the car to continue backing long after it was
wished not to. Elihu Titus was also rendered nervous, and was safely on
the ground before the car yielded to the invincible mass of a boxwood
hedge that had been forty years in growing. Sharon pointed his eyebrows.
"It makes you feel like a helpless fool," he confided to his hireling.
"She's all right on this side," said Elihu Titus, cannily peering at the
nether mechanism in pretense that he had left his seat to do just that.
The next start was happier in results. Down the broad driveway Sharon
had piloted the monster, and through the wide gate, though in a sudden
shuddering wonder if it were really wide enough for his mount; then he
had driven acceptably if jerkily along back streets for an exciting
hour. It wasn't so bad, except once when he met a load of hay and
emerged with frayed nerves from the ordeal of passing it; and he had
been compelled to drive a long way until he could find space in which to
turn round. The smarty that had sold the thing to him had turned in a
narrow road, but not again that day would Sharon employ the whimsically
treacherous gear of the retrograde.
He came at last to a stretch of common that permitted a wide circle, and
took this without mishap. A block farther along he had picked up the
Cowan boy. He was not above prizing the admiration of this child for his
mechanical genius. Wilbur exclaimed his delight at the car and lolled
gingerly upon its luxurious back seat. He was taken full into the
grounds of the Whipple Old Place, because Sharon had suddenly conceived
that he could not start the car again if he stopped it to let down his
guest. The car entered the wide gateway, which again seemed dangerously
narrow to its driver, and purred on up the gravelled drive. When half
the distance to the haven of the stable had been covered it betrayed
symptoms of some obscure distress, coughing poignantly. Sharon pretended
not to notice this. A dozen yards beyond it coughed again, feebly,
plaintively, then it expired. There could be no doubt of its utter
extinction. All was over. The end had come suddenly, almost painlessly.
They got out and blankly eyed the lifeless hulk. After a moment of this,
which was fruitless, Sharon spoke his mind concerning the car. For all
the trepidation it had caused him, the doubts and fears and panics, he
took his revenge in words of biting acidity--and he was through with the
thing.
"Let's get it out of sight," he said at last, and the three of them
pushed it on along the drive to the shelter of the stable.
Elihu Titus then breathed a long sigh and went silently to curry a horse
in a neighbouring box stall. He knew when to talk and when not to. But
Wilbur Cowan, wishing motor cars were in build more like linotypes,
fearlessly opened the hood.
"My shining stars!" murmured Sharon at this his first view of his car's
more intimate devices. "She's got innards like a human, ain't she?" He
instantly beheld a vision of the man in the front of the almanac whose
envelope is neatly drawn back to reveal his complicated structure in
behalf of the zodiacal symbols. "It's downright gruesome," he added. But
his guest was viewing the neat complexities of metal with real pleasure
and with what seemed to the car's owner a practiced and knowing eye.
"Understand 'em?" demanded Sharon.
The boy hesitated. What he wished more than anything was freedom to
take the thing apart, all that charming assemblage of still warm metal
and pipes and wires. He wanted to know what was inside of things, what
made them go, and--to be sure--what had made them stop.
"Well, I could if I had a chance," he said at last.
"You got it," said Sharon. "Spend all your born days on the old cadaver
if you're so minded." Already to Sharon it was an old car. He turned
away from the ghastly sight, but stopped for a final warning: "But don't
you ever tell anybody. I ain't wanting this to get out on me."
"No, sir," said Wilbur.
"Maybe we ought to----" began Sharon, but broke off his speech with a
hearty cough. He was embarrassed, because he had been on the point of
suggesting that they call Doc Mumford. Doc Mumford was the veterinary.
The old man withdrew. Elihu Titus appeared dimly in the background.
"Ain't she one gosh-awful crazy hellion?" he called softly to Wilbur,
and returned to the horse, whose mechanism was understandable.
The boy was left sole physician to the ailing monster. He drew a long
breath of gloating and fell upon it. For three days he lived in grimed,
greased, and oiled ecstasy, appeasing that sharp curiosity to know what
was inside of things. The first day he took down the engine bit by bit.
The clean-swept floor about the dismantled hulk was a spreading turmoil
of parts. Sharon, on cool afterthought, had conceived that his purchase
might not have suffered beyond repair, but returning to survey the
wreck, had thrown up his fat hands in a gesture of hopeless finality.
"That does settle it," he murmured. He pointed to the scattered members.
"How in time did you ever find all them fiddlements in that little
space?" Of course no one could ever put them back.
He picked up the book that had come with the car, a book falsely
pretending to elucidate its mechanism, even to minor intelligences. The
book was profuse in diagrams, and each diagram was profuse in letters
of the alphabet, but these he found uninforming. For the maker of the
car had unaccountably neglected to put A, B, or C on the parts
themselves, which rendered the diagrams but maddening puzzles. He threw
down the book, to watch the absorbed young mechanic who was frankly
puzzled but still hopeful.
"It's an autopsy," said Sharon. He fled again, in the buggy drawn by the
roan. "A fool and his money!" he called from the sagging seat.
The second day passed with the parts still spread about the floor. Elihu
Titus told Sharon the boy was only playing with them. Sharon said he was
glad they could furnish amusement, and mentally composed the beginning
of what would be a letter of withering denunciation to the car's maker.
But the third day the parts were unaccountably reassembled. Elihu Titus
admitted that every one of them was put back, though he hinted they were
probably by no means where they had been. But Sharon, coming again to
the dissecting room at the day's end, was stricken with awe for the
astounding genius that had put back all those parts. He felt a gleam of
hope.
"She'd ought to go now," said the proud mechanic.
"You ought to know," said Sharon. "You been plumb into her gizzard."
"Only other thing I can think of," continued the mechanic, "mebbe she
needs more of that gasoline stuff." He raised the cushion of the front
seat and unscrewed a cap. "We might try that," he suggested, brightly.
"This tank looks like she's empty."
"Try it," said Sharon, and the incredulous Elihu Titus was dispatched to
the village for a five-gallon tin of the gasoline stuff. Elihu was
incredulous, because in Newbern gasoline was until now something that
women cleaned white gloves with. But when the tank was replenished the
car came again to life, throbbing buoyantly.
"I'll be switched!" said Sharon.
A day later he was telling that his new car had broke down on him, but
Buck Cowan had taken her all apart and found out the trouble in no time,
and put her gizzard and lights and liver back as good as new. And Buck
Cowan himself came to feel quite unjustifiably a creator's pride in the
car. It was only his due that Sharon should let him operate it; perhaps
natural that Sharon should prefer him to. Sharon himself was never to
become an accomplished chauffeur. He couldn't learn to relax at the
wheel.
So it was that the boy was tossed to public eminence on a day when
Starling Tucker, accomplished horseman, descended into the vale of
ignominy by means of the Mansion House's new motor bus. Starling had
permitted the selling agents to instruct him briefly in the operation of
the new bus, though with lordly condescension, for it was his conviction
that a man who could tame wild horses and drive anything that wore hair
could by no means fail to guide a bit of machinery that wouldn't r'ar
and run even if a newspaper blew across its face. He mounted the seat,
on his first essay alone, with the jauntiness becoming a master of
vehicular propulsion. There may have been in his secret heart a bit of
trepidation, now that the instructor was not there. In fact, one of the
assembled villagers who closely observed his demeanour related afterward
that Star's face was froze and that he had hooked onto the wheel like he
was choking it to death. But the shining structure had glided off toward
the depot, its driver's head rigid, his glance strained upon the road's
centre. As it moved away Wilbur Cowan leaped to the rear steps and was
carried with it. He had almost asked Starling Tucker for the privilege
of a seat beside him, but the occasion was really too great.
Five blocks down Geneseo Street Starling had turned out to permit the
passing of Trimble Cushman's loaded dray--and he had inexplicably,
terribly, kept on turning out when there was no longer need for it.
Frozen with horror, helpless in the fell clutch of circumstance, he sat
inert and beheld himself guide the new bus over the sidewalk and through
the neat white picket fence of the Dodwell place. It demolished one
entire panel of this, made deep progress over a stretch of soft lawn,
and came at last--after threatening a lawless invasion of the sanctity
of domicile--to a grinding stop in a circular bed of pansies that would
never be the same again. There was commotion within the bus. Wild-eyed
faces peered from the polished windows. A second later, in the speech of
a bystander, "she was sweating passengers at every pore!"
Then came a full-throated scream of terror from the menaced house, and
there in the doorway, clad in a bed gown, but erect and defiant, was the
person of long-bedridden Grandma Dodwell herself. She brandished her
lace cap at Starling Tucker and threatened to have him in jail if there
was any law left in the land. Excited citizens gathered to the scene,
for the picket fence had not succumbed without protest, and the crash
had carried well. Even more than at the plight of Starling, they
marvelled at the miracle that had been wrought upon the aged
sufferer--her that hadn't put foot to floor in twenty years. There were
outcries of alarm and amazement, hasty suggestions, orders to Starling
Tucker to do many things he was beyond doing; but above them all rose
clear-toned, vigorous denunciation from the outraged owner of the late
pansy bed, who now issued from the doorway, walked unsupported down the
neat steps, and started with firm strides for the offender. Starling
Tucker beheld her approach, and to him, as to others there assembled, it
was as if the dead walked. He climbed swiftly down upon the opposite
side of his juggernaut, pushed a silent way through the crowd, and
strode rapidly back to town. Starling's walk had commonly been a
loose-jointed swagger, his head up in challenge, as befitted a hero of
manifold adventure with wild horses. He now walked head down with no
swagger.
But the crowd ceased to regard him, for now a slight boyish figure--none
other than that of Wilbur Cowan--leaped to the seat, performed swift
motions, grasped the fateful wheel, and made the bus roar. The smell of
burned gasoline affronted the pretty garden. Wheels revolved savagely
among the bruised roots of innocent pansies. Grandma Dodwell screamed
anew. Then slowly, implacably hesitant, ponderous but determined, the
huge bus backed along the track it had so cruelly worn in the sward--out
through the gap in the fair fence, over the side-walk and into the road,
rocking perilously, but settling level at last. Thereupon the young hero
had done something else with mysterious handles, and the bus glided
swiftly on to the depot, making the twelve-two in ample time.
Great moments are vouchsafed only to those souls fortified to survive
them. To one who had tamed the proud spirit of Sharon Whipple's hellion
it was but lightsome child's play to guide this honest and amiable new
bus. To the Mansion he returned in triumph with a load of passengers,
driving with zest, and there receiving from villagers inflamed by tales
of his prowess an ovation that embarrassed him with its heartiness. He
hastened to remove the refulgent edifice, steering it prudently to its
station in the stable yard. Then he went to find the defeated Starling
Tucker. That stricken veteran sat alone amid the ruins of his toppled
empire in the little office, slumped and torpid before the cold, rusty
stove. He refused to be comforted by his devotee. He said he would never
touch one of them things again, not for no man's money. The Darwinian
hypothesis allows for no petty tact in the process of evolution.
Starling Tucker was unfit to survive into the new age. Unable to adapt
himself, he would see the Mansion's stable become a noisome garage,
while he performed humble and gradually dwindling service to a few
remaining horses.
Wilbur Cowan guided the Mansion's bus for two days. He longed for it as
a life work, but school was on and he was not permitted to abandon this,
even for a glorious life at the wheel. There came a youth in neat
uniform to perform this service--described by Starling Tucker as a young
squirt that wouldn't know one end of a hawse from the other. Only on
Saturdays--on Saturdays openly and clandestinely on Sundays--was there
present on the driver's seat a knowing amateur who could have sat there
every day but for having unreasonably to learn about compound fractions
and geography.