Wilbur Cowan's fear that his brother might untimely stop the war proved
baseless. The war went on despite the _New Dawn's_ monthly exposure of
its motive and sinister aims; despite its masterly paraphrase of a
celebrated document declaring that this Government had been "conceived
in chicanery and dedicated to the industrial slavery of the masses." Not
even the new social democracy of Russia sufficed to inspire any
noticeable resistance. The common people of the United States had
refused to follow the example of their brothers of Russia and destroy a
tyranny equally hateful, though the _New Dawn_ again and again set forth
the advantages to accrue from such action. War prevailed. As the
Reverend Mallet said: "It gathered the vine of the earth and cast it
into the great wine press of the wrath of God."
But the little cluster of intellectuals on the staff of the _New Dawn_
persevered. Monthly it isolated the causative bacteria of unrest, to set
the results before those who could profit would they but read. Merle,
the modernist, at the forefront of what was known as all the new
movements, tirelessly applied the new psychology to the mind of the
common man and proved him a creature of mean submissions. He spoke of
"our ranks" and "our brave comrades of Russia," but a selective draft
had its way and an army went forward.
In Newbern, which Merle frequented between issues of the magazine, he
received perhaps less appreciation than was his due. Sharon Whipple was
blindly disparaging. Even Gideon was becoming less attentive when the
modernist expounded the new freedom. Gideon was still puzzled. He
quoted, as to war: "The sign of a mad world. God bless us out of it!"
But he was beginning to wonder if perhaps this newest Whipple had not,
with all his education, missed something that other Whipples had
learned.
Harvey D. had once or twice spoken with frank impatience of the _New
Dawn's_ gospel. And one Kate Brophy, cook at the Whipple New Place, said
of its apostle that he was "a sahft piece of furniture." Merle was
sensitive to these little winds of captiousness. He was now convinced
that Newbern would never be a cultural centre. There was a spirit of
intolerance abroad.
Sharon Whipple, becoming less and less restrained as the months went on,
spoke of the staff of the _New Dawn_ in Merle's hearing. He called it a
cage of every unclean and hateful bird. Merle smiled tolerantly, and
called Sharon a besotted reactionary, warning him further that such as
he could never stem the tide of revolution now gathering for its full
sweep. Sharon retorted that it hadn't swept anything yet.
"Perhaps not yet--on the surface," said Merle. "But now we shall show
our teeth."
Sharon fell to a low sort of wit in his retort.
"Better not show your teeth to the Government!" he warned. "If you do
you want to have the address of a good dentist handy."
And after another month--when the magazine of light urged resistance to
the draft--it became apparent not only that the _New Dawn_ would not
stop the war, but that the war would incredibly stop the _New Dawn_. The
despoilers of America actually plotted to destroy it, to smother its
message, to adjust new shackles about the limbs of labour.
Sharon Whipple was the first of the privileged class to say that
something had got to be done by the family--unless they wanted to have
the police do it. Gideon was the second. These two despoilers of the
people summoned Harvey D. from Washington, and the conspiracy against
spiritual and industrial liberty ripened late one night in the library
of the Whipple New Place. It was agreed that the last number of the
_New Dawn_ went pretty far--farther than any Whipple ought to go. But it
was not felt that the time had come for extreme measures. It was
believed that the newest Whipple should merely be reasoned with. To this
end they began to reason among themselves, and were presently wrangling.
It developed that Sharon's idea of reasoning lacked subtlety. It
developed that Gideon and Harvey D. reasoned themselves into sheer
bewilderment in an effort to find reasons that would commend themselves
to Merle; so that this first meeting of the conspirators was about to
break up fruitlessly, when Sharon Whipple was inspired to a suggestion
that repelled yet pricked the other two until they desperately yielded
to it. This was that none other than Dave Cowan be called into
consultation.
"He'll know more about his own son than we do," urged Sharon.
Harvey D.'s feeling of true fatherhood was irritated by this way of
putting it, but in the end he succumbed. He felt that his son was now
far removed from the sphere of Dave Cowan, yet the man might retain some
influence over the boy that would be of benefit to all concerned.
"He's in town," said Sharon. "He's a world romper, but he's here now. I
heard him to-day in the post office telling someone how many stars there
are in the sky--or something like that."
The following afternoon Dave Cowan, busy at the typesetting machine of
the Newbern _Advance_, Daily and Weekly, was again begged to meet a few
Whipples in the dingy little office of the First National. The office
was unchanged; it had kept through the years since Dave had last
illumined its gloom an air of subdued, moneyed discretion. Nor had the
Whipples changed much. Harvey D. was still neat-faced and careful of
attire, still solicitous of many little things. Gideon, gaunt and dour,
was still erect. His hair was white now, but the brows shot their
questioning glance straight. Sharon was as he had been, round-chested,
plump; perhaps a trifle readier to point the ends of the grizzled brows
in choleric amaze. The Whipple nose on all three still jutted forward
boldly. It was a nose never to compromise with Time.
Dave Cowan, at first glance, was much the same, even after he had
concealed beneath the table that half of him which was never quite so
scrupulously arrayed as the other. But a second glance revealed that the
yellow hair was less abundant. It was now cunningly conserved from ear
to ear, above a forehead that had heightened. The face was thinner, and
etched with new lines about the orator's mouth, but the eyes shone with
the same light as of old and the same willingness to shed its beams
through shadowed places such as first national banks. He no longer
accepted the cigar, to preserve in the upper left-hand waist coat pocket
with the fountain pen, the pencil, and the toothbrush. He craved rather
permission to fill and light the calabash pipe. This was a mere bit of
form, for he was soon talking so continuously that the pipe was no
longer a going concern.
Delay was occasioned at the beginning of the interview. It proved to be
difficult to convey to Dave exactly why he had been summoned. It
appeared that he did not expect a consultation--rather a lecture by
Dave Cowan upon life in its larger aspects. The Whipples, strangely,
were all not a little embarrassed in his presence, and the mere mention
of his son caused him to be informative for ten minutes before any of
them dared to confine the flow of his discourse within narrower banks.
He dealt volubly with the doctrines espoused by Merle, whereas they
wished to be told how to deal with Merle. As he talked he consulted from
time to time a sheaf of clippings brought from a pocket.
"A joke," began Dave, "all this socialistic talk. Get this from their
platform: They demand that the country and its wealth be redeemed from
the control of private interests and turned over to the people to be
administered for the equal benefit of all. See what they mean? Going to
have a law that a short man can reach as high as a tall man. Good joke,
yes? Here again: 'The Socialist Party desires the workers of America to
take the economic and political power from the capitalistic class.'
Going to pull themselves off the ground by their boot straps, yes? Have
a law to make the weak strong and the strong weak. Reads good, don't it?
And here's the prize joke--one big union: Socialist Party does not
interfere in the internal affairs of labour unions, but supports them in
all their struggles. In order, however, that such struggles might attain
the maximum of efficiency the socialists favour the closest organic
cooperation of all unions as one organized working body.
"Get that? Lovely, ain't it? And when we're all in one big union, who
are we going to strike against? Against ourselves, of course--like we do
now. Bricklayers striking against shoemakers and both striking against
carpenters, and all of 'em striking against the honest farmer and the
farmer striking back, because every one of 'em wants all he can get for
his labour and wants to pay as little as he has to for the other
fellow's labour. One big union, my eye! Socialists are jokes. You never
saw two of 'em yet that could agree on anything for ten minutes--except
that they want something for nothing."
The speaker paused impressively. His listeners stirred with relief, but
the tide of his speech again washed in upon them.
"They lack," said he, pointing the calabash pipe at Gideon Whipple,
sitting patiently across the table from him, "they lack the third eye of
wisdom." He paused again, but only as if to await applause. There was no
intimation that he had done.
"Dear me!" murmured Gideon, politely. The other Whipples made little
sounds of amazement and approval.
"You want to know what the third eye of wisdom is?" continued Dave, as
one who had read their secret thought. "Well, it's the simple gift of
being able to look at facts as they are instead of twisting 'em about as
they ain't. The most of us, savages, uneducated people, simples, and
that sort, got this third eye of wisdom without knowing it; we follow
the main current without knowing or asking why. But professors and
philosophers and preachers and teachers and all holy rollers like
socialists ain't got it. They want to reduce the whole blamed cosmos to
a system, and she won't reduce. I forget now just how many billion cells
in your body"--he pointed the pipe at Sharon Whipple, who stirred
uneasily--"but no matter." Sharon looked relieved.
"Anyway, we fought our way up to be a fish with lungs, and then we
fought on till we got legs, and here we are. And the only way we got
here was by competition--some of us always beating others. Holy rollers
like socialists would have us back to one cell and keep us there with
equal rewards for all. But she don't work that way. The pot's still
a-boiling, and competition is the eternal fire under it.
"Look at all these imaginary Utopias they write about--good stories,
too, about a man waking up three thousand years hence and finding
everything lovely. But every one of 'em, and I've read all, picture a
society that's froze into some certain condition--static. Nothing is!
She won't freeze! They can spray the fire of competition with speeches
all they like, but they can't put it out. Because why? Well, because
this life thing is going on, and competition is the only way it can get
on. Call it Nature if you want to. Nature built star dust out of
nothing, and built us out of star dust, but she ain't through; she's
still building. Old Evolution is still evoluting, and her only tool is
competition, the same under the earth and on the earth, the same out in
the sky as in these states.
"Of course there's bound to be flaws and injustice in any scheme of
government because of this same competition you can't get away from any
more than the planets can. There's flaws in evolution itself, only these
holy rollers don't see it, because they haven't got the third eye of
wisdom; they can't see that the shoemaker is always going to want all he
can get for a pair of shoes and always going to pay as little as he can
for his suit of clothes, socialism or no socialism.
"What would their one big union be? Take these unions that are striking
now all over the country. They think they're striking against something
they call capital. Well, they ain't. They're striking against each
other. Railroad men striking against bricklayers, shoemakers striking
against farmers, machinists striking against cabinetmakers, printers
striking against all of 'em--and the fools don't know it; think they're
striking against some common enemy, when all the time they're hitting
against each other. Oh, she's a grand bit of cunning, this Old
Evolution."
"This is all very interesting, Mr. Cowan"--Harvey D. had become uneasy
in his chair, and had twice risen to put straight a photograph of the
Whipple block that hung on the opposite wall--"but what we would like to
get at--"
"I know, I know"--Dave silenced him with a wave of the calabash--"you
want to know what it's all about--what it's coming to, what we're here
for. Well, I can tell you a little. There used to be a catch in it that
bothered me, but I figured her out. Old Evolution is producing an
organism that will find the right balance and perpetuate itself
eternally. It's trying every way it knows to get these cells of
protoplasm into some form that will change without dying. Simple enough,
only it takes time. Think how long it took to get us this far out of
something you can't see without glasses! But forget about time. Our time
don't mean anything out there in the real world. Say we been produced in
one second from nothing; well, think what we'll become in another ten
seconds. We'll have our balance by that time. This protoplasm does what
it's told to do--that's how it made eyes for us to see, and ears to
hear, and brains to think with--so by that time we'll be really living;
we'll have a form that's plastic, and can change round to meet any
change of environment, so we won't have to die if it gets too cold or
too hot. We want to live--we all want to live; by that time we'll be
able to go on living.
"Of course we won't be looking much like we are now, we're pretty clumsy
machines so far. I suppose, for one thing, we'll be getting our
nourishment straight from the elements instead of taking it through
plants and animals. We'll be as superior to what we are now as he is to
a hoptoad." The speaker indicated Sharon Whipple with the calabash.
Sharon wriggled self-consciously. "And pretty soon people will forget
that any one ever died; they won't believe it when they read it in old
books; they won't understand it. This time is coming, as near as I can
figure it, in seven hundred and fifty thousand years. That is, in round
numbers, it might be an odd hundred thousand years more or less. Of
course I can't be precise in such a matter."
"Of course not," murmured Harvey D., sympathetically; "but what we were
wanting to get at--"
"Of course," resumed the lecturer, "I know there's still a catch in it.
You say, 'What does it mean after that?' Well, I'll be honest with you,
I haven't been able to figure it out much farther. We'll go on and on
till this earth dries up, and then we'll move to another, or build
one--I can't tell which--and all the time we're moving round something,
but I don't know what or why. I only know it's been going on
forever--this life thing--and we're a little speck in the current, and
it will keep going on forever.
"But you can bet this: It will always go on by competition. There won't
ever be any Utopia, like these holy rollers can lay out for you in five
minutes. I been watching union labour long enough to know that. But
she's a grand scheme. I'm glad I got this little look at it. I wouldn't
change it in any detail, not if you come to me with full power. I
couldn't think of any better way than competition, not if I took a
life-time to it. It's a sporty proposition."
The speaker beamed modestly upon his hearers. Gideon was quick to clutch
the moment's pause.
"What about this boy Merle?" he demanded before Dave could resume.
"Oh, him?" said Dave. "Him and his holy rolling? Is that all you want to
know? Why didn't you say so? That's easy! You've raised him to be a
house cat. So shut off his cream."
"A house cat!" echoed Harvey D., shocked.
"No education," resumed Dave. "No savvy about the world. Set him down in
Spokane with three dollars in his jeans and needing to go to Atlanta.
Would he know how? Would he know a simple thing like how to get there
and ride all the way in varnished cars?"
"Is it possible?" murmured Harvey D.
The Whipples had been dazed by the cosmic torrent, but here was
something specific;--and it was astounding. They regarded the speaker
with awe. They wanted to be told how one could perform the feat, but
dreaded to incur a too-wordy exposition.
"Not practical enough, I dare say," ventured Harvey D.
"You said it!" replied Dave. "That's why he's took this scarlet rash of
socialism and holy rolling that's going the rounds. Of course there are
plenty that are holy rollers through and through, but not this boy. It's
only a skin disease with him. I know him. Shut off his cream."
"I said the same!" declared Sharon Whipple, feeling firm ground beneath
his feet for the first time.
"You said right!" approved Dave. "It would be a shock to him," said
Harvey D. "He's bound up in the magazine. What would he say? What would
he do?"
"Something pretty," explained Dave. "Something pretty and high-sounding.
Like as not he'd cast you off."
"Cast me off!" Harvey D. was startled.
"Tell you you are no longer a father of his. Don't I know that boy?
He'll half mean it, too, but only half. The other half will be showing
off--showing off to himself and to you people. He likes to be noticed."
Sharon Whipple now spoke.
"I always said he wouldn't be a socialist if he couldn't be a
millionaire socialist."
"You got him!" declared Dave.
"I shall hate to adopt extreme measures," protested Harvey D. "He's
always been so sensitive. But we must consider his welfare. In a time
like this he might be sent to prison for things printed in that
magazine."
"Trust him!" said Dave. "He wouldn't like it in prison. He might get
close enough to it to be photographed with the cell door back of
him--but not in front of him."
"He'll tell us we're suppressing free speech," said Harvey D.
"Well, you will be, won't you?" said Dave. "We ain't so fussy about free
speech here as they are in that free Russia that he writes about, but
we're beginning to take notice. Naturally it's a poor time for free
speech when the Government's got a boil on the back of its neck and is
feeling irritable. Besides, no one ever did believe in free speech, and
no government on earth ever allowed it. Free speakers have always had to
use judgment. Up to now we've let 'em be free-speakinger than any other
country has, but now they better watch out until the boat quits rocking.
They attack the machinery and try to take it apart, and then cry when
they're smacked. Maybe they might get this boy the other side of a cell
door. Wouldn't hurt him any."
"Of course," protested Harvey D., "we can hardly expect you to have a
father's feeling for him."
"Well, I have!" retorted Dave. "I got just as much father's feeling for
him as you have. But you people are small-towners, and I been about in
the world. I know the times and I know that boy. I'm telling you what's
best for him. No more cream! If it had been that other boy of mine you
took, and he was believing what this one thinks he believes, I'd be
telling you something different."
"Always said he had the gumption," declared Sharon Whipple.
"He's got the third eye," said Dave Cowan.
"We want to thank you for this talk," interposed Gideon Whipple. "Much
of what you have said is very, very interesting. I think my son will now
know what course to pursue."
"Don't mention it!" said Dave, graciously. "Always glad to oblige."
The consultation seemed about to end, but even at the door of the
little room Dave paused to acquaint them with other interesting facts
about life. He informed them that we are all brothers of the earth,
being composed of carbon and a few other elements, and grow from it as
do the trees; that we are but super-vegetables. He further instructed
them as to the constitution of a balanced diet--protein for building,
starches or sugar for energy, and fats for heating and also for their
vitamine content.
The Whipples, it is to be feared, were now inattentive. They appeared to
listen, but they were merely surveying with acute interest the now
revealed lower half of Dave Cowan. The trousers were frayed, the shoes
were but wraiths of shoes. The speaker, quite unconscious of this
scrutiny, concluded by returning briefly to the problems of human
association.
"We'll have socialism when every man is like every other man. So far
Nature hasn't made even two alike. Anyway, most of us got the third eye
of wisdom too wide open to take any stock in it. We may like it when we
read it in a book, but we wouldn't submit to it. We're too inquiring. If
a god leaned out of a cloud of fire and spoke to us to-day we'd put the
spectroscope on his cloud, get a moving picture of him, and take his
voice on a phonograph record; and we wouldn't believe him if he talked
against experience."
Dave surveyed the obscure small-towners with a last tolerant smile and
withdrew.
"My!" said Gideon, which for him was strong speech.
"Talks like an atheist," said Sharon.
"Mustn't judge him harshly," warned Harvey D.
* * * * *
So it came that Merle Dalton Whipple, born Cowan, was rather
peremptorily summoned to meet these older Whipples at another
conference. It was politely termed a conference by Harvey D., though
Sharon warmly urged a simpler description of the meeting, declaring that
Merle should be told he was to come home and behave himself. Harvey D.
and Gideon, however, agreed upon the more tactful summons. They
discussed, indeed, the propriety of admitting Sharon to the conference.
Each felt that he might heedlessly offend the young intellectual by
putting things with a bluntness for which he had often been conspicuous.
Yet they agreed at last that he might be present, for each secretly
distrusted his own firmness in the presence of one with so strong an
appeal as their boy. They admonished Sharon to be gentle. But each hoped
that if the need rose he would cease to be gentle.
Merle obeyed the call, and in the library of the Whipple New Place,
where once he had been chosen to bear the name of the house, he listened
with shocked amazement while Harvey D., with much worried straightening
of pictures, rugs, and chairs, told him why Whipple money could no
longer meet the monthly deficit of the _New Dawn_. The most cogent
reason that Harvey D. could advance at first was that there were too
many Liberty Bonds to be bought.
Merle, with his world-weary gesture, swept the impeding lock from his
pale brow and set pained eyes upon his father by adoption. He was unable
to believe this monstrous assertion. He stared his incredulity. Harvey
D. winced. He felt that he had struck some defenseless child a cruel
blow. Gideon shot the second gun in this unhuman warfare.
"My boy, it won't do. Harvey is glossing it a bit when he says the money
is needed for bonds. You deserve the truth--we are not going to finance
any longer a magazine that is against all our traditions and all our
sincerest beliefs."
"Ah, I see," said Merle. His tone was grim. Then he broke into a dry,
bitter laugh. "The interests prevail!"
"Looks like it," said Sharon, and he, too, laughed dryly.
"If you would only try to get our point of view," broke in Harvey D. "We
feel--"
He was superbly silenced by Merle, who in his best _New Dawn_ manner
exposed the real truth. The dollar trembled on its throne, the fat
bourgeoisie--he spared a withering glance for Sharon, who was the only
fat Whipple in the world--would resort to brutal force to silence those
who saw the truth and were brave enough to speak it out.
"It's the age-old story," he went on, again sweeping the lock of hair
from before his flashing glance. "Privilege throttles truth where it
can. I should have expected nothing else; I have long known there was no
soil here that would nourish our ideals. I couldn't long hope for
sympathy from mere exploiters of labour. But the die is cast. God
helping me, I must follow the light."
The last was purely rhetorical, for no one on the staff of the _New
Dawn_ believed that God helped any one. Indeed, it was rather felt that
God was on the side of privilege. But the speaker glowed as he achieved
his period.
"If you would only try to get our point of view," again suggested Harvey
D., as he straightened the Reading From Homer.
"I cannot turn aside."
"Meaning?" inquired Sharon Whipple.
"Meaning that we cannot accept another dollar of tainted money for our
great work," said Merle, crisply.
"Oh," said Sharon, "but that's what your pa just told you! You accepted
it till he shut off on you."
"Against my better judgment and with many misgivings," returned the
apostle of light. "Now we can go to the bitter end with no false sense
of obligation."
"But your magazine will have to stop, I fear," interposed Gideon gently.
Merle smiled wanly, shaking his head the while as one who contradicts
from superior knowledge.
"You little know us," he retorted when the full effect of the silent,
head-shaking smile had been had. "The people are at last roused. Money
will pour in upon us. Money is the last detail we need think of. Our
movement is solidly grounded. We have at our back"--he glanced defiantly
at each of the three Whipples--"an awakened proletariat."
"My!" said Gideon.
"You are out of the current here," explained Merle, kindly. "You don't
suspect how close we are to revolution. Yet that glorious rising of our
comrades in Russia might have warned you. But your class, of course,
never is warned."
"Dear me!" broke in Harvey D. "You don't mean to say that conditions are
as bad here as they were in Russia?"
"Worse--a thousand times worse," replied Merle. "We have here an
autocracy more hateful, more hideous in its injustices, than ever the
Romanoffs dreamed of. And how much longer do you think these serfs of
ours will suffer it? I tell you they are roused this instant! They await
only a word!"
"Are you going to speak it?" demanded Sharon.
"Now, now!" soothed Harvey D. as Merle turned heatedly upon Sharon, who
thus escaped blasting.
"I am not here to be baited," protested Merle.
"Of course not, my boy," said the distressed Harvey D.
Merle faced the latter.
"I need not say that this decision of yours--this abrupt withdrawal, of
your cooperation--must make a profound difference in our relations. I
feel the cause too deeply for it to be otherwise. You understand?"
"He's casting you off," said Sharon, "like the other one said he would."
"_Ssh_!" It was Gideon.
"I shall stay no longer to listen to mere buffoonery," and for the last
time that night Merle swept back the ever-falling lock. He paused at the
door. "The old spirit of intolerance," he said. "You are the sort who
wouldn't accept truth in France in 1789, or in Russia the other day."
And so he left them.
"My!" exclaimed Gideon, forcefully.
"Dear me!" exclaimed Harvey D.
"Shucks!" exclaimed Sharon.
"But the boy is goaded to desperation!" protested Harvey D.
"Listen!" urged Sharon. "Remember what his own father said! He's only
half goaded. The other half is showing off--to himself and us. That man
knew his own flesh and blood. And listen again! You sit tight if you
want to get him back to reason!"
"Brother, I think you're right," said Gideon.
"Dear me!" said Harvey D. He straightened an etched cathedral, and then
with a brush from the hearth swept cigar ashes deeper into the rug about
the chair of Sharon. "Dear me!" he sighed again.
* * * * *
Early the following morning Merle Whipple halted before the show window
of Newbern's chief establishment purveying ready-made clothing for men.
He was about to undergo a novel experience and one that would have
profoundly shocked his New York tailors. There were suits in the window,
fitted to forms with glovelike accuracy. He studied these
disapprovingly, then entered the shop.
"I want," he told the salesman, "something in a rough, coarse,
common-looking suit--something such as a day labourer might wear."
The salesman was momentarily puzzled, yet seemed to see light.
"Yes, sir--right this way, sir," and he led his customer back between
the lines of tables piled high with garments. He halted and spanned the
chest of the customer with a tape measure. From halfway down a stack of
coats he pulled one of the proper size.
"Here's a snappy thing, sir, fitted in at the back--belted--cuffs on
the trousers, neat check----"
But the customer waved it aside impatiently.
"No, no! I want something common--coarse cloth, roughly made, no style;
it mustn't fit too well."
The salesman deliberated sympathetically.
"Ah, I see--masquerade, sir?"
The customer again manifested impatience.
"No, no! A suit such as a day labourer might wear--a factory worker, one
of the poorer class."
The salesman heightened his manifestation of sympathy.
"Well, sir"--he deliberated, tapping his brow with a pencil, scanning
the long line of garments--"I'm afraid we're not stocked with what you
wish. Best go to a costumer, sir, and rent one for the night perhaps."
The customer firmly pushed back a pendent lock of hair and became
impressive.
"I tell you it is not for a masquerade or any foolishness of that sort.
I wish a plain, roughly made, common-looking suit of clothes, not too
well fitting--the sort of things working people wear, don't you
understand?"
"But certainly, sir; I understand perfectly. This coat here is what the
working people are buying; sold a dozen suits myself this week to some
of the mill workers--very natty, sir, and only sixty-five dollars. If
you'll look closely at the workers about town you'll see the same
suits--right dressy, you'll notice. I'm afraid the other sort of thing
has gone a little out of style; in fact, I don't believe you'll be able
to find a suit such as you describe. They're not being made. Workers are
buying this sort of garment." He picked up the snappy belted coat and
fondled its nap affectionately. "Of course, for a fancy-dress party----"
"No, no, no! I tell you it isn't a masquerade!"
The salesman seemed at a loss for further suggestions. The customer's
eye lighted upon a pile of coats farther down the line.
"What are those?"
"Those? Corduroy, sir. Splendid garments--suitable for the woods,
camping, hunting, fishing. We're well stocked with hunting equipment.
Will you look at them?"
"I suppose so," said the customer, desperately.
* * * * *
Late that afternoon the three older Whipples, on the piazza of the
Whipple New Place, painfully discussed the scene of the previous
evening. It was felt by two of them that some tragic event impended.
Sharon alone was cheerful. From time to time he admonished the other two
to sit tight.
"He'll tell you you ain't any longer a father of his, or a grandfather,
either, but sit tight!"
He had said this when Merle appeared before them as a car drew up to the
door. There was an immediate sensation from which even Sharon was not
immune. For Merle was garbed in corduroy, and the bagging trousers were
stuffed into the tops of heavy, high-laced boots. The coat was belted
but loose fitting. The exposed shirt was of brown flannel, and the gray
felt hat was low-crowned and broad of brim. The hat was firmly set on
the wearer's head, and about his neck was a wreath of colour--a knotted
handkerchief of flaming scarlet.
The three men stared at him in silent stupefaction. He seemed about to
pass them on his way to the waiting car, but then paused and confronted
them, his head back. He laughed his bitter laugh.
"Does it seem strange to see me in the dress of a common workingman?" he
demanded.
"Dress of a what?" demanded Sharon Whipple. The other ignored this.
"You have consigned me to the ranks," he continued, chiefly to Harvey D.
"I must work with my hands for the simple fare that my comrades are able
to gain with their own toil. I must dress as one of them. It's absurdly
simple."
"My!" exclaimed Gideon.
Harvey D. was suffering profoundly, but all at once his eyes flashed
with alarm.
"Haven't those boots nails in them?" he suddenly demanded.
"I dare say they have."
"And you've been going across the hardwood floors?" demanded Harvey D.
again.
"This is too absurd!" said Merle, grimly.
Harvey D. hesitated, then smiled, his alarm vanishing.
"Of course I was absurd," he admitted, contritely. "I know you must have
kept on the rugs."
"Oh, oh!" Again came the dry, bitter laugh of Merle.
"Say," broke in Sharon, "you want to take a good long look at the next
workingman you see."
Merle swept him with a glance of scorn. He stepped into the waiting car.
"I could no longer brook this spirit of intolerance, but I'm taking
nothing except the clothes I'm wearing," he reminded Harvey D. "I go to
my comrades barehanded." He adjusted the knot of crimson at his white
throat. "But they will not be barehanded long, remember that!"
Nathan Marwick started the car along the driveway. Merle was seen to
order a halt.
"Of course, for a time, at least, I shall keep the New York apartment.
My address will be the same."
The car went on.
"Did that father know his own flesh and blood--I ask you?" demanded
Sharon.
"Dear me, dear me!" sighed Harvey D.
"Poor young thing!" said Gideon.
Merle, on his way to the train, thought of his hat. He had not been able
to feel confidence in that hat. There was a trimness about it, an
assertive glamour, an air of success, that should not stamp one of the
oppressed. He had gone to the purchase of it with vague notions that a
labouring man, at least while actually labouring, wears a square cap of
paper which he has made himself. So he was crowned in all cartoons. But,
of course, this paper thing would not do for street wear, and the hat he
now wore was the least wealth-suggesting he had been able to find. He
now decided that a cap would be better. He seemed to remember that the
toiling masses wore a lot of caps.