On a day late in June of 1919 Wilbur Cowan dropped off the noon train
that paused at Newbern Center. He carried the wicker suitcase he had
taken away, and wore the same clothes. He had the casual, incurious look
of one who had been for a little trip down the line. No one about the
station heeded him, nor did he notice any one he knew. There was a new
assemblage of station loafers, and none of these recognized him.
Suitcase in hand, his soft hat pulled well down, he walked quickly round
the crowd and took a roundabout way through quiet streets to the
Penniman place.
The town to his eye had shrunk; buildings were not so high as he
remembered them, wide spaces narrower, streets shorter, less thronged.
On his way he met old Mr. Dodwell, muffled about the throat, though the
day was hot, walking feebly, planting a stout cane before him. Mr.
Dodwell passed blinking eyes over him, went on, then turned to call
back.
"Ain't that Wilbur Cowan? How de do, Wilbur? Ain't you been away?"
"For a little while," answered Wilbur. "Thought I hadn't seen you for
some time. Hot as blazes, ain't it?"
He came to the Penniman place at the rear. The vegetable garden, lying
between the red barn and the white house, was as he had known it,
uncared for, sad, discouraged. The judge's health could be no better. On
bare earth at the corner of the woodshed Frank, the dog, slumbered
fitfully in the shade. He merely grumbled, rising to change his posture,
when greeted. Feebly he sniffed the newcomer. It could be seen that his
memory was stirred, but his eyes told him nothing; he had a complaining
air of saying one met so many people. It was beyond one to place them
all. He whimpered when his ears were rubbed, seeming to recall a
familiar touch. Then with a deep sigh he fell asleep once more. His
master took up the suitcase and gained, without further encounters, the
little room in the side-yard house. Yet he did not linger here. He kept
seeing a small, barefoot boy who rummaged in a treasure box labelled
"Cake." This boy made him uncomfortable. He went round to the front of
the other house. On the porch, behind the morning-glory vine, Judge
Penniman in his wicker chair languidly fanned himself, studying a
thermometer held in his other hand. He glanced up sharply.
"Well, come back, did you?"
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur, and sat on the top step to fan himself with his
hat. "Warm, isn't it?"
The judge brightened.
"Warm? Warm ain't any name for it! We been having a hot spell nobody
remembers the like of, man nor boy, for twenty years. Why, day before
yesterday--say, I wish you'd been here! Talk about suffering! I was
having one of my bad days, and the least little thing I'd do I'd be
panting like a tuckered hound. Say, how was the war?"
"Oh, so-so," answered the returned private.
"You tell it well. Seems to me if I'd been off skyhootin' round in
foreign lands--say, how about them French women? Pretty bold lot, I
guess, if you can believe all you--"
The parrot in its cage at the end of the porch climbed to a perch with
beak and claw.
"Flapdoodle, Flapdoodle, Flapdoodle!" it screeched. The judge glared
murderously at it.
"Wilbur Cowan, you bad, bad, bad child--not to let us know!" Mrs.
Penniman threw back the screen door and rushed to embrace him. "You
regular fighting so-and-so!" she sobbed.
"Where'd you get that talk?" he demanded.
Mrs. Penniman wiped her eyes with a dish towel suspended from one arm.
"Oh, we heard all about you!"
She was warm, and shed gracious aromas. The returned one sniffed these.
"It's chops," he said--"and--and hot biscuits."
"And radishes from the garden, and buttermilk and clover honey and
raspberries, and--let me see--"
"Let's go!" said the soldier.
"Then you can tell us all about that war," said the invalid as with
groans he raised his bulk from the wicker chair.
"What war?" asked Wilbur.
* * * * *
He spent the afternoon in the little room, where he would glance up to
find the small, barefoot boy staring at him in wonder; and out in the
Penniman front yard, where the summer flowers bloomed. These
surroundings presented every assurance of safety, yet his restless,
wide-sweeping gaze was full of caution, especially after the aëroplane
went over. At the first ominous note of its droning he had broken for
cover. After that, in spite of himself, he would be glancing uneasily at
the Plummer place across the road. This was fronted by a hedge of
cypress--ideal machine-gun cover. But not once during the long afternoon
was he shot at. He brought out and repaired the lawn mower, oiled its
rusted parts and ran it gayly over the grass. At suppertime, when Dave
Cowan came, he was wetting the shorn sward with spray from a hose.
"Back?" said Dave, peering as at a bit of the far cosmos flung in his
way.
"Back," said his son.
They shook hands.
"You haven't changed any," said Wilbur, scanning Dave's placid face
under the straw hat and following the lines of his spare figure down to
the vestiges of a once noble pair of shoes.
"You only been away two years," said Dave. "I wouldn't change much in
that time. That's the way of the mind, though. We always forget how
slowly evolution works its wonders. Anyhow, you know what they say in
our trade--when a printer dies he turns into a white mule. I'm no white
mule yet. You've changed, though."
"I didn't know it."
"Face harder--about ten years older. Kind of set and sour looking. Ever
laugh any more?"
"Of course I laugh."
"You don't look it. Never forget how to laugh. It's a life-saver. Laugh
even at wars and killings. Human life in each of us isn't much. It's
like that stream you're spreading over the ground. The drops fall back
to earth, but the main stream is constant. That's all the life force
cares about--the main stream. Doesn't care about the drops; a few more
or less here and there make no difference."
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
Dave Cowan scanned the front of the house. The judge was not in sight.
He went softly to lean above the parrot's cage and in low, wheedling
tones, uttered words to it.
"Flapdoodle, Flapdoodle, Flapdoodle!" screeched the parrot in return,
and laughed harshly. The bird was a master of sarcastic inflection.
Dave came back looking pleased and proud.
"Almost human," he declared. "Kept back a few million years by
accident--our little feathered brother." He gestured toward the house.
"Old Flapdoodle, in there, he's a rabid red these days. Got tired of
being a patriot. Worked hard for a year trying to prove that Vielhaber
was a German spy, flapping his curtain at night to the German Foreign
Office. But no one paid any attention to him except a few other
flapdoodles, so then he began to read your brother's precious words, and
now he's a violent comrade. Fact! expecting any day that the workers
will take things over and he'll come into money--money the interests
have kept him out of. He kind of licks his chops when he talks about it.
Never heard him talk about his wife's share, though. Say, that brother
of yours is making a plumb fool of himself!"
"He didn't understand."
"No--and he doesn't yet."
"Where is he now?"
"Oh"--Dave circled a weary hand to the zenith--"off somewhere
holy-rolling. Gets his name in the papers--young poet radical that
abandoned life of luxury to starve with toiling comrades. Say, do you
know what a toiling comrade gets per day now? No matter. Your brother
hasn't toiled any. Makes red-hot speeches. That Whipple bunch reared at
last and shut off his magazine money, so he said he couldn't take
another cent wrung from the anguished sweat of serfs. But it ain't his
hands he toils with, and he ain't a real one, either. Plenty of real
ones in his bunch that would stand the gaff, but not him. He's a shine.
Of course they're useful, these reds. Keep things stirred up--human
yeast cakes, only they get to thinking they're the dough, too. That
brother of yours knows all the lines; says 'em hot, too, but that's only
so he'll get more notice. Say, tell us about the war.
"It was an awful big one," said his son.
* * * * *
Soon after a novel breakfast the following morning--in that it was late
and leisurely and he ate from a chair at a table--he heard the squealing
brakes of a motor car and saw one brought to a difficult stop at the
Penniman gate. Sharon Whipple, the driver, turned to look back at the
machine indignantly, as if it had misbehaved. Wilbur Cowan met him at
the gate.
It became Sharon's pretense that he was not hugging the boy, merely
feeling the muscles in his shoulders and back to see if he were as good
a lightweight as ever. He pounded and thumped and punched and even made
as if to wrestle with the returned soldier, laughing awkwardly through
it; but his florid face had paled with the excitement.
"I knew you'd come back! Old Sammy Dodwell happened to mention he'd seen
you; said he hadn't noticed you before for most a month, he thought. But
I knew you was coming, all right! Time and time again I told people you
would. Told every one that. I bet you had some narrow escapes, didn't
you now?"
Wilbur Cowan considered.
"Well, I had a pretty bad cold in the Argonne."
"I want to know!" said Sharon, much concerned. He pranced heavy-footedly
before the other, thumping his chest. "Well, I bet you threw it off! A
hard cold ain't any joke. But look here, come on for a ride!"
They entered the car and Sharon drove. But he continued to bubble with
questions, to turn his head and gesture with one hand or the other. The
passenger applied imaginary brakes as they missed a motor truck.
"Better let me take that," he suggested, and they changed seats.
"Out to the Home Farm," directed Sharon. "You ain't altered a mite," he
went on. "Little more peaked, mebbe--kind of more mature or judgmatical
or whatever you call it. Well, go on--tell about the war."
But there proved to be little to tell, and Sharon gradually wearied from
the effort of evoking this little. Yes, there had been fights. Big ones,
lots of noise, you bet! The food was all right. The Germans were good
fighters. No; he had not been wounded; yes, that was strange. The French
were good fighters. The British were good fighters. They were all good
fighters.
"But didn't you have any close mix-ups at all?" persisted Sharon.
"Oh, now and then; sometimes you couldn't get out of it."
"Well, my shining stars! Can't you tell a fellow?"
"Oh, it wasn't much! You'd be out at night, maybe, and you'd meet one,
and you'd trade a few punches, and then you'd tangle."
"And you'd leave him there, eh?"
"Oh, sometimes!"
"Who did win the war, anyway?" Sharon was a little irritated by this
reticence.
The other grinned.
"The British say they won it, and the last I heard the French said it
was God Almighty. Take your choice. Of course you did hear other gossip
going round--you know how things get started."
Sharon grunted.
"I should think as much. Great prunes and apricots! I should think there
would of been talk going round! Anyway, it was you boys that stopped the
fight. I guess they'd admit that much--small-towners like you that was
ready to fight for their country. Dear me, Suz! I should think as much!"
On the crest of a hill overlooking a wide sweep of valley farmland the
driver stopped the car in shade and scanned the fields of grain where
the green was already fading.
"There's the Home Farm," said Sharon. "High mighty! Some change since my
grandad came in here and fit the Injins and catamounts off it. I wonder
what he'd say if he could hear what I'm paying for farm help right
now--and hard to get at that. I don't know how I've managed. See that
mower going down there in the south forty? Well, the best man I've had
for two years is cutting that patch of timothy. Who do you guess? It's
my girl, Juliana. She not only took charge for me, but she jumped in
herself and did two men's work.
"Funny girl, that one. So quiet all these years, never saying much,
never letting out. But she let out when the men went. I guess lots have
been like her. You can see a woman doing anything nowadays. Why, they
got a woman burglar over to the county seat the other night! And I just
read the speech of a silly-softy of a congressman telling why they
shouldn't have the vote. Hell! Excuse me for cursing so."
Unconsciously Wilbur had been following with his eyes the course of the
willow-bordered creek. He half expected to hear the crisp little tacking
of machine guns from its shelter, and he uneasily scanned the wood at
his left. It was the valley of the Surmelin, and yonder was the Marne.
"I keep thinking I'll be shot at," he explained.
"You won't be. Safe as a church here--just like being in God's pocket.
Say, don't that house look good to you?" He cocked a thumb toward the
dwelling of the Home Farm in a flat space beyond the creek. It was the
house of dull red brick, broad, low, square fronted, with many windows,
the house in a green setting to which they had gone so many years
before. Heat waves made it shimmer.
"Yes, it looks good," conceded Wilbur.
"Then listen, young man! You're to live there. It'll be your
headquarters. You're going to manage the four other farms from there,
and give me a chance to be seventy-three years old next Tuesday without
a thing on my mind. You ain't a farmer, but you're educated; you can
learn anything after you've seen it done; and farming is mostly
commonsense and machinery nowadays. So that's where you'll be,
understand? No more dubbing round doing this and that, printing office
one day, garage the next, and nothing much the next. You're going to
settle down and take up your future, see?"
"Well, if you think I can."
"I do! You're an enlightened young man. What I can't tell you Juliana
can. I got a dozen tractors out of commission right now. Couldn't get
any one to put 'em in shape. None of them dissipated noblemen round the
Mansion garage would look at a common tractor. You'll start on them.
You're fixed--don't tell me no!"
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
"You done your bit in a fighting war; now you'll serve in a peaceful
one. I don't know what the good Lord intends to come out of all this
rumpus, but I do know the world's going to need food. We'll raise it."
"Yes, sir."
Sharon glanced shrewdly at him sidewise.
"You're a better Whipple than any one else of your name ever got to be."
"He didn't understand; he was misled or something."
"Or something," echoed Sharon. "Listen! There's one little job you got
to do before you hole up out here. You heard about him, of course--the
worry he's been to poor Harvey and the rest. Well, he's down there in
New York still acting squeamishy. I want you should go down and put the
fear of God into him."
"I understand he's mixed up with a lot of reds down there."
"Red! Him? Humph!" Sharon here named an equally well-known primary
colour--not red. Wilbur protested.
"You don't get him," persisted the old man. "Listen, now! He cast off
the family like your father said he would. Couldn't accept another cent
of Whipple money. Going to work with his bare hands. Dressed up for it
like a hunter in one of these powder advertisements. All he needed was a
shotgun and a setter dog with his tail up. And everybody in the house
worried he'd starve to death. Of course no one thought he'd work--that
was one of his threats they didn't take seriously. But they promised to
sit tight, each and all, and bring him to time the sooner.
"Well, he didn't come to time. We learned he was getting money from some
place. He still had it. So I begun to get my suspicions up. Last night I
got the bunch together, Gid and Harvey D. and Ella and Juliana, and I
taxed 'em with duplicity, and every last one of 'em was guilty as
paint--every goshed last one! Every one sending him fat checks
unbeknownst to the others. Even Juliana! I never did suspect her. 'I did
it because it's all a romance to him,' says she. 'I wanted him to go his
way, whatever it was, and find it bright.'
"Wha'd you think of that from a girl of forty-eight or so that can
tinker a mowing machine as good as you can? I ask you! Of course I'd
suspected the rest. A set of mushheads. Maybe they didn't look shamed
when I exposed 'em! Each one had pictured the poor boy down there alone,
undergoing hardship with his toiling workers or whatever you call 'em,
and, of course, I thought so myself."
"How much did you send him?" demanded Wilbur, suddenly.
"Not half as much as the others," returned Sharon in indignant triumph.
"If they'd just set tight like they promised and let me do the little I
done----"
"You were going to sit tight, too, weren't you?"
"Well, of course, that was different. Of course I was willing to shell
out a few dollars now and then if he was going to be up against it for a
square meal. After all, he was Whipple by name. Of course he ain't got
Whipple stuff in him. That young man's talk always did have kind of a
nutty flavour. You come right down to it, he ain't a Whipple in hide nor
hair. Why, say, he ain't even two and seventy-five-hundredths per cent.
Whipple!"
Sharon had cunningly gone away from his own failure to sit tight. He was
proving flexible-minded here, as on the links.
They were silent, looking out over the spread of Home Farm. The red
house still shimmered in the heat waves. The tall trees about it hung
motionless. The click of the reaper in the south forty sounded like a
distant locust.
"Put the fear of God into him," said Sharon at last. "Let him know them
checks have gosh all truly stopped."
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
"Now drive on and we'll look the house over. The last tenant let it run
down. But I'll fix it right for you. Why, like as not you'll be having a
missis and young ones of your own there some day."
"I might; you can't tell."
"Well, I wish they was going to be Whipple stock. Ours is running down.
I don't look for any prize-winners from your brother; he'll likely marry
that widow, or something, that wants to save America like Russia has
been. And Juliana, I guess she wasn't ever frivolous enough for
marriage. And that Pat--she'll pick out one of them boys with a head
like a seal, that knows all the new dances and what fork to use. Trust
her! Not that she didn't show Whipple stuff over there. But she's a
rattlepate in peacetime."
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
He left a train at the Grand Central Station in New York early the
following evening. He had the address of Merle's apartment on lower
Fifth Avenue, and made his way there on foot through streets crowded
with the war's backwash. Men in uniform were plentiful, and he was many
times hailed by them. Though out of uniform himself, they seemed to
identify him with ease. Something in his walk, the slant of his
shoulders, and the lean, browned, watchful face--the eyes set for wider
horizons than a mere street--served to mark him as one of them.
The apartment of Merle proved to be in the first block above Washington
Square. While he scanned doors for the number he was seized and turned
about by a playful creature in uniform.
"Well, Buck Cowan, you old son of a gun!"
"Gee, gosh, Stevie! How's the boy?"
They shook hands, moving to the curb where they could talk.
"What's the idea?" demanded ex-Private Cowan. "Why this dead part of
town for so many of the boys?"
Service men were constantly sauntering by them or chatting in little
groups at the curb.
"She's dead, right now," Steve told him, "but she'll wake up pronto.
Listen, Buck, we got the tip! A lot of them fur-faced boys that hurl the
merry bombs are goin' to pull off a red-flag sashay up the Avenoo. Get
it? Goin' to set America free!"
"I get it!" said Wilbur.
"Dirty work at the crossroads," added Steve.
"Say, Steve, hold it for twenty minutes, can't you? I got to see a man
down here. Be good; don't hurt any one till I get back."
"Do my best," said Steve, "but they're down there in the Square now
stackin' up drive impedimenta and such, red banners, and so forth,
tuning up to warble the hymn to free Russia. Hurry if you want to join
out with us!"
"I'll do that little thing, Steve. See you again." He passed on, making
a way through the jostling throng of soldiers and civilians. "Just my
luck," he muttered. "I hope the kid isn't in." Never before had he
thought of his brother as "the kid."
He passed presently through swinging glass doors, and in a hallway was
told by a profusely buttoned youth in spectacles that Mr. Whipple was
out. It was not known when he would be in. His movements were uncertain.
"He might be in or he might be out," said the boy.
He was back in the street, edging through the crowd, his head up,
searching for the eager face of Steve Kennedy, late his sergeant.
Halfway up the next block he found him pausing to roll a cigarette.
Steve was a scant five feet, and he was telling a private who was a
scant six feet that there would be dirty work at the crossroads--when
the fur-faces started.
"We're too far away," suggested Wilbur. "If they start from the Square
they'll be mussed up before they get here. You can't expect people
farther down to save 'em just for you. Where's your tactics, Steve?"
They worked slowly back down the Avenue. It was nine o'clock now, and
the street was fairly free of vehicles. The night was clear and the
street lights brought alert, lean profiles into sharp relief, faces of
men in uniform sauntering carelessly or chatting in little groups at the
curb. A few unseeing policemen, also sauntering carelessly, were to be
observed.
"Heard a fur-face speak last night," said Steve. "It's a long story,
mates, but it seems this is one rotten Government and everybody knows it
but a few cops. If someone would only call off the cops and let the
fur-faces run it we might have a regular country."
From the Square singing was now heard.
"Oh, boy!" murmured the tall private, dreamily; "am I glad I'm here?"
Stretching a long neck to peer toward the Square, he called in warm,
urgent tones: "Oh, come on, you reds--come on, red!"
They came on. Out from the Square issued a valiant double line of
marchers, men and women, their voices raised in the Internationale. At
their head, bearing aloft a scarlet banner of protest, strode a
commanding figure in corduroys, head up, his feet stepping a martial
pace.
"I choose that general," said the tall private, and licked his lips.
"Not if I get him first," shouted Steve, and sprang from the walk into
the roadway.
But ex-Private Cowan was ahead of them both. He had not waited for
speech. A crowd from each side of the Avenue had surged into the roadway
to greet the procession. The banner bearer was seen to hesitate, to lose
step, but was urged from the rear by other banner bearers. He came on
again. Once more he stepped martially. The Internationale swelled in
volume. The crowd, instead of opening a way, condensed more solidly
about the advance. There were jeers and shoving. The head of the line
again wavered. Wilbur Cowan had jostled a way toward this leader. He
lost no time in going into action. But the pushing crowd impaired his
aim, and it was only a glancing blow that met the jaw of the corduroyed
standard bearer.
The standard toppled forward from his grasp, and its late bearer turned
quickly aside. As he turned Wilbur Cowan reached forward to close a hand
about the corduroy collar. Then he pulled. The standard bearer came back
easily to a sitting posture on the asphalt. The crowd was close in,
noisily depriving other bearers of their standards. The Internationale
had become blurred and discordant, like a bad phonograph record. The
parade still came to break and flow about the obstruction.
Wilbur Cowan jerked his prize up and whirled him about. He contemplated
further atrocities. But the pallid face of his brother was now revealed
to him.
"Look out there!" he warned the crowd, and a way was opened.
He drew back on the corduroy collar, then sent it forward with a mighty
shove. His captive shot through the opening, fell again to the pavement,
but was up and off before those nearest him could devise further
entertainment. Among other accomplishments Merle had been noted in
college for his swiftness of foot. He ran well, heading for the north,
skillfully avoiding those on the outskirts of the crowd who would have
tackled him. Wilbur Cowan watched him out of sight, beyond the area of
combat. Then he worked his own way from it and stood to watch the
further disintegration of the now leaderless parade.
The tumult died, the crowd melted away. Policemen became officious. From
areaways up and down the Avenue forms emerged furtively, walked
discreetly to corners and skurried down side streets. Here and there a
crimson banner flecked the asphalt. Steve and the tall private issued
from the last scrimmage, breathing hard.
"Nothing to it!" said the tall private. "Only I skun my knuckles."
"I was aimin' a wallop at that general," complained Steve, "but
something blew him right out of my hand. Come on up to Madison Avenoo. I
heard they was goin' to save America up there, too."
"Can't," said Wilbur. "Got to see a man."
"Well, so long, Buck!"
He waved to them as they joined the northward moving crowd.
"Gee, gosh!" he said.
* * * * *
"No, sir; Mr. Whipple hasn't come in yet. He just sent word he wouldn't
be back at all to-night," said the spectacled hall boy. But his manner
was so little ingenuous that once again the hand of Wilbur Cowan closed
itself eloquently about the collar of a jacket.
"Get into that elevator and let me out at his floor."
"You let me alone!" said the hall boy. "I was going to."
He knocked a third time before he could hear a faint call. He opened the
door. Beyond a dim entrance hall the light fell upon his brother seated
at a desk, frowning intently at work before him. The visible half of him
was no longer in corduroy. It was incased in a smoking jacket of
velvet, and his neck was conventionally clad in collar and cravat. The
latter had been hastily tied.
"Why, Wilbur, old man!" cried Merle in pleased surprise. He half rose
from the desk, revealing that below the waist he was still corduroy or
proletarian. Along his left jaw was a contusion as from a glancing blow.
He was still breathing harder than most men do who spend quiet evenings
at desks.
Wilbur advanced into the room, but paused before reaching the desk. It
was an invitingly furnished room of cushioned couches, paintings,
tapestries, soft chairs, warmly toned rugs. The desk at which Merle
toiled was ornate and shining. Ex-Private Cowan felt a sudden revulsion.
He was back, knee-deep in trench bilge, tortured in all his being,
looking at death from behind a sandbag. Vividly he recalled why he had
endured that torture.
"You're all out of condition," he announced in even tones to Merle. "A
little sprint like that shouldn't get your wind."
Merle's look of sunny welcome faded to one of chagrin. He fell back in
his chair. He was annoyed.
"You saw that disgraceful outbreak, then?"
"I was in luck to-night."
"Did you see that drunken rowdy strike at me, and then try to get me
down where he and those other brutes could kick me?"
Wilbur's stare was cool. He was feeling the icy muck about his numbed
legs.
"I was the one that struck at you. Too many elbows in the way and I
flubbed it." He noted his brother start and stiffen in his chair. "And I
didn't try to get you down. When I saw it was you I got you up and shot
you out where you could run--if you wanted to. And I wasn't drunk, and
I'm not a rowdy."
Merle gazed with horror upon the apparently uncontrite fratricide. Twice
he essayed to speak before he found the words.
"Do you think that was a brave thing to do?"
"No--but useful. I've been brave a lot of times where it didn't do as
much good as that."
"Useful!" breathed Merle, scathingly. "Useful to brutalize a lot of
brave souls who merely sought--" he broke off with a new sense of
outrage. "And not a policeman there to do his duty!" he finished
resentfully.
Wilbur Cowan sat in a carven chair near a corner of the beautiful desk,
hitching it forward to rest his arms on the desk's top. He was newly
appraising this white-faced brother.
"Whining!" he suddenly snapped. "Get up and boast that you're outlaws,
going to keel the Government off its pins. Then you get the gaff, and
the first thing you do is whine for help from that same Government! You
say it's rotten, but you expect it to watch over you while you knock it
down. If you're going to be an outlaw, take an outlaw's chance. Don't
squeal when you get caught. You say the rules are rotten, then you fall
back on them. What kind of sportsmanship is that?"
Wearily but with a tolerant smile Merle pushed back the fallen lock with
one white hand.
"What could you understand of all this?" he asked, gently. "We merely
claim the right of free speech."
"And use it to tell other people to upset the Government! That crowd
to-night did what you tell your people to do--went against the rules.
But you can't take your own medicine. A fine bunch of spoiled children
you are! Been spoiled by too easy a Government at that!" He broke off to
study Merle again. "You're pasty, out of condition," he repeated,
inconsequently.
Again his brother's intolerant smile.
"You have all the cant of the reactionary," he retorted, again gently.
"It's the spirit of intolerance one finds everywhere. You can't expect
one of my--" he hesitated, showing a slight impatience. "I've been too
long where they are thinking," he said.
"Aren't you people intolerant? You want to break all the rules, and
those same rules have made us a pretty good big country."
"Ah, yes, a big country--big! We can always boast of our size, can't we?
I dare say you believe its bigness is a sign of our merit." Merle had
recovered his poise. He was at home in satire. "Besides, I've broken no
rules, as you call them."
"Oh, I'll bet you haven't! You'd be careful not to. I see that much. But
you try to get smaller children to. I'd have more patience with you if
you'd taken a chance yourself."
"Patience with me--you?" Merle relished this. His laugh was sincere.
"You--would have more patience with--me!" But his irony went for little
with a man still at the front.
"Sure! If only you'd smashed a few rules yourself. Take that girl and
her partner they arrested the other day. They don't whine. They're
behind the bars, but still cussing the Government. You've got to respect
fighters like that Liebknecht the Germans killed, and that Rosa
What's-Her-Name. They were game. But you people, you try to put on all
their airs without taking their chances. That's why you make me so
tired--always keeping your martyr's halo polished and handy where you
can slip it out of a pocket when you get just what you've been asking
for."
"You're not too subtle, are you? But then one could hardly expect
subtlety--"
Merle was again almost annoyed.
"Subtle be jiggered! Do you think you people are subtle? About as subtle
as a ton of bricks. All your talk in that magazine about this being a
land of the dollar, no ideals, no spirituality, a land of
money-grubbers--all that other stuff! Say, I want to tell you this is
the least money-grubbing land there is! You people would know that if
you had any subtlety. Maybe you did know it. We went into that scrap for
an ideal, and we're the only country that did. France might have gone
for an ideal, but France had to fight, anyway.
"England? Do you think England went in only to save poor little
Belgium? She herself was the next dish on the bill of fare. But we went
in out of general damfoolishness--for an ideal--this country you said
didn't have any. We don't care about money--less than any of those
people. Watch a Frenchman count his coppers, or an Englishman that
carries his in a change purse and talks about pounds but really thinks
in shillings. We carry our money loose and throw it away.
"If this country had been what your sniveling little magazine called it
we'd never have gone into that fight. You're not even subtle enough to
know that much. We knew it would cost like hell, but we knew it was a
great thing to do. Not another nation on earth would have gone in for
that reason. That's the trouble with you poor little shut-ins; you
decide the country hasn't any ideals because someone runs a stockyard
out in Chicago or a foundry in Pittsburgh. God help you people if you'd
had your way about the war! The Germans would be taking that nonsense
out of you by this time. And to think you had me kind of ashamed when I
went over! I thought you knew something then." He concluded on a note
almost plaintive.
Merle had grown visibly impatient.
"My dear fellow, really! Your point of view is interesting enough, even
if all too common. You are true to type, but so crude a type--so crude!"
"Sure, I'm crude! The country itself is crude, I guess. But it takes a
crude country to have ideals--ideals with guts. Your type isn't crude, I
suppose, but it hasn't any ideals, either."
"No ideals! No ideals! Ah, but that's the best thing you've said!"
He laughed masterfully, waving aside the monstrous accusation.
"Well, maybe it is the best thing I've said. You haven't any ideals that
would get any action out of you. You might tear down a house, but you'd
never build one. No two of you could agree on a plan. Every one of you
is too conceited about himself. If you had the guts to upset the
Government to-morrow you'd be fighting among yourselves before night,
and you'd have a chief or a king over you the next day, just as surely
as they got one in Russia. It'll take them a hundred years over there to
get back to as good a government as we have right now.
"You folks haven't any ideals except to show yourselves off. That's my
private opinion. The way you used to tell me I didn't have any form in
golf. You people are all gesture; you can get up on a platform and take
perfect practice swings at a government, but you can't hit the ball. You
used to take bully practice swings at golf, but you couldn't hit the
ball because you didn't have any ideal. You were a good shadow golfer,
like a shadow boxer that can hit dandy blows when he's hitting at
nothing. Shadow stuff, shadow ideals, shadow thinkers--that's what you
people are--spoiled children pretending you're deep thinkers."
Merle turned wearily to a sheaf of papers at his hand.
"You'll see one day," he said, quietly, "and it won't be a far day.
Nothing now, not even the brute force of your type, can retard the sweep
of the revolution. The wave is shaping, the crest is formed. Six months
from now--a year at most----"
He gestured with a hand ominously.
Wilbur briefly considered this prophecy.
"Oh, I know things look exciting here, but why wouldn't they after the
turnover they've had? And I know there's grafting and profiteering and
high prices and rotten spots in the Government, but why not? That's
another trouble with you people: you seem to think that some form of
government will be perfect. You seem to expect a perfect government from
imperfect human beings."
"Ah," broke in Merle, "I recognize that! That's some of the dear old
Dave Cowan talk."
"Well, don't turn it down just on that account. Sometimes he isn't so
crazy. He sees through you people. He knows you would take all you
could get in this world just as quick as the rest of us. He knows that
much."
Merle waved it aside.
"Six months from now--a year at the most! A thrill of freedom has run
through the people!"
Wilbur had relaxed in his chair. He spoke more lightly, scanning the
face of his brother with veiled curiosity.
"By the way, speaking of revolutions, there's been kind of a one at
Newbern; kind of a family revolution. A little one, but plenty of kick
in it. They want you to come back and be a good boy. That's really what
I came down here to say for them. Will you come back with me?"
Merle drew himself up--injured.
"Go back! Back to what? When my work is here, my heart, my life? I've
let you talk because you're my brother. And you're so naïvely honest in
your talk about our wonderful country and its idealism and the
contemptible defects of a few of us who have the long vision! But I've
let you talk, and now I must tell you that I am with this cause to the
end. I can't expect your sympathy, or the sympathy of my people back
there, but I must go my own way without it, fight my own battle--"
He was interrupted in a tone he did not like.
"Sympathy from the folks back there? Say, what do you mean--sympathy?
Did I tell you what this revolution back there was all about? Did I tell
you they've shut down on you?"
"You didn't! I still don't get your meaning."
"You cast them off, didn't you?"
"Oh!" A white hand deprecated this. "That's Sharon Whipple talk--his
famous brand of horse humour. Surely, you won't say he's too subtle!"
"Well, anyway, you said you couldn't accept anything more from them when
you left; you were going to work with your hands, and so forth. You
weren't going to take any more of their tainted money."
"I've no doubt dear old Sharon would put it as delicately as that."
"Well, did you work with your hands? Have you had to be a toiler?"
"Oh, naturally I had resources! But might I ask"--Merle said it with
chill dignity--"may I inquire just what relation this might have----"
"You won't have resources any longer."
"Eh?" Merle this time did not wave. He stared stonily at his informant.
"That was the revolution. They called each other down and found that
every last one of them had been sending you money, each thinking he was
the only one and no one wanting you to starve. Even your dear old Sharon
Whipple kicked in every month. No wonder I didn't find you in a
tenement."
"Preposterous!" expostulated Merle.
"Wasn't it? Anyway, they all got mad at each other, and then they all
got mad at you; then they swore an oath or something." He paused
impressively. "No more checks!"
"Preposterous!" Merle again murmured.
"But kind of plausible, wasn't it? Sharon wasn't any madder than the
others when they found each other out. Mrs. Harvey D. is the only one
they think they can't trust now. They're going to watch that woman's
funds. Say, anything she gets through the lines to you--won't keep you
from toiling!"
"Poor Mother Ella!" murmured Merle, his gaze remotely upon the woman.
"She has always been so fond of me."
"They're all fond of you, for that matter, I think they're fonder of you
than if you'd been born there. But still they're rank Bolsheviks right
now. They confiscated your estates."
"I didn't need you to tell me they're fond of me," retorted Merle with
recovered spirit. He sighed. "They must have missed me horribly this
last year." There was contrition in his tone. "I suppose I should have
taken time to think of that, but you'll never know how my work here has
engrossed me. I suppose one always does sacrifice to ideals. Still, I
owed them something--I should have remembered that." He closed on a note
of regret.
"Well, you better go back with me. They'll be mighty glad to see you."
"We can make that eleven-forty-eight if we hurry," he said. "I'll have
to change a few things."
He bustled cheerily into a bedroom. As he moved about there he whistled
the "Marseillaise."
Ten minutes later he emerged with bag, hat, and stick. The last item of
corduroy had vanished from his apparel. He was quietly dressed, as an
exploiter of the masses or a mechanic. He set the bag on the desk, and
going to a window peered from behind the curtain into the street.
"Some of those rowdies are still prowling about," he said, "but there
are cabs directly across the street."
He pulled the soft hat well down over his brow.
Wilbur had sat motionless in his chair while the dressing went on. He
got up now.
"Listen!" he said. "If you hear back home of my telling people you're a
dangerous radical, don't be worried. Even the Cowans have some family
pride. And don't worry about the prowling rowdies out there. I'll get
you across the street to a cab. Give me the bag."
As they crossed the street, Merle--at his brother's elbow--somewhat
jauntily whistled, with fair accuracy, not the "Marseillaise," but an
innocent popular ballad. Nor did he step aside for a torn strip of red
cloth lying in their way.