"Yes, sir," said the Wilbur twin, "and cutting people's hair with clippers like Don Paley clipped mine with."
"New York, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Omaha, Kansas City, Denver, San Antone," murmured Dave, and there was unction in his tone as he recited these advantages of a loose trade—"any place you like the looks of, or places you've read about that sound good—just going along with your little kit of razors, and not having to small-town it except when you want a bit of quiet."
They heard voices back of them. Dave turned about and Wilbur rose from the grass. Across the pasture came the girl, Patricia Whipple, followed at a little distance by Juliana. The latter was no longer in church garb, but in a gray tweed skirt, white blouse, and a soft straw hat with a flopping brim. There was a black ribbon about the hat and her stout shoes were of tan leather. The girl was bare-headed, and Don Paley's repair of yesterday's damage was noticeable. She came at a quickening pace, while Juliana followed slowly. Juliana looked severe and formidable. Never had her nose looked more the Whipple nose then when she observed Dave Cowan and his son at the stile. Yet she smiled humorously when she recognized the boy, and allowed the humour to reach his father when she glanced at him. Dave and Miss Juliana had never been formally presented. Dave had seen Juliana, but Juliana had had until this moment no sight of Dave, for though there was in Newbern no social prejudice against a craftsman, and Dave might have moved in its highest circles, he had chosen to consort with the frankly ineligible. He lifted his cap in a flourishing salute as Juliana and Patricia came through the stile.
"And how are you to-day, my young friend?" asked Juliana of Wilbur in her calm, deep voice.
The Wilbur twin said, "Very well, I thank you," striving instinctively to make his own voice as deep as Juliana's.
The girl winked at him brazenly as they passed on.
"Gypsies!" she called, exultantly, and Juliana swept him with a tolerant smile.
Dave Cowan watched them along the path to the ridge above the camp. Here they paused in most intelligible pantomime. Patricia Whipple wished to descend to the very heart of the camp, while Juliana could be seen informing the child that they were near enough. To make this definite she sat upon the bole of a felled oak beside the path while Patricia jiggled up and down in eloquent objection to the untimely halt. Dave read the scene and caressed his thick moustache with practiced thumb and finger. His glance was sympathetic.
"The poor old maid!" he murmured. "All that Whipple money, and she has to be just a small-towner! Say, I bet no one has ever kissed that old girl since her mother died! None of these small-town hicks would ever have the nerve to. Yes, sir; any one's got a right to be sorry for that dame. If she had a little enterprise she'd branch out from here and meet a few people."
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur. "But that girl wants to go down to the camp."
This was plain. Patricia still danced, while Juliana remained firmly seated.
"I could go take her down," he continued.
"Why don't you?" said his father, again stroking the golden moustache in sympathy for the unconscious Juliana.
So it befell that the Wilbur twin shyly approached the group by the felled tree, and the watching father saw the two children, after a moment's hesitancy on the part of Juliana, disappear from view over the crest of the ridge. Dave continued to loll by the stile and to watch the waiting Juliana, thinking of gypsies and the pure joy of wandering. He began to repeat some verses he had lately happened upon, murmuring them to a little mass of white clouds far off against the blue of the summer sky, where the pale bronze moon lonesomely hung. He liked the words and the moon and gypsies joyously foot-loose, and he again grew sympathetic for Juliana's small-town plight. He felt a large pagan tolerance for those warped souls pent in small towns.
After twenty minutes of this he faintly heard a call from Juliana, sent after the children below her. He saw her stand to beckon commandingly and watch to see if she were obeyed. Then she turned and came slowly back up the path that would lead to the stile. Again Dave absently murmured his verses. Juliana approached the stile, walking briskly now. She was halted by surprising speech from this rather cheaply debonair creature who looked so nearly like a gentleman and yet so plainly was not.
"Wanted to be off with 'em, didn't you?" Dave was saying brightly; "off and over the edge of the world, all foot-loose and free as wind, going over strange roads and lying by night under the stars."
"What?" demanded Juliana sharply.
She studied the fellow's face for the first time. He was preening his yellow moustache and flashing a challenge to her from half-shut eyes.
"Small-towners bound to feel it," he continued, unconscious of any sharpness in Juliana's "What!" "They want to be off and over the edge of things, but they don't dare—haven't the nerve. You'd like to, but you don't dare. You know you don't!"
Juliana almost smiled. The fellow's face, as she paused beside him at the stile, was set with sheer impudence, yet this was not wholly unattractive. And amazingly he now broke into verse:
We, too, shall steal upon the spring
With amber sails flown wide;
Shall drop, some day, behind the moon,
Borne on a star-blue tide.
He indicated the present moon with flourishing grace as he named it. Juliana did not gasp, but it might have been a gasp in one less than a Whipple. But the troubadour was not to be daunted. Juliana didn't know Dave Cowan as cities knew him.
Enchanted ports we, too, shall touch;
Cadiz or Cameroon;
Nor other pilot need beside
A magic wisp of moon.
Again he gracefully indicated our lunar satellite, and again Juliana nearly gasped.
"Of course, you felt it all, watching those people. I don't blame you for feeling wild."
Juliana lifted one of her stout tan boots toward the stile, and Dave with doffed cap extended a hand to assist her through. Juliana, dazed beyond a Whipple calm for almost the first time in her thirty years, found her own hand perforce upon his.
"You poor thing!" concluded Dave with a swift glance to the ridge where the children had not yet appeared.
Then amazingly he enfolded the figure of the woman in his arms and upon her cold, appalled lips he imprinted a swift but accurate kiss.
"There, poor thing!" he murmured.
He lavished one look upon the still frozen Juliana, replaced the cap upon his yellow hair, once more preened his moustache at her, and turned away to meet the oncoming children. And in his glance Juliana retained still the wit to read a gay, cherishing pity. As he turned away she sank limply against the fence, her first sensation being all of wonder that she had not cried out at this monstrous assault. And very clearly she knew at once that she had not cried out or made any protest because, though monstrous, it was even more absurd. A seasoned sense of humour had not failed.
The guilty man swaggered on to meet the children, not looking back. For him the incident was closed. Juliana, a hand supporting her capable chin, steadily regarded his swaying shoulders and the yellow hair beneath his cap. In her nostrils was the scent of printer's ink and pipe tobacco. She reflectively rubbed her chin, for it had been stung with a day-old beard that pricked like a nettle. Now she was recalling another woodland adventure of a dozen years before here in this same forest.
Dave Cowan had been wrong when he said that no one had kissed her since her mother died. Once on a winter's day, when she was sixteen, she had crossed here, bundled in a red cloak and hood, and a woodchopper, a merry, laughing foreigner who spoke no English, had hailed her gayly, and she had stopped and gayly tried to understand him, and knew only that he was telling her she was beautiful. She at least had thought it was that, and was certain of it when he had seized and kissed her, laughing joyously the while. She had not told any one of that, but she had never forgotten. And now this curious creature, whom she had not supposed to be gallantly inclined—unshaven, smelling of printer's ink and tobacco!
"I'm coming on!" said Juliana aloud, and laughed rather grimly.
She watched her prankling blade meet the children and go off down the ridge with his son, still not looking back. She thought it queer he did not look back at her just once. She soothed her chin again, sniffing the air.
Patricia Whipple came leaping up the path, excited with an imminent question. She halted before the still-reflective Juliana and went at once to the root of her matter.
"Cousin Juliana, what did that funny man kiss you for?"
This time Juliana in truth did gasp. There was no suppressing it.
"Patricia Whipple—and did that boy see it, too?"
"No, he was too far behind me. But I did. I saw it. I was looking right at you, and that funny man—all at once he grabbed you round your waist and he—"
"Patricia, dear, listen! We must promise never to say anything about it—never to anybody in the world—won't we, dear?"
"Oh, I won't tell if you don't want me to, but what——"
"You promise me—never to tell a soul!"
"Of course! I promise—cross my heart and hope to die—but what did he do it for?"
Juliana tried humorous evasion.
"Men, my dear, are often tempted by women to such lengths—tempted beyond their strength. Your question isn't worded with all the tact in the world. Is it so strange that a man should want to kiss me?"
"Well, I don't know"—Patricia became judicial, scanning the now flushed countenance of Juliana—"I don't see why not. But what did he do it for?"
"My dear, you'll be honest with me, and never tell; so I'll be honest with you. I don't know—I really don't know. But I have an awful suspicion that the creature meant to be kind to me."
"He looks like a kind man. And he's the father of the boy that I wore his clothes yesterday when I was running away, and the father of that other boy that was with him and that I'm going to have one of for my very own brother, because Harvey D. and grandpa said something of that kind would have to be done, so what relation will that make us to this man that was so kind to you?"
"None whatever," said Juliana, shortly. "And never forget your promise not to tell. Come, we must go back."
They went on through the pasture. The shadows had lengthened and the moon already glowed a warmer bronze. Juliana glanced at it and murmured indistinctly.
"What is it?" asked Patricia.
"Nothing," said Juliana. But she had been asking herself: "I wonder where he gets his verses?"
Her hand went again to her chin.
CHAPTER V
Dave Cowan went down the ridge to the road, disregarding his gypsy friends. He trod the earth with a ruffling bravado. The Wilbur twin lingered as far behind as he dared, loitering provocatively in the sight of the child stealers. If they meant to do anything about it now was their chance. But no violence was offered him, and presently, far beyond the camp where the fire still burned, he was forced to conclude that they could not mean to carry him off. Certainly they were neglecting a prize who had persistently flaunted himself at them. They notably lacked enterprise.
Down over the grassy slope of West Hill they went, the boy still well in the rear; you never could tell what might happen; and so came to Fair Street across shadows that lay long to the east. Newbern was still slumberous. Smoke issued from a chimney here and there, but mostly the town would partake of a cold supper. The boy came beside his father, with Frank, the dog, again on his leash of frayed rope. Dave Cowan was reciting to himself:
Enchanted ports we, too, shall touch;
Cadiz or Cameroon—
Then he became conscious of the silent boy at his side, stepping noiselessly with bare feet.
"Life is funny," said Dave.
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
"Of course there's a catch in it somewhere."
"Yes, sir."
"That old girl back there, that old maid, she'll have to small-town it all her life. I feel sorry for her, I do."
"Yes, sir."
But the sorrowing father now began to whistle cheerfully. His grief had not overborne him. A man who would call Judge Penniman Old Flapdoodle and question the worth of Matthew Arnold's acquaintance was not to be long downcast at the plight of one woman. And he had done what man could for her.
They came to River Street, the street of shops, deserted and sleeping back of drawn curtains. Only the shop of Solly Gumble seemed to be open for trade. This was but seeming, however, for another establishment near by, though sealed and curtained as to front, suffered its rear portal to yawn most hospitably. This was the place of business of Herman Vielhaber, and its street sign concisely said, "Lager Bier Saloon."
Dave Cowan turned into the alley just beyond Solly Gumble's, then up another alley that led back of the closed shops, and so came to the back door of this refectory. It stood open, and from the cool and shadowy interior came a sourish smell of malt liquors and the hum of voices. They entered and were in Herman Vielhaber's pleasant back room, with sanded floor and a few round tables, at which sat half a dozen men consuming beer from stone mugs or the pale wine of Herman's country from tall glasses.
Herman was a law-abiding citizen. Out of deference to a sacred and long-established American custom he sealed the front of his saloon on the Sabbath; out of deference to another American custom, equally long established, equally sacred, he received his Sabbath clientèle at the rear—except for a brief morning interval when he and Minna, his wife, attended service at the Lutheran church. Herman's perhaps not too subtle mind had never solved this problem of American morals—why his beverages should be seemly to drink on all days of the week, yet on one of them seemly but if taken behind shut doors and shielding curtains. But he adhered conscientiously to the American rule. His Lutheran pastor had once, in an effort to clear up the puzzle, explained to him that the Continental Sunday would never do at all in this land of his choice; but it left Herman still muddled, because fixed unalterably in his mind was a conviction that the Continental Sunday was the best of all Sundays. Nor was there anything the least clandestine in this backdoor trade of Herman's on the Sabbath. One had but to know the path to his door, and at this moment Newbern's mayor, old Doctor Purdy, sat at one of Herman's tables and sipped from a stone mug of beer and played a game of pinochle with stout, red-bearded Herman himself, overlooked by Minna, who had brought them their drink.
This was another thing about Herman's place that Newbern understood in time. When he had begun business some dozen years before, and it was known that Minna came downstairs from their living rooms above the saloon and helped to serve his patrons, the scandal was high. It was supposed that only a woman without character could, for any purpose whatever, enter a saloon. But Herman had made it plain that into the sort of saloon he conducted any woman, however exalted, could freely enter. If they chose not to, that was their affair. And Minna had in time recovered a reputation so nearly lost at first news of her service here.
Herman, indeed, ran a place of distinction, or at least of tone. He did sell the stronger drinks, it is true, but he sold them judiciously, and much preferred to sell the milder ones. He knew his patrons, and would stubbornly not sell drink, even beer or wine, to one he suspected of abusing the stuff. As for rowdyism, it was known far and wide about Newbern that if you wanted to get thrown out of Herman's quick you had only to start some rough stuff, or even talk raw. It was said he juggled you out the door like you were an empty beer keg. Down by the riverside was another saloon for that sort of thing, kept by Pegleg McCarron, who would sell whisky to any one that could buy, liked rough stuff and with his crutch would participate in it.
When Herman decided that a customer was spending too much money for drink, that customer had to go to Pegleg's if he bought more. And now the mayor at the little table connived at a flagrant breach of the law he had sworn to uphold, quaffing beer from his mug and melding a hundred aces as casually as if it were a week-day.
The other men at the little tables were also of the substantial citizenry of Newbern, including the postmaster, the editor of the Advance, and Rapp, Senior, of Rapp Brothers, Jewellery. The last two were arguing politics and the country's welfare. Rapp, Senior, believed and said that the country was going to the dogs, because the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer. The editor of the Advance disputed this, and the postmaster intervened to ask if Rapp, Senior, had seen what our exports of wheat and cotton were lately. Rapp, Senior, said he didn't care anything about that—it was the interests he was down on. Herman Vielhaber, melding eighty kings, said it was a good rich-man's country, but also a good poor-man's country, because where could you find one half as good—not in all Europe—and he now laid down forty jacks, which he huskily called "yacks."
Dave Cowan greeted the company and seated himself at a vacant table.
"Pull up a chair, Buzzer, and we'll drink to the life force—old electricity or something."
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur, and seated himself.
Minna left the pinochle game to attend upon them. She was plump and pink-faced, with thick yellow hair neatly done. A broad white apron protected her dress of light blue.
"A stein of Pilsener, Minna," said Dave, "and for the boy, let's see. How would you like, a nice cold bottle of pop, Doctor?"
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur. "Strawberry pop."
Herman looked up from his game, though in the midst of warm utterance in his native tongue at the immediate perverse fall of the cards.
"I guess you git the young one a big glass milk, mamma—yes? Better than pop for young ones. Pop is belly wash."
"Yes, ma'am," said Wilbur to Minna, though he would have preferred the pop by reason of its colour and its vivacious prickling; and you could have milk at home.
"And I tell you, Minna," said Dave. "Bread and butter and cheese, lots of it, rye bread and pumpernickel and Schweitzerkase and some pickles and radishes, nicht wahr?"
"Yes," said Minna, "all!" and moved on to the bar. But Dave detained her.
"Minna!"
She stopped and turned back to him.
"You will?"
"Sprechen sie Deutsch, Minna?"
"Ja—yes—why not? I should think I do. I always could. Why couldn't I?"
She went on her mission, grumbling pettishly. Why shouldn't she speak her own language? What did the man think? He must be a joker!
"Mamma!" Herman called again. "Git also the young one some that apfel kuchen. You make it awful good."
"Yes," called Minna from the bar. "I git it. For why wouldn't I speak my own language, I like to know?"
Dave Cowan's jest was smouldering faintly within her. She returned presently with the stein of beer and a glass of milk, and went, still muttering, for the food that had been commanded. She returned with this, setting bread and butter and cheese before them, and a blue plate whose extensive area was all but covered with apple cake, but now she no longer muttered in bewilderment. She confronted the jester, hands upon hips, her doll eyes shining with triumph.
"Hah! Now, mister, I ask you something good like you ask me. You git ready! Sprechen sie English?"
Dave Cowan affected to be overcome with confusion, while Minna laughed loud and long at her sally. Herman laughed with her, his head back and huge red beard lifted from his chest.
"She got you that time, mister!" he called to Dave. "Mamma's a bright one, give her a minute so she gits herself on the spot!"
"Ja! Sprechen sie English?" taunted Minna again, for a second relish of her repartee. Effusively, in her triumph, she patted the cheek of the Wilbur twin. "Ja! I could easy enough give your poppa as good like he sent, yes? Sprechen sie English, nicht wahr?"
Again her bulk trembled with honest mirth, and while this endured she went to the ice box and brought a bone for Frank, the dog. Frank fell upon it with noisy gurgles.
Dave Cowan affected further confusion at each repetition of Minna's stinging retort; acted it so convincingly that the victor at length relented and brought a plate of cookies to the table.
"I show you who is it should be foolish in the head!" she told him triumphantly.
"You got me, Minna—I admit it."
The victim pretended to be downcast, and ate his bread and cheese dejectedly. Minna went to another table to tell over the choice bit.
The Wilbur twin ate bread and cheese and looked with interest about the room. The tables and woodwork were dark, the walls and ceiling also low in tone. But there were some fine decorative notes that stood brightly out. On one wall was a lovely gold-framed picture in which a young woman of great beauty held back a sumptuous curtain revealing a castle on the Rhine set above a sunny terrace of grapevines. On the opposite wall was a richly coloured picture of a superb brewery. It was many stories in height; smoke issued from its chimneys, and before it stood a large truck to which were hitched two splendid horses. The truck was being loaded with the brewery's enlivening product. The brewery was red, the truck yellow, the horses gray, and the workmen were clad in blue, and above all was a flawless sky of blue. It was a spirited picture, and the Wilbur twin was instantly enamoured of it. He wished he might have seen this yesterday, when he was rich. Maybe Mr. Vielhaber would have sold it. He thought regretfully of Winona's delight at receiving the beautiful thing to hang on the wall of the parlour, a fit companion piece to the lion picture. But he had spent his money, and this lovely thing could never be Winona's.
Discussion of world affairs still went forward between Rapp, Senior, and the Advance editor. Even in that day the cost of living was said to be excessive, and Rapp, Senior, though accounting for its rise by the iniquity of the interests, submitted that the cost of women's finery was what kept the world poor.
"It's women's tomfool dressing keeps us all down. Look what they pay for their silks and satins and kickshaws and silly furbelows! That's where the bulk of our money goes: bonnets and high-heeled slippers and fancy cloaks. Take the money spent for women's foolish truck and see what you'd have!" Rapp, Senior, gazed about him, looking for contradiction.
"He's right," said Dave Cowan. "He's got the truth of it. But, my Lord! Did you ever think what women would be without all that stuff? Look what it does for 'em! Would you have 'em look like us? Would you have a beautiful woman wear a cheap suit of clothes like Rapp's got on, and a hat bought two years ago? Not in a thousand years! We dress 'em up that way because we like 'em that way."
Rapp, Senior, dusted the lapel of his coat, tugged at his waistcoat to straighten it, and closely regarded a hat that he had supposed beyond criticism.
"That's all right," he said, "but look where it gets us!"
Presently the discussion ended—Rapp, Senior, still on the note of pessimism and in the fell clutch of the interests—for the debaters must go blamelessly home to their suppers. Only the mayor remained at his game with Herman, his gray, shaven old face bent above his cards while he muttered at them resentfully. Dave Cowan ate his bread and cheese with relish and invoked another stein of beer from Minna, who vindictively flung her jest at him again as she brought it.
The Wilbur twin had eaten his apple cake and was now eating the cookies, taking care to drop no crumbs on the sanded floor. After many cookies dusk fell and he heard the church bells ring for evening worship. But no one heeded them. The game drew to an excited finish, while Dave Cowan, his pipe lighted, mused absently and from time to time quoted bits of verse softly to himself:
Enchanted ports we, too, shall touch;
Cadiz or Cameroon—
The game ended with an explosion of rage from the mayor. The cards had continued perverse for him. He pushed his soft black hat back from his rumpled crest of gray hair and commanded Minna Vielhaber to break a municipal ordinance which had received his official sanction. Herman cheerily combed his red beard and scoffed at his late opponent.
"It makes dark," Minna reminded him. "You should have light."
Herman lighted two lamps suspended above the tables. Then he addressed the Wilbur twin, now skillfully prolonging the last of his cookies.
"Well, young one, you like your bread and cheese and milk and cookies and apfel kuchen, so? Well, I tell you—come here. I show you something fine."
He went to the front room, where the bar was, and the Wilbur twin expectantly followed. He had learned that these good people produced all manner of delights. But this was nothing to eat. The light from the lamps shone over the partition between back room and front, and there in a spacious cage beside the wall was a monkey, a small, sad-eyed creature with an aged, wrinkled face all but human. He crouched in a corner and had been piling wisps of straw upon his reverend head.
"Gee, gosh!" exclaimed the Wilbur twin, for he had expected nothing so rare as this.
The monkey at sight of Herman became animated, leaping again and again the length of the cage and thrusting between its bars a hairy forearm and a little, pinkish, human hand.
"You like him, hey?" said Herman.
"Gee, gosh!" again exclaimed the Wilbur twin in sheer delight.
"It's Emil his name is," said Herman. "You want out, Emil, hey?"
He unclasped the catch of a door, and Emil leaped to the crook of his arm, where he nestled, one hand securely grasping a fold of Herman's beard.
"Ouch, now, don't pull them whiskers!" warned Herman. "See how he knows his good friend! But he shake hands like a gentleman. Emil, shake hands nicely with this young one." The monkey timidly extended a paw and the entranced Wilbur shook it. "Come," said Herman. "I let you give him something."
They went to the back room, Emil still stoutly grasping the beard of his protector.
"Now," said Herman, "you give him a nice fat banana. Mamma, give the young one a banana to give to Emil."
The banana was brought and the Wilbur twin cautiously extended it. Emil, at sight of the fruit, chattered madly and tried to leap for it. He appeared to believe that this strange being meant to deprive him of it. He snatched it when it was thrust nearer, still regarding the boy with dark suspicion. Then he deftly peeled the fruit and hurriedly ate it, as if one could not be—with strangers about—too sure of one's supper.
The monkey moved Dave Cowan to lecture again upon the mysteries of organic evolution.
"About three hundred million years difference between those two," he said, indicating Herman and his pet with a wave of the calabash. "And it's no good asking whether it's worth while, because we have to go on and on. That little beast is your second cousin, Herman."
"I got a Cousin Emil in the old country," said Minna, "but he ain't lookin' like this last time I seen him. I guess you're foolish in the head again."
"He came out of the forest and learned to stand up, to walk without using his hands, and he got a thumb, and pretty soon he was able to be a small-town mayor or run a nice decent saloon and argue about politics."
"Hah, that's a good one!" said Herman. "You hear what he says, Emil?"
The beast looked up from his banana, regarding them from eyes unutterably sad.
"See?" said Dave. "That's the life force, and for a minute it's conscious that it's only a monkey."
They became silent under Emil's gaze of acute pathos—human life aware of its present frustration. Then suddenly Emil became once more an animated and hungry monkey with no care but for his food.
"There," said Dave. "I ask you, isn't that the way we do? Don't we stop to think sometimes and get way down, and then don't we feel hungry and forget it all and go to eating?"
"Sure, Emil is sensible just like us," said Minna.
"But there's some catch about the whole thing," said Dave. "Say, Doc, what do you think life is, anyway?"
Purdy scanned the monkey with shrewd eyes, and grinned.
"I only know what it is physiologically," he said. "Physiologically, life is a constant force rhythmically overcoming a constant resistance."
"Pretty good," said Dave, treasuring the phrase. "The catch must be right there—it always does overcome the constant resistance."
"When it can't in one plant," said Purdy, "it dismantles it and builds another, making improvements from time to time."
"Think what it's had to do," said Dave, "to build Herman from a simple, unimproved plant like Emil! Herman's a great improvement on Emil."
"My Herman has got a soul," said Minna, stoutly—"monkeys ain't."
Dave Cowan and Purdy exchanged a tolerant smile. They were above arguing that outworn thesis. Dave turned to his son.
"Anyway, Buzzer, if you ever get discouraged, remember we were all like that once, and cheer up. Remember your ancestry goes straight back to one of those, and still back of that—"
"To the single cell of protoplasm," said Purdy.
"Beyond that," said Dave, "to star dust."
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
"Foolish in the head," said Minna. "You think you know things better than the reverent what preaches at the Lutheran church! He could easy enough tell you what you come from. My family was in Bavaria more than two hundred years, and was not any monkeys."
"Maybe Emil he got a soul, too, like a human," remarked Herman.
"You bet he has," said Dave Cowan, firmly—"just like a human."
"You put him to bed," directed Minna. "He listen to such talk and go foolish also in the head."
The Wilbur twin watched Emil put to bed, then followed his father out into the quiet, starlit streets. He was living over again an eventful afternoon. They reached the Penniman porch without further talk. Dave Cowan sat with his guitar in the judge's chair and lazily sounded chords and little fragments of melody. After a time the Pennimans and the Merle twin came from church. The Wilbur twin excitedly sought Winona, having much to tell her. He drew her beside him into the hammock, and was too eager for more than a moment's dismay when she discovered his bare feet, though he had meant to put on shoes and stockings again before she saw him.
"Barefooted on Sunday!" said Winona in tones of prim horror.
"It was so hot," he pleaded; "but listen," and he rushed headlong into his narrative.
His father knew gypsies, and had been to Chicago and Omaha and—and Cadiz and Cameroon—and he was sorry for Miss Juliana Whipple because she was a small-towner and no one had ever kissed her since her mother died; and if ever gypsies did carry him off he didn't want any one to worry about him or try to get him back; and the Vielhabers were very nice people that kept a nice saloon; and Mrs. Vielhaber had given him lots of apple cake that was almost like an apple pie, but without any top on it; and they had a lovely picture that would look well beside the lion picture, but it would probably cost too much money; and they had a monkey, a German monkey, that was just like a little old man; and once, thousands of years ago, when the Bible was going on, we were all monkeys and lived in trees, but a constant force made us stand and walk like people.
To Winona this was a shocking narrative, and she wished to tell Dave Cowan that he was having a wretched influence upon the boy, but Dave was now singing "In the Gloaming," and she knew he would merely call her Madame la Marquise, the toast of all the court, or something else unsuitable to a Sabbath evening. She tried to convey to the Wilbur twin that sitting in a low drinking saloon at any time was an evil thing.
"Anyway," said he, protestingly, "you say I should always learn something, and I learned about us coming up from the monkeys."
"Why, Wilbur Cowan! How awful! Have you forgotten everything you ever learned at Sunday-school?"
"But I saw the monkey," he persisted, "and my father said so, and Doctor Purdy said so."
Winona considered.
"Even so," she warned him, "even if we did come up from the lower orders, the less said about it the better."
He had regarded his putative descent without prejudice; he was sorry that Winona should find scandal in it.
"Well," he remarked to relieve her, "anyway, there's some catch in it. My father said so."
CHAPTER VI
Wilber Cowan went off to bed, only a little concerned by this new-found flaw in his ancestry. He would have thought it more important could he have known that this same Cowan ancestry was under analysis at the Whipple New Place.
There the three existing male Whipples sat about a long, magazine-littered table in the library and smoked and thought and at long intervals favoured one another with fragmentary speech. Gideon sat erect in his chair or stood before the fireplace, now banked with ferns; black-clad, tall and thin and straight in the comely pleasance of his sixty years, his face smoothly shaven, his cheekbones jutting above depressed cheeks that fell to his narrow, pointed chin, his blue eyes crackling far under the brow, high and narrow and shaded with ruffling gray hair, still plenteous. His ordinary aspect was severe, almost saturnine; but he was wont to destroy this effect with his thin-lipped smile that broke winningly over small white teeth and surprisingly hinted an alert young man behind these flickering shadows of age. When he sat he sat gracefully erect; when he stood to face the other two, or paced the length of the table, he stood straight or moved with supple joints. He was smoking a cigar with fastidious relish, and seemed to commune more with it than with his son or his brother. Beside Sharon Whipple his dress seemed foppish.
Sharon, the round, stout man, two years younger than Gideon, had the same blue eyes, but they looked from a face plump, florid, vivacious. There was a hint of the choleric in his glance. His hair had been lighter than Gideon's, and though now not so plentiful, had grayed less noticeably. His fairer skin was bedizened with freckles; and when with a blunt thumb he pushed up the outer ends of his heavy eye-brows or cocked the thumb at a speaker whose views he did not share, it could be seen that he was the most aggressive of the three men. Sharon notoriously lost his temper. Gideon had never been known to lose his. Sharon smoked and lolled carelessly in a Morris chair, one short, stout arm laid along its side, the other carelessly wielding the cigar, heedless of falling ashes. Beside the careful Gideon he looked rustic.
Harvey D., son of Gideon, worriedly paced the length of the room. His eyes were large behind thick glasses. He smoked a cigarette gingerly, not inhaling its smoke, but ridding himself of it in little puffs of distaste. His brown beard was neatly trimmed, and above it shone his forehead, pale and beautifully modelled under the carefully parted, already thinning, hair that was arranged in something almost like ringlets on either side. He was neat-faced. Of the three men he carried the Whipple nose most gracefully. His figure was slight, not so tall as his father's, and he was garbed in a more dapper fashion. He wore an expertly fitted frock coat of black, gray trousers faintly striped, a pearl-gray cravat skewered by a pear-headed pin, and his small feet were incased in shoes of patent leather. He was arrayed as befitted a Whipple who had become a banker.
Gideon, his father, achieved something of a dapper effect in an old-fashioned manner, but no observer would have read him for a banker; while Sharon, even on a Sunday evening, in loose tweeds and stout boots, was but a country gentleman who thought little about dress, so that one would not have guessed him a banker—rather the sort that makes banking a career of profit.
Careful Harvey D., holding a cigarette carefully between slender white fingers, dressed with studious attention, neatly bearded, with shining hair curled flatly above his pale, wide forehead, was the one to look out from behind a grille and appraise credits. He never acted hastily, and was finding more worry in this moment than ever his years of banking had cost him. He walked now to an ash tray and fastidiously trimmed the end of his cigarette. With the look of worry he regarded his father, now before the fireplace after the manner of one enjoying its warmth, and his Uncle Sharon, who was brushing cigar ash from his rumpled waistcoat to the rug below.
"It's no light thing to do," said Harvey D. in his precise syllables.
The others smoked as if unhearing. Harvey D. walked to the opposite wall and straightened a picture, The Reading of Homer, shifting its frame precisely one half an inch.
"It is overchancy." This from Gideon after a long silence.
Harvey D. paused in his walk, regarded the floor in front of him critically, and stooped to pick up a tiny scrap of paper, which he brought to the table and laid ceremoniously in the ash tray.
"Overchancy," he repeated.
"Everything overchancy," said Sharon Whipple after another silence, waving his cigar largely at life. "She's a self-headed little tike," he added a moment later.
"Self-headed!"
Harvey D. here made loose-wristed gestures meaning despair, after which he detected and put in its proper place a burned match beside Sharon's chair.
"A bright boy enough!" said Gideon after another silence, during which Harvey D. had twice paced the length of the room, taking care to bring each of his patent-leather toes precisely across the repeated pattern in the carpet.
"Other one got the gumption, though," said Sharon.
"Oh, gumption!" said Harvey D., as if this were no rare gift. All three smoked again for a pregnant interval.
"Has good points," offered Gideon. "Got all the points, in fact. Good build, good skin, good teeth, good eyes and wide between; nice manners, polite, lively mind."
"Other one got the gumption," mumbled Sharon, stubbornly. They ignored him.
"Head on him for affairs, too," said Harvey D. He went to a far corner of the room and changed the position of an immense upholstered chair so that it was equidistant from each wall. "Other one—hear he took all his silver and spent it foolishly—must have been eight or nine dollars—this one wanted to save it. Got some idea about the value of money."
"Don't like to see it show too young," submitted Sharon.
"Can't show too young," declared Harvey D.
"Can't it?" asked Sharon, mildly.
"Bright little chap—no denying that," said Gideon. "Bright as a new penny, smart as a whip. Talks right. Other chap mumbles."
"Got the gumption, though." Thus Sharon once more.
Long silences intervened after each speech in this dialogue.
"Head's good," said Harvey D. "One of those long heads like father's. Other one's head is round."
"My own head is round." This was Sharon. His tone was plaintive.
"Of course neither of them has a nose," said Gideon.
He meant that neither of the twins had a nose in the Whipple sense, but no comment on this lack seemed to be required. It would be unfair to expect a true nose in any but born Whipples.
Gideon Whipple from before the fireplace swayed forward on his toes and waved his half-smoked cigar.
"The long and short of it is—the Whipple stock has run low. We're dying out."
"Got to have new blood, that's sure," said Sharon. "Build it up again."
"I'd often thought of adopting," said Harvey D., "in the last two years," he carefully added.
"This youngster," said Gideon; "of course we should never have heard of him but for Pat's mad adventure, starting off with God only knows what visions in her little head."
"She'd have gone, too," said Sharon, dusting ashes from his waistcoat to the rug. "Self-headed!"
"She demands a brother," resumed Gideon, "and the family sorely needs she should have one, and this youngster seems eligible, and so—" He waved his cigar.
"There really doesn't seem any other way," said Harvey D. at the table, putting a disordered pile of magazines into neat alignment.
"What about pedigree?" demanded Sharon. "Any one traced him back?"
"I believe his father is here," said Harvey D.
"I know him," said Sharon. "A mad, swearing, confident fellow, reckless, vagrant-like. A printer by trade. Looks healthy enough. Don't seem blemished. But what about his father?"
"Is the boy's mother known?" asked Harvey D.
"Easy to find out," said Gideon. "Ask Sarah Marwick," and he went to the wall and pushed a button. "Sarah knows the history of every one, scandalous and otherwise."
Sarah Marwick came presently to the door, an austere spinster in black gown and white apron. Her nose, though not Whipple in any degree, was still eminent in a way of its own, and her lips shut beneath it in a straight line. She waited.
"Sarah," said Gideon, "do you know a person named Cowan? David Cowan, I believe it is."
Sarah's mien of professional reserve melted.
"Do I know Dave Cowan?" she challenged. "Do I know him? I'd know his hide in a tanyard."
"That would seem sufficient," remarked Gideon.
"A harum-scarum good-for-nothing—no harm in him. A great talker—make you think black is white if you listen. Don't stay here much—in and out, no one knows where to. Says the Center is slow. What do you think of that? I guess we're fast enough for most folks."
"What about his father?" said the stock-breeding Sharon. "Know anything about who he was?"
"Lord, yes! Everybody round here used to know old Matthew Cowan. Lived up in Geneseo, where Dave was born, but used to come round here preaching. Queer old customer with a big head. He wasn't a regular preacher; he just took it up, being a carpenter by trade—like our Lord Jesus, he used to say in his preaching. He had some outlandish kind of religion that didn't take much. He said the world was coming to an end on a certain day, and folks had better prepare for it, but it didn't end when he said it would; and he went back to carpentering week-days and preaching on the Lord's Day; and one time he fell off a roof and hit on his head, and after that he was outlandisher than ever, and they had to look after him. He never did get right again. They said he died writing a telegram to our Lord on the wall of his room. This Dave Cowan, he argued about religion with the Reverend Mallet right up in the post office one day. He'll argue about anything! He's audacious!"
"But the father was all right till he had the fall?" asked Harvey D. "I mean he was healthy and all that?"
"Oh, healthy enough—big, strong old codger. He used to say he could cradle four acres of grain in a day when he was a boy on a farm, or split and lay up three hundred and fifty rails. Strong enough."
"And this David Cowan, his son—he married someone from here?"
"Her that was Effie Freeman and her mother was a Penniman, cousin to old Judge Penniman. A sweet, lovely little thing, Effie was, too, just as nice as you'd want to meet, and so—"
"Healthy?" demanded Sharon.
"Healthy enough till she had them twins. Always puny after that. Took to her bed and passed on when they was four. Dropped off the tree of life like an overfruited branch, you might say. Winona and Mis' Penniman been mothers to the twins ever since."
"The record seems to be fairly clear," said Gideon.
"If he hasn't inherited that queer streak for religion," said Harvey D., foreseeing a possible inharmony with what Rapp, Senior, would have called the interests.
"Thank you, Sarah—we were just asking," said Gideon.
"You're welcome," said Sarah, withdrawing. She threw them a last bit over her shoulder. "That Dave Cowan's an awful reader—reads library books and everything. Some say he knows more than the editor of the Advance himself."
They waited until they heard a door swing to upon Sarah.
"Other has the gumption," said Sharon. But this was going in a circle. Gideon and Harvey D. ignored it as having already been answered.
"Well," said Harvey D., "I suppose we should call it settled."
"Overchancy," said Gideon, "but so would any boy be. This one is an excellent prospect, sound as a nut, bright, well-mannered."
"He made an excellent impression on me after church to-day," said Harvey D. "Quite refined."
"Re-fined," said Sharon, "is something any one can get to be. It's manners you learn." But again he was ignored.
"Something clean and manly about him," said Harvey D. "I should like him—like him for my son."
"Has it occurred to either of you," asked Gideon, "that this absurd father will have to be consulted in such a matter?"
"But naturally!" said Harvey D. "An arrangement would have to be made with him."
"But has it occurred to you," persisted Gideon, "that he might be absurd enough not to want one of his children taken over by strangers?"
"Strangers?" said Harvey D. in mild surprise, as if Whipples could with any justice be thus described.
Gideon, however, was able to reason upon this.
"He might seem both at first, I dare say; but we can make plain to him the advantages the boy would enjoy. I imagine they would appeal to him. I imagine he would consent readily."
"Oh, but of course," said Harvey D. "The father is a nobody, and the boy, left to himself, would probably become another nobody, without training, without education, without advantages. The father would know all this."
"Perhaps he doesn't even know he is a nobody," suggested Sharon.
"I think we can persuade him," said Harvey D., for once not meaning precisely what his words would seem to mean.
"I hope so," said Gideon, "Pat will be pleased."
"I shall like to have a son," said Harvey D., frankly wistful.
"Other one has the gumption," said Sharon, casting a final rain of cigar ash upon the abused rug at his feet.
"The sands of the Whipple family were running out—we renew them," said Gideon, cheerily.