CHAPTER XVII
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.
CHAPTER XVIII
A week later one of the New York evening papers printed an inspiring view of Merle Dalton Whipple in what was said to be the rough garb of the workingman. He stanchly fronted the world in a corduroy suit and high-laced boots, a handkerchief knotted at his throat above a flannel shirt, and a somewhat proletarian cap set upon his well-posed head. The caption ran: "Young Millionaire Socialist Leaves Life of Luxury to be Simple Toiler."
A copy of this enterprising sheet, addressed in an unknown hand, arrived at the Whipple New Place, to further distress the bereft family. Only Sharon Whipple was not distressed. He remarked that the toiler was not so simple as some people might think, and he urged that an inquiry be set on foot to discover the precise nature of the toil now being engaged in by this recruit to the ranks of labour. He added that he himself would be glad to pay ninety dollars a month and board to any toiler worth his salt, because Juliana was now his only reliable helper, and it did seem as if she would never learn to run a tractor, she having no gift for machinery. If Merle Whipple was bent on toil, why should he not come to the Home Farm, where plenty of it could be had for the asking?
Both Harvey D. and Gideon rebuked him for this levity, reminding him that he did not take into account the extreme sensitiveness of Merle.
Sharon merely said: "Mebbe so, mebbe not."
There came another issue of the New Dawn. It was a live issue, and contained a piece by the associate editor entitled, This Unpopular War, in which it was clearly shown that this war was unpopular. It was unpopular with every one the writer had questioned; no one wanted it, every one condemned it, even those actually engaged in it at Washington. The marvel was that an army could continue to go forward with existing public sentiment as the New Dawn revealed it. But a better day was said to be dawning. The time was at hand when an end would be put to organized exploitation and murder, which was all that the world had thus far been able to evolve in the way of a government.
In a foreword to the readers of the New Dawn, however, a faintly ominous note was sounded. It appeared that the interests had heinously conspired to suppress the magazine because of its loyalty to the ideals of free thought and free speech. In short, its life was menaced. Support was withdrawn by those who had suddenly perceived that the New Dawn meant the death of privilege; that "this flowering of mature and seasoned personalities" threatened the supremacy of the old order of industrial slavery. The mature and seasoned personalities had sounded the prelude to the revolution which "here bloodily, there peaceably, and beginning with Russia, would sweep the earth." Capital, affrighted, had drawn back. It was therefore now necessary that the readers of the New Dawn bear their own burden. If they would send in money in such sums as they could spare—and it was felt that these would flow in abundantly upon a hint—the magazine would continue and the revolution be a matter of days. It was better, after all, that the cause should no longer look to capital for favours. Contributors were to sign on the dotted line.
There were no more New Dawns. The forces of privilege had momentarily prevailed, or the proletariat had been insufficiently roused to its plight. The New Dawn stopped, and in consequence the war went on. For a time, at least, America must continue in that spiritual darkness which the New Dawn had sought to illumine.
Later it became known in Newbern that the staff of the New Dawn would now deliver its message by word of mouth. Specifically, Merle Whipple was said to be addressing throngs of despairing toilers not only in New York, but in places as remote as Chicago. Sharon Whipple now called him a crimson rambler.
Meanwhile, news of the other Cowan twin trickled into Newbern through letters from Winona Penniman, a nurse with the forces overseas. During her months of training in New York the epistolary style of Winona had maintained its old leisurely elegance, but early in the year of 1918 it suffered severely under the strain of active service and became blunt to the point of crudeness. The morale of her nice phrases had been shattered seemingly beyond restoration.
"D—n this war!" began one letter to her mother. "We had influenza aboard coming over and three nurses died and were buried at sea. Also, one of our convoy foundered in a storm; I saw men clinging to the wreck as she went down.
"Can it be that I once lived in that funny little town where they make a fuss about dead people—flowers and a casket and a clergyman and careful burial? With us it's something to get out of the way at once. And life has always been this, and I never knew it, even if we did take the papers at home. Ha, ha! Yes, I can laugh, even in the face of it. 'Life is real, life is earnest'—how that line comes back to me with new force!"
A succeeding letter from a base hospital somewhere in France spelled in full certain words that had never before polluted Winona's pen. Brazenly she abandoned the seemly reticence of dashes.
"Damn all the war!" she wrote; and again: "War is surely more hellish than hell could be!"
"Mercy! Can the child be using such words in actual talk?", demanded Mrs. Penniman of the judge, to whom she read the letter.
"More'n likely," declared the judge. "War makes 'em forget their home training. Wouldn't surprise me if she went from bad to worse. It's just a life of profligacy she's leadin'—you can't tell me."
"Nonsense!" snapped the mother.
"'And whom do you think I had a nice little visit with two days ago? He was on his way up to the front again, and it was our Wilbur. He's been in hot fighting three times already, but so far unscathed. But oh, how old he looks, and so severe and grim and muddy! He says he is the worst-scared man in the whole Army, bar none. He thought at first he would get over his fright, but each time he goes in he hates worse and worse to be shot at, and will positively never come to like it. He says the only way he can get over being frightened is to go on until he becomes very, very angry, and then he can forget it for a time. You can tell by his face that it would be easy to anger him.
"'But do not think he is cowardly, even if habitually frightened, because I also talked with his captain, who is an outspoken man, and he tells me that Wilbur is a regular fighting so-and-so. These were his very words. They are army slang, and mean that he is a brave soldier. A young man, a Mr. Edward Brennon from Newbern, a sort of athlete, came over with him, and they have been constantly together. I did not see this Mr. Brennon, but I hear that he, too, is gallantly great, and also a regular fighting so-and-so, as these rough men put it in their slang.
"'Wilbur spoke of Merle's writing about the war, and about America's being rotten to the core because of capital that people want to keep from the workingman, and he says he now sees that Merle must have been misled; as he puts it in his crude, forceful way, this man's country has come to stay. He says that is what he always says to himself when he has to go over the top, while he is still scared and before he grows angry—"This man's country has come to stay." He says this big American Army would laugh at many of Merle's speeches about America and the war. He says the country is greater than any magazine, even the best. Now my rest hour is over, and I must go in where they are doing terrible things to these poor men. For a week I have been on my feet eighteen hours out of each twenty-four. I have just time for another tiny cigarette before going into that awful smell.'
"Mercy!" cried the amazed mother.
"There you are!" retorted the judge. "Let her go into the Army and she takes up smoking. War leads to dissipation—ask any one."
"I must send her some," declared Mrs. Penniman; "or I wonder if she rolls her own?"
"Yes, and pretty soon we'll have the whole house stenched up worse'n what Dave Cowan's pipe does it," grumbled the judge. "The idee of a girl of her years taking up cigarettes! A good thing the country's going dry. Them that smoke usually drink."
"High time the girl had some fun," returned his wife, placidly.
"Needn't be shameless about it," grumbled the judge. "A good woman has to draw the line somewhere."
The unbending moralist later protested that Winona's letters should not be read to her friends. But Mrs. Penniman proved stubborn. She softened no word of Winona's strong language, and she betrayed something like a guilty pride in revealing that her child was now a hopeless tobacco addict.
A month later Winona further harassed the judge.
"'I think only about life and death,'" read Mrs. Penniman, "'and I'm thinking now that the real plan of things is something greater than either of them. It is not rounded out by our dying in the right faith. Somehow it must go on and on, always in struggle and defeat. I used to think, of course, that our religious faith was the only true one, but now I must tell you I don't know what I am.'"
"My Lord!" groaned the horrified judge. "The girl's an atheist! That's what people are when they don't know what they are. First swearing, then smoking cigarettes, now forsaking her religion. Mark my words, she's coming home an abandoned woman!"
"Stuff!" said Mrs. Penniman, crisply. "She's having a great experience. Listen! 'You should see them die here, in all faiths—Jews, Catholics, Protestants, and very, very many who have never enjoyed the consolation of any religious teachings whatsoever. But they all die alike, and you may think me dreadful for saying it, but I know their reward will be equal. I don't know if I will come out of it myself, but I don't think about that, because it seems unimportant. The scheme—you remember Dave Cowan always talking about the scheme—the scheme is so big, that dying doesn't matter one bit if you die trying for something. I couldn't argue about this, but I know it and these wonderful boys must know it when they go smiling straight into death. They know it without any one ever having told them. Sometimes I get to thinking of my own little set beliefs about a hereafter—those I used to hold—and they seem funny to me!'"
"There!" The judge waved triumphantly. "Now she's makin' fun of the church! That's what comes of gittin' in with that fast Army set."
Mrs. Penniman ignored this.
"'Patricia Whipple feels the same way I do about these matters; more intensely if that were possible. I had a long talk with her yesterday. She has been doing a wonderful work in our section. She is one of us that can stand anything, any sort of horrible operation, and never faint, as some of the nurses have done. She is apparently at such times a thing of steel, a machine, but she feels intensely when it is over and she lets down.
"'You wouldn't know her. Thin and drawn, but can work twenty hours at a stretch and be ready for twenty more next day. She is on her way up to a first-aid station, which I myself would not be equal to. It is terrible enough at this base hospital. For one who has been brought up as she has, gently nurtured, looked after every moment, she is amazing. And, as I say, she feels as I do about life and death and the absurd little compartments into which we used to pack religion. She says she expects never to get back home, because the world is coming to an end. You would not be surprised at her thinking this if you could see what she has to face. She is a different girl. We are both different. We won't ever be the same again.'"
"Wha'd I tell you?" demanded the judge.
"'The war increases in violence—dreadful sights, dreadful smells. I am so glad Merle's eyes kept him out of it. He would have been ill fitted for this turmoil. Wilbur was the one for it. I saw him a few minutes the other day, on his way to some place I mustn't write down. He said: "Do you know what I wish?" I said: "No; what do you wish?" He said: "I wish I was back in the front yard, squirting water on the lawn and flower beds, where no one would be shooting at me, and it was six o'clock and there was going to be fried chicken for supper and one of those deep-dish apple pies without any bottom to it, that you turn upside down and pour maple sirup on. That's what I wish."'"
"Always thinking of his stomach!" muttered the judge.
"'But he has gone on, and I can't feel distressed, even though I know it is probable he will never come back. I know it won't make any difference in the real plan, and that it is only important that he keep on being a fighting so-and-so, as they say in the Army. It is not that I am callous, but I have come to get a larger view of death—mere death. I said good-bye to him for probably the last time with as little feeling as I would have said good-bye to Father on departing for a three-days' trip to the city.'"
"Naturally she'd forget her parents," said the judge. "That's what it leads to."
Late in June of that year the shattered remains of a small town somewhere in France, long peaceful with the peace of death, became noisy with a strange new life. Two opposing and frenzied lines of traffic clashed along the road that led through it and became a noisy jumble in the little square at its centre, a disordered mass of camions, artillery, heavy supply wagons, field kitchens, ambulances, with motorcycles at its edges like excited terriers, lending a staccato vivacity to its uproar.
Artillery and soldiers went forward; supply wagons, empty, and ambulances, not empty, poured back in unending succession; and only the marching men, gaunt shapes in the dust, were silent. They came from a road to the south, an undulating double line of silent men in dust-grayed khaki, bent under a burden of field equipment, stepping swiftly along the narrow, stone-paved street, heads down, unheeding the jagged ruin of small shops and dwellings that flanked the way. Reaching the square, they turned to cross a makeshift bridge—beside one of stone that had spanned the little river but now lay broken in its shallow bed. Beyond this stream they followed a white road that wound gently up a sere hill between rows of blasted poplars. At the top of the rise two shining lines of helmets undulated rhythmically below the view.
At moments the undulations would cease and the lines dissolve. The opposing streams of traffic would merge in a tangle beyond extrication until a halt enabled each to go its way. A sun-shot mist of fine dust softened all lines until from a little distance the figures of men and horses and vehicles were but twisting, yellowish phantoms, strangely troubled, strangely roaring.
At these times the lines of marching men, halted by some clumsy clashing of war machines, instantly became mere huddles of fatigue by the wayside, falling to earth like rows of standing blocks sent over by a child's touch.
Facing the square was a small stone church that had been mistreated. Its front was barred by tumbled masonry, but a well-placed shell had widely breached its side wall. Through this timbered opening could be seen rows of cots hovered over by nurses or white-clad surgeons. Their forms flashed with a subdued radiance far back in the shaded interior. Litter bearers came and went.
From the opening now issued a red-faced private, bulky with fat. One of his eyes was hidden from the public by a bandage, but the other surveyed the milling traffic with a humorous tolerance. Though propelling himself with crutches, he had contrived to issue from the place with an air of careless sauntering. Tenderly he eased his bulk to a flat stone, aforetime set in the church's façade, and dropped a crutch at either side. He now readjusted his hat, for the bandage going up over his shock of reddish hair had affected its fit. Next he placed an inquiring but entirely respectful palm over the bandaged eye.
"Never was such a hell of a good eye, anyhow," he observed, and winked the unhidden eye in testimony of his wit. Then he plucked from back of an ear a half-smoked cigarette, relighted this, and leered humorously at the spreading tangle before him.
"Naughty, naughtykins!" he called to a driver of four mules who had risen finely to an emergency demanding sheer language. "First chance I had to get a good look at the war, what with one thing and another," he amiably explained to a sergeant of infantry who was passing.
Neither of his sallies evoked a response, but he was not rebuffed. He wished to engage in badinage, but he was one who could entertain himself if need be. He looked about for other diversion.
To the opening in the church wall came a nurse. She walked with short, uncertain steps and leaned against the ragged edge of the wall, with one arm along its stone for support. Her face was white and drawn, and for a moment she closed her eyes and breathed deeply of the dust-laden air. The fat private on the stone, a score of feet away, studied her approvingly. She was slight of form and her hair beneath the cap was of gold, a little tarnished. He waited for her eyes to open, then hailed her genially as he waved at a tangle of camions and ambulances now blocking the bridge.
"Worse'n fair week back home on Main Street, hey, sister?"
But she did not hear him, for a battered young second lieutenant with one arm in a sling had joined her from the dusk of the church.
"Done up, nurse?" he demanded.
"Only for a second. We just finished something pretty fierce."
She pointed back of her, but without looking.
"Why not sit down on that stone?"
He indicated a fallen slab at her feet. She looked at it with frank longing, but smiled a refusal.
"Dassent," she said. "I'd be asleep in no time."
"Cheer up! We'll soon finish this man's job."
The girl looked at him with eyes already freshened.
"No, it won't ever be finished. It's going on forever. Nothing but war and that inside."
Again she pointed back without turning her head.
"Another jam!"
The second lieutenant waved toward the makeshift bridge. The girl watched the muddle of wheeled things and stiffened with indignation.
"That's why it'll last so long," she said. "Because these officers of ours can't learn anything. Look at that muddle—while men are dying on beyond. You'd think they were a lot of schoolboys. Haven't they been told to keep one road for their up traffic and another road for their down traffic? But they wouldn't do it, because it was the British who told 'em. But the British had found out, hadn't they? Catch them having a senseless mix-up like that! But our men won't listen. They won't even listen to me. I've told one general and six or seven colonels only this morning. Told the general to keep certain roads for troops and wagons going to the front, and other roads of traffic coming back to camps and depots, and all he could say was that he hoped to God there wouldn't be another war until the women could staff it."
"Hooray, hooray!" squeaked the listening private in a subdued falsetto not meant to be overheard.
Then he turned to stare up the street of broken shop fronts. One of these diverted his attention from the nurse. Above its door protruded a bush, its leaves long since withered. He knew this for the sign of a wine shop, and with much effort regained his feet to hobble toward it. He went far enough to note that the bush broke its promise of refreshment, for back of it was but dry desolation.
"Napoo!" he murmured in his best French, and turned to measure the distance back to his stone seat. To this he again sauntered carelessly, as a gentleman walking abroad over his estate.
The second lieutenant was leaving the nurse by the extemporized portal of the church, though she seemed not to have done with exposing the incompetence of certain staff officers. She still leaned wearily against the wall, vocal with irritation.
"Bawl 'em out, sister! I think anything you think," called the private.
Then from his stone seat he turned to survey the double line of marching men that issued from the street into the square. They came now to a shuffling halt at a word of command relayed from some place beyond the bridge, where a new jumble of traffic could be dimly discerned. The lines fell apart and the men sank to earth in the shade of the broken buildings across the square. The private waved them a careless hand, with the mild interest of one who has been permanently dissevered from their activities.
One of them slouched over, gave the private a new cigarette, and slouched back to his resting mates. In the act of lighting the cigarette the fat private noted that another of these reclining figures had risen and was staring fixedly either at him or at something beyond him. He turned and perceived that the nurse and not himself must be the object of this regard.
The risen private came on a dozen paces, halted hesitatingly, and stared once more. The nurse, who had drooped again after the departure of the second lieutenant, now drew a long breath, threw up her shoulders, and half turned as if to reënter the church. The hesitating private, beholding the new angle of her face thus revealed to him, darted swiftly forward with a cry that was formless but eloquent. The nurse stayed motionless, but with eyes widened upon the approaching figure. The advancing private had risen wearily, and his first steps toward the church had been tired, dragging steps, but for the later distance he became agile and swift, running as one refreshed. The fat private on the stone observed the little play.
The couple stood at last, tensely, face to face. The watcher beheld the girl's eyes rest with wild wonder upon the newcomer, eyes that were steady, questioning green flames. He saw her form stiffen, her shoulders go back, her arms rise, her clenched hands spread apart in a gesture that was something of fear but all of allure. The newcomer's own hands widened to meet hers, the girl's wrists writhed into his tightened grasp, her own hands clasped his arms and crept slowly, tightly along the dusty sleeves of his blouse. Still her eyes were eyes of wild wonder, searching his face. They had not spoken, but now the hands of each clutched the shoulders of the other for the briefest of seconds. Then came a swift enveloping manoeuvre, and the girl was held in a close embrace.
The watching private studied the mechanics of this engagement with an expert eye. He saw the girl's arms run to tighten about the soldier's neck. He saw her face lift. The soldier's helmet obscured much of what ensued, and the watcher called softly. "Hats off in front!" Then fastidiously dusting the back of one hand, he kissed it audibly. Behind him, across the square, a score of recumbent privates were roused to emulation. Dusting the backs of their hands they kissed them both tenderly and audibly.
The two by the church were oblivious of this applause. Their arms still held each other. Neither had spoken. The girl's face was set in wonder, in shining unbelief, yet a little persuaded. They were apart the reach of their arms.
"As you were!" ordered the fat private in low tones, and with a little rush they became as they were. Again the girl's arms ran to tighten about the soldier's neck. The watcher noticed their earnest constrictions.
"I bet that lad never reads his dice wrong," he murmured, admiringly. "Oh, lady, lady! Will you watch him June her!"
He here became annoyed to observe that his cigarette had been burning wastefully. He snapped off its long ash and drew tremendously upon it. The two were still close, but now they talked. He heard sounds of amazement, of dismay, from the girl.
"Put a comether on her before she knew it," explained the private to himself.
There followed swift, broken murmurs, incoherent, annoyingly, to the listener, but the soldier's arms had not relaxed and the arms of the girl were visibly compressed about his neck. Then they fell half apart once more. The watcher saw that the girl was weeping, convulsed with long, dry, shuddering sobs.
"As you were!" he again commanded, and the order was almost instantly obeyed.
Presently they talked again, quick, short speech, provokingly blurred to the private's ears.
"Louder!" he commanded. "We can't hear at the back of the hall."
The muffled talk went on, one hand of the girl ceaselessly patting the shoulder where it had rested.
Now a real command came. The line of men rose, its head by the bridge coming up first. The pair by the church drew apart, blended again momentarily. The soldier sped back to his place, leaving the girl erect, head up, her shining eyes upon him. He did not look back. The line was marking time.
The fat private saw his moment. He reached for his crutches and laboriously came to his feet. Hands belled before his mouth, he trumpeted ringingly abroad: "Let the war go on!"
An officer, approaching from the bridge, seemed suddenly to be stricken with blindness, deafness, and a curious facial paralysis.
Once more the column undulated over the tawny crest of the hill. The nurse stood watching, long after her soldier had become indistinguishable in the swinging, grayish-brown mass.
"Hey, nurse!" the fat private, again seated, called to her.
To his dismay she came to stand beside him, refreshed, radiant.
"What you think of the war?" he asked.
He was embarrassed by her nearness. He had proposed badinage at a suitable distance.
"This war is nothing," said the girl.
"No?" The private was entertained.
"Nothing! A bore, of course, but it will end in a minute."
"Sure it will!" agreed the private. "Don't let no one tell you different."
"I should think not! This man's war won't bother me any more."
"Not any more?" demanded the private with insinuating emphasis.
"Not any more."
The private felt emboldened.
"Say, sister"—he grinned up at her—"that boy changed your view a lot, didn't he?"
"You mean to say you were here?" She flashed him a look of annoyance.
"Was I here? Sister, we was all here! The whole works was here!"
She reflected, the upper lip drawn down.
"Who cares?" she retorted. She turned away, then paused, debating with herself. "You—you needn't let it go any farther, but I've got to tell someone. It was a surprise. I was never so bumped in my whole life."
The private grinned again.
"Lady, that lad just naturally put a comether on you."
She considered this, then shook her head.
"No, it was more like—we must have put one on each other. It—it was fierce!"
"Happy days!" cheered the private. She lighted him with the effulgence of a knowing smile.
"Thanks a lot," she said.
The war went on.
In her next letter Winona Penniman wrote: "We moved up to a station nearer the front last Tuesday. I spent a night with Patricia Whipple. The child has come through it all wonderfully so far. A month ago she was down and out; now she can't get enough work to do. Says the war bores her stiff. She means to stick it through, but all her talk is of going home. By the way, she told me she had a little visit with Wilbur Cowan the other day. She says she never saw him looking better."