The Wrong Twin Part 32

"Rotten sportsmanship," declared Merle.

"No, no, he's a good sport, all right! He'd expect you to do the same, or tee up a little bit for a mid-iron shot. He says he won't read the rules, because they're too fine print. I like the old boy a lot," he concluded, firmly. He wanted no misunderstanding about that, even if Merle should esteem him less for it.

They drove from the next tee. One hundred and fifty yards ahead the fairway was intersected by a ditch. It was deep, and its cruel maw yawned hungrily for golf b.a.l.l.s. These it was fed in abundance daily.

"Rottenly placed, that ditch!" complained Merle as he prepared to drive.

"Only because you think so," replied his brother. "Forget it's there, and you'll carry it every time. That's what Sharon Whipple does. It's what they call psychology. It's a mental hazard. Sharon Whipple says that's another thing about golf that's like real life. He says most all things that scare us are just mental hazards."

"Stuff!" said Merle. "Stuffy stuffness! The ditch is there, isn't it, psychology or no psychology? You might ignore a hungry tiger, but calling him a mental hazard wouldn't stop him from eating you, would it?

Sharon Whipple makes me tired." He placed a drive neatly in the ditch.

"There!" he exploded, triumphantly. "I guess that shows you what the old gas bag knows about it."

"Oh, you'll soon learn to carry that hole!" his brother soothed. "Now let's see what you can do with that niblick." He grinned again as they went on to the ditch. "Sharon Whipple calls his niblick his 'gitter'."

Merle, however, would not join in the grin. Sharon Whipple still made him tired.

In the course of their desultory playing they discussed the other Whipples.

"Of course they're awfully fond of me," said Merle.

"Of course," said Wilbur.

"I guess Harvey D.--Father--would give me anything in the world I asked for, ever since I was a kid. Horses, dogs, guns, motor cars--notice the swell little roadster I'm driving? Birthday! You'd almost think he looks up to me. Says he expects great things of me."

"Why wouldn't he?" demanded the other.

"Oh, of course, of course!" Merle waved this aside. "And Grandfather Gideon, he's an old brick. College man himself--cla.s.s of sixty-five.

Think of that, way back in the last century! Sharon Whipple never got to college. Ran off to fight in the Civil War or something. That's why he's so countrified, I s'pose. You take Gideon now--he's a gentleman. Any one could see that. Not like Sharon. Polished old boy you'd meet in a club.

And Mrs. Harvey D.--Mother--say, she can't do enough for me! Bores me stiff lots of times about whether I'm not going to be sick or something.

And money--Lord! I'm supposed to have an allowance, but they all hand me money and tell me not to say anything about it to the others. Of course I don't. And Harvey D. himself--he tries to let on he's very strict about the allowance, then he'll pretend he didn't pay me the last quarter and hand me two quarters at once. He knows he's a liar, and he knows I know it, too. I guess I couldn't have fallen in with a nicer bunch. Even that funny daughter of Sharon's, Cousin Juliana, she warms up now and then--slips me a couple of twenties or so. You should have seen the hit I made at prep! Fellows there owe me money now that I bet I never do get paid back. But no matter, of course."

"That Juliana always makes me kind of shiver," admitted Wilbur. "She looks so kind of--well, kind of lemonish."

"She's all of that, that old girl. She's the only one I never do get close to. Soured old maid, I guess. Looks at you a lot, but doesn't say much, like she was sizing you up. That nose of hers certainly does stand out like a peak or something. You wouldn't think it, either, but she reads poetry--mushiest kind--awful stuff. Say, I looked into a book of hers one day over at the Old Place--Something-or-Other Love Lyrics was the t.i.tle--murder! I caught two or three things--talk about raw stuff--you know, fellows and girls and all that! What she gets out of it beats me, with that frozen face of hers."

A little later he portrayed the character of Patricia Whipple in terms that would have incensed her but that moved Wilbur to little but mild interest.

"You never know when you got your thumb on that kid," he said. "She's the shifty one, all right. Talk along to you sweet as honey, but all the time she's watching for some chance to throw the harpoon into you.

Venomous--regular vixen. No sense of humour--laughs at almost anything a fellow says or does. Trim you in a minute with that tongue of hers. And mushy! Reads stories about a young girl falling in love with strange men that come along when her car busts down on a lonely road. Got that bug now. Drives round a whole lot all alone looking for the car to go blooey and a lovely stranger to happen along and fix it for her that turns out to be a duke or something in disguise. Sickening!

"Two years ago she got confidential one night and told me she was going to Italy some day and get carried off to a cave by a handsome bandit in spite of her struggles. Yes, she would struggle--not! Talk about mental hazards, she's one, all right! She'll make it lively for that family some day. With Harvey D. depending on me a lot, I'm expecting to have no end of trouble with her when she gets to going good. Of course she's only a kid now, but you can plot her curve easy. One of these kind that'll say one thing and mean another. And wild? Like that time when she started to run off and found us in the graveyard---remember?"

They laughed about this, rehearsing that far-off day with its vicissitudes and sudden fall of wealth.

"That was the first day the Whipples noticed me," said Merle. "I made such a good impression on them they decided to take me."

At another time they talked of their future. Wilbur was hazy about his own. He was going to wait and see. Merle was happily definite.

"I'll tell you," said he when they had played out the last hole one day, "it's like this. I feel the need to express my best thoughts in writing, so I've decided to become a great writer--you know, take up literature. I don't mean poetry or muck of that sort--serious literature. Of course Harvey D. talks about my taking charge of the Whipple interests, but I'll work him round. Big writers are somebody--not bankers and things like that. You could be the biggest kind of a banker, and people would never know it or think much about it.

Writers are different. They get all kinds of notice. I don't know just what branch of writing I'll take up first, but I'll find out at college.

Anyway, not mucky stories about a handsome stranger coming along just because a girl's car busts down. I'll pick out something dignified, you bet!"

"I bet you will," said his admiring brother. "I bet you'll get a lot of notice."

"Oh"--Merle waved an a.s.senting hand--"naturally, after I get started good."

CHAPTER XIII

On a certain morning in early September Wilbur Cowan idled on River Street, awaiting a summons. The day was sunny and s.p.a.cious, yet hardly, he thought, could it contain his new freedom. Despairing groups of half-grown humans, still in slavery, hastened by him to their hateful tasks. He watched them pityingly, and when the dread bell rang, causing stragglers to bound forward in a saving burst of speed, he halted leisurely in sheer exultation. The ecstasy endured a full five minutes, until a last tap of the bell tolled the knell of the tardy. It had been worth waiting for. This much of his future he had found worth planning.

He pictured the unfortunates back in the old room, breathing chalk dust, vexed with foolish problems, tormented by discipline. He was never again to pa.s.s a public school save with a sensation of shuddering relief. He had escaped into his future, and felt no concern about what it should offer him. It was enough to have escaped.

Having savoured freedom another ten minutes, he sauntered over to the _Advance_ office as a favour to Sam Pickering. A wastrel printer had the night before been stricken with the wanderl.u.s.t, deciding at five-thirty to take the six-fifty-eight for other fields of endeavour, and Wilbur Cowan had graciously consented to bridge a possible gap.

He strolled into the dusty, disordered office and eased the worry from Sam Pickering's furrowed brow by attacking the linotype in spirited fashion. That week he ran off the two editions of the paper. A spotted small boy sat across the press bed from him to ink the forms. He confided impressively to this boy that when the last paper was printed the bronze eagle would flap its wings three times and scream as a signal for beer to be brought from Vielhaber's. The boy widened eyes of utter belief upon him, and Wilbur Cowan once more felt all his years.

But he was still lamentably indecisive about his future, and when a new printer looked in upon the _Advance_ he stepped aside. Whatever he was going to make of himself it wouldn't be someone who had to sit down indoors. He would be slave to no linotype until they were kept in the open. He told Sam Pickering this in so many words.

The former Mansion's stable at length engaged his wandering fancy. The stable's old swinging sign--a carefully painted fop with flowing side whiskers and yellow topcoat swiftly driving a spirited horse to a neat red-wheeled run-about--had been replaced by First-Cla.s.s Garage. Of its former activities remained only three or four sedate horses to be driven by conservatives; and Starling Tucker, who lived, but lived in the past, dazed and unbelieving--becoming vivacious only in speech, beginning, "I remember when--"

These memories dealt with a remote time, when a hawse was a hawse, and you couldn't have it put all over you by a lot of slick young smarties that could do a few things with a monkey wrench. Starling, when he thus discoursed, sat chiefly in the little office before the rusty stove, idly flicking his memory with a buggy whip from the rack above his head, where reposed a dozen choice whips soon to become mere museum pieces.

Wilbur's connection with this thriving establishment was both profitable and entertaining. Judge Penniman divined the truth of it.

"He don't work--he just plays!"

He played with disordered motors and unerringly put them right. But he seemed to lack steadiness of purpose. He would leave an ailing car to help out Sam Pickering, or he would leave for a round of golf with Sharon Whipple, Sharon complaining that other people were nothing but doggoned golf lawyers; and he would insist upon time off at three o'clock each afternoon to give Spike Brennon his work-out. Spike had laboured to develop other talent in Newbern, but with ill success. When you got 'em learned a little about the game they acted like a lot of sissies over a broken nose or a couple of front teeth out or something.

What he wanted was lads that would get the beak straightened, pretty near as good as new, or proper gold ones put in, and come back looking for more trouble. Wilbur Cowan alone he had found dependable.

Even so, the monotony of mere car repairing began to irk him. It was then he formed a pleasant alliance with old Porter Howgill, whose repair shop was across the street from the First-Cla.s.s Garage. Porter's swinging sign, weathered and ancient like that of the Mansion's stable, said in bold challenge, "Ask me! I do everything!" And once Porter had done everything. Now there were a number of things he couldn't do, even when asked. He was aging and knotted with rheumatism, and his failing eyes did not now suffice for many of the nicer jobs.

Wilbur Cowan came to him and, even as had Porter in the days when the sign was bright, did everything. It was a distinct relief to puzzle over a sewing machine after labouring with too easily diagnosed motor troubles, or to restore a bit of marquetry in a table, or play at a feat of locksmithing. The First-Cla.s.s Garage urged him to quit fiddling round and become its foreman, but this glittering offer he refused. It was too much like settling down to your future.

"Got his father's vagabond blood in his veins," declared Judge Penniman.

"Crazy, too, like his father. You can't tell me Dave Cowan was in his right mind when the Whipples offered, in so many words, to set him up in any business he wanted to name, and pay all expenses, and he spurned 'em like so much dirt beneath his heel. Acted like a crazy loon is what I say, and this Jack-of-all-trades is showing the strain. Mark my words, they'll both end their days in a madhouse!"

No one did mark his words. Not even Winona, to whom they were uttered with the air of owlish, head-snapping wisdom which marked so many of the invalid's best things. She was concerned only with the failure of Wilbur to select a seemly occupation. His working dress was again careless; he reeked with oil, and his hands--hard, knotty hands--seemed to be permanently grimed. Even Lyman Teaford managed his thriving flour and feed business, with a b.u.t.ter and eggs and farm produce department, in the garments of a gentleman. True, he often worked with his coat off, but he removed his cuffs and carefully protected the sleeves of his white shirt with calico oversleeves held in place by neat elastics. Once away from the store he might have been anybody--even a banker.

Winona sought to enlist Lyman's help in the matter of Wilbur's future.

Lyman was flaccid in the matter. The boy had once stolen into the Penniman parlour while Lyman and Winona were out rifling the ice box of delicacies, and enticed by the glitter of Lyman's flute had thrillingly taken it into his hands to see what made it go, dropping it in his panic, from the centre table to the floor, when he heard their returning steps. Lyman had never felt the same toward Wilbur after that. Now, even under the blandishments of Winona, he was none too certain that he would make a capable flour and feed merchant. Wilbur himself, to whom the possibility was broached, proved all too certain that he would engage in no mercantile pursuit whatever; surely none in which he might be a.s.sociated ever so remotely with Lyman Teaford, whom for no reason he had always viewed with profound dislike. This incident closed almost before it opened.

Winona again approached Sharon Whipple in Wilbur's behalf. But Sharon was not enough depressed by the circ.u.mstance that Wilbur's work was hard on clothes, or that tasks were chosen at random and irregularly toiled at.

"Let him alone," advised Sharon. "Pretty soon he'll harden and settle.

Besides, he's getting his education. He ain't educated yet."