The Wrong Twin Part 41

These had been exclusively of a sentimental character, for Frank had never been the fighting dog his first owner had promised he would be. He was an arch sentimentalist and had followed a career of determined motherhood, bringing into the world litter after litter of puppies, exhibiting all the strains then current in Newbern. He had surveyed each new family with pride--families revealing tinges of setter, Airedale, Newfoundland, pointer, collie--with the hopeful air of saying that a dog never knew what he could do until he tried. Now he could only dream of past conquests, and merely complained when his master roused him.

"I hope you'll be here when I get back--and I hope I'll be here, too,"

said his master, and went on, sauntering up to the station a bit later as nonchalantly as ever Dave Cowan himself had gone there to begin a long journey on the six-fifty-eight. Spike Brennon lounged against a baggage truck. Spike's only token of departure was a small bundle covered with that day's _Advance_. They waited in silence until the dingy way train rattled in. Then Sharon Whipple appeared from the freight room of the station. He affected to be impatient with the railway company because of a delayed shipment which he took no trouble to specify definitely, and he affected to be surprised at the sight of Wilbur and Spike.

"h.e.l.lo! I thought you two boys went on the noon train," he lied, carelessly. "Well, long as you're here you might as well take these--in case you get short." He pressed a bill into the hand of each. "Good-bye and good luck! I had to come down about that shipment should have been here last Monday--it beats time what these railroads do with stuff nowadays. Five days between here and Buffalo!"

He continued to grumble as the train moved on, even as the two waved to him from a platform.

"A hundred berries!" breathed Spike, examining his bill. "Say, he sheds it easy, don't he?"

They watched him where he stood facing the train. He seemed to have quit grumbling; his face was still.

"Well, kid, here we go! Now it's up to the guy what examines us. You'll breeze through--not a nick in you. Me--well, they're fussy about teeth, I'm told, and, of course, I had to have a swift poke in the mush that dented my beak. They may try to put the smother on me."

"Cheer up! You'll make the grade," said Wilbur.

Through the night he sat cramped and wakeful in the seat of a crowded day coach, while Spike beside him slept noisily, perhaps owing to the dented beak. His head back, he looked out and up to a bow moon that raced madly with the train, and to far, pale stars that were still. He wondered if any one out there noted the big new adventure down here.

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 doc.u.ment declaring that this Government had been "conceived in chicanery and dedicated to the industrial slavery of the ma.s.ses." 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 G.o.d."

But the little cl.u.s.ter 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. G.o.d 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 cla.s.s 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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 succ.u.mbed. 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 embarra.s.sed 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 cla.s.s.'

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 compet.i.tion--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 compet.i.tion 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 compet.i.tion with speeches all they like, but they can't put it out. Because why? Well, because this life thing is going on, and compet.i.tion 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 compet.i.tion, 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 compet.i.tion 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 gla.s.ses! 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 compet.i.tion. 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 compet.i.tion, 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.