The Wrong Twin Part 42

"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 const.i.tution 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 a.s.sociation.

"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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sertion. 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. G.o.d helping me, I must follow the light."

The last was purely rhetorical, for no one on the staff of the _New Dawn_ believed that G.o.d helped any one. Indeed, it was rather felt that G.o.d 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.