The Wrong Twin Part 8

"Well, everybody said I might have a brother, but n.o.body does anything about it. I will have one of those. I think the nice one that doesn't smoke."

"Poor motherless pet!" murmured the stepmother, helplessly.

"A brother is not what you need most at this time," broke in Juliana.

"It's a barber."

Down the dusty road over West Hill went the twins, Wilbur still forcefully leading. His brother was becoming uneasy. There was a strange light in the other's eyes, an unwonted look of power. When they were off the hill and come to the upper end of shaded Fair Street, Merle advanced to keep pace beside his brother. The latter's rate of speed had increased as they neared the town.

"Hadn't I better take care of our money for us?" he at last asked in a voice oily with solicitude.

"No, sir!"

The "sir" was weighted with so heavy an emphasis that the tactful Merle merely said "Oh!" in a hurt tone.

"I can take care of my own money for me," added the speeding capitalist, seeming to wish that any possible misconception as to the ownership of the h.o.a.rd might be definitely removed.

"Oh," said Merle again, this being all that with any dignity he could think of to say. They were now pa.s.sing the quiet acre that had been the scene of the morning's unpleasantness. Their pails, half filled with berries, were still there, but the strangely behaving Wilbur refused to go for them. He eyed the place with disrelish. He would not again willingly approach that spot where he had gone down into the valley of shame. Reminded that the pails were not theirs, he brutally asked what did he care, adding that he could buy a million pails if he took a notion to. But presently he listened to reason, and made reasonable proposals. The Merle twin was to go back to the evil place, salvage the pails, leave them at the Penniman house, and hasten to a certain confectioner's at the heart of the town, where a lavish reward would be at once his. After troubled reflection he consented, and they went their ways. The Merle twin sped to the quiet nook where Jonas Whipple had been put away in 1828, and sped away from there as soon as he had the pails.

Not even did he bend a moment above the little new-made grave where lay a part of all that was mortal of Patricia Whipple. He disliked graveyards on principle, and he wished his reward.

Wilbur Cowan kept his quick way down Fair Street. He had been lifted to pecuniary eminence, and incessantly the new wealth pressed upon his consciousness. The markets of the world were at his mercy. There were shop windows outside which he had long been compelled to linger in sterile choosing. Now he could enter and buy, and he was in a hurry to be at it. Something warned him to seize his golden moment on the wing.

The day was Sat.u.r.day, and he was pleasantly thrilled by the unwonted crowds on River Street, which he now entered. Farm horses were tethered thickly along hitching racks and shoppers thronged the marts of trade.

He threaded a way among them till he stood before the establishment of Solly Gumble, confectioner. It brought him another thrill that the people all about should be unaware of his wealth--he, laden with unsuspected treasure that sagged cool and heavy on either thigh, while they could but suppose him to be a conventionally impoverished small boy.

He tried to be cool--to calculate sanely his first expenditure. But he contrived an air of careless indecision as he sauntered through the portals of the Gumble place and lingered before the counter of choicest sweets, those so desirable that they must be guarded under gla.s.s from a loftily sampling public.

"Two of those and two of those and one of them!"

It was his first order, and brought him, for five cents, two cocoanut creams, two candied plums, and a chocolate mouse. He stood eating these while he leisurely surveyed the neighbouring delicacies. Vaguely in his mind was the thought that he might buy the place and thereafter keep store. His cheeks distended by the chocolate mouse and the last of the cocoanut creams, he now bartered for a candy cigar. It was of brown material, at the blunt end a circle of white for the ash and at its centre a brilliant square of scarlet paper for the glow, altogether a charming feat of simulation, perhaps the most delightful humoresque in all confectionery. It was priced at two cents, but what was money now?

Then, his eye roving to the loftier shelves, he spied remotely above him a stuffed blue jay mounted on a varnished branch of oak. This was not properly a part of the Gumble stock; it was a fixture, technically, giving an air to the place from its niche between two mounting rows of laden shelves.

"How much for that beautiful bird for my father?" demanded the nouveau riche.

His words were blurred by the still-resistant chocolate mouse, and he was compelled to point before Solly Gumble divined his wish. The merchant debated, removing his skullcap, smoothing his grizzled fringe of curls, fitting the cap on again deliberately. Then he turned to survey the bird, seemingly with an interest newly wakened. It was indeed a beautiful bird, brilliantly blue, with sparkling eyes; a bit dusty, but rarely desirable. The owner had not meant to part with it; still, trade was trade. He meditated, tapping his cheek with a pencil.

"How much for that beautiful bird for my father?"

He had swallowed strenuously and this time got out the words cleanly.

"Well, now, I don't hardly know. My Bertha had her cousin give her that bird. It's a costly bird. I guess you couldn't pay such a price. I guess it would cost a full half dollar, mebbe."

He had meant the price to be prohibitive, and it did shock the questioner, opulent though he was.

"Well, mebbe I will and mebbe I won't," he said, importantly. "Say, you keep him for me till I make my mind up. If anybody else comes along, don't you sell him to anybody else till I tell you, because prob'ly I'll simply buy him. My father, he loves animals."

Solly Gumble was impressed.

"Well, he's a first-cla.s.s animal. He's been in that one place goin' on five years now."

"Give me two of those and two of those and one of them," said the Wilbur twin, pointing to new heart's desires.

"Say, now, you got a lot of money for a little boy," said Solly Gumble, not altogether at ease. This might be a case of embezzlement such as he had before known among his younger patrons. "You sure it's yours--yes?"

"Ho!" The Wilbur twin scorned the imputation. He was not going to tell how he had earned this wealth, but the ease of his simple retort was enough for the practical psychologist before him. "I could buy all the things in this store if I wanted to," he continued, and waved a patronizing hand to the shelves. "Give me two of those and two of those and one of them."

Solly Gumble put the latest purchase in a paper bag. Here was a patron worth conciliating. The patron sauntered to the open door to eat of his provender with lordly ease in the sight of an envious world. Calmly elate, on the cushion of advantage, he scanned the going and coming of lesser folk who could not buy at will of Solly Gumble. His fortune had gone to his head, as often it has overthrown the reason of the more mature indigent. It was thus his brother found him, and became instantly troubled at what seemed to be the insane glitter of his eyes.

He engulfed an entire chocolate mouse from his sticky left hand and with his right proffered the bag containing two of those and two of those and one of them. Merle accepted the boon silently. He was thrilled, yet distrustful. Until now his had been the leading mind, but his power was gone. He resented this, yet was sensible that no resentment must be shown. His talent as a tactician was to be sorely tested. He gently tried out this talent.

"Winona says you ought to come home to dinner."

The magnate replied as from another world.

"I couldn't eat a mouthful," he said, and crowded a cocoanut cream into an oral cavity already distended by a chocolate mouse.

"She says, now, you should save your money and buy some useful thing with it," again ventured the parasite. It was the sign of a nicely sensed ac.u.men that he no longer called it "our" money.

"Ho! Gee, gosh!" spluttered the rich one, and that was all.

"What we going to have next?" demanded the wise one.

"I'll have to think up something." He did not invite suggestions and none were offered. Merle nicely sensed the arrogance of the newly rich.

"I know," said the capitalist at length--"candy in a lemon."

"One for each?"

"Of course!" It was no time for petty economies.

Solly Gumble parted with two lemons and two sticks of spirally striped candy of porous fabric. Then the moneyed gourmet dared a new flight.

"Two more sticks," he commanded. "You suck one stick down, then you put another in the same old lemon," he explained.

"I must say!" exclaimed Merle. It was a high moment, but he never used strong language.

When the candy had been imbedded in the lemons they sauntered out to the street, Merle meekly in the rear, the master mind still coerced by brute wealth. They paused before other shop windows, cheeks hollowed above the savory mechanism invented by Patricia Whipple. Down one side of River Street to its last shop, and up the other, they progressed haltingly. At many of the windows the capitalist displayed interest only of the most academic character. At others he made sportive threats. Thus before the jewellery shop of Rapp Brothers he quite unnerved Merle by announcing that he could buy everything in that window if he wanted to--necklaces and rings and pins and gold watches--and he might do this. If, say, he did buy that black marble clock with the prancing gold horse on it, would Merle take it home for him? He had no intention of buying this object--he had never found clocks anything but a source of annoyance--but he toyed with the suggestion when he saw that it agitated his brother. Thereafter at other windows he wilfully dismayed his brother by pretending to consider the purchase of objects in no sense desirable to any one, such as boots, parasols, manicure sets, groceries, hardware. He played with the feel of his wealth, relishing the power it gave him over the moneyless.

And then purely to intensify this thrill of power he actually purchased at the hardware shop and carelessly bestowed upon the mendicant brother an elaborate knife with five blades and a thing which the vender said was to use in digging stones out of horses' feet. Merle was quite overcome by this gift, and neither of them suspected it to be the first step in the downfall of the capitalist. The latter, be it remembered, had bought and bestowed the knife that he might feel more acutely his power over this penniless brother, and this mean reward was abundantly his. Never before had he felt superior to the Merle twin.

But the penalties of giving are manifold, and he now felt a novel glow of sheer beneficence. He was a victim to the craze for philanthropy. Too young to realize its insidious character, he was to embark upon a ruinous career. Ever it is the first step that costs. That carelessly given knife--with something to dig stones out of a horse's foot--was to wipe out, ere night again shrouded Newbern Center, a fortune supposed to be as lasting as the eternal hills that encircled it.

They again crossed River Street, and stopped in front of the Cut-Rate Pharmacy. The windows of this establishment offered little to entice save the two mammoth chalices of green and crimson liquor. But these were believed to be of fabulous value. Even the Cut-Rate Pharmacy itself could afford but one of each. Inside the door a soda fountain hissed provocatively. They took lemon and vanilla respectively, and the lordly purchaser did not take up his change from the wet marble until he had drained his gla.s.s. He had become preoccupied. He was mapping out a career of benevolence, splendid, glittering, ostentatious--ruinous.

In a show case near the soda fountain his eye rested upon an object of striking beauty, a photograph alb.u.m of scarlet plush with a silver clasp, and lest its purpose be misconstrued the word "Alb.u.m" writ in purest silver across its front. Negotiations resulting in its sale were brief. The Merle twin was aghast, for the cost of this thing was a dollar and forty-nine cents. Even the buyer trembled when he counted out the price in small silver and coppers. But the result was a further uplift raising him beyond the loudest call of caution. The alb.u.m was placed in the ornate box--itself no mean bibelot--and wrapped in paper.

"It's for Winona," the purchaser loftily explained to his white-faced brother.