Produced by Suzanne Shell and PG Distributed Proofreaders
THE WRONG TWIN
BY HARRY LEON WILSON
1921
TO HELEN AND LEON
"THE GIRL NOW GLOWERED AT EACH OF THEM IN TURN. 'I DON'TCARE!' SHE MUTTERED. 'I WILL, TOO, RUN AWAY!'"]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"The girl now glowered at each of them in turn. 'I don't care!' shemuttered. 'I will, too, run away!'"
"'I can always find a little time for bankers. I never kept one waitingyet and I won't begin now.'"
"The girl was already reading Wilbur's palm, disclosing to him that hehad a deep vein of cruelty in his nature."
"The malign eye was worn so proudly that the wearer bubbledvaingloriously of how he had achieved the stigma."
CHAPTER I
An establishment in Newbern Center, trading under the name of the FotoArt Shop, once displayed in its window a likeness of the twin sons ofDave Cowan. Side by side, on a lavishly fringed plush couch, theyconfronted the camera with differing aspects. One sat forward with adecently, even blandly, composed visage, nor had he meddled with hiscurls. His mate sat back, scowling, and fought the camera to the bitterend. His curls, at the last moment, had been mussed by a raging hand.
This was in the days of an earlier Newbern, when the twins were four andWinona Penniman began to be their troubled mentor--troubled lest theyshould not grow up to be refined persons; a day when Dave Cowan, thewidely travelled printer, could rightly deride its citizenry assmall-towners; a day when the Whipples were Newbern's sole noblesse andthe Cowan twins not yet torn asunder.
The little town lay along a small but potent river that turned a fewfactory wheels with its eager current, and it drew sustenance from thehill farms that encircled it for miles about. You had to take a dingyway train up to the main line if you were going the long day's journeyto New York, so that the Center of the name was often construedfacetiously by outlanders.
Now Newbern Center is modern, and grows callous. Only the other day awandering biplane circled the second nine of its new golf course, and ofthe four players on the tenth green but one paid it the tribute of anupward glance. Even this was a glance of resentment, for his partner atthat instant eyed the alignment for a three-foot putt and might bedistracted. The annoyed player flung up a hostile arm at the thing andwaved it from the course. Seemingly abashed, the machine slunk off intoa cloud bank.
Old Sharon Whipple, the player who putted, never knew that above him hadgone a thing he had very lately said could never be. Sharon has grownmodern with the town. Not so many years ago he scoffed at rumours of atelephone. He called it a contraption, and said it would be against thelaws of God and common sense. Later he proscribed the horseless carriageas an impracticable toy. Of flying he had affirmed that the fools whotried it would deservedly break their necks, and he had gustily raged atthe waste of a hundred and seventy-five acres of good pasture land whengolf was talked.
Yet this very afternoon the inconsequent dotard had employed a telephoneto summon his car to transport him to the links, and had denied even aglance of acknowledgment at the wonder floating above him. Much likethat is growing Newbern. There was gasping aplenty when Winona Pennimanabandoned the higher life and bought a flagrant pair of satin dancingslippers, but now the town lets far more sensational doings go almostunremarked.
The place tosses even with the modern fever of unrest. It has itsbourgeoisie, its proletariat, its radicals, but also a city-beautifulassociation and a rather captious sanitary league. Lately a visitingradical, on the occasion of a certain patriotic celebration, expressed aconventional wish to spit upon the abundantly displayed flag. A knowingfriend was quick to dissuade him.
"Don't do it! Don't try it! Here, now, you got no freedom! Should youspit only on their sidewalk, they fine the heart's blood out of you."
* * * * *
Midway between these periods of very early and very late Newbern therewas once a shining summer morning on which the Cowan twins, being thennine years old, set out from the Penniman home to pick wildblackberries along certain wooded lanes that environed the town. Theywere bare-footed, wearing knee pants buttoned to calico waists, thesebeing patterned with small horseshoes which the twins had been told bytheir father would bring them good luck. They wore cloth caps, andcarried tin pails for their berries. These would be sold to thePennimans at an agreed price of five cents a quart, and it was Winona'shope that the money thus earned on a beautiful Saturday morning would onSunday be given to the visiting missionary lately returned from China.Winona had her doubts, however, chiefly of Wilbur Cowan's keenness forproselyting, on his own income, in foreign lands. Too often with moneyin hand, he had yielded to the grosser tyranny of the senses.
The twins ran races in the soft dust of the highway until they reachedthe first outlying berry patch. Here they became absorbed in their work.They were finding well-laden bushes along the fence of what to-day isknown as the old graveyard.
Newbern now has a sophisticated new cemetery, with carved marble andtall shafts of polished granite, trimmed shrubs, and garnished mounds,contrasting--as the newer town to the old--with the dingy inclosurewhere had very simply been inhumed the dead of that simpler day. In thenew cemetery blackberry bushes would not be permitted. Along the olderplot they flourished. The place itself is over-grown with rank grasses,with ivy run wild, with untended shrubs, often hiding the memorials,which are mostly of brown sandstone or gray slate. It lies in deepshadow under cypress and willow. It is very still under the gloom of itscareless growths--a place not reassuring to the imaginative.
The bottoms of the tin pails had been covered with berries found outsidethe board fence, and now a hunt for other laden bushes led the twins toa trove of ripened fruit partly outside and partly inside that plotwhere those of old Newbern had been chested and laid unto their fathers.There was, of course, no question as to the ownership of that fruit outhere. It was any one's. There followed debate on a possible right tothat which grew abundantly beyond the fence. By some strange but notunprecedented twisting of the mature mind of authority, might it notbelong to those inside, or to those who had put them there? Further,would Mrs. Penniman care to make pies of blackberries--even the largestand ripest yet found--that had grown in a graveyard?
"They taste just the same," announced the Wilbur twin, having, after acautious survey, furtively reached through two boards of the fence toretrieve a choice cluster.
"I guess nobody would want 'em that owns 'em," conceded Wilbur.
"Well, you climb over first."
"We better both go together at the same time."
"No, one of us better try it first and see; then, if it's all right,I'll climb over, too."
"Aw, I know a better patch up over West Hill in the Whipple woods."
"What you afraid of? Nobody would care about a few old blackberries."
"I ain't afraid."
"You act like it, I must say. If you wasn't afraid you'd climb thatfence pretty quick, wouldn't you? Looky, the big ones!"
The Wilbur twin reflected on this. It sounded plausible. If he wasn'tafraid, of course he would climb that fence pretty quick. It stood toreason. It did not occur to him that any one else was afraid. He decidedthat neither was he.
"Well, I'm afraid of things that ain't true that scare you in the dark,"he admitted, "but I ain't afraid like that now. Not one bit!"
"Well, I dare you to go."
"Well, of course I'll go. I was just resting a minute. I got to rest alittle, haven't I?"
"Well, I guess you're rested. I guess you can climb a plain and simplefence, can't you? You can rest over there, can't you--just as well aswhat you can rest here?"
The resting one looked up and down the lane, then peer
ed forward intothe shadowy tangle of green things with its rows of headstones. Then,inhaling deeply, he clambered to the top of the fence and leaped to theground beyond.
"Gee, gosh!" he cried, for he had landed on a trailing branch ofblackberry vine.
He sat down and extracted a thorn from the leathery sole of his barefoot. The prick of the thorn had cleaned his mind of any merely fancifulfears. A surpassing lot of berries was there for the bold to take. Hisbrother stared not too boldly through the fence at the pioneer.
"Go on and try picking some," he urged in the subdued tones of extremecaution.
The other calmly set to work. The watcher awaited some mysteriouspunishment for this desecration. Presently, nothing having happened, heglowed with a boldness of his own and mounted to the top of the fence,where he again waited. He whistled, affecting to be at ease, but with afoot on the safe side of the fence. The busy worker inside paid him noattention. Presently Merle yawned.
"Well, I guess I'll come in there myself and pick a few berries," hesaid very loudly.
He was giving fair notice to any malign power that might be waiting toblast him. After a fitting interval, he joined his brother and fell towork.
"Well, I must say!" he chattered. "Who's afraid to come into a graveyardwhen they can get berries like this? We can fill the pails, and that'sthirty cents right here."
The fruit fell swiftly. The Wilbur twin worked in silence. But Merleappeared rather to like the sound of a human voice. He was aimlesslyloquacious. His nerves were not entirely tranquil.
"They're growing right over this old one," announced Wilbur presently.Merle glanced up to see him despoiling a bush that embowered one of thebrown headstones and an all but obliterated mound.
"You better be careful," he warned.
"I guess I'm careful enough for this old one," retorted the boldertwin, and swept the trailing bush aside to scan the stone. It wasweather-worn and lichened, but the carving was still legible.
"It says, 'Here lies Jonas Whipple, aged eighty-seven,' and it says, 'hepassed to his reward April 23, 1828,' and here's his picture."
He pointed to the rounded top of the stone where was graven a circleinclosing primitive eyes, a nose, and mouth. From the bottom of thecircle on either side protruded wings.
Merle drew near to scan the device. He was able to divine that theintention of the artist had not been one of portraiture.
"That ain't either his picture," he said, heatedly. "That's a cupid!"
"Ho, gee, gosh! Ain't cupids got legs? Where's its legs?"
"Then it's an angel."
"Angels are longer. I know now--it's a goop. And here's some morereading."
He ran his fingers along the worn lettering, then brought his eyes closeand read--glibly in the beginning:
Behold this place as you pass by. As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, so you must be. Prepare for death, and follow me.
The reader's voice lost in fullness and certainty as he neared the endof this strophe.
"Say, we better get right out of here," said Merle, stepping toward thefence. Even Wilbur was daunted by the blunt warning from beyond.
"Here's another," called Merle, pausing on his way toward the fence. Inhushed, fearful tones he declaimed:
Dear companion in your bloom, Behold me moldering in the tomb, For Death is a debt to Nature due, Which I have paid, and so must you.
"There, now, I must say!" called Merle. "We better hurry out!"
But the Wilbur twin lingered. Ripe berries still glistened about thestone of the departed Jonas Whipple.
"Aw, gee, gosh, they're just old ones!" he declared. "It says this onepassed to his reward in 1828, and we wasn't born then, so he couldn't bemeaning us, could he? We ain't passed to our reward yet, have we? Isimply ain't going to pay the least attention to it."
A bit nervously he fell again to picking the berries. The mere feel ofthem emboldened him.
"Gee, gosh! We ain't followed him yet, have we?"
"'As I am now, so you must be!'" quoted the other in warning.
"Well, my sakes, don't everyone in town know that? But it don't meanwe're going to be--be it--right off."
"You better come just the samey!"
But the worker was stubborn.
"Ho, I guess I ain't afraid of any old Whipple as old as what this oneis!"
"Well, anyway," called Merle, still in hushed tones, "I guess I gotenough berries from this place."
"Aw, come on!" urged the worker.
In a rush of bravado he now extemporized a chant of defiance:
Old Jonas Whipple Was an old cripple! Old Jonas Whipple Was an old cripple!
The Merle twin found this beyond endurance. He leaped for the fence andgained its top, looking back with a blanched face to see the offendersmitten. He wanted to go at once, but this might be worth waiting for.
Wilbur continued to pick berries. Again he chanted loudly, mocking thesolemnities of eternity:
Old Jonas Whipple Was an old cripple! Was an old--
The mockery died in his throat, and he froze to a statue of fear. Beyondthe headstone of Jonas Whipple, and toward the centre of the plot, aclump of syringa was plainly observed to sway with the movements of abeing unseen.
"I told you!" came the hoarse whisper of Merle, but he, too, was chainedby fright to the fence top.
They waited, breathless, in the presence of the king of terrors. Againthe bush swayed with a sinister motion. A deeper hush fell about them;the breeze died and song birds stilled their notes. A calamity wasimminent. Neither watcher now doubted that a mocked Jonas Whipple wouldterribly issue from the tangle of shrubbery.
The bushes were again agitated; then at the breaking, point of fear forthe Cowan twins the emergent figure proved to be not Jonas but atrifling and immature female descendant of his, who now sped rapidlytoward them across the intervening glade, nor were the low mounds sacredto her in her progress. Her short shirt of a plaid gingham flopped aboveher thin, bony legs as she ran, and she grasped a wide-brimmed straw hatin one hand.
* * * * *
It should be said that this girl appalled the twins hardly less thanwould an avenging apparition of the outraged Jonas Whipple. Beings of abaser extraction, they had looked upon Whipples only from afar and withawe. Upon this particular Whipple they had looked with especial awe.Other known members of the tribe were inhumanly old and gray andwithered, not creatures with whom the most daring fancy could picturethe Cowan twins sustaining any sane human relationship. But this one wasyoung and moderately understandable. Observed from across the room ofthe Methodist Sunday-school, she was undoubtedly human like them; butalways so befurbished with rare and shining garments, with glisteningsilks and costly velvets and laces, with bonnets of pink rosebuds andgloves of kid, that the thought of any secular relationship had beenpreposterous. Yet she was young, an animal of their own age, whose wayscould be comprehended.
She halted her mad flight when she discovered them, then turned tosurvey the way she had come. She was panting. The twins regarded herstonily, shaping defenses if she brought up anything regarding any onewho might have mocked Jonas Whipple.
When again she could breathe evenly, she said: "It was Cousin Julianadriving by was why I dashed in here. I think I have foiled her."
She was not now the creature of troubled elegance that Sabbaths hadrevealed her. The gingham dress was such as a daughter of the peoplemight have worn, and the straw hat, though beribboned, was notimpressive. She was a bony little girl, with quick, greenish eyes and ameagre pigtail of hair of the hue that will often cause a girl to becalled Carrots. Her thin, eager face was lavishly freckled; her nose wastrivial to the last extreme. Besides her hat, she carried and nownonchalantly drew refreshment from a stick of spirally striped candyinserted for half its length through the end of a lemon. The candy wasevidently of a porous texture, so that the juice of the fruit wouldreach the consumer's pursed lips charmi
ngly modified by its passagealong the length of the sweet. One needed but to approximate a vacuum atthe upper end of the candy, and the mighty and mysterious laws ofatmospheric pressure completed the benign process.
It should be said for the twins that they were not social climbers. Intheir instant infatuation for this novel device they quite lost thethrill that should have been theirs from the higher aspects of theencounter. They were not impressed at meeting a Whipple on terms ofseeming equality. They had eyes and desire solely for this delectablerefection. Again and again the owner enveloped the top of the candy withprehensile lips; deep cavities appeared in her profusely spangledcheeks. Her eyes would close in an ecstasy of concentration. The twinsstared, and at intervals were constrained to swallow.
"Gee, gosh!" muttered the Wilbur twin, helpless in the sight of sofierce a joy. His brother descended briskly from the fence.
"I bet that's good," he said, genially, and taking the half-filled pailfrom his brother's unresisting grasp he approached the newcomer. "Trysome of these nice ripe blackberries," he royally urged.
"Thanks a lot!" said the girl, and did so. But the hospitality remainedone-sided.
"I have to keep up my strength," she explained. "I have a long, hardjourney before me. I'm running away."
Blackberry juice now stained her chin, enriching a colour scheme alreadymade notable by dye from the candy.
"Running away!" echoed the twins. This, also, was sane.
"Where to?" demanded Wilbur.
"Far, far off to the great city with all its pitfalls."
"New York?" demanded Merle. "What's a pitfall?"
"The way Ben Blunt did when his cruel stepmother beat him because hewouldn't steal and bring it home."
"Ben Blunt?" questioned both twins.
"That's whom I am going to be. That's whom I am now--or just as soon asI change clothes with some unfortunate. It's in a book. 'Ben Blunt, theNewsboy; or, From Rags to Riches.' He run off because his cruelstepmother beat him black and blue, and he become a mere street urchin,though his father, Mr. Blunt, was a gentleman in good circumstances; andwhile he was a mere street urchin he sold papers and blacked boots, andhe was an honest, manly lad and become adopted by a kind, rich oldgentleman named Mr. Pettigrew, that he saved from a gang of rowdies thatboded him no good, and was taken to his palatial mansion and given akind home and a new suit of clothes and a good Christian education, andthat's how he got from rags to riches. And I'm going to be it; I'm goingto be a mere street urchin and do everything he did."
"Ho!" The Wilbur twin was brutal. "You're nothing but a girl!"
The runaway flashed him a hostile glance.
"Don't be silly! What difference does it make? Haven't I a cruelstepmother that is constantly making scenes if I do the least littlething, especially since Miss Murtree went home because her mother hastyphoid in Buffalo. You wait till I get the right clothes."
"Does she beat you something awful?" demanded the Merle twin unctuously.
The victim hesitated.
"Well, you might call it that."
"What kind of right clothes?" asked his brother.
"Boy's clothes; filthy rags of boy's clothes--like yours," sheconcluded. Her appraising glance rested on the garments of thequestioning twin. Both became conscious of their mean attire, andsquirmed uneasily.
"These are just everyday clothes," muttered the Wilbur twin.
"We have fine new Sunday suits at home," boasted Merle. "Too fine towear every day. If you saw those clothes once I guess you'd talkdifferent. Shoes and stockings, too."
The girl effaced his grandeur with a shrug.
"That's nothing--everyone has mere Sunday clothes."
"Is Miss Murtree that old lady that brings you to the Sunday-school?"demanded Wilbur.
"Yes; she's my governess, and had to go to her dying mother, and I hopeshe gets a cruel stepmother that will be harsh to her childish sports,like that Mrs. Blunt was. But she isn't old. It's her beard makes herlook so mature."
"Aw!" cried both twins, denoting incredulity.
"She has, too, a beard! A little moustache and some growing on herchin. When I first got 'Ben Blunt, or from Rags to Riches,' out of theSunday-school library I asked her how she made it grow, because I wantedone to grow on me, but she made a scene and never did tell me. I wish itwould come out on me that way." She ran questing fingers along her briefupper lip and round her pointed chin. "But prob'ly I ain't old enough."
"You're only a girl," declared the Wilbur twin, "and you won't ever havea beard, and you couldn't be Ben Blunt."
"Only a girl!" she flashed, momentarily stung into a defense of her sex."Huh! I guess I'd rather be a girl than a nasty little boy with hishands simply covered with warts."
The shamed hands of Wilbur Cowan sought the depths of his pockets, buthe came up from the blow.
"Yes, you'd rather be a girl!" he retorted, with ponderous irony. "It'sa good thing you wasn't born in China. Do you know what? If you'd beenborn in China, when they seen what it was they'd simply have chucked youinto the river to drown'd."
"The idea! They would not!"
"Ho! You're so smart! I guess you think you know more than thatmissionary that told us so at the meeting. I guess you think he wastelling lies. They'd have drownded you as soon as they seen it was agirl. But boys they keep."
"I don't listen to gossip," said the girl, loftily.
"And besides," continued the inquisitor, "if you think boys are such badones, what you trying to be one for, and be Ben Blunt and all likethat?"
"You're too young to understand if I told you," she replied with asnappish dignity.
The Merle twin was regretting these asperities. His eyes clungconstantly to the lemon and candy.
"She can be Ben Blunt if she wants to," he now declared in a voice ofauthority. "I bet she'll have a better moustache than that old MissMurphy's."
"Murtree," she corrected him, and spoke her thanks with a brighteningglance. "Here," she added, proffering her treasure, "take a good longsuck if you want to."
He did want to. His brother beheld him with anguished eyes. As Merledemonstrated the problem in hydraulics the girl studied him moreattentively, then gleamed with a sudden new radiance.
"Oh, I'll tell you what let's do!" she exclaimed. "We'll change clotheswith each other, and then I'll be Ben Blunt without waiting till I getto the great city. Cousin Juliana could pass me right by on the streetand never know me." She clapped her small brown hands. "Goody!" shefinished.
But the twins stiffened. The problem was not so simple.
"How do you mean--change clothes?" demanded Merle.
"Why, just change! I'll put on your clothes and look like a mere streeturchin right away."
"But what am I going to--"
"Put on my clothes, of course. I explained that."
"Be dressed like a girl?"
"Only till you get home; then you can put on your Sunday clothes."
"But they wouldn't be Sunday clothes if I had to wear 'em every day, andthen I wouldn't have any Sunday clothes."
"Stupid! You can buy new ones, can't you?"
"Well, I don't know."
"I'd give you a lot of money to buy some."
"Let's see it."
Surprisingly the girl stuck out a foot. Her ankle seemed badly swollen;she seemed even to reveal incipient elephantiasis.
"Money!" she announced. "Busted my bank and took it all. And I put it inmy stocking the way Miss Murtree did when she went to Buffalo to visither dying mother. But hers was bills, and mine is nickels and dimes andquarters and all like that--thousands of dollars' worth of 'em, andthey're kind of disagreeable. They make me limp--kind of. I'll give youa lot of it to buy some new clothes. Let's change quick." She turnedand backed up to the Merle twin. "Unbutton my waist," she commanded.
The Merle twin backed swiftly away. This was too summary a treatment ofa situation that still needed thought.
"Let's see your money," he demanded.
"Very well!" She
sat on the grassy low mound above her forebear,released the top of the long black stocking from the bite of a hiddengarter and lowered it to the bulky burden. "Give me your cap," she said,and into Merle's cap spurted a torrent of coins. When this had becomereduced to a trickle, and then to odd pieces that had worked down aboutthe heel, the cap held a splendid treasure. Both twins bent excitedlyabove it. Never had either beheld so vast a sum. It was beyondcomprehension. The Wilbur twin plunged a hand thrillingly into the heap.
"Gee, gosh!" he murmured from the sheer loveliness of it. Shiningsilver--thousands of dollars of it, the owner had declared.
"Now I guess you'll change," said the girl, observing the sensation shehad made.
The twins regarded each other eloquently. It seemed to be acknowledgedbetween them that anything namable would be done to obtain a share ofthis hoard. Still it was a monstrous infamy, this thing she wanted.Merle filtered coins through his fingers for the wondrous feel of them.
"Well, mebbe we better," he said at last.
"How much do we get?" demanded Wilbur, exalted but still sane.
"Oh, a lot!" said the girl, carelessly. Plainly she was not one tohaggle. "Here, I'll give you two double handfuls--see, like that," andshe measured the price into the other cap, not skimping. They weregenerous, heaping handfuls, and they reduced her horde by half. "Now!"she urged. "And hurry! I must be far by nightfall. I'll keep my shoesand stockings and not go barefoot till I reach the great city. But I'lltake your clothes and your cap. Unbutton my waist."
Again she backed up to Merle. He turned to Wilbur.
"I guess we better change with her for all that money. Get your pantsand waist off and I'll help button this thing on you."
It was characteristic of their relations that there was no thought ofMerle being the victim of this barter. The Wilbur twin did not suggestit, but he protested miserably.
"I don't want to wear a girl's clothes."
"Silly!" said the girl. "It's for your own good."
"You only put it on for a minute, and sneak home quick," reminded hisbrother, "and look at all the money we'll have! Here, show him again allthat money we'll have!"
And the girl did even so, holding up to him riches beyond the dreams ofavarice. There was bitterness in the eyes of the Wilbur twin even asthey gloated on the bribe. The ordeal would be fearful. He was to becomea thing--not a girl and still not a boy--a thing somehow shameful. Atlast the alternative came to him.
"You change with her," he said, brightening. "My pants got a tear hereon the side, and my waist ain't so clean as yours."
"Now don't begin that!" said his brother, firmly. "We don't want a lotof silly arguments about it, do we? Look at all the money we'll have!"
"Your clothes are the best," said the girl. "I must be filthy andragged. Oh, please hurry!" Then to Merle: "Do unbutton my waist. Startit at the top and I can finish."
Gingerly he undid the earliest buttons on that narrow back of checkedgingham, and swiftly the girl completed the process to her waist. Thenthe waist was off her meagre shoulders and she stepped from the hatedgarment. The Wilbur twin was aghast at her downright methods. He had afeeling that she should have retired for this change. How was he to knowthat an emergency had lifted her above prejudices sacred to the meanersouled? But now he raised a new objection, for beneath her gown the girlhad been still abundantly and intricately clad, girded, harnessed.
"I can't ever put on all those other things," he declared, indicatingthe elaborate underdressing.
"Very well, I'll keep 'em on under the pants and waist till I get to thegreat city," said the girl, obligingly. "But why don't you hurry?"
She tossed him the discarded dress. He was seized with fresh panic as hetook the thing.
"I don't like to," he said, sullenly.
"Look at all the money we'll have!" urged the brother.
"Here," said the girl, beguilingly, "when you've done it I'll give youtwo long sucks of my lemon candy."
She took the enticing combination from Merle and held it fair before hisyearning eyes; the last rite of a monstrous seduction was achieved. Thevictim wavered and was lost. He took the dress.
"Whistle if any one comes," he said, and withdrew behind the headstoneof the late Jonas Whipple. He--of the modest sex--would not disrobe inpublic. At least it was part modesty; in part the circumstance that hisvisible garments were precisely all he wore. He would not reveal to thischild of wealth that the Cowans had not the habit of multifariousunderwear. Over the headstone presently came the knee pants, the fadedcalico waist with bone buttons. The avid buyer seized and apparelledherself in them with a deft facility. The Merle twin was amazed that sheshould so soon look so much like a boy. From behind the headstone camethe now ambiguous and epicene figure of the Wilbur twin, contorted tohold together the back of his waist.
"I can't button it," he said in deepest gloom.
"Here!" said the girl.
"Not you!"
It seemed to him that this would somehow further degrade him. At leastanother male should fasten this infamous thing about him. When thebuttoning was done he demanded the promised candy and lemon. He gluttedhimself with the stimulant. He had sold his soul and was taking theprice. His wrists projected far from the gingham sleeves, and in truthhe looked little enough like a girl. The girl looked much more like aboy. The further price of his shame was paid in full.
"I'd better take charge of it," said Merle, and did so with an air oflarge benevolence. "I just don't know what all we'll spend it for," headded.
The Wilbur twin's look of anguish deepened.
"I got a pocket in this dress to hold my money," he suggested.
"You might lose it," objected Merle. "I better keep it for us."
The girl had transferred her remaining money to the pockets which, as aboy, she now possessed. Then she tried on the cap. But it proved to bethe cap of Merle.
"No; you must take Wilbur's cap," he said, "because you got hisclothes."
"And he can wear my hat," said the girl.
The Wilbur twin viciously affirmed that he would wear no girl's hat, yetwas presently persuaded that he would, at least when he sneaked home. Itwas agreed by all finally that this would render him fairly a girl inthe eyes of the world. But he would not yet wear it. He was beginning tohate this girl. He shot hostile glances at her as--with his cap on herhead, her hands deep in the money-laden pockets--she swaggered andswanked before them.
"I'm Ben Blunt--I'm Ben Blunt," she muttered, hoarsely, and swung hershoulders and brandished her thin legs to prove it.
He laughed with scorn.
"Yes, you are!" he gibed. "Look at your hair! I guess Ben Blunt didn'thave long girl's hair, did he--stringy old red hair?"
Her hands flew to her pigtail.
"My hair is not red," she told him. "It's just a decided blonde." Thenshe faltered, knowing full well that Ben Blunt's hair was not worn in abraid. "Of course I'm going to cut it off," she said. "Haven't you boysgot a knife?"
They had a knife. It was Wilbur's, but Merle quite naturally took itfrom him and assumed charge of the ensuing operation. Wilbur Cowan hadto stand by with no place to put his hands--a mere onlooker. Yet it washis practical mind that devised the method at last adopted, for theearly efforts of his brother to sever the braid evoked squeals of painfrom the patient. At Wilbur's suggestion she was backed up to the fenceand the braid brought against a board, where it could be severed strandby strand. It was not neatly done, but it seemed to suffice. When thecap was once more adjusted, rather far back on the shorn head, even thecynical Wilbur had to concede that the effect was not bad. The severedbraid, a bow of yellow ribbon at the end, now engaged the notice of itslate owner.
"The officers of the law might trace me by it," she said, "so we mustfoil them."
"Tie a stone to it and sink it in the river," urged Wilbur.
"Hide it in those bushes," suggested Merle.
But the girl was inspired by her surroundings.
"Bury it!" she ordered.
r /> The simple interment was performed. With the knife a shallow grave wasopened close to the stone whereon old Jonas Whipple taunted the livingthat they were but mortal, and in it they laid the pigtail to its lastrest, patting the earth above it and replacing the turf against possibleghouls.
Again the girl swaggered broadly before them, swinging her shoulders,flaunting her emancipated legs in a stride she considered masculine.Then she halted, hands in pockets, rocked easily upon heel and toe, andspat expertly between her teeth. For the first time she impressed theWilbur twin, extorting his reluctant admiration. He had never been ableto spit between his teeth. Still, there must be things she couldn't do.
"You got to smoke and chew and curse," he warned her.
"I won't, either! It says Ben Blunt was a sturdy lad of good habits.Besides, I could smoke if I wanted to. I already have. I smoked HarveyD.'s pipe."
"Who's Harvey D.?"
"My father. I smoked his pipe repeatedly."
"Repeatedly?"
"Well, I smoked it twice. That's repeatedly, ain't it? I'd have done itmore repeatedly, but Miss Murtree sneaked in and made a scene."
"Did you swallow the smoke through your nose?"
"I--I guess so. It tasted way down on my insides."
Plainly there was something to the girl after all. The Wilbur twin hereextracted from the dress pocket, to which he had transferred his fewbelongings, the half of something known to Newbern as a pennygrab. Itwas a slender roll of quite inferior dark tobacco, and the originalpurchaser had probably discarded it gladly. The present owner displayedit to the girl.
"I'll give you a part of this, and we'll light up."
"Well, I don't know. It says Ben Blunt was a sturdy lad of good----"
"I bet you never did smoke repeatedly!"
Her manhood was challenged.
"I'll show you!" she retorted, grim about the lips.
With his knife he cut the evil thing in fair halves. The girl receivedher portion with calmness, if not with gratitude, and lighted it fromthe match he gallantly held for her. And so they smoked. The Merle twinnever smoked for two famous Puritan reasons--it was wrong for boys tosmoke and it made him sick. He eyed the present saturnalia with strongdisapproval. The admiration of the Wilbur twin--now forgetting hisignominy--was frankly worded. Plainly she was no common girl.
"I bet you'll be all right in the big city," he said.
"Of course I will," said the girl.
She spat between her teeth with a fine artistry. In truth she wasspitting rather often, and had more than once seemed to strangle, butshe held her weed jauntily between the first and second fingers andcontrived an air of relish for it.
"Anyway," she went on, "it'll be better than here where I suffered soterribly with everybody making the vilest scenes about any little thingthat happened. After they find it's too late they'll begin to wishthey'd acted kinder. But I won't ever come back, not if they beg me towith tears streaming down their faces, after the vile way they acted;saying maybe I could have a baby brother after Harvey D. got thatstepmother, but nothing was ever done about it, and just because I triedto hide Mrs. Wadley's baby that comes to wash, and then because I triedto get that gypsy woman's baby, because everyone knows they're alwaysstealing other people's babies, and she made a vile scene, too, andeveryone tortured me beyond endurance."
This was interesting. It left the twins wishing to ask questions.
"Did that stepmother beat you good?" again demanded Merle.
"Well, not the way Ben Blunt's stepmother did, but she wanted to knowwhat I meant by it and all like that. Of course she's cruel. Don't youknow that all stepmothers are cruel? Did you ever read a story about onethat wasn't vile and cruel and often tried to leave the helplesschildren in the woods to be devoured by wolves? I should say not!"
"Where did you hide that Wadley baby?"
"Up in the storeroom in a nice big trunk, where I fixed a bed andeverything for it, while its mother was working down in the laundry, andI thought they'd look a while and give it up, but this Mrs. Wadley iskind of simple-minded or something. She took on so I had to say maybesomebody had put it in this trunk where it could have a nice time. Andthis stepmother taking on almost as bad."
"Did you nearly get a gypsy woman's baby?"
"Nearly. They're camped in the woods up back of our place, and I wentround to see their wagons, and the man had some fighting roosters thatwould fight anybody else's roosters, and they had horses to race, andthe gypsy woman would tell the future lives of anybody and what wasgoing to happen to them, and so I saw this lovely, lovely baby asleepon a blanket under some bushes, and probably they had stole it from somegood family, so while they was busy I picked it up and run."
"Did they chase you?"
Wilbur Cowan was by now almost abject in his admiration of this fearlessspirit.
"Not at first; but when I got up to our fence I heard some of 'emyelling like very fiends, and they came after me through the woods, butI got inside our yard, and the baby woke up and yelled like a veryfiend, and Nathan Marwick came running out of our barn and says: 'Whatin time is all this?' And someone told folks in the house and out comesHarvey D.'s stepmother that he got married to, and Grandpa Gideon andCousin Juliana that happened to be there, and all the gypsies rushed upthe hill and everyone made the vilest scene and I had to give back thislovely baby to the gypsy woman that claimed it. You'd think it was theonly baby in the wide world, the way she made a scene, and not a singleone would listen to reason when I tried to explain. They acted simplycrazy, that's all."
"Gee, gosh!" muttered the Wilbur twin. This was indeed a splendid anddesperate character, and he paid her the tribute of honest envy. Hewished he might have a cruel stepmother of his own, and so perhaps beraised to this eminence of infamy. "I bet they did something with you!"he said.
The girl waved it aside with a gesture of repugnance, as if some thingswere too loathsome for telling. He perceived that she had, like so manyraconteurs, allowed her cigar to go out.
"Here's a match," he said, and courteously cupped his hands about itsflame. The pennygrab seemed to have become incombustible, and the matchdied futilely. "That's my last match," he said.
"Maybe I better keep this till I get to the great city."
But he would not have it so.
"You can light it from mine," and he brought the ends of the two pennygrabs together.
"First thing you know you'll be dizzy," warned the moralist, Merle.
"Ho, I will not!"
She laughed in scorn, and valiantly puffed on the noisome thing. Thusstood Ben Blunt and the Wilbur twin, their faces together about thisbusiness of lighting up; and thus stood the absorbed Merle, the moralperfectionist, earnestly hoping his words of warning would presentlybecome justified. It did not seem right to him that others should smokewhen it made him sick.
At last smoke issued from the contorted face of Ben Blunt, and some ofthis being swallowed, strangulation ensued. When the paroxysm ofcoughing was past the hero revealed running eyes, but the tears were oftriumph, as was the stoic smile that accompanied them.
And then, while the reformer Merle awaited the calamity he hadpredicted, while Wilbur surrendered anew to infatuation for thisintrepid soul that would dare any crime, while Ben Blunt rocked onspread feet, the glowing pennygrab cocked at a rakish angle, while, inshort, vice was crowned and virtue abased, there rang upon the still airthe other name of Ben Blunt in cold and fateful emphasis. The groupstiffened with terror. Again the name sounded along those quiet aislesof the happy dead. The voice was one of authority--cool, relentless,awful.
"Patricia Whipple!" said the voice.
The twins knew it for the voice of Miss Juliana Whipple, who hadremotely been a figure of terror to them even when voiceless. Julianawas thirty, tall, straight, with capable shoulders, above which rose hercapable face on a straight neck. She wore a gray skirt and a waist ofwhite, with a severely starched collar about her throat, and a black bowtie. Her straw hat was narrow of brim, banded
with a black ribbon. Hersteely eyes flashed from beneath the hat. Once before the twins hadencountered her and her voice, and the results were blasting, thoughthe occasion was happier. Indeed, the intention of Juliana had beenwholly amiable, for it was at the picnic of the Methodist Sunday-school.
She came upon the twins in a fair dell, where they watched otherchildren at a game, and she took very civil notice of them, saying, "Howdo you do, young gentlemen?" in deep, thrilling tones, and though theyhad been doing very well until that moment, neither of the twins hadrecovered strength to say so. To them she had been more formidable thana schoolteacher. Their throats had closed upon all utterance. Now as shefaced them, a dozen feet away, even though the words "Patricia Whipple"applied to but one of their number, the twins took the challenge tothemselves and quailed. They knew that deep and terrible voice menacedthemselves as well as the late Ben Blunt--for that mere street urchin,blown upon by the winds of desolation, had shrivelled and passed. In hisplace drooped a girl in absurd boy's clothes, her hair messily cut off,smoking something she plainly did not wish to smoke. The stricken lilyof vice drooped upon its stem.
One by one the three heads turned to regard the orator. How had shecontrived that noiseless approach? How had she found them at all in thisseclusion? The heads having turned to regard her, turned back and bowedin stony glares at the rich Whipple-nourished turf. They felt her cometoward them; her shadow from the high sun blended with theirs. And againthe voice, that fearsome organ on which she managed such dread effects:
"Patricia Whipple, what does this mean?"
She confronted them, a spare, grim figure, tall, authoritative, seemingto be old as Time itself. How were they to know that Juliana was stillyouthful, even attired youthfully, though by no means frivolously, orthat her heart was gentle? She might, indeed, have danced to them asColumbine, and her voice would still have struck them with terror. Shebrought her deepest tones to those simple words, "What does this mean?"All at once it seemed to them that something had been meant, somethingabsurd, monstrous, lawless, deserving a ghastly punishment.
The late Ben Blunt squirmed and bored a heel desperately into the turfabove a Whipple whose troubles had ceased in 1828. She made a roughnoise in her throat, but it was not informing. The Wilbur twin,forgetting his own plight, glanced warm encouragement to her.
"I guess she's got aright to run away," he declared, brazenly.
But in this burst of bravado he had taken too little account of hisattire. He recalled it now, for the frosty gray eyes of Juliana ranabout him and came to rest upon his own eyes. For the taut moment thathe braved her glance it unaccountably seemed to him that the forbiddingmouth of the woman twitched nervously into the beginning of a smile. Itwas a fleeting effect, but it did seem as if she had almost laughed,then caught herself. And there was a tremolo defect in the organ tonewith which she now again demanded in blistering politeness, "May I askwhat this means?"
The quick-thinking Merle twin had by now devised an exit from anycomplicity in whatever was meant. He saw his way out. He spoke upbrightly and with no shadow of guilt upon his fair young face.
"I told her it was wrong for the young to smoke; it stunts their growthand leads to evil companions. But she wouldn't listen to me."
There was a nice regret in his tone.
Miss Juliana ignored him.
"Patricia!" she said, terribly.
But the late Ben Blunt, after the first devastating shock, had beenrecovering vitality for this ordeal.
"I don't care!" she announced. "I'll run away if I want to!" And again,bitterly, "I don't care!"
"Run away!"
Juliana fairly bayed the words. She made running away seem to besomething nice people never, never did.
"I don't care!" repeated the fugitive, dully.
There was a finality about it that gave Juliana pause. She had expecteda crumpling, but the offender did not crumple. It seemed another tackmust be taken.
"Indeed?" she inquired, almost cooingly. "And may I ask if this absurdyoung creature was to accompany you on your--your travels?" Sheindicated the gowned Wilbur, who would then have gone joyously to hisreward, even as had Jonas Whipple. His look of dumb suffering would havestayed a judge less conscientious. "I presume this is some young lady ofyour acquaintance--one of your little girl friends," she continued,though it was plain to all that she presumed nothing of the sort.
"He is not!" The look of dumb suffering had stoutened one heart to newcourage. "He's a very nice little boy, and he gave me these raggedclothes to run away in, and now he'll have to wear his Sunday clothes.And you know he's a boy as well as I do!"
"She made him take a lot of money for it," broke in the Merle twin. "Iwas afraid she wasn't doing right, but she wouldn't listen to me, so shegave him the money and I took charge of it for him."
He beamed virtuously at Miss Juliana, who now rewarded him with ahurried glance of approval. It seemed to Miss Juliana and to him that hehad been on the side of law and order, condemning and seeking todissuade the offenders from their vicious proceedings. He felt that hewas a very good little boy, indeed, and that the tall lady wasunderstanding it. He had been an innocent bystander.
Miss Juliana again eyed the skirted Wilbur, and the viewless wind of asmile's beginning blew across the lower half of her accusing face. Thenshe favoured the mere street urchin with a glance of extreme repugnance.
"I shall have to ask all of you to come with me," she said, terribly.
"Where to?" demanded the chief culprit.
"You know well enough."
This was all too true.
"Me?" demanded the upright Merle, as if there must have been somemistake. Surely no right-thinking person could implicate him in thisrowdy affair!
"You, if you please," said Miss Juliana, but she smiled beautifully uponhim. He felt himself definitely aligned with the forces of justice. Heall at once wanted to go. He would go as an assistant prosecutingattorney.
"Not--not me?" stammered the stricken Wilbur.
"By all means--you!" Miss Juliana sharpened her tone She added,mysteriously: "It would be good without you--good, but not perfect."
"Now I guess you'll learn how to behave yourself in future!" admonishedMerle, the preacher, and edged toward Miss Juliana as one withdrawingfrom contamination.
"Oh, not me!" pleaded the voice of Wilbur.
"I think you heard me," said Miss Juliana. "Come!"
She uttered "come" so that not mountains would have dared stay, muchless a frightened little boy in a girl's dress. In his proper garb therehad been instant and contemptuous flight. But the dress debased all hismanly instincts. He came crawling, as the worm. The recent Ben Bluntpulled a cap over a shorn head and advanced stoically before the group.
"One moment," said Miss Juliana. "We seem to be forgetting something."She indicated the hat of Patricia Whipple lying on the ground near wheresmouldered the two ends of the abandoned pennygrab. "I think you mightresume this, my dear, and restore the cap to its rightful owner." It wasbut a further play of her debased fancy. The mere street urchin was nowdecked in a girl's hat and a presumable girl wore an incongruous cap. "Iwill ask you two rare specimens to precede me," she said when the changewas made. They preceded her.
"I don't care!" This was more bravado from the urchin.
"Well, don't you care!" Juliana said it, soothingly.
"I will, too, care!" retorted the urchin, betraying her sex.
"Will she take us to the jail?" whispered the trembling Wilbur.
"Worse!" said the girl. "She'll take us home!" Side by side theythreaded an aisle between rows of the carefree dead, whom no malignantMiss Juliana could torture. Behind them marched their captor, Merlestepping blithely beside her.
"It's lovely weather for this time of year," they heard him say.