CHAPTER XIII
On a certain morning in early September Wilbur Cowan idled on RiverStreet, awaiting a summons. The day was sunny and spacious, yet hardly,he thought, could it contain his new freedom. Despairing groups ofhalf-grown humans, still in slavery, hastened by him to their hatefultasks. He watched them pityingly, and when the dread bell rang, causingstragglers to bound forward in a saving burst of speed, he haltedleisurely 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 beenworth 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 againto pass a public school save with a sensation of shuddering relief. Hehad escaped into his future, and felt no concern about what it shouldoffer 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 thenight before been stricken with the wanderlust, deciding at five-thirtyto take the six-fifty-eight for other fields of endeavour, and WilburCowan had graciously consented to bridge a possible gap.
He strolled into the dusty, disordered office and eased the worry fromSam Pickering's furrowed brow by attacking the linotype in spiritedfashion. That week he ran off the two editions of the paper. A spottedsmall boy sat across the press bed from him to ink the forms. Heconfided impressively to this boy that when the last paper was printedthe bronze eagle would flap its wings three times and scream as asignal for beer to be brought from Vielhaber's. The boy widened eyes ofutter belief upon him, and Wilbur Cowan once more felt all his years.But he was still lamentably indecisive about his future, and when a newprinter looked in upon the _Advance_ he stepped aside. Whatever he wasgoing to make of himself it wouldn't be someone who had to sit downindoors. He would be slave to no linotype until they were kept in theopen. He told Sam Pickering this in so many words.
The former Mansion's stable at length engaged his wandering fancy. Thestable's old swinging sign--a carefully painted fop with flowing sidewhiskers and yellow topcoat swiftly driving a spirited horse to a neatred-wheeled run-about--had been replaced by First-Class Garage. Of itsformer activities remained only three or four sedate horses to be drivenby conservatives; and Starling Tucker, who lived, but lived in the past,dazed and unbelieving--becoming vivacious only in speech, beginning, "Iremember when--"
These memories dealt with a remote time, when a hawse was a hawse, andyou couldn't have it put all over you by a lot of slick young smartiesthat could do a few things with a monkey wrench. Starling, when he thusdiscoursed, 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 profitableand 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 heseemed to lack steadiness of purpose. He would leave an ailing car tohelp out Sam Pickering, or he would leave for a round of golf withSharon Whipple, Sharon complaining that other people were nothing butdoggoned golf lawyers; and he would insist upon time off at threeo'clock each afternoon to give Spike Brennon his work-out. Spike hadlaboured to develop other talent in Newbern, but with ill success. Whenyou got 'em learned a little about the game they acted like a lot ofsissies over a broken nose or a couple of front teeth out or something.What he wanted was lads that would get the beak straightened, prettynear as good as new, or proper gold ones put in, and come back lookingfor more trouble. Wilbur Cowan alone he had found dependable.
Even so, the monotony of mere car repairing began to irk him. It wasthen he formed a pleasant alliance with old Porter Howgill, whose repairshop was across the street from the First-Class Garage. Porter'sswinging sign, weathered and ancient like that of the Mansion's stable,said in bold challenge, "Ask me! I do everything!" And once Porter haddone everything. Now there were a number of things he couldn't do, evenwhen asked. He was aging and knotted with rheumatism, and his failingeyes did not now suffice for many of the nicer jobs.
Wilbur Cowan came to him and, even as had Porter in the days when thesign was bright, did everything. It was a distinct relief to puzzle overa sewing machine after labouring with too easily diagnosed motortroubles, or to restore a bit of marquetry in a table, or play at a featof locksmithing. The First-Class Garage urged him to quit fiddling roundand become its foreman, but this glittering offer he refused. It was toomuch 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 hisright mind when the Whipples offered, in so many words, to set him up inany business he wanted to name, and pay all expenses, and he spurned 'emlike so much dirt beneath his heel. Acted like a crazy loon is what Isay, 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 utteredwith the air of owlish, head-snapping wisdom which marked so many of theinvalid's best things. She was concerned only with the failure of Wilburto select a seemly occupation. His working dress was again careless; hereeked with oil, and his hands--hard, knotty hands--seemed to bepermanently grimed. Even Lyman Teaford managed his thriving flour andfeed business, with a butter and eggs and farm produce department, inthe garments of a gentleman. True, he often worked with his coat off,but he removed his cuffs and carefully protected the sleeves of hiswhite shirt with calico oversleeves held in place by neat elastics. Onceaway 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 thePenniman parlour while Lyman and Winona were out rifling the ice box ofdelicacies, and enticed by the glitter of Lyman's flute had thrillinglytaken it into his hands to see what made it go, dropping it in hispanic, from the centre table to the floor, when he heard their returningsteps. Lyman had never felt the same toward Wilbur after that. Now, evenunder the blandishments of Winona, he was none too certain that he wouldmake a capable flour and feed merchant. Wilbur himself, to whom thepossibility was broached, proved all too certain that he would engage inno mercantile pursuit whatever; surely none in which he might beassociated ever so remotely with Lyman Teaford, whom for no reason hehad always viewed with profound dislike. This incident closed almostbefore it opened.
Winona again approached Sharon Whipple in Wilbur's behalf. But Sharonwas not enough depressed by the circumstance that Wilbur's work was hardon clothes, or that tasks were chosen at random and irregularly toiledat.
"Let him alone," advised Sharon. "Pretty soon he'll harden and settle.Besides, he's getting his education. He ain't educated yet."
"Education?" demanded Winona, incredulous. "But he's left school!"
"He'll get it out of school. Only kind ever I got. He's educatinghimself every day. Never mind his clothes. Right clothes are only rightwhen they fit your job. Give the boy a chance to find himself. He'sstill young, Buck is--still in the gristle."
Winona winced at "gristle." It seemed so physiological--almost coarse.
* * * * *
A year went by in which Wilbur was perforce left to his self-education,working for Porter Howgill or at the garage or for Sam Pickering as helisted. "I'm making good money," was his steady rejoinder to Winona'shectoring.
"As if money were everything," wrote Winona in her journal, where sheput the case against him.
Then when she had ceased to hope better things for him Wilbur Cowanseemed to waken. There were signs and symptoms Winona thus construed. Hebecame careful in his attire, bought splendid new garments. His lean,bold jaw was almost daily smoothed by the
razor of Don Paley, and Winonadiscovered a flask of perfume on his bureau in the little house. Thelabel was Heart of Flowers. It was perhaps a more florid essence thanWinona would have chosen, having a downright vigour of assertion thatleft one in no doubt of its presence; but it was infinitely superior tothe scent of machine oil or printer's ink which had far too oftenbetrayed the boy's vicinity.
Now, too, he wore his young years with a new seriousness; was morerestrained of speech, with intervals of apparently lofty meditation.Winona rejoiced at these evidences of an awakening soul. The boy mightafter all some day become one of the better sort. She felt sure of thiswhen he sought her of his own free will and awkwardly invited her tobeautify his nails. He who had aforetime submitted to the ordeal underprotest; who had sworn she should never again so torture him! Surely hewas striving at last to be someone people would care to meet.
Poor Winona did not dream that a great love had come into Wilbur Cowan'slife; a deep and abiding love that bathed all his world in colourfulradiance and moved him to those surface elegances for which all her ownpleading had been in vain. Not even when he asked her one night--whileshe worked with buffer and orange-wood stick--if she believed in love atfirst sight did she suspect the underlying dynamics, the trueinebriating factor of this reform. He put the query with elaborate anddeceiving casualness, having cleared a road to it with remarks upon acircumspect historical romance that Winona had read to him; and she hadmerely said that she supposed it often did happen that way, though itwere far better that true love come gently into one's life, based upon aprofound mutual respect and esteem which would endure through long yearsof wedded life.
Wilbur had questioned this, but so cautiously and quite impersonallythat Winona could not suspect his interest in the theme to be more thanacademic. She believed she had convinced him that love at first sight,so-called, is not the love one reads about in the better sort ofliterature. She was not alarmed--not even curious. In her very presencethe boy had trifled with his great secret and she had not known!
So continuously had Winona dwelt in the loftier realms of social andspiritual endeavour, it is doubtful if she knew that an organizationknown as the Friday Night Social Club was doing a lot to make lifebrighter for those of Newbern's citizens who were young and sportive andyet not precisely people of the better sort. In the older days of thetown, when Winona was twenty, there was but one social set. Now she wasthirty, and there were two sets. She knew the town had grown; onenowadays saw strange people that one did not know, even many one wouldnot care to know. If she had been told that the Friday Night Social Clubmet weekly in Knights of Pythias Hall to dance those sinister new dancesthat the city papers were so outspoken about she would have consideredit an affair of the underworld, about which the less said the letter.Had it been disclosed to her that Wilbur Cowan, under the chaperonage ofEdward--Spike--Brennon, 133 lbs., ringside, had become an addict ofthese affairs, a determined and efficient exponent of the weird newsteps--"a good thing for y'r footwork," Spike had said--she would haveconsidered he had plumbed the profoundest depths of social ignominy. Yetso it was. Each Friday night he danced. He liked it, and while hedisported himself from the lightest of social motives love came to him;the world was suddenly a place of fixed rainbows, and dancing--withher--no longer a gladsome capering, but a holy rite.
On a certain Friday evening unstarred by any portent she had burst uponhis yielding eyes. Instantly he could have told Winona more than shewould ever know about love at first sight. A creature of rounded beauty,peerlessly blonde, her mass of hair elaborately coifed and bound abouther pale brow with a fillet of sable velvet. He saw her first in thedance, sumptuously gowned, regal, yet blithe, yielding as might agoddess to the mortal embrace of Bill Bardin as they fox-trotted to theviol's surge. He was stricken dumb until the dance ended. Then hegripped an arm of Spike Brennon, who had stood by him against the wall,"looking 'em over," as Spike had put it.
"Look!" he urged in tones hushed to the wonder of her. Spike had looked.
"Gee!" breathed the stricken one mechanically. He would not have chosenthe word, but it formed a vent for his emotion.
"Bleached blonde," said Spike after a sharper scrutiny of the fair one,who now coquetted with a circle of gallants.
"Isn't she?" exclaimed the new lover, admiringly.
With so golden a result to dazzle him, was he to quarrel pettishly withthe way it had been wrought?
"Do you suppose I could be introduced to her?" demanded Wilbur, timidly.
This marked the depth of his passion. He was too good a dancer to talksuch nonsense ordinarily.
"Surest thing you know," said Spike. "Could you be introduced to her?In a split second! Come on!"
"But you don't know her yourself?" Wilbur hung back.
"Stop your kiddin'!"
Spike half dragged his fearful charge across the floor, not too subtlyshouldered a way between Bill Bardin and Terry Stamper, bowed gracefullyto the strange beauty, and said, "Hello, sister! Shake hands with myfriend, Kid Cowan."
"Pleased to meet you!" She smiled graciously upon Wilbur and extended arichly jewelled hand, which he timidly pressed. Then she turned to SpikeBrennon. "I know your name, all right," she declared. "You're thatMister Fresh we hear so much about--giving introductions to parties youain't met yourself."
Wilbur Cowan blushed for Spike's _faux pas_, looking to see him slinkoff abashed, but there were things he had yet to learn about his friend.
"Just for that," said Spike, "I'll take this dance with you." Andbrazenly he encircled her waist as the music came anew.
"It's hot to-night," said Wilbur very simply to Terry Stamper and BillBardin as they moved off the floor to an open window.
His dancing eyes followed Beauty in the dance, and he was at her sidewhen the music ceased. Until it came again he fanned by an open windowher flushed and lovely face. Her name was Pearl.
"I wish this night would last forever," he murmured to her.
"Tut, tut!" said Pearl in humorous dismay, "and me having to be atbusiness at seven A.M.!"
Only then did he learn that she was not a mere social butterfly, but oneof the proletariat; that, in truth, she waited on table at the Mansion.Instantly he constructed their future together. He would free her fromthat life of toil.
"You're too beautiful for work like that," he told her.
Pearl eyed him with sudden approval.
"You're all right, kid. I often said the same thing myself, but no one'sfell for it up to date."
They danced, and again they danced.
"You're the nicest boy in the bunch," murmured Pearl.
"I never saw any one so beautiful," said Wilbur.
Pearl smiled graciously. "I love the sound of your voice," she said.
She was wrested from him by Bill Bardin. When he would have retrievedher Terry Stamper had secured her notice. So through another dance hestood aloof against the wall, moody now. It might be only social finessein Pearl but she was showing to others the same pleased vivacity she hadshown to him. Could it be she did not yet understand? Had she possiblynot divined that they two were now forever apart from the trivial world?They danced again.
"Don't you feel as if we'd always known each other?" he demanded.
"Sure, kid!" breathed Pearl.
It was after still another dance--she had meantime floated in the armsof a mere mill foreman. This time he led her into the dusky hallway,where open windows brought the cool night to other low-voiced couples.He led her to the farthest window, where the shadow was deepest, andthey looked out-above the roof of Rapp Brothers, Jewellery-to a sky ofpale stars and a blond moon.
"Ain't it great?" said Pearl.
He stood close to her, trembling from the faintest contact with herloveliness. He wished to kiss her-he must kiss her. But he was afraid.Pearl was sympathetic. She divined his trouble, and in the deep shadowshe adroitly did it herself. Then she rebuked his boldness.
"Say, but you're the quick little worker, seems to me!"
For a moment he was incapable of speech, standing mute, her warm hand inhis.
"It's been a dream," he managed at last. "Just like a dream! Now youbelong to me, don't you?"
"Sure, if you want to put it that way," said Pearl "Come on! there's themusic again."
At the door she was taken from him by the audacious mill foreman.Wilbur was chilled. Pearl had instantly recovered her public, orballroom, manner. Could it be that she had not been rightly uplifted bythe greatness of their moment? Did she realize all it would mean tothem? But she was meltingly tender when at last they swayed in the waltzto "Home, Sweet Home." And it was he who bore her off under the witchingmoon to the side entrance of the Mansion. They lingered a moment in theprotecting shadows. Pearl was chatty--not sufficiently impressed, itseemed to him, with the sweet gravity of this crisis.
"We're engaged now," he reminded her. Pearl laughed lightly.
"Have it your own way, kid! Wha'd you say your name was?"
She kissed him again. Then he wandered off in the mystic night, far overa world reeling through golden moonshine, to reach his dark but glowinglittle room at an hour that would have disquieted Winona. It was thefollowing day that he cheered her by displaying a new attention to hisapparel, and it was before the ensuing Friday night dance that he hadsubmitted his hands to her for embellishment--talking casually of loveat first sight.
There followed for him a time of fearful delight, not unmarred by spellsof troubled wonder. Pearl was not exclusively enough his. She dancedwith other men; she chatted with them as with her peers. She seemed evento encourage their advances. He would have preferred that she foundthese repulsive, but she continued gay, even hard, under his chiding.
"Tut, tut! I been told I got an awfully feminine nature. A girl of mytype is bound to have gentleman friends," she protested.
He aged under this strain. He saw now that he must abandon his easy viewabout his future. He must, indeed, plan his life. He must choose hisvocation, follow it grimly, with one end in view. Pearl must become hisin the sight abandon his easy view about his future. He must, indeed,plan his life. He must choose his vocation, follow it grimly, with oneend in view. Pearl must become his in the sight of God andman--especially man--with the least delay. He delighted Sam Pickering bycontinuing steadily at the linotype for five consecutive weeks, whilebusiness piled up at the First-Class Garage and old Porter Howgill wasasked vainly to do everything.
Then on a fateful night Lyman Teaford assumed a new and disquietingvalue in his life. Lyman Teaford, who for a dozen years had gone withWinona Penniman faithfully if not spectacularly; Lyman Teaford,dignified and genteel, who belonged to Newbern's better set, had onenight appeared at an affair of the Friday Night Social Club. Perhapsbecause he had reached the perilous forties he had suddenly determinedto abandon the safe highway and seek adventure in miry bypaths. Perhapshe felt that he had austerely played the flute too long. At any rate, hecame and danced with the lower element of Newbern, not oftener withPearl than with others that first night. But he came again and dancedmuch oftener with Pearl. There was no quick, hot alarm in the breast ofWilbur Cowan. Lyman Teaford was an old man, chiefly notable, in Wilbur'sopinion, for the remarkable fluency of his Adam's apple while--with chinaloft--he played high notes on his silver flute.
Yet dimly at last he felt discomfort at Lyman's crude persistence withPearl. He danced with others now only when Pearl was firm in refusals.Wilbur to her jested with venomous sarcasm at the expense of Lyman.Women were difficult to understand, he thought. What could her motivebe?
The drama, Greek in its severity, culminated with a hideous, a sickeningvelocity. On a Monday morning, in but moderate torment at Pearl'sinconsistency, Wilbur Cowan sat at the linotype in the _Advance_ office,swiftly causing type metal to become communicative about the week'sdoings in Newbern. He hung a finished sheet of Sam Pickering's pencilledcopy on a hook, and casually surveyed the sheet beneath. It was a socialitem, he saw--the notice of a marriage. Then names amazingly leaped fromit to sear his defenseless eyes. Lyman Teaford--Miss Pearl King! Hegasped and looked about him. The familiar routine of the office wasunder way. In his little room beyond he could see Sam Pickeringscribbling other items. He constrained himself to read the monstrousslander before him.
"Lyman N. Teaford, one of our best-known business men, was last eveningunited in the bonds of holy wedlock to Miss Pearl King, for some monthsemployed at the Mansion House. The marriage service was performed by theReverend Mallett at the parsonage, and was attended by only a few chosenfriends. The happy pair left on the six-fifty-eight for a briefhoneymoon at Niagara Falls, and on their return will occupy the Latimermansion on North Oak Street, recently purchased by the groom in view ofhis approaching nuptials. A wide circle of friends wish them allhappiness."
Wilbur Cowan again surveyed the office, and again peered sharply in atSam Pickering. His first wild thought was that Sam had descended to apractical joke. If so it was a tasteless proceeding. But he must begame. It was surely a joke, and Sam and the others in the office wouldbe watching him for signs of anguish. His machine steadily clicked offthe item. He struck not one wrong letter. He hung the sheet of copy onits hook and waited for the explosion of crude humour. He felt that hisimpassive demeanour had foiled the mean intention. But no one regardedhim. Sam Pickering wrote on. Terry Stamper stolidly ran off cards on thejob press. They were all indifferent. Something told him it was not ajoke.
He finished the next sheet of copy. Then, when he was certain he had notbeen jested with, he rose from the torturing machine, put on his coat,and told Sam Pickering he had an engagement. Sam hoped it wouldn't keephim from work that afternoon.
Wilbur said "Possibly not," though he knew he would now loathe thelinotype forever.
"By the way"--he managed it jauntily, as Sam bent again over his pad ofyellow copy paper--"I see Lyme Teaford's name is going to be in printthis week."
Sam paused in his labour and chuckled.
"Yes, the old hard-shell is landed. That blonde hasn't been bringing himhis three meals a day all this time for nothing."
"She must have married him for his money," Wilbur heard himself sayingin cold, cynical tones. The illumining thought had just come. Thatexplained it.
"Sure," agreed Sam. "Why wouldn't she?"
* * * * *
Late that afternoon, in the humble gymnasium at the rear of PeglegMcCarron's, Spike Brennon emerged from a rally in which Wilbur Cowan haddisplayed unaccustomed spirit. Spike tenderly caressed his nose with aglove and tried to look down upon it. The swelling already showed to hisoblique gaze.
"Say, kid," he demanded, irritably, "what's the big idea? Is this murderor jest a friendly bout? You better behave or I'll stop pullin' mypunches."
It could not be explained to the aggrieved Spike that his opponent hadfor the moment convinced himself that he faced one of Newbern'sbest-known business men.
Later he contented himself with observing Lyman Teaford at NiagaraFalls. The fatuous groom stood heedlessly at the cataract's verge. Therewas a simple push, and the world was suddenly a better place to live in.As for his bereaved mate--he meditated her destruction, also, but thiswas too summary. It came to him that she had been a lovely and helplessvictim of circumstances. For he had stayed on with Spike through theevening, and in a dearth of custom Spike, back of the bar, had sung in awhining tenor, "For she's only a bird in a gilded cage----"
That was it. She had discarded him because he was penniless--had soldherself to be a rich man's toy. She would pay for it in bitter anguish.
"Only a bird in a gilded cage," sang Spike again. An encore had beenurged.
At noon the following day Winona Penniman, a copy of the _Advance_before her, sat at the Penniman luncheon table staring dully into a dishof cold rice pudding. She had read again and again the unbelievableitem. At length she snapped her head, as Spike Brennon would when nowand again a clean blow reached his jaw, pushed the untouched dessertfrom her with a gesture of repugnance, and went alo
ft to her own littleroom. Here she sat at her neat desk of bird's eye maple, opened herjournal, and across a blank page wrote in her fine, firm hand, "WhatLife Means to Me."
It had seemed to her that it meant much. She would fill many pages. Thename of Lyman Teaford would not there appear, yet his influence would becontinuously present. She was not stricken as had been another reader ofthat fateful bit of news. But she was startled, feeling herselfperilously cast afloat from old moorings. She began bravely and easily,with a choice literary flavour.
"My sensations may be more readily imagined than described."
This she found true. She could imagine them readily, but could not, intruth, describe them. She was shocked to discern that for the first timein her correct life there were distinctly imagined sensations which shecould not bring herself to word, even in a volume forever sacred to herown eyes. A long time she sat imagining. At last she wrote, but thewords seemed so petty.
All apparently that life meant to her was "How did she do it?"
She stared long at this. Then followed, as if the fruit of her furthermeditation: "There is a horrid bit of slang I hear from time totime--can it be that I need more pepper?"
After this she took from the bottom drawer of her bureau thatlong-forgotten gift from the facetious Dave Cowan. She held thestockings of tan silk before her, testing their fineness, theirsheerness. She was still meditating. She snapped her dark head, perkedit as might a puzzled wren.
"Certainly, more pepper!" she murmured.
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