Late that afternoon the three older Whipples, on the piazza of the Whipple New Place, painfully discussed the scene of the previous evening. It was felt by two of them that some tragic event impended.
Sharon alone was cheerful. From time to time he admonished the other two to sit tight.
"He"ll tell you you ain"t any longer a father of his, or a grandfather, either, but sit tight!"
He had said this when Merle appeared before them as a car drew up to the door. There was an immediate sensation from which even Sharon was not immune. For Merle was garbed in corduroy, and the bagging trousers were stuffed into the tops of heavy, high-laced boots. The coat was belted but loose fitting. The exposed shirt was of brown flannel, and the gray felt hat was low-crowned and broad of brim. The hat was firmly set on the wearer"s head, and about his neck was a wreath of colour--a knotted handkerchief of flaming scarlet.
The three men stared at him in silent stupefaction. He seemed about to pa.s.s them on his way to the waiting car, but then paused and confronted them, his head back. He laughed his bitter laugh.
"Does it seem strange to see me in the dress of a common workingman?" he demanded.
"Dress of a what?" demanded Sharon Whipple. The other ignored this.
"You have consigned me to the ranks," he continued, chiefly to Harvey D.
"I must work with my hands for the simple fare that my comrades are able to gain with their own toil. I must dress as one of them. It"s absurdly simple."
"My!" exclaimed Gideon.
Harvey D. was suffering profoundly, but all at once his eyes flashed with alarm.
"Haven"t those boots nails in them?" he suddenly demanded.
"I dare say they have."
"And you"ve been going across the hardwood floors?" demanded Harvey D.
again.
"This is too absurd!" said Merle, grimly.
Harvey D. hesitated, then smiled, his alarm vanishing.
"Of course I was absurd," he admitted, contritely. "I know you must have kept on the rugs."
"Oh, oh!" Again came the dry, bitter laugh of Merle.
"Say," broke in Sharon, "you want to take a good long look at the next workingman you see."
Merle swept him with a glance of scorn. He stepped into the waiting car.
"I could no longer brook this spirit of intolerance, but I"m taking nothing except the clothes I"m wearing," he reminded Harvey D. "I go to my comrades barehanded." He adjusted the knot of crimson at his white throat. "But they will not be barehanded long, remember that!"
Nathan Marwick started the car along the driveway. Merle was seen to order a halt.
"Of course, for a time, at least, I shall keep the New York apartment.
My address will be the same."
The car went on.
"Did that father know his own flesh and blood--I ask you?" demanded Sharon.
"Dear me, dear me!" sighed Harvey D.
"Poor young thing!" said Gideon.
Merle, on his way to the train, thought of his hat. He had not been able to feel confidence in that hat. There was a trimness about it, an a.s.sertive glamour, an air of success, that should not stamp one of the oppressed. He had gone to the purchase of it with vague notions that a labouring man, at least while actually labouring, wears a square cap of paper which he has made himself. So he was crowned in all cartoons. But, of course, this paper thing would not do for street wear, and the hat he now wore was the least wealth-suggesting he had been able to find. He now decided that a cap would be better. He seemed to remember that the toiling ma.s.ses wore a lot of caps.
CHAPTER XVIII
A week later one of the New York evening papers printed an inspiring view of Merle Dalton Whipple in what was said to be the rough garb of the workingman. He stanchly fronted the world in a corduroy suit and high-laced boots, a handkerchief knotted at his throat above a flannel shirt, and a somewhat proletarian cap set upon his well-posed head. The caption ran: "Young Millionaire Socialist Leaves Life of Luxury to be Simple Toiler."
A copy of this enterprising sheet, addressed in an unknown hand, arrived at the Whipple New Place, to further distress the bereft family. Only Sharon Whipple was not distressed. He remarked that the toiler was not so simple as some people might think, and he urged that an inquiry be set on foot to discover the precise nature of the toil now being engaged in by this recruit to the ranks of labour. He added that he himself would be glad to pay ninety dollars a month and board to any toiler worth his salt, because Juliana was now his only reliable helper, and it did seem as if she would never learn to run a tractor, she having no gift for machinery. If Merle Whipple was bent on toil, why should he not come to the Home Farm, where plenty of it could be had for the asking?
Both Harvey D. and Gideon rebuked him for this levity, reminding him that he did not take into account the extreme sensitiveness of Merle.
Sharon merely said: "Mebbe so, mebbe not."
There came another issue of the _New Dawn_. It was a live issue, and contained a piece by the a.s.sociate editor ent.i.tled, This Unpopular War, in which it was clearly shown that this war was unpopular. It was unpopular with every one the writer had questioned; no one wanted it, every one condemned it, even those actually engaged in it at Washington.
The marvel was that an army could continue to go forward with existing public sentiment as the _New Dawn_ revealed it. But a better day was said to be dawning. The time was at hand when an end would be put to organized exploitation and murder, which was all that the world had thus far been able to evolve in the way of a government.
In a foreword to the readers of the _New Dawn_, however, a faintly ominous note was sounded. It appeared that the interests had heinously conspired to suppress the magazine because of its loyalty to the ideals of free thought and free speech. In short, its life was menaced. Support was withdrawn by those who had suddenly perceived that the _New Dawn_ meant the death of privilege; that "this flowering of mature and seasoned personalities" threatened the supremacy of the old order of industrial slavery. The mature and seasoned personalities had sounded the prelude to the revolution which "here bloodily, there peaceably, and beginning with Russia, would sweep the earth." Capital, affrighted, had drawn back. It was therefore now necessary that the readers of the _New Dawn_ bear their own burden. If they would send in money in such sums as they could spare--and it was felt that these would flow in abundantly upon a hint--the magazine would continue and the revolution be a matter of days. It was better, after all, that the cause should no longer look to capital for favours. Contributors were to sign on the dotted line.
There were no more _New Dawns_. The forces of privilege had momentarily prevailed, or the proletariat had been insufficiently roused to its plight. The _New Dawn_ stopped, and in consequence the war went on. For a time, at least, America must continue in that spiritual darkness which the _New Dawn_ had sought to illumine.
Later it became known in Newbern that the staff of the _New Dawn_ would now deliver its message by word of mouth. Specifically, Merle Whipple was said to be addressing throngs of despairing toilers not only in New York, but in places as remote as Chicago. Sharon Whipple now called him a crimson rambler.
Meanwhile, news of the other Cowan twin trickled into Newbern through letters from Winona Penniman, a nurse with the forces overseas. During her months of training in New York the epistolary style of Winona had maintained its old leisurely elegance, but early in the year of 1918 it suffered severely under the strain of active service and became blunt to the point of crudeness. The morale of her nice phrases had been shattered seemingly beyond restoration.
"D--n this war!" began one letter to her mother. "We had influenza aboard coming over and three nurses died and were buried at sea. Also, one of our convoy foundered in a storm; I saw men clinging to the wreck as she went down.
"Can it be that I once lived in that funny little town where they make a fuss about dead people--flowers and a casket and a clergyman and careful burial? With us it"s something to get out of the way at once. And life has always been this, and I never knew it, even if we did take the papers at home. Ha, ha! Yes, I can laugh, even in the face of it. "Life is real, life is earnest"--how that line comes back to me with new force!"
A succeeding letter from a base hospital somewhere in France spelled in full certain words that had never before polluted Winona"s pen. Brazenly she abandoned the seemly reticence of dashes.
"d.a.m.n all the war!" she wrote; and again: "War is surely more h.e.l.lish than h.e.l.l could be!"
"Mercy! Can the child be using such words in actual talk?", demanded Mrs. Penniman of the judge, to whom she read the letter.
"More"n likely," declared the judge. "War makes "em forget their home training. Wouldn"t surprise me if she went from bad to worse. It"s just a life of profligacy she"s leadin"--you can"t tell me."
"Nonsense!" snapped the mother.
""And whom do you think I had a nice little visit with two days ago? He was on his way up to the front again, and it was our Wilbur. He"s been in hot fighting three times already, but so far unscathed. But oh, how old he looks, and so severe and grim and muddy! He says he is the worst-scared man in the whole Army, bar none. He thought at first he would get over his fright, but each time he goes in he hates worse and worse to be shot at, and will positively never come to like it. He says the only way he can get over being frightened is to go on until he becomes very, very angry, and then he can forget it for a time. You can tell by his face that it would be easy to anger him.