The Wrong Twin Part 35

So much for the war. But the French officer--a general now, perhaps with one arm off--came to Newbern to claim his bride. He had been one of the impetuous sort that simply would not take no for an answer. The wedding was in the Methodist church, and was a glittering public function. The groom was not only splendidly handsome in a French way, but wore a s.h.i.+ning uniform, and upon his breast sparkled a profusion of medals. A vast crowd outside the church waited to cheer the happy couple, and slinking at the rear of this was a drab Lyman Teaford--without medals, without uniform, dull, prosaic, enduring at this moment pangs of the keenest remorse for his hasty act of a year before. He, too, would never be the same man again.

In truth, the beginning Teaford menage lay under the most unfavourable portents. Things looked dark for it.

Yet despite the forebodings of Wilbur and Winona, it began to be suspected, even by them, that the war would wear itself out, as old Doctor Purdy said, by first intention. And in spite of affecting individual dramas they began to feel that it must wear itself out with no help from them. It seemed to have settled into a quarrel among foreign nations with which we could rightfully have no concern. Winona learned, too, that her picture of the nurse on a battlefield administering cordial to wounded combatants from the small keg at her waist was based upon an ancient and doubtless always fanciful print.

Wilbur, too, gathered from the newspapers that, though he might die upon a battlefield, there was little chance that a French general would be commissioned to repeat his last words to Mrs. Lyman Teaford of Newbern Center. He almost decided that he would not become a soldier. Some years before, it is true, he had been drawn to the life by a government poster, designed by one who must himself have been a capable dramatist.

"Join the Army and See the World," urged the large-lettered legend above the picture.

The latter revealed an entrancing tropical scene with graceful palms adorning the marge of a pinkly sun-kissed sea. At a table in the background two officers consulted with a private above an important-looking map, while another pleased-looking private stood at attention near by. At the left foreground a rather obsequious-looking old colonel seemed to be entreating a couple of spruce young privates to drop round for tea that afternoon and meet the ladies.

Had Wilbur happened upon this poster in conjunction with the resolve of Miss Pearl King to be sensible, it is possible his history might have been different. But its promise had faded from his memory ere his life was wrecked. He felt now merely that he ought to settle down to something. Even Sharon Whipple plainly told him so. He said it was all right to knock about from one thing to another while you were still in the gristle. Up to twenty a boy's years were kind of yeasty and uncertain, and if he was any way self-headed he ought to be left to run.

But after twenty he lost his pinfeathers and should begin to think about things.

So Wilbur began to think about things. He continued to do everything that old Porter Howgill was asked to do, to repair cars for the Mansion garage, and to be a s.h.i.+eld and buckler to Sam Pickering in time of need.

The _Advance_ office became freshly attractive at this time, because Sam had installed a wonderful new power press to print the paper daily; for the _Advance_, as Sam put it, could be found ever in the van of progress.

The new press had innermost secrets of structure that were presently best known to Wilbur Cowan. No smeared small boy was required to ink its forms and no surmounting bronze eagle was reported to scream for beer when the last paper was run off. Even Dave Cowan, drifting in from out of the nowhere--in shoes properly describable as only memories of shoes--said she was a snappy little machine, and applauded his son's easy mastery of it.

So the days of Wilbur were busy days, even if he had not settled far enough down to suit either Sam Pickering, Porter Howgill--who did everything, if asked--or the First-Cla.s.s Garage. And the blight put upon him by a creature as false as she was beautiful proved not to be enduring. He was able, indeed, to behold her without a tremor, save of sympathy for one compelled to endure the daily proximity of Lyman Teaford.

But the war prolonged itself as only he and Winona had felt it would, and presently it began to be hinted that a great nation, apparently unconcerned with its beginning, might eventually be compelled to a livelier interest in it. Herman Vielhaber was a publicly exposed barometer of this sentiment. At the beginning he beamed upon the world and predicted the Fatherland's speedy triumph over all the treacherous foes. When the triumph was unaccountably delayed he appeared mysterious, but not less confident. The Prussian system might involve delay, but Prussian might was none the less invincible. Herman would explain the Prussian system freely to all who cared to listen--and many did attentively--from high diplomacy to actual fighting. He left many of his hearers with a grateful relief that neutrality had been officially enjoined upon them.

Later Herman beamed less brightly as he recounted tales of German prowess. He came to exhibit a sort of indignant pity for the Fatherland, into whose way so many obstacles were being inopportunely thrown. He compared Germany to a wounded deer that ravenous dogs were seeking to bring down, but his predictions of her ultimate victory were not less confident. Minna Vielhaber wept back of the bar at Herman's affecting picture of the stricken deer with the arrow in her flank, and would be comforted only when he brought the war to a proper close.

It was at this time that Winona wrote in her journal: "General Sherman said that war is the bad place. He knew."

It was also at this time that a certain phrase from a high source briefly engaged the notice of Sharon Whipple.

"Guinea pigs," said he, "are also too proud to fight, but they ain't ever won the public respect on that account. They get treated accordingly."

It was after this that Sharon was heard ominously to wish that he were thirty or forty years younger. And it was after this that Winona became active as a promoter of bazaars for ravaged Belgium and a pacifist whose watchword was "Resist not evil!" She wrote again in her journal: "If only someone would reason calmly with them!" She presently became radiant with hope, for a whole boatload of earnest souls went over to reason calmly with the combatants.

But the light she had seen proved deceiving. The earnest souls went forward, but for some cause, never fully revealed to Winona, they had been unable to reason calmly with those whose mad behaviour they had meant to correct. It was said that they had been unable to reason calmly even among themselves. It was merely a mark of Winona's earnestness that she felt things might have gone differently had the personnel of this valiant emba.s.sy been enlarged to include herself. Meantime, war was becoming more and more the bad place, just as General Sherman had said.

She had little thought now for silk stockings or other abominations of the frivolous, for her own country seemed on the very verge of committing a frightful error.

Some time had elapsed since Wilbur Cowan definitely knew that he would never go to war because of the mother of Lyman Teaford's infant son. He began to believe, however, that he would relish a bit of fighting for its own sake. Winona reasoned with him as she would have reasoned with certain high personages on the other side of the water, and perhaps with as little success. He replied cryptically that he was an out-and-out phagocyte, and getting more so every time he read a newspaper. Winona winced at the term--it seemed to carry sinister implications. Where did the boy hear such words?

This one he had heard on a late Sunday afternoon when he sat, contrary to a munic.i.p.al ordinance of Newbern, in the back room of Herman Vielhaber, with certain officials sworn to uphold that ordinance, who drank beer and talked largely about what we should do; for it had then become shockingly apparent that the phrase about our being too proud to fight had been, in its essential meaning, misleading. Dave Cowan, citizen of the world and student of its structure, physical and social, had proved that war, however regrettable, was perhaps never to be avoided; that in any event one of the best means to avoid it was to be known for your fighting ways. Anyway, war was but an incident in human progress.

Dave's hair had thinned in the years of his wandering to see a man at Seattle or New Orleans, and he now wore spectacles, without which he could no longer have enlarged his comprehension of cosmic values, for his latest Library of Universal Knowledge was printed in very small type. Dave said that since the chemicals had got together to form life everything had lived on something else, and the best livers had always been the best killers. He did not pretend to justify the plan, but there it was; and it worked the same whether it was one microscopic organism preying on another or a bird devouring a beetle or Germany trying to swallow the world. Rapp, Senior, said that was all very well, but these pacifists would keep us out of war yet. Doctor Purdy, with whom he had finished a game of pinochle--Herman Vielhaber had lately been unable to keep his mind on the game--set down his beer stein in an authoritative manner, having exploded with rage even while he swallowed some of the last decent beer to come to Newbern Center. He wiped froth from his waistcoat.

"Pacifists!" he stormed. "Why don't they ever look into their own bodies? They couldn't live a day on non-resistance to evil. Every one of their bodies is thronged with fighting soldiers. Every pacifist is a living lie. Phagocytes, that's what they are--white corpuscles--and it's all they're there for. They believe in preparedness hard enough. See 'em march up to fight when there's an invasion! And how they do fight! These pacifists belie their own construction. They're built on a fight from the cradle and before that.

"I wish more of their own phagocytes would begin to preach non-resistance and try to teach great moral lessons to invading germs.

We wouldn't have to listen to so many of 'em. But phagocytes don't act that way. They keep in training. They don't say, like that poor old maunderer I read this morning, that there's no use preparing--that a million phagocytes will spring to arms overnight if their country's invaded. They keep in trim. They fight quick. If they didn't we wouldn't be here."

"These phagocytes--is infantry, yes?" demanded Herman Vielhaber. "I never hear 'em named before like that."

"Infantry, and all the other branches, in a healthy body--and our own body is healthy. Watch our phagocytes come forward now, just as those tiny white corpuscles rush through the blood to an invaded spot. You'll see 'em come quick. Herman, your country has licked Belgium and Serbia--you can rightly claim that much. But she'll never get another decision. Too many phagocytes."

Dave Cowan, who always listened attentively to Doctor Purdy for new words, was thus enabled to enlighten Winona about her own and other people's phagocytes; and Winona, overwhelmed by his ma.s.s of detail--for Dave had supplemented Purdy's lecture with fuller information from his encyclopedia--had sighed and said: "Oh, dear! We seem to be living over a volcano!"

This had caused Dave to become more volubly instructive.

"Of course! Didn't you know that? How thick do you suppose the crust of the earth is, anyway? All we humans are--we're plants that have grown out of the cooled crust of a floating volcano; plants that can walk and talk, but plants just the same. We float round the sun, which is only another big volcano that hasn't cooled yet--good thing for us it hasn't--and the sun and us are floating round some other volcano that no one has discovered yet because the circle is too big, and that one is probably circling round another one--and there you are. That's plain, isn't it?"

"Not very," said Winona.

"Well, I admit there's a catch in it I haven't figured out yet, but the facts are right, as far as I've gone. Anyway, here we are, and we got here by fighting, and we'll have to keep on fighting, one way or another, if we're to get any place else."

"I don't know anything about all that," said Winona; "but sometimes I almost think the Germans deserve a good beating."

This was extreme for Winona, the arch pacifist.

"You almost think so, eh? Well, that's a good specimen of almost thinking. Because the Germans don't deserve any such thing unless someone can give it to them. If the bird can swallow the worm the bird deserves the worm. The most of us merely almost think."

It was much later--an age later, it seemed to Winona--for her country, as she wrote in her journal, had crossed the Rubicon--that she went to attend a meeting of protest in a larger city than Newbern; a meeting of mothers and potential mothers who were persuaded that war was never excusable.

She had listened to much impa.s.sioned oratory, with a sickening surprise that it should leave her half-hearted in the cause of peace at any price; and she had gone to take her train for home, troubled with a monstrous indecision. Never before had she suffered an instant's bewilderment in detecting right from wrong.

As she waited she had observed on a siding a long, dingy train, from the windows of which looked the faces of boys. She was smitten with a quick curiosity. There were tall boys and short boys; and a few of them were plump, but mostly they were lean, with thin, browned faces, and they were all ominously uniformed. Their keen young faces crowded the open windows of the cars, and they thronged upon the platforms to make noisy purchases from younger boys who offered them pitiful confections from baskets and trays.

Winona stared at them with a sickened wonder. They were all so alive, so alert, so smiling, so eager to be on with the great adventure. In one of the cars a band of them roared a stirring chorus. It stirred Winona beyond the calm that should mark people of the better sort. She forgot that a gentleman should make no noise and that a lady is serene; forgot utterly. She waved a hand--timidly at first--to a cl.u.s.ter of young heads at a car window, and was a little dismayed when they waved heartily in return. She recovered and waved at another group--less timidly this time. Again the response was instant, and a malign power against which she strove in vain carried Winona to the train's side. Heads were thrust forth and greetings followed, some shy and low-toned, some with feigned man-of-the-world jauntiness.

Winona was no longer Winona. A freckled young vender with a basket halted beside her. Winona searched for her purse and emptied its h.o.a.rd into one gloved hand. Coins spilled from this and ran about the platform. Hands sprang from the window above her to point out their resting places, and half a dozen of the creatures issued from the car to recover them for her. Fl.u.s.tered, eager, pleasantly shocked at her own daring, Winona distributed gifts from the basket, seeing only the hands that came forth to receive them.

Chewing gum, candy, popcorn, figs--even cigarettes--and Winona the first vice-president and recording secretary of Newbern's anti-tobacco league! War was a.s.suredly what Sherman had so pithily described it, for she now sent the vender back to replenish his stock of cigarettes, and bought and bestowed them upon immature boys so long as her coin lasted.

Their laughter was noisy, their banter of one another and of Winona was continuous, and Winona laughed, even bantered. That she should banter strangers in a public place! She felt rowdy, but liked it.

There was a call from the front of the train, and the group about her sprang to the platform as the cars began to move, waving her gracious, almost condescending adieus, as happy people who go upon a wondrous journey will wave to poor stay-at-homes. Winona waved wildly now, being lost to all decorum; waved to the crowded platform and then to the cloud of heads at the window above her.

From this window a hand reached down to her--a lean, hard, brown hand--and the shy, smiling eyes of the boy who reached it sought hers in something like appeal. Winona clutched the hand and gripped it as she had never gripped a human hand before.

"Good-bye, sister!" said the boy, and Winona went a dozen steps with the train, still grasping the hand.

"Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye--all of you!" she called, and was holding the hand with both her own when the train gathered speed and took it from her grasp.

She stood then watching other windows thronged with young heads as the train bore them on; she still waved and was waved at. Faint strains of the resumed chorus drifted back to her. Her face was hurting with a set smile.

She stumbled back across the platform, avoiding other groups who had cheered the pa.s.sing train, and found sanctuary by a baggage truck loaded with crates of live chickens. Here she wept unnoticed, and wondered why she was weeping. Later, in her own train, she looked down and observed the white-ribboned badge which she had valiantly pinned above her heart that very morning. She had forgotten the badge--and those boys must have seen it. Savagely she tore it from its mooring, to the detriment of a new georgette waist, and dropped it from the open window.

That night she turned back in her journal to an early entry: "If only someone would reason calmly with them. Resist not evil!" She stared at this a long time, then she dipped a new pen in red ink and full across it she wrote "What rotten piffle!" That is, she nearly wrote those words. What she actually put down was "What r-tt-n piffle!"

To Wilbur Cowan, in recounting her fall from the serene heights of pacifism, she brazenly said: "Do you know--when that poor boy reached down to shake hands with me, if I could have got at him I just know I should have kissed him."

"Gee whiz!" said Wilbur in amazed tribute.

"I don't care!" persisted Winona. "That's the way I felt--he was such a nice boy. He looked like you, as if he'd come from a good home and had good habits, and I did want to kiss him, and I would have if I could have reached him--and I'm not going to tell a falsehood about it for any one, and I'm--I'm hostile."