There ensued further profitable education for the young mechanic from the remarkable case of Sharon Whipple's first motor car. Sharon, the summer before, after stoutly affirming for two years that he would never have one of the noisy things on the place, even though the Whipple New Place now boasted two--boasting likewise of their speed and convenience--and even though Gideon Whipple jestingly called him a fossilized barnacle on the ship of progress, had secretly bought a motor car and secretly for three days taken instructions in its running from the city salesman who delivered it. His intention was to become daringly expert in its handling and flash upon the view of the discomfited Gideon, who had not yet driven a car. He would wheel carelessly up the drive to the Whipple New Place in apparently contemptuous mastery of the thing, and he would specifically deny ever having received any driving lessons whatever, thus by falsehood overwhelming his brother with confusion.

In the stable, therefore, one afternoon he had taken his place at the wheel. Affecting a jovial ease of mind, he commanded the company of his stableman, Elihu t.i.tus, on the seat beside him. He wished a little to show off to Elihu, but he wished even more to be not alone if something happened. With set jaws and a tight grip of the wheel he had backed from the stable, and was rendered nervous in the very beginning by the apparent mad resolve of the car to continue backing long after it was wished not to. Elihu t.i.tus was also rendered nervous, and was safely on the ground before the car yielded to the invincible ma.s.s of a boxwood hedge that had been forty years in growing. Sharon pointed his eyebrows.

"It makes you feel like a helpless fool," he confided to his hireling.

"She's all right on this side," said Elihu t.i.tus, cannily peering at the nether mechanism in pretense that he had left his seat to do just that.

The next start was happier in results. Down the broad driveway Sharon had piloted the monster, and through the wide gate, though in a sudden shuddering wonder if it were really wide enough for his mount; then he had driven acceptably if jerkily along back streets for an exciting hour. It wasn't so bad, except once when he met a load of hay and emerged with frayed nerves from the ordeal of pa.s.sing it; and he had been compelled to drive a long way until he could find s.p.a.ce in which to turn round. The smarty that had sold the thing to him had turned in a narrow road, but not again that day would Sharon employ the whimsically treacherous gear of the retrograde.

He came at last to a stretch of common that permitted a wide circle, and took this without mishap. A block farther along he had picked up the Cowan boy. He was not above prizing the admiration of this child for his mechanical genius. Wilbur exclaimed his delight at the car and lolled gingerly upon its luxurious back seat. He was taken full into the grounds of the Whipple Old Place, because Sharon had suddenly conceived that he could not start the car again if he stopped it to let down his guest. The car entered the wide gateway, which again seemed dangerously narrow to its driver, and purred on up the gravelled drive. When half the distance to the haven of the stable had been covered it betrayed symptoms of some obscure distress, coughing poignantly. Sharon pretended not to notice this. A dozen yards beyond it coughed again, feebly, plaintively, then it expired. There could be no doubt of its utter extinction. All was over. The end had come suddenly, almost painlessly.

They got out and blankly eyed the lifeless hulk. After a moment of this, which was fruitless, Sharon spoke his mind concerning the car. For all the trepidation it had caused him, the doubts and fears and panics, he took his revenge in words of biting acidity--and he was through with the thing.

"Let's get it out of sight," he said at last, and the three of them pushed it on along the drive to the shelter of the stable.

Elihu t.i.tus then breathed a long sigh and went silently to curry a horse in a neighbouring box stall. He knew when to talk and when not to. But Wilbur Cowan, wishing motor cars were in build more like linotypes, fearlessly opened the hood.

"My shining stars!" murmured Sharon at this his first view of his car's more intimate devices. "She's got innards like a human, ain't she?" He instantly beheld a vision of the man in the front of the almanac whose envelope is neatly drawn back to reveal his complicated structure in behalf of the zodiacal symbols. "It's downright gruesome," he added. But his guest was viewing the neat complexities of metal with real pleasure and with what seemed to the car's owner a practiced and knowing eye.

"Understand 'em?" demanded Sharon.

The boy hesitated. What he wished more than anything was freedom to take the thing apart, all that charming a.s.semblage of still warm metal and pipes and wires. He wanted to know what was inside of things, what made them go, and--to be sure--what had made them stop.

"Well, I could if I had a chance," he said at last.

"You got it," said Sharon. "Spend all your born days on the old cadaver if you're so minded." Already to Sharon it was an old car. He turned away from the ghastly sight, but stopped for a final warning: "But don't you ever tell anybody. I ain't wanting this to get out on me."

"No, sir," said Wilbur.

"Maybe we ought to----" began Sharon, but broke off his speech with a hearty cough. He was embarra.s.sed, because he had been on the point of suggesting that they call Doc Mumford. Doc Mumford was the veterinary.

The old man withdrew. Elihu t.i.tus appeared dimly in the background.

"Ain't she one gosh-awful crazy h.e.l.lion?" he called softly to Wilbur, and returned to the horse, whose mechanism was understandable.

The boy was left sole physician to the ailing monster. He drew a long breath of gloating and fell upon it. For three days he lived in grimed, greased, and oiled ecstasy, appeasing that sharp curiosity to know what was inside of things. The first day he took down the engine bit by bit.

The clean-swept floor about the dismantled hulk was a spreading turmoil of parts. Sharon, on cool afterthought, had conceived that his purchase might not have suffered beyond repair, but returning to survey the wreck, had thrown up his fat hands in a gesture of hopeless finality.

"That does settle it," he murmured. He pointed to the scattered members.

"How in time did you ever find all them fiddlements in that little s.p.a.ce?" Of course no one could ever put them back.

He picked up the book that had come with the car, a book falsely pretending to elucidate its mechanism, even to minor intelligences. The book was profuse in diagrams, and each diagram was profuse in letters of the alphabet, but these he found uninforming. For the maker of the car had unaccountably neglected to put A, B, or C on the parts themselves, which rendered the diagrams but maddening puzzles. He threw down the book, to watch the absorbed young mechanic who was frankly puzzled but still hopeful.

"It's an autopsy," said Sharon. He fled again, in the buggy drawn by the roan. "A fool and his money!" he called from the sagging seat.

The second day pa.s.sed with the parts still spread about the floor. Elihu t.i.tus told Sharon the boy was only playing with them. Sharon said he was glad they could furnish amus.e.m.e.nt, and mentally composed the beginning of what would be a letter of withering denunciation to the car's maker.

But the third day the parts were unaccountably rea.s.sembled. Elihu t.i.tus admitted that every one of them was put back, though he hinted they were probably by no means where they had been. But Sharon, coming again to the dissecting room at the day's end, was stricken with awe for the astounding genius that had put back all those parts. He felt a gleam of hope.

"She'd ought to go now," said the proud mechanic.

"You ought to know," said Sharon. "You been plumb into her gizzard."

"Only other thing I can think of," continued the mechanic, "mebbe she needs more of that gasoline stuff." He raised the cushion of the front seat and unscrewed a cap. "We might try that," he suggested, brightly.

"This tank looks like she's empty."

"Try it," said Sharon, and the incredulous Elihu t.i.tus was dispatched to the village for a five-gallon tin of the gasoline stuff. Elihu was incredulous, because in Newbern gasoline was until now something that women cleaned white gloves with. But when the tank was replenished the car came again to life, throbbing buoyantly.

"I'll be switched!" said Sharon.

A day later he was telling that his new car had broke down on him, but Buck Cowan had taken her all apart and found out the trouble in no time, and put her gizzard and lights and liver back as good as new. And Buck Cowan himself came to feel quite unjustifiably a creator's pride in the car. It was only his due that Sharon should let him operate it; perhaps natural that Sharon should prefer him to. Sharon himself was never to become an accomplished chauffeur. He couldn't learn to relax at the wheel.

So it was that the boy was tossed to public eminence on a day when Starling Tucker, accomplished horseman, descended into the vale of ignominy by means of the Mansion House's new motor bus. Starling had permitted the selling agents to instruct him briefly in the operation of the new bus, though with lordly condescension, for it was his conviction that a man who could tame wild horses and drive anything that wore hair could by no means fail to guide a bit of machinery that wouldn't r'ar and run even if a newspaper blew across its face. He mounted the seat, on his first essay alone, with the jauntiness becoming a master of vehicular propulsion. There may have been in his secret heart a bit of trepidation, now that the instructor was not there. In fact, one of the a.s.sembled villagers who closely observed his demeanour related afterward that Star's face was froze and that he had hooked onto the wheel like he was choking it to death. But the shining structure had glided off toward the depot, its driver's head rigid, his glance strained upon the road's centre. As it moved away Wilbur Cowan leaped to the rear steps and was carried with it. He had almost asked Starling Tucker for the privilege of a seat beside him, but the occasion was really too great.

Five blocks down Geneseo Street Starling had turned out to permit the pa.s.sing of Trimble Cushman's loaded dray--and he had inexplicably, terribly, kept on turning out when there was no longer need for it.

Frozen with horror, helpless in the fell clutch of circ.u.mstance, he sat inert and beheld himself guide the new bus over the sidewalk and through the neat white picket fence of the Dodwell place. It demolished one entire panel of this, made deep progress over a stretch of soft lawn, and came at last--after threatening a lawless invasion of the sanct.i.ty of domicile--to a grinding stop in a circular bed of pansies that would never be the same again. There was commotion within the bus. Wild-eyed faces peered from the polished windows. A second later, in the speech of a bystander, "she was sweating pa.s.sengers at every pore!"

Then came a full-throated scream of terror from the menaced house, and there in the doorway, clad in a bed gown, but erect and defiant, was the person of long-bedridden Grandma Dodwell herself. She brandished her lace cap at Starling Tucker and threatened to have him in jail if there was any law left in the land. Excited citizens gathered to the scene, for the picket fence had not succ.u.mbed without protest, and the crash had carried well. Even more than at the plight of Starling, they marvelled at the miracle that had been wrought upon the aged sufferer--her that hadn't put foot to floor in twenty years. There were outcries of alarm and amazement, hasty suggestions, orders to Starling Tucker to do many things he was beyond doing; but above them all rose clear-toned, vigorous denunciation from the outraged owner of the late pansy bed, who now issued from the doorway, walked unsupported down the neat steps, and started with firm strides for the offender. Starling Tucker beheld her approach, and to him, as to others there a.s.sembled, it was as if the dead walked. He climbed swiftly down upon the opposite side of his juggernaut, pushed a silent way through the crowd, and strode rapidly back to town. Starling's walk had commonly been a loose-jointed swagger, his head up in challenge, as befitted a hero of manifold adventure with wild horses. He now walked head down with no swagger.

But the crowd ceased to regard him, for now a slight boyish figure--none other than that of Wilbur Cowan--leaped to the seat, performed swift motions, grasped the fateful wheel, and made the bus roar. The smell of burned gasoline affronted the pretty garden. Wheels revolved savagely among the bruised roots of innocent pansies. Grandma Dodwell screamed anew. Then slowly, implacably hesitant, ponderous but determined, the huge bus backed along the track it had so cruelly worn in the sward--out through the gap in the fair fence, over the side-walk and into the road, rocking perilously, but settling level at last. Thereupon the young hero had done something else with mysterious handles, and the bus glided swiftly on to the depot, making the twelve-two in ample time.

Great moments are vouchsafed only to those souls fortified to survive them. To one who had tamed the proud spirit of Sharon Whipple's h.e.l.lion it was but lightsome child's play to guide this honest and amiable new bus. To the Mansion he returned in triumph with a load of pa.s.sengers, driving with zest, and there receiving from villagers inflamed by tales of his prowess an ovation that embarra.s.sed him with its heartiness. He hastened to remove the refulgent edifice, steering it prudently to its station in the stable yard. Then he went to find the defeated Starling Tucker. That stricken veteran sat alone amid the ruins of his toppled empire in the little office, slumped and torpid before the cold, rusty stove. He refused to be comforted by his devotee. He said he would never touch one of them things again, not for no man's money. The Darwinian hypothesis allows for no petty tact in the process of evolution.

Starling Tucker was unfit to survive into the new age. Unable to adapt himself, he would see the Mansion's stable become a noisome garage, while he performed humble and gradually dwindling service to a few remaining horses.

Wilbur Cowan guided the Mansion's bus for two days. He longed for it as a life work, but school was on and he was not permitted to abandon this, even for a glorious life at the wheel. There came a youth in neat uniform to perform this service--described by Starling Tucker as a young squirt that wouldn't know one end of a hawse from the other. Only on Sat.u.r.days--on Sat.u.r.days openly and clandestinely on Sundays--was there present on the driver's seat a knowing amateur who could have sat there every day but for having unreasonably to learn about compound fractions and geography.

CHAPTER X

Now school was over for another summer and Trimble Cushman's dray could be driven at a good wage--by a boy overnight become a man. There were still carpers who would regard him as a menace to life and limb. Judge Penniman was among these. A large truck in sole charge of a boy--still in his teens, as the judge put it--was not conducive to public tranquillity. But this element was speedily silenced. The immature Wilbur drove the thing acceptably, though requiring help on the larger boxes of merchandise, and Trimble Cushman, still driving horses on his other truck, was proud of his employee. Moreover, the boy became in high repute for his knowledge of the inner mysteries of these new mechanisms.

New cars appeared in Newbern every day now, and many of them, developing ailments of a character more or less alarming to their purchasers, were brought to his distinguished notice with results almost uniformly gratifying. He was looked up to, consulted as a specialist, sent for to minister to distant roadside failures, called in the night, respected and rewarded.

It was a new Newbern through whose thoroughfares the new motor truck of Trimble Cushman was so expertly propelled. Farm horses still professed the utmost dismay at sight of vehicles drawn by invisible horses, and their owners often sought to block industrial progress by agitation for a law against these things, but progress was triumphant. The chamber of commerce recorded immense gains in population. New factories and mills had gone up beside the little river. New people were on the streets or living in their new houses. New merchants came to meet the new demand for goods.

The homy little town was putting on airs of a great city. There was already a Better Newbern club. The view down River Street from its junction with State, Masonic Hall on the left and the new five-story Whipple block on the right, as preserved on the picture postcards sold by the Cut-Rate Pharmacy, impressed all purchasers with the town's vitality. The _Advance_ appeared twice a week, outdoing its rival, the _Star_, by one issue; and Sam Pickering, ever in the van of progress, was busy with plans for making his journal a daily.

Newbern was coming on, even as boys were coming on from bare feet to shoes on week-days. Ever and again there were traffic jams on River Street, a weaving turmoil of farmers' wagons, buggies, delivery carts, about a noisy, fuming centre of motor vehicles. High in the centre would be the motor truck of Trimble Cushman, loaded with cases and nursed through the muddle by a cool, clear-eyed youth, who sat with delicate, sure hands on a potent wheel. Never did he kill or maim either citizen or child, to the secret chagrin of Judge Penniman. Traffic jams to him were a part of the day's work.

When he had performed for a little time this skilled labour for Trimble Cushman it was brought to him one day that he was old indeed. For he observed, delivering a box to Rapp Brothers, jewellery, that from the sidewalk before that establishment he was being courted by a small boy; a shy boy with bare feet and freckles who permanently exposed two front teeth, and who followed the truck to the next place of delivery. Here, when certain boxes had been left, he seated himself, as if absentmindedly, upon the remote rear of the truck and was borne to another stopping place. The truck's driver glanced back savagely at him, but not too savagely; then pretended to ignore him.

The newcomer for an hour hung to the truck leechlike, without winning further recognition. Then by insensible gradations, by standing on the truck bed as it moved, by edging forward toward the high seat, by silently helping with a weighty box, it seemed he had acquired the right to mount to the high seat of honour itself. He did this without spoken words, yet with an ingratiating manner. It was a manner that had been used, ages back, by the lordly driver of the present truck, when he had formed alliances with drivers of horse-drawn vehicles. He recognized it as such and turned to regard the courtier with feigned austerity.

"h.e.l.lo, kid!" he said, with permitting severity. But secretly he rejoiced. Now he was really old.

Winona viewed the latest avocation of her charge with little enthusiasm.