THE BOY SCOUT
by
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
Jimmie dropped the valise, forced his crampedfingers into straight lines, and saluted. [Page 10]]
New YorkCharles Scribner's Sons1914Copyright, 1914, by Charles Scribner's SonsPublished May, 1914
THE BOY SCOUT
A rule of the Boy Scouts is every day to do some one a good turn. Notbecause the copy-books tell you it deserves another, but in spite ofthat pleasing possibility. If you are a true scout, until you haveperformed your act of kindness your day is dark. You are as unhappyas is the grown-up who has begun his day without shaving or readingthe New York _Sun_. But as soon as you have proved yourself you may,with a clear conscience, look the world in the face and untie theknot in your kerchief.
Jimmie Reeder untied the accusing knot in his scarf at just tenminutes past eight on a hot August morning after he had given onedime to his sister Sadie. With that she could either witness thefirst-run films at the Palace, or by dividing her fortune patronizetwo of the nickel shows on Lenox Avenue. The choice Jimmie left toher. He was setting out for the annual encampment of the Boy Scoutsat Hunter's Island, and in the excitement of that adventure even themovies ceased to thrill. But Sadie also could be unselfish. With aheroism of a camp-fire maiden she made a gesture which might havebeen interpreted to mean she was returning the money.
"I can't, Jimmie!" she gasped. "I can't take it off you. You saved it,and you ought to get the fun of it."
"I haven't saved it yet," said Jimmie. "I'm going to cut it out of therailroad fare. I'm going to get off at City Island instead of at PelhamManor and walk the difference. That's ten cents cheaper."
Sadie exclaimed with admiration:
"An' you carryin' that heavy grip!"
"Aw, that's nothin'," said the man of the family.
"Good-by, mother. So long, Sadie."
To ward off further expressions of gratitude he hurriedly advised Sadieto take in "The Curse of Cain" rather than "The Mohawks' Last Stand,"and fled down the front steps.
He wore his khaki uniform. On his shoulders was his knapsack, fromhis hands swung his suitcase and between his heavy stockings and his"shorts" his kneecaps, unkissed by the sun, as yet unscathed byblackberry vines, showed as white and fragile as the wrists of a girl.As he moved toward the "L" station at the corner, Sadie and his motherwaved to him; in the street, boys too small to be scouts hailed himenviously; even the policeman glancing over the newspapers on thenews-stand nodded approval.
"You a Scout, Jimmie?" he asked.
"No," retorted Jimmie, for was not he also in uniform? "I'm Santa Clausout filling Christmas stockings."
The patrolman also possessed a ready wit.
"Then get yourself a pair," he advised. "If a dog was to see yourlegs----"
Jimmie escaped the insult by fleeing up the steps of the Elevated.
* * * * *
An hour later, with his valise in one hand and staff in the other, hewas tramping up the Boston Post Road and breathing heavily. The day wascruelly hot. Before his eyes, over an interminable stretch of asphalt,the heat waves danced and flickered. Already the knapsack on hisshoulders pressed upon him like an Old Man of the Sea; the linen in thevalise had turned to pig iron, his pipe-stem legs were wabbling, hiseyes smarted with salt sweat, and the fingers supporting the valisebelonged to some other boy, and were giving that boy much pain. But asthe motor-cars flashed past with raucous warnings, or, that those whorode might better see the boy with bare knees, passed at "half speed,"Jimmie stiffened his shoulders and stepped jauntily forward. Even whenthe joy-riders mocked with "Oh, you Scout!" he smiled at them. He waswilling to admit to those who rode that the laugh was on the one whowalked. And he regretted--oh, so bitterly--having left the train. He wasindignant that for his "one good turn a day" he had not selected oneless strenuous. That, for instance, he had not assisted a frightened oldlady through the traffic. To refuse the dime she might have offered, asall true scouts refuse all tips, would have been easier than to earn itby walking five miles, with the sun at ninety-nine degrees, and carryingexcess baggage. Twenty times James shifted the valise to the other hand,twenty times he let it drop and sat upon it.
And then, as again he took up his burden, the Good Samaritan drew near.He drew near in a low gray racing-car at the rate of forty miles anhour, and within a hundred feet of Jimmie suddenly stopped and backedtoward him. The Good Samaritan was a young man with white hair. He worea suit of blue, a golf cap; the hands that held the wheel were disguisedin large yellow gloves. He brought the car to a halt and surveyed thedripping figure in the road with tired and uncurious eyes.
"You a Boy Scout?" he asked.
With alacrity for the twenty-first time Jimmie dropped the valise,forced his cramped fingers into straight lines, and saluted.
The young man in the car nodded toward the seat beside him.
"Get in," he commanded.
When James sat panting happily at his elbow the old young man, toJimmie's disappointment, did not continue to shatter the speed limit.Instead, he seemed inclined for conversation, and the car, growlingindignantly, crawled.
"I never saw a Boy Scout before," announced the old young man. "Tell meabout it. First, tell me what you do when you're not scouting."
Jimmie explained volubly. When not in uniform he was an office-boy andfrom pedlers and beggars guarded the gates of Carroll and Hastings,stockbrokers. He spoke the names of his employers with awe. It was afirm distinguished, conservative, and long-established. The white-hairedyoung man seemed to nod in assent.
"Do you know them?" demanded Jimmie suspiciously. "Are you a customerof ours?"
"I know them," said the young man. "They are customers of mine."
Jimmie wondered in what way Carroll and Hastings were customers of thewhite-haired young man. Judging him by his outer garments, Jimmieguessed he was a Fifth Avenue tailor; he might be even a haberdasher.Jimmie continued. He lived, he explained, with his mother at One Hundredand Forty-sixth Street; Sadie, his sister, attended the public school;he helped support them both, and he now was about to enjoy a well-earnedvacation camping out on Hunter's Island, where he would cook his ownmeals and, if the mosquitoes permitted, sleep in a tent.
"And you like that?" demanded the young man. "You call that fun?"
"Sure!" protested Jimmie. "Don't _you_ go camping out?"
"I go camping out," said the Good Samaritan, "whenever I leave NewYork."
Jimmie had not for three years lived in Wall Street not to understandthat the young man spoke in metaphor.
"You don't look," objected the young man critically, "as though you werebuilt for the strenuous life."
Jimmie glanced guiltily at his white knees.
"You ought ter see me two weeks from now," he protested. "I get allsunburnt and hard--hard as anything!"
The young man was incredulous.
"You were near getting sunstroke when I picked you up," he laughed. "Ifyou're going to Hunter's Island why didn't you take the Third Avenue toPelham Manor?"
"That's right!" assented Jimmie eagerly. "But I wanted to save the tencents so's to send Sadie to the movies. So I walked."
The young man looked his embarrassment.
"I beg your pardon," he murmured.
But Jimmie did not hear him. From the back of the car he was draggingexcitedly at the hated suitcase.
"Stop!" he commanded. "I got ter get out. I got ter _walk_."
The young man showed his surprise.
"Walk!" he exclaimed. "What is it--a bet?"
Jimmie dropped the valise and followed it into the roadway. It took sometime to explain to the young man. First, he had to be told about thescout law and the one good turn a day, and that it must involve somepersonal sac
rifice. And, as Jimmie pointed out, changing from a slowsuburban train to a racing-car could not be listed as a sacrifice. Hehad not earned the money, Jimmie argued; he had only avoided paying itto the railroad. If he did not walk he would be obtaining the gratitudeof Sadie by a falsehood. Therefore, he must walk.
"Not at all," protested the young man. "You've got it wrong. What goodwill it do your sister to have you sunstruck? I think you _are_sunstruck. You're crazy with the heat. You get in here, and we'll talkit over as we go along."
Hastily Jimmie backed away. "I'd rather walk," he said.
The young man shifted his legs irritably.
"Then how'll this suit you?" he called. "We'll declare that first 'onegood turn' a failure and start afresh. Do _me_ a good turn."
Jimmie halted in his tracks and looked back suspiciously.
"I'm going to Hunter's Island Inn," called the young man, "and I've lostmy way. You get in here and guide me. That'll be doing me a good turn."
On either side of the road, blotting out the landscape, giant handspicked out in electric-light bulbs pointed the way to Hunter's IslandInn. Jimmie grinned and nodded toward them.
"Much obliged," he called, "I got ter walk." Turning his back upontemptation, he wabbled forward into the flickering heat waves.
* * * * *
The young man did not attempt to pursue. At the side of the road, underthe shade of a giant elm, he had brought the car to a halt and with hisarms crossed upon the wheel sat motionless, following with frowning eyesthe retreating figure of Jimmie. But the narrow-chested and knock-kneedboy staggering over the sun-baked asphalt no longer concerned him. Itwas not Jimmie, but the code preached by Jimmie, and not only preachedbut before his eyes put into practice, that interested him. The youngman with white hair had been running away from temptation. At fortymiles an hour he had been running away from the temptation to do afellow mortal "a good turn." That morning, to the appeal of a drowningCaesar to "Help me, Cassius, or I sink," he had answered, "Sink!" Thatanswer he had no wish to reconsider. That he might not reconsider hehad sought to escape. It was his experience that a sixty-horsepowerracing-machine is a jealous mistress. For retrospective, sentimental, orphilanthropic thoughts she grants no leave of absence. But he had notescaped. Jimmie had halted him, tripped him by the heels and set himagain to thinking. Within the half-hour that followed those who rolledpast saw at the side of the road a car with her engine running, andleaning upon the wheel, as unconscious of his surroundings as though hesat at his own fireplace, a young man who frowned and stared at nothing.The half-hour passed and the young man swung his car back toward thecity. But at the first roadhouse that showed a blue-and-white telephonesign he left it, and into the iron box at the end of the bar dropped anickel. He wished to communicate with Mr. Carroll, of Carroll andHastings; and when he learned Mr. Carroll had just issued ordersthat he must not be disturbed, the young man gave his name.
The effect upon the barkeeper was instantaneous. With the aggrieved airof one who feels he is the victim of a jest he laughed scornfully.
"What are you putting over?" he demanded.
The young man smiled reassuringly. He had begun to speak and, thoughapparently engaged with the beer-glass he was polishing, the barkeeperlistened.
Down in Wall Street the senior member of Carroll and Hastings alsolistened. He was alone in the most private of all his private offices,and when interrupted had been engaged in what, of all undertakings, isthe most momentous. On the desk before him lay letters to his lawyer, tothe coroner, to his wife; and hidden by a mass of papers, but withinreach of his hand, an automatic pistol. The promise it offered of swiftrelease had made the writing of the letters simple, had given him afeeling of complete detachment, had released him, at least in thought,from all responsibilities. And when at his elbow the telephone cougheddiscreetly, it was as though some one had called him from a world fromwhich already he had made his exit.
Mechanically, through mere habit, he lifted the receiver.
The voice over the telephone came in brisk staccato sentences.
"That letter I sent this morning? Forget it. Tear it up. I've beenthinking and I'm going to take a chance. I've decided to back you boys,and I know you'll make good. I'm speaking from a roadhouse in the Bronx;going straight from here to the bank. So you can begin to draw againstus within an hour. And--hello!--will three millions see you through?"
From Wall Street there came no answer, but from the hands of thebarkeeper a glass crashed to the floor.
The young man regarded the barkeeper with puzzled eyes.
"He doesn't answer," he exclaimed. "He must have hung up."
"He must have fainted!" said the barkeeper.
The white-haired one pushed a bill across the counter. "To pay forbreakage," he said, and disappeared down Pelham Parkway.
Throughout the day, with the bill, for evidence, pasted against themirror, the barkeeper told and retold the wondrous tale.
"He stood just where you're standing now," he related, "blowing inmillion-dollar bills like you'd blow suds off a beer. If I'd knowed itwas _him_, I'd have hit him once, and hid him in the cellar for thereward. Who'd I think he was? I thought he was a wire-tapper, working acon game!"
Mr. Carroll had not "hung up," but when in the Bronx the beer-glasscrashed, in Wall Street the receiver had slipped from the hand of theman who held it, and the man himself had fallen forward. His desk hithim in the face and woke him--woke him to the wonderful fact that hestill lived; that at forty he had been born again; that before himstretched many more years in which, as the young man with the whitehair had pointed out, he still could make good.
The afternoon was far advanced when the staff of Carroll and Hastingswere allowed to depart, and, even late as was the hour, two of them wereasked to remain. Into the most private of the private offices Carrollinvited Gaskell, the head clerk; in the main office Hastings had askedyoung Thorne, the bond clerk, to be seated.
Until the senior partner has finished with Gaskell young Thorne mustremain seated.
"Gaskell," said Mr. Carroll, "if we had listened to you, if we'd runthis place as it was when father was alive, this never would havehappened. It _hasn't_ happened, but we've had our lesson. And afterthis we're going slow and going straight. And we don't need you to tellus how to do that. We want you to go away--on a month's vacation. When Ithought we were going under I planned to send the children on asea-voyage with the governess--so they wouldn't see the newspapers. Butnow that I can look them in the eye again, I need them, I can't let themgo. So, if you'd like to take your wife on an ocean trip to Nova Scotiaand Quebec, here are the cabins I reserved for the kids. They call itthe Royal Suite--whatever that is--and the trip lasts a month. The boatsails to-morrow morning. Don't sleep too late or you may miss her."
* * * * *
The head clerk was secreting the tickets in the inside pocket of hiswaistcoat. His fingers trembled, and when he laughed his voice trembled.
"Miss the boat!" the head clerk exclaimed. "If she gets away from Millieand me she's got to start now. We'll go on board to-night!"
A half-hour later Millie was on her knees packing a trunk, and herhusband was telephoning to the drug-store for a sponge bag and a curefor seasickness.
Owing to the joy in her heart and to the fact that she was on her knees,Millie was alternately weeping into the trunk-tray and offering upincoherent prayers of thanksgiving. Suddenly she sank back upon thefloor.
"John!" she cried, "doesn't it seem sinful to sail away in a 'royalsuite' and leave this beautiful flat empty?"
Over the telephone John was having trouble with the drug clerk.
"No!" he explained, "I'm not seasick _now_. The medicine I want is to betaken later. I _know_ I'm speaking from the Pavonia; but the Pavoniaisn't a ship; it's an apartment-house."
He turned to Millie. "We can't be in two places at the same time," hesuggested.
"But, think," insisted Millie, "of all
the poor people stifling to-nightin this heat, trying to sleep on the roofs and fire-escapes; and ourflat so cool and big and pretty--and no one in it."
John nodded his head proudly.
"I know it's big," he said, "but it isn't big enough to hold all thepeople who are sleeping to-night on the roofs and in the parks."
"I was thinking of your brother--and Grace," said Millie. "They've beenmarried only two weeks now, and they're in a stuffy hall bedroom andeating with all the other boarders. Think what our flat would mean tothem; to be by themselves, with eight rooms and their own kitchen andbath, and our new refrigerator and the gramophone! It would be Heaven!It would be a real honeymoon!"
Abandoning the drug clerk, John lifted Millie in his arms and kissedher, for next to his wife nearest his heart was the younger brother.
* * * * *
The younger brother and Grace were sitting on the stoop of theboardinghouse. On the upper steps, in their shirt-sleeves, were theother boarders; so the bride and bridegroom spoke in whispers. The airof the cross street was stale and stagnant; from it rose exhalations ofrotting fruit, the gases of an open subway, the smoke of passingtaxicabs. But between the street and the hall bedroom, with its odors ofa
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