“It must be him!” gasped the heiress.
“It is him!” cried Betty, triumphantly. “Isn’t he splendid?”
“Say, girls,” observed Gladys McGowan, “let’s take Susie’s bet. It’ll be worth a round of sundaes to meet our Jim right away, without losing precious time.”
“Half an hour, Susie?”
“Half an hour at the most, girls.”
“Then it’s a go! How will you manage it?”
Susie still played with the sands, while the others watched her nervously. She was a tiny thing, and not especially beautiful, but the girls liked her because she was “good fun” and exhibited a rare cleverness at times. All they knew of her history was that Susie was visiting at the Carleton cottage.
“You’ll help me, girls?” enquired the adventurous one.
“Of course. But what’s your plan, dear?”
“Wait.”
Presently a bather emerged from Wilder’s Establishment, walked down to the shore near them, gave a glance of brief interest at the group of girls reclining upon the sands, and straightway plunged into the lake and swam out with bold, vigorous strokes.
Every feminine eye followed him.
“Jim can swim, all right,” observed Gladys, admiringly.
Susie nodded.
“I thought he could,” she said. “Now, girls, in we go!”
“What! Into the water?”
“Certainly.”
“And get wet?”
“It’ll take a week to dry our hair again!”
Susie ignored the protests.
“Oh, we’ll just putter around a bit. It won’t hurt us,” she said.
They arose reluctantly and one or two dipped a stockinged toe into the cool water and cringed. But Susie waded in without a quiver, and realizing the importance of the occasion they grew bold and slowly followed her. The heiress waited until the very last, and hesitated even then. But there was “Jim” in the water, and it wouldn’t do to let the other girls get an advantage over her.
So presently they had all trailed along the gently shelving bottom until the water had reached their waists, and in the case of little Susie, who was in the lead, it came quite up to her chin.
The young man had cleaved his way a good distance out; but now he was returning more slowly, leaping and turning like a dolphin at play and then floating luxuriously upon his back for awhile. As he drew nearer to the girls Susie whispered:
“Now scream — and scream loud, mind you!”
In amazement they watched her swim out a few strokes — for the girl could actually swim — and then saw her throw up her hands and heard her cry out.
Wildly they shrieked a chorus. It was the real thing in the way of a scream, and owed part of its vigor to the fact that Susie’s action seemed horribly natural.
Instantly the young man rolled off his back and elevated his head, treading water. He saw a girl struggling madly and heard the shrill outcry of her companions. A moment more he was dashing to the rescue.
Did Susie see him coming through one corner of her eye? She disappeared entirely, and was under water an alarming time. When she finally bobbed up a strong arm was folded around her waist.
“Don’t struggle! Keep quiet and leave it to me,” said Jim, calmly; and the sound of his voice seemed to have a soothing effect upon the drowning girl. She rested in his circling arm quite comfortably, and before another minute he found a footing and then waded ashore with both arms around her, while Susie’s envious friends scampered out beside him and insisted upon helping to restore her.
Very gently the big fellow laid her on the sand and knelt anxiously beside her. But she had been rescued at exactly the right moment, so now she opened her eyes, smiled sweetly, and heaved a sigh.
“Oh, thank you! Thank you, sir, for saving me!” she said. The voice was pretty husky for a girl that had to be held, but Jim was young and did not notice that.
“Don’t mention it,” he replied, delighted to find she was likely to live. “You’d better get home as soon as possible, and have a good rub-down and a glass of tonic. May I assist you?”
“If you please. I know it’s foolish and — and silly; but I’m so frightened and weak yet.”
“Naturally,” replied the sympathetic hero; and then the heiress, who could stand no more foolishness, jerked Susie to her feet before she had a chance to smile into the boy’s grave eyes again. That was wasted energy, of course, for Susie just now absolutely controlled the situation. Her delicate form swayed so visibly that the boy seized her arm at once, and Clara thoughtfully usurped the other arm and began to lavish such tender devotion upon her that Gladys laughed outright — a cold, harsh laugh that sent a shiver down the heiress’ back and made her vow to “get even” at the first opportunity.
Mischievous Susie was dying for a good laugh herself at the complete success of her stratagem; but she mastered the impulse and, letting Jim support her as much as he would, tottered slowly along the beach in the direction of home. The girls surrounded her, flooding her with eager questions of how it had happened and how she felt, and generous praises of her brave and noble rescuer. For none except the heiress could withhold her admiration for Susie’s cleverness or was the least bit jealous.
On the way they were all introduced, in the most natural manner, to the man of the hour, and then the heroine enquired in a languid tone that could not disguise her meaning: “What time is it, Clara dear?”
“Oh, less than half an hour since you attempted suicide,” returned the heiress, composedly. “Brace up, Susie dear, for I’m going to buy you a sundae tonight,”
Of course the young man didn’t understand this speech. He left the girl “whose life he had saved” at the Carleton porch, and begged permission to call in the evening and enquire after her — a permission instantly granted.
Then, with Betty and Mary and Gladys and the heiress all chattering in a breath as they surrounded him, Jim returned to the bathing establishment, where they separated. The heiress was a pretty girl, and the boy smiled as he bade her good-bye.
As he dressed himself he could not help congratulating himself upon his good luck in meeting this “bunch of nice girls” on the very day of his arrival. It augured a pleasant vacation.
As for the “bunch,” Gladys said on the way home:
“Isn’t Susie a deep one, though?”
“She thinks she is,” answered the heiress, with a toss of her shapely head. “Do you remember, dear, how the cat’s paw once pulled the chestnuts out of the fire for some one else?”
“Oh, yes;” answered Gladys, sniffing. “It was for a monkey, wasn’t it?”
Those sweet, sweet girls!
CHAPTER V.
GETTING ACQUAINTED.
Mrs. Still, who lived but a few doors from the Jarrods, called upon Mrs. Jarrod the next afternoon, and after welcoming her cordially to Tamawaca and congratulating her upon acquiring pretty Lake View, invited her and Mr. Jarrod to attend a card party at the yacht club that evening.
Jarrod didn’t play “five hundred,” but when the good-natured Stills called for them soon after dinner he complacently accompanied his wife to the club, which was located half way around the bay and was reached by one of Wilder’s ferry-boats after a five minutes’ ride from the Tamawaca dock. It was a pretty building, gay with electric lights. On the ground floor was a reception room filled with sailing trophies, and a big room reached through swinging doors which was devoted to the needs of thirsty men. The upper floor was one large room set with card tables, and here Mrs. Still introduced Mrs. Jarrod to a numerous concourse of merry folks who were all impatient to get at the cards and gamble fiercely for two hours or so to win a set of prizes that represented an outlay of about seventy-five cents in the aggregate. When the “prizes” were won they were usually either dropped quietly into the lake on the way home or reserved to be gambled for at some other social gathering. I knew one lady who won the same prize seven times in the same season, and likewise g
ave it away seven times. The only reason that she kept it then was that her guests flatly refused to accept it as a trophy, it having become sadly shop-worn.
Jarrod was ushered by Geo. B. into the thirst room and introduced to a solemn group of three or four men who wore yachting caps and shirts, and had brass buttons sewn on their blue serge coats.
“Howdy,” said Berwin, a man with a bald head and serious eyes. “Hear you’ve bought a cottage, Jarrod. Want to join our Club?”
“I’d like to,” the lawyer replied, hesitating; “but I’ve — ”
“Ten dollars, please. That’s the price for season membership.”
Jarrod paid it.
“But I’ve got no sail-boat,” said he.
“That’s all right,” observed Stakes, a little fellow with a peppery and pugnacious countenance. “None of the crowd upstairs owns a sail-boat, but they’re all club members, just the same. We four — Homperton, Berwin, Diller and myself — own boats, and we’re the yacht club in reality. We built this shop on credit, and run it ourselves, but we let the folks upstairs support it by paying ten dollars a year. It pleases ‘em to be members of a yacht club, you know, and helps us out financially. Much obliged for your donation.”
“Do I have a vote?” asked Jarrod, much amused by this frank explanation.
“Of course; but according to our constitution only men with sail-boats can be officers of the club. So you must vote for us.”
“Once,” remarked Diller, a fine looking chap who was intently interested in a squat bottle and a siphon, “I had money and ambition and no sail-boat. Who was I, anyhow? A landsman! A nobody! Didn’t belong to a yacht club, or anything else.”
“Except Mrs. Diller,” interjected Geo. B., with a sly wink at Jarrod.
“Then I bought a sail-boat — ”
“And a dingy,” added Geo. B.
“And paid up the debts of the club and was made Commodore. Commodore Diller! Who was I then? Why, ev’rybody said: ‘Morn’n’, Com-modore!”Have a smoke, Com-mo-dore!”One more with me, Com-mo-dore!’ Ah; that’s bein’ somebody, that is. Commodore Diller! Com-mo-dore Dil-ler.”
“Some men acquire greatness,” said Jarrod, sympathetically.
“Fact is,” remarked the solemn Berwin, “that Diller’s a fine sailor. Got a good boat, too. Every race we have, Diller’s there.”
“Where?” asked Diller, looking up with a puzzled expression.
“Oh, somewhere,” said Berwin. “Only yesterday I said to Wilder — ”
“Con-found Wilder!” yelled little Stakes, growing red with sudden rage and pounding the table fiercely. “Why should that monster’s name be mentioned in the sanctity of the sanctum of this respectable Yacht Club? Wilder’s a robber, a thief, a con-man, a — a rascal, and a — a — a — ”
“That’s all right,” interrupted Homperton. “He’s an upstairs member, and we’ve got his ten dollars.”
“Well, that’s something,” admitted Stakes, calming down somewhat. “It’s a pleasure to rob a robber, once in awhile.”
“Sh — h!” said Geo. B., mischievously. “You forget that both Mr. Jarrod and I are present, and have also been separated from our membership fees.”
“You don’t mind,” said Stakes. “You’re good fellows, for folks that don’t own sail-boats, and your wives will get ten dollars worth of struggle up stairs before the season’s over. Eh?’
“I think so,” said Jarrod.
Later in the evening the ferry-boat called for the card players, but broke her engines just as she reached the dock. That was unfortunate, for she had broken her engines only four times that day and this was her last trip. Wilder was with her, and he promptly hustled all the people aboard, collecting the fares as they crossed the gang-plank, and then, after some delay, he informed his passengers in a despairing voice that the blamed thing wouldn’t go. Something was wrong with the engines, but if they would be patient he would tie up to the dock and overhaul the machinery and get things in shape again. Of course they all trooped off to the dock again. One or two ventured to suggest a return of their fares; but Wilder had gone somewhere for a lantern and taken the pocketful of nickels with him. Before he returned his people had formed a merry procession to the shore back of the club house, where they struck the trolley-car tracks and tramped the half mile to Tamawaca singing and joking and thoroughly enjoying themselves. They were acquainted with Wilder’s ferry-boat, and never allowed it to make them unhappy.
Mrs. Jarrod was pleased and triumphant. She had won the third prize — a nineteen cent handkerchief embroidered with the initial “S.” — and it was indeed fortunate that she did not overhear the remark of Mrs. Sauter s that it was the same one she had dropped at the last yacht club party.
Next morning Jarrod went down to the post office and met several of his fellow cottagers. They were, as a class, highly respectable, well-to-do and good natured business men, who sought in this delightful nook rest and recreation after months of weary toil in their offices, factories, mills or mines. They talked freely of the adverse conditions existing in Tamawaca, of their abject dependence upon the whims of Wilder and Easton, of the usurpation by these men of the cottagers’ rights and privileges, and ended always by expressing an opinion that the law, if appealed to, would not support the owners of Tamawaca in their autocratic actions.
“Wilder’s all right,” said one.
“He’s a good fellow, personally, and mighty accommodating. But he owns only a one-third interest, so what can he do against a man like Easton, who owns two-thirds and refuses to spend a nickel to keep his own property in repair?”
“Easton isn’t so bad,” remarked another; “but he’s an old man, and weak, and Wilder makes him do anything he likes.”
“Why don’t the cottagers organize?” asked Jarrod.
“They are organized. The annua meeting is to be held next Saturday night,” was the reply. “But they never do anything at those meetings except bewail their condition of slavery and mildly denounce Wilder and Easton.”
“What we lack,” said a grizzled old fellow with piercing black eyes glinting underneath shaggy brows, “is a leader; an organizer. The whole system of imposition here is a fester that is gradually coming to a head. What we shall require presently is a clever surgeon with a sharp lancet.”
As the speaker walked away Jarrod looked thoughtfully after him.
“Who is that man?” he enquired.
“Why, that’s Colonel Kerry. Years ago he used to be one of the owners of Tamawaca; but they say he quarrelled with the methods of his partners and sold out to them. That was before either Wilder or Easton bought in; but the Colonel has never mixed in public affairs since.”
“I wonder he doesn’t use the lancet himself,” said Jarrod.
“Oh, he’s capable enough, I assure you; but the Colonel isn’t hunting trouble. He sticks to his cottage up on the hillside and minds his own business. But he’s a shrewd observer, and no one knows the inside history of all the encroachments upon the rights of our residents during the last dozen or so years better than old man Kerry.”
Jarrod strolled along the walks for an hour or two, noting carefully the conditions of neglect everywhere apparent. Nature had done wonders for Tamawaca; man had done little but mar nature, if we except the many handsome or cosy cottages that peeped enticingly from their leafy bowers or stood on the hills overlooking the two lakes.
Tamawaca occupies the point between the channel and Tamawaca Pool to the north, and Lake Michigan on the west, where a sloping height is thickly covered with a noble forest that creeps past the dwellings down to the water’s edge. In the hills are romantic ravines, flower-strewn vales and vine-covered cliffs. To a lover of nature nothing could be more exquisitely beautiful.
Jarrod tripped and stumbled along the walks. The boards were rotted and falling apart. In places the sand had drifted over and covered the highway completely. An air of neglect brooded everywhere in the public places, and where a bit of land had orig
inally been left for a small park the ground was strewn with empty tin cans, bones, papers and other debris.
It grieved him to note this condition of affairs. A little well directed energy and a little well expended money would make Tamawaca blossom like a rose; but both these essentials seemed lacking. The cottagers would do nothing because they were told the streets and public places were not theirs, and the owners would do nothing because they figured they could get as much out of the cottagers without additional investment. The people who built at Tamawaca, and lived there during the summer months, were perhaps regarded as legitimate prey by those who directed their fates during that time. Wilder and Easton supplied them with everything. They owned the electric light plant and the water works. Indeed, they owned and controlled everything that the cottagers were obliged to have, and netted a fine income each year.
All this was a challenge to Jarrod. The fires of his mental energy must be fed, even when he was “resting,” and without the slightest personal antagonism to Wilder and Easton, but simply because he saw there was a battle to be fought for the cottagers, whose ranks he had joined, his logical mind began to figure out ways and means to force the fighting.
A day or two later the lawyer took the electric car to Kochton and read a little Michigan law in the office of a friendly attorney. The result apprised him that he was uncovering nothing more than a huge game of “bluff,” which had been played so long and with such amazing assurance that it had completely cowed its victims.
Jarrod came home smiling. “There’s nothing like a summer resort for quieting one’s nerves,” he told his wife.
CHAPTER VI.
FOUND OUT.
When Jim called to enquire after Susie on the evening of his adventure he found her dressed in a fluffy white costume and sitting demurely upon the porch awaiting him.
Mr. Carleton came out to thank the boy for rescuing his little guest, and after one shrewd glance into the frank and manly face he retired and left the young folks together, satisfied that Susie had made no undesirable acquaintance.
Complete Works of L. Frank Baum Page 762