Hervey Willetts

Of course he had not registered for assignment to quarters, and even he contemplated not without uneasiness his entrance to the grub pavilion at dinnertime. Temple Camp was a big place and of an open hospitality to visiting strangers who made free upon the grounds. But, of course, Hervey knew that he must face the “keepers” sometime and he was a little chary about the noonday meal. Had the camp authorities forgotten their ultimatum? He was carefree enough to hope so. Dinnertime would furnish the test.

“What’s this thing, anyway?” he asked after the twentieth or so recovery of the bobbing sphere.

“If you were here last week you’d know,” a tenderfoot piped up. “Do you see that big log cabin away up there past the eats pavilion? That’s Administration Shack. (Hervey had good reason to know that) And do you see the flagpole up on top of it? Well, this brass ball got knocked off the top of that by lightning. There’s a kind of an iron bar sticking in the top of that pole—it sticks on there or screws on or something. The pole got struck by lightning and it split the wood and the bar with the ball on it came down kerplunk. Worrie Bannard, he’s in a troop from Ohio, he found it and gave it to me. Do you know what Tom Slade says? Do you know who he is, Tom Slade? He’s assistant manager and he’s better than the head managers—do you know what he says? He says no feller here has got enough adventure to him to climb up and put that ball where it belongs. Ooooooh, I’m glad I haven’t got enough adventure for that!”

It was quite like Tom Slade to say that and he had not intended to be taken seriously. But Hervey took it as a dare given by proxy. Well, he would not take a dare from anybody; certainly not from Tom Slade, champion of adventure and moving spirit in the big camp family. Why, that amounted to an official dare! And of course, if he did that thing upon the incentive of Tom Slade’s dare, why he would be welcome to stay at camp. That was the way that he reasoned—if one may say that he reasoned at all. He would do a magnificent stunt and Temple Camp officially would fall at his feet. Tom Slade would be his champion and sponsor. He could go into the eats shack not only registered but lionized. Yes, he was lucky.

“Give me the ball,” he said.

“You’re not going to do it?” the diminutive holder of the ball gasped.

“Don’t make me laugh,” said Hervey, contemptuously.

“It—it kind of fits on,” the astonished youngster informed him, “but—”

“Leave it to me,” said Hervey.

They followed him up the path around the storehouse cabin and past the main pavilion where a row of scouts sat with their feet up on the railing. The very sight of Hervey seemed to inform them that some blithesome, illicit enterprise was under way and a few of them joined the little group.

As for Hervey, being a true artist, he was quite oblivious to his audience. Being an outlaw in camp, he even carried himself with a certain swaggering independence and disdained to glance at the big bulletin-board in front of Administration Shack. He had worried a little about returning home and telling his stepfather what he should have told him the year before. But now he was not worrying. Would not he have Temple Camp eating out of his hand? If he had looked at that bulletin-board (the same which he had formerly disfigured) he might have seen something there to arrest his attention. But his thoughts were on high.

Things were certainly breaking favorably for him.

In less time than it takes to tell it, he was on the porch roof, then on the main roof of Administration Shack. Then he was shinning up the slender flagpole to the gasping consternation of the increasing crowd below. He could not hold the brass ball while climbing, so he laid it in his hat and held his hat in his teeth. The slender pole bent and swayed as up he went. If ever sheer rashness is eligible for reward, I suppose Hervey was a likely candidate. The bantering absurdity of Tom Slade’s remark was only too plainly shown by the swaying pole as that nimble figure, hat in teeth, ascended its tapering length.

Breathlessly the throng watched as the pole bent this way and that as if uncertain in which direction to break and send its victim crashing to the slanting roof, then mangled to the ground below. Breathlessly one or two of the more keen-eyed observers saw those legs tightening around the pole, saw one arm move loose.

He got the brass sphere in one hand and let his hat fall to the ground. It tumbled off the roof and was picked up by a tall, quiet boy who stood somewhat apart from the throng. They saw a hand groping at the very end of the pole, saw the brass ornament in place, saw that nimble figure slide down to the roof, then off its edge into the midst of the spellbound watchers. He was a hero; to them he was anyway.

“Hervey Willetts, you’re wanted in the office,” said a matter-of-fact voice. It was young Winthrop Allbright, the bespectacled young gentleman who was always digging in card indexes and writing in a big flat book in that awful sanctum. He held a fountain pen as if he had been but momentarily interrupted.

CHAPTER XXXVI
REACHED?

And so for the fourth time Hervey Willetts stood at the bar of judgment. He stood before the cage window in Administration Shack, hatless and with a long rip in his trousers. His mad, gray eyes, full of dancing light, looked through the filigree work at Councilor Easton. He would have preferred to see his old friend Councilor Wainwright, though of course it would have made no difference. The councilor had come over to the window at which young Mr. Allbright sat to speak to Hervey. He was not unpleasant, but cruelly brief.

“Hervey Willetts, there is no correspondence here affecting the arrangement by which you left last fall. I hope there is no misunderstanding on your part. Who sent you here?”

“My—my stepfather.”

“Hmph. Your stepfather isn’t in your confidence, I suppose?”

“Tom Slade said that anybody who put the brass ball on that flagpole—”

The councilor interrupted him, “Have you money enough to go home, Willetts?”

“I’ve got a check for three weeks that my stepfather gave me, and I’ve got ten dollars. But doesn’t it make any difference what I did—”

“Not a bit, my boy. The camp bus is going down to Catskill to meet the early afternoon train. You’d better go along and get the two-fifty for Albany. You can get a late afternoon train at Albany for Farrelton, I think. You may have your dinner here.”

Hervey stood motionless at the window. He felt much as he had felt on the night Mr. Walton had talked both severely and feelingly to him, and he found it easier to stand right where he was than to make a move. He knew now that half a dozen or so obtrusive boys were lingering in the background and he, the hero of the flagpole, could not turn and face them. The attitude of the management toward him was not such as to arouse consideration for his feelings and these boys were allowed to remain.

Well, he must go back to Farrelton and throw his bombshell into the household just as his good step-parents were in the throes of preparation for their holiday. I am glad to say that his heedlessness and buoyancy were not so great that he could contemplate this with equanimity. He would have been emboldened to refer again to his daredevil exploit, but the inexorable attitude of Councilor Easton chilled his forlorn hope.

“Is there anything we can do for you now before you go,” the councilor asked with a kind of cold finality.

“Is—can I—could I—”

It was just at that moment that the tall boy who had caught Hervey’s grotesque hat as it fell from the roof stepped up beside the window and handed it to him. And Hervey, to his dismay, saw that it was Wyne Corson. I think it quite characteristic of Hervey that it never occurred to him that this scout from his own home town was supposed to be sightseeing in California at that time. He had forgotten all about that.

“There is something you can do for me,” said Wyne. “Might I speak to you a minute, Mr. Easton?”

“Surely,” said the councilor, and he added smiling. “It’s customary for scouts to address the management as Councilor or Trustee, and not use the name.”

“Excuse me, I’m new at this camp,” said Wyne.

“I’ve only been here about ten days. I came up here to do a job and I did it and there’s not much snap to it. I see it’s up on the bulletin board.”

“Yes?”

“I won the hospitality award; I’m the one that swam around the lake without landing last Tuesday. I didn’t get any notice yet, but I suppose it’s all right. The booklet says the Home Circle Swim is once around the lake without landing and the Warring Memorial Hospitality award is for that. It’s on page thirty-two where it tells about the special awards.”

“Horace Warring lost his life in the lake,” said the councilor in a low voice, “and his parents established this award. We think it’s about the most beautiful of the camp awards.”

But Wyne Corson seemed interested in nothing but his point. “Well, this boy, Hervey Willetts, is the one I choose to have for my guest till the end of the summer.”

The councilor shook his head ruefully, as Hervey (let it be said to his eternal credit) gazed at this South Farrelton scout with brimming eyes.

“I’m afraid you’re a bit impulsive,” said the councilor.

“That’s a good one,” laughed Wyne. “I think you’ve got me mixed up with Willetts. I won a trip to California and had it changed to a summer at Temple Camp after I read the book. I did that so I could get here before Willetts and win the Warring Memorial award and be ready for him when he came. I knew blamed well he’d show up—I got his number.” He paused a moment while the councilor looked rueful and shook his head. “The book doesn’t say anything about what sort of a fellow I can have, or anything about him. It just says I can have as my guest for the balance of the summer anybody between the ages of twelve and eighteen of my own choosing. And he shall be recorded as my honor guest. That’s all there is to it and I choose Hervey Willetts. If he goes away I have to go, too.”

“Why do you choose him?” the councilor asked.

“Oh, I don’t know; just because I do, that’s all. Do I have to say why?”

“No, I don’t know that you do,” Councilor Easton said, not unpleased at Wyne’s vehemence, which almost bordered on impertinence. “But, of course, this is a very unusual thing and I must confer with the management.”

“Will you let Tom Slade have a vote?” poor Hervey asked.

“Tom Slade knows all about it,” said Wyne. “If you only stood on as solid ground as I do most of the time, you’d be all right. Will you put down Hervey Willett’s name, Councilor? He’s the one I choose. I’m going by just what the book says about the Warring Memorial award. It says any boy—”

Suddenly, Wyne Corson was interrupted and beaten into silence by a tremendous voice from a diminutive spectator, conspicuous because of a licorice smootch near his mouth. It was the mighty voice of Pee-wee Harris! “It’s a dandy argument and it’s a teckinality,” he shouted. “And it shows how the camp can’t do anything even if it wants to, because if a thing is printed in writing you can’t get around it and that settles it and I know, because my uncle knows a man who’s a judge! And maybe even I’ll have Hervey Willetts in my patrol as an honorary member, maybe!”

Even amid the laughter, Hervey looked at Wyne Corson, bewildered, uncertain, with glistening eyes. Was he grateful? Was he reached at last? No, not by scouting. But by a scout? That would be something. Here was a strange kind of a stunt! Such a stunt as he himself had never performed. A stranger had come to Temple Camp and deliberately set about beating it with its own weapons. He had brought with him just no more than a booklet with certain passages in it marked with a lead pencil. He had planned and wrought. How tawdry seemed that daredevil climb up the flagpole now! How rash and futile that dive at the Farrelton Carnival! How silly that stunt of sending in a false fire alarm! How much finer to use one’s head, than just to stand on one’s head!

And did Hervey think of these things? Not just in the way they have been set forth. But he felt cheap and inadequate. His latest stunt had been officially ignored with a kind of brief contempt. But this boy from South Farrelton had stepped up with his booklet and the record of his three mile swim around the lake and Temple Camp could not answer him back—was helpless. What is a stunt anyway? Here was a matter of a hundred and fifty dollars or so; a matter involving a clash between an ultimatum and the right of a winner to his award. And Wyne Corson had triumphed over Temple Camp. And Hervey Willetts, diver of dives, and ringer of alarms, and snatcher of satchels, was to stay and spend the summer in these familiar scenes. And his guardians would go to Europe never knowing. What is a stunt anyway?

He wandered forth and picked up a stick and started along the trail that went around the lake. But he glanced back (something he never did when starting out) and Wyne Corson followed him. And so they ambled through the bordering woods together.

“Will you show me how you swam around where the outlet is?” Hervey asked. “Bimbo, there’s some current there.”

“That was easy,” said Wyne. “We haven’t got time to hike all the way around now. Listen!” As he spoke the dinner-horn from camp sounded and echoed from the hills across the lake.

“The dickens with that,” said Hervey. “We can get our dinner an hour late all right; I know the cook; leave it to me.”

He jumped up, grabbed the limb of a tree and swung across one of the many brooklets that flowed out of the sombre lake and wriggled away among the flanking hills. “Can you do that?” He went on ahead and jumped across a tiny cove. “Come ahead,” he called back as he went upon his way rejoicing. And pretty soon, Wyne caught up with him and laughing said, “I see you’re going to get me in trouble in this old camp.”

“Well, then we’ll only go a little way and back,” said Hervey. Magnanimous concession! “I don’t care about the soup anyway.”

So, picking his way with difficulty through the briery thicket along the lakeside and getting over obstructions as only he knew how to do, he went upon his way rejoicing and paused after a little while for Wyne to catch up with him. Then they both went on their way rejoicing. And pretty soon they started on their way back—rejoicing. And that was quite a stunt for Hervey when you come to think of it. For no one had even dared him to return for dinner!