Left to Themselves: Being the Ordeal of Philip and Gerald. Edward Prime-Stevenson
Two and one half lengths behind instead of three; that is all you get by it, and there are six rowers in that boat ahead of you who will fall over, and overboard, before you shall pass them now. Again? Another spurt? Yes; well done, and you deserve the cheer for it that you scarcely hear in your frantic efforts. But there is a roar drowning it out already, which signals your defeat. At them! At them one last time, Dater, the Consequential! But you know how to pull. It must be the last. For, look! you can see the very scarf-pins in the bosoms of Mr. Voss and Mr. Marcy in the barge; and on it with them, in an agony of delight at your vain prowess, stands Gerald Saxton, the friend of Philip Touchtone—Philip Touchtone, whose strong stroke has helped mightily to tell against you all the way up and back. Ah, you falter a little now; nor can you save yourselves by any more spurting. The green amphitheater rings again and again with cheers and applause, but not for you. You dart two boat-lengths behind those crimson shirts, that even your warmest friends yonder must hurrah over as they shoot by the goal! The cannon booms out their welcome far and wide! You who are the Victors must call yourselves the Defeats, for the race is over and the Ossokosees have won it gloriously!
How the next half hour passed for Philip, Davidson, McKay, Rice, and all that enraptured crew, as they received in the boat-house the friends who could press their way inside to congratulate them—this the reader may imagine. Philip and his friends forgot how exhausted they were in the delight of such praises and hand-shakings. As for Gerald and Mr. Marcy, they were among the first to greet them when they were cool enough to quit their shell for a few moments. Gerald was quite unnerved with rapture.
“O, Philip,” he exclaimed, “I never was so glad over any thing in my life!” And the boy spoke the exact truth.
“You deserve to be carried home on a church-steeple—a blunt one—every one of you!” declared Mr. Marcy, adding to the patron of the Victors, who stood near him, “Mr. York, your young men have lost their laurels forever. Our boys don’t intend to be beaten again.” And, as a matter of fact, they never were; for the Ossokosee Club rowed them another year and utterly routed them, and before the third season the Victors were disbanded and a new organization had grown out of their ruins.
The two other races were duly pulled. Dater came out first in that which concerned his own club. The Ossokosees were presented at the side of the barge with their prize. Mr. Voss made a little speech. The crowd gave their final cheers as Philip received it for his associates. That two hundred dollars was to be spent in improving the boat-house. Somebody had talked of buying a new shell with it; but that was not heard of again after the day’s deeds with the old one. Then the crowds broke up. The carriages rolled in different directions. The excitements of the morning were over. In the evening there was to be a special reception at the Ossokosee House, given by Mr. Marcy.
“But I never went to a regular grown-up party, even,” protested Gerald, in visible concern when Miss Davidson declared he must go with her and see how Philip and the rest would be lionized. “I—I’m not old enough.”
“Neither am I, for that matter, Gerald,” laughed Philip, with a droll glance at the amused Miss Davidson; “so you ought to go along to keep me company. I am not a ladies’ man, like Davidson or McKay.”
“Well, you will have to walk about the hotel dining-room with some girl; you see if you don’t,” declared Gerald. But Philip did not. Nearly all the evening Gerald found his friend near him, where the boy could listen to the fine speeches lavished on Touchtone and every member of that crew of Ossokosee—quite numerous enough to turn older heads than Philip’s. Miss Beauchamp, who was quite old enough to be Philip’s aunt, declared that she, for her part, “felt jealous of Gerald” when Philip said that he would leave the scene for a while to see the boy quickly to his bed, Gerald having become fagged out with his enjoyment.
“You had better adopt him, Touchtone,” Mr. Marcy suggested as the two turned away.
“O, I will, if his father will let me,” retorted Philip, laughingly.
“Humph!” said Mr. Marcy, half aloud, “I doubt if he’d mind it half as much as he ought.”
The party broke up half an hour later. Early hours were the custom at the Ossokosee. Philip was to sleep in Gerald’s room that the accommodation he thus vacated might be given to some particular guests. The races had filled the house.
The hotel grew quiet. Mr. Marcy had not read the evening mail through, so busy had he been kept during the regatta. He sat in the office with his night-clerk, concluding the letters hastily.
“Holloa!” he exclaimed, breaking a seal, “Nova Scotia post-mark? Saxton’s hand? I guess I’d better look at it before I go to bed.” He glanced at the first lines. His face grew attentive. He read on and turned the page. It wasn’t a long letter, but it was plainly about an important matter.
He laid it down. Then, folding his arms, he stared in consideration at the uninteresting picture of a North German Lloyds steamship over his desk. Then he said, half aloud, “Certainly he’ll do! He’s just the person.” He rose quickly. “I’ll go up and read it to them at once. No! On second thoughts, they would neither of them sleep a wink if I did. To-morrow will do.”
Mr. Marcy put the letter in the desk, turned out the gas, bade Mr. Keller good-night, and walked away to his room.
In that letter were involved the fortunes of the two lads, the big and the little one, who were asleep in Number 45, Gerald with one hand under his yellow head and the other just touching Philip’s arm; as if he would have him mindful, even in dreams, that their existences now had ceased to be divorced, and that a new responsibility had come to Touchtone in that fact.
CHAPTER IV.
UNDER SAILING ORDERS.
They had just finished dressing next morning. Philip was asking himself whether, after all the fun of the last few days, the idea of adding up columns of figures in the office was a pleasant one.
“Come in,” was Gerald’s reply to a knock.
“Good-morning,” said Mr. Marcy. In his hand was the letter.
“Gerald,” he began, walking up to the lounge, “your father wants you.”
“Papa!” exclaimed the boy, starting up as Mr. Marcy sat down. “Where is he? When did he come? Isn’t that just like him!”
“No, sit down,” laughed Mr. Marcy, holding up the letter. “He isn’t down-stairs. He’s just where he was, in Nova Scotia. Listen to this and tell me what you think of it.”
He read, while Philip listened from across the room:
“Camp Half-Dozen, September, 188–.
“Dear Marcy: Please send Gerald up to me at this place, via Halifax, as soon as possible. When he arrives he can go to the Waverly Hotel. Somebody in our party, or myself, will meet him. We have not roughed it so much as I expected. We shall stay here; the hot weather seems to hold on too long down your way. Of course, Gerald cannot make such a journey alone. Put him in charge of an experienced servant used to traveling, or make some arrangement of the kind convenient. I inclose check. Supply whatever extra is needed.
“We are having a first-class time—lots of fishing and shooting. Our nearest civilization is miles off. Hope the Ossokosee is doing well these closing weeks. It’s a late season every-where, isn’t it?
“Yours, etc.,
“Gerald B. Saxton.
“P.S.—Give my love to Gerald. Tell him to write me immediately what day he starts. Tell him to be a good boy, and not let the whales have any excuse to eat him on the way.”
“There!” exclaimed Mr. Marcy, as he handed Gerald this business-like letter from any father summoning his son on such a journey. “That’s your father all over! Not a word