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!

THE END