Captains Courageous
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Rudyard Kipling >> Captains Courageous
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"When he wuz little he used to play at keeping store, an' I had
hopes he might follow that up. But soon's he could paddle a dory I
knew that were goin' to be denied me."
"They're square-riggers, Mother; iron-built an' well found.
Remember what Phil's sister reads you when she gits his letters."
"I've never known as Phil told lies, but he's too venturesome (like
most of 'em that use the sea). If Dan sees fit, Mr. Cheyne, he can
go-fer all o' me."
"She jest despises the ocean," Disko explained, "an' I-I dunno haow
to act polite, I guess, er I'd thank you better."
"My father-my own eldest brother-two nephews-an' my second
sister's man," she said, dropping her head on her hand. "Would you
care fer any one that took all those?"
Cheyne was relieved when Dan turned up and accepted with more
delight than he was able to put into words. Indeed, the offer meant
a plain and sure road to all desirable things; but Dan thought most
of commanding watch on broad decks, and looking into far-away
harbours.
Mrs. Cheyne had spoken privately to the unaccountable Manuel in
the matter of Harvey's rescue. He seemed to have no desire for
money. Pressed hard, he said that he would take five dollars,
because he wanted to buy something for a girl. Otherwise-"How
shall I take money when I make so easy my eats and smokes? You
will giva some if I like or no? Eh, wha-at?. Then you shall giva me
money, but not that way. You shall giva all you can think." He
introduced her to a snuffy Portuguese priest with a list of semi-destitute
widows as long as his cassock. As a strict Unitarian, Mrs. Cheyne
could not sympathize with the creed, but she ended by respecting the
brown, voluble little man.
Manuel, faithful son of the Church, appropriated all the blessings
showered on her for her charity. "That letta me out," said he. "I
have now ver' good absolutions for six months"; and he strolled
forth to get a handkerchief for the girl of the hour and to break the
hearts of all the others.
Salters went West for a season with Penn, and left no address
behind. He had a dread that these mlllionary people, with wasteful
private cars, might take undue interest in his companion. It was
better to visit inland relatives till the coast was clear. "Never you
be adopted by rich folk, Penn," he said in the cars, "or I'll take 'n'
break this checker-board over your head. Ef you forgif your name
agin-which is Pratt-you remember you belong with Salters Troop,
an' set down right where you are till I come fer you. Don't go
taggin' araound after them whose eyes bung out with fatness,
accordin' to Scripcher."
CHAPTER X
But it was otherwise with the We're Here's silent cook, for he came
up, his kit in a handkerchief, and boarded the "Constance." Pay
was no particular object, and he did not in the least care where he
slept. His business, as revealed to him in dreams, was to follow
Harvey for the rest of his days. They tried argument and, at last,
persuasion; but there is a difference between one Cape Breton and
two Alabama negroes, and the matter was referred to Cheyne by
the cook and porter. The millionaire only laughed. He presumed
Harvey might need a body-servant some day or other, and was sure
that one volunteer was worth five hirelings. Let the man stay,
therefore; even though he called himself MacDonald and swore in
Gaelic. The car could go back to Boston, where, if he were still of
the same mind, they would take him West.
With the "Constance," which in his heart of hearts he loathed,
departed the last remnant of Cheyne's millionairedom, and he gave
himself up to an energetic idleness. This Gloucester was a new
town in a new land, and he purposed to "take it in," as of old he
had taken in all the cities from Snohomish to San Diego of that
world whence he hailed. They made money along the crooked
street which was half wharf and half ship's store: as a leading
professional he wished to learn how the noble game was played.
Men said that four out of every five fish-balls served at New
England's Sunday breakfast came from Gloucester, and
overwhelmed him with figures in proof-statistics of boats, gear,
wharf-frontage, capital invested, salting, packing, factories,
insurance, wages, repairs, and profits. He talked with the owners
of the large fleets whose skippers were little more than hired men,
and whose crews were almost all Swedes or Portuguese. Then he
conferred with Disko, one of the few who owned their craft, and
compared notes in his vast head. He coiled himself away on
chain-cables in marine junk-shops, asking questions with cheerful,
unslaked Western curiosity, till all the water-front wanted to know
"what in thunder that man was after, anyhow." He prowled into the
Mutual Insurance rooms, and demanded explanations of the mysterious
remarks chalked up on the blackboard day by day; and that brought
down upon him secretaries of every Fisherman's Widow and Orphan
Aid Society within the city limits. They begged shamelessly, each
man anxious to beat the other institution's record, and Cheyne
tugged at his beard and handed them all over to Mrs. Cheyne.
She was resting in a boarding-house near Eastern Point-a strange
establishment, managed, apparently, by the boarders, where the
table-cloths were red-and-white-checkered and the population,
who seemed to have known one another intimately for years, rose
up at midnight to make Welsh rarebits if it felt hungry. On the
second morning of her stay Mrs. Cheyne put away her diamond
solitaires before she came down to breakfast.
"They're most delightful people," she confided to her husband; "so
friendly and simple, too, though they are all Boston, nearly."
"That isn't simpleness, Mama," he said, looking across the
boulders behind the apple-trees where the hammocks were slung.
"It's the other thing, that w~that I haven't got."
"It can't be," said Mrs. Cheyne quietly. "There isn't a woman here
owns a dress that cost a hundred dollars. Why, we~"
"I know it, dear. We have~f course we have. I guess it's only the
style they wear East. Are you having a good time?"
"I don't see very much of Harvey; he's always with you; but I ain't
near as nervous as I was."
'7 haven't had such a good time since Willie died. I never rightly
understood that I had a son before this. Harve's got to be a great
boy. 'Anything I can fetch
140 Rudyard Kipling
you, dear? 'Cushion under your head? Well, we'll go down to the
wharf again and look around."
Harvey was his father's shadow in those days, and the two strolled
along side by side, Cheyne using the grades as an excuse for laying
his hand on the boy's square shoulder. It was then that Harvey
noticed and admired what had never struck him before-his father's
curious power of getting at the heart of new matters as learned
from men in the street.
"How d'you make 'em tell you everything without opening your
head?" demanded the son, as they came out of a rigger's loft.
"I've dealt with quite a few men In my time, Harve, and one sizes
'em up somehow, I guess. I know something about myself, too."
Then, after a pause, as they sat down on a wharf-edge: "Men can
'most always tell when a man has handled things for himself, and
then they treat him as one of themselves."
"Same as they treat me down at Wouverman's wharf. I'm one of the
crowd now. Disko has told every one I've earned my pay." Harvey
spread out his hands and rubbed the palms together. "They're all
soft again," he said dolefully.
"Keep 'em that way for the next few years, while you're getting
your education. You can harden 'em up after."
"Ye-es, I suppose so," was the reply, in no delighted voice.
"It rests with you, Harve. You can take cover behind your mama,
of course, and put her on to fussing about your nerves and your
high-strungness and all that kind of poppycock."
"Have I ever done that?" said Harvey, uneasily.
His father turned where he sat and thrust out a long hand. "You
know as well as I do that I can't make anything of you if you don't
act straight by me. I can handle you alone if you'll stay alone, but I
don't pretend to manage both you and Mama. Life's too short,
anyway."
"Don't make me out much of a fellow, does it?"
"I guess it was my fault a good deal; but if you want the truth, you
haven't been much of anything up to date. Now, have you?"
"Umm! Disko thinks . . . Say, what d'you reckon it's cost you to
raise me from the start-first, last and all over?"
Cheyne smiled. "I've never kept track, but I should estimate, in
dollars and cents, nearer fifty than forty thousand; maybe sixty.
The young generation comes high. It has to have things, and it tires
of 'em, and-the old man foots the bill."
Harvey whistled, but at heart he was rather pleased to think that
his upbringing had cost so much. "And all that's sunk capital, isn't
it?"
"Invested, Harve. Invested, I hope."
"Making it only thirty thousand, the thirty I've earned is about ten
cents on the hundred. That's a mighty poor catch." Harvey wagged
his head solemnly.
Cheyne laughed till he nearly fell off the pile into the water.
"Disko has got a heap more than that out of Dan since he was ten;
and Dan's at school half the year, too."
"Oh, that's what you're after, is it?"
"No. I'm not after anything. I'm not stuck on myself any just
now-that's all. . . . I ought to be kicked."
"I can't do it, old man; or I would, I presume, if I'd been made that
way."
"Then I'd have remembered it to the last day I lived-and never
forgiven you," said Harvey, his chin on his doubled fists.
"Exactly. That's about what I'd do. You see?"
"I see. The fault's with me and no one else. All the samey,
something's got to be done about it."
Cheyne drew a cigar from his vest-pocket, bit off the end, and fell
to smoking. Father and son were very much alike; for the beard hid
Cheyne's mouth, and Harvey had his father's slightly aquiline nose,
close-set black eyes, and narrow, high cheek-bones. With a touch
of brown paint he would have made up very picturesquely as a Red
Indian of the story-books.
"Now you can go on from here," said Cheyne, slowly, "costing me
between six or eight thousand a year till you're a voter. Well, we'll
call you a man then. You can go right on from that, living on me to
the tune of forty or fitty thousand, besides what your mother will
give you, with a valet and a yacht or a fancy-ranch where you can
pretend to raise trotting-stock and play cards with your own crowd."
"Like Lorry Tuck?" Harvey put in.
"Yep; or the two De Vitre boys or old man McQuade's son.
California's full of 'em, and here's an Eastern sample while we're
talking."
A shiny black steam-yacht, with mahogany deck-house,
nickel-plated binnacles, and pink-and-white-striped awnings
puffed up the harbour, flying the burgee of some New York club.
Two young men in what they conceived to be sea costumes were
playing cards by the saloon skylight; and a couple of women with
red and blue parasols looked on and laughed noisily.
"Shouldn't care to be caught out in her in any sort of a breeze. No
beam," said Harvey, critically, as the yacht slowed to pick up her
mooring-buoy.
"They're having what stands them for a good time. I can give you
that, and twice as much as that, Harve. How'd you like it?"
"Caesar! That's no way to get a dinghy overside," said Harvey, still
intent on the yacht. "If I couldn't slip a tackle better than that I'd
stay ashore. . . . What if I don't?"
"Stay ashore-or what?"
"Yacht and ranch and live on 'the old man,' and-get behind Mama
where there's trouble," said Harvey, with a twinkle in his eye.
"Why, in that case, you come right in with me, my son."
"Ten dollars a month?" Another twinkle.
"Not a cent more until you're worth it, and you won't begin to
touch that for a few years."
"I'd sooner begin sweeping out the office-isn't that how the big bugs
start?-and touch something now than .
"I know it; we all feel that way. But I guess we can hire any
sweeping we need. I made the same mistake myself of starting in
too soon."
"Thirty million dollars' worth o' mistake, wasn't it? I'd risk it for
that."
"I lost some; and I gained some. I'll tell you."
Cheyne pulled his beard and smiled as he looked over the still
water, and spoke away from Harvey, who presently began to be
aware that his father was telling the story of his life. He talked in a
low, even voice, without gesture and without expression; and it
was a history for which a dozen leading journals would cheerfully
have paid many dollars-the story of forty years that was at the
same time the story of the New West, whose story is yet to be
written.
It began with a kinless boy turned loose in Texas, and went on
fantastically through a hundred changes and chops of life, the
scenes shifting from State after Western State, from cities that
sprang up m a month and- in a season utterly withered away, to
wild ventures in wilder camps that are now laborious, paved
municipalities. It covered the building of three railroads and the
deliberate wreck of a fourth. It told of steamers, townships, forests,
and mines, and the men of every nation under heaven, manning,
creating, hewing, and digging these. It touched on chances of
gigantic wealth flung before eyes that could not see, or missed by
the merest accident of time and travel; and through the mad shift
of things, sometimes on horseback, more often afoot, now rich,
now poor, in and out, and back and forth, deck-hand, train-hand,
contractor, boarding-house keeper, journalist, engineer, drummer,
real-estate agent, politician, dead-beat, rum-seller, mine~owner,
speculator, cattle-man, or tramp, moved Harvey Cheyne, alert and
quiet, seeking his own ends, and, so he said, the glory and
advancement of his country.
He told of the faith that never deserted him even when he hung on
the ragged edge of despair-the faith that comes of knowing men
and things. He enlarged, as though he were talking to himself, on
his very great courage and resource at all times. The thing was so
evident in the man's mind that he never even changed his tone. He
described how he had bested his enemies, or forgiven them,
exactly as they had bested or forgiven him in those careless days;
how he had entreated, cajoled, and bullied towns, companies, and
syndicates, all for their enduring good; crawled round, through, or
under mountains and ravines, dragging a string and hoop-iron railroad
after him, and in the end, how he had sat still while promiscuous
communities tore the last fragments of his character to shreds.
The tale held Harvey almost breathless, his head a little cocked to
one side, his eyes fixed on his father's face, as the twilight
deepened and the red cigar-end lit up the furrowed cheeks and
heavy eyebrows. It seemed to him like watching a locomotive
storming across country in the dark-a mile between each glare of
the open fire-door: but this locomotive could talk, and the words
shook and stirred the boy to the core of his soul. At last Cheyne
pitched away the cigar-butt, and the two sat in the dark over the
lapping water.
"I've never told that to any one before,"said the father.
Harvey gasped. "It's just the greatest thing that ever was!" said he.
"That's what I got. Now I'm coming to what I didn't get. It won't
sound much of anything to you, but I don't wish you to be as old as
I am before you find out. I can handle men, of course, and I'm no
fool along my own lines, but-but-I can't compete with the man who
has been taught! I've picked up as I went along, and I guess it
sticks out all over me."
"I've never seen it," said the son, indignantly.
"You will, though, Harve. You will-just as soon as you're through
college. Don't I know it? Don't I know the look on men's faces
when they think me a-a 'mucker,' as they call it out here? I can
break them to little pieces-yes-but I can't get back at 'em to hurt
'em where they live. I don't say they're 'way 'way up, but I feel I'm
'way, 'way, 'way off, somehow. Now you've got your chance.
You've got to soak up all the learning that's around, and you'll live
with a crowd that are doing the same thing. They'll be doing it for
a few thousand dollars a year at most; but remember you'll be
doing it for millions. You'll learn law enough to look after your
own property when I'm out o' the light, and you'll have to be solid
with the best men in the market (they are useful later); and above
all, you'll have to stow away the plain, common, sit-down-with-your
chin-on your-elbows book-learning. Nothing pays like that, Harve,
and it's bound to pay more and more each year in our country-in
business and in politics. You'll see."
"There's no sugar in my end of the deal," said Harvey. "Four years
at college! 'Wish I'd chosen the valet and the yacht!"
"Never mind, my son," Cheyne insisted. "You're investing your
capital where it'll bring in the best returns; and I guess you won't
find our property shrunk any when you're ready to take hold. Think
it over, and let me know in the morning. Hurry! We'll be late for
supper!"
As this was a business talk, there was no need for Harvey to tell his
mother about it; and Cheyne naturally took the same point of view.
But Mrs. Cheyne saw and feared, and was a little jealous. Her boy,
who rode rough-shod over her, was gone, and in his stead reigned a
keen-faced youth, abnormally silent, who addressed most of his
conversation to his father. She understood it was business, and
therefore a matter beyond her premises. If she had any doubts, they
were resolved when Cheyne went to Boston and brought back a
new diamond marquise ring.
"What have you two been doing now?" she said, with a weak little
smile, as she turned it in the light.
"Talking-just talking, Mama; there's nothing mean about Harvey."
There was not. The boy had made a treaty on his own account.
Railroads, he explained gravely, interested him as little as lumber,
real estate, or mining. What his soul yearned alter was control of
his father's newly purchased sailing-ship. If that could be promised
him within what he conceived to be a reasonable time, he, for his
part, guaranteed diligence and sobriety at college for four or five
years. In vacation he was to be allowed full access to all details
connected with the lin~he had not asked more than two thousand
questions about it,-from his father's most private papers in the safe
to the tug in San Francisco harbour.
"It's a deal," said Cheyne at the last. "You'll alter your mind twenty
times before you leave college, o' course; but if you take hold of it
in proper shape, and if you don't tie it up before you're twenty-three,
I'll make the thing over to you. How's that, Harve?"
"Nope; never pays to split up a going concern. There's too much
competition in the world anyway, and Disko says 'blood-kin hev to
stick together.' His crowd never go back on him. That's one reason,
he says, why they make such big fares. Say, the We're Here goes
off to the Georges on Monday. They don't stay long ashore, do
they?"
"Well, we ought to be going, too, I guess. I've left my business
hung up at loose ends between two oceans, and it's time to connect
again. I just hate to do it, though; haven't had a holiday like this for
twenty years."
"We can't go without seeing Disko off," said Harvey; "and
Monday's Memorial Day. Let's stay over that, anyway."
"What is this memorial business? They were talking about it at the
boarding-house," said Cheyne weakly. He, too, was not anxious to
spoil the golden days.
"Well, as far as I can make out, this business is a sort of
song-and-dance act, whacked up for the summer boarders. Disko
don't think much of it, he says, because they take up a collection
for the widows and orphans. Disko's independent. Haven't you
noticed that?"
"Well-yes. A little. In spots. Is it a town show, then?"
"The summer convention is. They read out the names of the
fellows drowned or gone astray since last time, and they make
speeches, and recite, and all. Then, Disko says, the secretaries of
the Aid Societies go into the back yard and fight over the catch.
The real show, he says, is in the spring. The ministers all take a
hand then, and there aren't any summer boarders around."
"I see," said Cheyne, with the brilliant and perfect comprehension
of one born into and bred up to city pride. "We'll stay over for
Memorial Day, and get off in the afternoon."
"Guess I'll go down to Disko's and make him bring his crowd up
before they sail. I'll have to stand with them, of course."
"Oh, that's it, is it," said Cheyne. "I'm only a poor summer boarder,
and you're----"
"A Banker-full-blooded Banker," Harvey called back as he boarded
a trolley, and Cheyne Went on with his blissful dreams for the
future.
Disko had no use for public functions where appeals were made
for charity, but Harvey pleaded that the glory of the day would be
lost, so far as he was concerned, if the We're Heres absented
themselves. Then Disko made conditions. He had heard-it was
astonishing how all the world knew all the world's business along
the water-front-he had heard that a "Philadelphia actress-woman"
was going to take part in the exercises; and he mistrusted that she
would deliver "Skipper Ireson's Ride." Personally, he had as little
use for actresses as for summer boarders; but justice was justice,
and though he himself (here Dan giggled) had once slipped up on
a matter of judgment, this thing must not be. So Harvey came back
to East Gloucester, and spent half a day explaining to an amused
actress with a royal reputation on two seaboards the inwardness of
the mistake she contemplated; and she admitted that it was justice,
even as Disko had said.
Cheyne knew by old experience what would happen; but anything
of the nature of a public palaver as meat and drink to the man's
soul. He saw the trolleys hurrying west, in the hot, hazy morning,
full of women in light summer dresses, and white-faced
straw-hatted men fresh from Boston desks; the stack of bicycles
outside the post~office; the come-and-go of busy officials, greeting
one another; the slow flick and swash of bunting in the heavy air;
and the important man with a hose sluicing the brick sidewalk.
"Mother," he said suddenly, "don't you remember-after Seattle was
burned out-and they got her going again?"
Mrs. Cheyne nodded, and looked critically down the crooked street
Like her husband, she understood these gatherings, all the West
over, and compared them one against another. The fishermen
began to mingle with the crowd about the town-hall doors-blue-
jowled Portuguese, their women bare-headed or shawled for the
most part; clear-eyed Nova Scotians, and men of the Maritime
Provinces; French, Italians, Swedes, and Danes, with outside crews
of coasting schooners; and everywhere women in black, who
saluted one another with gloomy pride, for this was their day of
great days. And there were ministers of many creeds ,-pastors of
great, gilt-edged congregations, at the seaside for a rest, with
shepherds of the regular work,-from the priests of the Church on
the Hill to bush-bearded ex-sailor Lutherans, hail-fellow with the
men of a score of boats. There were owners of lines of schooners,
large contributors to the societies, and small men, their few craft
pawned to the mastheads, with bankers and marine-insurance
agents, captains of tugs and water-boats, riggers, fitters, lumpers,
salters, boat-builders, and coopers, and all the mixed population of
the water-front.
They drifted along the line of seats made gay with the dresses of
the summer boarders, and one of the town officials patrolled and
perspired till he shone all over with pure civic pride. Cheyne had
met him for five minutes a few days before, and between the two
there was entire understanding.
"Well, Mr. Cheyne, and what d'you think of our city? -Yes,
madam, you can sit anywhere you please.-You have this kind of
thing out West, I presume?"
"Yes, but we aren't as old as you."
"That's so, of course. You ought to have been at the exercises when
we celebrated our two hundred and fiftieth birthday. I tell you, Mr.
Cheyne, the old city did herself credit."
"So I heard. It pays, too. What's the matter with the town that it
don't have a first-class hotel, though?"
"-Bight over there to the left, Pedro. Heaps o' room for you and
your crowd.-Why, that's what I tell 'em all the time, Mr. Cheyne.
There's big money in it, but I presume that don't affect you any.
What we want is
A heavy hand fell on his broadcloth shoulder, and the flushed
skipper of a Portland coal-and-ice coaster spun him half round.
"What in thunder do you fellows mean by clappin' the law on the
town when all decent men are at sea this way? Heh? Town's dry as
a bone, an' smells a sight worse sence I quit. 'Might ha' left us one
saloon for soft drinks, anyway."
"Don't seem to have hindered your nourishment this morning,
Carsen. I'll go into the politics of it later. Sit down by the door and
think over your arguments till I come back."
"What good is arguments to me? In Miquelon champagne's
eighteen dollars a case and---" The skipper lurched into his seat
as an organ-prelude silenced him.
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