Boy Scout, Page 2

gas-stove and a kitchen, the choice was difficult.

  "We've got to cool off somehow," the young husband was saying, "or youwon't sleep. Shall we treat ourselves to ice-cream sodas or a trip onthe Weehawken ferry-boat?"

  "The ferry-boat!" begged the girl, "where we can get away from all thesepeople."

  A taxicab with a trunk in front whirled into the street, kicked itselfto a stop, and the head clerk and Millie spilled out upon the pavement.They talked so fast, and the younger brother and Grace talked so fast,that the boarders, although they listened intently, could make nothingof it.

  They distinguished only the concluding sentences:

  "Why don't you drive down to the wharf with us," they heard the elderbrother ask, "and see our royal suite?"

  But the younger brother laughed him to scorn.

  "What's your royal suite," he mocked, "to our royal palace?"

  An hour later, had the boarders listened outside the flat of the headclerk, they would have heard issuing from his bathroom the coolingmurmur of running water and from his gramophone the jubilant notes of"Alexander's Ragtime Band."

  When in his private office Carroll was making a present of the royalsuite to the head clerk, in the main office Hastings, the juniorpartner, was addressing "Champ" Thorne, the bond clerk. He addressed himfamiliarly and affectionately as "Champ." This was due partly to thefact that twenty-six years before Thorne had been christened Champneysand to the coincidence that he had captained the football eleven of oneof the Big Three to the championship.

  "Champ," said Mr. Hastings, "last month, when you asked me to raiseyour salary, the reason I didn't do it was not because you didn'tdeserve it, but because I believed if we gave you a raise you'dimmediately get married."

  The shoulders of the ex-football captain rose aggressively; he snortedwith indignation.

  "And why should I _not_ get married?" he demanded. "You're a fine one totalk! You're the most offensively happy married man I ever met."

  "Perhaps I know I am happy better than you do," reproved the juniorpartner; "but I know also that it takes money to support a wife."

  "You raise me to a hundred a week," urged Champ, "and I'll make itsupport a wife whether it supports me or not."

  "A month ago," continued Hastings, "we could have _promised_ you ahundred, but we didn't know how long we could pay it. We didn't wantyou to rush off and marry some fine girl----"

  "Some fine girl!" muttered Mr. Thorne. "The Finest Girl!"

  "The finer the girl," Hastings pointed out, "the harder it would havebeen for you if we had failed and you had lost your job."

  The eyes of the young man opened with sympathy and concern.

  "Is it as bad as that?" he murmured.

  Hastings sighed happily.

  "It _was_," he said, "but this morning the Young Man of Wall Street didus a good turn--saved us--saved our creditors, saved our homes, savedour honor. We're going to start fresh and pay our debts, and we agreedthe first debt we paid would be the small one we owe you. You've broughtus more than we've given, and if you'll stay with us we're going to'see' your fifty and raise it a hundred. What do you say?"

  Young Mr. Thorne leaped to his feet. What he said was: "Where'n hell'smy hat?"

  But by the time he had found the hat and the door he mended his manners.

  "I say, 'thank you a thousand times,'" he shouted over his shoulder."Excuse me, but I've got to go. I've got to break the news to----"

  He did not explain to whom he was going to break the news; but Hastingsmust have guessed, for again he sighed happily and then, a littlehysterically, laughed aloud. Several months had passed since he hadlaughed aloud.

  In his anxiety to break the news Champ Thorne almost broke his neck. Inhis excitement he could not remember whether the red flash meant theelevator was going down or coming up, and sooner than wait to find outhe started to race down eighteen flights of stairs when fortunately theelevator-door swung open.

  "You get five dollars," he announced to the elevator man, "if you dropto the street without a stop. Beat the speed limit! Act like thebuilding is on fire and you're trying to save me before the rooffalls."

  Senator Barnes and his entire family, which was his daughter Barbara,were at the Ritz-Carlton. They were in town in August because there wasa meeting of the directors of the Brazil and Cuyaba Rubber Company, ofwhich company Senator Barnes was president. It was a secret meeting.Those directors who were keeping cool at the edge of the ocean had beensummoned by telegraph; those who were steaming across the ocean, bywireless.

  Up from the equator had drifted the threat of a scandal, sickening,grim, terrible. As yet it burned beneath the surface, giving out onlyan odor, but an odor as rank as burning rubber itself. At any moment itmight break into flame. For the directors, was it the better wisdom tolet the scandal smoulder, and take a chance, or to be the first to givethe alarm, the first to lead the way to the horror and stamp it out?

  It was to decide this that, in the heat of August, the directors and thepresident had foregathered.

  Champ Thorne knew nothing of this; he knew only that by a miracleBarbara Barnes was in town; that at last he was in a position to askher to marry him; that she would certainly say she would. That was allhe cared to know.

  A year before he had issued his declaration of independence. Before hecould marry, he told her, he must be able to support a wife on what heearned, without her having to accept money from her father, and untilhe received "a minimum wage" of five thousand dollars they must wait.

  "What is the matter with my father's money?" Barbara had demanded.

  Thorne had evaded the direct question.

  "There is too much of it," he said.

  "Do you object to the way he makes it?" insisted Barbara. "Becauserubber is most useful. You put it in golf balls and auto tires andgaloches. There is nothing so perfectly respectable as galoches. Andwhat is there 'tainted' about a raincoat."

  Thorne shook his head unhappily.

  "It's not the finished product to which I refer," he stammered; "it'sthe way they get the raw material."

  "They get it out of trees," said Barbara. Then she exclaimed withenlightenment--"Oh!" she cried, "you are thinking of the Congo. There itis terrible! _That_ is slavery. But there are no slaves on the Amazon.The natives are free and the work is easy. They just tap the trees theway the farmers gather sugar in Vermont. Father has told me about itoften."

  Thorne had made no comment. He could abuse a friend, if the friend wereamong those present, but denouncing any one he disliked as heartily ashe disliked Senator Barnes was a public service he preferred to leave toothers. And he knew besides that, if the father she loved and the manshe loved distrusted each other, Barbara would not rest until shelearned the reason why.

  One day, in a newspaper, Barbara read of the Puju Mayo atrocities, ofthe Indian slaves in the jungles and back waters of the Amazon, who areoffered up as sacrifices to "red rubber." She carried the paper to herfather. What it said, her father told her, was untrue, and if it weretrue it was the first he had heard of it.

  Senator Barnes loved the good things of life, but the thing he lovedmost was his daughter; the thing he valued the highest was her goodopinion. So when for the first time she looked at him in doubt, heassured her he at once would order an investigation.

  "But, of course," he added, "it will be many months before our agentscan report. On the Amazon news travels very slowly."

  In the eyes of his daughter the doubt still lingered.

  "I am afraid," she said, "that that is true."

  That was six months before the directors of the Brazil and Cuyaba RubberCompany were summoned to meet their president at his rooms in theRitz-Carlton. They were due to arrive in half an hour, and while SenatorBarnes awaited their coming Barbara came to him. In her eyes was a lightthat helped to tell the great news. It gave him a sharp, jealous pang.He wanted at once to play a part in her happiness, to make her gratefulto him, not alone to this stranger who was taking her away. So fearfulwas he t
hat she would shut him out of her life that had she asked forhalf his kingdom he would have parted with it.

  "And besides giving my consent," said the rubber king, "for which no oneseems to have asked, what can I give my little girl to make her rememberher old father? Some diamonds to put on her head, or pearls to hangaround her neck, or does she want a vacant lot on Fifth Avenue?"

  The lovely hands of Barbara rested upon his shoulders; her lovely facewas raised to his; her lovely eyes were appealing, and a littlefrightened.

  "What would one of those things cost?"