THE SENTENCE
Even the powers that be at Temple Camp were considerate of Hervey. They
did not dismiss him as they might have done after any one of his unruly
escapades. They bided their time, and as the season approached its end
they became the more lenient. There was something ominous about their
leniency; a kind of grimness about the way Mr. Benson greeted our hero
upon his return after an all night absence. “Well, my boy, did you have
a good time?” he asked with portentous cordiality.
Hervey was too guileless to read the handwriting on the wall. Another
boy, conscious of his own delinquencies, would have recognized this
sudden immunity from reprimand as too good to be true. But Hervey
accepted it as in the natural order of things. He had never resented
reprimands; he had ignored and forgotten them. He bore nobody any
malice, not even the trustees. He went upon his way rejoicing. If he had
any thought about the management at all, it was probably that it had at
last come round to his own way of thinking. But probably he had no
thought about these things at all.
Then came the end of the season with its boat races and swimming matches
and distribution of awards. Against the background of these honors and
festivities, Hervey seemed a lonely figure. But he was not lonely. It
was his fate to arouse much sympathy which he neither deserved nor
desired. There was really nothing pathetic about his being an outsider
at camp. It was the camp that was the outsider, not Hervey.
Yet there _was_ a certain pity expressed for him when little Harold
Titus, the tenderfoot office boy from Administration Shack, came running
down to the diving board where Hervey had condescended to grace a
loitering group with his presence. These idle, bantering groups bespoke
the closing of the season; they were significant of diminishing numbers
and the end of pleasurable routine.
“You’re wanted in the office, Hervey Willetts,” Harold panted. “You got
to go up there right away.” Perhaps the breathless little tenderfoot
felt a certain pride of triumph that he had been able to locate Hervey
at all; it was a sort of scout stunt. Significant glances passed between
the loiterers as Hervey departed.
He ambled in that way he had made familiar to all toward the somewhat
pretentious rustic bungalow where the business of Temple Camp was
conducted. He seemed never to proceed with any purpose; there was
something delightfully casual about him. He was a natural born explorer.
A secreted, chirping cricket could detain him, and on this occasion he
paused and accommodatingly laid his trusty stick against the ground so
that an aimless caterpillar might ascend it.
The small tenderfoot glanced back, aghast at Hervey’s leisurely progress
toward his doom. “You better hurry up, it’s serious,” he called. And,
imbued with a sense of his responsibility, he waited while our hero shot
the caterpillar up into the foliage by a dextrous snap of his stick.
His ambling progress bringing him to Administration Shack, Hervey
conceived the novel idea of ascending the steps on one leg. The
tenderfoot messenger was appalled by the delay and by Hervey’s thus
casually pulling a stunt at the very portal of the holy sanctum.
There being several steps, Hervey found his bizarre ascent difficult,
but his resolution increased with repeated failures. He often made use
of a couplet which had detained him many times and interfered with the
camp schedule:
Start a stunt and then get stuck,
Twenty days you’ll have bad luck.
He was so engrossed with this present acrobatic enterprise (to the
unspeakable dismay of the little boy who had summoned him) that he did
not at first perceive Councilor Wainwright standing in the doorway
smiling down upon him. Indeed he was not aware of the councilor until,
triumphant, he hopped breathless into the official’s very arms. The
tenderfoot was appalled.
“Well, you succeeded, Hervey?” Mr. Wainwright commented pleasantly.
“Suppose we step inside. I see you never give up.”
“When I start to do a thing, I do it,” said Hervey.
“Only sometimes you start to do the wrong things,” the councilor
commented sociably. “Well, Hervey,” he added, dropping into a chair and
inviting the boy to do the same, “here we are at the end of the season.
How many rules do you suppose you’ve broken, Hervey?”
“I don’t like a lot of those rules,” said Hervey.
“No, I know you don’t,” laughed Mr. Wainwright, “but you see this isn’t
your camp. If you want to have rules of your own you ought to have a
camp of your own.”
“That’s true, too,” said Hervey.
“You see, Hervey, the trouble is you don’t seem to fit. You’re not bad;
I never heard of you doing anything very bad. But you don’t seem to work
in harness. You’re pretty hard to handle.”
“You don’t have to handle me, because I’m not around so much,” said
Hervey.
“Well, now, my boy,” Mr. Wainwright pursued in a way of coming to the
point, “of course, this kind of thing can’t go on. There have been a
dozen occasions this season when you might have been--when you _ought_
to have been summarily expelled. That this wasn’t done speaks well for
your disposition. It’s surprising how well you are liked by those who
seldom see you. I suppose it’s what you might call the triumph of
personality.”
Here was a glowing truth. And because it _was_ true, because he really
did have a certain elusive charm, Hervey seemed baffled at this
declaration of his own quaint attractiveness. He did not know what a
hard job poor Mr. Wainwright was having trying to pronounce sentence.
“A fellow wanted to hike to Westboro with me yesterday,” said Hervey,
“but I told him he’d better ask the keepers; I wouldn’t get any fellow
in trouble--nix on that.”
“But you got yourself in trouble.”
“That’s different,” said Hervey.