Warm weather and the real opening of the season arrived at the same
time. The Camp hummed with the activities and the voices of people. And
it became possible for the Darlings to withdraw a little into their
shells and lead more of a family life. As Maud said:
"When there were more proprietors than guests, we simply had to sail in
and give the guests a good time. But now that the business is in full
blast, we mustn't be amateurs any more."
Langham, Renier, and the future Earl of Merrivale remained, of course,
upon their well-established footing of companionship, but the Darlings
began to play their parts of innkeepers with the utmost seriousness and
to fight shy of any social advances from the ranks of their guests.
Indeed, for the real heads of the family, Mary, Maud, and Eve, there was
serious work to be done. For, to keep thirty or forty exigent and
extravagant people well fed, well laundered, well served, and well
amused is no frisky skirmish but a morning-to-night battle, a constant
looking ahead, a steady drain upon the patience and invention.
In Sam Langham Mary found an invaluable ally. He knew how to live, and
could guess to a nicety the "inner man" of another. Nor did he stop at
advice. Being a celebrated _bon viveur_ he went subtly among the guests
and praised the machinery of whose completed product they were the
consumers and the beneficiaries. He knew of no place, he confided, up
and down the whole world, where, for a sum of money, you got exactly
what you wanted without asking for it.
"Take me for an example," he would say. "I have never before been able
to get along without my valet. Here he would be a superfluity. I am
'done,' you may say, better than I have ever been able to do myself. And
I know what I'm talking about. What! You think the prices are really
rather high. Think what you are getting, man--think!"
Among the new guests was a young man from Boston by the name of Herring.
He had written that he was convalescing from typhoid fever and that his
doctor had prescribed Adirondack air.
Renier knew Herring slightly and vouched for him.
"They're good people," he said, "his branch of the Herring family--the
'red Herrings' they are called locally--if we may speak of Boston as a
'locality'--he's the reddest of them and the most showy. If there's
anything he hasn't tried, he has to try it. He isn't good at things. But
he does them. He's the fellow that went to the Barren Lands with a
niblick. What, you never heard of that stunt? He was playing in foursome
at Myopia. He got bunkered. He hit the sand a prodigious blow and the
ball never moved. His partner said: 'Never mind, Syd, you hit hard
enough to kill a musk-ox.'
"'Did I?' said Herring, much interested, 'but I never heard of killing a
musk-ox with a niblick. Has it ever been done? Are there any authorities
one might consult?'
"His partner assured him that 'it' had never been done. Herring said
that was enough for him. The charm of Herring is that he never smiles;
he's deadly serious--or pretends to be. When they had holed out at the
eighteenth, Herring took his niblick and said: 'Well, so long. I'm off
to the Barren Lands.'
"They bet him there and then that he would neither go to the Barren
Lands nor kill a musk-ox when he got there. He took their bets, which
were large. And he went to the Barren Lands, armed only with his niblick
and a camera. But he didn't kill a musk-ox. He said they came right up
to be photographed, and he hadn't the heart to strike. He brought back
plenty enough pictures to prove where he'd been, but no musk-ox. He
aimed at one tentatively but at the last moment held his hand. 'He
remembered suddenly,' he said, 'that he had never killed anything, and
didn't propose to begin.' So he came home and paid one bet and pocketed
the other. He can't shoot; he can't fish; he can't row. He's a perfect
dub, but he's got the soul of a Columbus."
"Something tells me," said Pritchard, "that I shall like him."
Herring, having arrived and registered and been shown his rooms, was not
thereafter seen to speak to anybody for two whole days. As a matter of
fact, though, he held some conversation with Renier, whom he had met
before.
"It's just Boston," Renier explained. "They're the best people in the
world--when--well, not when you get to know them but when they get to
know you. Give him time and he will blossom."
"He looks like a blossom already," said Lee. "He looks at a little
distance like a gigantic plant of scarlet salvia, or a small maple-tree
in October."
Upon the third day Mr. Herring came out of his shell, as had been
prophesied. He went about asking guests and guides, with almost
plaintive seriousness, questions which they were unable to answer. He
began to make friends with Pritchard and Langham. He solemnly presented
Arthur with a baseball that had figured in a Yale-Harvard game. Then he
got himself introduced to Lee.
"You guide, don't you?" he said.
"I have guided," she said, "but I don't. It was only in the beginning of
things when there weren't enough real guides to go around. But, surely
you don't need a guide. You've been to the Barren Lands and all sorts of
wild places. You ought to be a first-class woodsman."
"I thought I'd like to go fishing to-morrow," he said. "It's very
disappointing. I've looked forward all my life to being guided by a
young girl, and when I saw you, I said, if this isn't she, this is her
living image."
"You shall have Bullard," said Lee. "He knows all the best places."
Herring complained to Arthur. "Your sisters," he said, "are said to be
the best guides in the Adirondacks, but they won't take me out. How is
a fellow to convalesce from typhoid if people aren't unfailingly kind to
him?"
Arthur laughed, and said that he didn't know.
"Let me guide you," he offered.
"No," said Herring, "it isn't that I want to be guided. It's that I want
the experience of being guided by a girl. I want to lean back and be
rowed."
Herring walked in the woods and came upon Phyllis's garden, with Phyllis
in the midst of it.
"Halloo again!" he said.
Now it so happened that he had never seen Phyllis before.
She straightened from a frame of baby lettuce and smiled. She loved
bright colors, and his flaming hair was becoming to her garden.
"Halloo again!" she said.
"Have you changed your mind?" he asked.
She sparred for time and enlightenment and said:
"It's against all the rules."
"We could," said he, "start so early that nobody would know. I have
often gotten up at five."
"So have I," said Phyllis wistfully.
"We could be back before breakfast."
Phyllis appeared to think the matter over.
"Of course," he said, "you said you wouldn't. But if girls didn't change
their minds, they wouldn't be girls."
"That," said Phyllis, "is perfectly true."
To herself she said:
"He's asked Lee or Gay to guide him, and thinks he's asked me."
Now, Phyllis was not good with oars or fishing-tackle, but she liked
Herring's hair and the fact that he never smiled. Furthermore, she
believed that, if the worst came to the worst, she could find some of
the places where people sometimes took trout.
"I have never," said Herring, "been guided by a young girl."
"What, never!" exclaimed Phyllis.
"Never," he said. "And I am sure that it would work wonders for me."
"Such as?"
"It might lead me to take an interest in gardening. I have always hoped
that I should some day."
"People," thought Phyllis, "interested in gardening are rare--especially
beautiful young gentlemen with flaming hair. Here is my chance to
slaughter two birds with one stone."
"You'll swear not to tell?" she exhorted.
"Yes," he said, "but not here. Soon. When I am alone." He did not smile.
"Then," she said, "be at the float at five-thirty sharp."
That night she sought out Lee and Gay.
"Such a joke," she said. "I've promised to guide Mr. Herring--to-morrow
at five-thirty, but he thinks that it's one of you two who has promised.
Now, as I don't row or fish, one of you will have to take my place for
the credit of the family."
But her sisters were laughing in their sleeves.
"My dear girl," said Gay, "why the dickens didn't you tell us sooner? We
also have made positive engagements at five-thirty to-morrow morning."
"What engagements?" exclaimed Phyllis.
Gay leaned close and whispered confidentially.
"We've made positive engagements," she said, "to sleep till breakfast
time."