TELLING THE MAGNATE
IT wasn’t a real announcement party, Babe explained carefully.
“Only a private view,” suggested Madeline, “which is not to be so much
as mentioned until Babe gives the word.”
Meanwhile Babe, who had no serious doubts of the continued approval
of her family--she had basked in it unquestioned ever since she could
remember--wrote a long letter home and spent her last days in Paris in
the garden with John and Virginie.
“You ought to be making a specialty of a trousseau,” Babbie told her
severely. “May be you’re not going to be married for a whole year, but
just the same there are lots of things you can get here much better
than at home.”
But Babe refused to be diverted to shopping excursions. “I prefer
fiancés for my dominant interest,” she said. “They’re much less
wearing. Besides you’ve all given me such lovely engagement presents.
My trousseau will have a Parisian touch from them.”
Mr. Jasper J. Morton was automobiling furiously through Germany. He
wired Babe to remind her of the boat-race and to invite her whole party
and John and Mr. Dwight to be his guests; but he gave no address, so
John finally tore up the long letter he had written, deciding to tell
his news in person when he and his father met in London.
A day or two after the going-away party Madeline appeared at breakfast
in her traveling suit.
“My trunk has gone,” she announced, “and my carry-all-and-more-too is
strapped as neatly as its bursting condition will permit. And the man
servant has gone to hunt me a cab. Tell you sooner? If I had, you’d
have persuaded me to stay a day longer. Don’t deny it, Betty Wales; I
see it in your eye.”
“But you’ll be back in New York in time to start the tea-room?”
inquired Babbie anxiously.
Madeline laughed. “If I don’t come, you may have all the ideas, Babbie
dear, and I promise not to open a rival establishment. Father is
thinking of a winter in Egypt, and I’ve ‘stayed put’ at Harding so long
that it sounds very tempting indeed. But so does a tea-room. I’ll write
you when I decide. Good-bye. No, I hate to have people come to the
train with me.”
And Madeline was off on her long journey, blithely confident that
each new experience in life is amusing, if only you expect it to be
and waste no time in regretting such sad necessities as missing a
Harvard-Cambridge race that you would give the world, if you had it, to
see.
The others crossed to London the day before the great event. Billy
Benson met them joyously at the station.
“Sold my Bond Street clothes,” he announced, “for just what they cost
me, to a nice little chap on the Harvard subs. Told him he’d need ’em
for the celebrations after the race. Didn’t tell him that I was down to
my last little express check. How are you people going to see the race?”
John explained, and Billy chuckled. “Bet I’ve seen your father. He was
down at the American Express Offices this morning trying to buy up the
boat they’ve advertised as especially for American spectators. Said
he’d pay whatever they liked if they’d refund the money on the tickets
they’d already sold and let him have the whole thing for his party. But
they wouldn’t do it--couldn’t, of course. He was in an awful rage.”
John and the girls laughed at the description, and Mrs. Hildreth
despatched John in haste to his father’s hotel to explain that such
magnificent accommodations were quite unnecessary. Jasper J. Morton was
still peppery over his defeat.
“Boats are all partly sold; desirable anchorages all taken. Nothing
to do but scramble aboard with the rest of the crowd. Maybe the girls
don’t mind it; I do. When I ask ladies to go to a boat-race, I want to
do the thing up properly.”
John decided that the time was not propitious for making his
announcement, but led up to it gently by suggesting that dinner at one
of the big hotels on the Embankment would be a luxurious enough ending
to the afternoon’s pleasures to make the girls forget any slight
discomfort they had experienced earlier in the day.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Mr. Morton admitted grudgingly. “Something in
the nature of a celebration of Harvard’s victory, I suppose you mean.
The London papers don’t seem to think we’ll win, but of course they’re
prejudiced. I hope those Harvard fellows haven’t come all this distance
just to show the English that Americans can’t row, eh?”
“Benson thinks they have a chance,” John said, and repeated Billy’s
lively account of the crew’s practice records. “But if we don’t win,”
he added tentatively, “we can celebrate something else.”
Jasper J. Morton sniffed scornfully. “The Harvard spirit and a good
race and all that? No sir, a defeat is a defeat. If we lose, there’ll
be nothing whatever to celebrate. Don’t let me hear you talking any
nonsense of that sort. A man who means to succeed in business mustn’t
get himself muddled about success and failure. Be a good loser if you
have to; but don’t you ever boast about it, or celebrate it.”
So John’s mild effort to introduce the subject of his engagement
proved futile, and he decided to wait till morning. But morning found
Mr. Morton spinning out to Windsor in his car, because some one at
his hotel had told him that it would be madness to go back to America
without seeing the finest royal residence in England.
“And when I got there this wasn’t a day when it’s open to the public,”
he explained to Mrs. Hildreth on the wharf, with a stoicism born of
despair. “Well, if I live till to-morrow, I shall be on my way to a
country where I’m glad to say that sightseeing isn’t the main business
of life. Where’s your crimson streamer, Miss B. A.? You promised me a
bow, didn’t you?” He turned to Babe, who blushed so red, as she pinned
on the crimson rosette, that if he hadn’t been watching so impatiently
for the boat, he would have guessed her happy secret and saved John an
anxious afternoon.
“For if we lose,” John confided solemnly to Babe, “my father will
be in a horrible temper this evening. And if I wait and tell him on
shipboard, he won’t like my doing that. And if he’s huffy about it to
begin with, he’ll never really like it.”
Betty was standing apart from the others, talking to Mr. Morton, who
forgot to look at his watch and mutter that they should be late for
the race after all their trouble, as he watched her bright face and
listened to the story she was telling.
“Wish she’d break the news to him,” said John, gloomily.
“I do, too. I’ll ask her,” volunteered Babe; and as their boat touched
the wharf just then, and the rush for good places tossed them together,
she did.
But Betty only laughed at her. “Babe, dear, you’re absurd. Run right up
to him, the two of you, and have it over. He’ll be awfully pleased. But
there’d be no sense at all in my telling him.”
“Yes, there would be, too,” protested John, who had come up behind
them. “I’m sorry for you, Miss Wales, but it’s your destiny. You
shouldn’t have such a magic influence on my father’s feelings if you
don’t want to exert it. Having benevolent adventures for your special
line, you’ve got to live up to the responsibilities involved.”
“But I didn’t choose that for my specialty,” Betty persisted. “The
girls just gave it to me.”
“It’s just like a ‘Merry Heart’ election,” declared Babe solemnly. “If
Harvard loses this race, you are elected to tell. There’s no getting
out of an election, you know.”
Babe wriggled in between two portly Englishmen, pounced upon a
desirable group of chairs, sat down in one, and smoothed out her huge
crimson bow with the air of happy irresponsibility that had won her her
sobriquet at Harding.
With Mr. Morton between her and Babe, and John at the other end of the
group, there was nothing for Betty to do but wait patiently for another
chance to remonstrate with “those silly children.” For she quite agreed
with them that it would be very foolish indeed to delay telling Mr.
Morton any longer. He would naturally feel hurt to think that John had
let his friends and Babe’s into the secret, but had kept his father
outside the charmed circle of intimates. It would put them back upon
the old footing of distrust and misunderstanding.
It seemed as if everybody in London was in a boat on the river that
afternoon, or hanging over one of the bridges, or waving energetically
from one of the banks. All along the course these were black with
people, and beside them, crowded boats fairly jostled one another at
anchor. “The Siren” steamed up almost to the finish line before she
came to her allotted station, and John explained, on Billy Benson’s
authority, that even if they couldn’t see the actual finish, they could
be practically certain that whoever had the lead here would win the
race.
“It’s simply got to be Harvard,” said Babbie vigorously, and then
suddenly noticing that outside of their own party everybody on board
was wearing the English colors, she laughed. “I suppose we ought to be
willing to be disappointed, because there aren’t so many of us--only a
few hundreds in all these millions of English people.”
“If the Harvard crew has come all this way only to lose,” began Mr.
Morton testily, and then looked at Betty and laughed. “That’s just like
me, isn’t it, Miss B. A.? Always looking on the dark side of things,
eh? Always ranting about things going wrong?”
Betty laughed and her eyes danced mischievously as she looked from Babe
to John. “Never mind the race,” she began impulsively. If she told, she
certainly had a right to choose her own time. “We’ve got something to
tell you that will make you forget there is a race. Whether or not the
Harvard crew wins, the Harvard man you are most interested in has won
the biggest kind of a race--no, not a race exactly,”--Betty stumbled
over her metaphors,--“but, well, the thing he wanted.”
“The Harvard man I’m most interested in,” repeated Mr. Morton blankly.
“That’s John. What’s he won?”
“This is an awfully public place,” Betty murmured. “Lean over and I’ll
whisper it.”
There was a breathless moment while Jasper J. Morton blinked hard, then
looked at John for confirmation of the news, and having received a
friendly little nod in answer, turned to Babe with a smile on his grim
face.
“Well, I can certainly congratulate John,” he said, “and from the
reports I’ve had lately I can congratulate myself on John’s having got
hold of just the right person to manage him and keep him up to the
mark, so if you’re satisfied I guess it’s all right. And I hope you’ll
never regret it.”
“I shan’t,” said Babe blithely.
“And you don’t mind waiting a whole year?”
Babe shook her head smilingly. “It takes a long while to get ready to
be married, you know.”
“Because,” Mr. Morton went on, “there’s a very good place in my
business waiting for a young man that knows how to talk ten different
languages, more or less. If he wants it this September, he can have it.
If he isn’t ready then, why I guess we’ll have to keep the place for
him. Fellows that can talk ten languages don’t grow on every bush.”
John and Babbie had moved their chairs so that the party now sat in a
close, confidential circle of its own.
“Thanks awfully, father,” John began, “but we’ve talked it over, Babe
and I, and we’ve decided that I ought to go back. If I leave college
now, I’ve been flunked out. I’d rather not have that kind of record
behind me.”
Jasper J. Morton nodded. “That would be my idea, but I’d leave almost
any kind of record behind me, I guess, sooner than disappoint this
young lady.”
Far down the river there rose the faint sound of cheering.
“They’re coming!” cried an excitable English gentleman with a white
umbrella. He lowered the umbrella and poked Mr. Morton’s shoulder with
it vigorously. “You’d better stand on your chairs. It’s the only way to
see.”
Nearer and nearer came the roar of applause--a great wave of sound that
caught Betty and tossed her up on her chair and fairly took her breath
away as she saw one--two black specks come into sight around a curve
and dash forward, until, before she knew it, they were alongside.
But just before that something had happened in the second boat--the
American boat, alas! The third man had caught a crab.
“Hi! Hi! They’re down and out now,” shouted the excitable Englishman.
“It’s Benson,” cried John.
“He’s all crumpled up in a heap,” cried Babe in anguished tones. “Oh,
he mustn’t give out now!”
[Illustration: SOMETHING HAD HAPPENED IN THE SECOND BOAT]
Babbie Hildreth caught at the Englishman’s white umbrella for
support--it happened to be the nearest thing she could reach--and
leaning far forward waved her crimson streamer wildly.
“Billy! Billy Benson! Row for Harvard!” she cried in a shrill, strained
voice.
“Benson! Harvard!” John and Mr. Dwight took up her cry.
The little Harvard coxswain who was pouring water on Billy’s white face
turned his head at the cry, and Billy raised his inquiringly and then
calmly slipped back into his place and caught his oar.
“Go it, fellows!” he panted, and the crew took up its stroke.
The whole thing had taken scarcely an instant, but the English boat was
three lengths ahead.
“Go it, Harvard!” cried the party on “The Siren.”
And how they went! Nothing like that spurt was ever known on the Thames
before or since. The English were bound to win, but the crowd on the
banks and in the boats forgot that as they cheered the plucky Harvard
crew, whose superhuman effort was bringing their boat in barely a
length behind the Cambridge craft.
As they passed the finish line Billy’s oar dropped from his limp hand
and he fainted quietly into the bottom of the boat.
“Tell ’em I ended game,” he murmured to the little coxswain as he went
off, and the coxswain himself came round in the evening to deliver the
message and to assure Miss Babbie Hildreth that she had saved the honor
of the college and that Billy would be on hand next day to thank her in
person for keeping him from the “fluke” that every athlete dreads.
“Wasn’t it lucky we came?” said Betty Wales, climbing carefully down
from her chair, while “The Siren” whistled madly and the crowd cheered
for Cambridge’s victory, with a shout so deafening that it made all the
noise which had come before seem like child’s play.
“Why couldn’t they have begun to pull a little sooner?” demanded Jasper
J. Morton grimly. But the next minute he had caught the Englishman’s
hand and was shaking it cordially. “Glad you’ve won, I’m sure,” he
declared. “You ought to win on your own river. I’m glad our fellows
gave yours a good race.”
Then he turned to John. “Let’s cheer for Cambridge,--a real American
tiger.”
So John jumped on his chair again and led the cheer, and the English
passengers responded for Harvard.
“There, Miss B. A.,” Mr. Morton turned to Betty, “is that your idea of
looking on the bright side of things? All the same, John, I’m disgusted
with that crew. Don’t tell your friend Benson, because he’s probably
upset enough as it is, but I’m sure I can’t see what those boys came
over here for if they couldn’t win their race.”
“If they hadn’t come they couldn’t possibly have won it,” Babe reminded
him gravely, whereupon Mr. Morton glared at her and then, remembering
that the race was not the main feature of the day after all, laughed
good naturedly and told such comical stories of his motoring
experiences in Germany and Holland that the defeated Americans were
quite the merriest party on board during “The Siren’s” homeward trip.
The dinner, which was a celebration in spite of the race, was served on
a little balcony overlooking the river, gay with lights and noisy with
belated merrymakers. Then Mr. Morton announced that he had a box at one
of the theatres, where moving pictures of the afternoon’s race were to
be the feature of the program.
“Well, it was a good race,” he admitted, after he had seen the
pictures. “They got ahead several times and they rowed well even when
they had to take the other crew’s water, and that last spurt was all
right, only it came too late. I hope Benson understands that we aren’t
at all ashamed of our crew, John. You might mention it when you see
him.”
It is to be feared that Billy cared very little for Jasper J. Morton’s
opinion of him. He had come out of his faint in a state of unwonted and
pathetic melancholy, only to find himself, to his amazement and almost
to his disgust, the hero of the occasion. For awhile he argued manfully
against such an idiotic idea, but finally he submitted to the popular
notion that his “crab” had made no difference in the final result and
that it had actually proved an advantage because it had inspired that
wonderful spurt that was the talk of all London and probably of all New
York. And since Babbie Hildreth was responsible for this turn of events
(and for some other reasons) Billy resolved to cast enforced economy
and doctor’s orders to the winds and beg or borrow enough money to give
her “the time of her life” during his last day in London.
As for Betty Wales, her eyes sparkled with happy excitement as she went
to bed that night. A regular trip abroad would have been fun enough,
but a trip with Madeline to hunt up the queer things, Babe to furnish
a romance, and Mr. Morton to play the good angel and then pretend
it was all her doing--so that Dick Blake and now Babe and John had
insisted upon thanking her extravagantly--that was a trip to make you
hold your breath and wonder how you happened to be such a lucky, lucky
girl. Betty’s last few letters from home had been rather short and
unsatisfactory.
“I’m afraid I ought to have kept house for mother this summer and let
her rest,” she reflected. “And perhaps father couldn’t easily afford
to let me come. But I haven’t spent nearly all the money he gave me,
and I’ll make mother take the grandest rest she ever had as soon as I
get home. And I can’t help being glad I’m here.”