ANOTHER GLIMPSE OF THE GOODFELLOW
To Tom poor old Caleb seemed like a last, faint echo of the upheaval
which had changed the face of nature and spelled sorrow in so many
lives. He was like a floating timber tossed by the wind and sea, the
last stray memento of some ship long since swallowed up in angry waves.
Tom was resolved old Caleb should not know that the offer of a reward
for his grandson’s capture was still open. He had hated but he had not
killed nor sanctioned killing. Tom had no doubt now of the grandson’s
guilt but his better knowledge of the whole affair only strengthened his
sympathy and liking for the little old man.
“Poor old codger,” Brent mused as they started back. “I never knew his
past history. I suppose a lot of folks lost their homes when the land
was cleared for the reservoir.”
“They were paid for them,” said Tom. “I guess a lot of them were glad to
get the money.”
“You can’t pay a person for his home,” said Brent. “You can pay him for
his _house_. Some of them tore their houses down, I heard, and carried
them off and put them up again in the new village near the shore. That’s
some idea, moving a village.
“Do you know,” he added, sprawling one of his legs against the
windshield and the other outside the car, “I believe it’s a good idea
for a village or a city to move; it gets into a rut sort of and needs a
change. It’s bad to stay too long in one place. Now you take Brooklyn
for instance, or Jersey City—”
“I often feel as if I’d like to get away and do something else for a
while,” said Tom, taking a serious view of Brent’s talk. “I don’t mean
give up my job at camp, of course, but just get off on a kind of a—you
know.”
“Restless kind of—I know,” said Brent. “Be nice to get off in that boat,
huh? The one you were shouting about? Just flop around. I suppose you
could bang down south in a boat like that. Start about, oh say in
October, and hit Palm Beach for the cold weather. I’d like to go down to
Dixie so as to get away from the Dixie songs we have up here. There’s
nothing like the water, Slady old boy. If I ever get rich I’m going to
have a yacht.”
Tom mused, his thoughts returning fondly to the _Goodfellow_. “She’s
some boat all right,” he said. “Hang it all, now you’ve got me thinking
of it again.” Then, after a pause he said, “Like to take a little ride
over to the Reservoir and pike around? It would only take an hour or so.
I feel kind of restless to-day; I don’t want to go straight back. I’ll
show you the boat, too, if you care to see it, when we get back to
Catskill. It doesn’t cost anything to look at it,” he added wistfully.
“Anywhere you want to go, Tommy,” drawled Brent. “I’ll look at anything
you want to show me.
“That’s very kind of you,” said Tom, glancing amusedly at his companion.
Brent reclined in an ungainly posture of complacent ease with a:
whimsically observant look on his face as if ready to be interested in
anything and everything which did not require any physical exertion. It
got on Tom’s nerves a little, but it amused him.
They drove through the clean, pleasant city of Kingston and over the
bridge across the Esopus Creek and along the fine, smooth highway which
parallels the Ulster and Delaware Railroad. A ride of half an hour or so
brought them in sight of the vast, artificial lake which furnishes water
to the distant metropolis.
“Pretty big drink of water, hey?” drawled Brent.
“They say it’s forty miles around it,” said Tom. “The dam is way over at
the other end.”
They could not see the whole reservoir from the road, but they caught
glimpses of it and could form an idea of its long, irregular extent.
Soon they came to the removed and rebuilt village of West Hurley near
the shore of the reservoir. Close by, under the water as Tom knew, were
the bones of the old dead village, traces of streets, odds and ends of
demolished masonry, submerged memorials of the settlement which had once
been there.
There was not much to the new village; it must have lost something in
the process of removal and revival of the community life. Some of its
simple buildings seemed comparatively new. The visitors looked in vain
for any signs of actual reconstruction.
“Do you know,” mused Brent in his slow, dry way, “I don’t know why a
reconstructed village shouldn’t be just as good as a new one—same as an
automobile or a typewriter. I’d kind of like to get a squint under the
water though. What do you suppose we’d see?”
“If we were here during a drought,” said Tom, “we’d see things on the
sloping shore, that’s what Pop Dyker said.”
“Old village sort of pokes its nose up, hey?”
“Sort of like a ghost,” Tom said.
“Comes up for air,” said Brent. “Well, let’s move along. I guess the new
village won’t get its feet wet, it seems to be well back.”
They drove along the road a little farther and up toward Woodstock,
which is the habitat of a queer race of poets and artists, and so on in
a northeasterly direction till they came to Saugerties and found
themselves back on the road which borders the lordly Hudson.
At Catskill they paused for an inspection of the _Goodfellow_, Brent
showing his usual amiable and whimsically passive interest at the
prospect of acquaintance with this beauteous damsel of poor Tom’s heart.
Tom was disappointed to find that his friend, the caretaker, had gone
away and was not expected to return till late in the autumn. No one
seemed to have the boat in charge and Tom (lacking Hervey Willetts’
aggressive genius) was disinclined to venture upon that hallowed deck
without permission. Nor was there a rowboat handy in which to
circumnavigate the trim little cruiser and view it at close range.
So they contented themselves with a long distance inspection from the
shore. The _Goodfellow_, in Tom’s view, seemed rather the worse for her
long period at anchor. She looked neglected. Her white sides were dirty
and there was, even from the distant shore, the appearance of neglect
about her. She lay well clear of the area of navigation and was safely
padlocked to her buoy as Tom could tell by her heavy mooring chain.
A boat is at home in the water and will not deteriorate riding at
anchor. But just the same the sprightly _Goodfellow_ seemed to be
suffering from the fickleness and neglect of her wealthy young owner.
The flag-pole was broken. The awning over the cockpit was torn and its
loose shreds flapped in the breeze.
One thing in particular Tom noticed, which seemed quite at variance with
the former spick and span appearance of the little cruiser. The
port-holes seemed to be covered inside with some dusty looking material,
which might have been torn from the ruined awning. Why the caretaker
should have thought it desirable to put these makeshift shades in the
unoccupied craft, Tom could not imagine. But on second thought it seemed
not so surprising. It would confound the curiosity of strangers, boys
especially, who might row out and try to peek into the sumptuous little
cabin.
Another thing he noticed which he could not so easily explain. This was
an area of sooty black at the top of the little smokestack from the
galley. Probably it had been there before and he had never noticed
it....
On the way to camp he said to Brent, “Seeing her neglected like that
only makes me want her all the more.”
“You love her for herself alone,” said Brent in his droll way.
“I read in a book,” said Tom, “that if a fellow wants a thing and wants
it bad enough and keeps on wanting it, in the end he’ll get it.”
“That isn’t what you read, Tommy,” said Brent. “You’re thinking of
something that Stevenson said; ‘What a man wants, that thing he will
get. Or he will be changed in the trying.’ That’s what you’re thinking
of, Tommy. A man can have anything he wants if he’s willing to pay the
price.”
“Well, I haven’t got the price,” said Tom soberly. He seemed quite
simple and unsophisticated beside Brent.
“How do you know you haven’t?” Brent said.
“I know whether I’ve got two thousand dollars or not, don’t I?” Tom said
sullenly.
“Yes, but how do you know two thousand dollars is the _price_?”
“Because the caretaker told me,” said Tom. “What are you trying to do,
kid me? You can’t buy a thing if you haven’t got the price, can you? You
get on my nerves.”
“I can have the gold trophy cup in the glass case in Administration
Shack if I want to pay the price,” Brent drawled. “I can steal it.”
“And you’d go to jail.”
“Sure, that would be the _price_, Tommy,” said Brent.