Doing Good

by Henry C. Rowland

Doing Good

By Henry C. Rowland
Author of “The Apple of Discord,” “Filling His Own Shoes,” etc.

Chapter I.

THE young man walked up and down the doctor's study with a step which one, watching, could scarcely have believed that of a solid mortal weighing some hundred and seventy pounds. It was more like the tread of Mercury, with his winged heels, or let us say Fokine. The nap of the new and heavy rug seemed scarcely disturbed by it, like a fairy skipping on the surface of dewy sward, and as the stepper talked in swift, syncopated phrases, gesturing with a hand which held a cigarette, there was a lilt to his voice and a sort of lyric diction as though he were reciting epic verse.

Behind the desk, leaning back in his heavy armchair, with a cigar of soft aromatic fragrance between his lips, the elder man, his father, listened to him, his fine face corrugated in lines of thoughtful wonder, almost disbelief. A quarter of a century of hard conscientious practice containing a volume of work staggering in amount if not in remuneration, had etched on Doctor Gladstone's features the record of emotions and philosophies which were not only visible, but could be felt by the observer.

“I haven't let you know about it, dad, because it was so wonderful. I had to wait to tell you. It seemed profane to slap the big news into a telegram or flounder at it in a letter. It all happened so suddenly that it took my breath away and I'm just beginning to get it back. Seeing you steadies me, dear old dad—brings me back to earth.”

His father nodded. “You'll quickly find your bearings, Jim. It never takes the young very long to adjust their minds to sudden fortune. They always expect it. They live in fairy tales, and are not surprised to find the rainbow's end and the pot of gold. It's different with the old. They are less surprised at calamity. But overwhelming fortune staggers them. They can't believe there's not some joker in it, some mistake. I had a patient once, an old lady, whose husband found a copper mine in his back yard when digging a grave to bury their old dog. He took millions out of it, but his wife could ever be persuaded that they could afford a trip to Europe.”

Jim threw aside his cigarette. “Yes, sir, there were some old people like that down there. Even my old partner is having a hard time to get it through his head. He said, 'Of course I know it in my brain, boy, but somehow my actions can't seem to pick up.' It's not to be wondered at, dad, when you stop to think. He's been prospecting all his life, making a little at long intervals, and then like all those birds throwing it back into the ground. And here, now, all at once, we fall right on a big pool. Millions and millions and millions.”

“Horace Greeley was right,” said Doctor Gladstone. “So you sold out?”

“Yes, sir. It seemed to me that four millions was enough for any man.”

“And what are you going to do now?”

“What would you advise, dad?”

Doctor Gladstone shook his head. “Too big an order, Jim. Haven't you formed any idea, yourself?”

“Well, yes, dad. You see I look at it this way: Money I don't need. Business I don't like. Science leaves me cold, and talents I have none. Social achievement is mostly pleasure seeking, and that is neither my nature nor my ambition. But I've got a big debt to pay off.”

“Debt?”

“Yes. Just that. A debt to the high gods, which is to say to mankind. I wouldn't state it to any one but you, dad, and even to you it makes me sound like a bit of a fool. But the fact is, I intend to devote my life to doing good.”

“Charities?”

“Not exactly. Helping people—personally I want to be what the French call a marchand de bonheur—a dealer in happiness—helpful happiness. I'm going through the world, this part of it principally, having a perfectly good time on my way, and whenever I meet up with people who've had a raw deal, or are up against it and need a leg up, I'll give it to them. I don't care whether they're good people or bad people, or whether it's one or a community. But the point is that they must be people whom I happen to run up against personally. What do you think of the idea?”

“It's not entirely a new one, Jim, That was, in fact, the fundamental principle of the Round Table, only King Arthur's knights did it with their swords instead of their check books. Then there was Don Quixote and a good many others, I imagine.”

“Quite so, father. And the boys had a pretty good time, riding around doing it. And I intend to have a good time riding around doing it. Mind you, dad, there's none of the Light of Asia stuff in it at all. I haven't the slightest intention 'of giving my fortune in a lump to the poor and starving and starting out like Lord Buddha. I'm not trying to reform the world or make any sublime sacrifice. I'm merely going to devote my life and fortune to doing good.”

Doctor Gladstone rolled his cigar in his lips and smiled. “It is all right in theory, Jim,” said he, “but you've got to be mighty careful not to particularize. There's always the danger of running up against the one girl—and doing it all to her.”

“Well, I've thought of that, too, of course. But if I should happen to meet that girl she'll be jolly well given to understand my idea, and that she's got to help. Dad, will you come along and help?”

His father smiled, then shook his head.

“I didn't think you would,” said Jim, “and it's cheeky for me to ask you when you've been doing the same thing yourself for the last twenty-five years, and a lot better than I can ever hope to do it. Then I suppose I'll have to be content with retaining you for counsel in this scheme of mine.”

“That will be better, I think. You see, Jim, since your mother died, my practice has been my life, and I'd rather not change it for any other. When do you propose to start on your knight-errantry?”

“Just as soon as I can put my affairs in order, dad. I'm going to see Mr. Judson to-morrow and get everything salted down. Of course, dad, it's understood that you're to have carte blanche on anything that you might want to make things easier for you or your own private charities or anything of that sort.”

“Of course, Jim. But now that there's no longer any need of considering your future, my own simple necessities are more than amply provided for.” He laid down his cigar, leaned forward, clasped his hands, and looked at his son with a peculiar illumination of his fine face. “I might as well tell you, Jim, that your plan appeals to me very strongly. It is one which would be impossible to most men, and possibly not to be recommended, but I think that you have got the temperament to carry it through. Organized charities are necessary, just as organized govrenment and laws and religion. It would be infinitely better if every man were to be his own arbiter, but that is the Utopian idea—the millennium. Nevertheless, when some individual has the sense and the resource, it would be wrong to hinder him. At any rate, the effort should increase his knowledge and philosophy and general evolution. So go to it, my boy, and God go with you!”

Chapter II.

Some philosopher has said, or if he has not, let me say it now, that the greatest value of a generous impulse lies in the possession of it.

Jim Gladstone was so filled with his great idea that all other benefits to be derived from his huge and suddenly required fortune became immediately of lesser worth. Like all healthy, sanguine boys, he had pictured often what he would do under precisely such a condition, and because he was bred true to form and had inherited strong self-sacrificing traits from rugged, toiling pioneer ancestors, his imaginary dispensations had always taken some generous form. Now that the fact was an accomplished one and because he was clearheaded while having, as he had truthfully said, no especial talents or ambitions, he had, on his journey East, been able to crystallize a good working scheme for his benefactions.

Jim's first plan had contained a good deal of romantic glamour for himself. The knight-errant picture appealed to his youth with a sort of childish sense of magnificence—the plumed knight, cap-a-pie in burnished golden helmet and shining armor, with spurs of gold, with pennanted lance and sword Excalibur, shield-point device, riding forth astride his great war horse, and attendend by a squire befittingly equipped; the quest to right wrongs, defend the weak from the tyrannically strong, and with always that glowing, deeper fancy to succor virtue and beauty in distress. His motto might have been “Ex recto decus,” and his passage marked by milestones of good deeds.

In accordance with the changed conditions of the world through successive ages, there would be a metamorphosis in his equipment. The shining armor might be replaced by a wardrobe of such clothes as are worn by the matinée hero in his careerings; the war horse by a latest model road car guaranteed to pass with ease through any brick garden wall; the squire, a faithful, devoted, and admiring chauffeur, if such rare bird exists; and Excalibur worn not in a scabbard but in an inside pocket of his tweed coat, and as his father had said, in the shape of a check book on the Trust Company.

We find him, therefore, thus riding blithely on his way, a fortnight on his quest with no interesting adventure as yet presenting itself. His big car was such, as moving silently on its majestic way, might sow the seeds of bolshevism in the bosoms of ninety-nine-hundredths of us. His squire had so far left nothing to be desired, an elderly person of Hibernian origin with the engaging name of Terence O'Toole. Terence was in the secret. His family had been patients of Doctor Gladstone's for many years. Terence himself, a master mechanic and expert motor adjuster, had been laid off from work countless times for periodic sprees, and then laid on again because of a technical ability which amounted to an art. Finally he had become the doctor's chauffeur, and the doctor had given him to Jim a good deal as the master of an old country home might give to his son going forth upon a quest, a retainer of whom, whatever his temperamental defects, there could never be any question of whole-souled loyalty.

It is doubtful if Terence got the serious side of Jim's purpose at all. Jim, to him, was merely a young man of quality and wealth with a hobby which might last until something more interesting would turn up.

So far nothing of importance had turned up. Jim did not worry about this any more than might Sir Percival have worried because after a lapse of pleasant excursioning he had failed to discover a chalice which bore the least resemblance to the Holy Grail. Traveling easily, they had covered a good deal of New England, the Berkshires, and the White Mountains, and were now working down toward Boston. Jim, under pretext of exploiting all that region for automobile tours, had mixed freely with all sorts of people and gathered a great deal of useful knowledge about its social and economic conditions. But he had been singularly struck by his lack of encounter with any who appeared to be in anything like approaching distress. On the contrary, the general air of prosperity seemed strikingly in contrast with all reports on the economic condition of the country, scarcity of labor, impossible wages, and general H. C. L. In the small towns the loungers appeared to be holding down the steps of the post office and general store, as had been the habits of their fathers. The farmers' boots reposed as usual on the railing of the front porch to act as a screen for the farmer who sat behind them comfortably on his lumbar vertebræ. There were a great many small automobiles buzzing in and out of these farms to lend an air of sufficiency which was supplemented by the white shoes and silk stockings of the rustic maidens.

No. Jim failed to see where any great amount of merit in his evolution could be acquired by showering benefits on this countryside. He was on the whole rather glad. Like a wise capitalist who keeps always a considerable bulk of his fortune in liquid form, his present object was less to invest in the doing-good market than to study it. He felt that he would be quite content to study it a long time if necessary before taking any active interest in it. Rolling about the charming region on his magic carpet was very pleasant, and having a distinct objective gave the pastime the dignity of reason. As a matter of fact he might have covered the whole United States in this way over a period of several years, and learned actually more of his great country, and the peculiar conditions confronting it, than is known to any political economist, and placed himself finally in that position, which probably no American occupies to-day—that of knowing his own country from one end to the other.

This in turn presented another big idea. Why not know America? Why not in the course of his knight-errantry learn the whole United States? To paraphrase Kipling, “he had the time and he had the will and he had the money, too.” Backed then by personal knowledge and that best of all information, which is not printed tiresomely and everlastingly, as the six wise men of Hindustan might have described the elephant, that comes of conversations in all quarters, there would be something for him to grapple. He swept around a curve of the road exalted by this thought and the power of the great fabric which he so easily controlled by the slightest touch of hand and foot.

“Look out, sir,” said Terence. “Mind the kiddies.”

The warning was unnecessary. Jim had already cut off his gas and put on the brake. A swarm of children were scattered over the road ahead, and their shrill pipings rose like the sound of “peepers” in a marsh. Drawn to the side of the road was a small motor bus rigged as a carryall with four wide seats and a protecting guard rail.

Jim came to a stop a little behind the vehicle beside which was standing a young man in blue denim overalls and a girl. Jim got down and, stepping to the girl, lifted his cap.

“Do you need any help?” he asked.

She turned, and he saw that his first impression had been correct. She was strikingly pretty in an intense and colorful way, but rather severe of expression with violet-blue eyes, blackly fringed, and features cleanly cut like those of an athlete trained too fine. Her mouth, though wide and with full red lips, was set at the least slant, and had a suggestion of sternness as she answered unsmilingly.

“No, thanks. We can manage, I think, You might take the driver on to the next place where there's a telephone, if you don't mind.”

“I'd like to do more than that,” Jim answered. “Is your truck down and out?”

“Yes,” she answered briefly. “Keyway of the shaft union ripped out.”

“There's not much to do for that,” said Jim, and he glanced up at the sky. “There's going to be a thunderstorm later. I can take a good many of the children to where you're going, and come back for the rest.”

She appeared to hesitate. “Oh, well,” she answered, “if you have plenty of time to spare.”

“The rest of my life,” Jim answered.

She raised her straight, black eyebrows. “Indeed?”

“Absolutely. I have no objective, and am in no hurry to get to it. My time is of no value unless I can be of some service to you or others.”

“That sounds well, like many idle phrases of idle people. Then if you will be so kind, you might take my driver with as many of the children as you can safely carry, about six miles on to the John Phillips Memorial Home. The driver can come back with another truck and tow this one home.”

“I can do even better,” said Jim. “We will take out some of my duffel, load my car with all the children that it can carry, and the driver. He can come back with the truck and my man can bring back my car for the rest of us. It will be slow work towing this bus, and you might get stuck on a hill.”

“Say, that's a good thought, Miss Dudley,” said the girl's driver. “It's about a fifty-fifty chance that we can get up Turner's Hill.”

The girl looked annoyed, then glanced at the sky, which was darkening in the west.

“You are very kind,” said she reluctantly. “I suppose for the sake of the children I ought to consent.”

Some of the youngsters had gathered about to listen, and it was apparent to Jim from their pale faces, meager little bodies, and city clothes, that they were fresh from the town. Probably a party just met at the train and being taken out for a month's or fortnight's vacation. Without wasting more words he told Terence of the plan. They quickly unloaded the valises and a big well-stocked lunch box, and set this impedimenta on the roadside, the girl watching with a look of annoyance at being obliged to accept this aid from a strange cavalier of the road. Then Terence took his seat at the wheel, the other driver getting in behind, and about ten of the children were piled aboard.

“Why don't you drive yourself?” asked the girl.

“I'd rather wait here, if you don't mind. I've been driving all day and I'd be glad of the rest. My man is careful.”

The car moved off in a clamor of shrill and joyful cries between those parting and those left behind. The latter immediately scattered through the pines on the side of the road, in quest of wild flowers and other treasure.

“Hadn't you better count 'em?” Jim asked. “Some might stray.”

“There are nine left,” Miss Dudley said. “There were to have been twenty, but one got ill at the last moment.”

“Then we'd better herd them a little. They seem to be having a good time.”

“Children always have a good time when they're given half a chance. Health and fun are the objects of this place of ours.” She started to walk in the direction the children had taken, and Jim, without waiting for an invitation, kept at her elbow. He was rather puzzled and a little hurt at her lack of graciousness in accepting a favor which any decent person with a heart would immediately have offered. Yet he admired her tremendously. She was precisely the type of girl which had always most appealed to him, serious, evidently of purpose, and of generous, yet charming physical personality, a little above medium height, nearly his own, full figured, but with a small round waist and pretty wrists and ankles. Her hair was almost black, but with a warm dusky color in it, and her very dark-blue eyes held a tender thoughtful expression as they followed the gambols of the children.

“Yours is a very splendid charity, Miss Dudley,” he said.

“That is its aim. It is a wonder more people who have the means don't go in for it.”

“A private one?”

“Yes—a personal one. The home is a memorial for an American officer who was killed at Château Thierry.” Her blue eyes flashed him a questioning look.

“No. I wasn't there, to my everlasting regret,” Jim answered. “They gave me a commission at Plattsburg, but my outfit was in England just ready to embark for France when the war blew up.”

“Well, that wasn't your fault. Then I suppose you came back and resumed your busy life.” Her eyebrows lifted a little.

“I certainly did. A chum of mine had told me a lot about the big oil strikes they were making in Texas, I had no profession and had inherited a few thousand, so I went down there.”

“And struck it?”

“And struck it.”

“Millions?”

“And then some.”

She turned and their eyes met. It seemed to Jim that her high color had faded a little. The violet eyes darkened, and there was no question of their accusing gleam. It roused his sudden resentment.

“So you did the usual thing—bought a big car and a lot of clothes and a man-servant and are now one of the great army of millionaire pleasure seekers.”

“Let's call it adventure.”

“It comes to the same thing, doesn't it? Has it never occurred to you that there are certain responsibilities, moral obligations, attached to great wealth, especially when you haven't worked for it?”

“Why, yes,” Jim answered, and added dryly, “once or twice I have thought of that.”

“It's really worth thinking about.” There was a bitter note in the girl's voice and she added almost with a cut, “In fact, I should say it was the only thing worth thinking about.”

Jim's resentment was slowly rising to irritation. He failed to see that this girl, whose contempt for the class to which she took it for granted he belonged, had any right to assume that he must be a slacker in good works and in generous giving. One does not wear a uniform when he enlists in the army of philanthropy. For all she knew, he might be at that very moment feeding daily a thousand famine sufferers. As if the same idea had occurred to her, she asked abruptly: “Have your one or two thoughts on the subject resulted in anything so far?”

“Why, no,” Jim answered. “I've scarcely got started.”

“You've got started with the biggest and costliest car that one could buy, I imagine, and a manservant and very expensive and, I must admit, becoming clothes.”

“Don't you think that's a natural start for a new-fledged millionaire?”

“Yes, more's the pity. But I can tell you one thing. Every day that passes will make it harder to give. Unless people with sudden fortunes start at once, the ice skims over their generosity. They quickly take it for granted, seem to accept their fortune as an endowment only due their special grace. They get to look upon themselves as superior beings, high above common clay. They feel under no more obligation to share their blessings than the might to share their luxurious apartments with beggars.”

“No doubt you're right,” said Jim. “I hadn't quite thought of that.” He stood and watched the spindle-legged children tumbling about on the scented carpet of pine needles. “Perhaps I ought to start something right off. Now this charity of yours. I might be permitted to help?”

She turned on him with a quick flush in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes.

“And then again you might not. As I've said already, this is entirely a personal memorial endowed and more or less managed by a rich girl whose former fiancé was killed on the field of honor not long before the end of the war. She had treated him unjustly, and he died without knowing that she really loved him.”

“I see. Then it's rather less than a charity.”

“Less?” Her eyes flashed, and through her parted lips Jim saw a double row of beautiful white teeth.

“I think so. You see, the motive which inspired her was less the desire to do good for good's sake than a sort of atonement—an expiation.”

For a moment Jim was rather startled at the expression which crossed her face. It was as if he had offered her some injury, while at the same time he could see that he had given her an entirely new thought. She looked startled, shocked, chagrined.

“I hadn't thought of that,” she muttered and, turning, walked quickly away to where some of the children were playing at a distance.

Jim, feeling that his close presence was unwelcome for the moment, strolled back to the truck, climbed up to the rear seat, lighted a cigarette, and sat smoking meditatively. It struck him there was a good deal of truth in what the girl said, and that if most people postponed their benefactions, they were indeed in danger of becoming indurated. Perhaps he was going wrongly about his scheme for doing good. “Give now,” was after all the proper motto, just as “Enlist now.” He knew a number of chaps who had postponed the latter until, to their everlasting regret, the act when it came had not got them anywhere.

He looked meditatively at the children, and it struck him that he would rather like to run a charity of that sort himself. One can make an awful mess of things by trying to help grown people, but it is absolutely impossible to go wrong in promoting the health and happiness of children. In doing things for children, he reflected, one is only giving them their own. Miss Dudley was leaning against a pine, her back to him, watching her charges. She made a charming picture to Jim's eyes, though many young men critical of feminine beauty might have found her proportions too matronly. She was one of those alluring types in which the mother appears to be awaiting the child—a potential mother—just as Jim on leaving Plattsburg had been a potential soldier, for a soldier is scarcely a soldier until his first fight, nor can a woman possibly be a mother until her first child. He wondered why she should have been so upset by his statement that the charity in which her services were enlisted was less than a charity because it had not been inspired purely by the desire of doing good. It never occurred to him for some reason that she herself might be the benefactress. He had immediately visualized this young woman as a sort of melancholy Hebe, who probably passed her time between repining and driving out in a black limousine to inspect her institution in a sort of lachrymose and martyred way.

Jim finished his cigarette, and at that moment Miss Dudley turned from the tree against which she had been leaning, dryadlike, and walked slowly back toward the road. Jim noticed then that the promised storm was not very far away and, although there was no sound of thunder, the blackness of the sky in the northwest had intensified and mounted. He got down from the seat on the truck.

“Might be getting the children together,” he suggested. “Terence ought to be back at any moment. My first millionaire's indulgence should do those twelve miles easily in half an hour.”

Miss Dudley nodded. “It's going to storm,” said she, and added with the faintest flicker of a smile: “After all newmade millionaires sometimes have their uses.”

“I've been thinking about what you said, Miss Dudley. You're right. I'm going to start something in the philantropic line right off.”

“I've been thinking about what you said,” she answered. “You're right. A charity can be as selfish as anything else, when its motive is selfish.”

“Well,” said Jim, “after all, the motive doesn't matter such a lot, does it, if you get results? Look at those kids, for instance. See the good time they're having. What difference does it make whether this rich girl that runs the kid ranch does it to salve her conscience or ease her grief or just as in the old days when her lord knight was killed in battle my lady went into a convent and gave her estates to the poor. The good is done just the same and, taking it from a humanitarian point of view, the proportion works out pretty well of people made happy as compared to one whose happiness is gone. But you're right. I think I'll stop my joy riding and start in doing good.”

This brought him a smile. It was not much of a smile, but its intention was good, and Jim was astonished to see how it lightened and made radiant a face which he had already decided was the most disturbing which he had ever seen.

“I think perhaps you've started already,” said she.

“In that case,” 'said Jim, “my ride has got me something that I was out for.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you see,” he began, when his speech was interrupted. The stillness was broken by the hoarse grunt of the big roadster, which swept around the curve, slowed, passed slowly, backed into the pine grove and turned. Terence's lined, good-humored face beamed down at Jim from under the chauffeur's cap, which was wedged over a cluster of grizzled curls.

“The childer are all delivered F. O. B., sor,” said he. “We had best be gone quick. The storm is comin' up fast. Billy, the driver, is not comin' back. I told him he could never tow this bus up them hills and 'twould be far easier to come to-morrow and do his repair work where she sets and take her in under her own power. 'Tis no great job, as he can shift the part of the other truck.”

The children were quickly loaded aboard, the luggage attached to the running board and behind, and thus heavily weighted the big car moved off, soon to reach the John Phillips Memorial Home. To the passer-by it presented such an aspect as it may have done for the past forty years, that of a fine, old, prosperous, well-kept New England farm. Here the passengers were deposited and, after a few brief words of thanks from Miss Dudley, Jim continued on his quest.

Chapter III.

“A foine philanthrophy that, sor,” said Terence.

“It sure is. Wonder who supports it. I didn't think to ask.”

“But 'tis the young lady has just got down, sor.”

“The deuce you say.”

“None other, sir,” and Terence proceeded to impart information about the charity furnished by the driver of the truck. Listening to him rather absently, Jim had driven a couple of miles when in the rapidly approaching gloom he saw the figure of a woman ahead, walking in the same direction and carrying what seemed to be a basket of provisions. Although the storm appeared soon to break, so that he was anxious to reach the next town with all dispatch, this very fact in his capacity of knight-errant made it obligatory for him to slow and offer the wayfarer a lift. She proved to be a pretty young woman of distinctly urban type, rather blond and smartly dressed for the locality, but as she looked up her face showed a sudden and, as it seemed to Jim, uncalled-for alarm. Jim raised his cap.

“Can't I set you on your way?” he asked in his pleasant voice. “The storm's going to break at any moment.”

The startled look gave way to one of relief. Terence sprang briskly down and, as the luggage had been piled back into the rear of the car, he opened the door at Jim's side.

“Step in here, ma'am,” said he. “I can stow myself wit' the duffel, and there is scant time to spare.”

“You are awfully kind,” said the girl, for she was scarcely more than that. “I'm almost home and I'm afraid of thunderstorms.” The rumble of thunder was now almost constant.

She seated herself and, then as Jim started ahead to his intense astonishment and dismay, she leaned suddenly forward, buried her face in her hands, and began to sob violently. Jim, attributing this hysterical outburst to a constitutional fear of thunderstorms, tried to comfort her.

“Don't be frightened,” said he. “We'll get there before it breaks.”

“Oh, it's not that,” she sobbed. “I'm—I'm not used to having people kind to me, and this big car reminds me of my life before I ran away to get married.”

A pathetic story now came pouring forth in gasping, incoherent words. It appeared that her father had been a prosperous Western farmer. She had eloped with the chauffeur, and her father had severed all paternal relations. Her husband soon ill treated her. He had ruined his health in dissipation and finally, out of work and at the end of their resources, she had persuaded him to go to a small farm which he had inherited from his grandfather and which for a span of years had been abandoned.

They were living there in utter wretchedness, the husband too weak physically and morally to do any work. She had sold such poor equipment as the place contained and now, as a last resort, at the end of her courage and resource, she had been to the Children's Home to “borrow” some provisions. It did not matter as the place was to be sold next week for what it would bring.

Jim listened to this tragic story with a sort of eagerness. Here, following hot upon his discussion with Miss Dudley, was the opportunity for doing good immediately presented; the chance to reconstruct two lives. The man no doubt was worthless, but might still be made to fit in somewhere. The woman Was young, pretty, and possessed apparently of an uncommon loyalty and devotion. It was precisely for such cases that his idea of knight-errantry had been formed, though a ruined community would have been more in proportion for his ablity to succor.

He did not say much until had finished her tale, but driving slowly, regardless of the storm which suggested the approaching end of the world, he was quickly forming his plans.

“Our miserable old place is just around this bend ahead,” said she. “I've delayed you awfully. I'm so sorry.”

“It doesn't matter, Mrs. King,” said Jim, for she had told him her name. “I'd rather not drive through the woods in what looks like an approaching cyclone. Have you a barn or shed in which I can put the car?”

“Oh, yes,” she answered eagerly, “The barn is in fairly good condition, There's an old car in there that won't go. I held on to that hoping that Will might be able to fix it up enough to get us somewhere.”

“Then I'll beg your hospitality, maybe for the night.”

But there's really no decent place to sleep.”

“That's the least of our cares. We're both good scouts and we've got our rugs. Besides, I want to talk to your husband. I may be able to help you out of this mess.”

Her answer was checked by their arriving in front of the dilapidated old place, which in the dim, baleful light of the approaching storm was enough to draw a shudder from a tramp. It was pitifully battered, did not look habitable, and probably was not, except in spots. Windows were broken, shutters off or dangling from one hinge, and threatening to flap forlornly in a gust, striking down through the big trees. They bumped over a broken culvert and drove around to the barn, the doors of which were open.

The girl got down and led the way to the house, Terence following with Mrs. King's basket of provisions and their own luncheon box with its varied delicacies. As they approached the house a man came out of the kitchen door and stood staring at them. He looked to be thirty, and it struck Jim that he was rather well dressed for a person in such desperate circumstances.

He appeared precisely what the girl had described him—a worthless chauffeur, too lazy to work, and with no heart to do so. Yet he was clean and of a type which is perhaps the most frequent of all others, medium size, rather thin, with a face partly impudent, partly cringing and self-effacing with no distinguishing traits or features.

Mrs. King quickly explained the situation. Then he became all affability and desire to please. Jim saw that there would be no obstacle here placed in his scheme of doing good.

“The old house leaks like a sieve, and there's nothing much to sleep on,” said he, “but I guess we can fix up something. Looks like we were going to have a Kansas twister. Pretty bad on the road such a night as this. Tree might blow down on you or something.”

The darkness came almost immediately. They went into the kitchen and lighted a lamp. Terence, an old campaigner, laid out their supplies. “No use to start a fire, ma'am,” said he. “We can fix up a nice cold supper.”

“Terence and I like to picnic on the side of the road,” said Jim, “and we always keep the old boat well supplied.”

There was no question of this. Mrs. King and her husband excused themselves to see what could be done about beds, and when they had gone out, Jim said to Terence:

“Looks as though I'd turned up something in the doing-good line, old scout.”

“Maybe so, sor. The lady must have qualities to stand the like of this for the sake of a felly who has all the earmarks of a worthless vagabond.”

“He doesn't look like much, I'll admit; but after all there's no use helping worthy folk who can help themselves.”

“Well, that is a question, sor. Does it not strike you that the lady herself does not ring quite true? I misdoubt they are much good, the two of them.”

“Well, they are in distress, and that's the main thing,” said Jim. “I suppose there are lots of helpless people like that who have to be carried along by the stronger ones. They might be made to fit in somewhere, though, if one were to take the trouble, and just now that is my job.”

Mr. and Mrs. King returned to say that there were two rooms fairly habitable in different parts of the house, though the mattresses were scarcely fit to be slept upon, but with the steamer tugs might be managed. Terence had spread the table with delicacies, finding it unnecessary to draw upon Mrs. King's provisions, and they were making their supper when the storm broke. It proved as Jim had expected, a small local cyclone, under which the old house, though protected by the trees, shuddered to the rotten core of its ancient timbers. Branches were whirled down, and in the midst of the turmoil they heard a crash which sounded as though a tree had fallen: It would indeed have been dangerous to drive over the road that night in that wooded section.

During the course of the storm and after it the talk was of things in general. The host and hostess rather pleased Jim by refraining to say much about their misfortune, nor did he press them. There would be time enough for that in the morning, when he intended to go into their affairs in greater detail. It was dreary with a single lamp, but Terence fetched the electric lanterns which they carried on the car for camping purposes or repairs at night—the battery sort. Also the roll of traveling rugs with which in some fashion he made up the shabby beds. Tired by the day's run they said good night and went to their rooms in different parts of the house which King showed them.

The bright, early morning sun was stealing through Jim's open window when he was awakened by an astonishing uproar of Hibernian profanity.

He sat up in his pajamas and rubbed his eyes. Somewhere outside the voice of Terence was bawling like the Bull of Bashan. Jim sprang from his rickety bed, risking its final destruction. He looked out of the windw, but could see only a rocky weed-grown pasture and some gnarled old apples trees. Down below Terence was filling the air with imprecations. Scarcely knowing what to think Jim turned to get into his clothes. But there were no clothes. The rickety chair beside the door on which he had thrown them was naked of one single article of apparel.

Shocked at this discovery, Jim rushed out and to the head of the stairs, noticing as he did so that there were puddles of water on the floor of the hall.

“Terence!” he called. “What the devil——”

“You have said it, sor,” roared Terence.

“My clothes are gone.”

“And mine, sor—and the car, and all of our gear, and with it Mr. and Mrs. King that you were going to help. They do not need it, sor, they have helped themselves. They have made a get-away with all we had, barrin' only the number plates of the car, which they have kindly left on the barn floor, takin' those of the old car. There is nothin' the matter with that same flivver except that they have taken the carburetor. The worse of it is we are any God's distance from nowhere and be like the wires all down from the storm. I misdoubt we shall ever see that fine new boat of ours ever again, sor. The nearest place is the Childer's Home, and that five miles away.”

 

Two hours later, as Miss Dudley was breakfasting, one of the children came rushing in to tell her that the nice young man who had brought them there the day before was outside playing Indian, barefooted, and in a blanket. Not quite understanding this message, Miss Dudley went out to investigate, when, to her considerable astonishment, she discovered the information to be exact. On the broad veranda, a later addition to the old but well-built house, Jim, in bare feet and a light plaid Yeager traveling rug, was hopping round and round, redskin fashion to the huge if rather scandalized delight of a group of the small passengers of the day before.

“Merciful heavens!” said Miss Dudley. “Have you gone suddenly mad?”

“'Mad' is too strong a word for it,” said Jim, “but I must admit to being considerably vexed. You see in me a recent millionaire reduced to the condition of a shipwrecked mariner, but rather worse, because the storm has not washed up any wreckage at all.”

“I think I understand. You stopped in that abandoned farm about five miles down the road, and it was struck by lightning?”

“Wrong. It was not abandoned and it was not struck by lightning. It was occupied by Mrs. King, a very attractive young woman, and her husband.”

“But nobody has lived there for years. It's to be sold at auction next week, and I shall probably buy it as it is such a picturesque old site and the land lies very nicely.”

“It is still there in all its picturesque beauty. Just after leaving here I overtook on the road a young woman carrying a basket of provision and I gave her a lift. She told me a pathetic tale of how she and her husband, a consumptive, had been trying to live there and were about to be sold out. As my conversation with you was still fresh in my mind, I thought I saw my chance for doing good, before my doing-good machinery got stalled, as you suggested it might. So I took her up and went there and spent the night with the intention of being a god from the machine. I am. Or, to be more precise, I am a god without a machine. They were evidently short-sighted people, and thought they would rather have the machine than the god.”

Miss Dudley stared at him with her pretty and generous mouth half open, then collapsed on a hammock in a paroxysm of the first laughter to which she had given way since receiving the news which had resulted in her giving up her life to doing good.

Chapter IV.

Theologists tell us that God never laughs, which is not surprising, all things considered. Hard-working country doctors who probably are the nearest images of their Creator in their intimate relations and care of mankind, for the same reason are seldom given to noisy mirth, and Doctor Gladstone was one of them.

But laugh he did, Homerically, when Jim had finished reciting his first adventure in doing good.

“I hope it hasn't discouraged you,” said his father.

“No, sir!” said Jim. “All high endeavor must have its initial setbacks, I suppose. It may have proved useful in showing me that I set about the business in the wrong way. Also I am richer by the acquaintance of a very wonderful girl.”

“Do you expect to see Miss Dudley again?”

“Not until I have something to report. She has no idea of my lofty purpose. She thinks that I was merely riding around the country for fun, and that I acted on a generous impulse which was the result of what she said to me. I now propose to go about it differently.”

“As a tramp or peddler or something of the sort?”

“No doubt that would be a good plan, but, as I said in the beginning, I intend to get some fun out of this job as I go along. I never had the slightest intention to make a martyr of myself. My theory is that a man can go right ahead and enjoy himself in his own way whether as a knight-errant or a bank president and yet do an enormous amount of good if he is careful not to miss a bet. I tried the knight-errant stuff and, instead of doing good, I got done good. Now I'm going at it as a sort of Ulysses,”

“In a boat?”

“Yes, sir. I mean to buy a comfy little cruising boat with motor and sail and jog along the coast. You always get a diverse humanity in ports. I understand sail. Terence is an expert mechanic, and all we'll need will be a cook. Meantime, as part of the result of this last experience I contributed rather largely to several children charities both at home and abroad. I don't intend to let my income get ahead of me while I'm trying to do some first-hand work of my own.”

“Well, better luck this time,” said Doctor Gladstone.

“Thanks, dad, I'll try to hang onto my clothes this time, anyhow.”

 

Not many days later a small sea-going, yawl-rigged boat with a compact and powerful motor might have been seen bowling across Massachusetts Bay before a fresh sou'wester which, for the moment, tempered the devitalizing heat ashore. She was heading in for the port of Boston under sail power alone, that the cabin might be more habitable that night. Jim had the wheel, while Terence, his duties light, reclined in the shade offered by the mainsail, smoking his bulldog pipe. Down below the clink of crockery indicated that the capable steward, Ito, was setting the table for supper.

“'Twill be hot in town to-morrow, sor,” Terence opined. “Now God help the poor folk that have to pass their days in the shops and their nights in an attic room endurin' such a spell of weather as this.”

The remark set Jim to thinking. It was a pretty awful fate he thought, and one which must rouse a sort of desperation—to have to spend the day upon one's feet behind a counter serving the petty needs of even hotter and equally irritable customers. He was vaguely aware that many philanthropic schemes had been devised for relieving the sufferings—for in the hot spell this word was not too strong—of such toilers, but he could not remember having heard of such efforts being conducted on a considerable scale, or meeting with marked success. He mentioned this to Terence.

“'Tis no easy task to do for thim poor divils, sor, especially the gurrls. They scorn charity and they will not stand for restraint. They would rather have some bakin' barracks, swarmin' with flies the day and mosquitoes the night, and a hammock under a dried-up tree, and a beach littered with swill hard by the dance hall, and movie theater, and sody fountain, and a raft of cheap skates with sleeves rolled up, and free to go and come all hours of the day and night, than cool rooms and shady lawns and clean surroundings, and wholesome food with a matron thrown in to tell them when they should go to bed.”

“All the same it seems as if it should be managed under sensible and reasonable direction. Of course if one keeps riding herd on the girls——”

“And if one does not, then they will be strayin' and trouble come of it and the place get a name which is not that of polite society.”

“But if everything was free and nice they'd surely have sense enough to know it was a good thing and save their money, so they wouldn't mind a few light restrictions—provided, of course, they had amusements there.”

“Some few might, sor, but those with sense are not the ones in need of such carin' for. It is the fools who suffer, and a fool is always the hardest to handle.”

“But all of these big summer hotels have girl attendants, and they're under restrictions.”

“Ah! but that is different, sor. They are makin' good money what with pay and tips. Then there's always the chance of flirtin' with the chauffeurs or rousin' the interest of some visitin' young gentleman like yourself. They are beholdin' to nobody, and not one of them but has not always in the back of her mind the movie star and the millionaire. For such a place as you name there will be but one way to hold them happy and in bounds.”

“What's that?” asked Jim, who had great respect for the wisdom of his grizzled henchman, who came of this class and knew it in all its contradictory elements.

“To pay them, sor.

“To pay them? Good Lord! Pay them for passing a vacation in a nice place and every comfort and amusement?”

“Just that, sor—no less. To invent some light divertent task and pay them for doin' it.”

“What sort of a task?”

“Waal, sor—that would need some thinkin'. For makin' daisy crowns or pickin' the flowers off century plants as fast as ever they bloomed or the like.”

“How about letting them pay a little themselves?”

“That has been tried, but it does not work, because if they are payin' guests they won't listen to discipline. I misdoubt if such a scheme is feasible.”

The Japanese announced that supper was ready, and the topic was dropped, Ito taking the wheel while Terence and Jim sat down to a delicious meal. A little later they came to anchor off the yacht club.

The following day came in rather like the fulfillment of an astronomic prophecy that the end of the world was at hand through the removal of atmosphere protecting it from solar heat, and the summer was really only at its beginning. Jim had a luncheon engagement with a classmate at the Harvard Club, and, leaving there about half past two, the friend being a busy lawyer, it occurred to him that he would like to see what the conditions really were for the personnel of a big department store on such a day. He went into the largest department store in the city, which was cool in comparison with the outer world. But the girls looked white and drawn, less no doubt from the shop than from their surroundings on leaving it. In two or three other big stores the conditions were similar.

Then sighting a big cheap bazaar across the street he entered, and was enveloped in an atmosphere which struck immediately its sinister warning on one from outside. This was not entirely of heat, although the place, rather low of ceiling, was torrid enough and stuffy enough. But there was something else which can best be described as the exhalation of its stock in trade; for the most part, flimsy gimcracks, emanating the poison of dyestuffs and lead, and the arsenic of paint, and moth destroyer, and dust, rich in microbes, and a sort of felter from the thousands of breaths from which the toxic products had never been thoroughly expelled.

Jim, fresh from the salt air off the Cape, felt as if his head had been covered suddenly by a heap of dirty bedding. He gasped. Some pretext for entering was required, so he made his way to the hardware counter presided over by a rather pretty but anæmic girl who, though sufficiently well nourished, so far as physical proportions were concerned, had the clear diaphanous skin of a Styrian arsenic eater. Her eyes were large and blue, but as he spoke to her it struck Jim that their pupils were abnormally dilated.

In a listless, automatic way, she began to pick out the purchases he indicated from the various trays, and appeared to have some difficulty in hearing his pleasantly pitched voice against the syncopated clatter of the piano, where a weary, poisoned girl was hammering out “Dardanella” for a pettish customer. And then as Jim waited for her to wrap up the things, her head began to sway as if overweighted by its heap of corn-colored hair, her knees buckled slowly under her, and she sank down in deliquescent way, like melting wax.

A little apathetic excitement prevailed; a sort of perfunctory, resigned disturbance which suggested nothing unusual about the circumstance. A sympathetic manageress brought some salts.

“It's no wonder,” she said apologetically to Jim, “what with this terrible heat.”

“Can't I take her home?” Jim asked. “I've got a taxi waiting outside.”

The woman shot him a keen look which proved her examination satisfactory. She recognized immediately his type, and saw that here was no motive but good intention.

“You're very kind, sir,” said she. “Then I'll send one of the other girls to look after her. She lives in Everett.”

“I've got all the afternoon,” said Jim. “My name is James Gladstone, and I'm cruising on a boat anchored off the yacht club,”

The girl, whose name was Jennie Clark, presently revived enough to be led out to the taxi between Jim and her fellow worker, whom she called Ettie. Refreshed by the strong draft, Jennie soon began to take an active interest in Jim, who sat on the folding seat facing the two. As her color returned Jim was a little surprised to discover she was really a very pretty girl, with a pretty, slenderly rounded physique, and a face which, though wide, was appealing by reason of its large well-spaced eyes, a baby nose, and a generous mouth with dimples in both cheeks. Her teeth also were strong and regular. It struck Jim that she ought to be a good type for the screen. Ettie, her friend, had also her attractions, though of a different sort. She was dark, with the figure of a trim carrier pigeon, and,the rich coloring which in the Semitic race defies confinement and vitiated air.

“Feeling better?” Jim asked when they had traveled a block or two.

“Well, I'll say I am, and then some. Gee, but it was fierce in the store to-day. The S. P.C. A. orta chase out the animals and put a seal on the cage when it gets one hundred and forty proof.”

“Then they'd have to put a cast-iron seal or asbestos or something,” said Ettie. “Lead would run.”

“It was pretty awful,” said Jim. “When you go in it's like walking against poison gas. They ought to serve you out masks.”

“You must have wanted that hardware pretty bad,” said Jennie.

“I didn't want it at all. As a matter of fact, I've left it on the counter.”

“Then what made you take a chance?” Ettie asked.

“I wanted to see what you people were up against.”

“Well, you saw, didn't you? It's sure swell of you to take me home,” said Jennie, opening the neck of her blouse still wider to expose a plump and creamy throat. “I only a been there a week and ain't trained down yet.”

“I ain't been there long either,” said Ettie. “You see, Mr. Gladstone, a lot of us salesladies haven't much idea about hoarding our kale. We hauled down good money working for the government during the war, but once it blew up we soon came down to——”

“Brass tacks, like I just sold you,” said Jennie, with a faint smile. “It don't take many pairs of silk stockings and georgette waists to get us piker profiteers, and now with the H. C. L. a girl's gotta swing to her job.”

“If you can't get what you love, you gotta love what you get.”

“All the same,” said Jim, “I should think you might do better than that glue factory. A summer-hotel job or something of the sort.”

“Waitin' at table and the like?” Jennie's melted form stiffened a little like cooling jelly. 'That ain't our class.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Jim, “but lots of nice girls are doing it, students and others that want a cool job and a little money on the side.”

“Well, it sounds all right, but I tried it when I was a kid and I soon got my fill. Some old hen of a housekeeper layin' down prison regulations and bein' at the beck and call of girls no better than us, but with rich folks.”

“How about the movies?” Jim asked. “You are both bright, pretty girls, if you don't mind my saying so.”

“Oh, you can't make us sore with that line of talk,” Ettie answered, “but you need a grubstake to break into the movies, and then you ain't sure you'll connect. I had a friend who did the Cinderella act and saved her money and went out to California. She hung around the lot for about six weeks and picked up a ten-spot now and then and finally got a tryout. The director said, 'I'm afraid you've been going to the movies, and that you'll never act like yourself again.' She stopped writing not long after. Listen, Mr. Gladstone. There ain't any girl between the ages of eight and eighty that don't long for a chance to get in front of the camera. There's something wrong—many are called but few are chosen, as Billy Sunday said.'

They talked a little longer about the possibility of the average working girl, and then Jim asked tentatively what they thought of country or beach rest houses for working girls where they might spend their vacations.

“That depends,” said Ettie judiciously. “I've heard the summer camps weren't so bad, but us girls that have to stand behind a counter all day want something livelier.”

“Jazz and dance halls and movies and things?”

“You said a mouthful. We want some fun and a chance to wear a few glad rags. We got fed up on khakis and bloomers during the war. Our trouble now ain't because of the war. It's because the war stopped.”

They reached their destination presently and both thanked Jim effusively and with a sudden shyness which he was a little puzzled to account for.

“I'm the one that's under obligation,” said Jim. “You've told me a lot that I wanted to know. I'm going to ask you to give me your names and addresses. I'd like to send you a little souvenir of our ride.”

He rode back to the yacht club in a very thoughtful frame of mind. The problem of helping such girls as these was, he feared, a little beyond his knowledge and experience. As a matter of fact he knew very little about girls of any class. At school and athletics had claimed most of his spare time, and in vacations the woods and the water. He had taken a technical course in Harvard and, on graduating, his father had found him a position with an engineer's outfit doing reclamation work in Arizona. Two years had been spent thus when the war broke out and he had returned East to go to Plattsburg. Some months of training followed when his regiment had embarked and was in England at the signing of the armistice. On returning to be mustered out, Jim, lured by the stories of a brother officer, had joined the throng of oil seekers in Texas, and there with the aid of a little inheritance had achieved the lucky strike which made him several times a millionaire. Wherefore one may see that the feministic part of his education had been totally neglected. Yet after his talk with these two typical average shopgirls, he could not help but feel that if one could only find the secret of its operation, herein lay enormous possibilities for doing good.

Chapter V.

His little boat worked its way eastward leisurely, and a few days later, coming into Casco Bay, Terence announced that they were running short of gas. There was no particular object in going all the way up to Portland, and, discovering on the starboard bow what appeared to be a small summer colony, with an attractive hotel and a sheltered place to lie, Jim decided to fetch up there for the night. They came to anchor off a little steamboat landing where there was a gasoline tank, but as he and Terence got into the dinghy to go ashore, both were struck by the abandoned aspect of the place. Though it was still early in the season, it might have been expected to show a certain animation, especially as its general situation and appearance were more than commonly attractive and picturesque.

The hotel was small but of pleasing architecture, and the cottages adjoining it of bungalow style, bright and cheerful. The pretty stretch of sheltered beach promised every facility for bathing, with its casino flanked by tennis courts. There were a good many pine and other trees, while the coastline was typical of the most charming in the world, rugged rocks with sheltered little coves and no objectionable features.

Yet an air of abandonment prevailed. There were no gayly colored children or girls or parosols or small boats, It might have been the month of April for all the activity which prevailed.

“What's wrong with the place?” Jim asked.

“I could not say, sor,” Terence answered, wrinkling his brow, “it should be filling up by now. But there is not so much as an old lady with a book, and they're the advance guard in these resorts.”

As they drew up to the landing, a dejected-looking man came out of the boathouse and surveyed them sadly. Like most of the natives on that part of the coast, he was tall and square—shouldered and angular, with a bleak, high-featured face deeply tanned and lined; and he wore a battered yachting cap from under whose rim clustered hair as grizzled as that of Terence. Jim discovered also the four braid stripes of a master mariner on the sleeve of his blue pilot coat.

“Good evening, captain,” said he. “Can we get about eighty gallons of gas?”

“All you want, sir. Take a hundred and I can give you a special price.”

“Well, make it a hundred then.” Jim got out of the boat which Terence made fast. “What's the matter with this place? Everybody gone fishing?”

“Wish they had, brother,” answered the mariner, and looked seaward wistfully as if to visualize the return of a happy picnic party. “There's nothin' the matter with the place. The trouble's with me. This is as good a little hotel property as on the hull coast from Boston to Eastport.”

“Hotel?” Jim asked.

“Yes, sir. It's all of a piece, hotel, casino, bowlin' alley, bungalows, and about a hundred and fifty acres here on the end of the p'int—good air, good water, big garden all planted, everything in good repair and ready for all hands to come aboard—and now I can't raise the money to swing it. Seems like bad luck, once she starts, don't know when to stop, like a gale from the nor'east.”

Then followed a really pitiful story, to which Jim, unlike the wedding guest, was ready and willing and even eager to give ear in his capacity as marchand de bonheur—dealer in good fortune,

Captain Fossett had retired from the sea ten years before, bought a summer hotel a few miles farther down the coast, and done a profitable business from the start. The year before, haying received a good offer to take a new four-master laden with dry lumber from Boston to Buenos Aires, he had accepted it, counting on geting back in ample time to put his house in order for his summer's trade, as he had sailed the first of October. The ship was a smart sailor, but returning light had encountered head and baffling winds, and when, the first of June, he was still some hundreds of miles from home, his wife had gone ahead and lighted the furnace to dry out the place. A defective flue, a high northwest wind, and the very small insurance had resulted in ruin. Everything was lost—even to outbuildings and the garage.

At this moment the death of the proprietor of Piney Head, as this hotel colony was called, had put the property on the market at a bargain. Seeing a possible opportunity to retrieve his fortune Captain Fossett had scraped together what money he could and purchased it under heavy mortgage, counting on his own late clientele and the former clientele of Piney Head to fill the establishment and weather his first and critical season. But here he had not counted on the fact that the patrons of both resorts were mostly family folk of provident habits who made their plans for the summer well in advance. His own, learning of the fire, had reserved accommodations elsewhere; while those of Piney Head, being likewise advised that the place might not reopen, had done the same. So now, at the beginning of the season, the captain found himself under heavy obligations, with only a handful of guests in sight and no credit to see the season through.

“To hang on any longer means just runnin' more heavily in debt, and go busted in the end,” said he. “The place is mortgaged up to the truck and I gotta deckload of new gear ordered and a full cargo of stores already aboard, and the store bill to be settled. I might just as well let them foreclose and be done with it.”

“You say that everything's all ready to start?” Jim asked,

“Yes, sir. She's in full commission and all ready to hist the flag. I even got my crew of help.”

“But you might fill up yet, especially in August.”

“Ain't got the leeway. I was p'intin' too close to the wind hopin' somethin' might turn up. But money's awful tight and my credit's plum at an end. Even at the best I was doin' it on a shoe string and now she's parted. My regular clients have been with me for years, and wouldn't have minded paying me a month's advance in the circumstances, and that might have seen me through. But the way it stands I'm on the rocks.”

Jim had been doing some rapid thinking. For one thing, here was precisely such a rare opportunity for doing good as had been the object of his quest, and for another the whole aspect of the place was extremely pleasing to him. It would be an admirable summer home for the sort of children's relief work which Miss Dudley was operating. But he had pondered a good deal on his shopgirl charity and disliked intensely to give up this idea without a trial, especially as in such a connection an idea recently had come into his head. A scheme which he thought would solve the problem of keeping his guests pleasantly and perhaps profitably employed.

Wherefore Captain Fossett, good honest sailorman, now received the surprise of his life; for the boyish-looking young man to whom he had been telling his troubles merely for the passing relief which comes through a sympathetic listener, fastened him with his soft gray eyes and said in his pleasant boyish voice:

“Well, I guess you can carry' on, captain. I'll take over the ship for this summer, anyhow, and put you in for skipper at let's say three hundred dollars a month.”

The captain's lean jaw dropped. If, with his four-master driven on a lee shore, and his last anchor dragging, a benevolent whale had taken the hawser in his mouth and towed him safely to windward, he could not have been more astonished.

“What—what's that?” he gasped.

“Straight stuff,” said Jim. “It just happens that I was on the lookout for a proposition like this, though not for hotel purposes. I've got a few million dollars lying idle that I'd like to see work a little, but if I'm going to carry out my plans, we've got to get some speed.”

 

And speed was shown. Jim took up the mortgage the next morning and returned to Boston, leaving Terence to await his instructions. In town he got in touch immediately with certain philantropic ladies of the Y. W. C. A. and other local-aid societies who undertook interviewing the management of such shops as that in which he had found Jennie and Ettie. These lines of operation started, he had a long and earnest consultation with a motion-picture producer who was himself in need of precisely such collaboration as Jim had to offer.

“I want you go down there,” said Jim, “with your location man and photographer and scenario writer and look the ground over. It strikes me as an ideal set for a historic colonial American play—the landing of the Pilgrims or old times in the colonies with indentured men and cargoes of girls sent out to be married to the settlers on payment of a hundred pounds of tobacco per; and Indian massacres; and pirates; and all that sort of thing. Make the best picture you can with the material you've got to work on and hire what supplementary stuff you need. Drag some old wreck off the flats and camouflage her like the Golden Hope or a French corvette or something, and sink her or burn her or blow her up. If the picture's any good it will help pay the expenses of the show. If it's not, it will be a start, and the girls will pass the word around. I'll have no trouble in keeping my place filled up and doing them some good.”

What the producer may have thought of this as a business proposition it is unnecessary to record, but he was guaranteed against loss and, after having looked the ground over, became as enthusiastic about the idea as Jim himself. And all this time the good ladies were not idle, and the prospective guests, learning that they were to be given opportunity to perform before the camera, and later they might see their fair images cast upon the screen, stampeded the office for applications for vacation at Piney Head.

Through all this excitement Jim preserved his unruffled calm. His cruiser became a means of transportation and pleasure craft. He collaborated to some extent with the scenario writer and spent many days with the librarian of Portland and booksellers of Boston, getting hold of volumes on costumes of the period, war paint of different tribes, Senecas, Penobscots, Algonquins, Iroquois, and all the historic reference attending. A stucco blockhouse was erected on the moor, and log cabins, and a ducking pool, and whipping post, and stocks; and the play began to shape up as a sort of composite classic and modern colonial historic novel. A flotilla of birch-bark canoes was sent down from Oldtown and two or three old vessels which Lloyd's inspector would have examined in a life preserver were patched up like gored horses at a bullfight to last long enough to recive their coup de grâce.

The most harrowing part was the case of the girls whose vacations expired and were forced to give way to their more fortunate sisters before the final and thrilling scenes. All were given a chance to do their turn in some capacity even at the useless sacrifice of film, and meanwhile the busy photographers wound off aquatic sports and beach revels, and even concocted a few impromptu comedy pieces. It was generally understood that all was for the benefit of the charity, and that no professionals were to be employed. But it was astonishing to Jim to find how his guests could act, also the local natives, boatmen, and fishermen when invited to perform.

“Say, Jim,” said the director one day, for they had grown very chummy, “I've made some finds in this bunch of yours. That Jennie girl and her little runnin' mate Ettie, 'a' got all the makin's. Jennie's got the slow, easy, demure stuff and a wonderful screen face like's apt to happen when the features balance up and there's space to spare between the eyes. Ettie's got the pep and gets the temperamental stuff across.”

“She's the big chief's daughter all right,” said Jim. “You'd swear she had Indian blood in her.”

In time the big piece was finished and with the new relays of guests others were made. No partiality was shown in the girls sent out from town, though naturally the director passed them through his tests for leading parts, and all the while everybody was having the most tremendous amount of fun. There was no more thought of protesting against such regulations as existed than there might be at Universal City itself. With over a hundred girls and sometimes more, this may sound surprising, but the secret lay in the fact that all were not only intensely interested, but found in these exercises two of the most fundamental needs of the human soul—those of expression and appreciation.

Natures warped or shriveling or congealing behind the counters of stifling shops found here the opportunity of expansion, of coming into the bright light, not only of the sun, but of later publicity, which is to say a recognition of the individual as such—as a personality—not as a mere human machine to reel out yards of calico or dozens of shoe strings. They were known by names, not numbers. Such as had beauty found it an asset instead of a danger. Their food was plentiful and wholesome, no lack of ice cream, no lack of dancing, and the movies they saw were the results of their own efforts as tested out in a hastily erected projecting room; these to be greeted with astonishment or rapture or shrieks of laughter at some signal failure. Jim asked Pelton, the director, what he really thought. He screwed up his face. “Well, let's call it—educational,” said he, “A piece like this is pretty sure of certain popularity, but there'll always be seating room where it's shown.”

“Then you think it may pay expenses?”

Pelton's face had a peculiar expression. He started to speak, then checked himself.

“Sure thing,” he answered. “And then some.”

“Well said Jim, “if you're right it will solve our problem here. The girls like to do it, and it keeps them interested and in order, and if there's any surplus it can go toward carrying on the idea on a bigger scale.

Pelton made no answer to this, but walked away with a peculiar smile on his face. Perhaps he was reflecting on the curious problem in metaphysics by which, when a man got very rich, everything seemed to acquire a Midas touch, and perhaps he was thinking of something else.

Chapter VI.

All summer long, Margaret Dudley had been a great deal in Jim's thoughts. He had not written her about his efforts, partly because their slight acquaintance did not seem to warrant this, and partly because he desired first to score a success, about which he might manage to tell her in person. He had replaced the stolen car by its duplicate, and now when the last guest had departed and he had settled with Captain Fossett and arranged for the renewal of his lease for the following season, it occurred to Jim that it would be very pleasant to go back over the road, drop in casually at Miss Dudley's children's farm, describe his own institution, and show her that he was neither the selfish pleasure seeker, nor altogether the ridiculously easy mark which his previous adventure in doing good might appear to have indicated.

So he set off blithely with Terence and Ito, making an early start. A pleasant day's run brought him late in the afternoon past the abandoned farm where he had been so gloriously stripped of his goods and chattels. He had never made an effort to recover the car.

But the farm was no longer abandoned. The old house had been removed and a number of small attractive bungalows were springing up about a central edifice, apparently a sort of administration building with its amusement halls and classrooms. The grounds also were being cleared and trimmed, and the flanking pastures plowed and harrowed for a crop of winter wheat. Evidently Miss Dudley had carried out her plan of buying the property and enlarging her good work.

Jim held on his course to arrive presently at the John Phillips Memorial Home, which rather suggested a brooder with the fluffy chicks swarming about it under the observation of white-clad “mothers.”

Jim turned in, stopped in front of the house, and asked for Miss Dudley. There was an old-fashioned flower garden off one side, and a smiling young “mother” told him that he would find her there, so he leaped down and made his way thither.

Margaret, with the assistance of several of the children, was gathering flowers for the supper table. She looked up as he approached. It seemed to Jim that she was lovelier than ever, a little more plump perhaps, and her face had lost much of its tragic expression and was more serene. But her violet eyes fixed him with their same peculiar austerity, and her wide mouth drew itself in a straight line which, if not precisely severe, held a certain judicial expression which puzzled him a little. There was, in fact, almost an accusatory manner in her reception of him. Jim chuckled inwardly, taking it for granted that she supposed him to be still the self-indulgent amusement seeker. He rather gloated over her surprise when she should learn how he had spent his summer.

She gave him a firm little hand and he repressed a strong inclination to raise it to his lips. He could not have realized what a thrill of exaltation it was going to give him to see her again.

“I see that you carried out your plans about the old farm where I was despoiled,” said he, after first greetings were exchanged.

“Yes, it's a good farm and has lain fallow for a number of years, and I have some hopes of getting my charity on a partially paying business. You see I am not a multimillionaire like yourself.”

“Well,” said Jim, “I guess if anybody can do it, you can. Benefactions in order to be thoroughly successful ought to be self-supporting to some extent. But of course when it's a question of children or old people or the sick, it's rather a different matter.”

“So that is why you chose working girls for your philanthropy?”

“Oh! So you've heard about it?” said Jim, a litle crestfallen.

Miss Dudley's black eyebrows raised and she shot him a curious look. “Why, yes. I imagine about everybody in the country has heard about it. Haven't you seen to-day's paper?”

“No,” Jim answered. “We made an early start and lunched on the side of the road.”

Miss Dudley smiled. “Then I fancy you have quite a surprise ahead of you.”

“Oh, the place has already been written up, a little,” said Jim carelessly. “Reporters came down from time to time and looked us over, and I told them the object of my scheme, which was to give the girls some fun and, if we could make a decent picture or two, turn in the proceeds toward elaborating the establishment.”

The violet eyes rested steadily on his. “Was that the extent of your intention?” she asked.

“Why, yes, of course. With our raw material we never really expected to do anything startling in the motion-picture line. But the place lent itself perfectly to early colonial and historical scenes, and I must say the girls played up astonishingly. We may have developed some really high ability for the screen.”

A faint flicker of amusement passed over Miss Dudley's charming face. “Well, from the account in our Sunday newspaper, I should say that you had succeeded. In fact, I am inclined to think that you have builded better than you knew.”

Jim was greatly elated at these words, despite their peculiar dryness of tone. Then, as she continued to regard him with that intense examining scrutiny, he became a little uneasy.

“I hope they haven't given us a knock,” said he.

“Knock is scarcely the word.” She turned to a litle girl. “Run up to the house, Clara, and ask Miss Minturn for to-day's paper.”

“I thought we'd managed rather well,” said Jim anxiously.

Miss Dudley's face turned very grave. “There is no criticism of the executive part of it,” said she. “Quite the reverse, in fact.”

“Then you don't mean to say that there has been an attack on the moral character of my plant?”

“No, neither of the plant nor of its guests or personnel,”

“On me, then?” A swarthy flush came up under Jim's tan. “What are you driving at, anyhow, Miss Dudley? Do you mean to say that they have dared accuse me of mixing it up with the girls? Because if they have, it's a dirty slander and they'll pay for it if it costs me a cold million.”

“Oh, nothing of the sort, Mr. Gladstone. As far as your social relations with your guests are concerned, there is not the slightest hint of anything unworthy. I am really terribly sorry for you. The account upset me a good deal because you had not impressed me at all as the sort of person which this malicious attack insinuates you to be.”

“Good heavens! Miss Dudley,” cried Jim, “don't keep me in suspense. Don't try to break it to me gently. I can't imagine what it's all about, but if it's anything scurrilous, then it's not true, that's all.”

“Here comes the paper,” said Miss Dudley, and she looked at him a little anxiously.

Jim grabbed the paper from the hands of the little girl and his horrified eyes fell upon a full page in color with reproductions of the scenes from several of the historic plays. A large portrait of Jennie Clark and Ettie Lawrence, with pictures of the colony, and one of himself in flannels talking to Director Pelton adorned it also. But these rotagravures made scarcely a dint on his retina, for his eyes were fastened on the leaders of the article.

“James Gladstone, oil millionaire, victimizes working girls.”

“Clever trick to make them work for nothing as movie actresses.”

“Miss Jennie Clark, star of Big Historic Production, draws only board and lodging for her services.”

“Thought they were playing for fun, thus saving Gladstone payroll of one thousand dollars a day. No contracts signed, but Lawyer Ketcham says he can recover. Sentiment divided among fair guests of Piney Head, but Miss Jennie Clark claims that whatever the motive, her services are worth ten thousand dollars.”

“Charitable ladies of Hub warmly defend Gladstone, and indignantly deny that millionaire had ulterior motive.”

Jim let fall the hand holding the paper and stared at Miss Dudley with wild eyes.

“Good Lord!” he gasped. “Can you beat it?”

She gave him one earnest look, and then for the second time since their first meeting, a gale of laughter seized her, the second irrepressible and whole-hearted bit of mirth experienced by this lady since the death of her fiancé on the field of honor.

She laughed so hard that she was obliged to totter to a bench where she sank down and covered her face with her hands.

Jim did not resent her mirth. On the contrary, it warmed and comforted him, and was as balm of Gilead to his gaping wounds, crying to Heaven for justice. He knew, of course, that she would never have laughed like that if she had not been convinced that he was blameless.

Pulling himself together he scanned the infamous article. It was a magnificent advertisement for the historic play, but at that moment Jim did not feel that it paid to advertise. In fact, it gave him full credit for being a young man of keen intelligence and high excutive ability. But painted him as a clever exploiter of such latent dramatic ability as might be found in any bright working girl who is a movie fan, which is to say, any bright working girl. Under pretext of their entertainment, their uplift, their moral and hygienic benefit, he had, according to insinuations which were just short of being legal charges, decoyed them to a hotel property which he had picked up at a bargain by trading on the impending ruin of a worthy seafaring man—who could have thought it of Captain Fossett!—and there at the emolument of roof and bed and board had worked them all summer in the production of a piece which might net him thousands.

The newspapers slipped from between Jim's nervous fingers, and he stared aghast at Margaret Dudley, who was beginning to get control of herself.

“Well, anyhow,” said he, “the Boston ladies stood up for me.”

Her laugher broke out afresh. “But don't you see, foolish, they had to.”

“No, I don't see. They might have claimed that I bunkoed them, too.”

“A woman, my dear Mr. Gladstone, especially a woman of strong mind and executive ability, cannot afford to admit that she has been bunkoed.”

Jim chewed the cud of this idea in silence. “Well,” said he desperately, “what do you think?”

She rose and offered him her hand, her face suddenly grave. Jim squeezed it rather hard and thought that he felt the faintest return pressure.

“I think that you are a dear. I think that you went about the whole business with the honest endeavor of doing good.”

“Well,” said Jim slowly, “If you think that I don't care three whoops in—Hoboken what the rest of the world thinks.”

Chapter VII.

Doctor Gladstone, this time, did not indulge in any Homeric laughter over the result of his son's sincere effort in doing good.

“It only goes to show, Jim,” said he, “what a popular fallacy it is, that in order to benefit his fellow man, all that a philanthropic millionaire has to do is to open his purse. It is a pretty serious thing for a young man to be published broadcast in a leading newspaper as a trickster and exploiter of poor working girls. What are you going to do about it?”

“Just as I did before, dad. Take the loss and keep my mouth shut. If the picture amounts to anything, I shall deduct the expenses of making it and turn the profits over to the Red Cross. If they want to bring suit they can, but they've really got no claim. It never would have occurred to anybody, but some shyster lawyer who was a beau of Jennie's saw a chance to make a case of it and, backed up by a yellow journalist in a slack season, they managed to make quite a noise. My statement has been published in all the papers and people can take it or leave it.”

“Then you're not going on with the Piney Head home?”

“No, sir. I shall turn my philanthropic efforts in another direction. Captain Fossett let me down, too, but I don't regret the good that I may have been able to do him. In fact, I don't regret any of it very much, since the most wonderful girl in the world believes in me.”

“Too bad you can't combine forces with that wonderful girl, Jim.”

“You've voiced a great truth, dad. But I'm afraid that such a woman loves but once.”

Doctor Gladstone stroked his gray Vandyke. “She may love but once when that love runs its full course, my boy. But a healthy-minded, full-natured young woman does not sacrifice her life's happiness to a sentimental idea. Don't despair about her. Unless I'm much mistaken, you have already inspired in her the most promising interest which it is possible to rouse in the heart of a true woman. She feels responsible for you. She thinks that she started you on this career of doing good and she's going to watch your progress with a growing interest. You're not discouraged, are you?”

“About doing good? No, sir. I'm beginning to appreciate, though, that it takes some doing.”

“Of course it does. So does everything that is worth while. But such disillusionments as yours are the reason why a great many rich people prefer to do their part through organized charities. The overhead is less even with a certain amount of expense in administrative quarters.”

“I suppose so,” said Jim, “but I'll have a few more tries before I quit, and then I shan't quit entirely.”

“Any idea what you'll tackle next?”

“Not the least in the world, sir. I'm going to amble along on the same knightly quest. Having had no luck going north, I shall now sail south. Perhaps I may be able to improve the condition of a gang of West Indian pirates or Mexican bandits or I. W. W.'s or something. There's another comforting feature besides Margaret Dudley. I may have got badly singed, but I actually have done good to the people I started in to help.”

 

Jim and Terence returned to Portland to get the forty-foot cruiser which Jim thought he might use during the winter. Jim also desired to say a few things to Captain Fossett, and he left that shamefaced master mariner with sufficient food for reflection throughout the approaching winter. Then as it was still too early to start south, Jim and Terence made a flying tour through the Middle Western States, in which he learned a good deal about the social and economic conditions of all that part of the country, but aside from sundry acts of kindliness which left as much bewilderment as blessings in his wake, he came upon no distinguished opportunity for doing good on a considerable scale. To tell the truth he didn't seek it out. He was still very sore over the results of his summer adventure, and though not precisely discouraged, yet in a sort of raw and tender state, and it had made him extremely wary of attack in benefactions of any magnitude.

He returned to spend Thanksgiving with his father. He sent several big crates of toys to the John Phillips Memorial Home, receiving a polite letter of acknowledgment from Margaret Dudley, which contained, however, no news or inquiries of a personal character. Had there been the slightest pretext for his doing so, Jim would have run up to see her; as he had nothing to report, he occupied himself in putting his boat The Vagabondia in commission for its southern cruise. He had retained the services of Ito, who had been serving Doctor Gladstone as butler, and procured another Japanese for his father. Then Jim, Terence, and Ito went aboard the stanch, comfortable craft on the second of December and laid their course southward.

It was cold cruising for the first two or three days, but after passing Absecom Inlet, they ran into sunny tempered weather, which daily improved. There seemed to be a large migration of small craft heading southward and probably an even greater flotilla of smaller craft going down through the canals, for on entering the Sounds the waterways were fairly thronging with them.

“This will be the great North Atlantice Rum Squadron, sor,” said Terence. “'Tis a pilgrimage to the wet shrines of Cuba and the Bahamas. The boys can keep in sheltered waters to Key West, and from there even the eighteen-footers will take a chance on a stretch of open sea with lashin's of booze' at the end of it.”

“Some of them seemed to have managed to stock up for the voyage,” Jim observed. “That bunch we were anchored among last night weren't singing 'How Dry I Am.'”

“No doubt 'tis the last of their stock,” said Terence, “and like a caravan on the desert they are speeding up for the oasis before the liquid supply gives out.” And he moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. “No doubt we will be lookin' into Nassau, sor, and Havana?”

“Yes,” said Jim good-naturedly, “if only to keep you from going on a still hunt and getting poisoned as you did in Portland. To tell the truth, I could do with a little drink myself. But we mustn't go and spoil it all.”

Gliding on their way through the shoal-clear waters and soft-tempered airs, they came, one afternoon, to a long sea island with patches of cleared land and stately Southern pines with plumy tassels. Being in need of water and, seeing a landing ahead, they put over to it, deciding to fetch up there for the night. Others of the drifting population had acted apparently with the same idea, for there were two Northern boats already anchored there; a shabby forty-foot cabin launch which, though in need of paint and general repairs, appeared to have been a smart boat, and a speed launch of about the same size, which also presented a dilapidated appearance. The occupants of both appeared to be getting supper, as the still fragrant air, with its piny odors, carried also the appetizing smells of coffee and bacon.

As Jim rounded up to anchor a little outside, he observed the name of the speed launch, a fifty-footer, and shoal of draft, “Squirrel—Portland, Maine.”

“I don't seem to be allowed to forget about that place,” said Jim,

He got in the dingy with Terence and went ashore to see what could be done about taking water and buying green vegetables. A path led up from the landing and, following this, they saw presently, through the pines, an old and stately plantation house, surrounded by a grove of magnificent live oaks, trees perhaps two hundred years old, of enormous girth and spread of limbs. But drawing nearer, it was apparent that the house, though occupied, was in a state of semiruin. The big columns of the porch were nude of paint and rotten at the foot, the portico sagged, the window shutters showed gaps, while the appearance of the roof, of uneven lines, made it doubtful that it was still water tight. In fact, the atmosphere of the whole premises was one of cruel poverty against a background of pride.

Nobody was in sight and, passing around to the rear, Jim saw an elderly man, evidently a gentleman, working in an unkempt garden. He looked up at Jim's approach and, as if rather glad of the interruption, dropped his hoe and mopped his brow with a large bandanna.

“Good afternoon, sir,” said Jim. “Could you spare me a few buckets of water?”

“All you wish, sir. That is the one commodity with which we are still abundantly supplied. There is the well right yonder. Just help yourself, sir.”

Terence went over to fill the buckets. Several trips were necessary, and Jim, observing that the old gentleman seemed inclined to conversation, remained to talk with him. He learned that he was a Major Shelby, and that his family had lived on the plantation for over a hundred and fifty years. There were two other big plantations on the island, people of the same stamp, who had lived in great magnificence before impoverished by the Civil War. At one time, the island had grown splendid crops of high-grade sea-island cotton.

“It is purely a question of capital, sir,” said Major Shelby. “In these days of high rates of interest and quick returns we can find nobody who cares to put his money in such an investment. So we have been obliged to let our fields lie fallow and scratch for food, as I am doing at this moment. There does not seem to be any relief in sight, sir, but we are accustomed to adversity, and with a few sheep and hogs and garden truck we make the best of it.”

The more Jim talked with the major, the more interested he became. The old gentleman, like all of his class, was a planter born and bred and he knew whereof he spoke. It seemed to Jim that here, at last, was presented a perfectly safe opportunity for doing good; and one from which he should not turn because of recent humiliating experiences. He had been stripped by thieves and vilified by a low-grade legal cunning, influencing the minds of a rather foolish and avaricious class—but here he would have to do with gentlefolk of a stock the oldest and proudest which the country could claim.

Observing his interest and possibly suspecting he might be entertaining an angel, for Jim had every appearance of the rich Northern yachtsman, Major Shelby went more into detail. He invited Jim into the house and, in answer to his summons, a very old negro appeared from somewhere and actually produced two delicious juleps. Although sadly stripped of its more precious treasures, Jim observed that there still remained some splendid pieces of furniture and old rugs and tapestries; these scarcely marketable because of their extreme decay. Then as they were talking, there came the sound of voices outside, and there entered two charming young girls, a middle-aged lady, as typical of her class as the old gentleman, and a young man of about Jim's own age. Major Shelby introduced them as his daughter, Mrs. Wade, his two granddaughters, Rose and Virginia, and his grandson, Shelby Wade. It appeared that they had just come in their sharpie from the mainland, where they had been for the mail and some few supplies. Jim found the girls charming, but the young man, who was tall and lean, with a clean-cut, aquiline face and very black hair, impressed Jim as playing the rôle of the motion-picture scion of an old Southern family. He had passed close to Jim's trim yacht, and it is to be feared that at that moment his heart was rife with envy and discontent.

Jim was invited to remain to supper, and accepted on condition that they lunch with him the following day. During the course of the simple but appetizing meal, he told them frankly a good deal about his own circumstances. He could not but notice the glow in Shelby Wade's dark eyes as he described his astonishing luck.

And then, his mind quite made up that here was to be found not only a singular opportunity for doing good, but also the meritorious endeavor to produce a valuable commodity, he offered point-blank to finance the reclamation of the whole island's cotton production.

“You see, major,” said he, “I've got to do something with my surplus income, and I believe your proposition to be a very good one. If your neighbors wish to come into this thing we can draw up some sort of an agreement which should be satisfactory to everybody and turn out profitably for us all.”

It must have seemed to the poor old major as if a visitant from some other planet had been sent by Divine direction to the rescue of the community in its moment of greatest stress. There was, of course, difficulty to be overcome in the matter of labor, but this he was sure could be accomplished. Jim made it plain that he had no desire to interfere with the management of the project. He wished merely to finance it, and was willing to accept the loss in the event of its turning out unprofitably.

Chapter VIII.

The following days were busy ones. Jim met and talked with Major Shelby's neighbors, gentlemen of his own class and circumstance. He took a party of them across to the principal city of the region, where their company was duly incorporated, and a large deposit for immediate operations made in the local bank, and, satisfied that his scheme was fairly launched, Jim was about to continue his voyage South, planning to return three or four months later, when the peculiar mischievous devil which appeared to have been detailed to poison his attempts at doing good, took a hand in the game.

A number of boats of the Southern migration had passed, but the Squirrel, the forty-foot speed launch hailing from Portland, still frequented the vicinity, though she had changed her anchorage to a little bight about a mile farther down the shore where there was a small colony of negro fishermen. There were three men aboard her, and they were seldom in evidence; but passing two of them one day in the skiff, it had struck Jim that the face of one of them was familiar. He spoke to Terence about it.

“I've seen the felly, too, sor,” said Terence. “I have an idee he was one of the bunch of bums that suped in the making of the picture down there on Piney Head. They look to be a hard crowd, and no doubt will be runnin' back a load of rum on their return.”

Then one day while walking on the shore with Virginia, the younger of the major's granddaughters, Jim saw the figures of two men about five hundred yards away come down from the pines and stand for a moment watching Virginia and himself. They got in a flat-bottomed skiff and rowed out to the Squirrel.

“I wonder why those men keep hanging around,” Virginia asked.

“I don't know,” Jim answered. “There seem to be a good many such floaters nowadays all over the country.”

He had planned to leave the following day, and Virginia suggested after supper that they walk to the next plantation, about a mile and a half away, that Jim might say au revoir. A family of Conways had lived there for several generations. There were two daughters of about the age of Virginia, and a young man, the chum of Shelby Wade, who was the generally accepted suitor of Virginia's elder sister, Rose.

Jim agreed to this, and they set out in the late twilight. Mrs. Wade, who had made a correct estimate of Jim's character, offered no objection to his unchaperoned excursions, with Virginia. It would scarcely have been natural for her not to have cherished some hope that the two might become interested in each other, but such an idea had never entered Jim's head. For one thing Virginia's limited opportunities and lack of any worldly knowledge made her seem to him scarcely more than a child, although she had just turned twenty-one. But more than that he now acknowledged himself to be hopelessly in love with Margaret Dudley.

Virginia, for her part, if she had not actually fallen in love with Jim, would have needed but little encouragement to do so. She was really a very pretty girl, graceful, lissom, dark like her brother, with thick, fine-spun hair, and a softly modulated Southern voice.

They did not follow the road, scarcely more than a trail through the sandy fields, but took a little path which ran along the shore, and wound through piny groves and skirted little bays where springs bubbled out of the sand. These were dense in foliage of a semi-tropical sort, magnolia and rhododendrons, and water, and live oak, and big gum trees from the branches of which hung long festoons of Spanish moss, and higher up held great globes of mistletoe. The path would have been difficult to follow after dark, but a big yellow moon was just lifting itself above the treetops, growing brighter as it rose.

These sea islands are for some reason richer in everything than the mainland opposite. Perhaps because of their climate tempered by the proximity of the Gulf Stream, it would seem as though the land bordering the dominion of the sea gave of its best to the frontier. The soil is richer, possibly because of phosphates, the vegetation more luxuriant, the fauna more profuse, and the human habitation also appears productive of more vital types, more generous and brave. There is among islanders that sort of fearless independence to be found in mountaineers, perhaps because of close contact with the bigger elemental things not to be encountered in more populous communities.

But the glamour of the moonlight night, the pretty girl at his side, and the fact that he was a sort of protecting genie of the place was lost on Jim. He was thinking with profound satisfaction that all was now in order and that, barring some mishap impossible to foresee, their effort for doing good should not prove a fiasco. Even while helping Virginia over the rail fence he was thinking to himself with what triumph he might announce his achievement to Margaret Dudley on his return North. Margaret had told him that in her opinion it was almost impossible to do much for able-bodied adults. Her motto in regard to charitable endeavor was “Hold fast to children.”

Virginia poised herself on the top of the fence and Jim swung her easily down. The path dipped to the shore and they came out at the head of a little bight where it was necessary to trudge about fifty yards through the sand. Then on the edge of the bay where the path turned inland again, Virginia stopped.

“I've got some pebbles in my shoe,” said she, and seated herself on a fallen log.

Jim dropped on one knee. “Let me,” said he, and slipped the knot of the shoe string. They were in the shadow of a water oak, through the foliage of which the moonlight splashed to throw odd crescentic shadows on the white sand. Jim, bantering Virginia about wearing high-heeled shoes on such a promenade, was intent on securing the knot of the lacing when there came a rustle as of some prowling animal in the bushes behind him and with it a shriek from Virginia.

Jim swung about, but before he could rise, a heavy body landed on his shoulders and bore him down. Virginia shrieked again, her cry ending in a curious, muffled way. Then Jim found his arms wrenched back and his head and shoulders enveloped in something resembling a gunny sack, which smelled evilly of rancid oil. His wrists and ankles were bound quickly by two men, and something else was thrown over the sack and swathed so snugly about his face that he could scarcely breathe. He heard, indistinctly, low-voiced admonitions passing between the assailants when he was picked up bodily by feet and shoulders and borne along, nearly smothered, to be lowered into a boat.

It was, of course, immediately evident to Jim that here was a perfectly good job of kidnaping, and something told him that the kidnapers were the rough trio off the speed launch, whom he and Virginia had seen watching them the evening before. He had evidently been recognized as the oil millionaire charged with duping the shopgirls, and the opportunity for seizing him and holding him for ransom in some lonely spot had been too easy to be missed.

Virginia's presence was a help rather than a hindrance to the kidnapers, who reasoned, no doubt, that while a high-spirited young fellow might prove stubborn about paying a ransom for himself, his chivalry would not permit his refusing it to liberate a young girl under his protection. And Jim admitted to himself that in this opinion they were entirely correct.

His rage at what had happened was secondary to his solicitude for Virginia, and the necessity of obtaining her immediate release no matter at what cost. This accomplished he could turn his whole energy to the capture of the bandits. Jim tried to speak, but the effort brought only a tightening of the greasy swathings around his head and face, so that he could scarcely breathe, much less articulate.

The skiff in which the two captives had been placed was rowed rapidly out from the shore, and a few minutes later they were lifted aboard a larger vessel, no doubt the speed launch, and carried down into the cabin. Presently the motor began to turn over. Then somebody removed the wrappings, pulled the sack off his head and went out into the cockpit. Jim blinked about, and in the glimmer of a standing light, set in gimbals on the forward bulkhead, saw Virginia crouched on the edge of a bunk.

“Oh, Jim,” she murmured, “we've been kidnaped.”

“So it appears,” Jim answered, “I hope you are not hurt, Virginia.”

“No, but I was nearly smothered, They put a nasty rag around my mouth and it tastes of oil.”

Jim turned to the companionway. “Hello, there!” he called. “Can't you give the lady a glass of water and let her rinse her mouth?”

“Sure,” answered a rough. voice. There was the gurgle of a jug and a big, rawboned man, the one whom Jim and Terence had recogized, lowered himself into the cabin with a tin pint cup of water which he handed to Virginia.

“We didn't aim to be rough,” said he, “but we couldn't take no chances,”

“Quite so,” said Jim. “It's about a twenty-year job if you slip up on it. Are you running the show?”

“Well, yes, I reckon I am. You may not know it, but there's an account between us ain't been settled yet.”

“That's the first I've heard of it,” said Jim. “When was the bill presented?”

“Wal, you see it's like this, Mr. Gladstone. I was one of the pirates in that there movie show you rigged last summer at Piney Head. I went down on that hulk they blew up and like ter drowned, not bein' much of a swimmer, and all I got out of it was my five a day. Now these hyer other stars are puttin' in their claims through Lawyer Ketcham, so I don't see no reason why I shouldn't collect, too.”

“I see,” said Jim, “and not having much faith in Lawyer Ketcham, you're going about it in your own way.”

“Wal, that's about the size of it.”

“What's your price?” asked Jim.

“Fifty thousand.”

“Charlie Chaplin you rate yourself with?”

“No, sir, it's more a question of damages. Injury to my health like. I ain't felt right since I got that duckin'. That's the reason I'm goin' South.”

Jim reflected for a moment. If he had been alone he would have laughed at the claim and told them to carry on. But it was imperative that Virginia be released immediately, not only for her own sake, but to save her family the anxiety caused by her disappearance. He was responsible for her safety and well-being, the more so as her abduction was to some extent the result of his own ridiculous adventure in doing good.

“Very well,” said Jim shortly. “Of course this act of yours is a criminal one and your claim absurd; and if it wasn't for Miss Wade I'd see you somewhere before I'd pay a cent. I don't happen to have fifty thousand dollars in loose change, but if you'll turn your boat around and set us on the landing I'll give you my word to hand it to you to-morrow and let you beat it.”

As he was talking, two heads had been thrust over the rim of the hatch, like the heads of turtles, and at Jim's words one of them began to wag.

“That don't go, Cy,” said a husky voice. “We gotta hold 'em till we get the money.”

“Cy's” down-East caution appeared to agree with this decision.

“I guess that's right, Mr. Gladstone,” said he. “If this hyer was a reg'lar business deal, your word would be all right, but as the case stands we can't afford to take no chances.”

“Look here, Cy,” said Jim. “You stand a lot better show of getting away with the job if you do as I say. My word's always been a good bet, so far. I'm not worrying about our safety. You men are not Mexican bandits, but just ordinary everyday American holdups that see a chance for some easy money. The important thing is Miss Wade's immediate return. If she doesn't get home to-night it's not going to matter much just when she does get home, and meantime this neighborhood will be getting pretty well combed out.”

But Cy and his mates could not see it this way. Their plans had been carefully laid. Jim and Virginia were to be landed at a desolate spot and kept there under guard until the money should be paid. Jim was to write his check for fifty thousand dollars with a note to Major Shelby requesting him to see that the check was honored immediately and urging that no attempt be made to detain the bearer, who would then return and take them to a place whence they could make their way home. To all of this Jim listened with a contemptuous smile.

“You fellows must have a lot of faith in each other,” said he dryly.

“Meaning——” asked Cy.

“Well, what's to prevent the bird that gets the cash putting one over on the others. You'd do a lot better to take my word. But that's a question of who you think you can trust.”

The effect of this speech was immediately apparent. The kidnapers were infused with sudden mutual distrust. They withdrew to the cockpit where a hoarse, low-voiced discussion ensued. Meanwhile the launch was rushing swiftly through the still water and rapidly widening the distance from home. Then apparently a decision was arrived at, for Cy's square bulk lowered itself again into the cabin.

“Lissen here, Mr. Gladstone,” said he. “There's only one way to fix this business if you're in a hurry to get the young lady back to her folks. You write that check and a note to the major telling him to see the money's paid and we're not to be interfered with. Then I'll set you and Miss Wade ashore in a nice spot we've located up one of these hyer creeks and leave you there alone with water and grub a-plenty. As soon as we get the money we'll beat it out and I'll send the major word where to find you.”

This plan was anything but to Jim's taste. But as he looked at Virginia's pale, frightened face he decided that he was in no position to argue over terms. The main thing was to get her out of the difficulty as soon as possible, and he reasoned that it would be better that she be left alone with him than held indefinitely by the kidnapers. So, finding Cy obdurate, he was forced to accede. He wrote the check and then a note which read as follows:

Dear Major Shelby: I have been fool enough to get kidnaped by some men who know me to be a millionaire and have grabbed Virginia and me and are holding us for fifty thousand dollars ransom. Of course, it is of the utmost importance that your granddaughter be set at liberty at once. Please therefore see that the check is honored and the money paid in cash. Do not make any effort to arrest or follow the bearer or bearers. They are desperate men and it would be dangerous to Virginia's safety to take any action until after her release. I am responsible for what has occurred and my only desire is the immediate return of your granddaughter. Faithfully yours,

James Gladstone.

Cy and his mates examined the note, then Cy put it into his pocket with the check.

“That reads all right,” said Cy. “You see we're all a-goin' to get that money.”

“And how about us?” Jim asked.

“Well, we'll set you and the lady down on a nice safe spot over in the marsh with grub and blankets and a tarpaulin to rig a shelter in case it showers. They might be a couple of days in getting to you, but the weather's mild and fixed, and I'll leave you stores a-plenty.”

The swift launch continued to rush along at close to a maximum of speed, twenty knots perhaps. Apparently with their present daring project in view, Cy had familiarized himself with the locality, and had ferreted out a proper spot in which to hold a prisoner. It was a little past midnight when the motor slowed and, glancing through a porthole on either side, Jim saw that they were making their way cautiously up a winding creek, whether in the labyrinthian marshes of the mainland or of some other sea island he had not the least idea. Then the motor stopped and Cy's voice invited them to come out.

“Here we be,” said he, “and a long ways from home. Now we'll just set you ashore and be startin' back.”

The full moon was in its zenith, and by its brilliant glare Jim examined the desolate aspect of the place with misgiving. It appeared to be a low island in a sea of marsh. The ground was apparently firm as it supported some great Southern pines, with long waving plumes and under them a growth of scrub oak, and flanking it in the vague distance he could see a dark rampart of what looked like solid forest; but he doubted that this could be reached save by a boat, as the marsh lay all about. Cy and another man picked up the flat-bottomed skiff which had been hauled across the stern.

“Suppose they can't find this place?” Jim asked.

“Oh, they'll find you, all right,” said Cy. “I'll cut off a section of the chart and mail it to the major from down below. You've come across like a gentleman, and I don't intend you shall suffer none. There's a full campin' outfit in the skiff—five pounds of biscuits and a ham and five pounds of pork and a bag of cornmeal and a dozen cans of beans and tomatoes and things, and plenty a coffee and sugar and matches, and a lantern and an ax and cookin' gear. I'm givin' you the tent off'n the cockpit and a two-gallon jug of water, though you won't need it, as there's a spring on this little island, and say, Mr. Gladstone,” he thrust his head toward Jim's ear, “there's a quart of old peach brandy in the bag with the fish lines. I know it's good because I made it myself.”

“Well, I must say,” said Jim, “you seem to be doing this kidnaping job all shipshape and proper. But don't forget about that letter. Look here, if we get out of this without any hardship, I'll let you off and take the loss. But mind you, if there's any hitch, I'll get you sooner or later if it costs a million dollars.”

Cy turned this proposition in his mind. “Say, Mr, Gladstone,” said he, “you're a good sport. That's a bargain. You can keep the skiff. Then if there should be any hitch which I don't count on, all you gotta do is to paddle down the creek to sea water and you can signal some boat going past. Only if I was you I'd stay just where you be, as it's marsh all about and it would be a long pull before you got to solid ground. Wal, I guess you might as well be goin' overside.”

Jim and Virginia got into the skiff, which was not the only small boat, as the launch carried also a yacht's dinghy on the cabin house. Cy in another access of generosity handed Jim several packages of cigarettes.

“I can't think o' nuthin' more you're apt to need,” said the cheerful pirate. “Good luck, folks,” and he thrust the skiff clear of the launch's side.

Jim picked up an oar and started to paddle to the solid ground. The launch backed and turned, the water churned up under its stern, and a few moments later it had glided around a bend of the creek and disappeared, leaving a swirl of foam and eddies glistening in the brilliant moonlight.

Chapter IX.

Terence O'Toole was tidying up the Vagabondia in the rosy dawn when he saw a skiff put off from the landing and a few moments later Shelby Wade came alongside and looked up at Terence with a scowl on his dark, handsome face.

“Where's Mr. Gladstone?” he demanded.

“Sure I thought he was stopping the night at the house, sor.”

“Well, he's not!” snapped Shelby. “He's disappeared, and so has my sister, Miss Virginia. Do you know anything about it?”

“I do not, sor,” Terence answered, much disturbed. “More than that I do not see how they could go from here without a boat, nor havin' this one, why Mr. James should take another. And when did you see them last?”

“They left last night after supper,” said Shelby, “to walk over and make a call at the Conways. None of us sat up for my sister, and we discovered only half an hour ago that she was not in the house.”

“Then they must have stopped the night there at the Conways, sor,” said Terence.

“No,” said Shelby, “I telegraphed over and they're not there. They haven't been there at all.”

“Telegraphed, sor,” said Terence, wrinkling his brows.

“Yes. Mr. Ravenel Conway and I were in the army signal corps and we've run a wire between the two houses. Now what the deuce has happened to them?”

If Shelby had felt any suspicion of Terence knowing anything of the affair, it vanished at the Irishman's expression. His gray, bushy eyebrows lowered while his face showed the alarm produced by this news. As if seeking some solution to the mystery he stared across the flat face of the water, and in doing so discovered in the distance a rapidly moving object which was followed by a considerable disturbance. Stepping to the companionway he took the binoculars from the rack and focused them.

“Here comes perhaps the answer to that riddle, sor,” said he, and his scared face hardened. “Yonder is that speed launch which has been hangin' about the premises since we came ourselves, and she is headin' in full bore.”

“What has that speed launch and her three loafers got to do with it?” Shelby demanded.

“I cannot say, sor, but I misdoubt there is some devilment afoot.”

The Squirrel came foaming in, passed them at full speed about a quarter of a mile away, then slowed for the landing, and the tide being high, ran up alongside, reversed and stopped. A man leaped off on to the jetty and strode off in the direction of the big house.

Terence lowered himself into Shelby's skiff. “Lave us hurry over,” said he. “I do not like the look of this. I have a hunch that these devils have much to do with the disappearance of Mr. Jim and your sister, sor.”

The launch had put off from the landing and had come to a stop in the deep water. Shelby and Terence pulled straight in, disembarking on the beach. They hurried to the house, and on coming in sight of the porch saw the major, gesticulating violently as he harangued Cy. Shelby in turn ran up the steps.

“Grandson,” cried the old gentleman in the shrill, querulous voice of age and emotion, “this bandit has kidnaped your sister and Mr. Gladstone.”

Shelby was about to make a rush at Cy, but Terence dropped a powerful hand on his shoulder.

“Steady, sor,” said he. “Let us first see what it's all about.”

The major thrust Jim's letter into his grandson's hand. “Read that,” said he.

Shelby glanced through the letter with lurid eyes and seemed again about to spring on Cy, who was watching him guardedly.

“Wait, sor!” Terence repeated, and, taking the letter, scanned it through, then looked at the major and shook his head.

“Major,” said he, “if 'twas Mr, Jim alone they had grabbed I would advise destroyin' these dirty scuts at wance. But since 'tis a question of the young lady and these bein' his orders there is nothing for it but to carry them out and git the devils later.”

“See here,” said Cy, “I'm just collectin' my little bill.”

“A bill is it?” growled Terence.

“Sure. I acted all summer for Mr, Gladstone and all I drew down was five dollars per. That pays all right for a brush cutter, but I reckon I owe it to my art to collect in full. I played a leadin' rôle as pirate, and I was blowed up on that old hulk and had to swim ashore.”

Major Shelby and Wade stared at him in astonishment, then looked at Terence, who began to laugh. He checked himself, then turned to the major.

“Lave us go to town and pay him the money, sor,” said he. “It is the wish of Misther Jim,”

 

Jim and Virginia had passed two not entirely unpleasant days camping under the pines. The shadows were lengthening at the close of their second day, when there seemed to come a thrumming vibration through the stillness, and, a moment later, the Vagabondia appeared, moving slowly around the bend of the creek. They got into the skiff and paddled out to meet her. There was quite a party aboard; the major, Mrs. Wade, Shelby, Virginia's sister, Rose, and Ravenel Conway, Wade's chum. They welcomed Jim and Virginia in rather silent relief, but the major's stern old face was a little grim while that of Shelby was dark with some suppressed emotion.

Terence had already explained the pretext taken advantage of by Cy for collecting the “salary” at which he valued his services. Jim had not much to say about this, stating merely that since Virginia was under his care he had not felt justified in refusing any terms which might lead to her immediate release.

There was an atmosphere of constraint aboard during the return trip. All but Shelby Wade and his friend Conway went immediately to the house on landing, when Jim, scenting trouble, looked inquiringly at Shelby.

“You act as if you thought I were in some way to blame for this,” said he.

“I do, sir, most emphatically,” said the young Southerner, “but before discussing the matter further, I have the honor to demand the character of your intentions toward my sister?”

Jim stared at him in astonishment. Then realizing suddenly the trend of this demand, the blood rose to his head.

“There can be no question of intentions,” said he. “I did everything in my power to insure her safety and immediate release.”

“That is not enough, sir,” said Shelby. “Through having left certain obligations unfulfilled, you have exposed her to rough treatment and endangered her reputation by compelling her to spend two days and nights alone with you on an island in a swamp. Her fair name is exposed to slander and, as her brother, I have the honor to insist that you make all due reparation which a gentleman may do.”

“What?” asked Jim, his anger rising.

“It should be evident, sir, that an immediate marriage is the only solution.”

Jim scarcely knew whether to laugh or swear. It was plain enough to him that Shelby with his distorted, or rather exaggerated, traditions of Southern chivalry felt himself to be acting entirely within his right, while a tremendous admiration and approval sat upon the features of his young friend Conway. In fact, even Terence appeared impressed, such procedure falling entirely within the code of his own inherited hot-blooded Irish ethics. He looked at Jim anxiously.

But Jim himself was seized with a sudden, violent exasperation. So here again he had with all knightly and generous purpose of doing good, taken a cropper into the worst pitfall which had as yet entrapped him. Already sore enough at this far-reaching result of his Piney Head fiasco, and compelled to pay fifty thousand dollars tribute to a clever scalawag, he was now required by this hot-headed young fool to marry a girl who, while charming enough, he did not love in any sense.

He attempted to explain his position, but Shelby would not listen. The boy was convinced that the honor of his house was at stake.

“Well, then,” said Jim, now thoroughly at the end of his patience, “I flatly refuse to meet your demand. What's the answer?”

“This, sir,” said Shelby, and before Jim could raise a hand to prevent, he stepped forward and struck him a ringing slap across the face.

To Jim's everlasting credit, he took the blow with no effort to return it. Terence, watching him, shook his head. Jim moistened his lips. “I suppose that means a duel,” said he.

“It does, sir,” said Shelby, “unless you are afraid to fight.”

“No,” said Jim disgustedly, “I've never been afraid to fight. When do you want it?”

Shelby glanced at the sun, which was not yet below the pine tops. “The sooner the better,” said he, “and before you can rouse the sympathy of my family. There is still light enough, and I see that you have some thirty caliber Colts in the rack in your cabin. If you are gentleman enough to give me satisfaction, we will go ashore immediately and settle this affair. Mr. Conway may act as my second, and there is no objection to your man, O'Toole, who appears to understand the obligations of gentlefolk, serving in the same capacity for you.”

Jim looked at Terence with an expression of disgusted inquiry. The Irishman shook his head.

“'Tis a fool business, sor,” said he, “but belike 'tis the custom of the country. I do not see how you can well refuse with honor what the young gentleman is askin' of you.”

“Nor I,” said Jim. “All right. Go get the guns and let's have it over with.” He raised his hand to his cheek. “I can't take that sort of stuff from anybody.”

What immediately followed made not the slightest impression on Jim's mind. He was thinking with profound discouragement, not of the chances of his being killed, but on the utter futility of his sincere and strenuous efforts at doing good. He lighted a cigarette and stood by the rail reflecting on his failures, while Conway and Terence went into the cabin and took from the case the two thirty-caliber police revolvers which Jim had purchased as a part of his boat's equipment.

The image of Margaret Dudley floated before Jim's eyes, and he wondered if she would laugh when she heard the result of this last supreme fiasco. He had not the slightest intention of harming Shelby Wade while still appreciating the fact that Shelby might easily bring his own philanthropic career to an abrupt and ridiculous termination.

In the same abstract state of soul, Jim got into the dinghy with the others. Terence took the oars and pulled them down the beach a little way, landing oddly enough at the identical cove where Jim and Virginia had been seized. The evening was absolutely still, the air sweet with the fragrance of pines, and overhead the big buzzards, as if scenting bloodshed, were circling not far above the treetops in great sweeping spirals.

But Jim was unconscious of any beauty in the immediate surroundings. A mantle of gloom had fallen upon him, not of fear at what might immediately follow, but a profound melancholy, edged with deep disgust at the failure of every conscientious effort on his part to dispense the great fortune of which, from the first, he had felt himself to be a sort of trustee.

They got out of the boat, which Terence made fast, and, he and Conway carrying the pistols, walked up the flat beach to the edge of the woods. Here young Conway, after a few muttered words with Shelby, turned to Terence.

“We'll call it twenty paces, if that's agreeable to you, Mr. O'Toole,” said he.

“Twenty paces let it be, sor,” Terence answered sepulchrally.

“They may stand back to back,” said Conway, “and at the given word both are to take ten paces, turn and fire one shot.”

To this Terence made objection. “And what if one were to walk faster than the other, sor? In that case he might be shootin' his opponent in the back and him still goin'.”

“Very good, then,” Conway agreed. “If you prefer the French procedure we can station them at twenty paces and let them fire at the word.”

“It strikes me that would be better, sor,” said Terence, who had noted Jim's apathy and distrusted Shelby's hot impatience.

It was accordingly thus arranged. The distance was paced off by the two seconds, when Jim and Shelby were placed on their positions. Though the weapons were self-cockers, the hammers were set by the seconds and the revolvers handed to the principals. Shelby's face was a little pale, though his dark eyes were burning and eager; but Jim was to all appearances as indifferent as though engaging in practice with Terence from the stern of the Vagabondia with an empty pickle bottle for target.

Of the four, Terence alone was cold with apprehension. He had hoped to the last that there might be a good deal of bluff about the Southern boy's insistence, and he now began to wonder if his duty to Doctor Gladstone did not require of him a prevention of the silly duel. But there was much that was old-school about Terence, and he did not see how he could now in honor to his master withdraw him from the affair. Jim had taken a blow in the face, and Terence knew that Shelby was not of the breed to apologize.

Young Conway, in the traditions of whose family were numerous duels, showed neither nervousness nor hesitation.

“I shall count three, gentlemen,” he said. “At the word three you will raise your pistols and fire instantly. Are you ready?”

“Ready,” came in one voice from the two young men.

“One—two—three.”

The two weapons rose simultaneously. Shelby fired and Jim swung half round in his tracks. He recovered himself and looked up. A buzzard soared low over his head.

“I always have hated those rotten birds,” said Jim slowly, then sighted at the encircling fowl. There was a sharp report and a crumpled mass of feathers came flopping down and struck the water with a splash. Jim tottered back two steps and leaned against a trunk of a pine. Terence rushed to his side, Conway following him. Shelby Wade stood for a moment upright, then walked forward slowly, his face deathly white.

“My God!” cried Terence in consternation. “He has it clean through the chist.”

It was true. The thirty-caliber steel-jacketed bullet had perforated the right side of Jim's chest about three inches under the clavicle, coming out through the shoulder blade. Still leaning against the tree, he gave a slight cough, spat out a little blood, then looked at Shelby with a smile.

“Well, Mr. Wade,” said he, “are you satisfied?”

Shelby's nerve seemed on the point of deserting him. Conway spoke in his place. “I think I can answer for my principal that the affair need go no further,” said he.

“Very well,” said Jim. “Then I have the honor to wish you good day. Come, Terence, let's get out aboard.”

Terence passed his arm under his shoulders, but Shelby spoke up. “You must bring him to the house,” said he.

“Thank you kindly, sor,” said Terence dryly, “but I do be thinkin'. Mr. Gladstone has had enough of Southern hospitality for the time bein'. I will be takin' him to a doctor, and losin' no time about it, sor.”

And, picking Jim up in his strong arms, he bore him down across the beach to the dinghy, laid him in the stern and, stepping in after him, shoved vigorously off.

Chapter X.

Jim rested luxuriously against the pillow of his wheeled chair and watched the brightly colored throng of America's gayest winter resort. It was full season at Palm Beach, and the costly display would have made Monte Carlo look drab and bought a daily food ration for about all of starving Armenia.

As sometimes happens in perforating gunshot wounds of the thorax, where the projectile is steel-jacketed, of small caliber and high velocity, Shelby's bullet had pierced his upper chest without injury to any nerve or blood vessel of size. And, thanks to healthy tissues and cleanliness, no infection had followed. The lung had been deflated temporarily from piercing of the pleural sack, and to get the bellows back in working order Jim took exercise with “the blow bottles.” The surgeon had merely recommended these and rest. As the small darky propelled his chair slowly under the high shade of the palms, Jim looked with mild interest at the passing faces. And then suddenly he sat up with a gasp which sent through him a twinge of pain.

For slowly approaching him, propelled by a white-clad nurse, was such a chair as his own; and in it the materialized object of many long and wistful daydreams, Although the charming face lacked the rich coloring which he remembered, there was no mistaking the vivid, violet eyes with their black-fringed lambrequins, and the wide, sweet mouth set a little aslant. It was Margaret Dudley, evidently convalescent from some illness.

She recognized Jim at the same moment, and both pronounced simultaneously the word “Stop” as the chairs came abreast.

“Miss Dudley!” Jim. murmured. “What's happened you?”

“Jim Gladstone! What's happened you?”

“A little setback in my headlong rush of high endeavor. Have you been ill?”

“Yes. 'Flu' and a touch of pneumonia. And you?”

“A bullet through the breather. I fought a duel—or at least I was fought a duel against. My own victim was a buzzard.”

“Have you lost your mind, too?”

“No, only fifty thousand dollars and a little more self-assurance. Stripped again by the Philistines. A sort of back-fire of the Piney Head fiasco. All it lacked was that they forgot to fine me twenty-five dollars for shooting a scavenging fowl.”

“Please stop talking in cryptograms and tell me what happened.”

They caused their chairs to be drawn out of the channel. Margaret's nurse seated herself on a bench at a little distance with a book, while Jim's small darky composed himself for a nap,

Talking slowly and in a low voice, Jim described his misadventure and, having ascertained that he was entirely out of danger, Margaret tilted back her head and indulged in the third irrepressible laugh of their acquaintanceship.

“At any rate,” said Jim, “each time we meet I am able to furnish you with the makings of a good laugh. And that is what you need. You were made to laugh rather than to mourn.”

“I've stopped mourning, Jim.”

He thrilled under this first sound of his Christian name on her lips.

“That's good news.” He looked at her inquiringly. A tinge of color spread over her skin, diaphanous from illness.

“You see, Jim. You're not the only one to get into awkward situations and be made ridiculous by a too-impulsive method of doing good.”

“What?” cried Jim, raising himself erect in his chair. “Has anybody had the nerve to knock you?”

Margaret gave her twisted smile and a little gleam showed from her violet eyes. “Not long ago,” said she, “just before I was taken ill, I received a letter from a Canadian girl, a Red Cross nurse. She asked me rather impertinently if the John Phillips Memorial Home for Children could by any chance have been given its name in memoriam of Captain John Phillips, A, E. F., late of Boston; and, if so, through what motive. She went on to explain that she had become engaged to Captain Phillips less than a week before he was killed in action, and for this reason she did not quite understand why a young, unmarried Boston lady, who was no relation, should found that particular sort of charity for this especial hero. Now you had better laugh a little yourself.”

Jim did not laugh. He felt rather like singing a Jubilate. His eyes may have told how this news affected him, for a deeper wave of color swept over Margaret's face.

“I never felt such a fool in my life,” said she. “Of course this news is not going to affect my carrying on the work, though it shall be under another name. But as you may easily imagine it has effectually dried my tears.”

Jim, with a pulse which a fortnight earlier might have proved dangerous to his lacerated alveoli, laid his hand upon the back of hers.

“I'll tell you what it is, Margaret,” said he. “Any rich person can spend money on himself with perfect safety, but you've got to mind your step when you start in to dispense it for doing good.”

Chapter XI.

Doctor Gladstone, who had run down to Palm Beach to see how his son was getting on, found Jim in so buoyant a state of heart that he permitted himself another good laugh over the most recent discomfiture.

“At any rate, dad,” said Jim, “I got some real action this time. Major Shelby writes me that everything is going strong, and with less difficulty and expense than he had counted on. Young Wade is making amends for his damn foolishness by working day and night, and taking it full and by, it looks as if I might put this thing across and produce a lot of cotton and drag a community of our best old Southern families out of the slough of poverty and despond, to say nothing of adding importantly to one of the country's most necessary products.”

“That's fine, Jim. How about brother Cy and the other kidnapers?”

“Oh, I let them slide, just like Mr. and Mrs, King. You see, if it hadn't been for them, I'd never have seen Margaret again, and if it hadn't been for Cy I shouldn't have found her here.”

“And how about Margaret?”

“Well, I'm not rushing things, dad. That appears to have been the principal fault in my method. One of these days that sweet and tender lady is going to have a sure enough opportunity for doing good. She's still terribly sore about the late Captain John Phillips. I know the feeling a little, but just imagine what it must be to a sensitive girl to get a memorial home going full blast and then find that its object and tutelary deity had turned her down cold and got engaged to another girl a week before his martyr's crown. Must put her rather off men altogether.”

“Off that one at least,” Doctor Gladstone admitted. “But aside from all personal feeling, since» you are both working for the same lofty purpose, it seems to me that you might pool your efforts a little.”

“Well, you see there's one point on which we can't agree. She claims that aside from relieving immediate distress it's hardly worth while trying to help people who are quite capable of helping themselves if they want to bad enough. Her specialty is giving the kids a start.”

“I think she's right.”

“So do I, up to a certain point. At the same time, I maintain that one can do a lot for able-bodied adults that are bogged down or on the wrong track, or have lost their courage or faith or pep or whatever it is that enables people to get on. I'm going to give it another try, and then if I run into a deadfall again, I'll admit that all men are ingrates.”

 

The devoted Doctor Gladstone returned North to continue his warfare in suburban trenches of snowy filth against the microbic hosts of “flu” and pneumonia. Jim's condition rapidly improved, and in a few days he was able to walk about and practice filling the deflated lung to normal dimensions by deep breaths of the resinous and briny air. He spent long hours with Margaret Dudley, whose robust physique was rapidly throwing off the ill effects of mental disturbance and its ensuing illness. Doctor Gladstone had told her of Jim's immediate resolution on finding himself suddenly very rich. And how he had been already on his quest of doing good at their first meeting when Margaret had so severely rated him for being, as she had wrongly supposed, an idle pleasure seeker.

“I did you a very great injustice, Jim,” said she, “and I'm awfully sorry, while at the same time I am relieved to know that I'm not entirely responsible for all the trouble you've had.”

“The trouble hasn't done me any harm,” said Jim, “and it has taught me a lot. I'm beginning to understand rich people better. Every poor person with any spark of generosity thinks that if only he were rich he'd do such a lot for everybody, and he can't understand why rich people don't do it. It's impossible for him to realize that it is about as hard to spend money usefully as it is to make it.”

“Hold fast to children,” said Margaret. “You can't go wrong with them.”

“But it relieves the parents of their obligations,” Jim objected.

“Perhaps—but I don't care if it does. The children get the benefit.”

“Well,” said Jim, “there doesn't seem to be much chance of missionary work in this pleasure city. It's a sort of exposition of unearned increment. I thought of cruising round the Bahamas, but a man I talked to last night, who'd just come from Nassau, tells me these caymen and cinch blowers are beginning to roll in fat surfeit, thanks to American prohibition. Their only worry is lest the eighteenth amendment be repealed with the next administration. It's brought a swarm of spenders who save up in the United States and pour millions into the West Indies.”

But the following day Jim had reason to reconsider his statement that no financial support was required by the gay and glittering frequenters of Palm Beach. During his sojourn there, he had noticed several times a family of New Yorkers who bore an aristocratic name and who appeared to be much in evidence and in demand because of their attractive personalities, clothes, jewels, and participation in the different gay events. The mother was something of a grande dame, beautiful, with snowy hair, and that cachet of elegance which takes several generations for the making. The daughters, three in number, were uncommonly pretty and of well-bred demeanor; and a son, about twenty-five, was the type of young New Yorker which theater and movies find it so difficult to depict, handsome, polished, easy of manner, with a certain keen shrewdness in his face which differentiates the young American of fortune and position from Englishmen of the same class. Jim, watching them with interest, at several times thought to himself that here was a representative family of America's upper class, who so far as liberty and the pursuit of happiness were concerned extracted full measure from what life had to offer with elegance and dignity, and who must be about as far removed from carking care as it is possible to imagine.

He discovered his mistake by what he thought to be a humiliating accident. Finding, while on a stroll, a sunny and secluded spot on the edge of a little bay he stretched himself out on the warm sand to rest, and presently dropped off to sleep. The murmur of voices partially roused him, but it was not until a rather startling statement had been absorbed by his drowsing consciousness that he fully awoke to the fact of his position. He had unwittingly overheard something which he knew the speakers would be dismayed to have let go beyond themselves, and Jim had no idea of how long they had been talking or what other personal family secrets had been divulged. These speakers were the young man of the family, to which Jim had ascribed such singular blessings, and the eldest daughter. They were apparently sitting on the other side of the cluster of scrub palmetto behind which Jim had stretched out, and as they were on the edge of the path, Jim hoped that they might finish their consultation and go their way without discovering him. He had already heard enough to make it extremely awkward for him to reveal his presence, and the chances were that they would receive his assurance of unwilling eavesdropper who had just awakened with disbelief.

Wherefore Jim decided to lie motionless and spare the contretemps.

“I tell you, Evelyn,” said the man's voice, “there's no other way out. You've got to marry this old rounder and make him come across. We're in the last trench. Father writes that the least uncertainty about his credit at this moment would blow him higher than a kite. He's carrying this great load of stuff on a shoe string, and his loans would be called and he'd be bankrupt and buried in debt as deep as that dry hole I've sunk all I could beg and borrow in.”

This last expression struck on sympathetic ears. Jim had seen unfortunates who had sunk their fortunes and those of friends in dry borings, and not far from the gusher which had so richly returned his own gamble.

“But I just can't do it, Jim,” murmured the girl, a sob in her voice.

“Well, then this family goes glimmering, that's all! Mother's jewels are all in soak, and I'm picked clean and owe a thousand gambling debts, and the hotel people are just about ready to grab our trunks and wish us bon jour. Announcement of your engagement with Hartwell would be good for an indefinite standoff. They'll keep their mouths shut, but they want their money, and you can't blame them.”

“Oh, dear!” groaned the girl. “If I make the play, I'll go through with it. But you know what a horror he is.”

“I know. It's awful. But it's the last chance. I don't care about myself, but there's mother and the girls, and dad's getting on, and I doubt he'd stand the gaff. He'd walk into his den and there'd be a muffled report and ruin. He says that he can weather it if he can keep up the bluff another thirty days. But you know what these society reporters are. 'Vandergoote Family Sojourn at Palm Beach Brought to Abrupt End. Luggage Seized by Hotel Management,' and all that sort of stuff. It's up to you, sis. You're the one white hope. You and only you can save the family from ruin and disgrace, and I've got a sneaking notion that old Hartwell suspects something. He'd see us through, but he'll want his pound of flesh.”

The girl began to sob. Jim's mind was working rapidly. Eavesdropping has its penalties even though unintentional, and he was instantly gripped by the idea that here at least was an opportunity for the doing good to which he had sworn himself, and one with no danger of any unfortunate repercussion. It was not in the nature of an investment in which he might be victimized nor an attempt at the reorganization of a faulty system of life, but merely in the nature of a loan, or gift if it came to that, to gentlefolk in dire distress. It might save one life dear to others and avert the ruin of another. Then, as if to cement his quickly forming resolution, the girl voiced the very thought which was passing through his own brain.

“Oh! what's the use of friends?” she wailed. “Just think of all the frightfully rich people we know and what they are continually giving to silly charities. Why can't people of our class stand by each other in moments like this? Why isn't there some rich disinterested person with enough imagination to appreciate that there's nobody who needs help like those in our position on the edge of the precipice?”

“Well, my friends all got stuck in that oil venture and blame me for it, though I stated it was a straight gamble, and dad's friends have already been taxed the limit, I fancy, and mother's friends would tattle and give the game away. The money to tide us over wouldn't do us any good if it were to leak out that we were at the end of our string. Besides, people are such brutes. They might be willing to give a poor obscure person a hand up, but they all love to see rich and socially prominent ones likes ourselves come a cropper.”

“But it's so cruel,” sobbed his sister. “What harm have we ever done to anybody?”

“None,” answered her brother bitterly, “and mighty little good. That's where I've missed out. There are one or two men down in Texas I might have helped if I'd had a mind to, but I passed them up, and two of them have since struck it rich. Fifteen hundred and two thousand barrels a day. One of them braced me for five hundred dollars. If I'd let him have it he'd be good to-day for a twenty-thousand-dollar touch, and not even ask for my I O U.”

Jim, now bursting with generous impulse, could appreciate the truth of this. For himself things had looked rickety for a while during boring operations, and he could easily imagine how richly he might now reward just such a friendly service.

“Very well,” said the girl, and there was a shudder in her voice. “Then I suppose I'm to be the sacrifice. It wouldn't be so bad if I weren't in love with Herbert.”

She began to sob again, and Jim heard the scratch of a match as brother lighted a cigarette. Jim waited no longer. He rose a little stiffly, and the palmetto crackled as he brushed against it. Looking across the growth he met the eyes of a young Vandergoote fastened on him with horror and a rising anger. The girl looked up and stifled a little scream.

Chapter XII.

“I beg your pardon,” said Jim. “I was taking a nap here and your voices woke me up—about five minutes ago.”

Vandergoote's eyes were steely, “About five minutes ago?” said he, “Don't you think that you might have made a noise?”

“I'd already heard enough to make it embarrassing,” said Jim frankly, “and I hoped that you would go away. What you've been saying would never have got past me.”

The girl was staring at him fixedly,

“Then why did you get up?” she asked.

“Because,” said Jim quietly, “I happen to be one of those rich people that you were just deploring the lack of.”

“What do you mean?” asked her brother, in whose tanned face a dark flush had risen.

“I struck it rich in oil not long ago,” Jim answered. “Bored into a gusher and got it under control. I was nearly down to my last dollar when she began to roar. I've heard enough to make me feel like offering to be of service to you.”

The brother and sister seemed quite bereft of speech. The girl, in fact, looked frightened, but whether because she thought they had disturbed the slumbers of a lunatic or because, Aladdinlike, she was terrified at the sudden apparition of the beneficent genii, Jim could not have told. Her brother was staring at Jim as though trying to adapt his mind to his startling announcement. He could understand the offer a little better than his sister because, although unsuccessful in his own venture, he had seen men strike oil and witnessed the various peculiar reactions on different temperaments of sudden, astounding, unexpected, and often unlimited wealth. In some cases this produced a numbed, awed condition; others it seemed to appall. Others were unable to rise mentally to the actuality of their powers and continued to plod on in the same parsimonious or economical way, buying perhaps some one insignificant object, heretofore the height of their imaginings, the limit of their conceptions of wealth—a flivver—a gramophone—a plush or golden-oak parlor suite—or painted their entire premises. But there were also these rare ones of donative impulse, who loved to give for the sake of giving; and here, as he looked at Jim's eager boyish face, it seemed to him that Heaven had opened its portals and shed one of these, as in old legends.

But he restrained from leaping on this opportunity perhaps from some instinct that it is not well to grapple with a god, nor to snatch at Fortune's wheel when rolling in the right direction.

“Your offer rather takes my breath away,” said he, “but I'm afraid you don't quite realize what you'd be letting yourself in for.”

Jim smiled. “I can form a pretty good guess,” said he. “I paid my own bill last night, and at first glance at the total I though there must be another James Gladstone who had rented a wing of the hotel and been entertaining royalty.”

“James Gladstone?” The girl stared at him with a light of recognition in her eyes. “Are you the James Gladstone that had that Girls' Vacation Home at Piney Head?”

“The same,” Jim answered. “Let me tell you about it.”

He seated himself near her on a fallen pine, and in a few brief words described his previous adventures in doing good, including that of the sea island and the duel.

The pair listened to him in more astonishment than amusement, and when he had finished Duane Vandergoote struck his thigh a ringing slap with his hand.

“Good Lord,” said he, “and after all that you still want to help people out of a mess?”

“That's one of the reasons,” said Jim. “I'm a stubborn sort of cuss about some things, and I want to beat the game.”

“But I don't believe you quite realize how deeply we're in. It's not merely a matter of a few hundreds; you see we're rather extravagant people, I'm afraid, and never learned the trick of bargaining.”

“I've rather got out of it myself,” said Jim. “It doesn't take long when you never had it badly. Suppose you give me an idea of what it would take to see you through the present crisis.”

Duane reached in his pocket and drew out a document which at first glance one might have thought to be a contractor's estimate for building a summer home at Greenwich.

“That's the damage up to date,” said he.

Jim glanced at it, raised his eyebrows, then laughed. “I'm glad I'm rich,” said he. “I might want to marry and bring my family here one day, and this gives me something to go on. I believe I'm also guilty of having overheard you say you had some gambling debts.”

“Quite so,” Duane admitted. “A few of the chaps here hold my I O U's for a little over two thousand.”

Jim drew out the check book which in his quest never left his person, replacing, as his father had aptly remarked, the consecrated sword of the Knights of the Round Table. Adding a third to the monumental bill, he looked at Duane inquiringly.

“Duane Vandergoote,” murmured the young man.

Jim filled and signed the check, then rose and handed it to him with a bow.

“I'm pleased and honored to render you this service,” said he. “You may, of course, consider it a friendly loan, but don't let that part of it worry you. Don't try to say anything about it just now.” He turned and looked at the girl with a smile.

“I hope that it will all come out right, and that you never have to marry Mr. Hartwell,” said he. “It's bad enough not to be able to marry the person whom you love. I know because I happen to be in love myself. You can thank me by doing the same thing for somebody when the chance falls your way.”

And, picking up his stick, he bowed again, and walked off slowly down the winding path.

 

Jim did not tell Margaret Dudley of this last benefaction. He had a vague feeling that she would disapprove it; that she would deny the right or title to such considerable assistance in the case of folk like these who normally would spend enough in a day for their selfish pleasure and luxury to provide the needs of a poor deserving family for a month—or incidentally to feed the hungry little mouths of her own fold for half that length of time.

But Jim saw it differently. His initial object had been to relieve distress as he encountered it in his walkings up and down, without reference to merit or circumstance, and this was something which had to be achieved in proportion to the conditions of the sufferer or sufferers. Kings may suffer as bitterly as beggars; Crœsus may endure more agonizing pangs than Lazarus; but these could not be relieved as those of Lazarus might be. Jim reasoned it somewhat in this way. He might not have subscribed to a charity for equipping a vessel to cruise about in search of castaways, but if he personally were to have fallen in with Castaways, he would have shared with them ration for ration and stitch for stitch to the last of his food and water and bodily covering, and it would have made no difference whether they were of the cabin or the forecastle.

So now he saw in these people whom he had offered to tide through their crisis, a family of castaways not only in disttress but bitter danger of death, and in the case of Evelyn a life rather worse than that. Meager assistance would have done them no good, so he had relieved their necessities in proportion to their need.

Late in the afternoon, while changing for dinner, a bell boy brought him a note from Mrs. Vandergoote requesting that if convenient he call at her suite. Jim did so, and found her alone. Her eyes showed traces of tears.

“I wonder if you quite realize what you have done, Mr. Gladstone?” she asked.

“I hope so, Mrs. Vandergoote,” Jim answered.

“My husband is one of the few American financiers who suffered heavily from the war instead of profiting by it. He has been making a hard fight to weather the storm, and at this moment has every hope of doing so, if the immediate crisis can be passed. But his liabilities are enormous, and he is carrying tremendous loans. The slightest reflection on his credit at this moment would be fatal—precipitate a catastrophe. This situation has developed since we came here, and we have remained simply because the means were lacking to settle our account and go.”

“I gathered this from what I unintentionally overheard,” said Jim.

“Your act,” said Mrs. Vandergoote, “has probably averted not only our financial ruin but actual tragedy, besides the wreck of my daughter Evelyn's life happiness. I don't think that my husband would have survived the crash. He is a proud man and, if I must admit it, a desperate gambler, who may have placed even his life on the stake. Of course we are not out of the woods yet, but for some reason I feel that the danger is past.” She stepped to Jim and took both his hands in hers, her eyes filled with tears. “You darling boy,” she said. “Such acts as yours do not happen for nothing; I have been a very bitter woman for these past few months, but you have brought back not only my lost faith in human kindliness, but my faith in God.”

Chapter XIII.

Jim went to dinner feeling happier than since he had seen the oil gush over the derrick under which he had sunk the comparatively small inheritance from his maternal grandfather. He longed to tell Margaret of what had happened, but felt that he could not do so in justice to the Vandergootes.

For the next few days his interest in the immediate future fortunes of these people to whom he had rendered such timely aid was almost equal to that in his own.

Margaret Dudley could not help but observe his peculiar air of excited elation and was puzzled by it. Jim was presented to the other Vandergoote daughters and, never thinking in his unsophistication what significance Margaret might ascribe to his doing so, he invited the Vandergootes and Margaret several times for excursions aboard the Vagabondia, which was anchored in the lagoon. Neither did he observe that in the course of these sails Margaret was very subdued, and that there was a look of understanding in her deep violet eyes as they observed the almost affectionate bearing of this distinguished family toward their host.

But Jim, not having the hide of the Florida alligator, could not help but feel her growing reserve. It seemed to him that their sympathies from having so closely approached were, for some distressing reason, growing subtly apart. Their talks together were more formal, less confidential, and but little was said upon that topic previously of greatest interest to them both—the problem of doing good.

Jim began to fear dismally that the delightful softening of Margaret's attitude toward him of the first week of his sojourn must have been due to her weakened physical condition, and that now, with returning health and vigor, she was growing back into herself with that serene self-sufficiency she had shown on their previous meetings. He began to despair of ever winning her heart, and one day when seized by a sort of panic at this idea he had confided in Evelyn Vandergoote, with whom he had come to be on terms of almost brotherly intimacy.

This discerning and thoroughly sophisticated damsel turned away her head to smile.

“Don't worry, Jim,” said she, “it's going to be all right.”

“What makes you think so?” he asked.

“I don't think anything about it. I know it.”

“How do you know it?”

“A sea bird whispered it.”

“Well, I wish your blooming bird would whisper it to me.”

“You'll do a little whispering yourself, one of these days. Listen, Jim. Margaret is not one of those girls that you can take by storm. She's like a proud little walled city that will not surrender until convinced that to do so would be for the greatest good of the garrison.”

“I felt that all the time,” said Jim. “That's the reason I've gone so slowly about it. Besides I don't know much about girls.”

“Men like you don't need to. The girls know about them.”

“She knows that I'm a well-meaning fool.”

“She knows better than that. But she may want to subject you to the acid test a little, now that you've been so thoroughly smelted in your high endeavor.”

“Do you think she really cares for me a little?”

“More than that. She's nearly ready to be crazy about you, and when such a girl lets herself go, it's rather like kicking a hole in the Croton Dam. But it's not going to hurt her any to see you appreciated a little. All you've got to do, my dear, is to sit tight and bide your time.”

“I'm afraid Duane may cut me out.”

“A dozen Duanes couldn't cut you out. No doubt he'd try if it were anybody but you, because Duane is not entirely a fool. But under the circumstances he'd soon kill himself, and if he didn't, I'd do it for him. Oh, Jim, listen——”

“Listening——”

“I think we're nearly across the shoals. Mother got a splendid letter from dad last night. We may get a wire any moment to say that he has wound up his deal, and that we're all back on terra firma.”

And then that evening the wire came. Jim had wandered out after dinner to look for Margaret, who had not appeared at her customary table. It was a glorious night with a great moon nearly full, about on a level with the high palm fronds, the edges of which were silvered as the brilliant rays struck down from them. People, like lower animals, are never long in a place without having their particular haunts. Jim knew that Margaret's was at a certain turning of a path where, between the bolls of the big royal palms, one got a charming vista of the sea and was seldom disturbed by noisy groups.

He turned his steps in this direction, and, on drawing near the spot, failed to observe two details of vital importance to a young man who has nerved himself up to the point of coming to a positive understanding with the lady of his choice. One of these was that Margaret had slightly changed her location, for the sake of shelter, from the damp little easterly air fanning in from the sea, and was ambushed, as one might say, behind a great mass of flowering rhododendrons; the other, that he was, himself, being followed at some little distance by a graceful girlish wraith in gauzy-white tulle, with bare flashing arms and carrying a scrap of paper in her hand.

Jim paused to look about, disappointed at finding the spot vacant. Margaret, watching him, waited to see if he could sense her near presence, and at that moment Evelyn, following, stole softly up from behind and reaching out her hands placed them over his eyes.

Jim did not move. He guessed who it was and guessed also at the errand which had brought her.

“Evelyn!” he said, and turned; and as he did so the bare arms slipped around his neck and he found himself being rapturously kissed.

“Oh, Jim,” whispered Evelyn, almost in a sob, “it's come.”

“The telegram?”

“Yes. It's all right. Our troubles are all over.”

Jim clasped her about the waist and kissed her in return.

“Thank God!” said he fervently, then stepped back and took both her hands in his.

“Mother wants to see you right away,” said Evelyn.

They started back together toward the hotel. A few minutes later another figure followed by the same path, walking slowly and with drooping head. Margaret went to her rooms and rang for her nurse.

“I think I've had enough of this place, Elsie,” said she. “I'd like to take the morning train for home. Please go down and see if you can get a stateroom.”

 

Having failed to find Margaret, Jim could scarcely wait for the following day. He was particularly late because he felt that at last he had defeated the jinx which so far had injected a squirt of poison to each of his attempts at doing good. This toxin, increasing its virulence with each successive effort until Jim had been obliged to admit that were the geometric progression to continue, his next would have to be nothing short of fatal in order to preserve its due mathematical ratio.

On awakening he lay for some time stretching luxuriously, and in that state of blissful relaxation which comes of vigor fully restored and the anticipation of a perfect day for the enjoyment of which there is no particular hurry. Evelyn had said the night before that there was no longer any reason why he should not tell Margaret of the service he rendered had their family. Duane had settled the mere pecuniary obligation with a draft on his father's firm, and Jim had himself received a letter from Mr. Vandergoote in which he requested the honor of acting as Jim's host on his return to New York, when he hoped to express in some measure his appreciation of the service rendered.

It never entered Jim's head to expect any particular credit from Margaret for an act of impulsive generosity, that he knew would be taken for granted between them, because it was merely in a manner of speaking, his profession, her profession—a profession which it was his ardent hope to practice with her jointly some day. It would no more have occurred to him to expect praise for having come to the rescue of the Vandergootes than the captain of a well-found ship would expect praise from a fellow master mariner for having picked up and taken aboard in mid-ocean a boatload of castaways. In the same way a distinguished surgeon would look for no particular commendation from a confrère for having succored the victims of a railroad accident on a train on which he happened to be traveling. But if this surgeon had by the employment of his skill and judgment saved a life or two by an impromptu operation which his confrère held to be impossible under the existing circumstances, he would feel naturally elated about it and entitled to praise.

This precisely expresses Jim's feeling in the matter. He had done something which Margaret had averred was most difficult if not impossible to achieve. This was to render pecuniary aid to sound and able-bodied adults with no financial or ethical damage. And the amazing part of it was that they were about the last people in the world that the average person would have considered as in need of or entitled to such assistance, while if any damage had been done by his act, Jim could not conceive wherein it lay—at that moment.

He breakfasted in his rooms, and about ten o'clock went out in search of Margaret, chuckling a little at what he considered to be his triumph over her. She was nowhere to be found, so after an hour's vain search he went out aboard the Vagabondia till luncheon time. Terence, to whom he confided the result of his last adventure in doing good, looked rather grave.

“'Tis a fine thing, sor,” said he, “to help such gentlefolk when in a hole, but I will be feeling better about it when ye have told Miss Dudley the whole story and hear what she has to say.”

A little chill struck through Jim. “What do you mean?” he asked sharply.

His faithful henchman drew down his grizzled bushy eyebrows.

“Has it not struck ye, sor, that 'tis possible Miss Dudley may be a little jealous?”

“Jealous?” cried Jim. “Good Lord, why should she be jealous?”

“'Tis the way of womankind, sir. I mind how she was watchin' the young ladies, and particular Miss Evelyn, the last time we went for a sail. Might she not be thinkin' there was some other raison beyond that of the doin' good which she knew nothin' about which led to the pleasant relations between yourself and these swell folk.”

Jim stared at him in dismay. “Jehoshaphat! I never thought of that. You mean that she may have thought I had a special interest which was not entirely philanthropy.”

“So it might have looked even to an old bonehead like meself, sor.”

Jim stared at him for a moment, then made a break for the side. “Set me ashore, quick,” said he.

Terence complied when Jim rushed up to the hotel at a speed which tested fully the inflated lung. Going to the desk, he was about to ask if Miss Dudley were in her room, when the clerk handed him a note. Jim, recognizing Margaret's writing, ripped it open and read as follows:

Dear Jim: Things have not been running entirely to my satisfaction at the Home. Being now quite well, I have suddenly decided that I ought not to absent myself any longer. I am leaving by this morning's train. I shall try to see your father in New York and give him the good news of your splendid recovery. For some reason I have a feeling that I am soon to hear of your being done a great deal of good yourself. And surely there is nobody who more deserves it. With all best wishes for your happiness,

Margaret Dudley.

Jim read this note thrice through before its deeper meaning got its full reaction. Then, having glimpsed Evelyn on the terrace, he tore out in that direction with a haste which disregarded intervening animate objects. He found the girl chatting with a group of friends, but at sight of his wild face she excused herself and led him out of earshot.

“Mercy, Jim! Whatever's happened?”

Jim thrust the note at her as if it had been a dagger.

“Read that!' said he sepulchrally, “I knew that there'd be a jinx in it somewhere.”

Evelyn read the note and stared at him aghast, Then she burst into a peal of laughter.

“That settles it, Jim. You've got her hooked.”

“Hooked?”

“I'll say so. She's swallowed the mullet, hook, sinker, and float. She's torn off at the end of a long line, but she's good and fast. All you've got to do now is to reel her carefully in. Ever fish for tarpon, Jim?”

“No, thank God, since you seem to think this is a similar outdoor sport.”

Evelyn reflected for an instant, while Jim watched her in the silent agony of the novice, who fears that he has committed an irreparable error.

“Listen, Jim, I'll go in and write to her. The letter will go North on your train.”

“My train?”

“Yes. You are leaving on this afternnoon's flyer.”

“Oh, am I? Of course I am.”

“Of course. If it's full up you can buy another car, or a special train or something.”

“I'll get an airplane.”

“Well, do that if you like, but there's no such desperate hurry. It would be better that she got my letter first and had a chance to think it over a little. It will give her time to realize how unjust she's been.”

“There's something in that,” Jim admitted. “She's owned up to having been that once or twice before.”

“So much the better. That noble young woman is going to do a lot of thinking when she's read what I shall I have to say.”

“But are you sure you want to tell her all that, Evelyn?”

“I certainly do. I should like to proclaim it from the housetops. It can't do the slightest harm now, as mother got a letter from dad this morning in which said that he had everything nailed down and clamped on the inside. He's not going to get caught like that again. Now you get going. What are you going to do with your boat?”

“I'll lend her to Duane until I come back to get her.”

“Well, Duane will know what to do with her. Now start and go.”

“I'm off,” said Jim.

Chapter XIV.

There are in the lives of most people moments of self-discouragement which is not directed against the whims of fortune or any especial recent error of judgment or behavior, but is rather a sort of general disgust of self as an impersonal individual, his or her methods, point of view, and especially final results.

Margaret Dudley was in one of those moods this dreary February afternoon. She had returned directly to the home, where a certain number of children were housed during the winter, little orphans, or those whose parents were ill and home conditions wretched. They were all in the playroom and happily oblivious to the dismal February thaw.

Margaret, in her cozy little suite before a a cheerful open fire of apple stumps, looked out at the snow beginning to fall again in great flakes and the grim leaden sky etched with the straggling branches of locust trees and under them the highway, a sort of mer de glace with great frozen ruts in what had been snow, but was now weeping ice, and compared her surroundings with those softly tempered ones she had so abruptly quitted. It was borne in upon her that she had done a silly thing. Her nurse had caught a bad cold and was in bed with a temperature. The Home had really been excellently administered by her efficient staff, and it struck Margaret that there was actually no more reason for her being there at that moment than for her having named it after a brave man—if a bit of a fraud in his sentimental relations, as brave men often are—who was the recent fiancé of another girl.

Margaret was feeling lonesome, discouraged, and depressed, and there was a flood of tears flanking her violet eyes.

“They are all frauds,” she muttered bitterly to herself, visualizing the picture of Jim standing in the silvery filtered moonlight with Evelyn in his arms. She could hear n the girl's ecstatic voice: “Oh, Jim—it's come—father's telegram. Mother wants to see you right away.”

A wave of anger swept through Margaret. And to think that just before this Jim had been making love to her if not in speech at least unmistakably in all other ways, in tone and gesture and the caressing expression of his eyes.

“Yes,” muttered Margaret to herself. “They are frauds—all—all.”

She looked out the window at the forlorn prospect. There had not been that day even a post, no letters, newspapers or magazines—not even bills to distract her mind. The terrible condition of the roads had discouraged the rural delivery. Even the postman's faithful flivver had panted out its soul at the foot of Turner's Hill, this a glare of wet ice and fearful frozen gullies. Then a moving object down the impassible trail caught her eye. She discovered this to be a young lad mounted on a shaggy farm horse with a postman's bag slung over his shoulders. He turned in at the Home, and Margaret in great relief at this interruption of her bad quarter hour, touched her bell.

“Give that deserving youth a dollar and a cup of coffee and a whole pie,” said she to the attendant at her door. “But first bring up the mail.”

The order was executed to the tremendous satisfaction of all parties, but especially that of Margaret, who picked immediately from her sheaf of letters one sent by special delivery which had occasioned the valiant effort at communication with the frozen world. She did not recognize Evelyn's handwriting, but she saw the Palm Beach postmark and ripped it open with fingers which trembled a little and proceeded to devour its contents with gluttony.

Evelyn had missed no detail. It was a witty letter, but charged with fervent heartbeats, and it wound up with the announcement of her engagement to one Herbert Spooner, architect, of New York. It was a funny letter, but Margaret did not laugh. She laid it on her knee, and the tears ran from her violet eyes in a little stream, and at that moment the sun broke through a rift of the gray lee set and swept the bleak landscape with a resplendent glory.

But this was not all. From far in the distance came the hoarse, disgruntled blare of an outraged motor car, the complaint, not as though made to clear the road, for indeed there was no road and no traffic on it to clear, but as though in protest that any ground-traversing fabric of mechanical device should be called upon to strain and labor over earth's irregular surface in what was only airplane weather.

Margaret's heart went off like a alarm clock. Although Evelyn had given no hint of Jim's departure from the shade of the sheltering palms, some sixth sense seemed to tell Margaret that he was not far away. Perhaps, also, she reasoned subconsciously, that only a lover would ever try to navigate a car of a size commensurate with so bass a bellow over that Chemin des Pas Perdus.

Then, as if to verify her instinct, that big roadster hove in sight, pitching and slewing as it crawled along, like a gleaming yacht working to windward in a cross chop.

Margaret sprang to her feet, threw open a window and looked out. She snatched a pair of field glasses from the mantel and focused them. It was Jim and two others, for he had brought with him a wrecking crew, and the back of the car was full of spare parts.

The day assumed suddenly glorious dimensions. Margaret was startled to catch a glimpse of her radiant face in the old looking-glass. She began to skip around in a demented sort of way, snatched a fresh blouse from her wardrobe, then put it back again. She gathered up the loose tendrils of her wavy black hair, which had the deep luster of some ruddy-hued object in the dark. She examined her eyes to see if they were red-rimmed, which they were not, and their violet depths glowed at her as though there was a fight ahead.

The big car blared again, like a steamboat coming up to a wharf in a fog, and the hoarse note sent a sort of quiver through the girl. Jim was apparently warning the gateposts to draw back and give him room. He bumped in over a fozen drift, and was lost to sight around the corner of the house. Margarget sat down again and tried to compose herself and keep her heart from acting foolishly.

For the high gods, as if to compensate for the practical jokes they had been playing on Jim since having enriched him, now steered him to Margaret at a time and place which could not have been more opportune. No glamour of the tropic, no soft airs and spicy odors could possibly have rendered her as vulnerable as the dreary aspect of that late wintry New Enggland countryside and the depression which she had just passed through. Moreover, it was her home, he was her guest, and there could be no questioning his claim to hospitality. She reflected that to have got there so soon, coming from New York in that big car over such terrific roads, he must have left Palm Beach the same day as herself, and then traveled some. She wondered how he had managed it, and was conscious of an overwhelming admiration for the costly fabric which had stood the strain.

There was the sound of voices from below in which she recognized Jim's cheerful, boyish, lilting tones, and they sounded to Margaret in the accents of some sylvan demigod. She felt instantly for some reason much older than hough there was but a month favor between their ages.

Then, at the sound of footsteps outside the door, Margaret became suddenly and hopelessly demoralized. To express her condition exactly, she was “badly rattled.” The suite which she occupied consisted of the office where she had been sitting, her bedroom, and it adjoining boudoir and bath. Downstairs, there was a formal reception room, but Margaret shrank from the idea of receiving him there.

An attendant rapped at the door, and Margaret made a frantic effort to compose herself.

“Mr. Gladstone is asking for you, Miss Dudley,” said the young woman.

“Please tell Mr. Gladstone that I'll be—no, ask him to come up here.”

Gladstone had heard the order, and did not wait for its delivery. Taking two of the little old-fashioned stairs at a stride, he passed the attendant in the hall. She arrested her downward course and looked back to see what sort of collision was going to occur. It is probable that she saw.

Jim strode down the hall. Margaret was standing in the doorway, and, as if to enhance unnecessarily the glory of her to Jim's vision, the late sun took good aim with one of its horizontal beams and shot it through the western window of the study to edge Margaret's charming figure all about with gold. To Jim she looked like some sort of a golden goddess of all sufficiency—the ultimate end and objective of his quest. He walked straight up to her, with singular fearlessness for one of his modest nature, and Margaret's defenses being wide open as she poised herself on the threshold, with either hand on the casing of the open door, Jim did not hesitate to take advantage of it.

He walked straight up to her and his arms went round her before she could let fall her own. He drew her close and Margaret, like a proud prisoner taken in her last trench, did not resist. Her head fell forward on his shoulder and Jim, without shame and without reproach, possessed himself of her sweet face.

“There, thank God!” said he. “I've got you at last. You'll never get away from me again.”

 

“You see, dad,” said Jim, a few days later, “we have come to a sort of compromise. I can't go knight-erranting around the country any more, because my wife is a lady of strong domestic tastes and has also the Home to run. But a babies' home, while unquestionably the finest of charities, does not offer precisely the employment best suited for a young and active man who is not a doctor. So doping the thing out between us, we've decided that Margaret is to look after the beginning of the mortal span, while I busy myself with the end of it.”

Doctor Gladstone's eyes twinkled. “That sounds rather somber,” said he. “Are you going to build a model cemetery?”

“No—that would be after the end of it. Besides an honest parson must live. I'm going to found an Old People's Home and name it after mother. You can't pauperize kiddies because they're too young, and you can't do any harm ~ to people over sixty-five or seventy because they're too old,, So we figure that in this way we ought to be able to do a lot of good, and manage to keep out of trouble.”

“The idea is excellent,” said Doctor Gladstone, “but if I am any judge of womankind, you will soon be starting a very young people's home, particularly your own.”

Jim laughed. “Well, after all,” said he, “you can't beat that much in the cause of doing good.”