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