Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling (e manga reader .txt) đ
- Author: Rudyard Kipling
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âIâve never told that to any one before,â said the father.
Harvey gasped. âItâs just the greatest thing that ever was!â said he.
âThatâs what I got. Now Iâm coming to what I didnât get. It wonât sound much of anything to you, but I donât wish you to be as old as I am before you find out. I can handle men, of course, and Iâm no fool along my own lines, butâbutâI canât compete with the man who has been taught! Iâve picked up as I went along, and I guess it sticks out all over me.â
âIâve never seen it,â said the son, indignantly.
âYou will, though, Harve. You willâjust as soon as youâre through college. Donât I know it? Donât I know the look on menâs faces when they think me aâa âmucker,â as they call it out here? I can break them to little piecesâyesâbut I canât get back at âem to hurt âem where they live. I donât say theyâre âway âway up, but I feel Iâm âway, âway, âway off, somehow. Now youâve got your chance. Youâve got to soak up all the learning thatâs around, and youâll live with a crowd that are doing the same thing. Theyâll be doing it for a few thousand dollars a year at most; but remember youâll be doing it for millions. Youâll learn law enough to look after your own property when Iâm out oâ the light, and youâll have to be solid with the best men in the market (they are useful later); and above all, youâll have to stow away the plain, common, sit-down-with-your chin-on your-elbows book-learning. Nothing pays like that, Harve, and itâs bound to pay more and more each year in our countryâin business and in politics. Youâll see.â
âThereâs no sugar in my end of the deal,â said Harvey. âFour years at college! âWish Iâd chosen the valet and the yacht!â
âNever mind, my son,â Cheyne insisted. âYouâre investing your capital where itâll bring in the best returns; and I guess you wonât find our property shrunk any when youâre ready to take hold. Think it over, and let me know in the morning. Hurry! Weâll be late for supper!â
As this was a business talk, there was no need for Harvey to tell his mother about it; and Cheyne naturally took the same point of view. But Mrs. Cheyne saw and feared, and was a little jealous. Her boy, who rode rough-shod over her, was gone, and in his stead reigned a keen-faced youth, abnormally silent, who addressed most of his conversation to his father. She understood it was business, and therefore a matter beyond her premises. If she had any doubts, they were resolved when Cheyne went to Boston and brought back a new diamond marquise ring.
âWhat have you two been doing now?â she said, with a weak little smile, as she turned it in the light.
âTalkingâjust talking, Mama; thereâs nothing mean about Harvey.â
There was not. The boy had made a treaty on his own account. Railroads, he explained gravely, interested him as little as lumber, real estate, or mining. What his soul yearned after was control of his fatherâs newly purchased sailing-ship. If that could be promised him within what he conceived to be a reasonable time, he, for his part, guaranteed diligence and sobriety at college for four or five years. In vacation he was to be allowed full access to all details connected with the lineâhe had not asked more than two thousand questions about it,âfrom his fatherâs most private papers in the safe to the tug in San Francisco harbour.
âItâs a deal,â said Cheyne at the last. âYouâll alter your mind twenty times before you leave college, oâ course; but if you take hold of it in proper shape, and if you donât tie it up before youâre twenty-three, Iâll make the thing over to you. Howâs that, Harve?â
âNope; never pays to split up a going concern. Thereâs too much competition in the world anyway, and Disko says âblood-kin hev to stick together.â His crowd never go back on him. Thatâs one reason, he says, why they make such big fares. Say, the âWeâre Hereâ goes off to the Georges on Monday. They donât stay long ashore, do they?â
âWell, we ought to be going, too, I guess. Iâve left my business hung up at loose ends between two oceans, and itâs time to connect again. I just hate to do it, though; havenât had a holiday like this for twenty years.â
âWe canât go without seeing Disko off,â said Harvey; âand Mondayâs Memorial Day. Letâs stay over that, anyway.â
âWhat is this memorial business? They were talking about it at the boardinghouse,â said Cheyne weakly. He, too, was not anxious to spoil the golden days.
âWell, as far as I can make out, this business is a sort of song-and-dance act, whacked up for the summer boarders. Disko donât think much of it, he says, because they take up a collection for the widows and orphans. Diskoâs independent. Havenât you noticed that?â
âWellâyes. A little. In spots. Is it a town show, then?â
âThe summer convention is. They read out the names of the fellows drowned or gone astray since last time, and they make speeches, and recite, and all. Then, Disko says, the secretaries of the Aid Societies go into the back yard and fight over the catch. The real show, he says, is in the spring. The ministers all take a hand then, and there arenât any summer boarders around.â
âI see,â said Cheyne, with the brilliant and perfect comprehension of one born into and bred up to city pride. âWeâll stay over for Memorial Day, and get off in the afternoon.â
âGuess Iâll go down to Diskoâs and make him bring his crowd up before they sail. Iâll have to stand with them, of course.â
âOh, thatâs it, is it,â said Cheyne. âIâm only a poor summer boarder, and youâreââ
âA Bankerâfull-blooded Banker,â Harvey called back as he boarded a trolley, and Cheyne went on with his blissful dreams for the future.
Disko had no use for public functions where appeals were made for charity, but Harvey pleaded that the glory of the day would be lost, so far as he was concerned, if the âWeâre Heresâ absented themselves. Then Disko made conditions. He had heardâit was astonishing how all the world knew all the worldâs business along the water-frontâhe had heard that a âPhiladelphia actress-womanâ was going to take part in the exercises; and he mistrusted that she would deliver âSkipper Iresonâs Ride.â Personally, he had as little use for actresses as for summer boarders; but justice was justice, and though he himself (here Dan giggled) had once slipped up on a matter of judgment, this thing must not be. So Harvey came back to East Gloucester, and spent half a day explaining to an amused actress with a royal reputation on two seaboards the inwardness of the mistake she contemplated; and she admitted that it was justice, even as Disko had said.
Cheyne knew by old experience what would happen; but anything of the nature of a public palaver was meat and drink to the manâs soul. He saw the trolleys hurrying west, in the hot, hazy morning, full of women in light summer dresses, and white-faced straw-hatted men fresh from Boston desks; the stack of bicycles outside the post office; the come-and-go of busy officials, greeting one another; the slow flick and swash of bunting in the heavy air; and the important man with a hose sluicing the brick sidewalk.
âMother,â he said suddenly, âdonât you rememberâafter Seattle was burned outâand they got her going again?â
Mrs. Cheyne nodded, and looked critically down the crooked street. Like her husband, she understood these gatherings, all the West over, and compared them one against another. The fishermen began to mingle with the crowd about the town-hall doorsâblue-jowled Portuguese, their women bare-headed or shawled for the most part; clear-eyed Nova Scotians, and men of the Maritime Provinces; French, Italians, Swedes, and Danes, with outside crews of coasting schooners; and everywhere women in black, who saluted one another with gloomy pride, for this was their day of great days. And there were ministers of many creeds,âpastors of great, gilt-edged congregations, at the seaside for a rest, with shepherds of the regular work,âfrom the priests of the Church on the Hill to bush-bearded ex-sailor Lutherans, hail-fellow with the men of a score of boats. There were owners of lines of schooners, large contributors to the societies, and small men, their few craft pawned to the mastheads, with bankers and marine-insurance agents, captains of tugs and water-boats, riggers, fitters, lumpers, salters, boat-builders, and coopers, and all the mixed population of the water-front.
They drifted along the line of seats made gay with the dresses of the summer boarders, and one of the town officials patrolled and perspired till he shone all over with pure civic pride. Cheyne had met him for five minutes a few days before, and between the two there was entire understanding.
âWell, Mr. Cheyne, and what dâyou think of our city? âYes, madam, you can sit anywhere you please.âYou have this kind of thing out West, I presume?â
âYes, but we arenât as old as you.â
âThatâs so, of course. You ought to have been at the exercises when we celebrated our two hundred and fiftieth birthday. I tell you, Mr. Cheyne, the old city did herself credit.â
âSo I heard. It pays, too. Whatâs the matter with the town that it donât have a first-class hotel, though?â
ââRight over there to the left, Pedro. Heaps oâ room for you and your crowd.âWhy, thatâs what I tell âem all the time, Mr. Cheyne. Thereâs big money in it, but I presume that donât affect you any. What we want isââ
A heavy hand fell on his broadcloth shoulder, and the flushed skipper of a Portland coal-and-ice coaster spun him half round. âWhat in thunder do you fellows mean by clappinâ the law on the town when all decent men are at sea this way? Heh? Townâs dry as a bone, anâ smells a sight worse sence I quit. âMight haâ left us one saloon for soft drinks, anyway.â
âDonât seem to have hindered your nourishment this morning, Carsen. Iâll go into the politics of it later. Sit down by the door and think over your arguments till I come back.â
âWhat good is arguments to me? In Miquelon champagneâs eighteen dollars a case andââ The skipper lurched into his seat as an organ-prelude silenced him.
âOur new organ,â said the official proudly to Cheyne. âCost us four thousand dollars, too. Weâll have to get back to high-license next year to pay for it. I wasnât going to let the ministers have all the religion at their convention. Those are some of our orphans standing up to sing. My wife taught âem. See you again later, Mr. Cheyne. Iâm wanted on the platform.â
High, clear, and true, childrenâs voices bore down the last noise of those settling into their places.
âO all ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him and magnify him for ever!â
The women throughout the hall leaned forward to look as the reiterated cadences filled the air. Mrs. Cheyne, with some others, began to breathe short; she had hardly imagined there were so many widows in the world; and instinctively searched for Harvey. He had
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