“I wasn’t considered big enough to go out in them alone, but one Saturday afternoon my father promised me that if Henry, when he came down from town, would take one boat, I could take the other, and we could have a race. As long as I live, I’ll never forget that morning. A thousand times I looked out to where the two boats lay moored; crazy with excitement; planning everything; the start, the course; looking at the wind; right on edge—and somehow it never even occurred to me that Henry wouldn’t want to go. I suppose I honestly couldn’t imagine that any man, woman or child could possibly refuse a chance to sail a boat race.
“Well, Henry arrived, and you can imagine what Henry did. He hated me even then; I believe he’d always hated me, though of course I didn’t realize it. Poor little rascal that I was, I’d never learned to think about hating any one. He heard me out—I can even remember how I grabbed hold of him as he was getting out of the station wagon, and how he shook me off, too—and then he looked at me with a queer kind of a smile that wasn’t really a smile—I can imagine now just what fun it must have been for him—and said he was afraid there wasn’t wind enough to go sailing. That was just to tantalize me—to see me argue and run out on the piazza and point to the ripples and the big American flag on the Island waving in the breeze—and then he had to turn away, and pretend to yawn, and say he didn’t believe he cared to go, that anyway he was going over to the Country Club to play tennis. And then he went into the house to get ready, and left me out there on the piazza alone.
“I can laugh now, and shrug my shoulders at the whole thing, but then—why, it was black tragedy for me. I guess I was a pretty solemn-looking little chap, swallowing hard and trying not to cry, when my father found me there half an hour later. He’d been fishing all the morning, I remember, and I guess he was good and tired—he hadn’t been well that summer, anyway—and he had a cigar in his mouth, and had his hand on the long piazza chair, just going to pull it into the shade, and settle down with a book and a paper for a nice, quiet afternoon. I told him, I remember, and he looked at his chair, and looked out on the water—the sun was strong, and pretty hot, and to tell the truth, though there was a little light air close to shore, about a quarter of a mile out to sea it was getting rather flat—and then he looked again at his chair, and then at me, and then he put down his book and his paper, and drew me up to him with one hand, and gave a smile—that was a smile.
“‘Come on, my old sailor,’ he said ‘and we’ll see if we can’t have a little boat race of our own.’ Oh, how my heart jumped—the poor old Governor, I think my expression must pretty nearly have paid him—and then we toiled down over the rocks, with me hanging to his hand, the way a kid that really likes his father will; and out we went in the skiff, with me doing the rowing, splashing and jerking, and very proud, and then we got up sail, and drifted around the little course for a couple of hours—I can remember how hot it was—and of course I won. I didn’t dream then that he let me, and perhaps, for him to hear me telling my mother about it over and over again at the supper table—perhaps—”
He stopped, unable to go on, and then, after a little pause, he added half-wistfully, in a voice that shook in spite of him, “It’s queer, Helmar—isn’t it?—how a little thing like that can stand out in your memory, and so many other things you utterly forget. It’s just the—what is the word—just the kindness of it—damn it all—” and self-restraint at last giving way, he buried his face in his hands, and for the first time in many a long year, cried like a child.
Helmar for a moment stood still in troubled silence; then turned upon his heel, and softly left the room.