“Hold on, Plympton, you don’t understand,” said Chauncy soothingly. He saw that he had made a mistake. He “had put too many goods on the market at once,” to use his own phrase. Continuing his soothing tone of voice, he said: “I can’t but pity the Scarlet Grays, if they are feeling so badly and their folks are stirred up, and ‘the town is down on ’em.’ Lang says, why, his mother is just awful, he says, and is real nervous. To oblige them, I’d give it all away—I mean the prize.”
Such self–sacrifice! He was willing to throw himself away—as far as this boat–race was concerned—all for the sake of the Scarlet Grays’ feelings! In reality, he had already received a present of “five dollars” from Tripp, and expected another “five,” if successful with Walter. Walter’s instincts were always in the right place. A wrong thing coming to him, he would condemn as wrong, and a right thing, he would commend as right. But he was sympathetic, while conscientious. He felt for the individual sinner, while he disapproved of his sin; and his sympathy might cloud the decision of his judgment. When he thought of the Scarlet Grays, the occasion of so much parental disappointment, and the object of so much town talk and town sport, he did pity “the poor chaps,” as Chauncy whiningly labeled them in his continued talk. Chauncy saw that he was making an impression; that he was “putting the right goods on the market, and the right quantity;” and he continued to deliver them in a sympathetic, pitying, self–sacrificing tone. Suddenly Walter said to himself, “What am I doing, allowing this fellow to talk so? Where’s mother’s advice, ‘Honest, boy’? And then that psalm I was reading from, this morning. What did that say? Why, I can almost seem to see it written in the sky!”
And looking away to the east all afire with a shining crimson above the placid sea, he seemed to see those words traced in the clouds:
“Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to Thy word. With my whole heart, have I sought Thee; O let me not wander from Thy commandments.”
He turned quickly to Chauncy, and said in a very positive way, “Aldrich, this thing is not right; and I won’t have anything to do with it.”
“A–em!” said a voice.
Somebody was passing. The two young men turned, and there was Capt. Barney, the keeper of the life saving station. He passed so near that they heard his step distinctly, and yet he did not seem to be noticing them, and rapidly moved away. Another moment, he had turned the corner of an old mossy ledge, tufted with a few bushes, and planted near the water’s edge, now sparkling in the sunshine. Chauncy was much confused for “a cool, clear–headed business man,” as he judged himself to be. Walter’s decided opinion, again abruptly presented, had taken this soft talking, pitying young trader by surprise. His face flushed, he stammered, and he looked angry, as Walter now spoke on his side:—
“Aldrich, this thing is wrong. I don’t care about the money; but as I understand it, quite a number of people, including those ten fishermen, have given toward the race. They will all take an interest in the race, and want The Harbor crew to do its best, its honest best. The people that take the trouble to come and look at us will all expect us to do our best. Why, I couldn’t do that thing,—let up on the rowing, and then walk up the street and hold up my head. As for those ninnies from Campton, if they didn’t want to get licked, what did they enter for? They were not obliged to do it!”
Chauncy’s feelings were of a very mixed character. He knew the proposition from the other crew was not fair, and was really ashamed of himself; and then he was mad because Walter had shown himself to be more honest than he. Walter now startled and confused him with another proposition:—
“See here, Aldrich! If we get the prize–money, I don’t want it any more than you. Let’s give it away, say to start a library down here at The Harbor, or somewhere in town; a Town Library, I mean; of course, if the other fellers in the crew are willing, and if—if—we get it.”