Miss Wombast looked up from her desk in the Sunbury Public Library and beheld Henry Calverly, 3rd. Then with a slight fluttering of her pale, blue-veined eyelids and a compression of her thin lips she looked down again and in a neat practised librarian's hand finished printing out a title on the-catalogue card before her.
For Henry Calverly was faintly disconcerting to her. Though it was only eleven o'clock, and a Tuesday, he was attired in blue serge coat, snow white trousers and (could she have seen through the desk) white stockings and shoes. His white négligé shirt was decorated at the neck with a 'four-in-hand' of shimmering foulard, blue and green. In his left hand was a rolled-up creamy-white felt hat and the crook of a thin bamboo stick. With his right he fussed at the fringe on his upper lip, which was somewhat nearer the moustache stage than it had been last week. Behind his nose glasses and their pendant silk cord his face was sober; the gray-blue eyes that (Miss Wombast knew) could blaze with primal energy were gloomy, or at least tired; there was a furrow between his blond eyebrow's. He had the air of a youth who wants earnestly to concentrate without knowing quite how.
Miss Wombast was a distinctly 'literary' person. She read Meredith, Balzac, De Maupassant, Flaubert, Zola, and Howells. She was living her way into the developing later manner of Henry James. She talked, on occasion, with an icy enthusiasm that many honest folk found irritating, of Stevenson's style and of Walter Pater.
It was Miss Wombast's habit to look in her books for complete identification of the living characters she met. She studied all of them, coolly, critically, at boardinghouse and library. Naturally, when a living individual refused to take his place among her gallery of book types, she was puzzled. One such was Henry Calverly.
She had known something of his checkered career in high school, where he had directed the glee club, founded and edited The Boys' Journal, written a rather bright one-act play for the junior class. Indeed the village in general had been mildly aware of Henry. He had stood out, and Miss Wombast herself had sung a modest alto in the Iolanthe chorus, two years back, under Henry's direction and had found him impersonally, ingenuously masterful and a subtly pleasing factor in her thought-world. He had made a success of that mob. The big men of the village gave him a dinner and a purse of gold. After all of which, his mother had died, he had run, apparently, through his gifts and his earnings, and settled down to a curiously petty reporting job, trotting up and down Simpson Street collecting useless little items for The Weekly Voice of Sunbury. Other young fellows of twenty either went to college or started laying the foundations of a regular job in Chicago. Those that amounted to anything. You could see pretty plainly ahead of each his proper line of development. Yet here was Henry, who had stood out, working half-heartedly at the sort of job you associated with the off-time of poor students, dressing altogether too conspicuously, wasting hours—daytimes, when a young fellow ought to be working—with this girl and that. For a long time it had been the Caldwell girl. Lately she had seen him with that strikingly pretty but, she felt, rather 'physical' young singer who was visiting the gifted but whispered-about Mrs Arthur V. Henderson, of Lower Chestnut Avenue. Name of Doge, or Doag, or something like that.
Henry himself had been whispered about. Very recently. He had been seen at Hoffmann's Garden, up the shore, with a vulgar young woman in extremely tight bloomers. Of the working girl type. Had her out on a tandem. Drinking beer.
So it was, unable to forget those secretly stirring Iolanthe days, that Miss Wombast had looked about among her book types for a key to Henry, but without success. He didn't appear to be in De Maupassant. Nor in Balzac. In Meredith and James there was no one who said 'Yeah' and 'Gotta' and spoke with the crude if honest throat 'r' of the Middle West and went with nice girls and vulgar girls and carried that silly cane and wore the sillier moustache; who had, or had had, gifts of creation and command, yet now, month in, month out, hung about Donovan's soda fountain; who never smoked and, apart from the Hoffmann's Garden incident, wasn't known to drink; and who, when you faced him, despite the massed evidence, gave out an impression of earnest endeavour. Even of moral purpose.
Had she known him better Miss Wombast would have found herself the more puzzled. For Miss Wombast, despite her rather complicated reading, still clung in some measure to the moralistic teachings of her youth, believing that people either had what she thought of as character or else didn't have it, that people were either industrious or lazy, bright or stupid, vulgar or nice. Therefore the fact that Henry, while still wrecking his stomach with fountain drinks and (a recently acquired habit) with lemon meringue pie between meals, had not touched candy for two years—not a chocolate cream, not even a gum drop!—and this by sheer force of character, would have been confusing.
And to read his thoughts, as he stood there before her desk, would have carried her confusion on into bewilderment.
Mostly these thoughts had to do with money, and bordered on the desperate. Tentative little schemes for getting money—even a few dollars—were forming and dissolving rapidly in his mind.
He was concerned because his sudden little flirtation with Corinne Doag, after a flashing start, had lost its glow. Only the preceding evening. He hadn't held her interest. The thrill had gone. Which plunged him into moods and brought to his always unruly tongue the sarcastic words that made matters worse. He was lunching down there to-day—he and Humphrey—and dreaded it, with moments of a rather futile, flickering hope. Deep intuition informed him that the one sure solution was money. You couldn't get on with a girl without it. Just about so far, then things dragged. And this, of course, brought him around the circle, back to the main topic.
He was thinking about his clothes. They, at least, should move Corinne. Along with the moustache, the cane, the cord on his glasses. He didn't see how people could help being a little impressed. Miss Wombast, even, who didn't matter. It seemed to him that she was impressed.
He was thinking about Martha Caldwell., She was pretty frankly going with James B. Merchant, Jr., now. Henry was jealous of James B. Merchant, Jr. And about Martha his thoughts hovered with a tinge of romantic sadness. He would like her to see him to-day, in these clothes, with his moustache and cane.
He was wondering, with the dread that the prospect of mental effort always roused in him, how on earth he was ever to write three whole columns about the Annual Business Men's Picnic of the preceding afternoon. Describing in humorous yet friendly detail the three-legged race, the ball game between the fats and the leans, the dinner in the grove, the concert by Foote's full band of twenty pieces, the purse given to Charlie Waterhouse as the most popular man on Simpson Street. He had a thick wad of notes up at the rooms, but his heart was not in the laborious task of expanding them. He knew precisely what old man Boice expected of him—plenty of 'personal mention' for all the advertisers, giving space for space. Each day that he put it off would make the task harder. If he didn't have the complete story in by Thursday night, Humphrey would skin him alive; yet here it was Wednesday morning, and he was planning to spend as much of the day as possible with the increasingly unresponsive Corinne. Life was difficult!
He was aware of a morbid craving in his digestive tract. He decided to get an ice-cream soda on the way back to the office. He would have liked about half a pound of chocolate creams. The Italian kind, with all the sweet in the white part. But here character intervened.
A corner of his mind dwelt unceasingly on queer difficult feelings that came. These had flared out in the unpleasant incident of Mamie Wilcox and the tandem; and again in the present flirtation with Corinne. In a way that he found perplexing, this stir of emotion was related to his gifts. He couldn't let one go without the other. There had been moments—in the old days—when a feeling of power had surged through him. It was a wonderful, irresistible feeling. Riding that wave, he was equal to anything. But it had frightened him. The memory of it frightened him now. He had put Iolanthe through, it was true, but he had also nearly eloped with Ernestine Lambert. He had completely lost his head—debts, everything!
Yes, it was as well that Miss Wombast couldn't read his thoughts. She wouldn't have known how to interpret them. She hadn't the capacity to understand the wide swift stream of feeling down which an imaginative boy floats all but rudderless into manhood. She couldn't know of his pitifully inadequate little attempts to shape a course, to catch this breeze and that, even to square around and breast the current of life.
Henry said politely:—
'Good-morning, Miss Wombast. I just looked in for the notes of new books.'
'Oh,' she replied quickly. 'I'm sorry you troubled. Mr Boice asked me to mail it to the office at the end of the month. I just sent it—this morning.'
She saw his face fall. He mumbled something that sounded like, 'Oh—all right! Doesn't matter.' For a moment he stood waving his stick in jerky, aimless little circles. Then went off down the stairs.
Emerging from Donovan's drug store Henry encountered the ponderous person of old Boice—six feet an inch and a half, head sunk a little between the shoulders, thick yellowish-white whiskers waving down over a black bow tie and a spotted, roundly protruding vest, a heavy old watch chain with insignia of a fraternal order hanging as a charm; inscrutable, washed-out blue eyes in a deeply lined but nearly expressionless face.
Henry stopped short; stared at his employer.
Mr Boice did not stop. But as he moved deliberately by, his faded eyes took in every detail of Henry's not unremarkable personal appearance.
Henry was thinking: 'Old crook. Wish I had a paper of my own here and I'd get back at him. Run him out of town, that's what!' And after he had nodded and rushed by, his colouring mounting: 'Like to know why I should work my head off just to make money for him. No sense in that!'
Henry came moodily into the Voice office, dropped down at his inkstained, littered table behind the railing, and sighed twice. He picked up a pencil and fell to outlining ink spots.
The sighs were directed at Humphrey, who sat bent over his desk, cob pipe in mouth, writing very rapidly. 'He's got wonderful concentration,' thought Henry, his mind wandering a brief moment from his unhappy self.
Humphrey spoke without looking up. 'Don't let that Business Men's Picnic get away from you, Hen. Really ought to be getting it in type now. Two compositors loafing out there.'
Henry sighed again; let his pencil fall on the table; gazed heavily, helplessly at the wall...
'Old man say anything to you about the “Library Notes”?'
Humphrey glanced up and removed his pipe. His swarthy long face wrinkled thoughtfully. 'Yes. Just now. He's going to have Miss Wombast send 'em in direct every month.'
'And I don't have 'em any more.'
Humphrey considered this fact. 'It doesn't amount to very much, Hen.'
'Oh, no—works out about sixty cents to a dollar. It ain't that altogether—it's the principle. I'm getting tired of it!'
The press-room door was ajar, Humphrey reached out and closed it.
Henry raised his voice; got out of his chair and sat on the edge of the table. His eyes brightened sharply. Emotion crept into his voice and shook it a little.
'Do you know what's he done to me—that old doubleface? Took me in here two years ago at eight a week with a promise of nine if I suited. Well, I did suit. But did I get the nine? Not until I'd rowed and begged for seven months. A year of that, a lot more work—You know! “Club Notes,” this library stuff, “Real Estate Happenings,” “Along Simpson Street,” reading proof—'
Humphrey slowly nodded as he smoked.
'—And I asked for ten a week. Would he give it? No! I knew I was worth more than that, so I offered to take space rates instead. Then what does he do? You know, Hump. Been clipping me off, one thing after another, and piling on the proof and the office work. Here's one thing more gone to-day. Last week my string was exactly seven dollars and forty-six cents. Dam it, it ain't fair! I can't live! I won't stand it. Gotta be ten a week or I—I'll find out why. Show-down.'
He rushed to the door. Then, as if his little flare of indignation had burnt out, fingered there, knitting his brows and looking up and down the street and across at the long veranda of the Sunbury House, where people sat in a row in yellow rocking chairs.
Humphrey smoked and considered him. After a little he remarked quietly:—
'Look here, Hen, I don't like it any more than you do. I've seen what he was doing. I've tried to forestall him once or twice——'
'I know it, Hump.' Henry turned. He was quite listless now. 'He's a tricky old fox. If I only knew of something else I could do—or that we could do together——'
'But—this was what I was going to say—no matter how we feel, I'm going to be really in trouble if I don't get that picnic story pretty soon. Mr Boice asked about it this morning.'
Henry leaned against Mr Boice's desk, up by the window; dropped his chin into one hand.
'I'll do it, Hump. This afternoon. Or to-night. We're going down to Mildred's this noon, of course.'
'That's part of what's bothering me. God knows how soon after that you'll break away from Corinne.'
'Pretty dam soon,' remarked Henry sullenly, 'the way things are going now.... I'll get at it, Hump. Honest I will. But right now'—he moved a hand weakly through the air—'I just couldn't. You don't know how I feel. I couldn't!'
'Where you going now?'
'I don't know.' The hand moved again. 'Walk around. Gotta be by myself. Sorta think it out. This is one of the days... I've been thinking—be twenty-one in November. Then I'll show him, and all the rest of 'em. Have a little money then. I'll show this hypocritical old town a few things—a few things....'
His voice died to a mumble. He felt with limp fingers at his moustache.
'I'll be ready quarter or twenty minutes past twelve,' Humphrey called after him as he moved mournfully out to the street.
Mr Boice moved heavily along, inclining his massive head, without a smile, to this acquaintance and that, and turned in at Schultz and Schwartz's.
The spectacle of Henry Calverly—in spotless white and blue, with the moustache, and the stick—had irritated him. Deeply. A boy who couldn't earn eight dollars a week parading Simpson Street in that rig, on a week-day morning! He felt strongly that Henry had no business sticking out that way, above the village level. Hitting you in the eyes. Young Jenkins was bad enough, but at least his father had the money. Real money. And could let his son waste it if he chose. But a conceited young chump like Henry Calverly! Ought to be chucked into a factory somewhere. Stoke a furnace. Carry boxes. Work with his hands. Get down to brass tacks and see if he had any stuff in him. Doubtful.
Mr Boice made a low sound, a wheezy sound between a grunt and a hum, as he handed his hat to the black, muscular, bullet-headed, grinning Pinkie Potter, who specialised in hats and shoes in Sunbury's leading barber shop.
He made another sound that was quite a grunt as he sank into the red plush barber chair of Heinie Schultz. His massive frame was clumsy, and the twinges of lumbago, varied by touches of neuritis, that had come steadily upon him since middle life, added to the difficulties of moving it about. He always made these sounds. He would stop on the street, take your hand non-committally in his huge, rather limp paw, and grunt before he spoke, between phrases, and when moving away.
Heinie Schultz, who was straw-coloured, thin, listlessly patient (Bill Schwartz was the noisy fat one), knew that the thick, yellowish gray hair was to be cut round in the back and the neck shaved beneath it. The beard was to be trimmed delicately, reverently—'not cut, just the rags taken off'—and combed out. Heinie had attended to this hair and beard for sixteen years.
'Heard a good one,' murmured Heinie, close to his patron's ear. 'There was a bride and groom got on the sleeping car up to Duluth—'
A thin man of about thirty-five entered the shop, tossed his hat to Pinkie, and dropped into Bill Schwartz's chair next the window. The new-comer had straight brown hair, worn a little long over ears and collar. His face was freckled, a little pinched, nervously alert. Behind his gold rimmed spectacles his small sharp eyes appeared to be darting this way and that, keen, penetrating through the ordinary comfortable surfaces of life.
This was Robert A. McGibbon, editor and proprietor of the Sunbury Weekly Gleaner. He had appeared in the village hardly six months back with a little money—enough, at least, to buy the presses, give a little for good will, assume the rent and the few business debts that Nicholas Simms Godfrey had been able to contract before his health broke, and to pay his own board at the Wombasts' on Filbert Avenue. His appearance in local journalism had created a new tension in the village and his appearance now in the barber shop created tension there. Heinie's vulgar little anecdote froze on his lips. Mr Boice, impassive, heavily deliberate, after one glimpse of the fellow in the long mirror before him, lay back in the chair, gazed straight upward at the fly-specked ceiling.
Mr Boice, when face to face with Robert A. McGibbon on the street, inclined his head to him as to others. But up and down the street his barely expressed disapproval of the man was felt to have a root in feelings and traditions infinitely deeper than the mere natural antagonism to a fresh competitor in the local field.
For McGibbon was—the term was a new one that had caught the popular imagination and was worming swiftly into the American language—a yellow journalist. He had worked, he boasted openly, on a sensationally new daily in New York. In the once staid old Gleaner he used boldfaced headlines, touched with irritating acumen on scandal, assailed the ruling political triumvirate, and made the paper generally fascinating as well as disturbing. As a result, he was picking up subscribers rapidly. Advertising, of course, was another matter. And Boice had all the village and county printing.
The political triumvirate mentioned above was composed of Boice himself, Charles H. Waterhouse, town treasurer, and Mr Weston of the Sunbury National Bank. For a decade their rule had not been questioned along the street. The other really prominent men of Sunbury all had their business interests in Chicago, and at that time used the village merely for sleeping and as a point of departure for the very new golf links. Such men, I mean, as B. L. Ames, John W. MacLouden, William B. Snow, and J. E. Jenkins.
The experience of withstanding vulgar attacks was new to the triumvirate. (McGibbon referred to them always as the 'Old Cinch.') The Gleaner had come out for annexation to Chicago. It demanded an audit of Charlie Waterhouse's town accounts by a new, politically disinterested group. It accused the bank of withholding proper support from men of whom old Boice disapproved. It demanded a share of the village printing.
The 'Old Cinch' were taking these attacks in silence, as beneath their notice. They took pains, however, in casual mention of the new force in town, to refer to him always as a 'Democrat.' This damned him with many. He called himself an 'Independent.' Which amused Charlie Waterhouse greatly. Everybody knew that a man who wasn't a decent Republican had to be a Democrat. In the nature of things.
And they were waiting for his money and his energy to give out. Giving him, as Charlie Waterhouse jovially put it, the rope to hang himself with.
Bill Schwartz took McGibbon's spectacles, tucked the towel around his scrawny neck, lathered chin and cheeks, and seizing his head firmly in a strong right hand turned it sidewise on the head-rest.
McGibbon lay there a moment, studying the yellowish-white whiskers that waved upward above the towels in the next chair. Bill stropped his razor.
'How are you, Mr Boice?' McGibbon observed, quite cheerfully.
Mr Boice made a sound, raised his head an inch. Heinie promptly pushed it down.
'Quite a story you had last week about the musicale at Mrs Arthur V. Henderson's.'
Mr Boice lay motionless. What was up! Distinctly odd that either journal should be mentioned between them. Bad taste. He made another sound.
'Who wrote it?'
No answer.
'Henry Calverly?'
A grunt.
'Thought so!' McGibbon chuckled.
Mr Boice twisted his head around, trying to see the fellow in the mirror. Heinie pulled it back.
'Got it here. Hand me my glasses, Bill, will you. Thanks.' McGibbon was sitting up, his face all lather, digging in his pocket. He produced a clipping. Read aloud with gusto:—
'“Mrs Stelton's art has deepened and broadened appreciably since she last appeared in Sunbury. Always gifted with a splendid singing organ, always charming in personality and profoundly, rhythmically musical in temperament, she now has added a superstructure of technical authority which gives to each passage, whether bravura or pianissimo, a quality and distinction.”'
McGibbon was momentarily choked by his own almost noiseless laughter. Bill pushed his head down and went swiftly to work on his right cheek. Two other customers had come in.
'Great stuff that!' observed McGibbon cautiously, under the razor. '“Profoundly, rhythmically musical in temperament “! “A superstructure of technical authority”! Great! Fine! That boy'll do something yet. Handled right. Wish he was working for me.'
Mr Boice, from whom sounds had been coming for several moments, now raised his voice. It was the first time Heinie had ever heard him raise it. Bill paused, razor in air, and glanced around. Pinkie Potter looked up from the shoes he was polishing.
'Well,' he roared huskily, 'what in hell's the matter with that!'
Just then Bill turned McGibbon's head the other way. He too raised his voice. But cheerfully.
'Nothing much. Nice lot o' words. Only Mrs Stelton wasn't there. Sprained her ankle in the Chicago station on the way out.'
Bill Schwartz had a trumpet-like Prussian voice. The situation seemed to him to contain the elements of humour. He laughed boisterously.
Heinie Schultz, more politic, tittered softly, shears against mouth.
Pinkie Potter laughed convulsively, and beat out an intricate rag-time tattoo on his bootblack's stand with his brush.
It was Mr Boice's fixed habit to go on, toward noon, to the post-office. Instead, to-day, he returned to the Voice office.
He seated himself at his desk for a quarter of an hour, doing nothing. He had the faculty of sitting still, ruminating.
Finally he reached out for the two-foot rule that always lay on his desk, and carefully measured a certain article in last week's paper. Then did a little figuring.
He rose, moved toward the door; turned, and remarked to the wondering Humphrey:—
'Take fifteen inches off Henry's string this week, Weaver. A dollar 'n' five cents. Be at the post-office if anybody wants me.' And went out.
Humphrey himself measured Henry's article on the musicale. Old Boice had been accurate enough; it came to an even fifteen inches. Which at seven cents an inch, would be a dollar and five cents.
When Henry reappeared and together they set out for Lower Chestnut Avenue, Humphrey found he hadn't the heart to break this fresh disappointment to his friend. He decided to let it drift until the Saturday. Something might turn up.
Henry's mood had changed. He had left the office, an hour earlier, looking like a discouraged boy. Now he was serious, silent, hard to talk to. He seemed three years older. With certain of Henry's rather violently contrasted phases Humphrey was familiar; but he had never seen him look quite like this. Henry was strung up. Plainly. He walked very fast, striding intently forward. At least once in each block he found himself a yard ahead of his companion, checked himself, muttered a few words that sounded vaguely like an apology and then repeated the process.
At Mrs Henderson's Henry was grave and curiously attractive. He had charm, no doubt of it—a sort of charm that women, older women, felt. Mildred Henderson distinctly played up to him. And Corinne, Humphrey noted, watched him now and then; the quietly observant keenness in her big dark eyes masked by her easy, lazy smile.
Toward the close of luncheon Henry's evident inner tension showed signs of taking the form of gaiety. He acted like a young man wholly sure of himself. Humphrey's net impression, after more than a year and a half of close association with the boy, was that he couldn't ever be sure of himself. Not for one minute. Yet, when they threw down their napkins and pushed back their chairs, it was Henry who said, with an apparently easy arrogance back of his grain:—
'Hump, you've got to be going back so soon, we're going to give you and Mildred the living-room. We'll wash the dishes.'
Humphrey noted the quick little snap of amusement in Mrs Henderson's eyes (Henry had not before openly used her first name) and the demure, expressionless look that came over Corinne's face. Neither was displeased.
To Mrs Henderson's, 'You'll do no such thing!' Henry responded smilingly:—
'I won't be contradicted. Not to-day.'
Corinne was still silent. But Mrs Henderson, now frankly amused, asked:—
'Why the to-day, Henry?'
'Oh, I don't know. Just the way I feel,' said he; and ushered her with mock politeness into the front room, then, gallantly, almost nonchalantly, took the elbow of the unresisting Corinne and led her toward the kitchen.
Humphrey lighted a cigarette and watched them go. Then with a slight heightening of his usually sallow colour, followed his hostess into the living-room.
It will be evident to the reader that among these four young persons, rather casually thrown together in the first instance, something of an 'understanding' had grown up.
There had been a furtive delight about their first gathering at Humphrey's rooms, a sense of exciting variety in humdrum village life, the very real and lively pleasure of exploring fresh personalities.
Of late years, looking back, it has seemed to me that Mildred Henderson never really belonged in Sunbury, where a woman's whole duty lay in keeping house economically and as pleasantly as might be for the husband who spent his days in Chicago. And in bearing and rearing his children. I never knew anything of her earlier life, before Arthur V. Henderson brought her to the modest house on Chestnut Avenue. I never could figure why she married him at all. Marriages are made in so many places besides Heaven! He used to like to hear her play.
In those days, and a little later, I judged her much as the village judged her—peering out at her through the gun-ports in the armour plate of self-righteousness that is the strong defence of every suburban community. But now I feel that her real mistake lay in waiting so long before drifting to her proper environment in New York. Like all of us, she had, sooner or later, to work out her life in its own terms or die alive of an atrophied spirit. She had gifts, and needed, doubtless, to express them. I can see her now as she was in Sunbury during those years—little, trim, slim, with a quick alert smile and snappy eyes. Not a beautiful woman, perhaps not even an out-and-out pretty one, but curiously attractive. She had much of what men call 'personality.' And she was efficient, in her own way. She never let her musical gift rust; practised every day of her life, I think. Including Sundays. Which was one of the things Sunbury held against her.
Humphrey, too, was using Sunbury as little more than a stop gap. We knew that sooner or later he would strike his gait as an inventor. He was quiet about it. Much thought, deep plans, lay back of that long wrinkly face. While he kept at it he was a conscientious country editor. But his heart was in his library of technical books, and in his workshop in the old Parmenter barn. He must have put just about all of his little inheritance into the place.
Corinne Doag was distinctly a city person. And she was a real singer, with ambition and a firm, even hard purpose, I can see now, back of the languorous dusky eyes and the wide slow smile that Henry was not then man enough to understand. In those days, more than in the present, a girl with a strong sense of identity was taught to hide it scrupulously. It was still the century of Queen Victoria. The life of any live girl had to be a rather elaborate pretence of something it distinctly was not. For which we, looking back, can hardly blame her. Besides, Corinne was young, healthy, glowing with a quietly exuberant sense of life. I imagine she found a sort of pure joy, an animal joy, in playing with men and life. She wasn't dishonest. She certainly liked Henry. Particularly to-day. But this was the summer time. She was playing. And she liked to be, thrilled.
An hour later, could Humphrey have glanced into the butler's pantry, he would have concluded that he knew Henry Calverly not at all. And Miss Wombast, could she have looked in, would have been thrilled and frightened, perhaps to the point of never speaking to Henry again. And of never, never forgetting him.
As the scene has a bearing on the later events of the day, we will take a look.
They stood in the butler's pantry, Henry and Corinne. The shards of a shattered coffee cup lay unobserved at their feet. Out in the kitchen sink all the silver and the other cups and saucers lay in the rinsing rack, the soapsuds dry on them. Henry held Corinne in his arms.
'Henry,' she whispered, 'we must finish the dishes! What on earth will Mildred think?'
'Let her think!' said Henry.
Corinne leaned back against the shelves, disengaged her hands long enough to smooth her flying blue-black hair.
'Henry, I never thought——'
'Never thought what?'
'Wait! My hair's all down again. They might come out here. I mean you seemed——'
'How did I seem? Say it!'
'Oh well—Henry!—I mean sort of—well, reserved. I thought you were shy.'
'Think so now!'
'I—well, no. Not exactly. Wait now, you silly boy! Really, Henry, you musn't be so—so intense.'
'But I am intense. I'm not the way I look. Nobody knows——' Here he interrupted himself.
'Oh, Henry,' she breathed, her head on his shoulder now, her arm clinging about his neck. He felt very manly. Life, real life, whirled, glowed, sparkled about him. He was exultant. 'You dear boy—I'm afraid you've made love to lots of girls.'
'I haven't!' he protested, with unquestionable sincerity. 'Not to lots.'
'Silly!' A silence. Then he felt her draw even closer to him. 'Henry, talk to me! Make love to me! Tell me you'll take me away with you—to-day!—now! Make me feel how wonderful it would be! Say it, anyway—even if—oh, Henry, say it!'
For an instant Henry's mind went cold and clear. He was a little frightened. He found himself wondering if this tempestuous young woman who clung so to him could possibly be the easy, lazy, comfortably smiling Corinne. He thought of Carmen—the Carmen of Calvé. He had suped once in that opera down at the Auditorium. He had paid fifty cents to the supe captain.
The thrill of the conqueror was his. But he was beginning to feel that this was enough, that he had best rest his case, perhaps, at this' point.
As for asking her to fly away with him, he couldn't conscientiously so much as ask her to have dinner with him in Chicago. Not in the present state of his pocket.
One fact, however, emerged. He must propose something. He could at least have it out with old Boice. Settle that salary business. He'd have to.
Another fact is that he was by no means so cool as he, for the moment, fancied himself.
The door from dining-room to kitchen opened, rather slowly. There was a light step in the kitchen, and Mildred Henderson's musical little voice humming the theme of the Andante in the Fifth Symphony.
Henry and Corinne leaped apart. She smoothed her hair again, and patted her cheeks. Then she took a black hair from his shoulder.
They heard Mildred at the sink. Rinsing the dishes and the silver, doubtless.
'Hate to disturb you two,' she called, a reassuring if slightly humorous sympathy in her voice, 'but I promised Humphrey I'd get after you, Henry. He says you simply must get some work done to-day.'
Henry stood motionless, trying to think.'
'Do your work here,' Corinne whispered. 'Stay.'
He shook his head. 'A lot I'd get done—here with you. Now.'
'I'll help you. Couldn't I be just a little inspiration to you?'
'It ain't inspiring work.'
'Henry—write something for me! Write me a poem!
'All right. Not to-day, though. Gotta do this Business Men's Picnic.
Then he said, 'Wait a minute;' went into the kitchen.
'Going over town,' he remarked, offhand, to Mrs Henderson.
At the outer door, Corinne murmured: 'You'll come back, Henry?'
With a vague little wave of one hand, and a perplexed expression, he replied: 'Yes, of course.' And hurried off.
Mr Boice wasn't at his desk at the Voice sanctum. Henry could see that much through the front window.
He didn't go in. He felt that he couldn't talk with Humphrey—or anybody—right now. Except old Boice. He was gunning for him. Equal to him, too. Equal to anything. Blazing with determination. Could lick a regiment.
He found his employer down at the post-office. In his little den behind the money-order window. He asked Miss Hemple, there, if he could please speak to Mr Boice.
Once again on this eventful day that conservative member of the village triumvirate found himself forced to gaze at the dressy if now slightly rumpled youth with a silly little moustache that he couldn't seem to let go of, and the thin bamboo stick with a crook at the end. The youth whose time was so valuable that he couldn't arrange to do his work. And once again irritation stirred behind the spotted, rounded-out vest and the thick, wavy, yellowish-white whiskers.
He sat back in his swivel chair; looked at Henry with lustreless eyes; made sounds.
'Mr Boice,' said Henry, 'I—I want to speak with you. It's—it's this way. I don't feel that you're doing quite the right thing by me.'
Another sound from the editor-postmaster. Then silence.
'You gave me to understand that I'd get better pay if I suited. Well, the way you're doing it, I don't even get as much. It ain't right! It ain't square! Now—well—you see, I've about come to the conclusion that if the work I do ain't worth ten a week—well——'
It is to be remembered of Norton P. Boice that he was a village politician of something like forty years' experience. As such he put no trust whatever in words. Once to-day he had raised his voice, and the fact was disturbing. He had weathered a thousand little storms by keeping his mouth shut, sitting tight. He never criticised or quarrelled. He disbelieved utterly in emotions of any sort. He hadn't written a letter in twenty-odd years. And he was not likely to lose his temper again this day—week—or month.
Henry didn't dream that at this moment he was profoundly angry. Though Henry was too full of himself to observe the other party to the controversy.
Mr Boice clasped his hands on his stomach and sat still.
Henry chafed.
After a time Mr Boice asked, 'Have you done the story of the Business Men's Picnic?'
Henry shook his head.
'Better get it done, hadn't you?'
Henry shook his head again.
Mr Boice continued to sit—motionless, expressionless. His thoughts ran to this effect:—The article on the picnic was by far the most important matter of the whole summer. Every advertiser on Simpson Street looked for whole paragraphs about himself and his family. Henry was supposed to cover it. He had been there. It would be by no means easy, now, to work up a proper story from any other quarter.
'Suppose,' he remarked, 'you go ahead and get the story in. Then we can have a little talk if you like. I'm rather busy this afternoon.'
He tried to say it ingratiatingly, but it sounded like all other sounds that passed his lips—colourless, casual.
Henry stood up very stiff; drew in a deep breath or two; His fingers tightened about his stick. His colour rose.
He leaned over; rested a hand on the corner of the desk.
'Mr Boice,' he said, firmly if huskily, and a good deal louder than was desirable, here in the post-office, within ear-shot of the moneyorder window—'Mr Boice, what I want from you won't take two minutes of your time. You'd better tell me, right now, whether I'm worth ten dollars a week to the Voice. Beginning this week. If I'm not—I'll hand in my string Saturday and quit. Think I can't do better'n this! I wonder! You wait till about next November. Maybe I'll show the whole crowd of you a thing or two! Maybe——'
For the second time on this remarkable day the unexpected happened to and through Norton P. Boice.
Slowly, with an effort and a grunt, he got to his feet. Colour appeared in his face, above the whiskers. He pointed a huge, knobby finger at the door.
'Get out of here!' he roared. 'And stay out!'
Henry hesitated, swung away, turned back to face him; finally obeyed.
Jobless, stirred by a rather fascinating sense of utter catastrophe, thinking with a sudden renewal of exultation about Corinne, Henry wandered up to the Y.M.C.A. rooms and idly, moodily, practise shooting crokinole counters.
Shortly he wandered out. An overpowering restlessness was upon him. He wanted desperately to do something, but didn't know what it could be. It was as if a live wild animal, caged within his breast, was struggling to get out.
He walked over to the rooms; threw off his coat; tried fooling at the piano; gave it up and took to pacing the floor.
There were peculiar difficulties here, in the big living-room. Corinne had spent an evening here. She had sat in this chair and that, had danced over the hardwood floor, had smiled on him. The place, without Her, was painfully empty.
He knew now that he wanted to write. But he didn't know what. The wild animal was a story. Or a play. Or a poem. Perhaps the poem Corinne had begged for. He stood in the middle of the room, closed his eyes, and saw and felt Corinne close to him. It was a mad but sweet reverie. Yes, surely it was the poem!
He found pencil and paper—a wad of copy paper, and curled up in the window-seat.
Things were not right. Not yet. He was the victim of wild forces. They were tearing at him. It was no longer restlessness—it was a mighty passion. It was uncomfortable and thrilling. Queer that the impulse to write should come so overwhelmingly without giving him, so far, a hint as to what he was to write. Yet it was not vague. He had to do it. And at once. Find the right place and go straight at it. It would come out. It would have to come out.
Mr Boice came heavily into the Voice office and sank into his creaking chair by the front window.
Humphrey went swiftly, steadily through galley after galley of proof. Humphrey had the trained eye that can pick out an inverted u in a page of print at three feet. He smoked his cob pipe as he worked.
Mr Boice drew a few sheets of copy paper from a pigeonhole, took up a pencil in his stiff fingers, and gazed down over his whiskers.
It was a decade or more since the 'editor' of the Voice had done any actual work. Every day he dropped quiet suggestions, whispered a word of guidance to this or that lieutenant, and listened to assorted ideas and opinions. He was a power in the village, no doubt about that. But to compose and write out three columns of his own paper was hopelessly beyond him. It called for youth, or for the long habit of a country hack. The deep permanent grooves in his mind were channels for another sort of thinking.
For an hour he sat there. Gradually Humphrey became aware of him. It was odd anyway that he should be here. He seldom returned in the afternoon.
Finally he looked over at the younger man, and made sounds.
Humphrey raised his head; removed his pipe.
'Guess you better fix up a little account of the Business Men's Picnic, Weaver,' he remarked.
'Henry's doing that.'
Mr Boice's massive head moved slowly, sidewise. 'No,' he said, 'he won't be doing it.'
Humphrey leaned back in his chair. His face wrinkled reflectively; his brows knotted. He held up his pipe; rubbed the worn cob with the palm of his hand.
Mr Boice got up and moved toward the door.
'I've let Henry go,' he said.
Humphrey went on rubbing his pipe; squinting at it.
Mr Boice paused in the door; looked back.
'I'll ask you to attend to it, Weaver.'
Humphrey shook his head.
Mr Boice stood looking at him.
'No,' said Humphrey. 'Afraid I can't help you out.'
Mr Boice stood motionless. There was no expression on his face, but Humphrey knew what the steady look meant. He added:—
'I wasn't there.'
Still Mr Boice stood. Humphrey took a fresh galley proof from the hook and fell to work at it. After a little Mr Boice moved back to his desk and creaked down into his chair. Again he reached for the copy paper.
Humphrey, in a merciful moment when he was leaving for the day, thought of suggesting that Murray Johnston, local man for the City Press Association, might be called on in the emergency. He had been at the picnic. He could write the story easily enough, if he could spare the time. A faint smile flitted across his face at the reflection that it would cost old Boice five or six times what he was usually willing to pay in the Voice.
But Mr Boice, bending over the desk, a pencil gripped in his fingers, a sentence or two written and crossed out on the top sheet of copy paper, did not so much as lift his eyes. And Humphrey went on out.
Humphrey let himself into Mrs Henderson's front hall, closed the screen door gently behind him, and looked about the dim interior. There seemed to be no one in the living-room. The girls were in the kitchen, doubtless, getting supper. Mildred had faithfully promised not to bother cooking anything hot. He hung up his hat.
Then he saw a feminine figure up the stairs, curled on the top-step, against the wall.
It was Corinne. She was pressing her finger to her lips and shaking her head.
She motioned him out toward the kitchen. There he found his hostess.
'Seen Henry?' he asked. 'Old Boice fired him to-day, and he's disappeared. Not at the rooms. And I looked in at the Y.M.C.A.'
'He's here,' said Mildred. 'A very interesting thing is happening, Humphrey. I've always told you he was a genius.'
'But what's up?'
'We've got him upstairs at my desk. He's writing something.
I think it's a poem for Corinne.'
'A poem! But——'
'It's really quite wonderful. Now don't you go and throw cold water on it, Humphrey.' She came over, very trim and pretty in her long apron, her face flushed with the heat of the stove, slipped her hand through his arm, and looked up at him. 'It's really very exciting. I haven't seen the boy act this way for two years. He came in here, all out of breath, and said he had to write. He didn't seem to know what. He's quite wild I never in my life saw such concentration. It seems that he's promised Corinne a poem.'
'Wonder what's got into him,' Humphrey mused.
Mildred returned to her salad dressing. 'Genius has got into him,' she said, a bright little snap in her eyes. 'And it's coming out. He's been up there nearly two hours now. Corinne's guarding. She'd kill you if you disturbed him. She peeked in a little while ago. She says there's a lot of it—all over the floor—and he was writing like mad. She couldn't see any of it. As soon as he saw her he yelled at her and waved her out.'
'Hm!' said Humphrey.
'Humphrey, my dear,' said Mildred then, 'I'm really afraid we've got to watch those two a little. Something's been happening to-day. Corinne has gone perfectly mad over him—to-day—all of a sudden. She fretted every minute he was away. Henry doesn't know it, but Corinne is a pretty self-willed girl. And just now she's got her mind on him.'
She came over again, took his arm, and looked up at Humphrey. She was at once sophisticating and confiding. There was a touch of something that, might have been tenderness, even wistfulness, in her voice as about her eyes.
'I've really been worrying a little about them. About Henry particularly, for some reason.' She gave a soft little laugh, and pressed his arm. 'They're so young, Humphrey—such green little things. Or he is, at least. I've been impatient for you to come.'
'I got down as soon as I could,' said Humphrey, looking down at her.
'Of course, I know.'
'I've been worrying about him, too.'
When the supper was ready, Mildred made Humphrey sit at the table and herself tiptoed up the stairs.
She came back, still on tiptoe, smiling as if at her own thoughts.
'He won't eat,' she explained. 'He's still at it. I wish you could see my room. It's a sight.'
'Corinne coming down?'
'Not she. She won't budge from the stairs. And she flared up when I suggested bringing up a tray. I never thought that Corinne was romantic, but... Well, it gives us a nice little téte-à-tête supper. I've made iced coffee, Humphrey. Just dip into the salad, won't you!' After supper they went out to the hall. Corinne, still on the top step, had switched on the light and was sorting out a pile of loose sheets. She beckoned to them. They came tiptoeing up the stairs.
'I can't make it out,' she whispered. 'It isn't poetry. And he doesn't number his pages.'
'How did you ever get them?' asked Mildred.
'Went in and gathered them up. He didn't hear me. He's still at it.'
Humphrey reached for the sheets; held them to the light; read bits of this sheet and that; found a few that went together and read them in order; finally turned a wrinkled astonished face to the two young women.
'What is it?' they asked.
He chuckled softly. 'Well, it isn't poetry.'
'I saw that much,' Corinne murmured, rather mournfully. 'It's—wait a minute! I couldn't believe it at first. It—no—yes, that's what it is.'
'What!'
Then Humphrey dropped down at Mildred's feet, and laughed, softly at first, then with increasing vigour.
Mildred clapped her hand over his mouth and ran him down the stairs and through into the living-room. There they dropped side by side on the sofa and laughed until tears came.
Corinne, laughing a little herself now, but perplexed, followed them.
'Here,' said Humphrey, when he could speak, 'let's get into this.'
They moved, to the table. Humphrey spread out the pages, and skimmed them over with a practised eye, arranging as he read.
Once he muttered, 'What on earth!' And shortly after: 'Why, the young devil!'
'Please—' said Corinne. 'Please! I want to know what it is.',
Humphrey stacked up the sheets, and laid them on the table.
'Well,' he remarked, 'it is certainly an account of the Business Men's Picnic. And it certainly was not written for The Weekly Voice of Sunbury. I'll start in a minute and read it through. But from what I've seen—— Well, while it may be a little Kiplingesque—naturally—still it comes pretty close to being a work of art.
'Tell you what the boy's done. He's gone at that little community outing just about as an artistic god would have gone at it. As if he'd never seen any of these Simpson Street folks before. Berger, the grocer, and William F. Donovan, and Mr Wombast, and Charlie Waterhouse, and Weston of the bank, and—and, here, the little Dutchman that runs the lunch counter down by the tracks, and Heinie Schultz and Bill Schwartz, and old Boice! It's a crime what he's done to Boice. If this ever appears, Sunbury will be too small for Henry Calverly. But, oh, it's grand writing.... He's got'em all in, their clothes, their little mannerisms—their tricks of speech... Wait, I'll read it.'
Forty minutes later the three sat back in their chairs, weak from laughter, each in his own way excited, aware that a real performance was taking place, right here in the house.
'One thing I don't quite understand,' said Mildred. 'It's a lovely bit of writing—he makes you see it and feel it—where Mr Boice and Charles Waterhouse were around behind the lemonade stand, and Mr Waterhouse is upset because the purse they're going to surprise him with for being the most popular man in town isn't large enough. What is all that, anyway?'
'I know,' said Humphrey. 'I was wondering about that. It's funny as the dickens, those two birds out there behind the lemonade stand quarrelling about it. It's—let's see—oh, yes! And Boice says, “It won't help you to worry, Charlie. We're doing what we can for you. But it'll take time. And it's a chance!”... Funny!'
He lowered the manuscript, and stared at the wall. 'Hm!' he remarked thoughtfully. 'Mildred, got any cigarettes?'
'Yes, I have, but I don't care to be mystified like this. Take one, and tell me exactly what you're thinking.'
'I'm thinking that Bob McGibbon would give a hundred dollars for this story as it stands, right now.'
'Why?'
'Because he's gunning for Charlie. And for Boice.'
'And what's this?'
'Evidence.' Humphrey was grave now. 'Not quite it. But warm. Very warm.'
'He's really stumbled on something. How perfectly lovely!'
'And he doesn't know it. Sees nothing but the story value of it. But it may be serious. They'd duck him in the lake. They'd drown him.'
'But how lovely if Henry, by one stroke of his pencil, should really puncture the frauds in this smug town.'
'There is something in that,' mused Humphrey.
'Ssh!' From Mildred.
They heard a slow step on the stairs.
A moment, and Henry appeared in the doorway. He stopped short when he saw them. His glasses hung dangling against his shirt front. He was coatless, but plainly didn't know it. His straight brown hair was rumpled up on one side and down in a shock over the farther eye. He was pale, and looked tired about the eyes. He carried more of the manuscript.
He stared at them as if he couldn't quite make them out, or as if not sure he had met them. Then he brushed a hand across his forehead and slowly, rather wanly, smiled.
'I had no idea it was so late,' he said.
Mildred and Corinne fed him and petted him while Humphrey drew a big chair into the dining-room, smoked cigarette after cigarette, and studied the brightening, expanding youth before him. He reflected, too, on the curious, instant responsiveness that is roused in the imaginative woman at the first evidence of the creative impulse in a man. As if the elemental mother were moved.
'That's probably it,' he thought. 'And it's what the boy has needed. Martha Caldwell couldn't give it to him—never in the world! He was groping to find it in that tough little Wilcox girl. It wouldn't do to tell him—no, I mustn't tell him; got to steady him down all I can—but I rather guess he's been needing a Mildred and a Corinne. These two years.'
Humphrey stood up then, said he was going out for half an hour, and picked up the manuscript from the living-room table as he passed.
He went straight to Boice's house on Upper Chestnut Avenue.
'What has all this to do with me?' asked Mr Boice, behind closed doors in his roomy library. 'Let him write anything he likes.'
Humphrey sat back; slowly turned the pages of the manuscript.
'This,' he said, 'is a real piece of writing. It's the best picture of a community outing I ever read in my life. It's vivid. The characters are so real that a stranger, after reading this, could walk up Simpson Street and call fifteen people by name. He'd know how their voices sound, what their weaknesses are, what they're really thinking about Sunday mornings in church. It is humour of the finest kind. But they won't know it on Simpson Street. They'll be sore as pups, every man. He's taken their skulls off and looked in. He's as impersonal, as cruel, as Shakespeare.'
This sounded pretty highfalutin' to Mr Boice. He made a reflective sound; then remarked:—
'You think the advertisers wouldn't like it,'
'They'd hate it. They'd fight. It would raise Ned in the town. But McGibbon wouldn't mind. Or if he didn't have the nerve to print it, any Sunday editor in Chicago would eat it alive.'
'Well, what——'
Humphrey quietly interrupted.
'Little scenes, all through. Funny as Pickwick. There really is a touch of genius in it. Handles you pretty roughly. But they'd laugh. No doubt about that. All sorts of scenes—you and Charlie Waterhouse behind the lemonade stand—Bill Parker's little accident in the tug-of-war.' He read on, to himself. But he knew that Mr Boice sat up stiffly in his chair, with a grunt. He heard him rise, ponderously, and move down the room; then come back.
When he spoke, Humphrey, aware of his perturbation, was moved to momentary admiration by his apparent calmness. He sounded just as usual.
'What are you getting at?' he asked. 'You want something.'
'I want you to take Hemy back at—say, twelve a week.'
'Hm. Have him re-write this?'
'No. Henry won't be able to write another word this week. He's empty. My idea is, Mr Boice, that you'll want to do the cutting yourself. When you've done that, I'll pitch in on the re-write. We can get our three columns out of it all right.'
'Hm!'
'There's one thing you may be sure of. Henry doesn't know what he's written. No idea. It's a flash of pure genius.'
'Don't know that we've got much use for a genius on the Voice,' grunted Mr Boice. 'He ought to go to Chicago or New York.'
'He will, some day.' Humphrey rose. 'Will you send for him in the morning?'
There was a long silence. Then a sound. Then:—'Tell him to come around.'
'Twelve a week, including this week?'
The massive yellowish-gray head inclined slowly.
'Very well, I'll tell him.'
'You can leave the manuscript here, Weaver.'
'No.' Humphrey deliberately folded it and put it in an inside pocket. 'Henry will have to give it to you himself. It's his. Good-night.'
Out on the street, Humphrey reflected, with a touch of exuberance rare in his life:—
'We won't either of us be long on the Voice. Not now. But it's great going while it lasts.'
And he wondered, with a little stir of excitement, just why that purse wasn't enough for Charlie Waterhouse... just what old Boice knew... Why it was a chance! Curious! Something back of it, something that McGibbon was eternally pounding at—hinting—insinuating. Something real there; something that might never be known.
Humphrey felt that the little triumph—though it might indeed prove temporary; any victory over old Boice in Sunbury affairs was likely to be that—called for celebrating in some special degree. He had, it seemed, a few bottles of beer at the rooms.
So thither they adjourned; Mildred and Humphrey strolling slowly ahead, Corinne and Henry strolling still more slowly behind.
Henry seemed fagged. At least he was quiet.
Corinne, stirred with a sympathetic interest not common to her sort of nature, stole hesitant glances at him, even, finally, slipped her hand through his arm.
She hung back. Mildred and Humphrey disappeared in the shadows of the maples a block ahead.
'I suppose you're pretty tired, aren't you?' Corinne murmured.
Her voice seemed to waken him out of a dream.
'I—I—what was that? Oh—tired? Why, I don't know. Sorta.'
Her hand slipped down his forearm, within easy reach of his hand; but he was unaware.
'I'm frightfully excited,' he said, brightening. 'If you knew what this meant to me! Feeling like this. The Power—but you wouldn't know what that meant. Only it lifts me up. I know I'm all right now. It's been an awful two years. You've no idea. Drudgery. Plugging along. But I'm up again now. I can do it any time I want. I'm free of this dam' town. They can't hold me back now.'
'You'll do big things,' she said, a mournful note in her voice.
'I know. I feel that.'
And now she stopped short. In a shadow.
'What is it?' he asked casually. 'What's the matter?'
She glanced at his face; then down.
'Do you think you'll write—a poem?' she asked almost sullenly.
'Maybe. I don't know. It's queer—you get all stirred up inside, and then something comes. You can't tell what it's going to be. It's as if it came from outside yourself. You know. Spooky.'
She moved on now, bringing him with her.
'Mildred and Humphrey'll wonder where we are,' she said crossly.
Henry glanced down at her; then at the shadowy arch of maples ahead. He wondered what was the matter with her. Girls were, of course, notoriously difficult. Never knew their own minds. He was exultantly happy. It had been a great day. Twelve a week now, and going up! Hump was a good old soul.... He recalled, with a recurrence of both the thrill and the conservatism that had come then, that he had had a great time with Corinne in the early afternoon. Mustn't go too far with that sort of thing, of course. But she was sure a peach. And she didn't seem the sort that would be for ever trying to pin you down. He took her hand now. It was great to feel her there, close beside him.'
Corinne walked more rapidly. He didn't know that she was biting her lip. Nor did he perceive what she saw clearly, bitterly; that she had unwittingly served a purpose in his life, which he would never understand. And she saw, too, that the little job was, for the present, at least, over and done with.
She stole another sidelong glance at him. He was twisting up the ends of his moustache. And humming.