It was late May in Sunbury, Illinois, and twenty minutes past eight in the morning.
The spacious lawns and the wide strips of turf between sidewalk and roadway in every avenue and street were lush with crowding young blades of green. The maples, oaks, and elms were vivid with the exuberant youth of the year.
Throughout the village, brisk young men, care-worn men of middle age, a few elderly men were hurrying toward the old red-brick station whence the eight-twenty-nine would shortly carry them into the dust and sweat and smoke of a business day in Chicago. The swarms of sleepy-eyed clerks, book-keepers, office boys and girl stenographers had gone in on the seven-eleven and the seven-thirty-two.
Along Simpson Street the grocers, in their aprons, already had out their sidewalk racks heaped with seasonable vegetables and fruits (out-of-season delicacies had not then become commonplaces of life in Sunbury; strawberries appeared when the local berries were ripe, not sooner). The two butcher shops were decorated with red and buff carcasses hung in rows. A whistling, coatless youth had just swept out Donovan's drug store and was wiping off the marble counter before the marble and glass soda fountain. Through the windows of the Sunbury National Bank Alfred Knight could be seen filling the inkwells and putting out fresh blotters and pens. The neat little restaurant known as 'Stanley's' (the Stanleys were a respectable coloured couple) was still nearly full of men who ate ham and eggs, pounded beefsteak, fried potatoes, and buckwheat cakes, and drank huge cups of gray-brown coffee; with, at the rear tables, two or three family groups. And from numerous boarding-houses and dormitories in the northern section of the overgrown village students of both sexes were converging on the oak-shaded campus by the lake.
All of Sunbury appeared to be up and about the business of the day; all, perhaps, except Henry Calverly, 3rd, who sat, dressed except for his coat, heavy-eyed, a hair brush in either hand, hands resting limp on knees, on the edge of his narrow iron bed. This, in Mrs Wilcox's boardinghouse in Douglass Street, one block south of Simpson; top floor.
If the present reader has, by chance, had earlier acquaintance with Henry, it should be explained that he is now to be pictured not as a youth of eighteen going on nineteen but as a young man of twenty going on twenty-one.
That figure, twenty-one, of significance in the secret thoughts of any growing boy, was of peculiar, stirring significance to the sensitive, imaginative Henry. It marked the beginning of what is sometimes termed Life. It suggested alarming but interesting responsibilities. On that day, beginning with the stroke of the midnight hour, guardians ceased to function and independence set in. One was a citizen. One voted. In Henry's case, the crowning symbol of manhood would be deferred a year, as Election Day was to fall on the fifth of November and his birthday was the seventh; but that so trivial a mere fact bore small weight in the face of potential citizenship might have been indicated by the faint blonde fringe along his upper lip. This fringe was a new venture. He stroked it much of the time, and stole glances at it in mirrors. He could twist it up a little at the ends.
The rest of him indicated a taste that was hardly bent on the inexpensive as such. His duck trousers (this was the middle nineties) were smartly creased and rustled with starch. His white canvas shoes were not 'sneakers' but had heavy soles and half-heels of red rubber. His coat, lying now across the iron tube that marked the foot of the bed, was a double-breasted blue serge, unlined, well-tailored. The hat, hung on a mirror post above the 'golden oak' bureau, was of creamy white felt. He had given up spectacles for nose glasses with a black silk cord.
Nearly two years earlier his mother had died. He had lived on, caught in a drift of time and circumstance, keeping, without any particular plan, this little room with its sloping ceiling. The price was an item, of course—six dollars a week for room and board. You couldn't do better in Sunbury, even then. Memories haunted the place, naturally enough. Loneliness had dwelt close with him.
His mother's picture, in a silver frame, stood at the right of the pincushion; at the left, in hammered brass ('repoussé work') was a 'cabinet size' photograph of Martha Caldwell. A woven-wire rack on the wall held half a hundred snapshots of girls, boys, and groups, in about a third of which figured Martha's smiling, sensible, pleasantly freckled face. A guitar in an old green bag leaned against the wall behind his mother's old trunk; it had not been out of the bag in more than a year. An assortment of neck-ties hung over the gas-jet by the bureau. Tacked about on the wall were six or eight copies of Gibson girls; rather good copies, barringva certain stiffness of line. On the seat in the one dormer window reposed two cushions, one covered with college pennants, the other with cigar bands laboriously cross-stitched together; both from, the hands of Martha.
Henry's little bookcase was not uninteresting. It contained the following books: Daily Strength for Daily Needs, Browning, Trollope, and Hawthorne in sets, Sonnets, from the Portuguese, Words often Mispronounced, Longfellow, complete in one fat volume. Red Line Edition, and Six Thousand Puzzles, all of which had been his mother's; Green's History of the English People, Boswell's Johnson, both largely uncut, and the Discourses of Epictetus, which three had come as Christmas or birthday gifts; and exactly one volume, a work by an obscure author (who was pictured in the frontispiece with a bristling moustache and intensely knit brows) entitled Will Power and Self Mastery, which offered the only clue as to Henry's own taste in book buying.
His taste in reading was another matter. The novels and romances he had devoured during certain periods of his teens had mostly come from the Sunbury Free Public Library. Lately, however, apart from thrilling moments with The Prisoner of Zenda, Under the Red Rose, and The Princess Aline, he had found difficulty in reading at all. Something was stirring within him, something restlessly positive, an impulse to give out rather than take in. Though he had, at intervals, lunged with determination at the Green and the Boswell. This effort, indeed, had been repeated so many times that he occasionally caught himself speaking of these authors as if he had read them exhaustively.
The bottom drawer of the bureau was a third full of unfinished manuscripts—attempts at novels, short stories, poems, plays—each faithfully reflecting its immediate source of inspiration. There were paragraphs that might have been written by a little Dickens; there were thinly diluted specimens of Dumas, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Richard Harding Davis, Thackeray. The rest was all Kipling, prose and verse. Everybody was writing Kipling then.
A step sounded in the hall. The knob turned softly; the door opened a little way; and the thinnish, moderately pretty face of Mamie Wilcox appeared—pale blue eyes with the beginnings of hollows beneath them, fair skin, straight hay-coloured hair, wisps of it straying down across forehead and cheek, thin nose, soft but rather sulky mouth. She was probably twenty-two or twenty-three at this time.
All she said was, 'Oh!'—very low.
'Wonder you wouldn't knock!' said he.
'Wonder you wouldn't get up before noon!' she responded smartly, but still in that cautious voice; then added, 'Here, I'll leave the towels, and come back.' And she slipped into the room, a heavier and more shapely figure of a girl than was suggested by the face, a girl in a full-length gingham apron and little shoes with unexpectedly high heels; not 'French' heels, but the sloping style known then as 'military.'
Henry's colour was rising a little. He cleared his throat, and said, mumbling, 'Leave anything you like.'
'I'll do just that,'—she turned, with a flirt of her apron and stood, between washstand and door, surveying him—'what I like, and nothing more.'... Her eyes wandered now from him to the picture at the left of the pincushion, then to the snapshots on the wall, and she smiled, very self-contained, very knowing, with the expression that the young call 'sarcastic.' The adjective came to mind. Henry's colour was mounting higher.
'Pretty snappy to-day, ain't we?' said he.
'Yes, when we're snapped at,' said she.
There was a silence that ran on into seconds and tens of seconds.
Then, acting on an impulse of astonishing suddenness, he sprang toward her.
With almost equal agility she stepped away. But he caught one hand.
She had the door-knob in her other hand. She drew the door open, then, indecisively, pushed it nearly to.
'Be careful!' she whispered. 'They'll hear!'
She made a small effort to free her hand. For a moment they stood tugging at each other.
When Henry spoke, in an effort to appear the off-hand man of the world he assuredly was not, his voice sounded weak and husky.
'Whew—strong!'
'Suppose I slapped.'
'Slap all you like.'
'What would Martha Caldwell say?'
There was a gloomy sort of anger on Henry's red face. He jerked her violently toward him.
'Stop! You're hurting my wrist!' With which she yielded a little. He found himself about to take her in his arms. He heard her whispering—'For Heaven's sake be careful! They'll surely hear!'
He was most unhappy. He pushed her roughly away, and rushed to the window.,
He knew from the silence that she was lingering. He hated her. And himself.
She said: 'Well, you needn't get mad.'
Then, slowly, cautiously, she let herself out. He heard her moving composedly along the hall.
He felt weak. And deeply guilty. For a long time this moment had been a possibility; now it had taken place. What if some one had seen her come in! What if she should come again! What if she should tell!...
He found one hair brush on the floor, the other on the bed, and brushed his hair; donned his coat, buttoning it and smoothing it down about his shapely torso with a momentary touch of complacency; glanced at the mirror; twisted up his moustache; then stood waiting for his colour to go down.
Suddenly, with one of his quick impulses, he sprang at the bookcase, drew out the Epictetus—it was a little book, bound in 'ooze' calf of an olive-green colour—and read these words (the book opened there):—
'To the rational animal only is the irrational intolerable.
He lowered the book and repeated the phrase aloud.
A little later—red about the ears, and given to sudden starts when the swinging pantry doors opened to let a student waiter in or out—he sat, quite erect, in the dining room and bolted a boarding-house breakfast of stewed prunes, oatmeal, fried steak, fried potatoes, fried mush swimming in brown sugar syrup, and coffee. The Discourses of Epictetus lay at his elbow.
After this he walked—stiffly self-conscious, book under arm—over to Simpson Street, and took a chair and an Inter Ocean at Schultz and Schwartz's, among the line of those waiting to be shaved.
This accomplished he paused outside, on the curb, to pencil this entry in a red pocket account-book:—
'Shave—10 c.'
He wavered when passing Donovan's; stepped in and consumed a frosted maple shake. Which necessitated the further entry in the red book:—
'Soda—10 c.'
In front of Berger's grocery he met Martha Caldwell. They walked together to the corner.
Martha was a sizable girl, about as tall as Henry, with large blue eyes, an attractively short nose, abundant brown hair coiled away under her flat straw hat, and a general air of good sense. Martha was really a goodlooking young woman, and would have been popular had not Henry stood in her light. She had a small gift at drawing (the Gibson copies in Henry's room were hers) and danced gracefully enough. Monday and Thursday evenings were his regular calling times; and there were so many other evenings when he was expected to take her to this house or that with 'the crowd' that the other local 'men' had long since given up calling at her house. But they were not engaged.
On this occasion there was constraint between them. They spoke of the lovely weather. She, knowing Henry pretty well, looked with some curiosity at his book. Henry glanced sidelong at her across a wide bottomless gulf, and stroked his moustache. He was groping desperately for words. He began to resent her. He presented an outer front of stem self-control.
At the corner they stopped and stood in a silence that grew rapidly embarrassing.
She lowered her eyes and dug with the point of her parasol in the turf by the stone walk.
He thrust both hands into his trousers' pockets, spread his feet, and stared across at the long veranda of the Sunbury House. It seemed to him that he had never been so unhappy.
'Are you'—Martha began; hesitated; went on—'were you thinking of coming around this evening?'
'Why—it's Thursday, ain't it?'
'Yes,' she said, 'it's Thursday.'
'Listen, Martha!' Was it possible that she suspected something? But how could she! His ears were getting red again. He knew it. She must never, never know about Mamie!... 'Listen, I may have to go down to Mrs Arthur V. Henderson's.'
'Oh,' she murmured, 'that musicale.'
'Yes.' Eagerness was creeping into his voice. 'Anne Mayer Stelton. She's been over studying with Marchesi, you know. Mrs Henderson asked specially to have me cover it.'
'Why don't you go?'
'Well—you see how it is. Of course, I'd hate——'
'You'd better go.' Saying which Martha turned away down Filbert Avenue, and left him standing there.
He bit his lip; pulled at his moustache. 'I ought to do something for her,' he thought. 'Buy some flowers—or a box of Devoe's.'
This was an idle thought; for the day, Thursday, lay much too close to the financially lean end of the week to permit of flowers or candy. And he hadn't asked anywhere for a dollar of credit these nearly two years. Still, he felt faintly the warmth of his kindly intention.
It didn't seem altogether right to let her go like that. They had not before drifted so near a quarrel. On the farther side of the street he paused, and glanced down the avenue.
A smart trap that he had never seen before had pulled up, midway of the block. An impeccable coachman sat stiffly upon an indubitable box. A man who appeared to have reddish hair, dressed in a brown cutaway suit and Derby hat, a man with a pronounced if close-cropped red moustache and a suggestively interesting band of mourning about his left sleeve, was leaning out, gracefully, graciously, talking to—Martha. And Martha was listening.
Henry moved on, little confused pangs of quite unreasonable jealousy stabbing at his heart, and entered the business-and-editorial office of The Weekly Voice of Sunbury, where he worked.
Here he laid down the Discourses of Epictetus and asked Humphrey Weaver, untitled editor of the paper (old man Boice, the owner, would never permit any one but himself to be known by that title), for the galley proofs of the week's 'Personal Mention.'
He found this item:—
Mr James B. Merchant, Jr., of Greggs, Merchant & Co., was a guest of Mr and Mrs Ames at the Country Club on Saturday evening. Mr Merchant has leased for the summer the apartment of M. B. Wills, on Lower Filbert Avenue.
That was the man! James B. Merchant was a bachelor, rich, a famous cotillion leader on the South Side, Chicago, an only son of the original James B. Merchant.
And Martha had gone to the Country Club Saturday with the Ameses. This curious tension between himself and Martha had then first bordered on the acute. Mr Ames disapproved of Henry; he felt that Martha shouldn't have gone. And now, of course, her lack of consideration for himself was leading her into new complications.
He sat moodily fingering the papers on the littered, ink-stained table that served him for a desk. He was disturbed, uncomfortable, but couldn't settle on what seemed a proper mental attitude. He was jealous; but he mustn't let his jealousy carry him to the point of taking a definite stand with Martha, because—well...
Life seemed very difficult.
The Voice office occupied what had once been a shop, opposite the hotel. The show window of plate glass now displayed the splintery rear panels of old Mr Boice's rolltop desk, that was heaped, on top, with back numbers of the Voice, the Inter Ocean and the Congressional Record, and a pile of inky zinc etchings mounted on wood blocks.
Within, back of a railing, were Humphrey Weaver's desk and Henry Calverly's table.
Humphrey was tall, rather thin and angular, with a long face, long nose, long chin, swarthy complexion, and quick, quizzical brown eyes with innumerable fine wrinkles about them. When he smiled, his whole face seemed to wrinkle back, displaying many large teeth in a cavernous mouth.
Humphrey might have been twenty-five or six. He was a reticent young man, with no girl or women friends that one ever saw, a fondness for the old corn-cob that he was always scraping, filling, or smoking, and a secret passion for the lesser known laws of physics. He lived alone, in a barn back of the old Parmenter place. He had divided the upper story into living and sleeping rooms, and put in hardwood floors and simple furniture and a piano. Downstairs, in what he called his shop, were lathes, a workbench, innumerable wood-and-metal working tools, a dozen or more of heavy metal wheels set, at right angles, in circular frames, and several odd little round machines suspended from the ceiling at the ends of twisted cords. In one corner stood a number of box kites, very large ones. And there were large planes of silk on spruce frames. He was an alumnus of the local university, but had made few friends, and had never been known in the town. Henry hadn't heard of him before the previous year, when he had taken the desk in the Voice office.
'Say, Hen,'—Henry looked up from his copy paper—; 'Mrs Henderson looked in a few minutes ago, and left a programme and a list of guests for her show to-night. She wants to be sure and have you there. You can do it, can't you?'
Henry nodded listlessly.
'It seems there's to be a contralto, too—somebody that's visiting her. She—Sister Henderson—appears to take you rather seriously, my boy. Wants you particularly to hear the new girl. One Corinne Doag. We,'—Humphrey smoked meditatively, then finished his sentence—'we talked you over, the lady and I. I promised you'd come.'
At noon, the editorial staff of two lunched at Stanley's.
'Wha'd you and Mrs Henderson say about me?' asked Henry, over the pie.
'She says,' remarked Humphrey, the wrinkles multiplying about his eyes, 'that you have temperament. She thinks it's a shame.'
'What's a shame?' muttered Henry.
'Whatever has happened to you. I told her you were the steadiest boy I ever knew. Don't drink, smoke, or flirt. I didn't add that you enter every cent you spend in that little red book; but I've seen you doing it and been impressed. But I mentioned that you're the most conscientious reporter I ever saw. That started her. It seems that you're nothing of the sort. My boy, she set you before me in a new light. You begin to appear complex and interesting.'
Still muttering, Henry said, 'Nothing so very interesting about me.'
'It seems that you put on an opera here—directed it, or sang it, or something. Before my time.'
'That was Iolanthe,' said Henry, with a momentarily complacent memory.
'And you sang—all over the place, apparently. Why don't you sing now?'
'It's too,'—Henry was mumbling, flushing, and groping for a word—'too physical.'
Then, with a sudden movement that gave Humphrey a little start, the boy leaned over the table, pulled at his moustache, and asked, gloomily: 'Listen! Do you think a man can change his nature?'
Humphrey considered this without a smile. 'I don't see exactly how, Hen.'
'I mean if he's been heedless and reckless—oh, you know, girls, debts, everything. Just crazy, sorta.'
'Well, I suppose a man can reform. Were you a very bad lot?' The wrinkled smile was reassuring.
'That depends on what you—I wasn't exactly sporty, but—oh, you don't know the trouble I've had, Humphrey. Then my mother died, and I hadn't been half-decent to her, and I was left alone, and my uncle had to pay my debts out of the principal—it was hundreds of dollars——'
His voice died out.
There was an element of pathos in the picture before him that Humphrey recognised with some sympathy—the gloomy lad of twenty, with that absurd little moustache that he couldn't let alone. After all, he had been rather put to it. It began to appear that he had suppressed himself without mercy. There would doubtless be reactions. Perhaps explosions.
Henry went on:—
'I don't know what's happened to me. I don't feel right about things. I'—he hesitated, glanced up, then down, and his ears reddened—'I've been going with Martha Caldwell, you know. For a long time.'
Humphrey nodded.
'Mondays and Thursdays I go over there, and other times. I don't seem to want to go any more. But I get mixed up about it. I—I don't want them to say I'm fickle. They used to say it.'
'You've evidently got gifts,' observed Humphrey, as if thinking aloud. 'You've got some fire in you. The trouble with you now, of course, is that you're stale.' Humphrey deliberately considered the situation, then remarked: 'You asked me if a man can change his nature. I begin to see now. You've been trying to do that to yourself, for quite a while.'
Henry nodded.
'Well, I suppose you'll find that you can't do it. Not quite that. The fire that's in you isn't going to stop burning just because you tell it to.'
'But what's a fellow to do?'
'I don't know. Just stick along, I suppose, gradually build up experience until you find work you can let yourself go in. Some way, of course, you've got to let yourself go, sooner or later.'
Henry, his eyes nervously alert now, his slim young body tense, was drawing jerkily with his fork on the coarse table-cloth.
'Yes,' he broke out, with the huskiness in his voice that came when his emotions pressed—'yes, but what if you can't let yourself go without letting everything go? What if the fire bums you!'
Humphrey found it difficult to frame a reply. He got no further, this as they were leaving the restaurant, than to say, 'Of course, one man can't advise another.'
As they were turning into the Voice office, Henry caught sight of Mamie Wilcox, in a cheap pink dress and flapping pink-and-white hat, loitering by the hotel. He fell back behind Humphrey. Mamie beckoned with her head. He nodded, and entered the office; and she moved slowly on around the corner of the avenue.
He mumbled a rather unnecessary excuse to Humphrey, and slipped out, catching up with her on the avenue. She was unpleasantly attractive. She excited him.
'What is it?' he asked, walking with her. 'Did you want to speak to me?'
'Stuck up, aren't we!'
'Well?'
She pouted. 'Take a little walk with me. I do want to talk with you.'
'Haven't time. Got to get right back to the office.'
'Well—listen, meet me to-night. I can get out by eight. It's pretty important. Maybe serious.'
'Is it—-did anybody——'
She nodded. 'Mrs MacPherson. She was right in her door when I came out of your room.'
'Did she say anything?'
'She looked a lot.'
'Well, say—I'll see you for a few minutes to-night. Say about eight.' This was best. It would be dark, or near it. He simply mustn't be seen strolling with Mamie Wilcox along Filbert Avenue in broad daylight. 'What do you say to Douglass Street and the Lake Shore Drive?'
'All right. Tell you what—bring a tandem along and take me for a ride.'
'Oh, I can't.' But his will was weak. 'Got to report a concert. I don't know, though. I s'pose I could get around at half-past nine' or ten and hear the last numbers.'
He had often done this. Besides, he could probably manage it earlier. He knew he could rent a tandem at Murphy's cigar store down by the tracks. A quite wild, wholly fascinating stir of adventure was warming his breast and bringing that huskiness into his voice. He was letting go. He felt daring and a little mad. He hadn't realised, before to-day, that Mamie had such a lure about her.
Before returning to the office he got his bank-book and brazenly drew from the bank, savings department, his entire account, amounting to ten dollars forty-six cents. He also bespoke the tandem.
These were the great days of bicycling. The first highwheeled, rattling horseless carriage was not to appear in the streets of Sunbury for a year or two yet. Bicycle clubs flourished. Memorial Day each year (they called it Decoration Day) was a mad rush of excursion and road races. Every Sunday witnessed a haggard-eyed humpbacked horde of 'Scorchers' in knickerbockers or woollen tights. Many of the young men one met on train and street wore medals with a suspended chain of gold bars, one for each 'century run.'
And these were the first great days of the bloomer girl. She was legion. Sometimes her bloomers were bloomers, sometimes they were knickerbockers, sometimes little more than the tights of the racing breed. She was dusty, sweaty, loud. She was never the sort of girl you knew; but always appeared from the swarming, dingy back districts of the city. Sometimes she rode a single wheel, sometimes tandem with some male of the humpbacked breed and of the heavily muscled legs and the grotesquely curved handle bars. The bloomer girl was looked at askance by the well-bred folk of the shaded suburbs. Ministers thumped pulpits and harangued half-empty pews regarding this final moral, racial disaster while she rode dustily by the very doors.
Henry, as he pedalled the long machine through back streets to the rendezvous, was glad that the twilight was falling fast. In his breast pocket were copy paper and pencils, in an outer pocket his little olive-green book. His white trousers were caught about the ankles with steel dips.
Mamie kept him waiting. He hid both himself and the wheel in the shadows of the tall lilac bushes in the little village park.
She came at length, said 'Hello!' and with a little deft unhooking, coolly stepped out of her skirt, rolled up that garment, thrust it under a bush, and stood before him in the sort of wheeling costume rarely seen in Sunbury save on Saturdays and Sundays when the Chicago crowds were pouring through.
Henry stood motionless, silent, in the dusk.
'Well,' said she, smartly, 'are we riding?'
Without a word he wheeled out the bicycle and they rolled away.
She was very close, there before him. She bent over the handle bars like an old-timer, and pedalled with something more than the abandon of a boy. It was going to be hard to talk to her... If he could only blot this day out of his life. 'She started it,' he thought fiercely, staring out ahead over her rhythmically moving shoulder. 'I never asked her to come in!'
'I didn't know you rode a wheel,' said he, after a time, dismally.
'I ride Sundays with the boys from Pennyweather Point. But you needn't tell that at home.'
'I'm not telling anything at home,' muttered Henry. Then she flung back at him the one word.
'Surprised?'
'Well—why, sorta.'
'You thought I was satisfied to do the room work and wash dishes, I suppose!'
'I don't know as I thought anything.'
'What's the matter, anyway? Scared at my bloomers?'
'That's what you call'em, is it?'
'I must say you're grand company.'
He made no reply.
They pedalled past the university buildings, the athletic field, the lighthouse, up a grade between groves of oak, out along the brink of a clay bluff overlooking the steely dark lake—horizonless, still, a light or two twinkling far out.
'Shall we go to Hoffman's?' she asked.
'I don't care where we go,' said he.
The Weekly Voice of Sunbury was put to press every Friday evening, was printed during that night, and appeared in the first mail on Saturday mornings.
Friday, therefore, was the one distractingly busy day for Humphrey Weaver. And it was natural enough that he should snatch at Henry's pencilled report of the musicale at Mrs Henderson's with the briefest word of greeting, and give his whole mind, blue copy-editing pencil posed in air, to reading it. But he did note that the boy looked rather haggard, as if he hadn't slept much. He heard his mumbled remark that he had been over at the public library, writing the thing; and perhaps wondered mildly and momentarily why the boy should be writing at the library and not at home, and why he should speak of the fact at all. And now and again during the day he was aware of Henry, pale, dog-eyed, inclined to hang about as if confidences were trembling on his tongue. And he was carrying a little olive-green book around; drew it from his pocket every now and then and read or turned the pages with an ostentatious air of concentration, as if he wanted to be noticed. Humphrey decided to ask him what the trouble was; later, when the paper was put away. When he might have spoken, old man Boice was there, at his desk. And Humphrey never got out to meals on Fridays. Henry got all his work in on time: the 'Real Estate Notes' for the week and the last items for 'Along Simpson Street.'
The report of the musicale would have brought a smile or two on another day. There was nearly a column of it. Henry had apparently been deeply moved by the singing of Anne Mayer Stelton. He dwelt on the 'velvet suavity' of her legato passages, her firmness of attack and the 'delicate lace work of her colourature.' 'Mme. Stelton's art,' he wrote, '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 seldom heard in this country. Miss Corinne Doag also added immeasurably to the pleasure of the select audience by singing a group of songs. Miss Corinne Doag has a contralto voice of fine verve and timbre. She is a guest of Mrs Henderson, who herself accompanied delightfully. Among those present were:—'
Henry's writing always startled you a little. Words fairly flowed through his pencil, long words, striking words. He had the word sense; this when writing. In speech he remained just about where he had been all through his teens, loose of diction, slurring and eliding and using slang as did most of the Middle-Westerners among whom he had always lived, and, like them, swallowing his tongue down his throat.
Humphrey initialed the copy, tossed it into the devil's basket, turned to a pile of proofs, paused as if recollecting something, picked up the copy again, glanced rapidly through it, and turned on his assistant.
'Look here, Hen,' he remarked, 'you don't tell what they sang, either of 'em. Or who were among those present.'
Henry was reading his little book at the moment, and fumbling at his moustache. A mournful object.
He turned now, with a start, and stared, wide-eyed, at Humphrey. His lips parted, but he didn't speak. A touch of colour appeared in his cheeks.
Then, as abruptly, he went limp in his chair.
'I thought she left a list here and a programme,' he said, eyes now on the floor.
Humphrey's practised eye ran swiftly over the double row of pigeonholes before him. 'Right you are!' he exclaimed.
It was a quarter past eleven that night when Humphrey scrawled his last 'O.K.'; stretched out his long form in his swivel chair; yawned; said, 'Well, that's done, thank God!'; and hummed and tapped out on his bare desk the refrain of a current song:—
'But you'd look sweet
On the seat
Of a bicycle built for two.'
He turned on Henry with a wrinkly, comfortable grin.
'Well, my boy, it's too late for Stanley's but what do you say to a bite at Ericson's, over by the tracks?'
Then he became fully aware of the woebegone look of the boy, fiddling eternally with that moustache, fingering the leaves of his little book, and added:—
'What on earth is the matter with you!'
Henry gazed long at his book, swallowed, and said weakly:—
'I'm in trouble, Humphrey.'
'Oh, come, not so bad as all—'
He was silenced by the sudden plaintive appeal on Henry's face. Mr Boice, a huge-slow-moving figure of a man with great white whiskers, was coming in from the press room.
They walked down to the little place by the tracks. Humphrey had a roast-beef sandwich and coffee; Henry gloomily devoured two cream puffs.
There Humphrey drew out something of the story. It was difficult at first. Henry could babble forth his most sacred inner feelings with an ingenuous volubility that would alarm a naturally reticent man, and he could be bafflingly secretive. To-night he was both, and neither. He was full of odd little spiritual turnings and twistings—vague as to the clock, intent on justifying himself, submerged in a boundless bottomless sea of self-pity. Humphrey, touched, even worried, finally went at him with direct questions, and managed to piece out the incident of the Thursday morning in the boy's room.
'But I never asked her in,' he hurried to explain. 'She came in. Maybe after that it was my fault, but I didn't ask her in.'
'But as far as I can see, Hen, it wasn't so serious. You didn't make love to her.'
'I tried to.'
'Oh yes. She doubtless expected that. But she got away.'
'But don't you see, Hump, Mrs MacPherson saw her coming out. She'd been snooping. Musta heard some of it. That's why Mamie hung around for me yesterday noon.'
'Oh, she hung around?'
Henry swallowed, and nodded. 'That's why I slipped out again after lunch yesterday. I didn't want to tell you.'
'Naturally. A man's little flirtations——'
'But wait, Hump! She was excited about it. And she seemed to think it was up to me, somehow. I couldn't get rid of her.'
'Well, of course——'
'She made me promise to see her last night——'
'But—wait a minute!—last night——'
'This was the first part of the evening. She made me promise to rent Murphy's tandem——'
'Hm! you were going it!'
'And we rode up the shore a ways.'
'Then you didn't hear all of the musicale?'
'No. She wanted to go up to Hoffmann's Garden. So we went there——'
'But good lord, that's six miles—-'
'Eight. You can do it pretty fast with a tandem. The place was jammed. I felt just sick about it. The waiter made us walk clear through, past all the tables. I coulda died. You see, Mamie, she—but I had to be a sport, sorta.'
'Oh, you had to go through with it, of course.'
'Sure! I had to. It was awful.'
'Anybody there that knew you?'
Henry's colour rose and rose. He gazed down intently at the remnant of a cream puff; pushed it about with his fork. Then his lips formed the word, 'Yes.'
Humphrey considered the problem. 'Well,' he finally observed, 'after all, what's the harm? It may embarrass you a little. But most fellows pick up a girl now and then. It isn't going to kill anybody.'
'Yes, but'—Henry's emotions seemed to be all in his throat to-night; he swallowed—'but it—well, Martha was there.'
'Oh—Martha Caldwell?'
'Yes. And Mary Ames and her mother. They were with Mr Merchant's party.'
'James B., Junior?'
'Yes. They drove up in a trap. I saw it outside. We weren't but three tables away from them. They saw everything. Mamie, she——'
'After all, Hen. It's disturbing and all that, but you were getting pretty tired of Martha——'
'It isn't that, Hump 1 I don't know that I was. I get mixed. But it's the shame, the disgrace. The Ameses have been down on me anyway, for something that happened two years ago. And now...! And Martha, she's—well, can't you see, Hump? It's just as if there's no use of my trying to stay in this town any longer. They'll all be down on me now. They'll whisper about me. They're doing it now. I feel it when I walk up Simpson Street. They're going to mark me for that kind of fellow, and I'm not.'
His face sank into his hands.
Humphrey considered him; said, 'Of course you're not;' considered him further. Then he said, reflectively: 'It's unpleasant, of course, but I'll confess I can't see that what you've told me justifies the words “shame” and “disgrace.” They're strong words, my boy. And as for leaving town... See here, Hen | Is there anything you haven't told me?'
The bowed head inclined a little farther.
'Hadn't you better tell me? Did anything happen afterward? Has the girl got—well, a real hold on you?' The head moved slowly sidewise. 'We fought afterward, all the way home. Rowed. Jawed at each other like a pair of little muckers. No, it isn't that. I hated her all the time. I told her I was through with her. She tried to catch me in the hall this morning, up on the third floor. Came sneaking to my room again. With towels. That's why I wrote in the library.'
'But you aren't telling me what the rest of it was.'
'She—oh, she drank beer, and——'
'That's what most everybody does at Hoffmann's. The beer's good there.'
'I don't know. I don't like the stuff.'
'Come, Hen, tell me. Or drop it. Either.'
'I'll tell you. But I get so mad. It's—she—well, she wore pants.'
Humphrey's sympathy and interest were real, and he did not smile as he queried: 'Bloomers?'
'No, pants. Britches. I never saw anything so tight. Nothing else like 'em in the whole place. People nudged each other and laughed and said things, right out loud. Hump, it was terrible. And we walked clear through—past hundreds of tables—and away over in the corner—and there were the Ameses, and Martha, and——'
His head was up now; there was fire in his eyes; his voice trembled with the passion of a profound moral indignation.
'Hump, she's tough. She rides with that crowd from Pennyweather Point. She smokes cigarettes. She—she leads a double life.'
And neither did it occur to Humphrey, looking at the blazing youth before him, to smile at that last remark.
Humphrey had reached a point of real concern over Henry. He thought about him the last thing that night—pictured him living a lonely, spasmodically ascetic life, in the not over cheerful boarding-house of Mrs Wilcox—and the first thing the next morning.
The curious revelation of the later morning nettled him, perhaps, as a responsible editor, but, if anything, deepened his concern. He had the boy on his conscience, that was the size of it. He thought him over all the morning, before and after the revelation. After it he smoked steadily and hard, and knit his brows, and shook his head gravely, and chuckled.
Henry always came in between half-past eleven and twelve Saturdays to clip his contributions from the paper and paste them, end to end, in a 'string.' Then Humphrey would measure the string with a two-foot rule and fill out an order on the Voice Company for payment at the rate of a dollar and a quarter a column, or something less than seven cents an inch. Henry despairing of a raise from nine dollars a week had, months back, elected to work 'on space.'
That the result had not been altogether happy—he was averaging something less than nine dollars a week now—does not concern us here.
Humphrey contrived to keep busy until the string was made and measured; then proposed lunch.
At Stanley's, the food ordered, he leaned on his lank elbows and surveyed the dejected young man before him.
'Hen,' he remarked dryly, 'do you really think Anne Mayer Stelton's voice has a velvet suavity?'
Henry glanced up from his barley soup, coloured perceptibly, then dropped his eyes and consumed several spoonfuls of the tepid fluid.
'Why not?' said he.
'You feel, do you, that her art has deepened and broadened appreciably since she last appeared in Sunbury?'
Henry centred all his attention on the soup.
'You feel that she has really added a superstructure of technique during her study abroad?'
Henry's ears were scarlet now.
Humphrey, his soup turning cold between his elbows, looked steadily at his deeply unhappy friend.
For a moment longer Henry went on eating. But then he quietly laid down his spoon, sank rather limply back in his chair, and wanly met Humphrey's gaze.
'There was a moment this morning, Hen, when I could have wrung your neck. A moment.'
Henry's voice was colourless. His expression was that of a man who has absorbed his maximum of punishment, to whom nothing more matters much. 'What is it?' he asked. 'What happened?'
'Madame Stelton fell in the Chicago station, hurrying for the train, and sprained her ankle. Miss Doag gave the entire programme.'
Henry sat a little time considering this. Finally he raised his eyes.
'Hump,' he said, 'I don't know that I'm sorry. I'm rather glad you caught me, I think.'
It was a difficult speech to meet. Humphrey even found it a moving speech.
'You had an unlucky day,' he said.
Henry nodded. The roast beef and potato were before them now; but Henry pushed his aside. He ate nothing more.
'Mrs Henderson was in,' Humphrey added. 'I don't care what they say about her, she's a really pretty woman and bright as all get out.'
'Was she mad, Hump?'
'I—well, yes, I gathered the impression that you'd better not try to talk to her for a while. There she was, you see—came straight down to the office or stopped on her way to the train. Had Miss Doag along. Unusual dark brown eyes—almost black. A striking girl. But you won't meet her—not this trip. Though she couldn't help laughing once or twice. Over your phrases. You see you laid it on unnecessarily thick. Verve. Timbre. It puts you—I won't say in a Bad light—but certainly in a rather absurd light.'
'Yes,' said Henry, gently, meekly, 'it does. It sorta completes the thing. I picked up some of the town talk this morning. They're laughing at me. And Martha cut me dead, not an hour ago. I've lost my friends. I'm sort of an outcast, I suppose. A—a pariah.'
There was a long silence.
'You'd better eat some food,' said Humphrey.
'I can't.' Henry was brooding, a tired droop to his mouth, a look of strain about the eyes. He began thinking aloud, rather aimlessly. 'It ain't as if I did that sort of thing. I never asked her to come in. I couldn't very well refuse to talk with her. She suggested the tandem. It did seem like a good idea to get her out of town, if I had to risk being seen with her. I'll admit I got mixed—awfully. I don't suppose I knew just what I was doing. But it was the first time in two years. Hump, you don't know how hard I've——'
'It's the first-time offenders that get most awfully caught,' observed Humphrey. 'But never mind that now. You're caught, Hen. No good explaining. You've just got to live it down.'
'That's what I've been doing for two years—living things down. And look where it's brought me. I'm worse off than ever.'
There was a slight quivering in his voice that conveyed an ominous suggestion to Humphrey.
'Mustn't let the kid sink this way,' he thought. Then, aloud: 'Here's a little plan I want to suggest, Hen. You're stale. You're taking this too hard. You need a change.'
'I don't like to leave town, exactly, Hump—as if I was licked. I've changed about that.'
'You're not going to leave town. You're coming over to live with me. Move this afternoon.'
Henry seemed to find difficulty in comprehending this. Humphrey, suddenly a victim of emotion, pressed on, talking fast. 'I'll be through by four. You be packing up. Get an expressman and fetch your things. Here's my key. I'll let you pay something. We'll get our breakfasts.'
He had to stop. It struck him as silly, letting this forlorn youth touch him so deeply. He gulped down a glass of water. 'Come on,' he said brusquely, 'let's get out.' And on the street he added, avoiding those bewildered dog eyes—'I'm going to reshuffle you and deal you out fresh.' That's all you need, a new deal.'
But to himself he added: 'It won't be easy. He is taking it hard. He's unstrung. I'll have to work it out slowly, head him around, build up his confidence. Teach him to laugh again. It'll take time, but it can be done. He's good material. Get him out of that dam boardinghouse to start with.'
It was nearly five o'clock when Humphrey reached his barn at the rear of the Parmenter place. He found the outside door ajar.
'Hen's here now,' he thought.
He stepped within the dim shop, that had once been a carriage room, called, 'Hello there!' and crossed to the narrow stairway. There was no answer. He went on up.
On the rug in the centre of the living-room floor was a heap consisting of an old trunk, a suit-case, a guitar in an old green woollen bag, two canes, an umbrella, and various loose objects—books, a small stand of shelves, two overcoats, hats, and a wire rack full of photographs.
The polished oak post at the head of the stairs was chipped, where they had pushed the trunk around. Humphrey fingered the spot; found the splinter on the floor; muttered, 'I'll glue it on, and rub over the cracks.'
He looked again at the disorderly heap in the centre of the room. 'It didn't occur to him to stow'em away,' he mused. 'Probably didn't know where to put 'em.'
He set to work, hauling the trunk into a little unfinished room next to his own bedroom. He had meant to make a kitchen of this some day. He carried in the other things; then got a dust-pan and brushed off the rug.
The rooms were clean and tidy. Humphrey was a born bachelor; he had the knack of living, alone in comfort. His books occupied all one wall of his bedroom, handy for night reading. He had running water there, and electric lights placed conveniently by the books, beside his mirror, and at the head of his bed.
He stood now in the living-room, humming softly and looking around with knit brows. After a few moments he stopped humming. He was struggling against a slight but definite depression. He had known it would be hard to give up room in his comfortable quarters to another; he had not known it would be as hard as it was now plainly to be. He started humming again, and moved about, straightening the furniture. This oddly pleasant home was his citadel. He had himself evolved it, in every detail, from a dusty, cobwebby old bam interior. He had run the wires and installed the water pipes and fixtures with his own hands. He seldom even asked his acquaintances in. There seemed no strong reason why he should do so.
'Hen shouldn't have left the door open like that,' he mused.
He thrust his hands into his pockets and whistled a little. Then he sighed.
'Well,' he thought, 'needn't be a hog. It's my chance to do a fairly decent turn. The boy hasn't a soul. Not yet.
He isn't the sort you can safely leave by himself. Got to be organised. Very likely I've got to build him over from the ground up. Might try making him read history. God knows he needs background. It'll take time. And patience. All I've got. Help him, little by little, to get hold of his self-esteem. Teach the kid to laugh again. That's it. I've taken it on. Can't quit. It seems to be my job.' And he sighed again. 'Have to get him a key of his own.'
There were footsteps below. Henry, his arms full of personal treasures and garments he had overlooked in packing, came slowly up the stairs.
'I put your things in there,' Humphrey pointed. 'We'll move the box couch in for you to-night.'
'That'll be fine,' said Henry, aimless of eye, weak of voice.
Humphrey's eyes followed him as he passed into the improvised bedroom; and he compressed his lips and shook his head.
Shortly Henry came out and sank mournfully on a chair. It was time for the first lesson. 'There's simply no life in the boy,' thought Humphrey. He cleared his throat, and said aloud:—
'Tell you what, Hen. We'll celebrate a little, this first evening. I've got a couple of chafing dishes and some odds and ends of food. And I make excellent drip coffee. If you'll go over to Berger's and get a pound or so of cheese for the rabbit, I'll look the situation over and figure out a meal. Charge it to me. I have an account there.'
Henry, without change of expression, got slowly up, said, 'All right,' hung around for a little time, wandering about the room, and finally wandered off down the stairs and out.
He returned at twenty minutes past midnight.
Humphrey was abed, reading Smith' on Torsion. He put down the book and waited. He had left lights on downstairs and in the living-room. Since six o'clock he had passed through many and extreme states of feeling; at present he was in a state of suspense between worry and strongly suppressed wrath.
Henry came into the room—a little flushed, bright of eye, the sensitive corners of his mouth twitching nervously, alertly, happily upward. He even actually chuckled.
'Well, where—on—earth....
Henry waved a light hand. 'Queerest thing happened. But say, I guess I owe you an apology, sorta. I ought to have sent word or something. Everything happened so quickly. You know how it is. When you're sorta swept off your feet like that——'
'Like what!'