|HENNION came to his office early that Saturday morning with his
mind full of Macclesfield's bridge, and of the question of how to get
Macclesfield interested in the Boulevard and the parks. He wondered how
Macclesfield would take to the part of a municipal patriot. He thought
that if he could only conquer some shining success, something marked,
public, and celebrated, then, perhaps, his success might succeed with
Camilla. At any rate, it paid to keep your eyes on the path where you
seemed to be getting somewhere, and to follow that path, for so one
travelled ahead and found that success attracted success by a sort of
gravitation between them. All things came about to him who kept going.
This was the native Hennion philosophy, of father and son, much as
it was a Champney trait to crave something to canonise. Neither Henry
Champney nor Camilla could ever find peace without believing something
to be better than they could prove it to be; neither the elder Hennion
nor his son could ever find peace without the occupation of making
something a little better than it had been.
Hennion leaned back in his office chair and stared out of the window.
“I'll bet Miss Eunice is level-headed,” he thought.
The half-begun plans and rough drawings for Macclesfield's bridge lay
reproachful on his desk; a typewriter clicked in the anteroom; the
clamour of trucks and trolley cars came in through the window, familiar
noises, now sounding dull and far away to his ears. The maze of
telephone wires and the window panes across the street glittered in the
bright sunlight.
The sound of shambling feet outside approached the corridor door.
The owner of the feet knocked, hesitated, and came in, the pallid,
unsubstantial, wavering Shays. His lips trembled, and his hand lingered
on the door knob. Hennion swung around promptly in his chair.
“Look here, Shays! You don't get nourishment enough! You've burnt holes
in your stomach till it won't hold any more than a fish net. Now, I'll
tell you what you'd better do.”
“Misser Hennion--Misser Hennion--I want you to see me through!”
He stretched out his hand with scattered fingers, appealingly.
“I want you--Misser Hennion--you see me through!”
“Oh, come in! Sit down.”
Shays sat down, and Hennion looked him over.
“Had any breakfast?”
“I want you see me through!”
“What's the matter?”
Shays sat on the edge of the chair and told his story, waving a thin
hand with high blue veins. He hurried, stumbled, and came on through
confusion to the end.
“Hicksy come about three o'clock,” he said. “I didn't do nothing, and
Tom he was asleep. Tha's right. We didn't want him, but he woke me up,
and he says, 'I'm off, Jimmy,' like that. 'I broke jail,' he says, 'an'
ye needn't wake Coglan,' he says, like that. Then I gets up and I falls
down, plunk! like that, and Tom woke up. Then he goes arguin' with
Hicksy, like they always done, and he says, 'You stay under Jimmy's
bed,' he says, friendly, like that. 'You get off when there ain't nobody
lookin',' he says. But Hicksy says, 'You're lookin' for the reward;
you're goin' to sell me out,' he says. Then he says he's off, but Tom
won't let him. Then they clinched, and Hicksy hit him with the chisel.
Oh, my God! Misser Hennion! You see me through! He dropped, plunk!
like that, plunk! Oh, my God! Misser Hennion! Jus' like that, plunk! He
clipped him dead. He did, too!” Shays paused and rubbed his lips.
“What next?”
“Then he says, 'Jimmy, that's the end of me,' like that, and he put that
thing what he done it with in his pocket. He goes creepin', scroochin'
out the door, like that, creepin', scroochin'. Oh, my God! Misser
Hennion! I ain't goin' to stay there alone! Not me! I goes after him.
And in Muscadine Street I see him, but it was dark, but I see him
creepin', scroochin' along to the bridge; I see the chisel fall out and
it clinked on the stones. Pretty soon I picks it up, and pretty soon I
see Hicksy out on the bridge. Then he stopped. Then I knowed he'd jump.
Then he jumped, plunk! jus' like that, plunk!”
He had the chisel in his hand, and showed it to Hennion.
“Let me see that.”
Hennion swung away in his chair toward the light and examined the
battered handle with the straggling, ill-cut, and woe-begone face traced
there.
He turned slowly and took a newspaper from his desk, rolled up the
chisel in the newspaper, thrust it into a drawer, locked the drawer and
turned back to the muttering Shays.
“I see. What next?”
“I says, 'Wha' for? Wha's that for?' Then I come to that place, and
there ain't nothin' there. He got under quick, he did. He stayed there.
He never come up. I watched. He never come up. Oh, my God! Misser
Hennion, I ain't goin' to stay there! Folks was comin' on the bridge. I
ain't goin' to stay there!”
“I see. What next?”
“Next?”
“Where'd you go then?”
“Misser Hennion! I went down under along the bridge, where there wa'n't
anybody.”
“What next?”
“Next?”
“Did you meet anyone? Say anything?”
“Wha' for? Wha's tha' for?”
“What did you do between then and now?”
“Me? Nothin'! I went to sleep by the bridge. Then I got breakfast at
Riley's 'All Night.' Then I come here. I ain't said a word, excep' to
Riley.”
“What did you say to Riley?”
“Me! I says, 'Give me some coffee and an egg sandwich,' and Riley says,
'Ye're a dom little gutter pig, Jimmy,' and tha's every word.”
“I see.”
“Misser Hennion! You see me through!”
“All right. But you've got to mind this, or I get out from under you.
You leave out Hicks' dropping that chisel, or your picking it up. He
dropped nothing; you picked up nothing. Understand? He hit Coglan with
something he had in his hand. Whatever it was, never mind. He put it in
his pocket and carried it off. You followed. You saw him jump off the
bridge. That's all. Tell me the thing again, and leave that out. Begin
where Hicks waked you.”
“Me! Wha' for? Wha's tha' for?”
“I want you to get it fixed. Oh, never mind why! Fire away!”
While Shays repeated the story Hennion swung to and fro in his swing
chair.
He had not seen the chisel these halfdozen years, but he knew the
battered handle and the woful cherub face as the face of an old friend.
He knew the niche in the tool chest where it belonged, and the spot
where the tool chest stood in the room high over the mansards, from
whose windows one looked through the upper branches of the trees out on
the Muscadine. There in the summer the maple leaves would flicker in the
sunlight, and in winter through bare branches one could see the river.
There Milly used to sit on the floor with a white apron on and a red
ribbon, and chatter like a sweet-voiced canary bird.
He went over again the connection that had first flashed past his mind,
between the chisel in the Champney tool chest and the one wrapped in
a newspaper in his desk. Aidee visited Hicks Thursday night; Friday
afternoon he was at the Champney house, where Miss Eunice had noticed
emotion, conjectured a crisis, and was moved to give advice; Friday
night Hicks broke jail and went to Shays, quarrelled with and killed
Coglan, and went off to another world, leaving Shays with the chisel;
Saturday morning comes Shays, along with the story that he was stumbling
through now, anxiously shying around the forbidden part of it. Well,
but--now as to Aidee--that was the second time he had been to Camilla
for help, and Henry Champney had liked that sort of business no better
than Hennion. It wouldn't do. As to Camilla, of course the “little maid”
would be “game,” but that gameness was a bit too convenient for men like
Aidee, who came along with a wheelbarrow full of celestial purposes in
front and a cartload of tragedies behind. Hennion did not like the kind.
A man ought to handle his own troubles and not drag women into them;
that is to say, not Camilla. Why in thunder couldn't he keep his mouth
shut, and buy a respectable burglar's outfit, like a gentleman, from a
respectable hardware dealer! However, as to Miss Eunice's “crisis,”
it looked as if Aidee must have been confessing his criminal family,
instead of the condition of his heart. Aidee was having a run of hard
luck. Still, his criminal family was out of the way now, which did not
seem a bad idea. Any chance of Camilla's name being mentioned would have
to be smothered of course, which meant smothering the whole thing.
“Go on, Jimmy. Your style's picking up.”
But, of course, Camilla now would take into her soul all the
responsibilities in sight, and brood and sadden over her fancies, and
have nightmares. That wouldn't do either.
“Very good, Jimmy.”
He must see Camilla, and be the first to tell her. Being inside the
story now, he could give a healthy point of view from the inside.
“Plunk! jus' like that!” said Shays. “He went, plunk! I come up, and I
looked, and he wa'n't there. Wa'n't nothin' there. He got under quick.
He stayed, but I wa'n't goin' to stay. Wha' for? Wha's that for? Folks
was cornin' down Maple Street and I come away. I ain't see no more of
him, but Tom, he's under the table, and there ain't no use in that, not
him, nor I ain't goin' to stay there, not him.”
“You wander, Jimmy. Who's 'him'?” Miss Eunice was a wise woman, and
according to her wisdom love was a sort of continuity of surprise,
because women wanted it that way, and they held the leading ideas on the
subject. Humph! Well--Camilla's joining Aidee that way was curious, and
in fact, that “continuity of surprise” was all right. Aidee preached a
kind of contempt for law; his doctrine always led him to side with
the individual man against men organised, and against the structure of
things; and he might have infected Camilla with his view of things,
or it might be that view of things natural to women, their gift and
function. What would Camilla do next? “God knows!” She would see that
the “continuity of surprise” was all right. What on earth was Jimmy
Shays talking about?
“Tom he says to me, 'Hicksy's a dangerous man, Jimmy,' he says, 'and I
wouldn't trust him with me life or me property. Nor,' he says, 'I
don't agree with his vilyanous opinions,' he says. That was Tom's word,
'vilyanous,' and it's true and it's proved, Misser Hennion, ain't it?
Sure! Then he jumps into the river, plunk! like that, Misser Hennion! I
ain't done no harm.”
Shays was harmless surely, and cobbled shoes besides for the benefit of
society.
“Drop it, Jimmy. We'll go over to the police station.”