'Oh, a couple of Chicago men are coming out.'
'Oh!' It was between a grunt and a snort. He struck out at such a gait
that she finally said:--
'If you want to walk at that pace I'm afraid you'll have to walk alone.'
So far a failure. Just as with Humphrey, the situation had given him
no opportunity to display his own kind of thing. The picturesque slang
phrase had not then been coined; but Henry was in wrong and knew it. It
was defeat.
The first faint hope stirred when Mrs Henderson rose from a hammock and
came to the top step to clasp his hand. She thought him a genius. Well,
she had been accompanist through all those rehearsals for _Iolanthe._
She ought to know.
She asked him now, in her alertly offhand way, to stay to dinner. He
accepted instantly.
4
Mildred Henderson was little, slim, quick, with tiny feet and hands.
Despite these latter she was the most accomplished pianist in Sunbury.
She had snappy little eyes, and a way of smiling quickly and brightly.
The Hendersons had lived four or five years in Sunbury. They had no
children. They had no servant at this time--but she possessed the gift
of getting up pleasant little meals without apparent effort.
After the arrival of Corinne and Henry she disappeared for a few
moments, then called them to the dining-room.
'It's really a cold lunch,' she said, as they gathered at the
table--'chicken and salad and things. But there's plenty for you,
Henry. Do have some iced tea. I know they starve you at that old
boarding-house. We've all had our little term at Mrs Wilcox's.'
'I--I'm not living there any more. I've moved.'
'Not to Mrs Black's?'
'No... you see I work with Humphrey Weaver at the _Voice_ office and he
asked me to come and live with him.'
'With him? And where does he live?'
'Why, just back of the old Parmenter place.'
'But there's nothing back of the Parmenter place!'
'Yes--you see, the barn----'
'Not that old red----'
'Yes. You'd be surprised! Humphrey's put in hardwood and electricity and
things. He's really a wonderful person. Did the wiring himself. And the
water pipes. You ought to see his books--and his shop downstairs. He's
an inventor, you know. Going to be. Don't you think for a minute that
he's just a country editor. That's just while he's feeling his way. Oh,
Hump's a smart fellow. Mighty decent of him to take me in that way, too;
because he's busy and I know he'd rather live alone. You see, he's quiet
and orderly about things, and I--well, I'm different.'
'Offhand,' mused Mrs Henderson, 'I shouldn't suspect Humphrey Weaver of
temperament. But tell me--how on earth do you live? Who cooks and cleans
up?'
'Well, Hump gets breakfast and--and we'll probably take turns cleaning
up.'
'You remember Humphrey Weaver, Corinne,' the little hostess breezed on.
'You've met him. Tall, thin, face wrinkles up when he smiles or speaks
to you.' She added, as if musing aloud, 'He _has_ nice eyes.' Then, to
Henry:
'But do you mean to say that so fascinating a man as that lives
undiscovered, right under our noses, in this bourgeois town.'
Henry was rather vague about the meaning of 'bourgeois,' but he nodded
gravely.
'You must bring him down here, Henry. I can't imagine what I've been
thinking of to overlook him.
Tell you what, we'll have a little rabbit to-morrow night. We four.
We'll devote an evening to drawing Mr Humphrey Weaver out of his shell.'
Her quick eyes caught a doubtful look in Corinne's eyes. 'Oh,' she said,
'we did speak of letting Will and Fred take us in town, didn't we?'
Corinne nodded.
It seemed to Henry that he ought to take the situation in hand. As
regarded his relations with Humphrey he was sailing under false colours.
Among his confused thoughts he sought, gropingly, a way out. The speech
he did make was clumsy.
'I don't know whether I could make him come. He likes to read evenings,
or work in his shop.'
Mrs Henderson took this in, then let her eyes rest a moment,
thoughtfully, on Henry's ingenuous countenance. An intent look crept
into her eyes.
'Do you mean that you two sweep and make beds and wash dishes and dust?'
'Well'--Henry's voice faltered--'you see, I haven't been--I just moved
over there yesterday afternoon.'
'Hm!' There was a bright, flash in Mrs Henderson's eyes. She chuckled
abruptly. It was a sharp little chuckle that had the force of an
interruption. 'I'd like to see the corners of those rooms. There ought
to be some woman that could take care of you.' She turned again on
Henry. 'Be sure and bring him down to-morrow. Come in about six for a
picnic supper. Or no--let me think----'
Henry's eyes were on Corinne. She was eating now, composedly, like an
accomplished feminine fatalist, leaving the disposition of matters to
her more aggressive hostess. The food he had eaten rested comfortably
on his long ill-treated but still responsive young stomach. His
nervous concern of the morning was giving place to a glow of snug
inner well-being. Ice-cream was before him now, a heaping plate of
it--vanilla, with hot chocolate sauce--and a huge slice of chocolate
layer cake. He blessed Mrs Henderson for the rich cream as he let
heaping spoonfuls slip down his throat and followed them with healthy
bites of the cake. What a jolly little woman she was. No fuss.
Nothing stuck up about her. And he knew she was on his side.
She had sympathy. Even if she hadn't yet heard--when she did hear--it
wouldn't matter. She would be on his side; he was sure of it.
Corinne's hair, a loose curl of it, curved down over her ear and part
of her cheek. She reached up a long hand and brushed it back. The motion
thrilled him. He was quiveringly responsive to the faint down on her
cheek, to the slight ebbing and flowing of the colour under her skin, to
the whiteness of her temple, the curve of her rather heavy eyebrow, even
to the 'waist' she wore--a simple garment, with an open throat and a
wide collar that suggested the sea.
Mrs Henderson was talking about something or other, in her brisk way.
Henry only partly heard. He was day-dreaming, weaving an imaginative
web of irridescent fancy about the healthy, rather matter-of-fact girl
before him. And eating rapidly his second large helping of ice-cream,
and his second piece of cake.
Little resentments were still popping up among his thoughts, taunting
him. But tentative little hopes were struggling with these now. A sense
of power, even, was stirring to life in his breast. This brought new
thrills. It was a long, long time since he had felt as he was now
beginning to feel. Life had dealt pretty harshly with him these two
years. But he wasn't beaten yet. Not even if nice men did give cameo
brooches mounted on beaded gold.
He felt in his pocket. Nearly all of the week's pay was there--about
eight dollars. It wasn't much. It wouldn't buy gold brooches.
Space-reporting on a country weekly at a dollar and a quarter a column,
as a means of livelihood, was pretty hard sledding. He would have to
scheme out something. There would be seventeen dollars more on the
fifteenth from his Uncle Arthur, executor of his mother's estate and
guardian to Henry, but that had been mentally pledged to the purchase of
necessary summer underwear and things. Still, he might manage somehow.
You had to do a lot for girls, of course. They expected it. Expensive
business.
He indulged himself a moment, shading his eyes with one hand and eating
steadily on, in a momentary wave of bitterness against well-to-do young
men who could lavish money on girls.
Corinne was speaking now, and he was answering. He even laughed at
something she said. But the train of his thoughts rumbled steadily on.
After the coffee they all carried out the dishes and washed them. Henry
amused them by wearing a full-length kitchen apron. Corinne tied the
strings around his waist. He found an excuse to reach back, and for an
instant his hands covered hers. She laughed a little. He danced about
the kitchen and sang comic songs as he wiped dishes and took them to the
china closet in the butler's pantry.
This chore finished, they went to the living-room.
Mrs Henderson said: 'Oh, Corinne, you must hear Henry sing “When Britain
Really Ruled” from _Iolanthe_.' She found the score and played for him.
He sang lustily, all three verses.
'Too much dinner,' he remarked, beaming with pleasure, at the close.
'Voice is rotten.'
'It's a good organ,' said Corinne. 'You ought to work at it.'
'Perfect shame he won't study,' said Mrs Henderson. Henry found _The
Geisha_ on the piano.
'Come on, Corinne,' he cried. 'Do the “Jewel of Asia.” Mrs Henderson'll
transpose it.'
Corinne leaned carelessly against the piano and sang the pleasant little
melody with an ease and a steady flow of tone that brought a shine to
Henry's eyes. He had to hide it, dropping on the big couch and resting
his head on his hand. He could look nowhere but at her. He ordered her
to sing 'The Amorous Goldfish.'
She fell into the spirit of it, and moved away from the piano, looking
provocatively at Henry, gesturing, making an audience of him. She even
danced a few steps at the end.
Henry sprang up. The power was upon him. Obstacles, difficulties, the
little scene with Humphrey, while not forgotten, were swept aside. He
was irresistible.
'Tell you what,' he said gaily, with supreme ease--'w'e'll send
those Chicago men a box of poisoned candy to-morrow, and--oh, yes w-e
will!--and then we'll have a party at the rooms. You'll be chaperon, Mrs
Henderson and Hump'll cook things in the chafing dish, and----'
'What a perfectly lovely idea!' said Mrs Henderson in a surprisingly
calm voice. 'I'll bring the cold chicken, and a vegetable salad...
Henry watched Corinne.
For an instant--she was rummaging through the music--her eyes met his.
'It'll be fun,' she said.
Henry felt a shock as if he had plunged unexpectedly, headlong, into
ice-water; then a glow.
He was a daring soul. They didn't understand him in Sunbury. He had
temperament, a Bohemian nature. The thing was, he'd wasted two years
trying to make another sort of himself. Kept account of every penny in a
red book! All that! Book was in his pocket now.
He decided to tear it up. He wouldn't be a coward another day. That
plodding self-discipline hadn't got him anywhere. Now really, had it?
Little inner voices were protesting weakly. People might find out about
it. Have to be pretty quiet. And keep the shades down. It wouldn't
do for the folks in the parsonage, across the alley, to know that Mrs
Arthur V. Henderson and her guest were in the Parmenter barn. Have to
find some tactful way of suggesting that they come after dark...
As if she could read his thoughts, Mrs Henderson remarked calmly: 'You
come for us, Henry. Say about eight.'
Still the little voices of doubt and confusion. Even of fear. He
mentally shouted them down; fixing his eyes on the disturbingly radiant
Corinne, then glancing for moral support at the really pretty little Mrs
Henderson who gave out such a reassuring air of knowing precisely what
she was about, of being altogether in the right. Funny, knowing her all
these years, he hadn't realised she was so nice!
He had turned defeat into victory. Single-handed. Will and Fred could go
sit on the Wells Street bridge and eat bananas. He had settled _their_
hash.
5
To this lofty mood there came, promptly? an opposite and fully equal
reaction.
Difficulties having arisen in connection with the problem of breaking
the news to Humphrey, he couldn't very well go back to the rooms.
The thing would have to be put right before Humphrey. He decided to
think it over. That was the idea--think it over. Humphrey would be
eating his supper, if not at the rooms, then at Stanley's little
restaurant on Simpson Street. So he could hardly go to Stanley's. There
was another little lunch room down by the tracks, but Humphrey had
been known to go there. And of course it was impossible to return for a
transient meal to Mrs Wilcox. For one thing, the student waiters would
be off and Mamie Wilcox on duty in the dining-room. He didn't want Mamie
back in his life. Not if he could help it. He even went so far as to
wonder, with a paralysing sense of helplessness in certain conceivable
contingencies, if he _could_ help it... So instead of eating supper he
sat on a breakwater, alone, unobserved, while the golden sunset glow
faded from lake and sky and darkness claimed him for her own.
Later, handkerchief over face, rushing and pawing his way through the
myriads of sand-flies that swarmed about each corner light, he walked
into the neighbourhood of Martha Caldwell's house. He walked backhand
forth for a time on the other side of the street, and stood motionless
by trees. He found the situation trying, as he didn't know why he had
come, whether he wanted to see Martha or what he could say to her.
He could hear voices from the porch. And he thought he could see one
white dress.
Then, because it seemed to be the next best thing to do, he crossed over
and mounted the familiar front steps.
He found himself touching the non-committal hand of James B. Merchant,
Jr., who carried the talk along glibly, ignoring the gloomy youth with
the glasses and the tiny moustache who sat in a shadow and sulked.
Finally, after deliberately, boldly arranging a driving party of two for
Monday evening, the cotillion leader left.
Martha, when he had disappeared beyond the swirling, illuminated
sand-flies at the corner, settled back in her chair and stared, silent,
at the maples.
Henry struggled for speech.
'Martha, look here,' came from him, in a tired voice, 'you've cut me
dead. Twice. Now it seems to me----'
'I don't want to talk about that,' said Martha.
'But it isn't fair not to----'
'Please don't try to tell me that you weren't at Hoffmann's with that
horrid girl.'
'I'm not trying to. But----'
'You took her there, didn't you?'
'Yes, but she----'
'She didn't make you. You knew her pretty well. While you were going
with me, too.'
'Oh, well,' he muttered. Then, 'Thunder! If you're just determined not
to be fair----
'I won't let you say that to me.' The snap in her voice stung him.
'You're not fair! You won't even let me talk!'
'What earthly good is talk!'
'Oh, if you're going to take that attitude----'
She rose. So did he.
'I can't and I won't talk about a thing like that,' she said quickly,
unevenly.
'Then I suppose I'd better go,' said he, standing motionless.
She made no reply.
They stood and stood there. Across the street, at B. F. Jones's, a porch
full of young people were singing _Louisiana Lou_. Henry, out of sheer
nervousness, hummed it with them; then caught himself and turned to the
steps.
'Well,' he remarked listlessly, 'I'll say good-night, then.'
Still she was silent. He lingered, but she gave him no help. He hadn't
believed that she could be as angry as this. He waited and waited. He
even felt and weighed the impulses to go right to her and make her sit
in the hammock with him and bring back something of the old time
feeling.
But he found himself moving off down the steps and heading for the
yellow cloud at the corner.
He hated the sand-flies. Their dead bodies formed a soft crunchy carpet
on pavement and sidewalk. You couldn't escape them. They came for a week
or two in June. They were less than an inch long, pale yellow with gauzy
wings. They had neither sting nor pincers. They overwhelmed these lake
towns by their mere numbers. Down by the bright lights on Simpson Street
they literally covered everything. You couldn't see through a square
inch of Donovan's wide plateglass front. Mornings it was sometimes
necessary to clear the sidewalks with shovels.
It was two or three hours later when Henry crept cautiously into
Humphrey's shop and ascended the stairs.
Humphrey had left lights for him. He was awake, too; there was a crack
of light at the bottom of his bedroom door. But the door was shut tight.
Henry put out all the lights and shut himself in his own disorderly
room.
He stood for a time looking at the mess; everything he owned, strewed
about on chairs, table and floor. Everything where it had fallen.
He considered finishing unpacking the suit-case. Pushed it with his
foot.
'Just have to get at these things,' he muttered aloud. 'Make a job of
it. Do it the first thing to-morrow, before I go to the office.'
Then he dug out the box of books that stood beside the bed, the volume
entitled _Will Power and Self Mastery_.
He sat on the bed for an hour, reading one or another of the vehemently
pithy sentences, then gazing at the wall, knitting his brows, and
mumbling the words over and over until the small meaning they had ever
possessed was lost.
6
He came almost stealthily into the office of _The Weekly Voice of
Sunbury_ on the Monday morning. He had not fallen really asleep until
the small hours. When he awoke, Humphrey was long gone and the breakfast
things stood waiting on the centre table. And there they were now. He
hadn't so much as rinsed them in the sink.
Humphrey sat behind his roll-top desk, back of the railing. Old Mr
Boice, the proprietor, was at his own desk, out in front. At the first
glimpse of his massive head and shoulders with the heavy white whiskers
falling down on his shirt front, Henry, hesitating on the sill, gave
a little quick sigh of relief. He let himself, moving with the
self-consciousness that somewhat resembled dignity, through the gate in
the railing and took his chair at the inkstained pine table that served
him for a desk.
He felt Humphrey's eyes on him, and said 'Goodmorning!' stiffly, without
looking round. He looked through the papers on the table for he knew
not what; snatched at a heap of copy paper, bit his pencil and made a
business of writing nothing whatever.
At eleven Mr Boice, who was also postmaster, lumbered out and along
Simpson Street toward the post office. Henry, discovering himself alone
with Humphrey, rushed, muttering, to the press room and engaged Jim
Smith, the foreman, in talk which apparently made it necessary for that
blonde little man, whose bare forearms were elaborately tattooed and who
chewed tobacco, to come in, sit on Henry's table, and talk further.
Noon came.
Humphrey pushed back his chair, tapped on the edge of his desk, and
thoughtfully wrinkled his long face. The natural thing was for Henry to
come along with him for lunch at Stanley's. He didn't mind for himself.
It was quite as pleasant to eat alone. In the present circumstances,
more pleasant. It was awkward.
He got up; stood a moment.
He could feel the boy there, bending over proofs of the programmes
for the Commencement 'recital' of the Music School, pencil poised,
motionless, almost inert.
Suddenly Henry muttered again, sprang up, rushed to the press room,
proof in hand; and Humphrey went to lunch alone.
Henry did not appear again at the office. This was not unusual. Monday
was a slack day, and much of Henry's work consisted in scouting along
Simpson Street, looking up new real estate permits at the village
office, new volumes at the library and other small matters.
The unusual thing was the note on Humphrey's desk. Henry had put it on
top of his papers and weighted it down conspicuously with the red ink
bottle.
'I've had to ask Mrs Henderson and Corinne Doag to the rooms to-night
for a little party. I'll bring them about eight.' Pinned to the paper
was a five-dollar banknote.
At supper-time, Humphrey, eating alone in Stanley's, saw a familiar
figure outside the wide front window. It was Henry, dressed in his
newest white ducks, his blue coat newly pressed (while he waited, at the
Swede tailor's down the street), standing stiffly on the curb.
Occasionally he glanced around, peering into the restaurant.
The light was failing in the rear of the store. Mrs Stanley came from
her desk by the door and lighted two gas-jets.
Henry again glanced around. He saw Humphrey and knew that Humphrey saw
him.
A youth on a bicycle paused at the curb.