1
|Miss Amelia Dittenhoefer was a figure in Sunbury. She had taught two
generations of its young in the old Filbert Avenue school. And during
more than ten years, since relinquishing that task, she had supplied
the 'Society,' 'Church Doings,' 'Woman's Realm,' and 'Personal Mention'
departments of the _Voice_ with their regular six to eight columns of
news and gossip.
And as several hundred Sunbury men and women had once been her boys
and girls, this sort of personal news came to her from every side. Her
'children,' of whatever present age, accepted her as an institution,
like the university building, General Grant, or Lake Michigan. She never
had a desk in the _Voice_ office, but worked at home or moving
briskly about the town. Home, to her, was the rather select, certainly
high-priced boarding-house of Mrs Clark on Simpson Street, over by the
lake, where she had lived, at this time, for twenty-one or twenty-two
years. She was little, neat, precise, and doubtless (as I look back
on those days) equipped for much more important work than any she ever
found to do in Sunbury. But Woman's sun had hardly begun to rise then.
As Henry had been, at the age of six, one of her boys, and during the
past two years had shared with her the reporting work of the _Voice_,
it was not unnatural that she should stop him as he was hurrying, airily
twirling his thin bamboo stick, over to Stanley's restaurant. It was
noontime. Simpson Street was quiet. They walked along past Donovan's
drug store and Jackson's book store (formerly B. F. Jones's) and turned
the corner. Here, in front of an unfrequented photographer's studio,
Miss Dittenhoefer stated her problem. She looked, though her trim little
person was erect as always, rather beaten down.
'Mr Boice has taken half my work, Henry--“Church Doings” and “Society.”
He sent me a note. I gather that you're to do it.'
'Me?' Henry spoke in honest amazement.
'Doubtless. He's cutting down expenses. I mind, of course, after all
these years. I've worked very hard. And on the money side, I shall mind
a little.'
'You don't mean----'
'Oh, yes. Half the former wage. And they don't pension old teachers in
Sunbury. But this is what I want to tell you----'
'Oh, but Miss Dittenhoefer, I don't----'
'Never mind, Henry; it's done. Of course I shouldn't have said as much
as this. Though perhaps I had to say it to somebody. Forget what you can
of it. But now--I wanted to give you this list. There's a good lot of
society for summer. Never knew the old town to be so gay. Two or three
things in South Sunbury that are important. They feel that we've been
slighting them down there this year. I've noted everything down. And
I've written the church societies, asking them to send announcements
direct to the office after this.'
'I don't want your work,' said Henry, colouring up. 'It
ain't--isn't--square.'
'But it's business, Henry. Mr. Boice explained that in his note. You'll
find I've written everything out in detail--all my plans and the right
ladies to see. Good-bye now.'
Henry, pained, unable to believe that Miss Dittenhoefer's day could pass
so abruptly, walked moodily back to Stanley's and, as usual, bolted his
lunch. The unkindness to Miss Dittenhoefer directly affected himself. It
meant still more of the routine desk-work and more running around town.
Then, slowly, as he sat there staring at the pink mosquito-bar that was
gathered round the chandelier, his eyes filled. It was hard to believe
that even Mr Boice could do a thing like that to Miss Dittenhoefer.
Coolly cutting her pay in half! It seemed to Henry wanton cruelty. It
suggested to his sensitive mind other tales of cruelty--tales of the
boys who had gone into Chicago wholesale houses for their training and
had found their fresh young dream-ideals harshly used in the desperate
struggle of business.
Henry, I am certain, thought of Mr Boice at this moment with about
as much sympathy as a native of a jungle village might feel for a
man-eating tiger. That look about Miss Dittenhoefer's mouth when she
smiled! It was a world, this of placid-appearing Sunbury and the big
city, just below the town line, in which men fought each other to the
death, in which young boys were hardened and coarsened and taught to
kill or be killed, in which women were tortured by hard masters until
their souls cried out.
Boice, I am sure, sensed nothing of this somewhat morbid hostility. No;
until Robert A. McGibbon turned up in Sunbury, Mr Boice had some reason
to feel settled and complacent in his years. His private funds were
secure in his wife's name. And he had every reason to believe that,
before many months more, it would be his privilege and pleasure to
run McGibbon out of town for good. If the matter of Miss Dittenhoefer
should, for a little while, stir up sentimental criticism, why--well,
it was business. Sound business. And you couldn't go back of sound
business.
Henry sighed, got slowly up, had his meal ticket punched at the desk by
Mrs Stanley, went back to the office.
2
The sunny, listless July day was at its lowest ebb--when men who had the
time dawdled and smoked late over their lunch, when ladies took naps.
Flies crawled languidly about the speckled walls of the _Voice_ office.
Outside the screen door and the plate-glass front window, the hot air,
rising from the cement sidewalk, quivered so that the yellow outlines
of the Sunbury House across the street wavered unstably, and the dusty
trees over there wavered, and the men sitting coatless, suspendered, in
the yellow rocking chairs on the long veranda, wavered. Through the
open press-room door came the sound of one small job-press rumbling at
a handbill job; the other presses were still. The compositors worked or
idled without talking.
Here in the office, Henry, tipped back in his kitchen chair before the
inkstained, cluttered pine table by the end wall, coat off, limp wet
handkerchief tucked carefully around his neck inside the collar, chewed
a pencil, gazing now at the little pile of blank copy paper before
him, now at a discouraged fly on the wall. Gradually the fly took on
a perverse interest among his wandering, unhappy thoughts. Prompted,
doubtless, by a sense of inner demoralisation that was now close to
recklessness, he reached for a pen, filled it with ink, and shot a
scattering volley at the slow-moving insect.
At the roll-top desk by the press-room door, Humphrey Weaver, also
coatless, cob pipe in mouth, long lean face wrinkled in the effort to
keep his usually docile mind on its task, elbow on desk and long fingers
spread through damp hair, was correcting proof.
Mr Boice's desk, up in the front window, outside the railing, stood
vacant. The proprietor might or might not stop in on the early-afternoon
trip from his house on Upper Chestnut Avenue to the post-office. Mr
Boice could do as he liked. His time was his own. He lived on the labour
of others. A fact which often stirred up in Henry's breast a rage that
was none the less bitter because it was impotent. It was the sort of
thing, he felt, in his more nearly lucid moments, that you have to
stand--the wall against which you must beat your head year after year.
Henry, victorious over the fly, settled back. He tried to work. Then sat
for a time brooding. Then, finally, turned to his friend.
'Hump,' he said, 'I--I know you wouldn't think I had much to do--I mean
the way you get work done--I don't know what it is--but I wish I could
see a way to begin on all this new work. I know I'm no good, but----'
'I wouldn't say that.' Humphrey, glad of a brief respite, settled back
in his swivel chair. 'I could never have written that picnic story.
Never in the world. We're different, that's all. You're a racer; I'm a
work-horse. I don't know just what it's coming to. He isn't handling you
right.'
'That's it!' Henry cried, softly, eagerly. 'He _isn't!_'
'I suppose you know now about Miss Dittenhoefer.' Henry's head bowed in
assent. 'I didn't have the heart to tell you myself, Hen.' He picked up
his proofs, then looked up and out of the window. 'There,' he remarked
unexpectedly, 'is a pretty girl!'
Henry turned with the quickness of long habit. 'Where?' he asked, then
discovered the young person in question standing on the hotel veranda
talking with Mrs B. L. Ames and Mary Ames.
She was a new girl. Even now, though Henry had given up girls for good,
she caused a quickening of his pulse. She _was_ pretty--rather slender,
in a blue skirt and a trim white shirt-waist, and an unusual amount
of darkish hair that massed effectively about a face, the principal
characteristics of which, at this distance and through the screen door,
was a bright, almost eager smile.
It is a not uninteresting fact, to those who know something of Henry's
susceptibility on previous occasions, that his gaze wandered moodily
back to his table. He sighed. His hand strayed up and began pulling at
his little moustache.
'You haven't told me what I'm to do about it, Hump. This society thing
really stumps me.'
'I haven't known quite what to say. That's all, Hen. The old man is
riding you, of course. I didn't think, when he raised you to twelve a
week, that he'd just lie down and pay it. Meekly. Not he! He's a crafty
old duck. Very, very crafty--Cheese it; here he comes!'
The shadow of Norton P. Boice fell across the door-step. The screen door
opened with a squeak, and ponderously the quietly dominating force of
Simpson Street, came in, inclined his massive head in an impersonal
greeting, and lowered his huge bulk into his chair.
'Henry!' called Mr Boice in his quietly husky voice.
The young man quivered slightly, but sat motionless.
'Henry!' came the husky voice again.
There could be no pretending not to hear. Henry went over there.
Mr Boice sat still--he could; do that--great hands resting on his
barrel-like thighs.
'I am rearranging the work of the paper--' he began.
'Yes,' muttered Henry, not without sullenness; 'I know.'
'Oh, you know!'
'Yes.'
'There's a little more for you to do. You'll have to get it cleaned up
well ahead of time this week. Thursday is the fiftieth anniversary of
the founding of Sunbury. You'll have to cover that. Take down what you
can of the speeches.'
That seemed to be all. Henry moved slowly back to the table. After a
little shuffling about of the papers on his desk, Mr Boice moved heavily
out and headed toward the post-office.
Then, and not before, Henry rummaged under a pile of exchanges at the
rear of the table until he found a book. This he held close to his body,
where it would not be seen should Humphrey turn unexpectedly.
The book was entitled _Will Power and Self Mastery_. Opposite the title
page was a half-tone reproduction of the author--a face with a huge
moustache and intensely knit brows. Henry studied it, speculating in a
sort of despair as to whether he could ever bring himself to look like
that. He knit his own brows. His hand strayed again to his own downy
moustache.
He turned the pages. Read a sentence here and there. The book, though
divided under various chapter headings, was really made up of hundreds
of more or less pithy little paragraphs. These paragraphs--their
substance mainly a rehandling of the work of Samuel Smiles, James
Parton, and the Christian and Mental Scientists (though Henry didn't
know this)--might easily have been shuffled about and arranged in
other sequence, so little continuity of thought did they represent. One
paragraph ran:--
The express train of Opportunity stops but once at your station. If you
miss it, it will never again matter that you almost caught it.