1
|Elberforce Jenkins was the most accomplished very young man-about-town
in Sunbury. He appeared to have, even at twenty-one, the bachelor gift.
He danced well. His golf was more than promising. He had lately taken
up polo with the Dexter Smith boys and young de Casselles. He owned two
polo ponies, a schooled riding horse, and a carriage team which he
drove to a high cart. His allowance from his father by far overcame the
weakness of his salary (he was with his brother, Jefferson, in a bond
house on La Salle Street). His aptitude at small talk amounted to a
gift. He liked, inevitably, the play that was popular and (though he
read little) the novel that was popular. His taste in girls pointed him
unerringly toward the most desirable among the newest.
He and Henry had been together in high school (Sunbury was democratic
then). They had played together in the football team. They had--during
one hectic month--been rivals for the hand of Ernestine Lambert.
In that instance, in so far as success had come, it had come to Henry.
But those were Henry's big days, when he was directing _Iolanthe_, the
town at his feet. Life, these two years, had flowed swiftly on. The long
dangling figure of Elbow Jenkins had filled out. His crude boyishness
had given way to a smiling reserve. He was a young man of the
world--self-assured, never indiscreet of tongue, always well-mannered,
never individual or interesting.
While Henry still worked on Simpson Street. He hadn't struck his gait.
He was--if you bothered, these days, to think about him--a little
queer. He wore that small moustache and a heavy cord hanging from his
nose-glasses, and dressed a thought too conspicuously. As if impelled
by some inner urge to assert a personality that might otherwise be
overlooked.... As I glance back upon the Henry of this period, it seems
to me that there was more than a touch of pathos about that moustache.
It was such a soft little thing. He fussed with it so much, and kept
trying to twist it up at the ends. He didn't seem to know that they
weren't twisting moustaches up at the ends that year. In fact, I think
he lacked almost utterly the gift of conformity which was the strongest,
element in Elbow Jenkins's nature. And he never acquired it. In
education, in work and preparation for life, he went it alone,
stumbling, blundering, doing apparently stupid things, acting from
baffling obscure motives, then suddenly coming through with an
unexpected flash of insight and power.
From the period of Ernestine Lambert to the time of the present story
Elbow Jenkins had been on Henry's nerves. Whenever they met, that is;
or when Henry saw him driving the newest, prettiest, best-dressed
girl about in his cart. Two years earlier he would have had two ponies
hitched tandem. But now, a little older, less willing to be conspicuous
except in strict conformity with the conventions, he drove his carefully
matched team side by side. His scat, his hold of the reins, the very
turning-back of his tan gloves, all were correct. These, indeed, were
details in the problem of living and moving about with success among
one's fellows that Elberforce Jenkins regarded as really important. Like
one's stance at golf, and cultivating the favour of men who could be
influential in a business or social way.
Yes, Elbow was on Henry's nerves.
But Elbow had long since forgotten Henry, except for a chance nod now
and then. And occasionally a moment's annoyance that Henry should insist
on keeping alive a nickname that had with years and the beginnings of
dignity become undesirable.
2
The blow fell on Henry at half-past five on the Tuesday.
I mark the time thus precisely because it perhaps adds a touch of
interest to the consideration of what happened between then and Friday
night, when McGibbon first saw what he had done. Of the importance of
the blow in Henry's life there is no doubt. It turned him sharply Not
until he was approaching middle life could he look back on the occasion
without wincing. And while wincing, he would say that it was what he had
needed. Plainly. That it made a man of him, or started the process.
As to that, I can't say. Perhaps it did. Life is not so simple as Henry
had been taught it was. I am fatalist enough to believe that Henry would
have become what he was to become in any event, because it was in him. I
doubt if he could have been given any other direction. Though of course
he might have gone under simply through a failure to get aroused.
Something had to start him, of course.
The practical difficulty with Henry's life was, of course, that he was
strong. He didn't know this himself. He thought he was weak. Some who
observed him thought the same. There were reasons enough. But Mildred
always declared flatly that he was a genius, that he was too good for
Sunbury, against the smugness of which community she was inclined to
rail. A debate on this point between Mrs Henderson and, say, William F.
Donovan, the drug store man, would have been interesting. Mr Donovan's
judgments of human character were those of Simpson Street.
I say Henry was strong, because I can't interpret his rugged
nonconformity in any other way. A weaker lad would long since have given
up, gone into Smith Brothers' wholesale, taken his spiritual beating
and fallen into step with his generation. But Henry's resistance was
so strong and so deep that he didn't even know he was resisting. He was
doing the only thing he could do, being what he was, feeling what he
felt. And when instinct failed to guide, when 'the Power' lay quiescent,
he was simply waiting and blundering along; but never falling into step.
He had to wait until the Power should rise with him and take him out and
up where he belonged.
There was a little scene the Monday evening before.
It was in the rooms. Mildred was there.
Henry stumbled in on the two of them, Mildred and Humphrey. They were
at the piano, seated side by side. They had been studying _Tristan and
Isolde_ together for a week or so; Mildred playing out the motifs. She
often played the love duet from the second act for him, too. Henry heard
him, mornings, trying to hum it while he shaved.
They insisted that he take a chair. He, with a sense of intrusion, took
the arm of one, and kept hat and stick (his thin bamboo) in his hands.