'Corinne writes that she'll be back for a week late in August.' Then,
noting the touch of dismay on Henry's ingenuous countenance, she added,
'But you mustn't have her on your conscience, Henry.'
'It isn't that----'
'I'm fond of Corinne. But I can see now that you two would never get on
long together. In a queer way you're too much alike. At least, you
both have positive qualities. Corinne will some day find a nice little
husband who'll look after the business side of her concerts. And
you--well, Henry, you've got to have some one to mother you.' She smiled
at him thoughtfully. 'Some one you can make a lot of.'
'No.' Henry's colour was up. He was shaking his head. 'You don't
understand. I'm through with girls. They're nothing in my life.
Nothing!'
She slowly shook her head. 'That's absurd, Henry. You're particularly
the kind. You'll never be able to live without idealising some woman.'
'I tell you they're nothing to me. My life is different now. I've
changed. I've put money--a lot of money--into the _Gleaner_. It means
big responsibilities. You've no idea----'
'If I hadn't, seen you writing,' she mused aloud.... 'No, Henry. You
won't change. You'll grow, but you won't change. You're going to write,
Henry. And you'll always write straight at a woman.'
'No! No!' Henry was sputtering. He appeared to be struggling. 'Life
means work to me. I'm through with----'
She took down the _Tristan_ score from the piano and turned the pages in
her lap.
'Love is the great vitaliser, Henry,' she said.
'No--it's the mind. Thinking. We have to learn to think
clearly--objectively.'
'Objectively? No. Not you. And I'm glad, in a way. Because I know we're
going to be proud of you. But it's love that makes the world go round.
They don't teach you that in the colleges, but it's the truth... Take
Wagner--and _Tristan_. He wrote it straight at a woman. And it's the
greatest opera ever written. And the greatest love story. It's that
because he was terribly in love when he wrote it. Do you Suppose, for
one minute that if Wagner had never seen Mathilde Wesendonck we should
have had _Tristan?_'
She paused, pursed her lips, studied the book with eyes that seemed to
grow misty, then looked up at Humphrey.
He--tall, angular, very sober--met her gaze; then his swarthy face
wrinkled up about the eyes and he hurriedly drew his cob pipe from his
pocket and began filling it.
Henry stared at the rug; traced out the pattern with his stick. He
couldn't answer this last point, because he had never heard of Mathilde
Wesendonck. And as he was supposed to be 'musical' it seemed best to
keep quiet.
He made an excuse of some sort and went out for a walk. Down by the lake
he thought of several strong arguments. Mildred was wrong. She had to be
wrong. For he had cut girls out.
It was like Mildred to speak out in that curiously direct way. She was
fond of Henry. And she had divined, out of her various, probably rather
vivid contacts with life, certain half-truths that were not accepted in
Sunbury.
I think she saw Henry pretty clearly, saw that he was driven by an
emotional dynamo that was to bring him suffering and success both....
Mildred, of course, never really belonged in a small town.
It was at the close of the following afternoon that Henry came in and
found Humphrey's long figure stretched out on the window-seat--he was
smoking, of course--of all things, blowing endless rings up at the
curtains Mildred had made and hung for him. His dark skin looked gray.
There were deep lines in his face. He couldn't speak at first. But he
stared at Henry.
That young man put away hat and stick, had his coat off, and was rolling
back his shirt sleeves for a wash, humming the refrain of _Kentucky
Babe_. Then, through a slow moment, the queer silence about him,
Humphrey's attitude--that fact, for that matter, that Hump was here,
at all; he was a great hand to work until six or after at the _Voice_
office--these things worked in on him like a premonition. The little
song died out. He went on, a few steps, toward the bathroom, then came
to a stop, turned toward the silent figure on the window-seat, came
slowly over.
Now he saw his friend clearly. As he sank on the arm of a chair--it was
where he had sat the evening before--he caught his breath.
'Wha--what is it?' he asked. His voice was suddenly husky. His mind
went blank. There was sensation among the roots of his hair. 'What's the
matter, Hump?'
Finally Humphrey took out his pipe and spoke. His voice, too, was low
and uncertain. But he gathered control of it as he went on.
'Where've you been?' he asked.
'Me? Why, over at Rockwell Park. Bob McGibbon wanted me to see about a
regular correspondent for the “Rockwell Park Doings.”'
'Heard anything?'
'Me? No. Why?... Hump, what is it? What you getting at?'
'Then I've got to tell you.' He swung his feet around; sat up; emptied
his pipe, then filled it.
'Is it--is it--about me, Hump?'
'Yes. It is.'
'Well--then--hadn't you better tell me?'
'I'm trying to, Hen. It's dam' unpleasant. You remember--you told me
once--early in the summer--' Humphrey, usually most direct, was having
difficulty in getting it out--'you told me you rode a tandem up to
Hoffmann's Garden with that little Wilcox girl.'
'Oh, that! That was nothing. Why all the time I lived at Mrs Wilcox's I
never----'
'Yes, I know. Let me try to tell this, Hen. It's hard enough. She's in a
scrape. That girl. There's a big row on. I'm not going into the details,
so far as I've heard 'em. There ugly. They wouldn't help. But her
mother's collapsed. Her uncle and aunt have turned up and taken the girl
off somewhere. He's a butcher on the North Side.' Henry was pale but
attentive.
'In all the time I lived there,' he began again...
'Please, Hen! Wait! It is one of those mean scandals that tear up a town
like this every now and then. Boils up through the crust and has to be
noticed. It's a beastly thing. The number of men involved... some older
ones... and young Bancroft Widdicombe has left town. There's some queer
talk about her marrying him. And they say one or two others have run
away. Widdicombe got out before the storm broke. Jim Smith says he's
been heard from at San Francisco.'
'But they can't say of me----'
'Hen, they can and they do.'
'But I can prove----'
'What can you prove? What chance will you have to prove anything?
You were disturbed when Martha Caldwell and the party with Charles H.
Merchant caught you with her up at Hoffmann's----'
'But, Hump, I didn't _want_ to take her out that night! And it's the
only time I ever really talked to her except once or twice in the
boarding-house.'
He was speaking with less energy now. He felt the blow. Not as he would
feel it a few hours later; but he felt it.
Humphrey watched him.
'It has brought things home to me,' he said uncertainly. 'The sort of
thing that can happen. When you're caught in a drift, you don't think,
of course... Now, Hen, listen! This is real trouble. It's going to hit
you about to-morrow--full force. It's got to be faced. I don't want to
think that you'd run----'
'Oh, no,' Henry put in mechanically, 'I won't run.'
'I'm sure you won't. But it's got to be faced. You're hit especially.'
'But why, when I----'
'Because you lived alone there, in the boarding-house, for two years.
And you were caught with her at Hoffmann's, she in bloomers, drinking
beer. Just a cheap little tough. And there isn't a thing you can do but
live it down. Nobody will say a direct word to you.'
'That's what I'll do,' said Henry, 'live it down.'
'It'll be hard, Hen.'