'Go on! Don't disturb me!'
'You seem to be hitting it up.'
'I am. I can't talk! Please--go away! Go to bed. You'll make me lose
it!'
Humphrey obeyed.
Later--well along in the night--he awoke.
There was a crack of light about his door. He turned on his own light.
It was quarter to three.
'Here!' he called. 'What on earth are you up to, Hen?' A chair scraped.
Then Henry came to the door and burst it open. His coat was off now,
and his vest open. He had unbuttoned his collar in front so that the
two ends and the ends of his tie hung down. His hair was straggling down
over his forehead.
'Do you know what time it is, Hen?'
'No. Say--listen to this! Just a few sentences. You liked the piece I
did about the Business Men's Picnic, remember. Well, this has sorta
grown out of it. It's just the plain folks along Simpson Street. Say!
There's a title for the book.'
'For the what!'
'The book. Oh, there'll be a lot of them. Sorta sketches. Or maybe
they're stories. I can't tell yet. Plain folks of Simpson Street. Yes,
that's good. Wait a second, while I write it down. The thing struck me
all at once--to-night!--Queer, isn't it!--thinking about the folks
along the street--Bill Hemple, and Jim Smith in your press room with
the tattooed arms, and old Boice and Charlie Waterhouse, and the way Bob
McGibbon blew into town with a big dream, and the barber shop--Schultz
and Schwartz's--and Donovan's soda fountain, and Izzy Bloom and the
trouble about his boys in the high school, and all his fires, and Mr
Draine, the Y.M.C.A. secretary that's been in the British Mounted Police
in Mashonaland--think of it! In Africa--and----'
'Would you mind'--Humphrey was on an elbow, blinking sleepy eyes--'would
you mind talking a little more slowly. Good lord! I can't----'
'All right, Hump. Only I'm excited, sorta. You see, it just struck me
that there's as much romance right here on Simpson Street as there is in
Kipling's Hills or Bagdad or Paris. Just the way people's lives go. And
what old Berger's really thinking about when he tells you the vegetables
were picked yesterday.'
Humphrey gazed--wider awake now--at the wild figure before him. And a
thrill stirred his heart. This boy was supposed to be crushed.
'How much have you done?' he asked soberly.
'Most finished this first one. It's about old Boice and Charlie
Waterhouse and Mr Weston----'
'Gee!' said Humphrey.
'I call it, _The Caliph of Simpson Street_.'
'Well--see here, you're going to bed, aren't you?'
'Oh, yes. But listen.' And he began reading aloud.
Humphrey waved his arms.
'No, no! For heaven's sake, go to bed, Hen!'
'Well, but--oh, say! Just thought of something!' And he went out,
chuckling.
Humphrey awoke again at eight. Through his open door came a light that
was not altogether of the sun.
The incident of the earlier morning came to him in confused form, like a
dream.
He sprang out of bed.
There, still bending over the atlas, was Henry. The sheets of paper lay
like drifts of snow about him now. His pencil was flying.
He looked up. His face was white and red in spots now. He was grinning,
apparently out of sheer happiness.
'Say,' he cried, 'listen to this! It's one I call, _The Cauliflowers
of the Caliph_. Oh, by the way, I've changed the title of the book to
_Satraps of the Simple_.
'The whole book'll be sort of imaginary, like that. It's queer. Just as
if it came to be out of the air. Things I never thought of in my life.
Only everything I ever knew's going into it. Things I'd forgotten.'
'Hen,' said Humphrey, 'are you stark mad?'
'Me? Why--why no, Hump!' The grin was a thought sheepish now.
'But--well, Bob McGibbon said we needed stuff for the paper.'
'How many stories have you written already?'
'Just three.'
'_Three!_ In one night!'
'But they're short, Hump. I don't believe-they average over two or three
thousand words. I think they're good. You know, just the way they made
me feel. Funny idea--Bagdad and Simpson Street, all mixed up together.'
'One thing's certain, Hen. You're an extremely surprising youth, but
right here's where you quit. I don't propose to have a roaring maniac
here in the rooms. On my hands.'
'Oh, Hump, I can't quit now! You don't understand. It's wonderful. It
just comes. Like taking dictation.'
'Dictation is what you're going to take. Right now. From me. Brush up
your clothes, and pick up all that mess while I dress. We'll go out for
some breakfast.'
'Not now, Hump! Wait--I promise I'll go out a little later.'
'You'll go now. Get up.'
Henry obeyed. But he nearly fell back again.
'Gosh!' he murmured.
'Stiff, eh?'
'I should smile. And sorta weak.'
'No wonder. Come on, now! And I want your promise that after breakfast
you'll go straight to bed.'
'Hump, I can't.'
This, apparently, was the truth. He couldn't.
He stopped in at Jackson's Book Store (formerly B. F. Jones's) and
bought paper and pencils: Then, in a thrill of fresh importance, he
bought penholders, large desk blotters, a flannel pen-wiper with a
bronze dog seated in the centre, a cut-glass inkstand, a ruler, half
a dozen pads of a better paper, a partly abridged dictionary, Roget's
_Thesaurus_, (for years he had casually wondered what a Thesaurus was),
a round glass paperweight with a gay butterfly imprisoned within, four
boxes of wire clips, assorted sizes, and, because he saw it, Crabb's
_Synonyms_. Then he saw an old copy of _The Thousand and One Nights_ and
bought that.
It seemed to him that he ought to be equipped for his work. Before he
went out he asked the prices of the better makes of typewriters.
And for the first time in two years, he uttered the magic but too often
fatal words:--
'Just charge it, if you don't mind.'
7
He was back at the rooms by nine-fifteen. Before the university clock
boomed out the hour of noon, he had written that elusive, extraordinary
little classic, _A Kerbstone Barmecide_, and had jotted down suggestive
notes for the story that was later to be known as _The Printer and the
Pearls_.
By this time all thoughts of civic reform had faded out. Charlie
Waterhouse, now that _The Caliph of Simpson Street_ was done and, in
a surface sense, forgotten, no longer appeared to him as a crook who
should be ousted from the local political triumvirate and from town
office; he was but a bit of ore in the rich lode of human material
with which Henry's fancy was playing. The important fact about the new
Waterhouse store-and-office building in South Sunbury, was not that
there was reason to believe Charlie had built it with town money but
that he had put a medallion bas-relief of himself in terra cotta in the
front wall.
Charlie figured, though, unquestionably, in _Sinbad the Treasurer_.
At noon, deciding that he would stroll out after a little and eat a
bite, Henry stretched out on the lounge. Here he dozed, very lightly for
an hour or two.
Humphrey stole in, found him tossing there, fully dressed, mumbling in
his sleep, and stole out.
But early in the afternoon Henry leaped up. His brain, or his emotions,
or whatever the source of his ideas, was a glowing, boiling, seething
crater of tantalising, obscurely associated concepts and scraps of
characterisation and queerly vivid, half-glimpsed dramatic moments,
situations, contrasts. They amounted to a force that dragged him on. The
thought that some bit might escape before he could catch it and get it
written down kept his pulse racing.
At about half-past four he finished that curious fantasy, _Roc's Eggs,
Strictly Fresh_.
This accomplishment brought a respite. He could see his book clearly
now. The cover, the title page and particularly the final sentence.
He knew that the concluding story was to be called _The Old Man of the
Street_. He printed out this title; printed, too, several titles of
others yet to be written--_Ali Anderson and the Four Policemen_ and
_Scheherazade in a Livery Stable_, and one or two more.
His next performance I find particularly interesting in retrospect.
During the long two years of his extreme self-suppression in the vital
matters of candy, girls, and charge-accounts, Henry had firmly refused
to sing. Without a murmur he had foregone the four or five dollars
a Sunday he could easily have picked up in church quartet work, the
occasional sums from substituting in this or that male quartet and
singing at funerals. It was even more extraordinary that he should
have given up, as he did, his old habit of singing to girls. The only
explanation he had ever offered of this curious stand was the rather
obscure one he gave Humphrey that singing was 'too physical.' Whatever
the real complex of motives, it had been a rather violent, or at least a
complete reaction.
But now he strode about the room, chin up, chest expanded, brows
puckered, roaring out scales and other vocalisings in his best voice.
The results naturally were somewhat disappointing, after the long
silence, but he kept at it.
He was still roaring, half an hour later, when McGibbon came anxiously
in.
'Saw Humphrey Weaver down-town,' said the editor of the _Gleaner_, 'and
he said I'd better look you up.'
An hour later McGibbon--red spots in his cheeks, a nervous glitter
in his eyes--hurried down to the _Gleaner_ office with the pencilled
manuscripts of four of the 'Caliph' stories. He was hurrying because
it seemed to him highly important to get them into type. For one thing,
something might happen to them--fire, anything. For another, it might
occur to Henry to sell them to an eastern magazine.
When Humphrey came in, just before six, Henry was already well into
_Scheherazade in a Livery Stable_, and was chuckling out loud as he
wrote.
Friday night was press night at the _Gleaner_ office. Henry strolled
in about ten o'clock and carelessly dropped a thick roll of script on
McGibbon's desk.
That jaded editor leaned back, ran thin fingers through his tousled
hair, and wearily looked over the dishevelled, yawning, exhausted,
grinning youth before him. Never in his life had he seen an expression
of such utter happiness on a human face.
'How many stories is this?' he asked.
'Ten.'
'Good Lord! That's a whole book!'
'No--hardly. I've thought of some more. There'll be fifteen or twenty
altogether. I just thought of one, coming over here. Think I'll call it.
_The Story of the Man from Jerusalem_. It's about the life of a little
Jew storekeeper in a town like this. Struck me all of a sudden--you
know, how he must feel. I don't think I'll write it to-night--just make
a few notes so it won't get away from me.'
Bob McGibbon rose up, put on coat and hat, took, Henry firmly by the
arm, and marched him, protesting, home.
'Now,' he said, 'you go to bed.'
'Sure, Bob! What's the matter with you! I'm just going to jot down a few
notes------'
'You're going to bed!' said McGibbon.
And he stood there, earnest, even grim, until Henry was undressed and
stretched out peacefully asleep.'
Henry slept until nearly three o'clock Saturday afternoon.
8
Senator Watt laid down the _Gleaner_, took off his glasses, removed an
unlighted cigar from his mouth, and said, in his low, slightly husky
voice:--
'A really remarkable piece of work. Quite worthy of Kipling.' The
nineties, as we have already remarked, belong to Kipling. Outright. He
had to be mentioned. 'It is fresh, vivid, and remarkably condensed. The
author produces his effects with a sure swift stroke of the brush.'
The Senator rarely spoke. When he did it was always in these measured,
solid sentences, as if his words might be heard round the world and
therefore must be chosen with infinite care. After delivering himself
of this opinion he resumed his 'dry smoke' and reached for the _Evening
Post_, which lay folded back to the financial page.
'I was sure you would think so,' said Cicely Hamlin, glancing first at
the Senator then at her aunt. 'I wish you would read it, Aunt Eleanor.'
'Hm!' remarked that formidable person, planting her own gold-rimmed
glasses firmly astride her rugged nose just above the point where it
bent sharply downward, picking up the paper, then lowering it to gaze
with a hint of habitual, impersonal severity at her niece.
'Even so,' she said. 'Suppose the young man has gifts. That will hardly
make it necessary for you to cultivate him. I gather he's a bad lot.'
'I have no intention of cultivating him,' replied Cicely, moving toward
the door, but pausing by the mantel to pat her dark ample hair into
place. She wore it low on her shapely neck. Cicely was wearing a
simple-appearing, far from inexpensive blue frock.
Madame Watt read the opening sentence of _The Caliph of Simpson Street_,
then lowered the paper again.
'Are you going out, Cicely?'
'No, I expect company here.'
'Who is coming?'