'Henry Calverly, can't you see that your attentions are making it hard
for a certain young lady? Do you want to injure her reputation along
with yours? Why don't you do the decent thing and leave town!
'_A Round Robin of People Who Know You_.'
Humphrey pursed his lips over it.
'It's the Mamie Wilcox trouble, of course,' he said finally.
Henry nodded. His mouth drooped at the corners. There was a shine in his
eyes.
Humphrey folded the paper; handed it back.
'Do you know who did it?'
Henry shook his head. 'They printed it out. Oh, I can make guesses, of
course. It's about Cicely Hamlin and me.'
'You can't do anything.'
'I know.'
'And maybe you're going to be so successful that it won't matter. Laugh
at 'em.'
'I don't believe that, Hump. I can't even imagine it.'
'At that, it may be jealousy.'
'I've thought of that. Even if it is...' they're partly right. I didn't
do what they think, but... Don't you see, Hump?'
'Oh, yes, I see clearly enough.'
'I've felt it. When I was all stirred up over my work, I went there
to call. Last Saturday night. Then I got to thinking.' His voice was
unsteady, but he kept on. Rather doggedly. 'I've stayed away all this
week. Just worked. You know. You've seen how I've kept at it. Until
Thursday night. I sorta slipped up then and went around there. She was
out. And that's all. I've thought I--I've felt... Hump, do you believe
in love--you know--at first sight?'
Humphrey's long face wrinkled into a rather wry smile, then sobered.
'I ought to,' he replied. 'In a way it was like that--with me.'
2
The first of Henry's meaty, fantastic little stories of the plain folk
of the village, that one called _The Caliph of Simpson Street_, had
appeared in the _Gleaner_ of the preceding Saturday. It had made a
distinct stir.
The second story was out on this the Saturday of our present narrative.
In the order of writing, and in Henry's plans, it should have been _The
Cauliflowers of the Caliph_. But Bob McGibbon, hanging wearily over the
form in the press room late Friday night, suddenly hit on the notion of
putting _Sinbad the Treasurer_ in its place. He had all but the last one
or two in type by that time. There were no mechanical difficulties; and
he didn't consult the author. He could hit Charlie Waterhouse harder
this way. _The Cauliflowers_ was quietly humorous; while _Sinbad the
Treasurer_ had a punch. That was how McGibbon put it to the foreman,
Jimmy Albers. The word 'punch' was fresh slang then. McGibbon himself
introduced it into Sunbury.
Henry had Charlie and the town money in the back of his head, of course,
when he wrote _Sinbad_. Probably more than he himself knew. McGibbon
sniffed a sensation in the brief, vivid narrative. And a sensation of
some sort he had to have. It was now or never with McGibbon.... He was
able even to chuckle at the way Charlie would froth. He couldn't admit
that the coat fitted, of course. He would just have to froth. It was
Henry's _naïveté_ that made the thing so perfect. An older man wouldn't
have dared. Henry had just naturally rushed in. Yes, it was perfect.
Bob McGibbon was a hustler. And his nervous quickness of perception had
brought him a few small successes and was to bring him larger ones. His
Sunbury disaster was perhaps later to be charged to education.
The roots of that particular failure went deep. From first to last his
attitude was that of a New Yorker in a small town. He outraged every
local prejudice; he alienated, one by one, each friendly influence.
He couldn't understand that any such village as Sunbury resents the
outsider who insists on pointing out its little human failings. It was
recognised here and there as possible that old man Boice and Mr Weston
of the bank might be covering up something in the matter of the genial
town treasurer; but there was reason enough to believe that Mr Boice and
Mr Weston knew pretty well what they were about. That, at least, was
the rather equivocal position into which McGibbon by his very energy and
assertiveness, drove many a ruffled citizen.
And it had needed very little urging on the part of the three leading
citizens (McGibbon had a trick of referring to them in his paper as 'the
Old Cinch') to bring about the boycott on the part of the Simpson Street
and South Sunbury advertisers. As Charlie Waterhouse himself put it:--
'It ain't what he says about me. I can stand it. Man to man I can attend
to him. The thing is, he's hurtin' the town. That's it--he's hurtin' the
town.'
3
I have spoken of McGibbon's perception. He knew before reading three
paragraphs that Henry had a touch of genius. Before finishing _A
Kerbstone Barmecide_ he knew--knew with a mental grasp that was
pitifully wasted on the petty business of a country weekly--that nothing
comparable had appeared anywhere in the English-speaking world since
_Plain Tales from the Hills and Soldiers Three_. He knew, further, what
no Sunbury seems ever able to recognise, that it is your occasional
Henry who, as he mentally put it, 'rings the bell.' A queer young man,
slightly dudish in dress, unable to fit in any conventional job,
unable really to fall into step with his generation, blunderingly
but incorrigibly a non-conformist, a moodily earnest yet absurdly
susceptible young man, slightly self-conscious, known here and there
among those of his age as 'sarcastic,' brilliant occasionally, dogged
some of the time, dreamy and irresponsible the rest, yet with charm. A
youth who not infrequently was guilty of queer, rather unsocial acts;
not of meanness or unkindness, rather of an inability to feel with and
for others, to fit. A youth destined to work out his salvation, if at
all, alone.
Yes, McGibbon read the signs shrewdly. For which Sunbury owes that
erratic editor a small debt that remains unpaid and unrecorded to-day.
No doubt that McGibbon brought him out. Encouraged him, spurred him,
held him to it.
It was tradition in Sunbury that the two weekly papers should come
decorously into the world each Saturday morning for the first delivery
of mail. A small pile of each, toward noon was put on sale in Jackson's
book store (formerly B. F. Jones's). That was all.
And that was why McGibbon was able, on this Saturday of our story, to
shake the town.
Poor old Sunbury was shaken heavily and often that summer. First by the
Mamie Wilcox scandal. The sort of thing that didn't, couldn't happen.
Men leaving town, and all that. A miserable, hastily contrived marriage.
Henry's name dragged in, unjustly (as it happened), but convincingly.
Though Henry always worked best after some sort of a blow. He had to be
shaken out of himself. I think. It isn't likely that he could or would
have written _Satraps of the Simple_ if this particular blow hadn't
fallen. It was a feverish job. He was stung, quivering, helpless. And
then his great gift functioned.
Then Madame Watt happened to Sunbury. And shook the village to its
roots.
And then came Bob McGibbon's last and mightiest effort.
When all commuting Sunbury converged on the old red brick 'depot' that
morning for the seven-eleven and the seven forty-six and the eight-three
and the eight-twenty-nine, hoarsely bellowing newsboys held the two ends
of the platform. They wore cotton caps with 'The Weekly Gleaner' printed
around the front. They were big, deep-throated roughs, the sort that
shout 'extras' through the cities. They crowded the local newsdealer,
little Mr Beamer, back into one of the waiting-rooms.
They fairly intimidated the town. People bought the _Gleaner_ in
self-defence, even boarded trains and rode off to Chicago without their
regular _Tribune_ or _Record_ or _Inter Ocean_.
Other newsmen roamed the shady, pleasant residence streets, bellowing.
Housewives, old gentlemen, servants, hurried out to buy.
There were posters on the fences, and, along the billboards from
Rockwell Park on the south to Borea on the north. McGibbon actually
rented the space from the Northern Billboard Company. And there
were newsmen with caps, in the afternoon, attacking the North Shore
home-comers in the Chicago station, the very heart of things. All
this--posters screaming like the news-men; big wood type, red and
black--to advertise _Sinbad the Treasurer_ and the rest of the long
series and Henry Calverly.
'Attack' is the word. McGibbon was assaulting the town and the region as
it had hardly been assaulted before. If it was his last, it was surely
his most outrageous act from the local point of view. People talked,
boiled, raged. The blatancy of the thing irritated them to the point of
impotent mutterings. They were helpless. McGibbon was breaking no laws.
He was stirring them, however feverish his condition of mind, with
deliberate intent. It was his notion of advertising. Reaching the
mark, regardless of obstacles, indifference, difficulties. And had
his personal circumstances been less harrowing he could have chuckled
happily at the result.
The noise fell upon the ear drums of Charlie Waterhouse as he walked
down-town. A ragged, red-faced pirate thrust a _Gleaner_ into his hand,
snatched his nickel, and rushed off, bellowing.
Charlie began reading _Sinbad the Treasurer_ as he walked. He finished
it standing on the turf by the sidewalk, ignoring passing acquaintances,
nervously biting and mouthing a cigar that had gone out. In the same
condition he read bits of it again. He stood for a while, wavering; then
went back home, and spoke roughly to Mrs Waterhouse when she asked him
why. He hid the paper from her, to no particular purpose. He didn't
appear at the town hall all day, but caught a trolley into Chicago and
went to a dime museum. Later in the day he was seen by two venturesome
youths sitting alone in the rear of a stage box at Sam T. Jack's.
Norton P. Boice became aware of the sensation on his familiar way to the
_Voice_ office.
Humphrey, at his own editorial desk behind the railing, waited,
apparently buried in galley proofs, for the explosion. He had caught it
all after leaving Henry at Stanley's door, and had prowled a bit, taking
it in.
But Mr Boice simply made little sounds--'Hmm!' and 'mmp!' and 'Hmm!'
again. Then, slowly lifting his ponderous figure, the upper half of his
face expressionless as always above his long yellowish-white beard, went
out.
For an hour he was shut up with Mr Weston in the director's room at the
bank; his huge bulk disposed in an armchair; little, low-voiced, neatly
bearded Mr Weston standing by the mantel. It came down to this:--
'Could throw him into bankruptcy. He must be about broke.'