'Let's see it.'
Henry ran up the stairs, and returned with a pasteboard box file, which,
not without a momentary touch of pride in his quite new business sense,
he handed to his friend.
Humphrey glanced at the carefully printed-out phrase on the back--'Henry
Calverly, 3rd. Business Affairs'--but did not smile. He opened it and
ran through the indexed leaves. It appeared to be empty.
'Look under “Me,”' said Henry.
The note was there. 'For three months,' Humphrey mused aloud.
Then he smiled. There was a whimsical touch in Humphrey that his few
friends knew and loved. Even in this serious crisis it did not desert
him. I believe it was even stronger then.
'Hen,' he said, 'got a quarter?'
The smile seemed to restore the rock that Henry had lately clung to. He
found himself returning the smile, faintly but with a growing warmth. He
replied, 'Just about.'
'Match me!' cried Humphrey.
'What for?'
'To settle a very important point. Somebody's name has got to come
first. Best two out of three.'
'But I don't----'
'Match me! No--it's mine!... Now I'll match you--mine again! I win.
Well--that's settled!'
'What's settled? I don't-----'
Humphrey sat on a tool bench; swung his legs; grinned. 'Life moves on,
Hen,' he said. 'It's a dramatic old world.'
And Henry, puzzled, looking at him, laughed excitedly.
8
It was two o'clock in the afternoon. Simpson Street was quiet after the
brisk business of the morning. The air quivered up from the pavement in
the still heat. The occasional people about the street moved slowly. The
collars of the few visible tradesmen were soft rags around their necks
and they mopped red faces with saturated handkerchiefs. The morning
breeze had died; the afternoon breeze would drift in at four o'clock or
so; until which time Sunbury ladies took their naps and Sunbury business
men dozed at their desks. Saturday closing had not made much headway at
this period, though the still novel game of golf was beginning to work
its mighty change in small-town life.
Through this calm scene, absorbed in their affairs, unaware of the heat,
strode Humphrey and Henry--down past the long hotel veranda, where the
yellow rocking chairs stood in endless empty rows, past Swanson's and
Donovan's and Jackson's book store to the meat market and then, rapidly,
up the long stairway.
They found McGibbon with his long legs stretched out under his desk,
hands deep in pockets, thin face lined and weary, but eyes nervously
bright as always. He was in his shirt-sleeves, of course. His drab brown
hair seemed a little longer and even more ragged than usual where it met
his wilted collar.
But he grinned at them, and waved a long hand.
'My God!' he cried, 'but it's good to see a human face. Look!' His
hand swept around, indicating the dusty, deserted desks and the open
press-room door. It was still out there; not a man hummed or whistled as
he clicked type into his stick, not one of the four job presses rumbled
out its cheerful drone of industry.
'Rats all gone!' McGibbon added. 'But the Caliph was up again.'
'Yes,' Henry, who found himself suddenly and deeply moved, breathed
softly, 'we know.'
'Came up a hundred. He'll pay six hundred now. For all this. An actual
investment of more'n four thousand.' The hand waved again. 'It's
amusing. He doesn't know I'm on to him. You see the old fox's been
nosing around to get up a petition to throw me into involuntary
bankruptcy, but he can't find any creditors. Has to be five hundred
dollars, you know.'
'What did you say to him?' asked Humphrey, thoughtfully.
'Showed him out. Second time to-day. It was a hard climb for him, too.
He did puff some.'
Humphrey slowly drew a large envelope from an inner pocket and laid it
on the table at his elbow.
McGibbon eyed it alertly.
'Here!' he said, his hand moving up toward the row of four or five
cigars that projected from a vest pocket, 'smoke up, you fellows.'
Henry shook his head. Humphrey drew out his pipe; then raised his head,
and said quietly:--
'Listen!'
There came the unmistakable sound of heavy feet on the stairs. Steadily,
step by step, a slowly moving body mounted.
Then, framed in the doorway, stood the huge bulk of Norton P. Boice,
breathless, red, and wet of face, his old straw hat pushed back, his
yellowish-white, wavy beard covering his necktie and the upper part of
his roundly protruding, slightly spotted vest, against which the heavy
watch chain with its dangling fraternal insignia stood out prominently.
Boice's eyes, nearly expressionless, finally settled on Humphrey.
'What are you doing here?' he asked, between puffs.
Humphrey's only reply was a slight impatient gesture.
'You oughta be at your desk.'
Then he came into the room. Of the three men seated there Humphrey was
the only one who knew by certain small external signs, that the Caliph
of Simpson Street was blazing with wrath. For here was his own hired
lieutenant hobnobbing with the boy whose agile, irresponsible pen had
made him the laughing stock of the township and with the intemperate
rival who had first attacked and then defied him. And then he had just
climbed the stairs for the third and what he meant to be the last time.
He came straight to business.
'Have you decided to accept my offer?'
'Sit down,' said McGibbon, pushing a chair over with his foot.
Boice ignored this final bit of insolence.
'Have you decided to accept my offer?'
'Well'--McGibbon shrugged; spread out his hands--'I've decided nothing,
but as it looks now I may find myself forced to accept it.'
'Then I suggest that you accept it now.'
'Well----' the hands went out again.
'Wait a moment,' said Humphrey.
'I think you had better go back to the office,' Boice broke in.
'Shortly. I have no intention of leaving you in the lurch, Mr Boice. But
first I have business here.'
'_You_ have business!'
'Yes.' Humphrey opened the large envelope. 'Here, McGibbon, is your note
to Henry for one thousand dollars, due in November.'
Before their eyes, deliberately, he tore it up, leaned over McGibbon's
legs with an, 'I beg your pardon!' and dropped the pieces in the
waste-basket. Next he produced a folded document engraved in green and
red ink. 'Here,' he concluded, 'is a four per cent, railway bond that
stands to-day at a hundred two and a quarter in the market. That's our
price for the _Gleaner_.'
McGibbon's nervous eyes followed the movements of Humphrey's hands as
if fascinated. During the hush that followed he sat motionless, chin on
breast. Then, slowly, he drew in his legs, straightened up, reached for
the bond, turned it over, opened it and ran his eye over the coupons,
looked up and remarked:--
'The paper's yours.'
'Then, Mr Boice,' said Humphrey, 'the next issue of the _Gleaner_ will
be published by Weaver and Calverly, and the stories you object to will
run their course.'
But Mr Boice, creaking deliberately over the floor, was just
disappearing through the doorway.'
9
The sunlight was streaming in through the living-room of the barn back
of the old Parmenter place. Outside the maple leaves were rustling
gently. Through the quiet air came the slow booming of the First
Presbyterian bell across the block. From greater distances came the
higher pitched bell of the Baptist Church, down on Filbert Avenue,
and the faint note from the Second Presbyterian over on the West Side,
across the tracks.
Humphrey had made coffee and toast. They sat at an end of the centre
table. Humphrey in bath-robe and slippers, Henry fully dressed in his
blue serge suit, neat silk four-in-hand tie, stiff white collar and
carefully polished shoes.
'Where are you going with all that?' Humphrey asked.
Henry hesitated; flushed a little.
'To church,' he finally replied.
Humphrey's surprise was real. There had been a time, before they came to
know each other, when the boy had sung bass in the quartet at the Second
Presbyterian. But since that period he had not been a church-goer. Henry
had been quiet all evening, and now this morning. He seemed all boxed up
within himself. Preoccupied. As if the triumph over old Boice had merely
opened up the way to new responsibilities. Which, for that matter, was
just what it had done--done to both of them. Humphrey, not being given
to prying, would have let the subject drop here, had not Henry surprised
him by breaking hotly forth into words.
'It's my big fight, Hump!' he was saying now. 'Don't you see! This town.
All they say. Look here!' He laid a rumpled bit of paper on the table.
As if he had been holding it ready in his hand.'
'Oh, that letter,' said Humphrey.
'Yes. It's what I've got to fight. And I've got to win. Don't you see?'
'Yes,' Humphrey replied gravely, 'I see.'
'I think,' said Henry, 'it's being in love that's going to help me.
We've got to hold our heads up, you and I. Build the _Gleaner_ into a
real property. Win confidence. And there mustn't be any doubt. The way
we step out and fight, you know. I've got to stand with you.'
Humphrey's eyes strayed to the sunlit window. He suppressed a little
sigh.
'This note's right enough, in a way,' Henry went on. 'It wouldn't be
fair to compromise her.' He leaned earnestly over the table. 'It's
really a hopeless love. I know that, Hump. But it isn't like the
others.' It makes me feel ashamed of them. All of them. I've got to show
her, or at least show myself, that it's this love that has made a man of
me. Without asking anything, you know.'
Humphrey listened in silence as the talk ran on. The boy was changing,
no question about that. Even back of the romantic strain that was
colouring his attitude, the suggestion of pose in it, there was real
evidence of this change. At least his fighting blood was up. And he was
taking punishment.
Sitting there sipping his coffee, Humphrey, half listening, soberly
considered his younger friend. Henry was distinctly odd, a square peg in
a round world. He was capable of curiously outrageous acts, yet most
of them seemed to arise from a downright inability to sense the common
attitude, to feel with his fellows. He could be heedless, neglectful,
self-centred; but Humphrey had never found meanness or unkindness in
him. And he was capable of a passionate generosity. He had, indeed,
for Humphrey, the fascination that an erratic and ingenuous but gifted
person often exerts on older, steadier natures. You could be angry at
him; but you couldn't get over the feeling that you had to take care of
him. And it always seemed, even when he was out and out exasperating,
that the thing that was the matter with him was the very quality that
underlay his astonishing gifts; that he was really different from
others; the difference ran all through, from his unexpected, rather
self-centred ways of acting and reacting clear up to the fact that he
could write what other people couldn't write. 'If they could,' thought
Humphrey now, shrewdly, 'very likely they'd be different too.' Take this
business of dressing up like a born suburbanite and going to church.
It was something of a romantic gesture, But that wasn't all it was. The
fight was real, whatever unexpected things it might lead him to do from
day to day.
Herbert de Casselles, wooden-faced, dressed impeccably in frock coat,
heavy 'Ascot' tie, gray striped trousers perfectly creased, (Henry had
never owned a frock coat) ushered him half-way down the long aisle to
a seat in Mrs Ellen F. Wilson's pew. He felt eyes on him as he walked,
imagined whispers, and set his face doggedly against them all. He had
set out in a sort of fervor; but now the thing was harder to do than he
had imagined. The people looked cold and hostile. It was to be a long
fight. He might never win. The more successful he might come to be, the
more some of them would hate him and fight him down... It was queer,
Herb de Casselles ushering him.
The organist slid on to his seat, up in the organ loft behind the
pulpit; spread out his music and turned up the corners; pulled and
pushed on stops and couplers; glanced up into his narrow mirror;
adjusted his tie; fussed again with the stops; began to play.
Henry sat up stiffly, even boldly, and looked about. Across the church,
in a pew near the front, sat the Watts: the Senator, on the aisle,
looking curiously insignificant with his meek, red face and his little,
slightly askew chin beard; Madame Watt sitting wide and high over him,
like a stout hawk, chin up, nose down, beady eyes fixed firmly on the
pulpit; Cicely Hamlin almost fragile beside her, eyes downcast--or was
she looking at the hymns?
When Cicely was talking, with her nervous eagerness, her quick smile,
her almost Frenchy gestures, she seemed gay. When in repose, as now, her
delicate sensitiveness, her slightly sad expression, were evident, even
to Henry.
Made him feel in the closing scene of _The Prisoner of Zenda_, where
he was bidding the Princess who could never be his a last farewell; the
mere sight of her thrilled him with a deep romantic sorrow.
Through the prayers, the announcements, the choir numbers and
collection, his sacrificial mood grew more and more intense. It was
something of a question whether he could hide his emotion before all
these hostile people. The long fight ahead to rebuild his name in the
village loomed larger and larger, began to take on an aspect that was
almost terrifying. For the first time to-day he felt weakness but she
made him feel something as Sothem had made in his heart. He sat very
quiet, hands clenched on his knees, and unconsciously thrust out his
chin a little.
When the doxology was sung and his head was bowed for the benediction,
he had to struggle with a mad impulse to rush out, run down the aisle
while people were picking up their hats and things. The thing to do, of
course, was to take his time, be natural, move out with the rest. This
he did, blazing with self-consciousness, his chin forward.
It was difficult. Several persons--older persons, who had known his
mother--stopped him and congratulated him on the brilliant work he was
doing. This in the midst of the unuttered hostility that seemed like
hundreds of little barbed darts penetrating his skin from every side.
He could only blush and mumble. Elderly, innocent Mrs Bedford of Filbert
Avenue actually introduced him to her nieces from Boston as a young man
of whom all Sunbury was proud. He had to blush and mumble here for a
long time, while the line of people crowded decorously past.
At last he got to the door. Stiffly raising his hat as one or two groups
of young people recognised him, he moved out to the sidewalk. There he
raised his eyes. They met, for a fleeting instant, but squarely, over
Herb de Casselles' shoulder, the dark eyes of Cicely Hamlin.
She was sitting on the little forward seat in the black-and-plum
Victoria. Madame Watt was settling herself in the back seat. The
Senator was stepping in. The plum-coloured footman stood stiffly by. The
plum-coloured driver sat stiffly on the box.
Herb de Casselles turned, with a wry smile.
Henry raised his hat, bit his lip, hesitated, hurried on.
Then he heard her voice.
'Oh, Mr Calverly!'
He had to turn back. He knew he was fiery red. He knew, too, that in
this state of tortured bewilderment he couldn't trust his tongue for a
moment.
Cicely leaned out, with outstretched hand.
He had to take it. The thrill the momentary touch of it gave, him but
added a wrench to the torture. Then the Senator's hand had to be taken;
finally Madame's.
His pulse was racing; pounding at his temples. What did all this mean!
Cicely, her own colour up a little, speaking quickly, her face lighting
up, her hands moving, cried:--
'Oh, Mr Calverly! We heard this morning that the _Gleaner_ has failed
and that Mr Boice has it and we aren't to see your stories any more.'
'No,' said Henry, a faint touch of assurance appearing in his heart,
mind, voice, 'that isn't so. Mr Boice hasn't got it. We've got
it--Humphrey Weaver and I.'
'You mean you have purchased it?' This from the Senator.
'Yay-ah, We bought it yesterday.'
'No!' cried Cicely. 'Really?'
'Yay-ah. We bought it.'
'Then,' commented the Senator, 'you must permit me indeed to
congratulate you. It is unusual to find business acumen and enterprise
combined with such a literary talent as yours.'
This was pleasing, if stilted. It was beginning to be possible for Henry
to smile.
Then Cicely clinched matters.
'You promised to come and read me the others, Mr Calverly. Oh, but
you did! You must come. Really! Let me see--I know I shall be at home
to-morrow evening.'
Then, for a moment, Cicely seemed to falter. She turned questioningly to
her aunt.
Madame Watt certainly knew the situation. She had heard Henry discussed
in relation to the Mamie Wilcox incident. She knew how high feeling
was running in the village. Just what her motives were, I cannot say.
Perhaps it was her tendency to make her own decisions and if possible to
make different decisions from those of the folk about her. The instinct
to stand out aggressively in all matters was strong within her. And she
liked Henry. The flare of extreme individuality in him probably reached
her and touched a curiously different strain of extreme individuality
within herself. She hated sheep. Henry was not a sheep.
As for Cicely's part of it, I know she had been thrilled when Henry read
her the first ten stories. She had read more than the Sunbury girls; and
she saw more in his oddities than they were capable of seeing. To fail
in any degree to conform to the prevailing customs and thought was to be
ridiculous in Sunbury. But she had no more forgotten the jeers that had
followed Henry from this very carriage as he chased his hat down Simpson
Street the preceding day than had Henry himself. Nor had she forgotten
that Herbert de Casselles had been one of that unkind group. And as she
certainly knew what she was about, despite her impulsiveness, I prefer
to think that her action was deliberately kind and deliberately brave.
'Come to dinner,' said Madame Watt shortly but with a sort of rough
cordiality. 'Seven o'clock. To-morrow evening. Informal dress. All
right, Watson.'
Cicely settled back, her eyes bright; but gave Henry only the same
suddenly impersonal little nod of good-bye that she gave Herbert de
Casselles.
The footman leaped to the box. The remarkable carriage rolled
luxuriously away on its rubber tyres.
Henry turned, grinning in foolish happiness, on the young man in the
frock coat who had not been asked to dinner.
'Walking up toward Simpson, Herb?' he asked.
'Me--why--no, I'm going this way.' And Herb pointed hurriedly southward.
'Well--so long!' said Henry, and headed northward.
The warm sunlight filtered down through the dense foliage. Birds
twittered up there. The church procession moving slowly along was
brightly dressed; pleasant to see. Henry, head up, light of foot,
smiling easily when this or that person, after a moment's hesitation,
bowed to him, listened to the birds, expanded his chest in answer to
the mellowing sunshine, and gave way, with a fresh little thrill, to the
thought:--
'I must buy a frock coat for to-morrow night.'