'A fellow has to do the sorta thing he _can_ do, Hump!'
'Well--will you be at the rooms this evening?' Humphrey's eyes were
again taking in the natty costume. And surveying him, Humphrey answered
his own question; dryly. 'I imagine not.'
'Well--I was going over to the Watts.'
There was a long silence:
Finally Henry let himself slowly out and closed the door.
Outside, on the landing, he paused again; but this time to button his
coat and pull up the blue-bordered handkerchief in his breast pocket
until a corner showed.
He looked too, by the fading light--it was mid-September, and the sun
would be setting shortly, out over the prairie--at the tin legend on the
door.
The sight seemed to reassure him somewhat. As did the other, similar
tin legends that were tacked up between the treads of the long flight of
stairs that led to Simpson Street, at each of which he turned to look.
Humphrey had before him a pile of canvas-bound account books, a spindle
of unpaid bills, a little heap of business letters, and a pad covered
with pencilled columns. He rested an elbow among the papers, turned his
chair, and looked through the window down into the street.
A moment passed, then he saw Henry walking diagonally across toward
Donovan's drug store.
For an ice-cream soda, of course; or one of those thick, 'frosted'
fluids of chocolate or coffee flavour that he affected. And it was now
within an hour of supper time.
Humphrey leaned forward. Yes, there he stood, on the kerb before
Donovan's, looking, with a quick nervous jerking of the head, now up
Simpson Street, now down. Yes, that was his hurry--the usual thing.
Madame Watt made a point of driving down to meet the five-twenty-nine
from town. Senator Watt always came out then. And usually Cicely Hamlin
came along with her.
Humphrey sighed, rose, stood looking down at the bills and letters and
canvas books; pressed a hand again against his eyes; wandered to the
press-room door and looked, pursing his lips, knitting his brows, at
the row of job presses, at the big cylinder press that extended nearly
across the rear end of the long room, at the row of type cases on their
high stands, at imposing-stones on heavy tables. He sniffed the odour
of ink, damp paper, and long, respected dust that hung over the whole
establishment. He smiled, moodily, as his eye rested on the gray
and black roller towel that hung above the iron sink, recalling Bob
Burdette's verses. He returned to the office, and stood for a few
moments before the file of the _Gleaner_ on the wall desk by the door,
turning the pages of recent issues. From each number a story by Henry
Calverly, 3rd, seemed to leap out at his eyes and his brain. _The Caliph
of Simpson Street, Sinbad the Treasurer, A Kerbstone Barmecide, The
Cauliflowers of the Caliph, The Printer and the Pearls, Ali Anderson
and the Four Policemen_--the very titles singing aloud of the boy's
extraordinary gift.
'And it's all we've got here,' mused Humphrey, moving back to his own
desk. 'That mad child makes us, or we break. I've got to humour him,
protect him. Can't even show him these bills. Like getting all your
light and heat from a candle that may get blown out any minute.' And
before dropping heavily into his chair, glancing at his watch, drawing
his eye-shade down, and plunging again at the heavy problem of keeping
a country weekly alive without sufficient advertising revenue, he added,
aloud, with a wry, wrinkly smile that yet gave him a momentary whimsical
attractiveness: 'That's the devil of it!'
There was a step on' the stairs.
The door opened slowly. A red face appeared, under a tipped-down Derby
hat; a face decorated with a bristling red moustache and a richly
carmine nose.
Humphrey peered; then considered. It was Tim Niernan, one-time fire
chief, now village constable.
'Young Calverly here?' asked the official in a husky voice.
Humphrey shook his head. His thoughts, momentarily disarranged, were
darting this way and that.
'What is it, Tim? What do you want of him?'
Tim seemed embarrassed.
'Why----' he began, 'why----'
'Some trouble?'
'Why, you see Charlie Waterhouse's suing him.'
Humphrey tried to consider this.
'What for?'
'Well--libel. One o' them stories o' his. I liked 'em myself. My folks
all say he's a great kid. But Charlie's pretty sore.'
'Suing for a lot, I suppose?'
'Why yes. Well--ten thousand.'
'Hm!'
'He lives with you, don't he--back of the Parmenter place?'
'Yes.' Humphrey's answer was short. At the moment he was not inclined to
make Tim's task easy.
The constable went out. Humphrey watched him from the window. He passed
Donovan's on the other side of the street and kept on toward the lake.
Humphrey returned to the wall file, and, standing there, read _Sinbad
the Treasurer_ through.
There was an extraordinarily fresh, naive power in the story. Simpson
Street was mentioned by name. There was but the one town treasurer,
whether you called him 'Sinbad' or Waterhouse.
'He certainly did cut loose,' mused Humphrey. 'Charlie's got a case. Got
his nerve, too.'
Then he dropped into his chair and sat, for a long time, very quiet,
tapping out little tunes on his hollowed cheek with a pencil.
2
Henry turned away from Donovan's soda fountain, wiping froth from his
moustache, and sauntered to the nearer of the two doors. His brows were
knit in a slight frown that suggested anxiety. There was earnestness,
intensity, in the usually pleasant gray-blue eyes as he peered now up
the street, now down.
A low-hung Victoria, drawn by a glossy team in harness that glittered
with silver, swung at a dignified pace around the corner of Filbert
Avenue, two wooden men in plum-coloured livery on the box, two
dignified figures on the rear seat, one middle-aged, large, formidable,
commanding, sitting erect and high, the other slighter and not
commanding.
Instantly, at the sight, Henry's frown gave place to a nervously eager
smile, returned, went again. When the carriage at length drew up before
Berger's grocery, across the way, however, he had both frown and smile
under reasonable control and was a presentable if deadly serious young
man.
The footman leaped down and stood at attention. The formidable one
stepped out and entered Berger's. And the slight, fresh-faced girl,
leaned out to welcome the youth who rushed across the street.
In Sunbury, in the nineties, a youth and a maiden could 'go together'
without a thought of the future. The phrase implied frank pairing off,
perhaps an occasionally shyly restrained sentimental passage, in general
a monopoly of the other's spare time. An 'understanding,' on the other
hand, was a. distinctly transitive state, leading to engagement and
marriage as soon as the youth was old enough or could earn a living or
the opposition of parents could be overcome.
The relationship between Cicely and Henry had lately hovered delicately
between the two states. If it seemed, after each timid advance, to
recede from the 'understanding' point; that was because of the burdens
and the heavy responsibility that instantly claimed their thoughts at
the mere suggestion of engagement and marriage:
There were among the parents of Henry's boyhood friends, couples that
had married at twenty or even younger, and on no greater income than
Henry's rather doubtful twelve dollars a week. But that day had gone by.
An 'understanding' meant now, at the very least, that you were saving
for a diamond. You could hardly ask a nice girl to become engaged
without one.
And marriage meant good clothes for parties, receptions and Sundays, and
the street; it meant membership in the Country Club, a reasonably priced
pew in church, a rented house, at least, preferably not in South Sunbury
and distinctly not out on the prairie or too near the tracks, a certain
amount invested in furniture, dishes and other house fittings, and
reasonable credit with the grocer and at the meat-market. You could
hardly ask a nice girl to go in for less than that. You really couldn't
afford to let her go in for less.
So they were marrying later now; six or eight or ten years later. And
the girls were turning to older men. Here in Sunbury, Clemency Snow had
married a man seven or eight years older whose younger brother had been
among her playmates. Jane Bellman had married a shy little doctor of
thirty-one or two. And Martha Caldwell, whom Henry had 'gone with' for
two or three years, was permitting the rich, really old bachelor,
James B. Merchant, Jr., to devote about all his time to her. He was
thirty-eight if a day.
It was a disturbing condition for the town boys. Thoughts of it cast
black shadows on Henry's undisciplined brain as he looked at the girl in
the Victoria, felt, in the very air about them, her quick, bright
smile, the delicately responsive liftings of her eyebrows, her marked
desirability.
'Oh, Henry,' she was saying, 'I've just been hearing the most wonderful
things about you! You can't imagine! At Mrs MacLouden's tea. There was a
man there----'
Henry sniffed. A man at a tea! And talking to Cicely! Making up to her,
doubtless.
'--a friend of Mr Merchant's, from New York. And what do you think? Mr
Merchant showed him your stories. The ones that have come out. He's been
keeping them. Isn't that remarkable? They read them aloud. And this man
says that you are more promising than Richard Harding Davis was at your
age. Henry--just _think!_'
But Henry was scowling. He was thinking with hot, growing concern, of
the man. A rich old fellow, of course! One of the dangerous ones.
He leaned over the wheel.
'Cicely--you--you're expecting me to-night?'
'Oh! Why yes, Henry, of course I'd like to have you come.'
'But weren't you _expecting_ me?'
'Why--yes, Henry.
'Of course'--stiffly--'if you'd rather I wouldn't come...'
'Please, Henry! You mustn't. Not here on the street!' He stood, flushing
darkly, swallowing down the emotion that threatened to choke him.'