'You know I want you to come.'
This was unsatisfactory. Indeed he hardly heard it. He was full of his
thoughts about her, about the older men, about those tremendous
burdens that he couldn't even pretend to assume. And then came a mad
recklessness.
'Oh, Cicely--this is awful--I just can't stand it! Why can't we have an
understanding? Call it that? Stop all this uncertainty! I--I--I've just
got to speak to your aunt----'
'Henry! Please! Don't say those things---'
'That's it! You won't let me say them.'
'Not here----'
'Oh, please, Cicely! Please! I know I'm not earning much; but I'll be
twenty-one on the seventh of November and then I'll have more'n three
thousand dollars. Please let me tell her that, Cicely. Oh, I know it
wouldn't do to spend all the principal,--but it would go a long way
toward setting us up--you know--' his voice trembled, dropped even
lower, as with awe--'get the things we'd need when we were--you
know--well, married.'
He felt, as he poured out this mumbled torrent of words, that he
was rushing to a painful failure. Cicely had drawn back. She looked
bewildered, and tired. And he had fetched up in a black maze of
despairing thoughts.
The footman must have heard part of it. He was standing very straight.
And the coachman was staring out over the horses. He had probably heard
too.
Then Madame Watt came sailing out Of Berger's; fixed her hawk eyes on
him with a curious interest.
He knew that he lifted his hat. He saw, or half saw, that Cicely tried
to smile. She did bob her head in the bright quick way she had.
Then the Victoria rolled away, and he was standing, one foot in the
street, the other on the kerb, gazing after them through a mist of
something so near tears that he was reduced to a painful struggle to
gain even the appearance of self-control.
And then, for a quarter-hour, mood followed mood so fast that they
almost maddened him.
He thought of old Hump, up there in the office, fighting out their
common battle. Perhaps he ought to go back; do his best to understand
the accounts. Figures always depressed him. No matter. He would go back.
He would show Hump that he could at least be a friend. Yes, he could at
least show that. Thing to do was to keep thinking of the other fellow.
Forget yourself. That was the thing!
But what he did, first, was to cross over to Swanson's flower shop and
sternly order violets. Paid cash for them.
'Miss Cicely Hamlin?' asked the Swanson-girl.
'Yes,' growled Henry, 'for Miss Hamlin. Send them right over, please.'
Then he walked around the block; muttering aloud; starting;
glancing-about; muttering again. He could hardly go to Cicely's. Not
this evening! Not when she had been willing to leave it like that.
He meant to go, of course. Too early. By seven-thirty or so. But he told
himself he wouldn't do it. She would have to write him. Or lose him. He
would wait in dignified silence.
The early September twilight was settling down on Sunbury.
Lights came on, here and there. The dusk was a relief.
He had wrecked everything. It wasn't so much that he had proposed an
understanding. In the circumstances she couldn't altogether object to
that. It was risking the vital, final decision, of course. But that,
sooner or later, would have to be risked. That was something a man had
to face, and go through, and be a sport about. No, the trouble seemed
to be that he had lost himself. He had made it awkward, impossible,
for both of them. Through his impatience he had created an impossible
situation. And in losing himself he had lost her, and lost her in the
worst way imaginable. He had contrived to make an utterly ridiculous
figure of himself, and, in a measure, of her. He had to set his teeth
hard on that thought, and compress his lips.
He was on Simpson Street again. Yellow gas-light shone out of the
windows of the _Gleaner_ offices, over Hemple's. Old Hump was hard at
it.
He went up there.
3
Humphrey was sitting there, chin on chest, long legs stretched under the
desk. He didn't look up; only a slight start and a movement of one hand
indicated that he heard.
Henry stood, confused, a thought alarmed, looking at him; moved
aimlessly to his own desk and stirred papers about; came, finally,
and sat on a corner of the exchange table, tapping his cane nervously
against his knee.
'Aren't going to stay here all night, are you, Hump?' he asked, rather
huskily.
Humphrey's hand moved again; he didn't speak.
'Hump! What's the matter? Anything happened?'
Still no answer.
'But you know we're picking up in advertising, Hump?'
'Not near enough.' This was a non-committal growl.
'And see the way our circulation's been----'
'Losing money on it. Can't carry it.'
'But--but, Hump----'
The senior partner waved his hand. His face was gray and grim, his voice
restrained. He even smiled as he deliberately filled his pipe.
'It's bad, Hen. Very, very bad. I've tried to keep you from worrying,
but you've got to know now. We paid a little over two thousand for this
plant and the good will.
'Cheap enough, wasn't it?' cried Henry.
'If we'd really got her for that, yes. But look at the capital it takes.
Building up. I had just a thousand more, a bond. Threw that in last
month, you know.'
'Oh'--breathed Henry, fright in his eyes--'I forgot about that.'
'And you can't raise a cent.'
Henry tried to think this over. He started to speak; swallowed; slipped
off the table; stood there; lifted his cane and sighted along it out the
window.
'I can--November seventh,' he finally remarked.
Humphrey blew a smoke-ring; followed it with his eyes.
'My boy, nations, worlds, constellations, may crash between now and
November seventh.'
'I--I could tackle my uncle again,' murmured Henry, out of a despairing
face.
There was at times an acid quality in Humphrey. Henry felt it in him
now, as he said dryly:--
'As I recall your last transaction with your uncle, Hen, he told
you finally that you couldn't have one cent of your principal before
November seventh.'
'He--well, yes, he did say that.'
'Meant it, didn't he?'
'Y--yes. He meant it.'
'He's a business man, I believe.' Humphrey smoked for a moment; then
added, with that same biting quality in his voice, 'And unless
he's insane he would hardly put money into this business now. As it
stands--or doesn't stand. And I presume he's not insane. No, we'll drop
that subject.'
Henry felt Humphrey's eyes on him. Sombre cold eyes. And he fell again,
in his misery, to sighting along his cane. It seemed to Henry that the
world was reeling to disaster. His young, over keen imagination was
painting ugly, inescapable pictures of a savage world in which all
effort seemed to fail.
Between Humphrey and himself a gulf had opened. It was growing wider
every minute. Nothing he could say would help; words were no good. He
was afraid he might try to talk. It would be like him; floods of talk,
meaningless, mere words, really mere nerves. He clamped his lips on that
fear.
If I understand Henry, the thing that had brought him to despair--and he
was in despair--was neither the sorry condition of the business, nor
the trouble with Cicely. These had confused and saddened him. But the
hopelessness had come after he saw Humphrey's face and eyes and caught
that cool note in his voice. To the day of his death Henry couldn't
endure hostility in those close about him. He had to have friendly
sympathy, an easy give and take of the spirit in which his _naïveté_
would not be misunderstood. This sort of atmosphere provided,
apparently, the only soil in which his faculties could take root and
grow. Hostility in those he had been led to trust disarmed him, crushed
him.
'Hump,' he ventured now, weakly, 'I think--maybe--you'd better show me
those figures. I--I'll try to understand 'em. I will.'
Humphrey gave a little snort; brushed the idea away with a sweep of a
long hand.
'No use!' he said brusquely. He rolled down the desktop and locked it
with a snap. 'Getting stale myself. Sleep on it. Not a thing you can do,
Hen!' He knocked the ashes from his pipe, gloomily. Buttoned his vest.
Suddenly he broke out with this:--
'You're a lucky brute, Hen!'
Henry started; glanced up; fumbled at his moustache. 'You're wondering
why I said that. But, man, you're a genius--Yes, you are! I have to plug
for it. But you've got the flare. You know well enough what's loaded all
this circulation on us. Your stories! Not a thing else. You'll do more
of 'em. You'll be famous.'
'Oh, no, Hump I You don't know how I've----'
'Yes, you'll be famous. I won't. It's a gift--fame, success. It's a sort
of edge God--or something--puts on a man. A cutting edge. You've simply
got it. I simply haven't.'
Henry pulled and pulled at his moustache.
'And you've got a girl--a lovely girl. She's mad about you--oh, yes she
is! I know. I've seen her look at you.'
'But, Hump, you don't just know what----'
'She doesn't have to hide her feelings. Not seriously, not with a lying
smile. And you don't have to hide yours. You haven't got this furtive
rope around your neck, strangling the breath of decent morality out of
your soul. Thank God you don't know what it means--that struggle. She'll
be announcing her engagement one of these days.
'There'll be presents and flowers. You'll get stirred up and write
something a thousand times better than you know how to write. Money will
come--oh, yes it will! It'll roll to you, Hen. For a time. Or at times.
And you'll marry--a nice clean wedding. God, just to think of it is like
the May winds off the lake!'
He threw out his long arms. Henry thought, perversely enough, that he
looked like Lincoln.
'But the greatest thing of all is that you're twenty. Think of it!
Twenty!... Hen, when I was twenty I put my life on a schedule for five
years. They were up last month.
'I was to be flying at twenty-four. Think of it--flying! Through the
air, man! Like a gull! At twenty-five I was to be famous and rich. A
conqueror! I slaved for that. Worked days and nights and Sundays for
that. Sweated for the Old Man there on the _Voice_; put up with his
stupid little insults.'
He sprang up; got into his coat; looked at his watch.
'I'm late. Got to stop at the rooms too. Mildred'll be wondering. You
can stay here if you like.'
But Henry clung to him. Around the back street they went. And Humphrey
talked on.
'Well, I'm twenty-five! And where've I got? I love a woman. Hen, I hope
you'll never be torn as I'm torn now. You think you've been through
things. Why, you're an innocent babe. I've got a woman's name--and
that's a woman's life, Hen!--in my hands. It's a muddle. Maybe there's
tragedy in it. May never work out. Sometimes I feel as if we were going
straight over a precipice, she and I. It goes dark. It suffocates me....
It's costing me everything. It'll take money--a lot of it--money I
haven't got. If the paper goes, my last hopes go with it. If we can't
turn that corner. Everything comes down bang. No use.'
Henry tried to say, 'Oh, I guess we'll turn our corner all right;' but
if the words passed his lips at all it was only as a whisper.
They were a hundred feet from the alley back of Parmenter's. It was dark
now, there in the shade of the double row of maples. Humphrey stopped
short; pressed his hands to his eyes; then looked at Henry.
'You coming to the rooms, too?' he asked.
Henry nodded.
'I don't know's I--I was forgetting, so many things--Oh well, come
along. It hardly matters.'
At the alley entrance a man intercepted them; said, 'This is Henry
Calverly, ain't it?' Struck a match and read an extraordinary mumble
of words. He struck other matches, and read hurriedly on. Then he moved
apologetically away, leaving Henry backed limply against a board fence.
Humphrey stood waiting, a tall shadow of a man. To him Henry turned,
feeling curiously weak in the legs and gone at the stomach.
'What is it?' he asked, weakly, meekly. 'I couldn't understand. Did he
ar--arrest me or something?'
'Charlie Waterhouse has sued you for libel. Ten thousand dollars. Come
on. I can't wait.'
'But--but--but that's foolish. He can't----'
'That's how it is.' Humphrey was grim.
They walked in silence up the alley. Henry stood by while his partner
unlocked the neat front door to the old barn, a white door, with one
white step and an iron scraper. He could just make them out in the dusk.
He wondered if he mightn't presently wake up and find it a dream.... Old
Hump!
They stood in the shop. Humphrey had switched on one light; he looked
now, his face deeply seamed, his eyes a little sunken, at the dim
shadowy metal lathes, the huge reels of copper wire, the tool benches,
the rows of wall boxes filled with machine parts, the small electric
motors hanging by twisted strings or wires from the ceiling joists, the
heavy steel wheels in frames, the great box kites and the spruce and
silk planes, in sections, the gas engine, the water motor, the wheels,
shafts, and belting overhead.
He bent his sombre eyes on Henry.
That youth, aching at heart, bruised of spirit, unaware of the figure he
made, was too far gone to be further puzzled by the weary, mocking smile
that flitted across Humphrey's face.
'Hump!' he cried out: 'What'll we do!'
'Do? Sleep over it. Raise some more money?'
'But how?'
Humphrey waved a hand at the machinery. 'All this. And my library
upstairs. They've stood me more'n four thousand, altogether. Ought to
fetch something.'
'But--but--ten thousand!' Henry whispered the amount with awe as well as
misery.
'Oh, _that!_ Your trouble! Why, you'll sleep over that, too, and
to-morrow I suppose you'll talk to Harry Davis's father.' The senior
Davis, Arthur P., was a Simpson Street lawyer. 'They'll sting you. But
they don't expect any ten thousand.'
'But what I said is _true!_ Charlie Waterhouse is a----'
'What's that got to do with it. You can't prove it. And we aren't strong
enough to hire counsel and detectives and run him to earth. Doesn't look
as if we had the barest breath of life in us. Charlie'll think of your
uncle next, and attach your mother's estate.'
He said this with unusual roughness. Then he went upstairs; stamped
around for a brief time; came hurrying down.
Henry, now, was sitting dejectedly on a work-bench.
'Hump--please!--you don't know how I feel. I----'
'And,' replied the senior partner, 'I don't care. I don't care how I
feel, either. We either save the paper this week or we don't. That's
what I care about right now.'
'I--I won't let you sell your things, Hump.' An unconvincing assertion,
from the limp figure on the bench.
'You?' Humphrey stared at him with something near contempt--stared at
the moustache and the cane. 'You? You won't let me?... For God's sake,
_shut up!_'
With which he went out, slamming the door.
For a time Henry continued to sit there. Then he dragged himself
upstairs, went to his bookcase and got the book entitled _Will Power and
Self Mastery_.
He turned the pages until he hit upon these paragraphs:--'Every machine,
every cathedral, every great ship was a thought before it could become a
fact. Build in your brain.
'Through the all-enveloping ether drifts the invisible electricity that
is all life, all energy. Open yourself to it. Make yourself a conductor.
Stupidity and fear are resistants; cast these out. Make your brain a
dynamo and drive the world.'
This seemed a good idea.
4
Arthur P. Davis was just rising from the supper table when the door-bell
rang. He answered it himself; found young Calverly there, in a state of
haggard but vigorous youthful intensity. He contrived, after a slight
initial difficulty, to draw out of the curiously verbose youth the
essential facts. He considered the matter with a deliberation and
caution that appeared irritating to the boy. But he had read and (in
the bosom of his family) chuckled over _Sinbad the Treasurer_. He had
wondered a little, though he didn't mention the fact to Henry, whether
Charlie wouldn't sue. Charlie had a case.
When Henry left, clearly still in a confused condition, it was Mr
Davis's impression that Henry had placed the matter in his hands as
counsel and further had distinctly agreed to shut his head.
Henry apparently understood it differently. Or, more likely, he didn't
understand at all. Henry was, at the moment, a storm centre with
considerable emotional disturbance still to come. Any one who has
followed Henry, who knows him at all, will understand that such
disturbance within him led directly and always to action. Whatever he
may have said to Mr Davis, he was helpless. He had to function in his
own way. Probably Mr Davis's use in the situation was to stimulate
Henry's already overactive brain. Hardly more.
Certainly it was hardly later than a quarter or twenty minutes past
seven when Henry appeared at Charlie Waterhouse's place on Douglass
Street.
The town treasurer was on the lawn, shifting his sprinkler by the light
of the arc lamp on the corner and smoking his after-supper cigar.
The conversation took place across the picket fence, one of the few
surviving in Sunbury at this time.