Kitabı oku: «Henry Is Twenty: A Further Episodic History of Henry Calverly, 3rd», sayfa 17
6
The Senator’s cheeks and forehead and nose were shining redly above the little white beard, which, for itself, looked more than ever askew. The straw hat was far back on his head. He waved a limp hand toward the enormous, brightly lighted painting that hung over the bar.
Henry, a painfully set look on his face, sat opposite, across the alcove, leaned heavily on the table, and watched him.
The passion had gone out of him. He was wishing, in a state near despair, that he had listened more attentively to what Madame Watt had said. Something about getting word to her – at the restaurant. But how could he? If it had seemed disastrously difficult before, full of his own trouble, to face that merry party, it was now, with this really tragic problem on his hands, flatly impossible.
And there wasn’t a soul in the world to help him. He must work it out alone. Even if he might get word to Madame, what could she do? She couldn’t leave her party. And she couldn’t bring this pitiable object in among those young people.
Henry’s lips pressed together. The world looked to him just now a savage wilderness.
‘Consider women, for instance!’ The Senator’s hand waved again toward the picture. It was surprising to Henry that he could speak with such distinctness. ‘Consider women! They toil not, neither do they spin. Yet at the last, they bite like a serpent and sting like an adder.’
Henry held his watch under the table; glanced down. It was five minutes past twelve. For nearly an hour he had been sitting there, helpless, beating his brain for schemes that wouldn’t present themselves. The twelve-fourteen was as good as gone, of course. Though it had not for a minute been possible. He thought vaguely, occasionally, of a hotel. But stronger and more persistent was the feeling that he ought to get him out home if he could.
‘Women…!’ The Senator drooped in his chair. Then looked up; braced himself; shouted, ‘Here, boy! A bit more of the same!’ When the glass was before him he drank, brightened a little, and resumed. ‘Woman, my boy, is th’ root – No, I will go farther! I will state that woman is th’ root ‘n’ branch of all evil.’
Henry, with a muttered, ‘Excuse me, Senator!’ got out of the alcove and stepped outside the door. He stood on the door-step; took off his hat and pressed a hand to his forehead.
Across the street, near the side door of the hotel, stood an old-fashioned closed hack. The driver lay curled up across his seat, asleep. The horses stood with drooping heads.
Henry gazed intently at the dingy vehicle. Slowly his eyes narrowed. He looked again at his watch. Then he moved deliberately across the way and woke the cabman.
‘Hey!’ he cried, as the man fumblingly put on his hat and blinked up the street and down. ‘Hey, you! What’ll you take to drive to Sunbury?’
‘Sunbury? Oh, that’s a long way. And it’s pretty late at night.’
‘I know all that! How much’ll you take?’
The cabman pondered.
‘How many?’
‘Two.’
‘Fifteen dollars.’
‘Oh, say I, that’s twice too much! Why – ’
‘Fifteen dollars.’
‘But – ’
‘Fifteen dollars.’
Henry swallowed. He felt very daring. He had heard of fellows and girls missing the late train and driving out. But the amount usually mentioned was ten dollars. However…
‘All right. Drive across here.’
He bent over the Senator, who was talking, still on the one topic, to a small picture just above Henry’s empty seat.
‘We’re going home now, Senator. You’d better come with me.’
‘Going home? No, not there. Not there. Back to the Senate, yes. Tha’s different. But not home. If you knew what I’ve – ’
Henry led him out. But first the Senator, with some difficulty in the managing, paid his check. Henry would have paid it, but hadn’t nearly enough. It had never occurred to him that a single individual could spend so large a sum on himself within the space of less, considerably less, than three hours.
The cabman and Henry together got him into the hack.
‘They are pop – popularly known as the weaker sex. All a ter’ble mistake, young man. They’re stronger. Li’l do you dream how stronger – how great – how more stronger they are. Curious about words. At times one commands them with ease. Other times they elude one. Words are more tricky – few suspect – but women allure us only to destroy us. Women…’
Before the cab rolled across the Rush Street Bridge on its long journey to the northward he was asleep.
7
It was half-past two in the morning when a hack drawn by weary horses on whose flanks the later glistened, drew up at the porte cochère of the old Dexter Smith place in Sunbury.
The cabman lumbered down and opened the door. A youth, nervously wide awake, leaped out. Then followed this brief conversation.
‘Help me carry him up, please.’
‘You’d better pay me first. Fifteen dollars!
‘I’ll do that afterward.’
‘I’ll take it now.’
‘I tell you I’m going to get it – ’
‘You mean you haven’t got it?’
‘Not on me.’
‘Well, look here – ’
‘Ssh! You’ll wake the whole house up! You’ve simply got to wait until I get home. You needn’t worry. I’m going to pay you.’
‘You’d better. Say, he’d ought to have it on him.’
‘We’re not going into his pockets. Now you do as I tell you.’
Together they lifted him out.
Henry looked up at the door. Madame Watt, somebody, had left this outside light burning. Doubtless the thing to do was just to ring the bell.
He brushed the cabman aside. The Senator was such a little man, so pitifully slender and light! And Henry himself was supple and strong. He took the little old gentleman up in his arms and carried him up the steps. And once again in the course of this strange night his eyes filled.
But not for himself this time. Henry’s gift of insight, while it was now and for many years to come would be fitful, erratic, coming and going with his intensely varied moods, was none the less a real, at times a great, gift. And I think he glimpsed now, through the queer confusing mists of thought, something of the grotesque tragedy that runs, like a red and black thread, through the fabric of many human lives.
The Senator had been a famous man. Through nearly two decades, as even Henry dimly knew, he had stood out, a figure of continuous national importance. And now he was just – this. Here in Henry’s arms; inert.
‘Ring the bell, will you!’ said Henry shortly.
The cabman moved.
There was a light step within. The lock turned. The door swung open, and Cicely stood there.
She was wrapped about in a wonderful soft garment of blue. She was pale. And her hair was all down, rippling about her shoulders and (when she stepped quickly back out of the cabman’s vision) down her back below the waist.
Henry carried his burden in, and she quickly closed the door.
‘Has anybody seen? Does anybody know?’ she asked, in a whisper.
He leaned back against the wall.
‘No. Nobody. But you – ’
‘I’ve been sitting up, watching. I was so afraid aunt might – ’
‘Then you know?’
‘Know? Why – Tell me, do you think you can carry him to his room?’
‘Me? Oh, easy! Why he doesn’t weigh much of anything. Just look!’
‘Then come. Quickly. Keep very quiet.’
Slowly, painstakingly, he followed her up the stairs and along the upper hall to an open door.
‘Wait!’ she whispered. ‘I’ll have to turn on the light.’ He laid the limp figure on the bed.
Outside, in the still night, the horses stirred and stamped. A voice – the cabman’s – cried, —
‘Whoa there, you! Whoa!’
Cicely turned with a start.
‘Oh, why can’t he keep still!.. You – you’d better go. I don’t know why you’re so kind. Those others would never – ’
‘Please! – You do know!’
This remark appeared to add to her distress. She made a quick little gesture.
‘Oh, no, I don’t mean – not that I want you to – ’
‘Not so loud! Quick! Please go!’
‘But it’s so terribly hard for you. I can’t bear – I can’t bear to think of your having to – people just mustn’t know about it, that’s all! We’ve got to do something. She mustn’t – You see, I love you, and…
Their eyes met.
A deep dominating voice came from the doorway.
‘You had better go to your room, Cicely,’ it said.
They turned like guilty children.
Cicely flushed, then quietly went.
Madame was a strange spectacle. She wore a quilted maroon robe, which she held clutched together at her throat. Most of the hair that was usually piled and coiled about her head had vanished; what little remained was surprisingly gray and was twisted up in front and over the ears in curl papers of the old-fashioned kind.
Henry lowered his gaze; it seemed indelicate to look at her. He discovered then that he was still wearing his hat, and took it off with a low, wholly nervous laugh that was as surprising to himself as it certainly was, for a moment, to Madame Watt, who surveyed him under knit brows before centring her attention on the unconscious figure on the bed.
‘We owe you a great deal,’ she said then. ‘It was awkward enough. But it might have been a disaster. You’ve saved us from that.’
‘Oh, it was nothing,’ murmured Henry, blushing.
‘Are you sure no one saw? You didn’t take him to the station?’
‘No. We drove straight out.’
‘Hm! When you came did you ring our bell?’
‘Me? Why, no. I was going to. But – ’
‘Yes?’
‘She – your – Miss – ’
‘Do you mean Cicely?’
‘Yes. She opened the door.’
Madame frowned again.
‘But what on earth – ’
Henry interrupted, looking up at her now.
‘I’ll tell you. I know. I can see it. And somebody’s got to tell you.’
Madame looked mystified.
‘She couldn’t bear to have you know. She was afraid you – ’
Madame raised her free hand. ‘We won’t go into that.’
‘But we must. It was your temper she was – ’
‘We wont – ’
‘You must listen! Can’t you see the dread she lives under – the fear that you’ll forget yourself and people will know! And can’t you see what it drives – him – to? I heard him talk when he was telling his real thoughts. I know.’
‘Oh, you do!’
‘Yes, I know. And I know this town. They’re very conservative. They watch new people. They’re watching you. Like cats. And they’ll gossip. I know that too. I’ve suffered from it. Things that aren’t so. But what do they care? They’d spoil your whole life – like that! – and go to the Country Club early to get the best dances. Oh, I know, I tell you. You’ve got to be careful. It isn’t what I say, but you’ve got to! Or they’ll find out, and they won’t stop till they’ve hounded you out of town, and driven him to – this – for good, and broken her – your niece’s – heart.’
He stopped, out of breath.
The fire that had flamed from his eyes died down, leaving them like gray ashes. Confusion smote him. He shifted his feet; turned his hat round and round between his hands. What —what– had he been saying!
Then he heard her voice, saying only this: —
‘In a way – in a way – you have a right… God knows it won’t… So much at stake… Perhaps it had to be said.’
He felt that he had better retreat. Emotions were rising, and he was gulping them down. He knew now that he couldn’t speak again; not a word.
She stood aside.
‘It was very good of you,’ she said.
But he rushed past her and down the stairs.
Humphrey, when he awoke in the morning, remembered dimly his temperamental young partner, a dishevelled, rather wild figure, bending over him, shaking him and saying, ‘Gimme fifteen dollars! I’ll explain to-morrow. Gosh, but I’m a wreck! You’ve no idea!’
And he remembered drawing to him the chair on which his clothes were piled and fumbling in various pockets for money.
8
When Henry awoke, at ten, he found himself alone in the rooms. The warm sunshine was streaming in, the university clock was booming out the hour. Then the mellow church bells set up their stately ringing.
He lay for a time drowsily listening. Then the bells brought recollections. Madame Watt, and Cicely, and often the Senator attended the First Presbyterian Church. Right across the alley, facing on Filbert Avenue. By merely turning his head, Henry could see the rear gable of the chapel and the windows of the Sunday-school room.
He sprang out of bed.
His blue serge coat was spotted. From the table in that bar-room, doubtless. He found a bottle of ammonia and sponged. It was also in need of a pressing, but he could do nothing about that now. He had to go to church.
No other course was thinkable. If only to sit where he could catch a glimpse now and then of her profile.
He heard a knock downstairs, but at first ignored it. No one would be coming here of a Sunday morning.
Finally he went down.
There, on the step, immaculately dressed, rather weary looking with dark areas under red eyes, stood Senator Watt.
‘How do you do,’ said he, with dignity.
‘Won’t you come in?’ said Henry.
They mounted the stairs. The Senator sat stiffly on a small chair. Henry took the piano stool.
‘I understand that you did me a very great service last night, Mr Calverly.’
‘Oh, no,’ Henry managed to say, in a mumbling voice, throwing out his hands. ‘No, it wasn’t really anything at all.’
‘You will please tell me what it cost.’
‘Oh – why – well, fifteen dollars.’
The Senator counted out the money.
‘You have placed me greatly in your debt, Mr Calverly. I hope that I may some day repay you.’
‘Oh, no! You see…’
Silence fell upon them.
The Senator rose to go.
‘Drink,’ he remarked then, ‘is an unmitigated evil. Never surrender to it.’
‘I really don’t drink at all, Senator.’
‘Good! Don’t do it. Life is more complex than a young man of your age can perceive. At best it is a bitter struggle. Evil habits are a handicap. They aggravate every problem. Good day. We shall see you soon again at the house, I trust.’
Henry, moved, looked after him as he walked almost briskly away – an erect, precise little man.
Then Henry went to church.
Herb de Casselles ushered him to a seat. He could just see Cicely. He thought she looked very sad. Yet she sang brightly in the hymns. And after the benediction when Herb and Elbow and Dex Smith crowded about her in the aisle, she smiled quite as usual, and made her quick, eager Frenchy gestures.
He brushed his hand across his eyes Had he been living through a dream – a tragic sort of dream?
He made his way, between pews, to a side door, and hurried out. He couldn’t speak to a soul; not now. He walked blindly, very fast, down to Chestnut Avenue, over to Simpson Street, then up toward the stores and shops.
Humphrey had a way of working at the office Sundays. He decided to go there. There was the matter of the fifteen dollars. And Humphrey would expect him for their usual Sunday dinner at Stanley’s.
He was passing Stanley’s now. Next came Donovan’s drug store. Next beyond that, Swanson’s flower shop.
A carriage – a Victoria – rolled softly by on rubber tyres. Silver jingled on the harness of the two black horses. Two men in plum-coloured livery sat like wooden things on the box. On the rear seat were Madame Watt and Cicely.
The carriage drew up before Swanson’s. Madame Watt got heavily out and went into the shop.
Cicely had turned. She was waving her hand.
Henry found his vision suddenly blurred. Then he was standing by the carriage, and Cicely was speaking, leaning over close to him so that the men couldn’t hear.
‘It was dreadful the way I let you go! I didn’t even say good-night. And all the time I wanted you to know…’
He couldn’t speak. He stared at her, lips compressed; temples pounding.
She seemed to be smiling faintly.
‘We – we might say good-night now.’
He heard her say that.
She thought he shivered. Then he said huskily: —
‘I – I’ve wanted to call you – to call you – ’
‘Yes?’
‘ – Cicely.’.
There was a silence. She whispered, ‘I think I’ve wanted you to.’
He had rested a hand on the plum upholstery beside her. In some way it touched hers; clasped it; gripped it feverishly.
The colour came rushing to his face. And to hers.
He saw, through a blinding mist, that there were tears in her eyes.
‘Ci – Cicely, you don’t, you can’t mean – that you – too…’
‘Please, Henry! Not here! Not now!’
They glanced up the street; and down.
‘Come this afternoon,’ she breathed.
‘They’ll be there.’
‘Come early. Two o’clock. We’ll take a walk.’
‘Oh – Cicely!’
‘Henry!’
Their hands were locked together until Madame came out.
The carriage rolled away.
Henry – it seemed to himself – reeled dizzily along Simpson Street to the stairway that you climbed to get to the Gleaner office.
And all along this street of his struggles, his failures, his one or two successes, his dreams, the dingy, two-story buildings laughed and danced and cheered about him, with him, for him – Hemple’s meat-market, Berger’s grocery, Swanson’s, Donovan’s, Schultz and Schwartz’s barber shop, Stanley’s, the Sunbury National Bank, the postoffice – all reeled jubilantly with him in the ecstasy of young love!
IX – WHAT’S MONEY!
1
Henry paused on the sill. The door he held open bore the legend, painted in black and white on a rectangle of tin: —
THE SUNBURY WEEKLY GLEANER
By Weaver and Calverly
‘How late you going to stay, Hump?’ he asked.
Humphrey raised his eyes, listlessly thrust his pencil back of his ear, and looked rather thoughtfully at the youth in the doorway; a dapper youth, in an obviously new ‘Fedora’ hat, a conspicuous cord of black silk hanging from his glasses, his little bamboo cane, caught by its crook in the angle of his elbow.
Humphrey’s gaze wandered to the window; settled on the roof of the Sunbury National Bank opposite. He suppressed a sigh.
‘I may want to talk with you, Hen. I’ve been figuring – ’
The youth in the doorway shifted his position with a touch of impatience.
‘See here, Hump, you know I can’t make head or tail out of figures!’
Humphrey looked down at the desk.
‘Anyway I’ll see you at supper,’ Henry added defensively.
‘Mildred expects me down there for supper,’ said Humphrey. The sigh came now. He pushed up the eyeshade and slowly rubbed his eyes. ‘But I may not be able to get away. There are times, Hen, when you have to look figures in the face.’
The youth flushed at this, and replied, rather explosively; —
‘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.
