Kitabı oku: «Henry Is Twenty: A Further Episodic History of Henry Calverly, 3rd», sayfa 6

3

Mr Boice moved heavily along, inclining his massive head, without a smile, to this acquaintance and that, and turned in at Schultz and Schwartz’s.

The spectacle of Henry Calverly – in spotless white and blue, with the moustache, and the stick – had irritated him. Deeply. A boy who couldn’t earn eight dollars a week parading Simpson Street in that rig, on a week-day morning! He felt strongly that Henry had no business sticking out that way, above the village level. Hitting you in the eyes. Young Jenkins was bad enough, but at least his father had the money. Real money. And could let his son waste it if he chose. But a conceited young chump like Henry Calverly! Ought to be chucked into a factory somewhere. Stoke a furnace. Carry boxes. Work with his hands. Get down to brass tacks and see if he had any stuff in him. Doubtful.

Mr Boice made a low sound, a wheezy sound between a grunt and a hum, as he handed his hat to the black, muscular, bullet-headed, grinning Pinkie Potter, who specialised in hats and shoes in Sunbury’s leading barber shop.

He made another sound that was quite a grunt as he sank into the red plush barber chair of Heinie Schultz. His massive frame was clumsy, and the twinges of lumbago, varied by touches of neuritis, that had come steadily upon him since middle life, added to the difficulties of moving it about. He always made these sounds. He would stop on the street, take your hand non-committally in his huge, rather limp paw, and grunt before he spoke, between phrases, and when moving away.

Heinie Schultz, who was straw-coloured, thin, listlessly patient (Bill Schwartz was the noisy fat one), knew that the thick, yellowish gray hair was to be cut round in the back and the neck shaved beneath it. The beard was to be trimmed delicately, reverently – ‘not cut, just the rags taken off’ – and combed out. Heinie had attended to this hair and beard for sixteen years.

‘Heard a good one,’ murmured Heinie, close to his patron’s ear. ‘There was a bride and groom got on the sleeping car up to Duluth – ’

A thin man of about thirty-five entered the shop, tossed his hat to Pinkie, and dropped into Bill Schwartz’s chair next the window. The new-comer had straight brown hair, worn a little long over ears and collar. His face was freckled, a little pinched, nervously alert. Behind his gold rimmed spectacles his small sharp eyes appeared to be darting this way and that, keen, penetrating through the ordinary comfortable surfaces of life.

This was Robert A. McGibbon, editor and proprietor of the Sunbury Weekly Gleaner. He had appeared in the village hardly six months back with a little money – enough, at least, to buy the presses, give a little for good will, assume the rent and the few business debts that Nicholas Simms Godfrey had been able to contract before his health broke, and to pay his own board at the Wombasts’ on Filbert Avenue. His appearance in local journalism had created a new tension in the village and his appearance now in the barber shop created tension there. Heinie’s vulgar little anecdote froze on his lips. Mr Boice, impassive, heavily deliberate, after one glimpse of the fellow in the long mirror before him, lay back in the chair, gazed straight upward at the fly-specked ceiling.

Mr Boice, when face to face with Robert A. McGibbon on the street, inclined his head to him as to others. But up and down the street his barely expressed disapproval of the man was felt to have a root in feelings and traditions infinitely deeper than the mere natural antagonism to a fresh competitor in the local field.

For McGibbon was – the term was a new one that had caught the popular imagination and was worming swiftly into the American language – a yellow journalist. He had worked, he boasted openly, on a sensationally new daily in New York. In the once staid old Gleaner he used boldfaced headlines, touched with irritating acumen on scandal, assailed the ruling political triumvirate, and made the paper generally fascinating as well as disturbing. As a result, he was picking up subscribers rapidly. Advertising, of course, was another matter. And Boice had all the village and county printing.

The political triumvirate mentioned above was composed of Boice himself, Charles H. Waterhouse, town treasurer, and Mr Weston of the Sunbury National Bank. For a decade their rule had not been questioned along the street. The other really prominent men of Sunbury all had their business interests in Chicago, and at that time used the village merely for sleeping and as a point of departure for the very new golf links. Such men, I mean, as B. L. Ames, John W. MacLouden, William B. Snow, and J. E. Jenkins.

The experience of withstanding vulgar attacks was new to the triumvirate. (McGibbon referred to them always as the ‘Old Cinch.’) The Gleaner had come out for annexation to Chicago. It demanded an audit of Charlie Waterhouse’s town accounts by a new, politically disinterested group. It accused the bank of withholding proper support from men of whom old Boice disapproved. It demanded a share of the village printing.

The ‘Old Cinch’ were taking these attacks in silence, as beneath their notice. They took pains, however, in casual mention of the new force in town, to refer to him always as a ‘Democrat.’ This damned him with many. He called himself an ‘Independent.’ Which amused Charlie Waterhouse greatly. Everybody knew that a man who wasn’t a decent Republican had to be a Democrat. In the nature of things.

And they were waiting for his money and his energy to give out. Giving him, as Charlie Waterhouse jovially put it, the rope to hang himself with.

Bill Schwartz took McGibbon’s spectacles, tucked the towel around his scrawny neck, lathered chin and cheeks, and seizing his head firmly in a strong right hand turned it sidewise on the head-rest.

McGibbon lay there a moment, studying the yellowish-white whiskers that waved upward above the towels in the next chair. Bill stropped his razor.

‘How are you, Mr Boice?’ McGibbon observed, quite cheerfully.

Mr Boice made a sound, raised his head an inch. Heinie promptly pushed it down.

‘Quite a story you had last week about the musicale at Mrs Arthur V. Henderson’s.’

Mr Boice lay motionless. What was up! Distinctly odd that either journal should be mentioned between them. Bad taste. He made another sound.

‘Who wrote it?’

No answer.

‘Henry Calverly?’

A grunt.

‘Thought so!’ McGibbon chuckled.

Mr Boice twisted his head around, trying to see the fellow in the mirror. Heinie pulled it back.

‘Got it here. Hand me my glasses, Bill, will you. Thanks.’ McGibbon was sitting up, his face all lather, digging in his pocket. He produced a clipping. Read aloud with gusto: —

‘“Mrs Stelton’s art has deepened and broadened appreciably since she last appeared in Sunbury. Always gifted with a splendid singing organ, always charming in personality and profoundly, rhythmically musical in temperament, she now has added a superstructure of technical authority which gives to each passage, whether bravura or pianissimo, a quality and distinction.”’

McGibbon was momentarily choked by his own almost noiseless laughter. Bill pushed his head down and went swiftly to work on his right cheek. Two other customers had come in.

‘Great stuff that!’ observed McGibbon cautiously, under the razor. ‘“Profoundly, rhythmically musical in temperament “! “A superstructure of technical authority”! Great! Fine! That boy’ll do something yet. Handled right. Wish he was working for me.’

Mr Boice, from whom sounds had been coming for several moments, now raised his voice. It was the first time Heinie had ever heard him raise it. Bill paused, razor in air, and glanced around. Pinkie Potter looked up from the shoes he was polishing.

‘Well,’ he roared huskily, ‘what in hell’s the matter with that!’

Just then Bill turned McGibbon’s head the other way. He too raised his voice. But cheerfully.

‘Nothing much. Nice lot o’ words. Only Mrs Stelton wasn’t there. Sprained her ankle in the Chicago station on the way out.’

Bill Schwartz had a trumpet-like Prussian voice. The situation seemed to him to contain the elements of humour. He laughed boisterously.

Heinie Schultz, more politic, tittered softly, shears against mouth.

Pinkie Potter laughed convulsively, and beat out an intricate rag-time tattoo on his bootblack’s stand with his brush.

4

It was Mr Boice’s fixed habit to go on, toward noon, to the post-office. Instead, to-day, he returned to the Voice office.

He seated himself at his desk for a quarter of an hour, doing nothing. He had the faculty of sitting still, ruminating.

Finally he reached out for the two-foot rule that always lay on his desk, and carefully measured a certain article in last week’s paper. Then did a little figuring.

He rose, moved toward the door; turned, and remarked to the wondering Humphrey: —

‘Take fifteen inches off Henry’s string this week, Weaver. A dollar ‘n’ five cents. Be at the post-office if anybody wants me.’ And went out.

Humphrey himself measured Henry’s article on the musicale. Old Boice had been accurate enough; it came to an even fifteen inches. Which at seven cents an inch, would be a dollar and five cents.

When Henry reappeared and together they set out for Lower Chestnut Avenue, Humphrey found he hadn’t the heart to break this fresh disappointment to his friend. He decided to let it drift until the Saturday. Something might turn up.

Henry’s mood had changed. He had left the office, an hour earlier, looking like a discouraged boy. Now he was serious, silent, hard to talk to. He seemed three years older. With certain of Henry’s rather violently contrasted phases Humphrey was familiar; but he had never seen him look quite like this. Henry was strung up. Plainly. He walked very fast, striding intently forward. At least once in each block he found himself a yard ahead of his companion, checked himself, muttered a few words that sounded vaguely like an apology and then repeated the process.

At Mrs Henderson’s Henry was grave and curiously attractive. He had charm, no doubt of it – a sort of charm that women, older women, felt. Mildred Henderson distinctly played up to him. And Corinne, Humphrey noted, watched him now and then; the quietly observant keenness in her big dark eyes masked by her easy, lazy smile.

Toward the close of luncheon Henry’s evident inner tension showed signs of taking the form of gaiety. He acted like a young man wholly sure of himself. Humphrey’s net impression, after more than a year and a half of close association with the boy, was that he couldn’t ever be sure of himself. Not for one minute. Yet, when they threw down their napkins and pushed back their chairs, it was Henry who said, with an apparently easy arrogance back of his grain: —

‘Hump, you’ve got to be going back so soon, we’re going to give you and Mildred the living-room. We’ll wash the dishes.’

Humphrey noted the quick little snap of amusement in Mrs Henderson’s eyes (Henry had not before openly used her first name) and the demure, expressionless look that came over Corinne’s face. Neither was displeased.

To Mrs Henderson’s, ‘You’ll do no such thing!’ Henry responded smilingly: —

‘I won’t be contradicted. Not to-day.’

Corinne was still silent. But Mrs Henderson, now frankly amused, asked: —

‘Why the to-day, Henry?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Just the way I feel,’ said he; and ushered her with mock politeness into the front room, then, gallantly, almost nonchalantly, took the elbow of the unresisting Corinne and led her toward the kitchen.

Humphrey lighted a cigarette and watched them go. Then with a slight heightening of his usually sallow colour, followed his hostess into the living-room.

It will be evident to the reader that among these four young persons, rather casually thrown together in the first instance, something of an ‘understanding’ had grown up.

There had been a furtive delight about their first gathering at Humphrey’s rooms, a sense of exciting variety in humdrum village life, the very real and lively pleasure of exploring fresh personalities.

Of late years, looking back, it has seemed to me that Mildred Henderson never really belonged in Sunbury, where a woman’s whole duty lay in keeping house economically and as pleasantly as might be for the husband who spent his days in Chicago. And in bearing and rearing his children. I never knew anything of her earlier life, before Arthur V. Henderson brought her to the modest house on Chestnut Avenue. I never could figure why she married him at all. Marriages are made in so many places besides Heaven! He used to like to hear her play.

In those days, and a little later, I judged her much as the village judged her – peering out at her through the gun-ports in the armour plate of self-righteousness that is the strong defence of every suburban community. But now I feel that her real mistake lay in waiting so long before drifting to her proper environment in New York. Like all of us, she had, sooner or later, to work out her life in its own terms or die alive of an atrophied spirit. She had gifts, and needed, doubtless, to express them. I can see her now as she was in Sunbury during those years – little, trim, slim, with a quick alert smile and snappy eyes. Not a beautiful woman, perhaps not even an out-and-out pretty one, but curiously attractive. She had much of what men call ‘personality.’ And she was efficient, in her own way. She never let her musical gift rust; practised every day of her life, I think. Including Sundays. Which was one of the things Sunbury held against her.

Humphrey, too, was using Sunbury as little more than a stop gap. We knew that sooner or later he would strike his gait as an inventor. He was quiet about it. Much thought, deep plans, lay back of that long wrinkly face. While he kept at it he was a conscientious country editor. But his heart was in his library of technical books, and in his workshop in the old Parmenter barn. He must have put just about all of his little inheritance into the place.

Corinne Doag was distinctly a city person. And she was a real singer, with ambition and a firm, even hard purpose, I can see now, back of the languorous dusky eyes and the wide slow smile that Henry was not then man enough to understand. In those days, more than in the present, a girl with a strong sense of identity was taught to hide it scrupulously. It was still the century of Queen Victoria. The life of any live girl had to be a rather elaborate pretence of something it distinctly was not. For which we, looking back, can hardly blame her. Besides, Corinne was young, healthy, glowing with a quietly exuberant sense of life. I imagine she found a sort of pure joy, an animal joy, in playing with men and life. She wasn’t dishonest. She certainly liked Henry. Particularly to-day. But this was the summer time. She was playing. And she liked to be, thrilled.

An hour later, could Humphrey have glanced into the butler’s pantry, he would have concluded that he knew Henry Calverly not at all. And Miss Wombast, could she have looked in, would have been thrilled and frightened, perhaps to the point of never speaking to Henry again. And of never, never forgetting him.

As the scene has a bearing on the later events of the day, we will take a look.

They stood in the butler’s pantry, Henry and Corinne. The shards of a shattered coffee cup lay unobserved at their feet. Out in the kitchen sink all the silver and the other cups and saucers lay in the rinsing rack, the soapsuds dry on them. Henry held Corinne in his arms.

‘Henry,’ she whispered, ‘we must finish the dishes! What on earth will Mildred think?’

‘Let her think!’ said Henry.

Corinne leaned back against the shelves, disengaged her hands long enough to smooth her flying blue-black hair.

‘Henry, I never thought – ’

‘Never thought what?’

‘Wait! My hair’s all down again. They might come out here. I mean you seemed – ’

‘How did I seem? Say it!’

‘Oh well —Henry! – I mean sort of – well, reserved. I thought you were shy.’

‘Think so now!’

‘I – well, no. Not exactly. Wait now, you silly boy! Really, Henry, you musn’t be so – so intense.’

‘But I am intense. I’m not the way I look. Nobody knows – ’ Here he interrupted himself.

‘Oh, Henry,’ she breathed, her head on his shoulder now, her arm clinging about his neck. He felt very manly. Life, real life, whirled, glowed, sparkled about him. He was exultant. ‘You dear boy – I’m afraid you’ve made love to lots of girls.’

‘I haven’t!’ he protested, with unquestionable sincerity. ‘Not to lots.’

‘Silly!’ A silence. Then he felt her draw even closer to him. ‘Henry, talk to me! Make love to me! Tell me you’ll take me away with you – to-day! – now! Make me feel how wonderful it would be! Say it, anyway – even if – oh, Henry, say it!’

For an instant Henry’s mind went cold and clear. He was a little frightened. He found himself wondering if this tempestuous young woman who clung so to him could possibly be the easy, lazy, comfortably smiling Corinne. He thought of Carmen – the Carmen of Calvé. He had suped once in that opera down at the Auditorium. He had paid fifty cents to the supe captain.

The thrill of the conqueror was his. But he was beginning to feel that this was enough, that he had best rest his case, perhaps, at this’ point.

As for asking her to fly away with him, he couldn’t conscientiously so much as ask her to have dinner with him in Chicago. Not in the present state of his pocket.

One fact, however, emerged. He must propose something. He could at least have it out with old Boice. Settle that salary business. He’d have to.

Another fact is that he was by no means so cool as he, for the moment, fancied himself.

The door from dining-room to kitchen opened, rather slowly. There was a light step in the kitchen, and Mildred Henderson’s musical little voice humming the theme of the Andante in the Fifth Symphony.

Henry and Corinne leaped apart. She smoothed her hair again, and patted her cheeks. Then she took a black hair from his shoulder.

They heard Mildred at the sink. Rinsing the dishes and the silver, doubtless.

‘Hate to disturb you two,’ she called, a reassuring if slightly humorous sympathy in her voice, ‘but I promised Humphrey I’d get after you, Henry. He says you simply must get some work done to-day.’

Henry stood motionless, trying to think.’

‘Do your work here,’ Corinne whispered. ‘Stay.’

He shook his head. ‘A lot I’d get done – here with you. Now.’

‘I’ll help you. Couldn’t I be just a little inspiration to you?’

‘It ain’t inspiring work.’

‘Henry – write something for me! Write me a poem!

‘All right. Not to-day, though. Gotta do this Business Men’s Picnic.

Then he said, ‘Wait a minute;’ went into the kitchen.

‘Going over town,’ he remarked, offhand, to Mrs Henderson.

At the outer door, Corinne murmured: ‘You’ll come back, Henry?’

With a vague little wave of one hand, and a perplexed expression, he replied: ‘Yes, of course.’ And hurried off.

6

Mr Boice wasn’t at his desk at the Voice sanctum. Henry could see that much through the front window.

He didn’t go in. He felt that he couldn’t talk with Humphrey – or anybody – right now. Except old Boice. He was gunning for him. Equal to him, too. Equal to anything. Blazing with determination. Could lick a regiment.

He found his employer down at the post-office. In his little den behind the money-order window. He asked Miss Hemple, there, if he could please speak to Mr Boice.

Once again on this eventful day that conservative member of the village triumvirate found himself forced to gaze at the dressy if now slightly rumpled youth with a silly little moustache that he couldn’t seem to let go of, and the thin bamboo stick with a crook at the end. The youth whose time was so valuable that he couldn’t arrange to do his work. And once again irritation stirred behind the spotted, rounded-out vest and the thick, wavy, yellowish-white whiskers.

He sat back in his swivel chair; looked at Henry with lustreless eyes; made sounds.

‘Mr Boice,’ said Henry, ‘I – I want to speak with you. It’s – it’s this way. I don’t feel that you’re doing quite the right thing by me.’

Another sound from the editor-postmaster. Then silence.

‘You gave me to understand that I’d get better pay if I suited. Well, the way you’re doing it, I don’t even get as much. It ain’t right! It ain’t square! Now – well – you see, I’ve about come to the conclusion that if the work I do ain’t worth ten a week – well – ’

It is to be remembered of Norton P. Boice that he was a village politician of something like forty years’ experience. As such he put no trust whatever in words. Once to-day he had raised his voice, and the fact was disturbing. He had weathered a thousand little storms by keeping his mouth shut, sitting tight. He never criticised or quarrelled. He disbelieved utterly in emotions of any sort. He hadn’t written a letter in twenty-odd years. And he was not likely to lose his temper again this day – week – or month.

Henry didn’t dream that at this moment he was profoundly angry. Though Henry was too full of himself to observe the other party to the controversy.

Mr Boice clasped his hands on his stomach and sat still.

Henry chafed.

After a time Mr Boice asked, ‘Have you done the story of the Business Men’s Picnic?’

Henry shook his head.

‘Better get it done, hadn’t you?’

Henry shook his head again.

Mr Boice continued to sit – motionless, expressionless. His thoughts ran to this effect: – The article on the picnic was by far the most important matter of the whole summer. Every advertiser on Simpson Street looked for whole paragraphs about himself and his family. Henry was supposed to cover it. He had been there. It would be by no means easy, now, to work up a proper story from any other quarter.

‘Suppose,’ he remarked, ‘you go ahead and get the story in. Then we can have a little talk if you like. I’m rather busy this afternoon.’

He tried to say it ingratiatingly, but it sounded like all other sounds that passed his lips – colourless, casual.

Henry stood up very stiff; drew in a deep breath or two; His fingers tightened about his stick. His colour rose.

He leaned over; rested a hand on the corner of the desk.

‘Mr Boice,’ he said, firmly if huskily, and a good deal louder than was desirable, here in the post-office, within ear-shot of the moneyorder window – ‘Mr Boice, what I want from you won’t take two minutes of your time. You’d better tell me, right now, whether I’m worth ten dollars a week to the Voice. Beginning this week. If I’m not – I’ll hand in my string Saturday and quit. Think I can’t do better’n this! I wonder! You wait till about next November. Maybe I’ll show the whole crowd of you a thing or two! Maybe – ’

For the second time on this remarkable day the unexpected happened to and through Norton P. Boice.

Slowly, with an effort and a grunt, he got to his feet. Colour appeared in his face, above the whiskers. He pointed a huge, knobby finger at the door.

‘Get out of here!’ he roared. ‘And stay out!’

Henry hesitated, swung away, turned back to face him; finally obeyed.

Jobless, stirred by a rather fascinating sense of utter catastrophe, thinking with a sudden renewal of exultation about Corinne, Henry wandered up to the Y.M.C.A. rooms and idly, moodily, practise shooting crokinole counters.

Shortly he wandered out. An overpowering restlessness was upon him. He wanted desperately to do something, but didn’t know what it could be. It was as if a live wild animal, caged within his breast, was struggling to get out.

He walked over to the rooms; threw off his coat; tried fooling at the piano; gave it up and took to pacing the floor.

There were peculiar difficulties here, in the big living-room. Corinne had spent an evening here. She had sat in this chair and that, had danced over the hardwood floor, had smiled on him. The place, without Her, was painfully empty.

He knew now that he wanted to write. But he didn’t know what. The wild animal was a story. Or a play. Or a poem. Perhaps the poem Corinne had begged for. He stood in the middle of the room, closed his eyes, and saw and felt Corinne close to him. It was a mad but sweet reverie. Yes, surely it was the poem!

He found pencil and paper – a wad of copy paper, and curled up in the window-seat.

Things were not right. Not yet. He was the victim of wild forces. They were tearing at him. It was no longer restlessness – it was a mighty passion. It was uncomfortable and thrilling. Queer that the impulse to write should come so overwhelmingly without giving him, so far, a hint as to what he was to write. Yet it was not vague. He had to do it. And at once. Find the right place and go straight at it. It would come out. It would have to come out.