1
Miss Amelia Dittenhoefer was a figure in Sunbury. She had taught two generations of its young in the old Filbert Avenue school. And during more than ten years, since relinquishing that task, she had supplied the 'Society,' 'Church Doings,' 'Woman's Realm,' and 'Personal Mention' departments of the Voice with their regular six to eight columns of news and gossip.
And as several hundred Sunbury men and women had once been her boys and girls, this sort of personal news came to her from every side. Her 'children,' of whatever present age, accepted her as an institution, like the university building, General Grant, or Lake Michigan. She never had a desk in the Voice office, but worked at home or moving briskly about the town. Home, to her, was the rather select, certainly high-priced boarding-house of Mrs Clark on Simpson Street, over by the lake, where she had lived, at this time, for twenty-one or twenty-two years. She was little, neat, precise, and doubtless (as I look back on those days) equipped for much more important work than any she ever found to do in Sunbury. But Woman's sun had hardly begun to rise then.
As Henry had been, at the age of six, one of her boys, and during the past two years had shared with her the reporting work of the Voice, it was not unnatural that she should stop him as he was hurrying, airily twirling his thin bamboo stick, over to Stanley's restaurant. It was noontime. Simpson Street was quiet. They walked along past Donovan's drug store and Jackson's book store (formerly B. F. Jones's) and turned the corner. Here, in front of an unfrequented photographer's studio, Miss Dittenhoefer stated her problem. She looked, though her trim little person was erect as always, rather beaten down.
'Mr Boice has taken half my work, Henry—“Church Doings” and “Society.” He sent me a note. I gather that you're to do it.'
'Me?' Henry spoke in honest amazement.
'Doubtless. He's cutting down expenses. I mind, of course, after all these years. I've worked very hard. And on the money side, I shall mind a little.'
'You don't mean——'
'Oh, yes. Half the former wage. And they don't pension old teachers in Sunbury. But this is what I want to tell you——'
'Oh, but Miss Dittenhoefer, I don't——'
'Never mind, Henry; it's done. Of course I shouldn't have said as much as this. Though perhaps I had to say it to somebody. Forget what you can of it. But now—I wanted to give you this list. There's a good lot of society for summer. Never knew the old town to be so gay. Two or three things in South Sunbury that are important. They feel that we've been slighting them down there this year. I've noted everything down. And I've written the church societies, asking them to send announcements direct to the office after this.'
'I don't want your work,' said Henry, colouring up. 'It ain't—isn't—square.'
'But it's business, Henry. Mr. Boice explained that in his note. You'll find I've written everything out in detail—all my plans and the right ladies to see. Good-bye now.'
Henry, pained, unable to believe that Miss Dittenhoefer's day could pass so abruptly, walked moodily back to Stanley's and, as usual, bolted his lunch. The unkindness to Miss Dittenhoefer directly affected himself. It meant still more of the routine desk-work and more running around town.
Then, slowly, as he sat there staring at the pink mosquito-bar that was gathered round the chandelier, his eyes filled. It was hard to believe that even Mr Boice could do a thing like that to Miss Dittenhoefer. Coolly cutting her pay in half! It seemed to Henry wanton cruelty. It suggested to his sensitive mind other tales of cruelty—tales of the boys who had gone into Chicago wholesale houses for their training and had found their fresh young dream-ideals harshly used in the desperate struggle of business.
Henry, I am certain, thought of Mr Boice at this moment with about as much sympathy as a native of a jungle village might feel for a man-eating tiger. That look about Miss Dittenhoefer's mouth when she smiled! It was a world, this of placid-appearing Sunbury and the big city, just below the town line, in which men fought each other to the death, in which young boys were hardened and coarsened and taught to kill or be killed, in which women were tortured by hard masters until their souls cried out.
Boice, I am sure, sensed nothing of this somewhat morbid hostility. No; until Robert A. McGibbon turned up in Sunbury, Mr Boice had some reason to feel settled and complacent in his years. His private funds were secure in his wife's name. And he had every reason to believe that, before many months more, it would be his privilege and pleasure to run McGibbon out of town for good. If the matter of Miss Dittenhoefer should, for a little while, stir up sentimental criticism, why—well, it was business. Sound business. And you couldn't go back of sound business.
Henry sighed, got slowly up, had his meal ticket punched at the desk by Mrs Stanley, went back to the office.
2
The sunny, listless July day was at its lowest ebb—when men who had the time dawdled and smoked late over their lunch, when ladies took naps.
Flies crawled languidly about the speckled walls of the Voice office. Outside the screen door and the plate-glass front window, the hot air, rising from the cement sidewalk, quivered so that the yellow outlines of the Sunbury House across the street wavered unstably, and the dusty trees over there wavered, and the men sitting coatless, suspendered, in the yellow rocking chairs on the long veranda, wavered. Through the open press-room door came the sound of one small job-press rumbling at a handbill job; the other presses were still. The compositors worked or idled without talking.
Here in the office, Henry, tipped back in his kitchen chair before the inkstained, cluttered pine table by the end wall, coat off, limp wet handkerchief tucked carefully around his neck inside the collar, chewed a pencil, gazing now at the little pile of blank copy paper before him, now at a discouraged fly on the wall. Gradually the fly took on a perverse interest among his wandering, unhappy thoughts. Prompted, doubtless, by a sense of inner demoralisation that was now close to recklessness, he reached for a pen, filled it with ink, and shot a scattering volley at the slow-moving insect.
At the roll-top desk by the press-room door, Humphrey Weaver, also coatless, cob pipe in mouth, long lean face wrinkled in the effort to keep his usually docile mind on its task, elbow on desk and long fingers spread through damp hair, was correcting proof.
Mr Boice's desk, up in the front window, outside the railing, stood vacant. The proprietor might or might not stop in on the early-afternoon trip from his house on Upper Chestnut Avenue to the post-office. Mr Boice could do as he liked. His time was his own. He lived on the labour of others. A fact which often stirred up in Henry's breast a rage that was none the less bitter because it was impotent. It was the sort of thing, he felt, in his more nearly lucid moments, that you have to stand—the wall against which you must beat your head year after year.
Henry, victorious over the fly, settled back. He tried to work. Then sat for a time brooding. Then, finally, turned to his friend.
'Hump,' he said, 'I—I know you wouldn't think I had much to do—I mean the way you get work done—I don't know what it is—but I wish I could see a way to begin on all this new work. I know I'm no good, but——'
'I wouldn't say that.' Humphrey, glad of a brief respite, settled back in his swivel chair. 'I could never have written that picnic story. Never in the world. We're different, that's all. You're a racer; I'm a work-horse. I don't know just what it's coming to. He isn't handling you right.'
'That's it!' Henry cried, softly, eagerly. 'He isn't!'
'I suppose you know now about Miss Dittenhoefer.' Henry's head bowed in assent. 'I didn't have the heart to tell you myself, Hen.' He picked up his proofs, then looked up and out of the window. 'There,' he remarked unexpectedly, 'is a pretty girl!'
Henry turned with the quickness of long habit. 'Where?' he asked, then discovered the young person in question standing on the hotel veranda talking with Mrs B. L. Ames and Mary Ames.
She was a new girl. Even now, though Henry had given up girls for good, she caused a quickening of his pulse. She was pretty—rather slender, in a blue skirt and a trim white shirt-waist, and an unusual amount of darkish hair that massed effectively about a face, the principal characteristics of which, at this distance and through the screen door, was a bright, almost eager smile.
It is a not uninteresting fact, to those who know something of Henry's susceptibility on previous occasions, that his gaze wandered moodily back to his table. He sighed. His hand strayed up and began pulling at his little moustache.
'You haven't told me what I'm to do about it, Hump. This society thing really stumps me.'
'I haven't known quite what to say. That's all, Hen. The old man is riding you, of course. I didn't think, when he raised you to twelve a week, that he'd just lie down and pay it. Meekly. Not he! He's a crafty old duck. Very, very crafty—Cheese it; here he comes!'
The shadow of Norton P. Boice fell across the door-step. The screen door opened with a squeak, and ponderously the quietly dominating force of Simpson Street, came in, inclined his massive head in an impersonal greeting, and lowered his huge bulk into his chair.
'Henry!' called Mr Boice in his quietly husky voice.
The young man quivered slightly, but sat motionless.
'Henry!' came the husky voice again.
There could be no pretending not to hear. Henry went over there. Mr Boice sat still—he could; do that—great hands resting on his barrel-like thighs.
'I am rearranging the work of the paper—' he began.
'Yes,' muttered Henry, not without sullenness; 'I know.'
'Oh, you know!'
'Yes.'
'There's a little more for you to do. You'll have to get it cleaned up well ahead of time this week. Thursday is the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Sunbury. You'll have to cover that. Take down what you can of the speeches.'
That seemed to be all. Henry moved slowly back to the table. After a little shuffling about of the papers on his desk, Mr Boice moved heavily out and headed toward the post-office.
Then, and not before, Henry rummaged under a pile of exchanges at the rear of the table until he found a book. This he held close to his body, where it would not be seen should Humphrey turn unexpectedly.
The book was entitled Will Power and Self Mastery. Opposite the title page was a half-tone reproduction of the author—a face with a huge moustache and intensely knit brows. Henry studied it, speculating in a sort of despair as to whether he could ever bring himself to look like that. He knit his own brows. His hand strayed again to his own downy moustache.
He turned the pages. Read a sentence here and there. The book, though divided under various chapter headings, was really made up of hundreds of more or less pithy little paragraphs. These paragraphs—their substance mainly a rehandling of the work of Samuel Smiles, James Parton, and the Christian and Mental Scientists (though Henry didn't know this)—might easily have been shuffled about and arranged in other sequence, so little continuity of thought did they represent. One paragraph ran:—
The express train of Opportunity stops but once at your station. If you miss it, it will never again matter that you almost caught it.
Another was—
Practise concentration. Fix your mind on the job in hand. Aim to do it a little better than such a job was ever done before. It is related of Thomas Alva Edison that, at the early age of seven, he——
And this:—
Oh, how many a young man, standing at the parting of life's main roads, has lost for ever the golden opportunity because he stopped to light a cigarette!'
Henry replaced the book under the pile of exchanges. A copy of last week's Voice lay there.
It was the first time he had let an issue of the paper go by without reading and re-reading every line of his own work. But he had, during these five days, passed through one of life's great revolutions. Besides, he had been put on a salary basis. When on space-rates, it had been necessary to cut everything out and paste it up into a 'string' for measurement. It came to him now, with a warm little uprush of memory, that the best piece of writing he had ever done would be in this issue.
He opened the paper. There was his story, occupying all of page three that wasn't given up to advertisements. This was better than working. Besides, he ought to go over it. He settled down to it.
3
The sound that caused Humphrey to start up in surprise was the first outbreak of profanity he had ever heard from the lips of Henry Calverly.
Henry was sitting up stiffly, holding last week's Voice with hands that distinctly trembled. When Humphrey first looked, he was white, but after a moment the colour began flowing back to his face and continued flowing until his face was red. His lips were clamped tight, as if the small verbal explosion that had just passed them had proved even more startling to himself than to Humphrey. 'What is it?' asked the editor.
Henry stared at the outspread paper.
'This!' he got out. 'This—this!'
'What's the matter, Hen?'
'Don't you know?'
'Oh, your picnic story! Yes—but—what on earth is the matter with you?'
'You know, Hump! You never told me!'
'You mean the cuts?'
'Oh—yes!' This 'Oh' was a moan of anguish.
'Good heavens, Hen—you didn't for a minute think we could print it as you wrote it?' Henry's facial muscles moved, but he got no words out. Humphrey, touched, went on. 'I don't mind telling you—between ourselves—that the thing as you wrote it, every word, is the best bit of descriptive writing I've seen this year. But you wrote the real story, boy. You painted the whole Simpson Street bunch as they are—every wart. It's a savage picture. Why, we'd have dropped seventy per cent, of our advertising between Saturday and Monday! And the queer little picture of Charlie Waterhouse out behind the lemonade stand—— Why, boy, that's enough to bust open the town!
With Bob McGibbon gunning for Charlie and demanding an accounting of the town money! Gee!'
Henry seemed hardly to hear this.
'Who—who re-wrote it?'
'I did some. The old man polished it off himself.'
'It's ruined!'
'Of course. But it brought you a raise to twelve a week. That's something.'
'You don't understand. It was my work. And it was true. I wrote the truth.'
'That's why.'
'Then they don't want the truth?'
'Good lord—no!'
Henry considered this, bent over as if to read further, twisted his flushed face as if in pain, then abruptly sprang up.
'What's become of it—the piece I wrote?'
'Well, Hen—I didn't feel that we had a right to destroy the thing. Too dam good! In a sense, it's the old man's property; in another sense, it's yours——'
'It's mine!'
'In a sense. At any rate, I took it on myself to have a copy made confidentially. Then I turned the original over to Mr Boice. He doesn't know.'
'Where's the copy?'
'Here in my desk.'
'Give it to me!'
'Just hold your horses a minute, Hen——'
'You give it——'
Humphrey threw up a hand, then opened a drawer. He handed over the typewritten manuscript.
'Who made this?'
'Gertie Wombast. I warned her to keep her mouth shut.'
'How much did it cost?'
'Oh, see here, Hen—I won't talk to you! Not till you get over this excitement.'
'I'm not excited. Or, at least——'
Humphrey gave a shrug. Henry, gripping the roll of manuscript, started out.
'Wait a minute, Hen! What do you think you're going to do?'
'What do you s'pose? Only one thing I can do!'
'Going after the old man?'
'Of course! You would yourself, if——'
'No, I wouldn't. Not in any such rush as that. It's upsetting to have your good work pawed over and cut to pieces, but twelve a week is——'
'Oh, Hump, it's everything! He's made it impossible for me. I could stand some of it, but not all this. He ain't fair! He wants to make it hard for me! He's just thinking up ways to be mean. And he's spoiled my work—best thing I've ever done in my life! And now people will never know how well I can write.'
'Oh, yes, they will!'
'No, they won't. I'll never feel just that way again. It's a feeling that comes. And then it goes. You can't do anything about it. It was Corinne and the way I felt about her. And a lot o' things. Seemed to make me different. Lifted me up. I was red-hot.' He reached out and struck the paper from the table to the floor. 'You bet I'll go to old Boice! 'I'll tell him a thing or two I He'll know something's happened before he gets through with me. I've had something to say to him for a good while. Going to say it now. Guess he don't know I'll be twenty-one in November. Have a little money then. He can't put it over me. I'll buy his old paper. Or start another one. I'll make the town too hot for him. Thinks he owns all Sunbury. But he don't!'
'Hen,' said Humphrey bravely, when the irate youth paused for breath, 'you simply must not try to talk to him while you're mad as this.'
'But don't you see, Hump,' cried Henry, his face working with vexation, tears close to his eyes; 'it's just the time! When I'm mad. If I wait, I'll never say a word.'
He rolled the manuscript tightly in his hand, bit his lip, then abruptly rushed out.
'Look here,' cried Humphrey. 'Don't you go showing that——'
But the only reply was the noisy slam of the screen door.
Face set, eyes wild behind their glasses, Henry hurried down Simpson Street toward the post-office.
Miss Hemple, at the money-order window, said that Mr Boice was having a talk with Mr Waterhouse in the back office and wasn't to be disturbed.
Henry turned away. For a little time he studied the weather-chart hanging on the wall. He went to the wide front window and gazed out on the street. His determination was already oozing away. He found himself slouching and straightened up. Repeatedly he had to do this. Four times he went back to the money-order window; four times Miss Hemple smiled and shook her head.
Martha Caldwell walked by with the two Smith girls. He thought she saw him. If so, she carefully avoided a direct glance. They still weren't speaking. At least, Martha wasn't. And to think that during three long years, except for another episode now and than, she had been his girl!
Heigh-ho! No more girls! He was through!
The Ames's carriage rolled fly. Mary Ames was in it. And—apparently, unmistakably—the new girl. The girl of the Sunbury House veranda. She was chatting brightly. She was pretty.
He turned mournfully away. She was not for him. Once it might have been possible—back in his gay big days. But not now. Not now.
He approached the window for the sixth time. For the sixth time, Miss Hemple shook her head.
He wandered out to the door.
His chance had passed. If the old man should, at this moment, and alone, come walking out, he would say meekly, 'Good-afternoon, Mr Boice,' and hurry away. He would even try to look busy and earnest. There was shame in the thought. His mouth was drooping at the corners. All of him—body, mind, spirit—was sagging now. He moved, slowly down toward the tracks, entered the little lunch-counter place there and ate a thick piece of lemon-meringue pie. Which was further weakness. He knew it. It completed his depression.
He felt that he must think. He ordered another piece of pie. He wished he hadn't said so much to Humphrey. Would he ever learn to control the spoken word? Probably not. He sighed. And ate. He couldn't very well go back to the office. Not like this—in defeat. All that work, too I Life, work, friendship, all the realities seemed to be slipping from his grasp. His thoughts were drifting off into a haze. It was an old familiar mood. It had come often during his teens. Not so much lately; but he was as helpless before it as he had been at eighteen, when he finally drifted aimlessly out of his class at the high school.
In those days, it had been his habit to wander along the beach, sit on a breakwater, let life and love and duty drift by beyond his reach. Thither he headed now by a back street. Too many people he knew along Simpson Street. Besides, he might be thrown face to face with the old man.
At the corner of Filbert Avenue he met the editor and proprietor of the Gleaner. He inclined his head with unconscious severity and would have passed on.
But Robert A. McGibbon came to a halt, smiled in a thin strained fashion, and glanced curiously from Henry's face to the tightly rolled manuscript in his hand and back to the face.
'Well,' he remarked, 'how's things?'
Henry wanted to be let alone. But he had never deliberately snubbed anybody in his life. He couldn't. So he, too, came to a stop.
'Oh, pretty good,' he replied.
4
He found himself, in his turn, looking Mr McGibbon over. The man was just a little seedy. He had a hand up, rubbing the back of his head under the tipped-down straw hat, and Henry noted the shiny black surface of his sleeve. He had a freckled, thinly alert face, a little pinched. His hair was straight and came down raggedly about ears and collar. Behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, small, sharp eyes, very keen, appeared to be darting this way and that, restlessly noting everything within their range of vision.
'Things going well over at the Voice office?' Henry was silent. He couldn't lie. 'Not going so well, eh? That's too bad. Anything special up?'
'No,' said Henry, finding his voice untrustworthy; 'nothing special.'
'What you doing now? Anything much?' Henry shook his head. 'Taking a little walk, perhaps.'
'Why—yes.'
'Mind if I walk along with you?'
'Why—no.'
They fell into step.
'Been thinking a little about you lately. Wondering if you were happy in your work over there.' Henry compressed his lips. 'Did you write the Business Men's Picnic story?' Henry was silent. 'Pretty fair job, I thought.'
'It was terrible!'
'Oh, no—not terrible. You're too hard on yourself.'
'I'm not hard on myself. It's his fault. He spoiled it.'
'Who—Boice? I shouldn't wonder. He could spoil The New York Sun in two days, with just a little rope.'
'He tore it all to pieces. I've got the real story here. I couldn't let you see it, of course.'
McGibbon glanced down at the roll of paper.
'You like to write, don't you?' Henry nodded shortly. 'Boice won't let you do it, I suppose.' Henry shook his head. 'He wouldn't. You know, there isn't really any reason why a country paper shouldn't be interesting. Play to the subscriber, you know. Boice plays to the advertiser and the county printing. Other way takes longer, takes a little more money at first, but once you get your subscriber hooked, the advertiser has to follow. Better for the long game.'
Henry was only half listening. They were crossing the Lake Shore Drive now. They stopped at the railing and looked out over the lake. Henry's thoughts were darting this way and that, searching instinctively for a weak spot in the wall of fate that had closed in on him.
'I've got a little money,' he said.
McGibbon smiled.
'Well, it has its uses.'
'I haven't quite got it. I get the interest. And they'll have to give me all of it in November. The seventh. I'll be twenty-one then.' These words seemed to reassure. Henry. 'Yes; I'll be twenty-one. It's quite a little, too. Over four thousand dollars. It was my mother's.'
'It's not to be sneezed at,' said McGibbon reflectively. 'If I had four thousand right now—or one thousand, for that matter—I could make sure of turning my corner and landing the old Gleaner on Easy Street. I've had a fight with that paper. Been through a few things these eight months. But I'm gaining circulation in chunks now. Six months more, and I'll nail that gang.'
'You know'—McGibbon threw a knee up on the railing and lighted a cigar—'it takes money to make money.'
'Oh, yes—of course,' said Henry.
'A thousand dollars now on the Gleaner would be worth ten thousand ten years from now.' He smoked thoughtfully. 'I've been watching you, Calverly. And if it wasn't so tough on you, I could laugh at old Boice. He's got a jewel in you, and he doesn't know it. I suppose he keeps you grinding—correcting proof, running around——'
'Oh, you've no idea!' Henry burst out. 'Everything! Just an awful grind! And now he expects me to cover all the “Society” and “Church Doings.”'
'What! How's that? Has he come down on Miss Dittenhoefer?'
Henry swallowed convulsively and nodded.
'He's piling it all on me, and I won't stand for it. It ain't right! It 'ain't fair! And you bet your life he's going to hear a few things from me before this day's much older! I'm going to tell him a thing or two!'
'That's right!' said McGibbon. 'He won't respect you any the less for it.'
A silence followed. Henry stood, flushed, breathing hard through set teeth, staring out at the horizon.
'I'm going to tell you something, Calverly. And it's because I feel that you and I are going to be friends. I've known about you, of course. I know you can write. You'd do a lot to make a paper readable. Which is what a paper has got to be. But now I can see that we're going to be friends. You've confided in me. I'm going to confide in you.' He paused, blew out a long, meditative arrow of smoke, then added, 'I know a little about that story you wrote.'
'You do!' McGibbon slowly nodded. 'But how?'
'You must remember, Calverly, that I'm not like these small-town folks around here. I've worked at this game in New York, and I know a thing or two.'
'I've been in New York,' said Henry.
'Great town! But I don't spend my time here in daydreams. I have my lines out all over town. There's mighty little going on that I don't know.'
'You seem to know a lot about Charlie Waterhouse.'
McGibbon smiled like a sphinx, then said:—
'I've nearly got him. Not quite, but nearly.'
'But I don't see how you could know about——'
'I told you I was going to confide in you. It's simple enough. Gert Wombast let her sister read it—the one that works at the library. Swore her to secrecy. And—well, I board at the Wombasts'—Look here, Calverly: you'd better let me read it.'
Henry promptly surrendered it.
McGibbon laid the manuscript on his knee, lighted a fresh cigar, and gazed at the lake. Henry, all nerves, was clasping and unclasping his hands.
'Of course,' he said, 'this ain't really a finished thing, you understand. It's just as I wrote it off—fast, you know—and I haven't had a chance to correct it or——'
McGibbon raised his hand.
'No, Calverly—none of that. This is literature. Of course, old Boice couldn't print it. Never in the world. But it's sweet stuff. It's a perfect, merciless pen-picture of life on Simpson Street. And those two old crooks behind the lemonade stand—you've opened a jack-pot there. If you only knew it, son, that's evidence. Evidence! You walked right into it. Charlie Waterhouse is short in his town accounts. I know that. Boice and Weston are covering up for him. They work up this neat little purse and give it to Charlie. Why? Because he's the most popular man in Sunbury? Rot! Because they're helping him pay back. Making the town help.'
'Oh, do you really think——'
'“Think?” I know. This completes the picture. Tell me—what is Boice paying you?'
'Twelve a week, now.'
'Hm! That's quite a little for a country weekly. I could meet it, though, if—see here: What chance is there of your getting, say, a thousand of your money free and investing in the Gleaner? Now, wait! I want to put this thing before you. It's the turning-point. If we act without delay, we've got 'em. We've got everything. We own the town. Here we are! The Gleaner is just at the edge of success. I take you over from the Voice at the same salary—twelve a week. I'll give you lots of rope. I won't expect routine from you. I'll expect genius. Stuff like this. The real thing. Just when it comes to you, and you feel you can't help writing. With this new evidence I can go after Charlie Waterhouse and break him. I'll finish Boice and Weston at the same time. Show up the whole outfit! Whatever'll be left of the Voice by that time, Boice can have and welcome. The Gleaner will be the only paper in Sunbury.'
'My Uncle Arthur is executor of my mother's estate.'
'You go right after him. No time to lose. We must drive this right through.'
'I'll see him to-morrow.'
'Couldn't you find him to-night?'
5
Uncle Arthur lived in Chicago, out on the West Side. It was a long ride—first by suburban train into the city, then by cable-car through miles upon miles of gray wooden tenements and dingy gray-brick tenements. You breathed in odours of refuse and smoke and coal-gas all the way.
Uncle Arthur was as thin as McGibbon, but wholly without the little gleam in the eyes that advertised the proprietor of the Gleaner as an eager and perhaps dangerous man. Uncle Arthur was a man of method who had worked through long years into a methodical but fairly substantial prosperity.
His thin nose was long, and prominent. His brow was deeply furrowed. His gaze was critical. He believed firmly that life is a disciplinary training for some more important period of existence after death. He didn't smoke or drink. Nor would he keep in his employ those who indulged in such practices. He was an officer of several organisations aiming at civic and social reform.
Uncle Arthur laid a pedantic stress, in all business matters, on what he called 'putting the thing right end to.' It was not unnatural, therefore, that he should receive a distinctly unfavourable impression when Henry began, with a foolish little gesture and a great deal of fumbling at his moustache, slouching in his chair, by saying 'There's a little chance come up—oh, nothing much, of course—for me to make a little money, sort of on the side—and you see I'll be twenty-one in November; so it's just a matter of three or four months, anyway—and I was figuring—oh, just talking the thing over——'
His voice trailed off into a mumble.
'If you would take your hand away from your mouth, Henry,' said his uncle sharply, 'perhaps I could make out what you're trying to say.'
Henry sat up with a jerk.
'Why, you see, Uncle Arthur, there's a fellow bought the old Sunbury Gleaner and he's awfully smart—got his training in New York—and he's brought the paper already—why, it ain't eight months!—to where he's right on the point of turning his corner. You see, a thousand dollars now may easily be worth ten thousand in a few years. The Voice is a rotten paper. Nobody reads the darned thing. And I can't work for old Boice, anyhow. He drives me crazy. If he'd just give me half a chance to do the kind of thing I can do best once in a while; but this——'
'Henry, are you asking me to advance you a thousand dollars of your principal?'
'Why—well, yes, if——'
'Most certainly not!'
'But, you see, it's so close to November seventh, anyway, that I thought——'
'You thought that on your twenty-first birthday I would at once close out the investments I have made with the money your mother left and hand you the principal in cash?'
Henry stared at him, his thoughts for the moment frozen stiff. In Uncle Arthur's obstructionist attitude, so suddenly revealed, lay the promise of a new, wholly undreamed-of disappointment. It was crushing. Then, almost in the same second, it was stimulating. Henry's eyes blazed.
'You mean to say——' he began, shouting.
'I mean to say that I haven't the slightest intention of letting you squander the money your mother so painfully—'
'That's my money!'
'But I'm your uncle and your guardian——'
'You needn't think you're going to keep that one minute after November seventh!'
'I will use my judgment. I won't be dictated to by a boy who——'
'But you gotta!'
'I have not got to!'
'I won't stand for——'
'Henry, I won't have such talk here. I think you had better go.'
Henry, with a good deal of mumbling, went. He was bewildered. And the little storm of indignant anger had shaken him. He returned, during the ride back past the tenements on the jerky cable-car, through streets that swarmed with noisy, ragged children and frowsy adults and all the smells, to depression. McGibbon said that Uncle Arthur's threat to hold the money after the seventh of November was a distinct point.
'In these matters, unfortunately, where a relative or family friend has for years had charge of money belonging to others, little temptations are bound to come up. Now, your uncle may be the most scrupulously honest of men, but——'
'He has a bad eye,' Henry put in.
'I don't doubt it. Calverly, let me tell you—never forget this—a man who hesitates for one instant to account freely, fully for money is never to be trusted.'
'But what can I do?'
'Do? Everything! Just what I'm doing with Charlie Waterhouse, for one thing—insist on a full statement.'
'They framed a letter—or McGibbon framed it—demanding an accounting, 'in order that further legal measures may not become necessary.' McGibbon said he would send it early in the morning, registered, and with a special-delivery stamp. 'Later, they decided to add emphasis by means of a telegram demanding immediate consideration of the letter.
Late that night, when Humphrey came upstairs into a pitch-dark living-room and switched on the light, he discovered a pale youth sitting stiffly on a window-seat wide-awake, eyes staring nervously, hands clasped.
'Well, what on earth?' said he, in mild surprise.
'Oh, Hump, I've wondered what you'd think—leaving you in the lurch with all that work!
Humphrey threw out a lean hand.
'I can manage. Get some help from one of the students. And Gertie Wombast is usually available—— Oh, say; how about the old man? Did you tell him what's what?'
Henry's burning eyes stared out of that white face. Suddenly—so suddenly that Humphrey himself started—he sprang up, cried out; 'No! No! No!' and rushed into his bedroom, slamming the door after him.
Humphrey looked soberly at the door, shook his head, filled his pipe.
That 'No! No! No!' still rang in his ears It was a cry of pain.
Humphrey had suffered; but he had never known a turbulence of the sort that every now and then seemed to tear Henry to pieces.
'Must be fierce,' he thought. 'But it works up as well as down. Runs to extremes. Creative faculty, I suppose. Well, he's got it—that's all. And he's only a kid. Thing to do's to stand by and try to steady him up a little when he comes out of it.'
And the philosophical Humphrey went to bed.
6
At noon, no word had come from Uncle Arthur. Henry, all the morning, had flitted back and forth between McGibbon's rear office and the telegraph office in the 'depot.'
At twelve-thirty, they sent a peremptory message, demanding a reply by three o'clock. An ultimatum.
The reply came unexpectedly, with startling effect, at twenty-five minutes past two, requesting Henry to come directly into his uncle's Chicago office.
He caught the two-forty-seven. McGibbon, who had missed nothing of the concern on Henry's face at this brisk counter-offensive on the part of Uncle Arthur, was with him.
McGibbon waited in the corner drug store while Henry-went up in one of the elevators of the great La Salle Street office-building.
Uncle Arthur led the way into his inner office, closed the door, seated himself, and with austerity surveyed the youth before him, taking in with deliberate thought the far-from-inexpensive blue-serge suit, the five-dollar straw hat, the bamboo stick (which Henry carried anything but airily now), and the hopelessly futile little moustache.
'Sit down,' said Uncle Arthur.
Henry sat down.
Uncle Arthur opened a drawer, took up two slips of paper, deliberately laid them before his nephew.
'There,' he said, 'is my cheque for one thousand forty-six dollars and twenty-nine cents. It is the value, with interest to this morning, of one bond which I am buying from you, at the price given in to-day's quotations. Kindly sign the receipt. Right there.'
He dipped a pen and Henry signed, then, with shaky fingers, picked up the cheque, fingered it, laid it down again.
'I want no misunderstandings about this, Henry. I am doing it because I regard you as a young fool. Perhaps you will be less of a fool after you have lost this money. Henry heard the words through a mist of confused feelings. 'I will have no more letters and telegrams like these.' He indicated the little sheaf of papers on his desk. 'And I won't have my character assailed either by you or by any cheap scoundrel whose advice you may be taking.'
'But—but he's not a cheap scoundrel!'
Uncle Arthur raised his eyebrows. His eyes, Henry felt, would burn holes in him if he stayed here much longer.
'You're hard on me, Uncle Arthur. You're not fair I'm not going to lose——'
The older man abruptly got up.
'If you care for any advice at all from me, I suggest that you insist on a note from this man—a demand note, or, at the very outside, a three-months' one. Don't put money unsecured into a weak business. Make it a personal obligation on the part of the proprietor. And now, Henry, that is all. I really don't care to talk to you further.
Henry stood still.
His uncle turned brusquely away.
'But—but—' Henry said unsteadily, 'Uncle Arthur—really! Money isn't everything!'
His uncle turned on him as if about to speak; but on second thought merely raised his eyebrows again.
And then came the final humiliation, the little climax that was always to stand out with particular vividness in Henry's memory of the scene. He turned to go. He had reached the door when he heard his uncle's voice, saying, with a rasp:—
'You have forgotten the cheque, Henry'
And he had to go back for it.
7
One effect of the scene was a slight coolness toward McGibbon.
'I shall want your note,' he said.
McGibbon turned his head away at this and looked out of the car window. Then, a moment later, he replied:—
'Sure! Of course! It's just as I told you—always watch a man who hesitates a minute in money matters.'
'Three months,' said Henry.
'And we can arrange renewals in a friendly spirit between ourselves,' said McGibbon.
At the Sunbury station, Henry drew a little red book from his pocket, knit his brows, and said:—
'I owe you for those car fares. Two; wasn't it? Or three?'
'Oh, shucks! Don't think of that!'
'Was it two or three?'
'Well—if you really—two.'
Henry gave him a dime. Then entered the item in the small book.
'What's that?' asked McGibbon. 'Keep accounts?'
'Oh, yes,' Henry replied; 'I'm very careful about money.'
'It's a good way to be,' said McGibbon.
The Gleaner office was over Hemple's meat-market on Simpson Street, up a long flight of stairs. Here they paused.
'Come up,' said McGibbon jovially, 'and pick out the place for your desk.'
'No,' said Henry; 'not now. Got to hurry. But I'll be right over.'
He had to hurry, because it was nearly five o'clock, and Mr Boice might be gone. And it seemed to Henry to be important that he should have the cheque still in his pocket at the moment.
His eyes were burning again. And his brain was racing.
'Say!' he cried abruptly. 'Look here! Miss Dittenhoefer——'
Their eyes met. I think McGibbon, for the first time, really felt the emotional power that was unquestionably in Henry. His own quick eyes now took on some of that fire.
'Great!' he answered. And would have talked on, but Henry had already torn away, almost running.
He rushed past the Gleaner office without a glance. It suddenly didn't matter whether Mr Boice had gone or not. Henry was a firebrand now. He would unhesitatingly trail the man to his home, to the Sunbury Club, to Charlie Waterhouse's, even to Mr Weston's. The Power was on him!
Mr Boice had not gone. Even twenty minutes later, when Henry came into the office, he was still at his desk. Over it, between the dusty pile of the Congressional Record and the heap of ancient zinc etchings, his thick gray hair could be seen.
Henry entered, head erect, tread firm, marched in through the gate in the railing to his table, rummaged through the heaps of old exchanges, proofs, hand-bills, and programmes for a book that was there, and certain other little personal possessions. The two pencils and one penholder were his. Also, a small glass inkstand. He gathered these up, made a parcel in a newspaper. He felt Humphrey's eyes on him. He heard old Boice move.
Then came the husky voice.
'Henry!' He went on tying the parcel. 'Henry—come here!'
He turned to his friend.
'Gotta do it, Hump. Tell you later.'
Then he moved deliberately to the desk out front, rested an elbow on it, looked down at the bulky, motionless figure sitting there.
'Where've you been?' asked Mr Boice.
'Been attending to my own affairs.'
'How do you expect your work to be done? The fiftieth anniversary of——'
'I haven't any work here.'
'Oh, you haven't?'
'No. Through with you. You owe me a little for this week, but I don't want it. Wouldn't take it as a gift.' His voice was rising. He could feel Humphrey's eyes over the top of his desk. And a stir by the press-room door told him that Jim Smith was listening there, with two or three compositors crowding pip behind him. 'Not as a gift. It's dirty money. I'm through with you. You and your crooked crowd!'
'Oh, you are?'
'Yes. Through with you. I'm on a decent paper now. A paper that ain't afraid to print the truth.'
Mr Boice, still motionless, indulged his only nervous affection, making little sounds.'
'Mmm!' he remarked. 'Hmm! Ump! Mmm!' Then he said, 'Meaning the Gleaner, I presume.'
'Meaning the Gleaner.'
'I suppose you know that McGibbon's slated to fail within the month. He can't so much as meet his pay-roll.'
'I know more'n that!' cried Henry, laughing nervously. 'I know he's got money because I put some in to-day. Miss Dittenhoefer's quitting you this week, too. She's enthusiastic about us. I've just seen her. We're going to have a big property there. We'll buy you out one o' these days for a song. Then it'll be the Gleaner and Voice. See? But, first, we're going to clean up the town. You and Charlie Waterhouse and that-old whited sepulchre in the bank! I'll show you you can't fool with me!'
It was very youthful. Henry wished, in a swift review, that he had thought up something better and rehearsed it.
Then he saw the eyes of the huge, still man waver down to his desk. And his heart bounded.
'He's afraid of me!' ran his thoughts. 'I've licked him!'
It was the time to leave. Parcel under arm, he strode out.
Out on the sidewalk, he laughed aloud. Which wouldn't do. He was a business man now. With investments. He mustn't go grinning down Simpson Street.
But it was worth a thousand dollars. Just to feel this way once.
Jim Smith? out of breath, came sidling up to the corner. He had run around through the alley.
He wrung Henry's hand.
'Great!' he cried. 'Soaked it to the old boy, you did! Makes me think of a story. Maybe you've heard this one. If you have, just——'
A hand fell on Henry's shoulder.
It was Humphrey, hatless. He must have walked out right past Mr Boice. His face wrinkled into a grin.
'My boy,' he said, 'right here and now I thank you for the joy you've brought into my young life. The impossible has happened. The beautifully impossible. It was great.'
'Well,' cried Henry, beaming, unstrung, a touch of nervous aggression in his voice, 'I said it!'
'Oh, you said it' cried Humphrey.
Thus Henry closed a door behind him. And treading the air, trying desperately to control the upward-twitching corners of his mouth, humming the wedding-march from Lohengrin to the familiar words:—
Here comes the bride—
Get on to her stride!
—he marched, a conqueror, down Simpson Street. Yes, it was worth a thousand.
Back in the old Voice office, Mr Boice sat motionless, big hands sprawling across his thighs, making little sounds.
I think he was trying, in his deliberate way, to figure out what had happened. But he never succeeded in figuring it out. Not this particular incident. He couldn't know that it is as well to face a tigress as an artist whose mental offspring you have injured.
No; to him, Henry, the boy of the silly little cane and the sillier moustache, had stepped out of character. He couldn't know that Henry, the drifting, helpless youth, and Henry the blazing artist were two quite different persons. In Mr Boice's familiar circles they played duplicate whist and talked business, but they were not acquainted with the mysteries of dual personality such as appear in the case of any genius, great or small.
Nor (for the excellent reason that he had never heard of William Blake or his works) did the immortal line come to mind;—
Did He who made the lamb make thee?
Mr Boice was obliged to give it up.