1
There is nothing more unsettling than a sudden uncalculated, incalculable success. It at once thrills, depresses, confuses. People attack with the most unexpected venom. Others, the most unexpected others, defend with vehemence, One feels queerly out of it, yet forlornly conspicuous. As if it were some one else, or a dream. Innocent effort dragged to the public arena, quarrelled over, misunderstood. One boasts and apologises in a breath; dreads the thing will keep up and fears it will stop; finds one day it has stopped and ever after thinks back in sentimental retrospect to the good old days, the great days, when one did stir them up a bit.
Henry awoke on this Saturday morning to a sense of trouble that hung heavily over him during the walk with Humphrey from the rooms to Stanley's. Nothing of the stir reached them here. They were so late that the restaurant was about empty. Humphrey did hear a faint, distant voice booming, but gave no particular thought to it at the moment. And the Stanleys went quietly about their business as usual. Henry, indeed, was deep in his personal concern.
This found words over the oatmeal. He drew a rumpled paper from his pocket and submitted it to his room mate.
'Got this last night,' Henry explained moodily.
Humphrey read the following pencilled communication:—
'Henry Calverly, can't you see that your attentions are making it hard for a certain young lady? Do you want to injure her reputation along with yours? Why don't you do the decent thing and leave town!
'A Round Robin of People Who Know You.'
Humphrey pursed his lips over it.
'It's the Mamie Wilcox trouble, of course,' he said finally.
Henry nodded. His mouth drooped at the corners. There was a shine in his eyes.
Humphrey folded the paper; handed it back.
'Do you know who did it?'
Henry shook his head. 'They printed it out. Oh, I can make guesses, of course. It's about Cicely Hamlin and me.'
'You can't do anything.'
'I know.'
'And maybe you're going to be so successful that it won't matter. Laugh at 'em.'
'I don't believe that, Hump. I can't even imagine it.'
'At that, it may be jealousy.'
'I've thought of that. Even if it is...' they're partly right. I didn't do what they think, but... Don't you see, Hump?'
'Oh, yes, I see clearly enough.'
'I've felt it. When I was all stirred up over my work, I went there to call. Last Saturday night. Then I got to thinking.' His voice was unsteady, but he kept on. Rather doggedly. 'I've stayed away all this week. Just worked. You know. You've seen how I've kept at it. Until Thursday night. I sorta slipped up then and went around there. She was out. And that's all. I've thought I—I've felt... Hump, do you believe in love—you know—at first sight?'
Humphrey's long face wrinkled into a rather wry smile, then sobered.
'I ought to,' he replied. 'In a way it was like that—with me.'
2
The first of Henry's meaty, fantastic little stories of the plain folk of the village, that one called The Caliph of Simpson Street, had appeared in the Gleaner of the preceding Saturday. It had made a distinct stir.
The second story was out on this the Saturday of our present narrative. In the order of writing, and in Henry's plans, it should have been The Cauliflowers of the Caliph. But Bob McGibbon, hanging wearily over the form in the press room late Friday night, suddenly hit on the notion of putting Sinbad the Treasurer in its place. He had all but the last one or two in type by that time. There were no mechanical difficulties; and he didn't consult the author. He could hit Charlie Waterhouse harder this way. The Cauliflowers was quietly humorous; while Sinbad the Treasurer had a punch. That was how McGibbon put it to the foreman, Jimmy Albers. The word 'punch' was fresh slang then. McGibbon himself introduced it into Sunbury.
Henry had Charlie and the town money in the back of his head, of course, when he wrote Sinbad. Probably more than he himself knew. McGibbon sniffed a sensation in the brief, vivid narrative. And a sensation of some sort he had to have. It was now or never with McGibbon.... He was able even to chuckle at the way Charlie would froth. He couldn't admit that the coat fitted, of course. He would just have to froth. It was Henry's naïveté that made the thing so perfect. An older man wouldn't have dared. Henry had just naturally rushed in. Yes, it was perfect.
Bob McGibbon was a hustler. And his nervous quickness of perception had brought him a few small successes and was to bring him larger ones. His Sunbury disaster was perhaps later to be charged to education.
The roots of that particular failure went deep. From first to last his attitude was that of a New Yorker in a small town. He outraged every local prejudice; he alienated, one by one, each friendly influence. He couldn't understand that any such village as Sunbury resents the outsider who insists on pointing out its little human failings. It was recognised here and there as possible that old man Boice and Mr Weston of the bank might be covering up something in the matter of the genial town treasurer; but there was reason enough to believe that Mr Boice and Mr Weston knew pretty well what they were about. That, at least, was the rather equivocal position into which McGibbon by his very energy and assertiveness, drove many a ruffled citizen.
And it had needed very little urging on the part of the three leading citizens (McGibbon had a trick of referring to them in his paper as 'the Old Cinch') to bring about the boycott on the part of the Simpson Street and South Sunbury advertisers. As Charlie Waterhouse himself put it:—
'It ain't what he says about me. I can stand it. Man to man I can attend to him. The thing is, he's hurtin' the town. That's it—he's hurtin' the town.'
3
I have spoken of McGibbon's perception. He knew before reading three paragraphs that Henry had a touch of genius. Before finishing A Kerbstone Barmecide he knew—knew with a mental grasp that was pitifully wasted on the petty business of a country weekly—that nothing comparable had appeared anywhere in the English-speaking world since Plain Tales from the Hills and Soldiers Three. He knew, further, what no Sunbury seems ever able to recognise, that it is your occasional Henry who, as he mentally put it, 'rings the bell.' A queer young man, slightly dudish in dress, unable to fit in any conventional job, unable really to fall into step with his generation, blunderingly but incorrigibly a non-conformist, a moodily earnest yet absurdly susceptible young man, slightly self-conscious, known here and there among those of his age as 'sarcastic,' brilliant occasionally, dogged some of the time, dreamy and irresponsible the rest, yet with charm. A youth who not infrequently was guilty of queer, rather unsocial acts; not of meanness or unkindness, rather of an inability to feel with and for others, to fit. A youth destined to work out his salvation, if at all, alone.
Yes, McGibbon read the signs shrewdly. For which Sunbury owes that erratic editor a small debt that remains unpaid and unrecorded to-day. No doubt that McGibbon brought him out. Encouraged him, spurred him, held him to it.
It was tradition in Sunbury that the two weekly papers should come decorously into the world each Saturday morning for the first delivery of mail. A small pile of each, toward noon was put on sale in Jackson's book store (formerly B. F. Jones's). That was all.
And that was why McGibbon was able, on this Saturday of our story, to shake the town.
Poor old Sunbury was shaken heavily and often that summer. First by the Mamie Wilcox scandal. The sort of thing that didn't, couldn't happen. Men leaving town, and all that. A miserable, hastily contrived marriage. Henry's name dragged in, unjustly (as it happened), but convincingly. Though Henry always worked best after some sort of a blow. He had to be shaken out of himself. I think. It isn't likely that he could or would have written Satraps of the Simple if this particular blow hadn't fallen. It was a feverish job. He was stung, quivering, helpless. And then his great gift functioned.
Then Madame Watt happened to Sunbury. And shook the village to its roots.
And then came Bob McGibbon's last and mightiest effort.
When all commuting Sunbury converged on the old red brick 'depot' that morning for the seven-eleven and the seven forty-six and the eight-three and the eight-twenty-nine, hoarsely bellowing newsboys held the two ends of the platform. They wore cotton caps with 'The Weekly Gleaner' printed around the front. They were big, deep-throated roughs, the sort that shout 'extras' through the cities. They crowded the local newsdealer, little Mr Beamer, back into one of the waiting-rooms.
They fairly intimidated the town. People bought the Gleaner in self-defence, even boarded trains and rode off to Chicago without their regular Tribune or Record or Inter Ocean.
Other newsmen roamed the shady, pleasant residence streets, bellowing. Housewives, old gentlemen, servants, hurried out to buy.
There were posters on the fences, and, along the billboards from Rockwell Park on the south to Borea on the north. McGibbon actually rented the space from the Northern Billboard Company. And there were newsmen with caps, in the afternoon, attacking the North Shore home-comers in the Chicago station, the very heart of things. All this—posters screaming like the news-men; big wood type, red and black—to advertise Sinbad the Treasurer and the rest of the long series and Henry Calverly.
'Attack' is the word. McGibbon was assaulting the town and the region as it had hardly been assaulted before. If it was his last, it was surely his most outrageous act from the local point of view. People talked, boiled, raged. The blatancy of the thing irritated them to the point of impotent mutterings. They were helpless. McGibbon was breaking no laws. He was stirring them, however feverish his condition of mind, with deliberate intent. It was his notion of advertising. Reaching the mark, regardless of obstacles, indifference, difficulties. And had his personal circumstances been less harrowing he could have chuckled happily at the result.
The noise fell upon the ear drums of Charlie Waterhouse as he walked down-town. A ragged, red-faced pirate thrust a Gleaner into his hand, snatched his nickel, and rushed off, bellowing.
Charlie began reading Sinbad the Treasurer as he walked. He finished it standing on the turf by the sidewalk, ignoring passing acquaintances, nervously biting and mouthing a cigar that had gone out. In the same condition he read bits of it again. He stood for a while, wavering; then went back home, and spoke roughly to Mrs Waterhouse when she asked him why. He hid the paper from her, to no particular purpose. He didn't appear at the town hall all day, but caught a trolley into Chicago and went to a dime museum. Later in the day he was seen by two venturesome youths sitting alone in the rear of a stage box at Sam T. Jack's.
Norton P. Boice became aware of the sensation on his familiar way to the Voice office.
Humphrey, at his own editorial desk behind the railing, waited, apparently buried in galley proofs, for the explosion. He had caught it all after leaving Henry at Stanley's door, and had prowled a bit, taking it in.
But Mr Boice simply made little sounds—'Hmm!' and 'mmp!' and 'Hmm!' again. Then, slowly lifting his ponderous figure, the upper half of his face expressionless as always above his long yellowish-white beard, went out.
For an hour he was shut up with Mr Weston in the director's room at the bank; his huge bulk disposed in an armchair; little, low-voiced, neatly bearded Mr Weston standing by the mantel. It came down to this:—
'Could throw him into bankruptcy. He must be about broke.'
Thus Boice. 'We'd get the stories that way. Suppress 'em.'
The old gentleman was still wincing from the artlessly subtle stabs he had suffered a week back in The Caliph of Simpson Street. Everybody within four miles of the postoffice knew who the Caliph was. He had caught people hiding their smiles. Mentally he was considering a new drawn head for the Voice, with the phrase 'And The Weekly Gleaner' neatly printed just below. There never had been room for two papers in Sunbury anyway.
Mr Weston was shaking his head. 'May as well sit tight, Nort. What harm's to be done, is done already. He'll have to come down. We'll get him then.'
'You haven't got any of his paper here, have you?'
'There was one note. I called that some time ago.'
'Wha'd he do?'
'Paid it. He seems still to have a little something. But he can't last. Not without advertising.'
'But he's selling his paper fast. If he can keep that up maybe he'll begin to pick up a little along the street.'
Mr Weston was still shaking his head. 'Better wait, Nort.'
'No, I'll offer him a few hundred. The old Gleaner plant's worth something.'
'Of course, there's no harm in that.'
So Mr Boice crossed the street to Hemple's market and laboriously lifted his great body up the stairway beside it to the quarters of the Gleaner upstairs, where a coatless, rumpled, rather wild-eyed McGibbon listened to him and then, with suspiciously, alert and smiling politeness, showed him out and down again.
4
The sensation struck Henry, full face, in the barber shop, Schütz and Schwartz's, whither he went from Stanley's. Professor Hennis, of the English department at the university, met him at the door and insisted on shaking hands.
'These sketches of yours, Calverly—the two I have read—are remarkable. There is a freshness of characterisation that suggests Chaucer to me. Sunbury will live to be proud of you.'
This left Henry red and mumbling, rather dumbfounded.
Then, in the chair, Bill Schwartz—fat, exuberant—said, bending over him:—
'Well, how does it feel to be famous, Henry?' And added, 'You've got 'em excited along the street here. Henry Berger says Charlie Waterhouse'll punch your head before night. Says he'll have to. Can't sue very well.'
It was after this and a few other evidences of the stir he was causing that Henry, as Humphrey had done a half-hour earlier, went prowling. He watched and followed the bellowing newsmen. He observed the lively scene at the depot when the nine-three train pulled out, from the cluttered-up window of Murphy's cigar store.
Then, keeping off Simpson Street, which was by this time crowded with the Saturday morning shopping, he slipped around Hemple's corner and up the stairs.
McGibbon sat alone in the front office—coat off, vest open, longish hair tousled, a lock straggling down across his high forehead, eyes strained and staring. He was deep in his swivel chair; long legs stretched out under the desk, smoking a five-cent cigar, hands deep in pockets.
He greeted Henry with a wry, thin-lipped smile, and waved his cigar.
'Great days!' he remarked dryly. 'Gee!' Henry dropped into a chair, laid his bamboo stick on the table, mopped a glistening face. 'Gee! You do know how to get'em going!'
The cigar waved again.
'Sure! Stir'em up! Soak it to'em! Only way.'
'Everybody's buying it.'
'Rather! You're a hit, son!'
'Oh, I don't know's I'd say that.'
'Rats! You're a knockout. Never been anything like it. Two months of it and they'd be throwing your name around in Union Square, N.Y. If we only had the two months.' He sighed.
'Why!' Henry, all nerves, caught his expression. 'What's the matter?'
'We're-out of paper.'
'You mean to print on?'
A nod. 'And we're out of money to buy more.'
'But with this big sale—'
'Costing four 'n' one-half times what we take in.'
'But I don't see——'
'Don't you? That's business, Hen. That's this world. You pour your money in—whip up your sales—drive, drive, drive! After a while it goes of itself and you get your money back. Scads of it. You're rich. That's the way with every young business. Takes nerve I tell you, and vision! Why, I know stories of the early days of—look here, what we need is money. Got to have it. Right now, while they're on the run. If we can't get it, and get it quick, well'—he reached deliberately forward, picked up a copy of the Gleaner and waved it high—'that—that, my son, is the last copy of the Gleaner!'
Henry stared with burning eyes out of a white face.
'But my stories!' he cried.
'They go to the man that gets the paper. If we land in bankruptcy, as we doubtless shall, they will be held by the court as assets.'
'But they're mine!' A note of bewilderment that was despair was in Henry's voice.
McGibbon shook his head.
'No, Hen. We're known to have them. They're in type here. You're helpless. We're both helpless. The thousand dollars you put in, too. You hold my note for that. You'll get so many cents on the dollar when the plant is sold at auction. Or if Boice buys it. He was up here just now. Offered me five hundred dollars. Think of it—five hundred for our plant, the big press and everything.'
'Wha—wha'd you say?'
'Showed him out. Laughed at him. Of course! But it was just a play. Never. Now look here, Hen, you've got a little more, haven't you? Your uncle——'
Henry had reached the limits of his emotional capacity.' He was far beyond the familiar mental process known as thinking. He was sitting on the edge of his chair, knees drawn up, hands clasped tightly, temples drumming, a flush spreading down over his cheeks.
But even in this condition, thoughts came.
One of these—or perhaps it was just a feeling, a manifestation of a sort of instinct—was of hostility to Bob here. It. brought a touch of guilty discomfort—hostility came hard, with Henry—yet it was distinctly there. Bob was doubtless right. All his experience. And his wonderful fighting nerve. Yet somehow he wouldn't do.
'No!' said Henry. And again, 'No! Not a cent from my uncle!'
McGibbon's hand still held up the paper. He brought it down now with a bang. On the desk. And sprang up, speaking louder, with quick, intense gestures.
'You don't seem to get it, Hen!' he cried. 'We're through—broke!' He glanced around at the press-room door and controlled his voice. 'No pay-roll—nothing! Nothing for the boys out there—or me—or you. I've been sitting here wondering how I can tell'em. Got to.'
'Nothing!' Henry echoed weakly, fumbling at his Little moustache—'for me?'
'Not a cent.'
'But—but——' Henry's earthly wealth at the moment was about forty cents. His rough estimate of immediate expenditures was considerable.
'Got to have money now, Hen! To-day. Before night. Can't you get hold of that fact? Even a hundred—the pay-roll's only ninety-six-fifty. If I could handle that, likely I could make a turn next week and get our paper stock in time.'
Henry heard his own voice saying:—
'But don't business men borrow——'
'Borrow! Me? In this town? They wouldn't lend me the rope to hang myself with... Hold on there, Hen—'
For the young man had picked up his stick and was moving toward the door. And as he hurried out he was saving, without looking back:—
'No... No!'
He said it on the stairs, where none could hear. He rushed around the corner, around the block. Anything to keep off Simpson Street. He had a really rather desperate struggle to keep from talking his heart out—aloud—in the street—angrily—attacking Boice, Weston, and McGibbon in the same breath. His feeling against McGibbon amounted to bitterness now. But his feeling against old Boice had risen to the borders of rage. He thought of that silent, ponderous old man, sitting at his desk in the post-office, like a spider weaving his subtle web about the town, where helpless little human flies crawled innocently about their uninspired daily tasks.
So Mr Boice had offered five hundred for plant, good will, and the stories!
No mere legal, technical claim on those stories as property, as assets, held the slightest interest for Henry. He couldn't understand that. They were his. He had created them, made them out of nothing—just a few one-cent lead pencils and a lot of copy paper. Bob had snatched them away to print them in the Gleaner. But they weren't Bob's.
'They're mine!' he said aloud. 'They're mine! Old Boice shan't have them! Never!' He caught himself then; looked about sharply, all hot emotion and tingling nerves.
5
A little later—it was getting on toward noon—he found himself on Filbert Avenue approaching Simpson Street. Without plan or guidance, he was heading northward, toward the rooms. It would be necessary to cross Simpson Street. He was fighting down the impulse to go several blocks to the east, toward the lake, where the stores and shops gave place to homes and lawns and shade trees, where he could slip across unnoticed; but his feet were leading him straight toward the corner of Filbert and Simpson, the busiest, most conspicuous corner in town, where were the hotel and Berger's grocery and, only a few doors off, Donovan's drug store and Swanson's flower shop and Duneen's general store and the Voice office. It had come down, the warfare within him, to a question of proving to himself that he wasn't a coward, that he could face disaster, even the complete disaster that seemed now to be upon him. It was like the end of the world.
In a pocket his fingers were tightly clasped about the anonymous note that had been the cloud over his troubled sleep of the night and his gloomy awakening of the morning. The note was now but a detail in the general crash. He decided to press on, march straight across Simpson Street, head high. He even brought out the note from his pocket; held it in his hand as he walked stiffly on. It was a somewhat bitter touch of bravado, but I find I like Henry none the less for it.
A little way short of the corner, it must be recorded, he faltered. It was by Berger's rear door. There was a gate in the fence here, that now stood open. Two of the Berger delivery wagons were backed in there. And right by the gate Henry Berger himself, his ample person enveloped in a long white apron, was opening a crate.
Henry sensed him there; flushed (for it seemed that he could not speak to any human being now) and wrestled, in painful impotence of will, with the idea of moving on.
But then, through a slow moment after Mr Berger said, 'How are you, Henry!' he sensed something further; a note of good nature in the voice, a feeling that the man was smiling, a suggestion that all the genial quality had not, after all, been hardened out of life.
He turned; pulled at his moustache (paper in hand), and flicked at weeds with his stick.
Mr Berger was smiling. He drew his hand across a sweaty brow; shook the hand; then leaned on his hatchet.
'Getting hot,' he remarked.
Henry tried to reply, but found himself still inarticulate.
'Old Boice is getting after you. Plenty.'
Henry winced; but felt slightly reassured when Mr Berger chuckled. All intercourse with Mr Berger was tempered, however, by the memory that Henry had been caught, within the decade, stealing fruit from the cases out front.
'He was just here. Don't mind telling you that he's trying to get McGibbon's creditors together and throw him into bankruptcy. Doesn't look as if there was enough out against him, though. Got to be five hundred. It ain't as if he had a family and was running up bills. Just living alone at the Wombasts, like he does. But old Boice is out gunning for fair. Never saw him quite like this. First it was the advertising boycott...'
Henry was shifting his weight from foot to foot.
'Well,' he said now, 'I guess I'd better be getting along.'
'I was just going to say, Henry, that you've give me a good laugh. Keep on like this and you'll be famous some day.... And say! Hold on a minute! I don't know's you're in a position to do anything about it, but I was just going to say, I rather guess the old Gleaner could be picked up for next to nothing right now. And there's folks here that ain't so anxious to see Boice get the market all to hisself. Not so dam anxious.... Wait a minute! I mean, I guess once McGibbon was got rid of the Old Boy'd find it wouldn't be so easy to hold this boycott together. There's folks that would break away—— Well, that's about all that was on my mind. Only I'd sorta hate to see your yarns suppressed. They're grand reading, Henry. My wife like to 'a' died over that one last week—The Sultan of Simpson Street.'
'“Caliph!”' said Henry, with a nervous eagerness. 'The Caliph of Simpson Street.'
'Touched up old Norton P. for fair. Made him sorer 'n a goat. My wife's literary, and she says it's worthy of Poe. And you ought to hear the people talking to-day about this new one.'
'Sinbad the Treasurer!' said Henry quickly, fearing another misquotation:
'Yay-ah. That. Ain't had time to read it yet myself. They say it's great.'
'Well—good-bye,' said Henry, and moved stiffly away toward the corner.
'Funny!' mused the grocer,' looking after him. 'These geniuses never have any business sense. I give him a real opening there.'
6
Simpson Street was always crowded of a Saturday morning with thoughtful housewives. The grocers and butchers bustled about. The rows of display racks along the sidewalk were heaped with fresh vegetables and fruits.
The majority of the shoppers came afoot, but the kerb was lined with buggies, surries, neat station wagons and dog-carts, crowded in between the delivery wagons. Sunbury boasted, as well, a number of Stanhopes, a barouche or two, and several landaus. The Jenkins family, among its several members, had a stable full of horses and ponies. William B. Snow owned a valuable chestnut team with silver-mounted harness. Here and there along the street one might have seen, on this occasion, several vehicles that might well have been described as smart.
But Sunbury had never seen anything like the equipage that, at a quarter to twelve—a little late for selective shopping in those days—came rolling smoothly, silently, on its rubber-shod wheels across the tracks and past the post-office, Nelson's bakery, the Sunbury National Bank, Duneen's and Donovan's to Swanson's flower shop.
Never, never had Sunbury seen anything quite like that. Mr Berger, hurrying through to the front of his store, stopped short, stared out across the street and after a breathless moment breathed the words, 'Holy Smoke!' Women stood motionless, holding heads of lettuce, boxes of raspberries and what not, and gazed in an amazement that was actually long minutes in reaching the normal mental state of critical appraisal.
The carriage was a Victoria, hung very low, varnished work glistening brilliantly in the sunshine. It was upholstered conspicuously in plum colour. The horses were jet black, glossy, perfectly matched, checked up so high that the necks arched prettily if uncomfortably; and they had docked tails. The harness they wore was mounted with a display of silver that made the silver on William B. Snow's team, standing just below Donovan's, look outright inconspicuous.
Leaning back in luxurious comfort as the carriage came so softly along the street, holding up a parasol of black lace, overshadowing her niece, pretty little Cicely Hamlin, who sat beside her, Madame Watt, her large person dressed with costly simplicity in black with a touch of colour at the throat, square of face, with an emphatic chin, a strongly hooked nose, penetrating black eyes, surveyed the street with a commanding dignity, an assertive dignity, if the phrase may be used. Or it may have been that a touch of self-consciousness within her showed through the enveloping dignity and made you think about it. Certainly there was a final outstanding reason for self-consciousness, even in the case of Madame Watt; for on the high box in front visible for blocks above the traffic of the street, sat, in wooden perfection as in plum-coloured livery, side by side, a coachman and a footman.
At Swanson's the footman leaped nimbly down and stood rigid by the step while Madame heavily descended and passed across the walk and into the shop.
The street lifted. Women's tongues moved briskly. Trade was resumed.
A pretty girl in the most wonderful carriage ever seen—a new girl, at that, bringing a stir of quickened interest to the younger set—is a magnet of considerable attracting power. Young people appeared—from nowhere, it seemed—and clustered about the carriage. Two couples hurried from the soda fountain in Donovan's. The de Casselles boys were passing on their way from the Country Club courts (which were still on the old grounds, down near the lake) in blazer coats and with expensive rackets in wooden presses. Alfred Knight was out collecting for the bank, and happened to be near. Mary Ames and Jane Bellman came over from Berger's, where Mary was scrutinising cauliflowers with a cool eye.
It was at this moment that Henry reached the corner by Berger's, paused, hopelessly, confused and torn in the swirl of success and disaster that marked this painful day, fighting down that mad impulse to talk out loud his resentments in a passionate torrent of words, saw the carriage, the girl in it and the crowd about it in one nervous glance, then, suddenly pale, lips tightly compressed, moved doggedly forward across the street.
He had nearly reached the opposite kerb—not turning; with the ugly little note that was clasped in his left hand, he could not trust himself to bow, he felt a miserable sort of relief that the distance might excuse his appearing not to see; and there had to be an excuse, or it would look to some like cowardice—when an errant summer breeze wandered around the corner and seized on his straw hat.
He felt it lifting; dropped his stick; reached then after both hat and stick and in doing so nearly dropped the paper. In another moment he was to be seen, desperately white, stick in one hand, a slip of paper in the other, running straight down Simpson Street after his hat, which whirled, sailed, rolled, sailed again, circled, and settled in the dust not two rods from the Watt carriage. The street, as streets, will, turned to look.
Henry lunged for the hat. It lifted, and rolled a little way on. He lunged again. It whirled over and over, then rolled rapidly straight down the street, just missing the hoofs of a delivery horse, passing under Mr George F. Smith's buggy without touching either horse or wheels, and sailed on.
Henry fell to one knee in his second plunge. And his pallor gave place to a hot flush.
Laughter came to his ears—jeering laughter. And it came unquestionably from the group about the Watt carriage. The first voices were masculine. Before he could get to his feet one or two of the girls had joined in. In something near despair of the spirit, helplessly, he looked up.
The whole group, still laughing, turned away. All, that is, but one. Cicely was not laughing. She was leaning a little forward, looking right at him, not even smiling, her lips parted slightly. He was too far gone even to speculate as to what her expression meant. It fell upon him as the final blow. He ran on and on. In front of Hemple's market a boy stopped the hat with his foot. Henry, trembling with rage, took it from him, muttered a word of thanks, and rushed, followed by curious eyes, around the corner to the north.
7
Humphrey found him, a little before one, at the rooms, and thought he looked ill. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at a small newspaper clipping. He looked up, through his doorway, saw his friend standing in the living-room, mumbled a colourless greeting, and let his heavy eyes fall again.
'What's all this?' asked Humphrey, with a rather weary, wrinkly smile.
Henry got up then and came slowly into the living-room.
'It's this,' he explained, in a voice that was husky and light, without its usual body. 'This thing. I've had it quite a while.'
Humphrey read:—
Positively No Commission HEIRS CAN BORROW On or sell their individual estate, income or future inheritance; lowest rates; strictly confidential Heirs' Loan Office.
And an address.
'What on earth are you doing with this, Hen?'
'Well, Hump, there's still a little more'n three thousand dollars in my legacy. I got a thousand this summer, you know, and lent it to McGibbon for my interest in the paper. But my uncle said he wouldn't give me a cent more until I'm twenty-one, in November. And so I was wondering... Look here! How much do you suppose I could get out of it from these people. They're all right, you see?
They've got a regular office and——'
'You'd just about get out with your underwear and shoes, Hen. They might leave you a necktie. What do you want it for—throw it in after the thousand?'
'Well, McGibbon's broke——'
'Yes, I know. They're saying on the street that Boice has got the Gleaner already. Two compositors and your foreman were in our place half an hour ago asking for work. Boice went right down there. I saw him start climbing the stairs.'
'That's his second trip this morning, then, Hump. He offered Bob five hundred.'
'But it ought to be worth a few thousand.'
'Sure. And except for there not being any money it's going great. You'd be surprised! You know it's often that way. Bob says many a promising business has gone under just because they didn't have the money to tide it over a tight place. But he's getting the circulation. You've no idea! And when you get that you're bound to get the advertisers. Sooner or later. Bob says they just have to fall in line.'
Humphrey appeared to be only half listening to this eager little torrent of words. He deliberately filled his pipe; then moved over to a window and gazed soberly out at the back yard of the parsonage.
Henry, moody again, was staring at the advertisement, fairly hypnotising himself with it.
'Great to think of the Old Man having to climb those stairs twice,' Humphrey remarked, without turning. Then: 'Even with all the trouble you're going through, Hen, you're lucky not to be working for Boice. He does wear on one.'
He smoked the pipe out. Then, brow's knit, his long swarthy face wrinkled deeply with thought, he walked slowly over to the door of his own bedroom and leaned there, studying the interior.
'There's three thousand dollars' worth of books in here,' he remarked. 'Or close to it. Even at second hand they'd fetch something. You see, it's really a well built, pretty complete little scientific library. Now come downstairs.'
He had to say it again: 'Come on downstairs.'
Henry followed, then; hardly aware of the oddity of Humphrey's actions.
In the half-light that sifted dustily in through the high windows, the metal lathes, large and small, the tool benches, the two large reels of piano wire, the rows of wall boxes filled with machine jars, the round objects that might have been electric motors hanging by twisted strings or wires from the ceiling joists, the heavy steel wheels of various sizes mounted in frames, some with wooden handles at one side, the big box kites and the wood-and-silk planes stacked at one end of the room, the gas engine mounted at the other end, the water motor in a corner, the wheels, shafts and belting overhead—all were indistinct, ghostly. And all were covered with dust.
'See!' Humphrey waved his pipe. 'I've done no work here for six weeks. And I shan't do any for a good while. I can't. It takes leisure—long-evenings—Sundays when you aren't disturbed by a soul. And at that it means years and years, working as I've had to. You know, getting out the Voice every week. You know how it's been with me, Hen. People are going to fly some day, Hen. As sure as we're walking now. Pretty soon. Chanute—Langley—they know! Those are Chanute gliders over there. By the kites. I've never told you; I've worked with 'em, moonlight nights, from the sand-dunes away up the beach. I've got some locked in an old boat-house up there, Hen'—he stood, very tall, a reminiscent, almost eager light in eyes that had been dull of late, a gaunt strong hand resting affectionately on a gyroscope—'I've flown over six hundred feet! Myself! Gliding, of course. Got an awful ducking, but I did it.
'But it takes money, Hen. I've thought I could be an inventor and do my job besides. Maybe I could. Maybe some day I'll succeed at it. But I've just come to see what it needs. Material, workmen, time—Hen, you've got to have a real shop and a real pay-roll to do it right. And...
'Oh, I'm not telling you the truth, Hen! Not the real truth!'
He took to walking around now, making angular gestures. Henry, watching him, coming slowly alive now to the complex life that was flowing around him, found himself confronted by a new, disturbed Humphrey. He had, during the year and more of their friendship, taken him for granted as an older, steadier influence, had leaned on him more than he knew. He had been a rock for the erratic Henry to cling to in the confusing, unstable swirl of life.
'Hen'—Humphrey turned on him—'you don't know, but I'm going to be married.'
Henry's jaw sagged.
'It's Mildred, of course.
'It's going to be hard on the little woman, Hen. She's got to get her divorce. She can't take money from her husband, of course; and she's only got a little. She'll need me.' His voice grew a thought unsteady; he waved his pipe, as if to indicate and explain the machinery. 'We've got to strike out—take the plunge—you know, make a little money. It's occurred to me... This machinery's worth more than the library, in a pinch. And I've got two bonds left. Just two. They're money, of course...... Hen, you said you lent that thousand to McGibbon?'
Henry nodded. 'He gave me his note.'
'Let's see it.'
Henry ran up the stairs, and returned with a pasteboard box file, which, not without a momentary touch of pride in his quite new business sense, he handed to his friend.
Humphrey glanced at the carefully printed-out phrase on the back—'Henry Calverly, 3rd. Business Affairs'—but did not smile. He opened it and ran through the indexed leaves. It appeared to be empty.
'Look under “Me,”' said Henry.
The note was there. 'For three months,' Humphrey mused aloud.
Then he smiled. There was a whimsical touch in Humphrey that his few friends knew and loved. Even in this serious crisis it did not desert him. I believe it was even stronger then.
'Hen,' he said, 'got a quarter?'
The smile seemed to restore the rock that Henry had lately clung to. He found himself returning the smile, faintly but with a growing warmth. He replied, 'Just about.'
'Match me!' cried Humphrey.
'What for?'
'To settle a very important point. Somebody's name has got to come first. Best two out of three.'
'But I don't——'
'Match me! No—it's mine!... Now I'll match you—mine again! I win. Well—that's settled!'
'What's settled? I don't——-'
Humphrey sat on a tool bench; swung his legs; grinned. 'Life moves on, Hen,' he said. 'It's a dramatic old world.'
And Henry, puzzled, looking at him, laughed excitedly.
8
It was two o'clock in the afternoon. Simpson Street was quiet after the brisk business of the morning. The air quivered up from the pavement in the still heat. The occasional people about the street moved slowly. The collars of the few visible tradesmen were soft rags around their necks and they mopped red faces with saturated handkerchiefs. The morning breeze had died; the afternoon breeze would drift in at four o'clock or so; until which time Sunbury ladies took their naps and Sunbury business men dozed at their desks. Saturday closing had not made much headway at this period, though the still novel game of golf was beginning to work its mighty change in small-town life.
Through this calm scene, absorbed in their affairs, unaware of the heat, strode Humphrey and Henry—down past the long hotel veranda, where the yellow rocking chairs stood in endless empty rows, past Swanson's and Donovan's and Jackson's book store to the meat market and then, rapidly, up the long stairway.
They found McGibbon with his long legs stretched out under his desk, hands deep in pockets, thin face lined and weary, but eyes nervously bright as always. He was in his shirt-sleeves, of course. His drab brown hair seemed a little longer and even more ragged than usual where it met his wilted collar.
But he grinned at them, and waved a long hand.
'My God!' he cried, 'but it's good to see a human face. Look!' His hand swept around, indicating the dusty, deserted desks and the open press-room door. It was still out there; not a man hummed or whistled as he clicked type into his stick, not one of the four job presses rumbled out its cheerful drone of industry.
'Rats all gone!' McGibbon added. 'But the Caliph was up again.'
'Yes,' Henry, who found himself suddenly and deeply moved, breathed softly, 'we know.'
'Came up a hundred. He'll pay six hundred now. For all this. An actual investment of more'n four thousand.' The hand waved again. 'It's amusing. He doesn't know I'm on to him. You see the old fox's been nosing around to get up a petition to throw me into involuntary bankruptcy, but he can't find any creditors. Has to be five hundred dollars, you know.'
'What did you say to him?' asked Humphrey, thoughtfully.
'Showed him out. Second time to-day. It was a hard climb for him, too. He did puff some.'
Humphrey slowly drew a large envelope from an inner pocket and laid it on the table at his elbow.
McGibbon eyed it alertly.
'Here!' he said, his hand moving up toward the row of four or five cigars that projected from a vest pocket, 'smoke up, you fellows.'
Henry shook his head. Humphrey drew out his pipe; then raised his head, and said quietly:—
'Listen!'
There came the unmistakable sound of heavy feet on the stairs. Steadily, step by step, a slowly moving body mounted.
Then, framed in the doorway, stood the huge bulk of Norton P. Boice, breathless, red, and wet of face, his old straw hat pushed back, his yellowish-white, wavy beard covering his necktie and the upper part of his roundly protruding, slightly spotted vest, against which the heavy watch chain with its dangling fraternal insignia stood out prominently.
Boice's eyes, nearly expressionless, finally settled on Humphrey.
'What are you doing here?' he asked, between puffs.
Humphrey's only reply was a slight impatient gesture.
'You oughta be at your desk.'
Then he came into the room. Of the three men seated there Humphrey was the only one who knew by certain small external signs, that the Caliph of Simpson Street was blazing with wrath. For here was his own hired lieutenant hobnobbing with the boy whose agile, irresponsible pen had made him the laughing stock of the township and with the intemperate rival who had first attacked and then defied him. And then he had just climbed the stairs for the third and what he meant to be the last time.
He came straight to business.
'Have you decided to accept my offer?'
'Sit down,' said McGibbon, pushing a chair over with his foot.
Boice ignored this final bit of insolence.
'Have you decided to accept my offer?'
'Well'—McGibbon shrugged; spread out his hands—'I've decided nothing, but as it looks now I may find myself forced to accept it.'
'Then I suggest that you accept it now.'
'Well——' the hands went out again.
'Wait a moment,' said Humphrey.
'I think you had better go back to the office,' Boice broke in.
'Shortly. I have no intention of leaving you in the lurch, Mr Boice. But first I have business here.'
'You have business!'
'Yes.' Humphrey opened the large envelope. 'Here, McGibbon, is your note to Henry for one thousand dollars, due in November.'
Before their eyes, deliberately, he tore it up, leaned over McGibbon's legs with an, 'I beg your pardon!' and dropped the pieces in the waste-basket. Next he produced a folded document engraved in green and red ink. 'Here,' he concluded, 'is a four per cent, railway bond that stands to-day at a hundred two and a quarter in the market. That's our price for the Gleaner.'
McGibbon's nervous eyes followed the movements of Humphrey's hands as if fascinated. During the hush that followed he sat motionless, chin on breast. Then, slowly, he drew in his legs, straightened up, reached for the bond, turned it over, opened it and ran his eye over the coupons, looked up and remarked:—
'The paper's yours.'
'Then, Mr Boice,' said Humphrey, 'the next issue of the Gleaner will be published by Weaver and Calverly, and the stories you object to will run their course.'
But Mr Boice, creaking deliberately over the floor, was just disappearing through the doorway.'
9
The sunlight was streaming in through the living-room of the barn back of the old Parmenter place. Outside the maple leaves were rustling gently. Through the quiet air came the slow booming of the First Presbyterian bell across the block. From greater distances came the higher pitched bell of the Baptist Church, down on Filbert Avenue, and the faint note from the Second Presbyterian over on the West Side, across the tracks.
Humphrey had made coffee and toast. They sat at an end of the centre table. Humphrey in bath-robe and slippers, Henry fully dressed in his blue serge suit, neat silk four-in-hand tie, stiff white collar and carefully polished shoes.
'Where are you going with all that?' Humphrey asked.
Henry hesitated; flushed a little.
'To church,' he finally replied.
Humphrey's surprise was real. There had been a time, before they came to know each other, when the boy had sung bass in the quartet at the Second Presbyterian. But since that period he had not been a church-goer. Henry had been quiet all evening, and now this morning. He seemed all boxed up within himself. Preoccupied. As if the triumph over old Boice had merely opened up the way to new responsibilities. Which, for that matter, was just what it had done—done to both of them. Humphrey, not being given to prying, would have let the subject drop here, had not Henry surprised him by breaking hotly forth into words.
'It's my big fight, Hump!' he was saying now. 'Don't you see! This town. All they say. Look here!' He laid a rumpled bit of paper on the table. As if he had been holding it ready in his hand.'
'Oh, that letter,' said Humphrey.
'Yes. It's what I've got to fight. And I've got to win. Don't you see?'
'Yes,' Humphrey replied gravely, 'I see.'
'I think,' said Henry, 'it's being in love that's going to help me. We've got to hold our heads up, you and I. Build the Gleaner into a real property. Win confidence. And there mustn't be any doubt. The way we step out and fight, you know. I've got to stand with you.'
Humphrey's eyes strayed to the sunlit window. He suppressed a little sigh.
'This note's right enough, in a way,' Henry went on. 'It wouldn't be fair to compromise her.' He leaned earnestly over the table. 'It's really a hopeless love. I know that, Hump. But it isn't like the others.' It makes me feel ashamed of them. All of them. I've got to show her, or at least show myself, that it's this love that has made a man of me. Without asking anything, you know.'
Humphrey listened in silence as the talk ran on. The boy was changing, no question about that. Even back of the romantic strain that was colouring his attitude, the suggestion of pose in it, there was real evidence of this change. At least his fighting blood was up. And he was taking punishment.
Sitting there sipping his coffee, Humphrey, half listening, soberly considered his younger friend. Henry was distinctly odd, a square peg in a round world. He was capable of curiously outrageous acts, yet most of them seemed to arise from a downright inability to sense the common attitude, to feel with his fellows. He could be heedless, neglectful, self-centred; but Humphrey had never found meanness or unkindness in him. And he was capable of a passionate generosity. He had, indeed, for Humphrey, the fascination that an erratic and ingenuous but gifted person often exerts on older, steadier natures. You could be angry at him; but you couldn't get over the feeling that you had to take care of him. And it always seemed, even when he was out and out exasperating, that the thing that was the matter with him was the very quality that underlay his astonishing gifts; that he was really different from others; the difference ran all through, from his unexpected, rather self-centred ways of acting and reacting clear up to the fact that he could write what other people couldn't write. 'If they could,' thought Humphrey now, shrewdly, 'very likely they'd be different too.' Take this business of dressing up like a born suburbanite and going to church. It was something of a romantic gesture, But that wasn't all it was. The fight was real, whatever unexpected things it might lead him to do from day to day.
Herbert de Casselles, wooden-faced, dressed impeccably in frock coat, heavy 'Ascot' tie, gray striped trousers perfectly creased, (Henry had never owned a frock coat) ushered him half-way down the long aisle to a seat in Mrs Ellen F. Wilson's pew. He felt eyes on him as he walked, imagined whispers, and set his face doggedly against them all. He had set out in a sort of fervor; but now the thing was harder to do than he had imagined. The people looked cold and hostile. It was to be a long fight. He might never win. The more successful he might come to be, the more some of them would hate him and fight him down... It was queer, Herb de Casselles ushering him.
The organist slid on to his seat, up in the organ loft behind the pulpit; spread out his music and turned up the corners; pulled and pushed on stops and couplers; glanced up into his narrow mirror; adjusted his tie; fussed again with the stops; began to play.
Henry sat up stiffly, even boldly, and looked about. Across the church, in a pew near the front, sat the Watts: the Senator, on the aisle, looking curiously insignificant with his meek, red face and his little, slightly askew chin beard; Madame Watt sitting wide and high over him, like a stout hawk, chin up, nose down, beady eyes fixed firmly on the pulpit; Cicely Hamlin almost fragile beside her, eyes downcast—or was she looking at the hymns?
When Cicely was talking, with her nervous eagerness, her quick smile, her almost Frenchy gestures, she seemed gay. When in repose, as now, her delicate sensitiveness, her slightly sad expression, were evident, even to Henry.
Made him feel in the closing scene of The Prisoner of Zenda, where he was bidding the Princess who could never be his a last farewell; the mere sight of her thrilled him with a deep romantic sorrow.
Through the prayers, the announcements, the choir numbers and collection, his sacrificial mood grew more and more intense. It was something of a question whether he could hide his emotion before all these hostile people. The long fight ahead to rebuild his name in the village loomed larger and larger, began to take on an aspect that was almost terrifying. For the first time to-day he felt weakness but she made him feel something as Sothem had made in his heart. He sat very quiet, hands clenched on his knees, and unconsciously thrust out his chin a little.
When the doxology was sung and his head was bowed for the benediction, he had to struggle with a mad impulse to rush out, run down the aisle while people were picking up their hats and things. The thing to do, of course, was to take his time, be natural, move out with the rest. This he did, blazing with self-consciousness, his chin forward.
It was difficult. Several persons—older persons, who had known his mother—stopped him and congratulated him on the brilliant work he was doing. This in the midst of the unuttered hostility that seemed like hundreds of little barbed darts penetrating his skin from every side. He could only blush and mumble. Elderly, innocent Mrs Bedford of Filbert Avenue actually introduced him to her nieces from Boston as a young man of whom all Sunbury was proud. He had to blush and mumble here for a long time, while the line of people crowded decorously past.
At last he got to the door. Stiffly raising his hat as one or two groups of young people recognised him, he moved out to the sidewalk. There he raised his eyes. They met, for a fleeting instant, but squarely, over Herb de Casselles' shoulder, the dark eyes of Cicely Hamlin.
She was sitting on the little forward seat in the black-and-plum Victoria. Madame Watt was settling herself in the back seat. The Senator was stepping in. The plum-coloured footman stood stiffly by. The plum-coloured driver sat stiffly on the box.
Herb de Casselles turned, with a wry smile.
Henry raised his hat, bit his lip, hesitated, hurried on.
Then he heard her voice.
'Oh, Mr Calverly!'
He had to turn back. He knew he was fiery red. He knew, too, that in this state of tortured bewilderment he couldn't trust his tongue for a moment.
Cicely leaned out, with outstretched hand.
He had to take it. The thrill the momentary touch of it gave, him but added a wrench to the torture. Then the Senator's hand had to be taken; finally Madame's.
His pulse was racing; pounding at his temples. What did all this mean!
Cicely, her own colour up a little, speaking quickly, her face lighting up, her hands moving, cried:—
'Oh, Mr Calverly! We heard this morning that the Gleaner has failed and that Mr Boice has it and we aren't to see your stories any more.'
'No,' said Henry, a faint touch of assurance appearing in his heart, mind, voice, 'that isn't so. Mr Boice hasn't got it. We've got it—Humphrey Weaver and I.'
'You mean you have purchased it?' This from the Senator.
'Yay-ah, We bought it yesterday.'
'No!' cried Cicely. 'Really?'
'Yay-ah. We bought it.'
'Then,' commented the Senator, 'you must permit me indeed to congratulate you. It is unusual to find business acumen and enterprise combined with such a literary talent as yours.'
This was pleasing, if stilted. It was beginning to be possible for Henry to smile.
Then Cicely clinched matters.
'You promised to come and read me the others, Mr Calverly. Oh, but you did! You must come. Really! Let me see—I know I shall be at home to-morrow evening.'
Then, for a moment, Cicely seemed to falter. She turned questioningly to her aunt.
Madame Watt certainly knew the situation. She had heard Henry discussed in relation to the Mamie Wilcox incident. She knew how high feeling was running in the village. Just what her motives were, I cannot say. Perhaps it was her tendency to make her own decisions and if possible to make different decisions from those of the folk about her. The instinct to stand out aggressively in all matters was strong within her. And she liked Henry. The flare of extreme individuality in him probably reached her and touched a curiously different strain of extreme individuality within herself. She hated sheep. Henry was not a sheep.
As for Cicely's part of it, I know she had been thrilled when Henry read her the first ten stories. She had read more than the Sunbury girls; and she saw more in his oddities than they were capable of seeing. To fail in any degree to conform to the prevailing customs and thought was to be ridiculous in Sunbury. But she had no more forgotten the jeers that had followed Henry from this very carriage as he chased his hat down Simpson Street the preceding day than had Henry himself. Nor had she forgotten that Herbert de Casselles had been one of that unkind group. And as she certainly knew what she was about, despite her impulsiveness, I prefer to think that her action was deliberately kind and deliberately brave.
'Come to dinner,' said Madame Watt shortly but with a sort of rough cordiality. 'Seven o'clock. To-morrow evening. Informal dress. All right, Watson.'
Cicely settled back, her eyes bright; but gave Henry only the same suddenly impersonal little nod of good-bye that she gave Herbert de Casselles.
The footman leaped to the box. The remarkable carriage rolled luxuriously away on its rubber tyres.
Henry turned, grinning in foolish happiness, on the young man in the frock coat who had not been asked to dinner.
'Walking up toward Simpson, Herb?' he asked.
'Me—why—no, I'm going this way.' And Herb pointed hurriedly southward.
'Well—so long!' said Henry, and headed northward.
The warm sunlight filtered down through the dense foliage. Birds twittered up there. The church procession moving slowly along was brightly dressed; pleasant to see. Henry, head up, light of foot, smiling easily when this or that person, after a moment's hesitation, bowed to him, listened to the birds, expanded his chest in answer to the mellowing sunshine, and gave way, with a fresh little thrill, to the thought:—
'I must buy a frock coat for to-morrow night.'