1
It was mid-August and twenty minutes to eight in the evening. The double rows of maples threw spreading shadows over the pavement, sidewalk and lawns of Hazel Avenue. From dim houses, set far back amid trees and shrubs, giving a homy village quality to the darkness, came through screened doors and curtained 'bay' windows the yellow glow of oil lamps and the whiter shine of electric lights. Here and there a porch light softly illuminated a group of young people; their chatter and laughter, with perhaps a snatch of song, floating pleasantly out on the soft evening air. Around on a side street, sounding faintly, a youthful banjoist with soft fingers and inadequate technique was struggling with The March Past.
Moving in a curious, rather jerky manner along the street, now walking swiftly, nervously, now hesitating, even stopping, in some shadowy spot, came a youth of twenty (going on twenty-one). He wore—though all these details were hardly distinguishable even in the patches of light at the street corners, where arc lamps sputtered whitely—neatly pressed white trousers, a 'sack' coat of blue serge, a five-dollar straw hat, silk socks of a pattern and a silken 'four-in-hand' tie. He carried a cane of thin bamboo that he whipped and flicked at the grass and rattled lightly along the occasional picket fence except when he was fussing at the light growth on his upper lip. Under his left arm was a square package that any girl of Sunbury would have recognised instantly, even in the shadows, as a two-pound box of Devoe's chocolates.
If you had chanced to be a resident of Sunbury at this period you would have known that the youth was Henry Calverly, 3rd. Though you might have had no means of knowing that he was about to 'call' on Cicely Hamlin. Or, except perhaps from his somewhat spasmodic locomotion, that he was in a state of considerable nervous excitement.
Not that Henry hadn't called on many girls in his day. He had. But he had called only once before on Cicely (the other time had been that invitation to dinner for which her aunt was really responsible) and had then, in a burning glow of temperament, read her his stories!
How he had read! And read! And read! Until midnight and after. She had been enthusiastic, too.
But he wasn't in a glow now. Certain small incidents had lately brought him to the belief that Cicely Hamlin lacked the pairing-off instinct so common among the young of Sunbury. She had been extra nice to him; true. But the fact stood that she was not 'going with' him. Not in the Sunbury sense of the phrase. A baffling, disturbing aura of impersonally pleasant feeling held him at a distance.
So he was just a young fellow setting forth, with chocolates, to call on a girl. A girl who could be extra nice to you and then go out of her way to maintain pleasant acquaintance with the others, your rivals, your enemies. Almost as if she felt she had been a little too nice and wished to strike a balance; at least he had thought of that. A girl who had been reared strangely in foreign convents; who didn't know The Spanish Cavalier or Seeing Nellie Home or Solomon Levi, yet did know, strangely, that the principal theme in Dvorak's extremely new 'New World' symphony was derived from Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (which illuminating fact had stirred Henry to buy, regardless, the complete piano score of that symphony and struggle to pick out the themes on Humphrey's piano at the rooms). A girl who had never seen De Wolf Hopper in Wang, or the Bostonians in Robin Hood, or Sothem in The Prisoner of Zenda, or Maude Adams or Ethel Barrymore or anything. A girl who had none of the direct, free and easy ways of the village young; you couldn't have started a rough-house with her—mussed her hair, or galloped her in the two-step. A girl who wasn't stuck up, or anything like that, who seemed actually shy at times, yet subtly repressed you, made you wish you could talk like the fellow's that had gone to Harvard.
In view of these rather remarkable facts I think it really was a tribute to Cicely Hamlin that the many discussions of her as a conspicuous addition to the youngest set had boiled down to the single descriptive adjective, 'tactful.' Though the characterisation seems not altogether happy; for the word, to me, connotes something of conscious skill and management—as my Crabb put it: 'TACTFUL. See Diplomatic'—and Cicely was not, certainly not in those days, a manager.
Henry, muttered softly, as he walked.
'I'll hand it to her when she comes in.
'No, she'll shake hands and it might get in the way.
'Put it on the table—that's the thing!—on a corner where she'll see it.
'Then some time when we can't think of anything to talk about, I'll say—“Thought you might like a few chocolates.” Sorta offhand. Prevent there being a lull in the conversation.
'Better begin calling her Cicely.'
'Why not? Shucks! Can't go on with “You” and “Say!” Why can't I just do it naturally? The way Herb would, or Elbow, or those fellows.
'“How'd' you do, Cicely! Come on, let's take a walk.”
'No. “Good-evening, Cicely. I thought maybe you'd like to take a walk. There's a moonrise over the lake about half-past eight.” That's better.
'Wonder if Herb'll be there. He'd hardly think to come so early, though. Be all right if I can get her away from the house by eight.'
He paused, held up his watch to the light from the corner, then rushed on.
'Maybe she'd ask me to sit him out, anyway.'
But his lips clamped shut on this. It was just the sort of thing Cicely wouldn't do. He knew it.
'What if she won't go out!'
This sudden thought brought bitterness. A snicker had run its course about town—in his eager self-absorption he had wholly forgotten—when Alfred Knight, confident in an engagement to call, had hired a horse and buggy at McAllister's. The matter of an evening drive a deux had been referred to Cicely's aunt. As a result the horse had stood hitched outside more than two hours only to be driven back to the livery, stable by the gloomy Al.
'Shucks, though! Al's a fish! Don't blame her!'
He walked stiffly in among the trees and shrubs of the old Dexter Smith place and mounted the rather imposing front steps.
That purchase of the Dexter Smith place was typical of Madame Watt at the time. She was riding high. She had money. Two acres of lawn, fine old trees, a great square house of Milwaukee brick, high spacious rooms with elaborately moulded plaster ceilings and a built-on conservatory and a barn that you could keep half a dozen carriages in! It was one of only four or five houses in Sunbury that the Voice and the Gleaner rejoiced to call 'mansions.' And it was the only one that could have been bought. The William B. Snows, like the Jenkinses and the de Casselles (I don't know if it has been explained before that the accepted local pronunciation was Dekasells,) lived in theirs. And even after the elder Dexter Smith died Mrs Smith would hardly have sold the place if the children hadn't nagged her into it. Young Dex wanted to go to New York. And at that it was understood that Madame Watt paid two prices.
2
A uniformed butler showed Henry into the room that he would have called the front parlour. Though there was another much like it across the wide hall. There was a 'back parlour,' with portières between. Out there, he knew, between centre table and fireplace, the Senator and Madame might even now be sitting.
He listened, on the edge of a huge plush and walnut chair, for the rustle of the Senator's paper, or Madame's deep, always startling voice.
There was no sound. Save that somewhere upstairs, far off, a door opened; then footsteps very faint. And silence again.
Henry looked, fighting down misgivings, at the heavily framed oil paintings on the wall. One, of a life-boat going out through mountainous waves to a wreck, he had always heard was remarkably fine. Fastened over the bow of the boat was a bit of real rope that had provoked critical controversy when the picture was first exhibited in Chicago.
He glanced down, discovered the box of chocolates on his knees, and hurriedly placed it on the corner of the inevitable centre table. Then he fussed nervously with his moustache; adjusted his tie, wondering if the stick pin should be higher; pulled down his cuffs; and sat up stiffly again.
'Maybe she ain't home,' he thought weakly. 'That fella said he'd see.'
'Maybe I oughta've asked if she'd be in.'
The silence deepened, spread, settled about him. He wished she would come down. There was danger, he knew, that his few painfully thought-out conversational openings would leave him. He would be an embarrassed, quite speechless young man. For he was as capable, even now, at twenty, almost at twenty-one, of speechlessness as of volubility. Either might happen to him, at any moment, from the smallest, least foreseeable of causes.
And there was something oppressive about the stillness of this cavernous old house with its sound-proof partitions and its distances. And that silent machine of a butler. It wasn't like calling at Martha Caldwell's, in the old days, where you could hear the Swedish cook crashing around in the kitchen and Martha moving around upstairs before she came down. Here you wouldn't so much as know there was a kitchen.
Then, suddenly, sharp as a blow out of the stillness came a series of sounds that froze the marrow in his bones, made him rigid on the edge of that plush chair, his lips parted, his eyes staring, wrestling with an impulse to dash out of the house; with another impulse to cough, or shout, or play the piano, in some mad way to announce himself, yet continuing to sit like a carved idol, in the grip of a paralysis of the faculties.
There is nothing more painful to the young than the occasional discovery, through the mask of social reticence, that the old have their weak or violent moments.
Gossip, yes! But gossip rests lightly and briefly in young ears. Henry had heard the Watts slyly ridiculed. There were whispers, of course. Madame's career as a French countess—well, naturally Sunbury wondered. And the long obscurity from which she had rescued Senator Watt raised questions about that very quiet little man. So often men in political life were tempted off the primly beaten track. And Henry, like the other young people, had grinned in awed delight over the tale that Madame swore at her servants. That was before he had so much as spoken to her niece. And it had little or no effect on his attitude toward Madame herself when he met her. She had at once taken her place in the compartment of his thoughts reserved from earliest memory for his elders, whose word was (at least in honest theory) law and to whom one looked up with diffidence and a genuine if somewhat automatic respect.
The first of the disturbing sounds was Madame's voice, far-off but ringing strong. Then a door opened—it must have been the dining-room door; not the wide one that opened into the great front hall, but the other, at the farther end of the 'back parlour.'
There was a brief lull. A voice could be heard, though—a man's voice, low-pitched, deprecatory.
Then Madame's again. And stranger noises. The man's voice cried out in quick protest; there was a rustle and then a crash like breaking china.
The Senator, hurrying a little, yet with a sort of dignity, walked out into the hall. Henry could see him, first between the portières as he left the room, then as he passed the hall door.
There was a rush and a torrent of passionately angry words from the other room. An object—it appeared to be a paper weight or ornament—came hurtling out into the hall. The Senator, who had apparently gone to the closet by the door for his hat and stick—for he came back into the hall with them—stepped back just in time to avoid being struck. The object fell on the stair, landing with the sound of solid metal.
'You come back here!' Madame's voice.
'I will not come back until you have had time to return to your senses,' replied the Senator. He looked very small. He was always stilted in speech; Humphrey had said that he talked like the Congressional Record. 'This is a disgraceful scene. If you have the slightest regard for my good name or your own you will at least make an effort to compose yourself. Some one might be at the door at this moment. You are a violent, ungoverned woman, and I am ashamed of you.'
'And you'—she was almost screaming now—'are the man who was glad to marry me.'
He ignored this. 'If any one asks for me, I shall be at the Sunbury Club.'
'Going to drink again, are you?'
'I think not.'
'If you do, you needn't come back. Do you hear? You needn't come back!'
He turned, and with a sort of strut went out the front door.
She started to follow. She did come as far as the portières. Henry had a glimpse of her, her face red and distorted.
She turned back then, and seemed to be picking up the room. He could hear sniffing and actually snorting as she moved about. There was a brief silence. Then she crossed the hall, a big imposing person—even in her tantrums she had presence—and went up the stairs, pausing on the landing to pick up the object she had thrown. Her solid footfalls died out on the thick carpets of the upper hall. A door opened, and slammed faintly shut.
Silence again.
Henry found that he was clutching the arms of the chair.
'I must relax,' he thought vacantly; and drew a slow deep breath, as he had been taught in a gymnasium class at the Y.M.C.A.
He brushed a hand across his eyes. Now that it was over, his temples were pounding hotly, his nerves aquiver.
It was incredible. Yet it had happened. Before his eyes. A vulgar brawl; a woman with a red face throwing things. And he was here in the house with her. He might have to try to talk with her.
He considered again the possibility of slipping out. But that butler had taken his name up. Cicely would be coming down any moment. Unless she knew.
Did she know? Had she heard? Possibly not.
Henry got slowly, indecisively up and wandered to the piano; stood leaning on it.
His eyes filled. All at once, in his mind's eye, he could see Cicely. Particularly the sensitive mouth. And the alert brown eyes. And the pretty way her eyebrows moved when she spoke or smiled or listened—always with a flattering attention—to what you were saying.
He brought a clenched fist down softly on the piano.
3
'Oh,' cried the voice of Cicely—'there you are! How nice of you to come!'
She was standing—for a moment—in the doorway.
White of face, eyes burning, his fist still poised on the piano, he stared at her.
She didn't know! Surely she didn't—not with that bright smile. __
She wore the informal, girlish costume of the moment—neatly fitting dark skirt; simple shirt-waist with the ballooning sleeves that were then necessary; stiff boyish linen collar propping the chin high, and little bow tie; darkish, crisply waving hair brought into the best order possible, parted in the middle and carried around and down over the ears to a knot low on the neck.
'I brought some candy,' he cried fiercely. 'There! On the table!'
She knit her brows for a brief moment. Then opened the box.
'How awfully nice of you... You'll have some?'
'No. I don't eat candy. I was thinking of—I want to get you out—Come on, let's take a walk!'
She smiled a little, around a chocolate. Surely she didn't know!
She had seemed, during her first days in Sunbury, rather timid at times. But there was in this smile more than a touch of healthy self-confidence. No girl, indeed, could find herself making so definite a success as Cicely had made here from her first day without acquiring at least the beginnings of self-confidence. It was a success that had forced Elbow Jenkins and Herb de Casselles to ignore small rebuffs and persist in fighting over her. It permitted her, even in a village where social conformity was the breath of life, to do odd, unexpected things. Such as allowing herself to be interested, frankly, in Henry Calverly.
So she smiled as she nibbled a chocolate.
He said it again, breathlessly:—
'I was thinking of asking you to take a walk.'
'Well'—still that smile—'why don't you?'
But he was still in a daze, and pressed stupidly on.
'It's a fine evening. And the moon'll be coming up.'
'I'll get my sweater,' she said quietly, and went out to the hall.
She was just turning away from the hall closet with the sweater—he, hat and stick in hand, was fighting back the memory of how Senator Watt had marched stiffly to that same closet—when Madame Watt came down the stairs, scowling intently, still breathing hard.
She saw them; came toward them; stood, pursing her lips, finally forcing a sort of smile.
'Oh, howdadoo!' she remarked, toward Henry.
Her black eyes focused pointedly on him. And while he was mumbling a greeting, she broke in on him with this:—'I didn't know you were here. Did you just come?' Henry's eyes lowered. Then, as utter silence fell, the colour surging to his face, he raised them. They met her black, alarmed stare. He felt that he ought to lie about this, lie like a good one. But he didn't know how.
Slowly, all confusion, he shook his head.
During a long moment they held that gaze, the vigorous, strangely interesting woman of wealth and of what must have been a violent past, and the gifted, sensitive youth of twenty. When she turned away, they had a secret.
'We thought of taking a little walk,' said Cicely.
Madame moved briskly away into the back parlour, merely throwing back over her shoulder, in a rather explosive voice: 'Have a good time!'
The remark evidently struck Cicely as somewhat out of character. She even turned, a little distrait, and looked after, her aunt.
Then, as they were passing out the door, Madame's voice boomed after them. She was hurrying back through the hall.
'By the way,' she said, with a frowning, determined manner, 'we are having a little theatre party Saturday night. A few of Cicely's friends. Dinner here at six. Then we go in on the seven-twenty. I know Cicely'll be glad to have you. Informal—don't bother to dress.'
'Oh, yes!' cried Cicely, looking at her aunt.
'I—Im sure I'd be delighted,' said Henry heavily.
Then they went out, and strolled in rather oppressive quiet toward the lake.
There was a summer extravaganza going, at the Auditorium. That must be the theatre. They hadn't meant to ask him, of course. Not at this late hour. It hurt, with a pain that, a day or so back, would have filled Henry's thoughts. But Cicely's smile, as she stood by the table, nibbling a chocolate, the poise of her pretty head—the picture stood out clearly against a background so ugly, so unthinkably vulgar, that it was like a deafening noise in his brain.
4
He glanced sidewise at Cicely. They were walking down Douglass Street. Just ahead lay the still, faintly shimmering lake, stretching out to the end of the night and beyond. Already the whispering sound reached their ears of ripples lapping at the shelving beach. And away out, beyond the dim horizon, a soft brightness gave promise of the approaching moonrise.
He stole another glance at Cicely. He could just distinguish her delicate profile.
He thought: 'How could she ask me? They wouldn't like it, her friends. Mary Ames mightn't want to come. Martha Caldwell, even. She's been nice to me. I mustn't make it hard for her. And she mustn't know about tonight. Not ever.'
Then a new thought brought pain. If there had been one such scene, there would be others. And she would have to live against that background, keeping up a brave face before the prying world of Sunbury. Perhaps she had already lived through something of the sort. That sad look about her mouth; when she didn't know you were looking.
They had reached the boulevard now, and were standing at the railing over the beach. A little talk had been going on, of course, about this and that—he hardly knew what.
He clenched his fist again, and brought it down on the iron rail.
'Oh,' he broke out—'about Saturday. I forgot. I can't come.'
'Oh, but please——'
'No. Awfully busy. You've no idea. You see Humphrey Weaver and I bought the Gleaner. I told you, didn't I? It's a big responsibility—getting the pay-roll every week, and things like that. Things I never knew about before. I don't believe I was made to be a business man. Lots of accounts and things. Hump's at it all the time—nights and everything. You see we've got to make the paper pay. We've got to! It was losing, when Bob McGibbon had it. People hated him, and they wouldn't advertise. And now we have to get the advertising back.' If we fail in that, we'll go under, just as he did...'
Words! Words! A hot torrent of them! He didn't know how transparent he was.
She stood, her two hands resting lightly on the rail, looking out at the slowly spreading glow in the east.
'I'm so glad aunt asked you,' she said gravely. 'I wanted you to come. I want you to know. Won't you, please?'
He looked at her, but she didn't turn. There was more behind her words. Even Henry could see that. He had been discussed. As a problem. But she didn't say the rest of it.
Then his clumsy little artifice broke down, and the crude feeling rushed to the surface.
'You know I mustn't come!' he cried.
'No,' said she, with that deliberate gravity. 'I don't know that. I think you should.'
'I can't. You don't understand. They wouldn't like it, my being there. They talk about me. They don't speak to me, even.'
'Then oughtn't you to come? Face them? Show them that it isn't true?'
'But that will just make it hard for you.'
She was slow in answering this; seemed to be considering it. Finally she replied with:—
'I don't think I care about that. People have been awfully nice to me here. I'm having a lovely time. But it isn't as if I had always lived here and expected to stay for the rest of my life. My life has been different. I've known a good many different kinds of people, and I've had to think for myself a good deal. No, I'd like you to come. If you don't come—-don't you see?—you're putting me with them. You're making me mean and petty. I don't want to be that way. If—if I'm to see you at all, they must know it.'
'Perhaps, then,' he muttered, 'you'd better not see me at all.'
'Please!'
'Well, I know; but—'
'No. I want to see you. If you want to come. I love your stories. You're more interesting than any of them.'
At this, he turned square around; stared at her. But she, very quietly, finished what she had to say. 'I think you're a genius. I think you're going to be famous. It's—it's exciting to see the way you write stories.... Wait, please! I'm going to tell you the rest of it. Now that we're talking it out, I think I've got to. It was aunt who didn't want to ask you. She likes you, but she thought—well, she thought it might be awkward, and—and hard for you. I told her what I've told you, that I've either got to be your friend before all of them or not at all. And now that she has asked you—don't you see, it's the way I wanted it all along.'
There wasn't another girl in Sunbury who could have, or would have, made quite that speech.
She looked delicately beautiful in the growing light. Her hair was a vignetted halo about her small head.
Henry, staring, his hands clenched at his sides, broke out with:—
'I love you!'
'Oh—h!' she breathed. 'Please!'
Words came from him, a jumble of words. About his hopes, the few thousand dollars that would be his on the seventh of November, when he would be twenty-one, the wonderful stories he would write, with her for inspiration.
Inwardly he was in a panic. He hadn't dreamed of saying such a thing. Never before, in all his little philanderings had he let go like this, never had he felt the glow of mad catastrophe that now seemed to be consuming him. Oh, once perhaps—something of it—years back—when he had believed he was in love with Ernestine Lambert. But that had been in another era. And it hadn't gone so deep as this.
'Anyway'—he heard her saying, in a rather tired voice—'anyway—it makes it hard, of course—you shouldn't have said that—'
'Oh, I am making it hard! And I meant to——'
'—anyway, I think you'd better come. Unless it would be too hard for you.'
There was a long silence. Then Henry, his forehead wet with sweat, his feet braced apart, his hands gripping the rail as if he were holding for his life, said, with a sudden quiet that she found a little disconcerting:—
'All right. I'll come.... Your aunt said a quarter past six, didn't she?'
'No, six.'
5
Madame Watt appropriated Henry the moment he entered her door on Saturday evening. She was, despite her talk of offhand summer informality, clad in an impressive costume with a great deal of lace and the shimmer of flowered silk.
At her elbow, Henry moved through the crowd in the front hall. He felt cool eyes on him. He stood very straight and stiff. He was pale. He bowed to the various girls and fellows—Mary, Martha, Herb, Elbow, and the rest, with reserve. It was, from moment to moment, a battle.
Nobody but Madame Watt would have thought of giving such a party. It was so expensive—the dinner for twenty-two, to begin with; then all the railway fares; a bus from the station in Chicago to the theatre and back. The theatre tickets alone came to thirty-three dollars (these were the less expensive days of the dollar and a half seat). Sunbury still, at the time, was inclined to look doubtfully on ostentation.
You felt, too, in the case of Madame, that she was likely to speak, at any moment rather—well, broadly. All that Paris experience, whatever it was, seemed to be hovering about the snapping black eyes and the indomitable mouth. You sensed in her none of the reserve of movement, of speech, of mind, that were implied in the feminine standards of Sunbury. Yet she was unquestionably a person. If she laughed louder than the ladies of Sunbury, she had more to say.
To-night she was a dominantly entertaining hostess. She talked of the theatre, in Paris, London and New York—of the Coquelins, Gallipaux, Bernhardt, of Irving and Terry and Willard and Grossmith. Some of these she had met. She knew Sothem, it appeared. Even the extremely worldly Elbow and Herb were impressed.
She had Henry at her right. Boldly placed him there. At his right was a girl from Omaha who was visiting the Smiths and who made several efforts to be pleasant to the pale gloomy youth with the little moustache and the distinctly interesting gray-blue eyes.
By the time they were settled on the train Henry found himself grateful to the certainly strong, however coarse-fibred woman.
Efforts to identify her as she seemed now, with the woman of that hideous scene with the Senator brought only bewilderment. He had to give it up.
This woman was rapidly winning his confidence; even, in a curious sense, his sympathy.
At the farther end of the table the little Senator, all dignity and calm stilted sentences, made himself remotely agreeable to several girls at once.
At one side of the table sat Cicely, in lacy white with a wonderful little gauzy scarf about her shoulders. She looked at him only now and then, and just as she looked at the others. He wondered how she could smile so brightly.
Herb and Elbow made a great joke of fighting over her. Elbow had her at dinner; Herb on the train; Elbow again at the theatre.
Henry was fairly clinging to Madame by that time.
I think, among the confused thoughts and feelings that whirled ceaselessly around and around in his brain, the one that came up oftenest and stayed longest was a sense of stoical heroism. For Cicely's sake he must bear his anguish. For her he must be humble, kindly, patient. He had read, somewhere in his scattered acquaintance with books, that Abraham Lincoln had once been brought to the point of suicide through a disappointment in love. And to-night he thought much and deeply of Lincoln. He had already decided, during an emotionally turbulent two days, not to shoot himself.
During the first intermission the Senator stayed quietly in his seat.
When the curtain went down for the second time, he stroked his beard with a small, none-too-steady hand, coughed in the suppressed way he had, and glanced once or twice at Madame.
The young men were, apparently all of them, moving out for a smoke in the lobby.
Henry, with a tingling sense of defiance, a little selfconscious about staying alone with the girls, followed them.
And after him, walking up the aisle with his odd strutting air of importance, came the Senator.
He gathered the young men together in the lobby; pulled at his twisted beard; said, 'It will give me pleasure to offer you young gentlemen a little refreshment;' and led the way out to a convenient bar. It was a large, high-panelled room. There were great mirrors; rows and rows of bottles and shiny glasses; alcoves with tables; and enormous oil paintings in still more enormous gilt frames and lighted by special fixtures built out from the wall. The one over the bar exhibited an undraped female figure reclining on a couch.
They stood, a jolly group, naming their drinks.
Henry, who had no taste for liquor, stood apart, pale, sober, struggling to exhibit a savoir faire that had no existence in his mercurial nature.
'I'll take ginger ale,' he said, in painful self-consciousness.
The Senator, his somewhat jaunty straw hat thrust back a little way off his forehead, took Scotch; drank it neat. It seemed to Henry incongruous when the prim little man tossed the liquor back against his palate with a long-practised flourish.
Back in his seat, between Madame and the girl from Omaha, Henry noted that the Senator had not returned with the others.
Madame turned and looked up the aisle.
The lights were dimmed. The curtain rose.
Cicely was in the row ahead, Herb on one side, Elbow on the other.
Elbow was calm, casual, humorous in a way, whispering phrases that had been found amusing by many girls.
Herb, the only man in what Henry still thought of as a 'full dress suit,' had a way of turning his head and studying Cicely's hair and profile whenever she turned toward Elbow, that stirred Henry to anguish.
'He's rich,' thought Henry, twisting in his chair, clasping and unclasping his hands. 'He's rich. He can do everything for her. And he loves her. He couldn't look that way if he didn't.'
A comedian was singing and dancing on the stage. Cicely watched him, her eyes alight, her lips parted in a smile of sheer enjoyment.
'How can she!' he thought. 'How can she!' Then: 'I could do that. If I'd kept it up. If she'd seen me in Iolanthe maybe she'd care.'
The curtain fell on a glittering finale.
With a great chattering the party moved up the aisle. Cicely told her two escorts that she didn't know when she had enjoyed anything so much. She was merry about it. Care free as a child.
Henry stopped short in the foyer; standing aside, half behind a framed advertisement on an easel; his hands clenched in his coat pockets; white of face; biting his lip.
'I can't go with them!' he was thinking. 'It's too much. I can't! I can't trust myself. I'd say something. But what'll they think?
'She won't know. She won't care. She's happy—my suffering is nothing to her.' This was youthful bitterness, of course. But it met an immediate counter in the following thought, which, to any one who knew the often selfcentred Henry would have been interesting. 'But that's the way it ought to be. She mustn't know how I suffer. It isn't her fault. A great love just comes to you. Nobody can help it. It's tragedy, of course. Even if I have to—to'—his lip was quivering now—'to shoot myself, I must leave a note telling her she wasn't to blame. Just that I loved her too much to live without her. But I haven't any money. I couldn't make her happy.'
His eyes, narrow points of fire, glanced this way and that. Almost furtively. Passion—a grown man's passion—was or seemed to him to be tearing him to pieces. And he hadn't a grown man's experience of life, the background of discipline and self-control, that might have helped him weather the storm. All he could do was to wonder if he had spoken aloud or only thought these words. He didn't know. Somebody might have heard. The crowd was still pouring slowly out past him. It seemed to him incredible that all the world shouldn't know about it.
The others of the party were somewhere out on the street now. They were going to a restaurant; then, in their bus, to the twelve-fourteen, the last train for Sunbury until daylight.
What could he do if he didn't take that train? He might hide up forward, in the smoker. But there were a hundred chances that he would be seen. No, that wouldn't do. He must hurry after them.
But he flatly couldn't. Why, the tears were coming to his eyes. A little weakness, whenever he was deeply moved, for which he despised himself. There was no telling what he might do—cry like a girl, break out into an impossible torrent of words. A scene. Anywhere; on the street, in the restaurant.
No, however awkward, whatever the cost, he couldn't rejoin them, he couldn't look at Cicely and Elbow and Herb and the others.
He felt in his pocket. Not enough money, of course. He never had enough. He couldn't ever plan intelligently. Yet he was earning twelve dollars a week!... He had a dollar, and a little change. Perhaps it was enough. He could go to a cheap hotel. He had seen them advertised—fifty or seventy-five cents for the night. And then an early morning train for Sunbury.
He would be worse off then than ever, of course. The people who had talked, would have fresh material. Running away from the party! They might say that he had got drunk. Though in a way he would welcome that. It was a sort of way out.
The crowd was nearly gone. They would be closing the doors soon. Then he would have to go—somewhere.
A big woman was making her way inward against the human current. But Henry, though he saw her and knew in a dreamy way that it was Madame Watt, still couldn't, for the moment, find place for her in his madly surging thoughts.
She passed him; looked into the darkened theatre; came back; stood before him.
Then came this brief conversation:—
'You haven't seen him, Henry?'
'No, I haven't.'
'Hm! Awkward—he took the pledge—he swore it—I am counting on you to help me.'
'Of course. Anything!'
'Were you out with him between the acts?'
'Why—yes.'
'Did he drink anything then?'
'Yes. He took Scotch.'
'Oh, he did?'
'Yes'm.'
'It's all off, then. See here, Henry, will you look? The same place? Be very careful. People mustn't know. And I must count on you. There's nobody else. We'll manage it, somehow. We've got to keep him quiet and get him out home. I'll be at the restaurant. You can send word in to me—have a waiter say I'm wanted at the telephone. Do that. And...'
It is to be doubted if Henry heard more than half of this speech. She was still speaking when he shot out to the street, dodged back of the waiting groups by the kerb and disappeared among the night traffic of the street in the direction of a certain bar.
6
The Senator's cheeks and forehead and nose were shining redly above the little white beard, which, for itself, looked more than ever askew. The straw hat was far back on his head. He waved a limp hand toward the enormous, brightly lighted painting that hung over the bar.
Henry, a painfully set look on his face, sat opposite, across the alcove, leaned heavily on the table, and watched him.
The passion had gone out of him. He was wishing, in a state near despair, that he had listened more attentively to what Madame Watt had said. Something about getting word to her—at the restaurant. But how could he? If it had seemed disastrously difficult before, full of his own trouble, to face that merry party, it was now, with this really tragic problem on his hands, flatly impossible.
And there wasn't a soul in the world to help him. He must work it out alone. Even if he might get word to Madame, what could she do? She couldn't leave her party. And she couldn't bring this pitiable object in among those young people.
Henry's lips pressed together. The world looked to him just now a savage wilderness.
'Consider women, for instance!' The Senator's hand waved again toward the picture. It was surprising to Henry that he could speak with such distinctness. 'Consider women! They toil not, neither do they spin. Yet at the last, they bite like a serpent and sting like an adder.'
Henry held his watch under the table; glanced down. It was five minutes past twelve. For nearly an hour he had been sitting there, helpless, beating his brain for schemes that wouldn't present themselves. The twelve-fourteen was as good as gone, of course. Though it had not for a minute been possible. He thought vaguely, occasionally, of a hotel. But stronger and more persistent was the feeling that he ought to get him out home if he could.
'Women...!' The Senator drooped in his chair. Then looked up; braced himself; shouted, 'Here, boy! A bit more of the same!' When the glass was before him he drank, brightened a little, and resumed. 'Woman, my boy, is th' root—No, I will go farther! I will state that woman is th' root 'n' branch of all evil.'
Henry, with a muttered, 'Excuse me, Senator!' got out of the alcove and stepped outside the door. He stood on the door-step; took off his hat and pressed a hand to his forehead.
Across the street, near the side door of the hotel, stood an old-fashioned closed hack. The driver lay curled up across his seat, asleep. The horses stood with drooping heads.
Henry gazed intently at the dingy vehicle. Slowly his eyes narrowed. He looked again at his watch. Then he moved deliberately across the way and woke the cabman.
'Hey!' he cried, as the man fumblingly put on his hat and blinked up the street and down. 'Hey, you! What'll you take to drive to Sunbury?'
'Sunbury? Oh, that's a long way. And it's pretty late at night.'
'I know all that! How much'll you take?'
The cabman pondered.
'How many?'
'Two.'
'Fifteen dollars.'
'Oh, say I, that's twice too much! Why——'
'Fifteen dollars.'
'But——-'
'Fifteen dollars.'
Henry swallowed. He felt very daring. He had heard of fellows and girls missing the late train and driving out. But the amount usually mentioned was ten dollars. However...
'All right. Drive across here.'
He bent over the Senator, who was talking, still on the one topic, to a small picture just above Henry's empty seat.
'We're going home now, Senator. You'd better come with me.'
'Going home? No, not there. Not there. Back to the Senate, yes. Tha's different. But not home. If you knew what I've——'
Henry led him out. But first the Senator, with some difficulty in the managing, paid his check. Henry would have paid it, but hadn't nearly enough. It had never occurred to him that a single individual could spend so large a sum on himself within the space of less, considerably less, than three hours.
The cabman and Henry together got him into the hack.
'They are pop—popularly known as the weaker sex. All a ter'ble mistake, young man. They're stronger. Li'l do you dream how stronger—how great—how more stronger they are. Curious about words. At times one commands them with ease. Other times they elude one. Words are more tricky—few suspect—but women allure us only to destroy us. Women....'
Before the cab rolled across the Rush Street Bridge on its long journey to the northward he was asleep.
7
It was half-past two in the morning when a hack drawn by weary horses on whose flanks the later glistened, drew up at the porte cochère of the old Dexter Smith place in Sunbury.
The cabman lumbered down and opened the door. A youth, nervously wide awake, leaped out. Then followed this brief conversation.
'Help me carry him up, please.'
'You'd better pay me first. Fifteen dollars!
'I'll do that afterward.'
'I'll take it now.'
'I tell you I'm going to get it——'
'You mean you haven't got it?'
'Not on me.'
'Well, look here——'
'Ssh! You'll wake the whole house up! You've simply got to wait until I get home. You needn't worry. I'm going to pay you.'
'You'd better. Say, he'd ought to have it on him.'
'We're not going into his pockets. Now you do as I tell you.'
Together they lifted him out.
Henry looked up at the door. Madame Watt, somebody, had left this outside light burning. Doubtless the thing to do was just to ring the bell.
He brushed the cabman aside. The Senator was such a little man, so pitifully slender and light! And Henry himself was supple and strong. He took the little old gentleman up in his arms and carried him up the steps. And once again in the course of this strange night his eyes filled.
But not for himself this time. Henry's gift of insight, while it was now and for many years to come would be fitful, erratic, coming and going with his intensely varied moods, was none the less a real, at times a great, gift. And I think he glimpsed now, through the queer confusing mists of thought, something of the grotesque tragedy that runs, like a red and black thread, through the fabric of many human lives.
The Senator had been a famous man. Through nearly two decades, as even Henry dimly knew, he had stood out, a figure of continuous national importance. And now he was just—this. Here in Henry's arms; inert.
'Ring the bell, will you!' said Henry shortly.
The cabman moved.
There was a light step within. The lock turned. The door swung open, and Cicely stood there.
She was wrapped about in a wonderful soft garment of blue. She was pale. And her hair was all down, rippling about her shoulders and (when she stepped quickly back out of the cabman's vision) down her back below the waist.
Henry carried his burden in, and she quickly closed the door.
'Has anybody seen? Does anybody know?' she asked, in a whisper.
He leaned back against the wall.
'No. Nobody. But you——'
'I've been sitting up, watching. I was so afraid aunt might——'
'Then you know?'
'Know? Why—Tell me, do you think you can carry him to his room?'
'Me? Oh, easy! Why he doesn't weigh much of anything. Just look!'
'Then come. Quickly. Keep very quiet.'
Slowly, painstakingly, he followed her up the stairs and along the upper hall to an open door.
'Wait!' she whispered. 'I'll have to turn on the light.' He laid the limp figure on the bed.
Outside, in the still night, the horses stirred and stamped. A voice—the cabman's—cried,—
'Whoa there, you! Whoa!'
Cicely turned with a start.
'Oh, why can't he keep still!... You—you'd better go. I don't know why you're so kind. Those others would never——'
'Please!—You do know!'
This remark appeared to add to her distress. She made a quick little gesture.
'Oh, no, I don't mean—not that I want you to——'
'Not so loud! Quick! Please go!'
'But it's so terribly hard for you. I can't bear—I can't bear to think of your having to—people just mustn't know about it, that's all! We've got to do something. She mustn't—You see, I love you, and....
Their eyes met.
A deep dominating voice came from the doorway.
'You had better go to your room, Cicely,' it said.
They turned like guilty children.
Cicely flushed, then quietly went.
Madame was a strange spectacle. She wore a quilted maroon robe, which she held clutched together at her throat. Most of the hair that was usually piled and coiled about her head had vanished; what little remained was surprisingly gray and was twisted up in front and over the ears in curl papers of the old-fashioned kind.
Henry lowered his gaze; it seemed indelicate to look at her. He discovered then that he was still wearing his hat, and took it off with a low, wholly nervous laugh that was as surprising to himself as it certainly was, for a moment, to Madame Watt, who surveyed him under knit brows before centring her attention on the unconscious figure on the bed.
'We owe you a great deal,' she said then. 'It was awkward enough. But it might have been a disaster. You've saved us from that.'
'Oh, it was nothing,' murmured Henry, blushing.
'Are you sure no one saw? You didn't take him to the station?'
'No. We drove straight out.'
'Hm! When you came did you ring our bell?'
'Me? Why, no. I was going to. But——'
'Yes?'
'She—your—Miss——'
'Do you mean Cicely?'
'Yes. She opened the door.'
Madame frowned again.
'But what on earth——'
Henry interrupted, looking up at her now.
'I'll tell you. I know. I can see it. And somebody's got to tell you.'
Madame looked mystified.
'She couldn't bear to have you know. She was afraid you——'
Madame raised her free hand. 'We won't go into that.'
'But we must. It was your temper she was——'
'We wont——'
'You must listen! Can't you see the dread she lives under—the fear that you'll forget yourself and people will know! And can't you see what it drives—him—to? I heard him talk when he was telling his real thoughts. I know.'
'Oh, you do!'
'Yes, I know. And I know this town. They're very conservative. They watch new people. They're watching you. Like cats. And they'll gossip. I know that too. I've suffered from it. Things that aren't so. But what do they care? They'd spoil your whole life—like that!—and go to the Country Club early to get the best dances. Oh, I know, I tell you. You've got to be careful. It isn't what I say, but you've got to! Or they'll find out, and they won't stop till they've hounded you out of town, and driven him to—this—for good, and broken her—your niece's—heart.'
He stopped, out of breath.
The fire that had flamed from his eyes died down, leaving them like gray ashes. Confusion smote him. He shifted his feet; turned his hat round and round between his hands. What—what—had he been saying!
Then he heard her voice, saying only this:—
'In a way—in a way—you have a right.... God knows it won't.... So much at stake.... Perhaps it had to be said.'
He felt that he had better retreat. Emotions were rising, and he was gulping them down. He knew now that he couldn't speak again; not a word.
She stood aside.
'It was very good of you,' she said.
But he rushed past her and down the stairs.
Humphrey, when he awoke in the morning, remembered dimly his temperamental young partner, a dishevelled, rather wild figure, bending over him, shaking him and saying, 'Gimme fifteen dollars! I'll explain to-morrow. Gosh, but I'm a wreck! You've no idea!'
And he remembered drawing to him the chair on which his clothes were piled and fumbling in various pockets for money.
8
When Henry awoke, at ten, he found himself alone in the rooms. The warm sunshine was streaming in, the university clock was booming out the hour. Then the mellow church bells set up their stately ringing.
He lay for a time drowsily listening. Then the bells brought recollections. Madame Watt, and Cicely, and often the Senator attended the First Presbyterian Church. Right across the alley, facing on Filbert Avenue. By merely turning his head, Henry could see the rear gable of the chapel and the windows of the Sunday-school room.
He sprang out of bed.
His blue serge coat was spotted. From the table in that bar-room, doubtless. He found a bottle of ammonia and sponged. It was also in need of a pressing, but he could do nothing about that now. He had to go to church.
No other course was thinkable. If only to sit where he could catch a glimpse now and then of her profile.
He heard a knock downstairs, but at first ignored it. No one would be coming here of a Sunday morning.
Finally he went down.
There, on the step, immaculately dressed, rather weary looking with dark areas under red eyes, stood Senator Watt.
'How do you do,' said he, with dignity.
'Won't you come in?' said Henry.
They mounted the stairs. The Senator sat stiffly on a small chair. Henry took the piano stool.
'I understand that you did me a very great service last night, Mr Calverly.'
'Oh, no,' Henry managed to say, in a mumbling voice, throwing out his hands. 'No, it wasn't really anything at all.'
'You will please tell me what it cost.'
'Oh—why—well, fifteen dollars.'
The Senator counted out the money.
'You have placed me greatly in your debt, Mr Calverly. I hope that I may some day repay you.'
'Oh, no! You see...'
Silence fell upon them.
The Senator rose to go.
'Drink,' he remarked then, 'is an unmitigated evil. Never surrender to it.'
'I really don't drink at all, Senator.'
'Good! Don't do it. Life is more complex than a young man of your age can perceive. At best it is a bitter struggle. Evil habits are a handicap. They aggravate every problem. Good day. We shall see you soon again at the house, I trust.'
Henry, moved, looked after him as he walked almost briskly away—an erect, precise little man.
Then Henry went to church.
Herb de Casselles ushered him to a seat. He could just see Cicely. He thought she looked very sad. Yet she sang brightly in the hymns. And after the benediction when Herb and Elbow and Dex Smith crowded about her in the aisle, she smiled quite as usual, and made her quick, eager Frenchy gestures.
He brushed his hand across his eyes Had he been living through a dream—a tragic sort of dream?
He made his way, between pews, to a side door, and hurried out. He couldn't speak to a soul; not now. He walked blindly, very fast, down to Chestnut Avenue, over to Simpson Street, then up toward the stores and shops.
Humphrey had a way of working at the office Sundays. He decided to go there. There was the matter of the fifteen dollars. And Humphrey would expect him for their usual Sunday dinner at Stanley's.
He was passing Stanley's now. Next came Donovan's drug store. Next beyond that, Swanson's flower shop.
A carriage—a Victoria—rolled softly by on rubber tyres. Silver jingled on the harness of the two black horses. Two men in plum-coloured livery sat like wooden things on the box. On the rear seat were Madame Watt and Cicely.
The carriage drew up before Swanson's. Madame Watt got heavily out and went into the shop.
Cicely had turned. She was waving her hand.
Henry found his vision suddenly blurred. Then he was standing by the carriage, and Cicely was speaking, leaning over close to him so that the men couldn't hear.
'It was dreadful the way I let you go! I didn't even say good-night. And all the time I wanted you to know....'
He couldn't speak. He stared at her, lips compressed; temples pounding.
She seemed to be smiling faintly.
'We—we might say good-night now.'
He heard her say that.
She thought he shivered. Then he said huskily:—
'I—I've wanted to call you—to call you—'
'Yes?'
'—Cicely.'.
There was a silence. She whispered, 'I think I've wanted you to.'
He had rested a hand on the plum upholstery beside her. In some way it touched hers; clasped it; gripped it feverishly.
The colour came rushing to his face. And to hers.
He saw, through a blinding mist, that there were tears in her eyes.
'Ci—Cicely, you don't, you can't mean—that you—too....'
'Please, Henry! Not here! Not now!'
They glanced up the street; and down.
'Come this afternoon,' she breathed.
'They'll be there.'
'Come early. Two o'clock. We'll take a walk.'
'Oh—Cicely!'
'Henry!'
Their hands were locked together until Madame came out.
The carriage rolled away.
Henry—it seemed to himself—reeled dizzily along Simpson Street to the stairway that you climbed to get to the Gleaner office.
And all along this street of his struggles, his failures, his one or two successes, his dreams, the dingy, two-story buildings laughed and danced and cheered about him, with him, for him—Hemple's meat-market, Berger's grocery, Swanson's, Donovan's, Schultz and Schwartz's barber shop, Stanley's, the Sunbury National Bank, the postoffice—all reeled jubilantly with him in the ecstasy of young love!