Henry Is Twenty: A Further Episodic History of Henry Calverly, 3rd

‘She couldn’t bear to have you know. She was afraid you – ’

Madame raised her free hand. ‘We won’t go into that.’

‘But we must. It was your temper she was – ’

‘We wont – ’

‘You must listen! Can’t you see the dread she lives under – the fear that you’ll forget yourself and people will know! And can’t you see what it drives – him – to? I heard him talk when he was telling his real thoughts. I know.’

‘Oh, you do!’

‘Yes, I know. And I know this town. They’re very conservative. They watch new people. They’re watching you. Like cats. And they’ll gossip. I know that too. I’ve suffered from it. Things that aren’t so. But what do they care? They’d spoil your whole life – like that! – and go to the Country Club early to get the best dances. Oh, I know, I tell you. You’ve got to be careful. It isn’t what I say, but you’ve got to! Or they’ll find out, and they won’t stop till they’ve hounded you out of town, and driven him to – this – for good, and broken her – your niece’s – heart.’

He stopped, out of breath.

The fire that had flamed from his eyes died down, leaving them like gray ashes. Confusion smote him. He shifted his feet; turned his hat round and round between his hands. What —what– had he been saying!

Then he heard her voice, saying only this: —

‘In a way – in a way – you have a right… God knows it won’t… So much at stake… Perhaps it had to be said.’

He felt that he had better retreat. Emotions were rising, and he was gulping them down. He knew now that he couldn’t speak again; not a word.

She stood aside.

‘It was very good of you,’ she said.

But he rushed past her and down the stairs.

Humphrey, when he awoke in the morning, remembered dimly his temperamental young partner, a dishevelled, rather wild figure, bending over him, shaking him and saying, ‘Gimme fifteen dollars! I’ll explain to-morrow. Gosh, but I’m a wreck! You’ve no idea!’

And he remembered drawing to him the chair on which his clothes were piled and fumbling in various pockets for money.

8

When Henry awoke, at ten, he found himself alone in the rooms. The warm sunshine was streaming in, the university clock was booming out the hour. Then the mellow church bells set up their stately ringing.

He lay for a time drowsily listening. Then the bells brought recollections. Madame Watt, and Cicely, and often the Senator attended the First Presbyterian Church. Right across the alley, facing on Filbert Avenue. By merely turning his head, Henry could see the rear gable of the chapel and the windows of the Sunday-school room.

He sprang out of bed.

His blue serge coat was spotted. From the table in that bar-room, doubtless. He found a bottle of ammonia and sponged. It was also in need of a pressing, but he could do nothing about that now. He had to go to church.

No other course was thinkable. If only to sit where he could catch a glimpse now and then of her profile.

He heard a knock downstairs, but at first ignored it. No one would be coming here of a Sunday morning.

Finally he went down.

There, on the step, immaculately dressed, rather weary looking with dark areas under red eyes, stood Senator Watt.

‘How do you do,’ said he, with dignity.

‘Won’t you come in?’ said Henry.

They mounted the stairs. The Senator sat stiffly on a small chair. Henry took the piano stool.

‘I understand that you did me a very great service last night, Mr Calverly.’

‘Oh, no,’ Henry managed to say, in a mumbling voice, throwing out his hands. ‘No, it wasn’t really anything at all.’

‘You will please tell me what it cost.’

‘Oh – why – well, fifteen dollars.’

The Senator counted out the money.

‘You have placed me greatly in your debt, Mr Calverly. I hope that I may some day repay you.’

‘Oh, no! You see…’

Silence fell upon them.

The Senator rose to go.

‘Drink,’ he remarked then, ‘is an unmitigated evil. Never surrender to it.’

‘I really don’t drink at all, Senator.’

‘Good! Don’t do it. Life is more complex than a young man of your age can perceive. At best it is a bitter struggle. Evil habits are a handicap. They aggravate every problem. Good day. We shall see you soon again at the house, I trust.’

Henry, moved, looked after him as he walked almost briskly away – an erect, precise little man.

Then Henry went to church.

Herb de Casselles ushered him to a seat. He could just see Cicely. He thought she looked very sad. Yet she sang brightly in the hymns. And after the benediction when Herb and Elbow and Dex Smith crowded about her in the aisle, she smiled quite as usual, and made her quick, eager Frenchy gestures.

He brushed his hand across his eyes Had he been living through a dream – a tragic sort of dream?

He made his way, between pews, to a side door, and hurried out. He couldn’t speak to a soul; not now. He walked blindly, very fast, down to Chestnut Avenue, over to Simpson Street, then up toward the stores and shops.

Humphrey had a way of working at the office Sundays. He decided to go there. There was the matter of the fifteen dollars. And Humphrey would expect him for their usual Sunday dinner at Stanley’s.

He was passing Stanley’s now. Next came Donovan’s drug store. Next beyond that, Swanson’s flower shop.

A carriage – a Victoria – rolled softly by on rubber tyres. Silver jingled on the harness of the two black horses. Two men in plum-coloured livery sat like wooden things on the box. On the rear seat were Madame Watt and Cicely.

The carriage drew up before Swanson’s. Madame Watt got heavily out and went into the shop.

Cicely had turned. She was waving her hand.

Henry found his vision suddenly blurred. Then he was standing by the carriage, and Cicely was speaking, leaning over close to him so that the men couldn’t hear.

‘It was dreadful the way I let you go! I didn’t even say good-night. And all the time I wanted you to know…’

He couldn’t speak. He stared at her, lips compressed; temples pounding.

She seemed to be smiling faintly.

‘We – we might say good-night now.’

He heard her say that.

She thought he shivered. Then he said huskily: —

‘I – I’ve wanted to call you – to call you – ’

‘Yes?’

‘ – Cicely.’.

There was a silence. She whispered, ‘I think I’ve wanted you to.’

He had rested a hand on the plum upholstery beside her. In some way it touched hers; clasped it; gripped it feverishly.

The colour came rushing to his face. And to hers.

He saw, through a blinding mist, that there were tears in her eyes.

‘Ci – Cicely, you don’t, you can’t mean – that you – too…’

‘Please, Henry! Not here! Not now!’

They glanced up the street; and down.

‘Come this afternoon,’ she breathed.

‘They’ll be there.’

‘Come early. Two o’clock. We’ll take a walk.’

‘Oh – Cicely!’

‘Henry!’

Their hands were locked together until Madame came out.

The carriage rolled away.

Henry – it seemed to himself – reeled dizzily along Simpson Street to the stairway that you climbed to get to the Gleaner office.

And all along this street of his struggles, his failures, his one or two successes, his dreams, the dingy, two-story buildings laughed and danced and cheered about him, with him, for him – Hemple’s meat-market, Berger’s grocery, Swanson’s, Donovan’s, Schultz and Schwartz’s barber shop, Stanley’s, the Sunbury National Bank, the postoffice – all reeled jubilantly with him in the ecstasy of young love!

IX – WHAT’S MONEY!

1

Henry paused on the sill. The door he held open bore the legend, painted in black and white on a rectangle of tin: —

THE SUNBURY WEEKLY GLEANER

By Weaver and Calverly

‘How late you going to stay, Hump?’ he asked.

Humphrey raised his eyes, listlessly thrust his pencil back of his ear, and looked rather thoughtfully at the youth in the doorway; a dapper youth, in an obviously new ‘Fedora’ hat, a conspicuous cord of black silk hanging from his glasses, his little bamboo cane, caught by its crook in the angle of his elbow.

Humphrey’s gaze wandered to the window; settled on the roof of the Sunbury National Bank opposite. He suppressed a sigh.

‘I may want to talk with you, Hen. I’ve been figuring – ’

The youth in the doorway shifted his position with a touch of impatience.

‘See here, Hump, you know I can’t make head or tail out of figures!’

Humphrey looked down at the desk.

‘Anyway I’ll see you at supper,’ Henry added defensively.

‘Mildred expects me down there for supper,’ said Humphrey. The sigh came now. He pushed up the eyeshade and slowly rubbed his eyes. ‘But I may not be able to get away. There are times, Hen, when you have to look figures in the face.’

The youth flushed at this, and replied, rather explosively; —

‘A fellow has to do the sorta thing he can do, Hump!’

‘Well – will you be at the rooms this evening?’ Humphrey’s eyes were again taking in the natty costume. And surveying him, Humphrey answered his own question; dryly. ‘I imagine not.’

‘Well – I was going over to the Watts.’

There was a long silence:

Finally Henry let himself slowly out and closed the door.

Outside, on the landing, he paused again; but this time to button his coat and pull up the blue-bordered handkerchief in his breast pocket until a corner showed.

He looked too, by the fading light – it was mid-September, and the sun would be setting shortly, out over the prairie – at the tin legend on the door.

The sight seemed to reassure him somewhat. As did the other, similar tin legends that were tacked up between the treads of the long flight of stairs that led to Simpson Street, at each of which he turned to look.

Humphrey had before him a pile of canvas-bound account books, a spindle of unpaid bills, a little heap of business letters, and a pad covered with pencilled columns. He rested an elbow among the papers, turned his chair, and looked through the window down into the street.

A moment passed, then he saw Henry walking diagonally across toward Donovan’s drug store.

For an ice-cream soda, of course; or one of those thick, ‘frosted’ fluids of chocolate or coffee flavour that he affected. And it was now within an hour of supper time.

Humphrey leaned forward. Yes, there he stood, on the kerb before Donovan’s, looking, with a quick nervous jerking of the head, now up Simpson Street, now down. Yes, that was his hurry – the usual thing. Madame Watt made a point of driving down to meet the five-twenty-nine from town. Senator Watt always came out then. And usually Cicely Hamlin came along with her.

Humphrey sighed, rose, stood looking down at the bills and letters and canvas books; pressed a hand again against his eyes; wandered to the press-room door and looked, pursing his lips, knitting his brows, at the row of job presses, at the big cylinder press that extended nearly across the rear end of the long room, at the row of type cases on their high stands, at imposing-stones on heavy tables. He sniffed the odour of ink, damp paper, and long, respected dust that hung over the whole establishment. He smiled, moodily, as his eye rested on the gray and black roller towel that hung above the iron sink, recalling Bob Burdette’s verses. He returned to the office, and stood for a few moments before the file of the Gleaner on the wall desk by the door, turning the pages of recent issues. From each number a story by Henry Calverly, 3rd, seemed to leap out at his eyes and his brain. The Caliph of Simpson Street, Sinbad the Treasurer, A Kerbstone Barmecide, The Cauliflowers of the Caliph, The Printer and the Pearls, Ali Anderson and the Four Policemen– the very titles singing aloud of the boy’s extraordinary gift.

‘And it’s all we’ve got here,’ mused Humphrey, moving back to his own desk. ‘That mad child makes us, or we break. I’ve got to humour him, protect him. Can’t even show him these bills. Like getting all your light and heat from a candle that may get blown out any minute.’ And before dropping heavily into his chair, glancing at his watch, drawing his eye-shade down, and plunging again at the heavy problem of keeping a country weekly alive without sufficient advertising revenue, he added, aloud, with a wry, wrinkly smile that yet gave him a momentary whimsical attractiveness: ‘That’s the devil of it!’

There was a step on’ the stairs.

The door opened slowly. A red face appeared, under a tipped-down Derby hat; a face decorated with a bristling red moustache and a richly carmine nose.

Humphrey peered; then considered. It was Tim Niernan, one-time fire chief, now village constable.

‘Young Calverly here?’ asked the official in a husky voice.

Humphrey shook his head. His thoughts, momentarily disarranged, were darting this way and that.

‘What is it, Tim? What do you want of him?’

Tim seemed embarrassed.

‘Why – ’ he began, ‘why – ’

‘Some trouble?’

‘Why, you see Charlie Waterhouse’s suing him.’

Humphrey tried to consider this.

‘What for?’

‘Well – libel. One o’ them stories o’ his. I liked ‘em myself. My folks all say he’s a great kid. But Charlie’s pretty sore.’

‘Suing for a lot, I suppose?’

‘Why yes. Well – ten thousand.’

‘Hm!’

‘He lives with you, don’t he – back of the Parmenter place?’

‘Yes.’ Humphrey’s answer was short. At the moment he was not inclined to make Tim’s task easy.

The constable went out. Humphrey watched him from the window. He passed Donovan’s on the other side of the street and kept on toward the lake.

Humphrey returned to the wall file, and, standing there, read Sinbad the Treasurer through.

There was an extraordinarily fresh, naive power in the story. Simpson Street was mentioned by name. There was but the one town treasurer, whether you called him ‘Sinbad’ or Waterhouse.

‘He certainly did cut loose,’ mused Humphrey. ‘Charlie’s got a case. Got his nerve, too.’

Then he dropped into his chair and sat, for a long time, very quiet, tapping out little tunes on his hollowed cheek with a pencil.

2

Henry turned away from Donovan’s soda fountain, wiping froth from his moustache, and sauntered to the nearer of the two doors. His brows were knit in a slight frown that suggested anxiety. There was earnestness, intensity, in the usually pleasant gray-blue eyes as he peered now up the street, now down.

A low-hung Victoria, drawn by a glossy team in harness that glittered with silver, swung at a dignified pace around the corner of Filbert Avenue, two wooden men in plum-coloured livery on the box, two dignified figures on the rear seat, one middle-aged, large, formidable, commanding, sitting erect and high, the other slighter and not commanding.

Instantly, at the sight, Henry’s frown gave place to a nervously eager smile, returned, went again. When the carriage at length drew up before Berger’s grocery, across the way, however, he had both frown and smile under reasonable control and was a presentable if deadly serious young man.

The footman leaped down and stood at attention. The formidable one stepped out and entered Berger’s. And the slight, fresh-faced girl, leaned out to welcome the youth who rushed across the street.

In Sunbury, in the nineties, a youth and a maiden could ‘go together’ without a thought of the future. The phrase implied frank pairing off, perhaps an occasionally shyly restrained sentimental passage, in general a monopoly of the other’s spare time. An ‘understanding,’ on the other hand, was a. distinctly transitive state, leading to engagement and marriage as soon as the youth was old enough or could earn a living or the opposition of parents could be overcome.

The relationship between Cicely and Henry had lately hovered delicately between the two states. If it seemed, after each timid advance, to recede from the ‘understanding’ point; that was because of the burdens and the heavy responsibility that instantly claimed their thoughts at the mere suggestion of engagement and marriage:

There were among the parents of Henry’s boyhood friends, couples that had married at twenty or even younger, and on no greater income than Henry’s rather doubtful twelve dollars a week. But that day had gone by. An ‘understanding’ meant now, at the very least, that you were saving for a diamond. You could hardly ask a nice girl to become engaged without one.

And marriage meant good clothes for parties, receptions and Sundays, and the street; it meant membership in the Country Club, a reasonably priced pew in church, a rented house, at least, preferably not in South Sunbury and distinctly not out on the prairie or too near the tracks, a certain amount invested in furniture, dishes and other house fittings, and reasonable credit with the grocer and at the meat-market. You could hardly ask a nice girl to go in for less than that. You really couldn’t afford to let her go in for less.

So they were marrying later now; six or eight or ten years later. And the girls were turning to older men. Here in Sunbury, Clemency Snow had married a man seven or eight years older whose younger brother had been among her playmates. Jane Bellman had married a shy little doctor of thirty-one or two. And Martha Caldwell, whom Henry had ‘gone with’ for two or three years, was permitting the rich, really old bachelor, James B. Merchant, Jr., to devote about all his time to her. He was thirty-eight if a day.

It was a disturbing condition for the town boys. Thoughts of it cast black shadows on Henry’s undisciplined brain as he looked at the girl in the Victoria, felt, in the very air about them, her quick, bright smile, the delicately responsive liftings of her eyebrows, her marked desirability.

‘Oh, Henry,’ she was saying, ‘I’ve just been hearing the most wonderful things about you! You can’t imagine! At Mrs MacLouden’s tea. There was a man there – ’

Henry sniffed. A man at a tea! And talking to Cicely! Making up to her, doubtless.

‘ – a friend of Mr Merchant’s, from New York. And what do you think? Mr Merchant showed him your stories. The ones that have come out. He’s been keeping them. Isn’t that remarkable? They read them aloud. And this man says that you are more promising than Richard Harding Davis was at your age. Henry – just think!’

But Henry was scowling. He was thinking with hot, growing concern, of the man. A rich old fellow, of course! One of the dangerous ones.

He leaned over the wheel.

‘Cicely – you – you’re expecting me to-night?’

‘Oh! Why yes, Henry, of course I’d like to have you come.’

‘But weren’t you expecting me?’

‘Why – yes, Henry.

‘Of course’ – stiffly – ‘if you’d rather I wouldn’t come…’

‘Please, Henry! You mustn’t. Not here on the street!’ He stood, flushing darkly, swallowing down the emotion that threatened to choke him.’

She murmured: —

‘You know I want you to come.’

This was unsatisfactory. Indeed he hardly heard it. He was full of his thoughts about her, about the older men, about those tremendous burdens that he couldn’t even pretend to assume. And then came a mad recklessness.

‘Oh, Cicely – this is awful – I just can’t stand it! Why can’t we have an understanding? Call it that? Stop all this uncertainty! I – I – I’ve just got to speak to your aunt – ’

‘Henry! Please! Don’t say those things – ’

‘That’s it! You won’t let me say them.’

‘Not here – ’

‘Oh, please, Cicely! Please! I know I’m not earning much; but I’ll be twenty-one on the seventh of November and then I’ll have more’n three thousand dollars. Please let me tell her that, Cicely. Oh, I know it wouldn’t do to spend all the principal, – but it would go a long way toward setting us up – you know – ’ his voice trembled, dropped even lower, as with awe – ‘get the things we’d need when we were – you know – well, married.’

He felt, as he poured out this mumbled torrent of words, that he was rushing to a painful failure. Cicely had drawn back. She looked bewildered, and tired. And he had fetched up in a black maze of despairing thoughts.

The footman must have heard part of it. He was standing very straight. And the coachman was staring out over the horses. He had probably heard too.

Then Madame Watt came sailing out Of Berger’s; fixed her hawk eyes on him with a curious interest.

He knew that he lifted his hat. He saw, or half saw, that Cicely tried to smile. She did bob her head in the bright quick way she had.

Then the Victoria rolled away, and he was standing, one foot in the street, the other on the kerb, gazing after them through a mist of something so near tears that he was reduced to a painful struggle to gain even the appearance of self-control.

And then, for a quarter-hour, mood followed mood so fast that they almost maddened him.

He thought of old Hump, up there in the office, fighting out their common battle. Perhaps he ought to go back; do his best to understand the accounts. Figures always depressed him. No matter. He would go back. He would show Hump that he could at least be a friend. Yes, he could at least show that. Thing to do was to keep thinking of the other fellow. Forget yourself. That was the thing!

But what he did, first, was to cross over to Swanson’s flower shop and sternly order violets. Paid cash for them.

‘Miss Cicely Hamlin?’ asked the Swanson-girl.

‘Yes,’ growled Henry, ‘for Miss Hamlin. Send them right over, please.’

Then he walked around the block; muttering aloud; starting; glancing-about; muttering again. He could hardly go to Cicely’s. Not this evening! Not when she had been willing to leave it like that.

He meant to go, of course. Too early. By seven-thirty or so. But he told himself he wouldn’t do it. She would have to write him. Or lose him. He would wait in dignified silence.

The early September twilight was settling down on Sunbury.

Lights came on, here and there. The dusk was a relief.

He had wrecked everything. It wasn’t so much that he had proposed an understanding. In the circumstances she couldn’t altogether object to that. It was risking the vital, final decision, of course. But that, sooner or later, would have to be risked. That was something a man had to face, and go through, and be a sport about. No, the trouble seemed to be that he had lost himself. He had made it awkward, impossible, for both of them. Through his impatience he had created an impossible situation. And in losing himself he had lost her, and lost her in the worst way imaginable. He had contrived to make an utterly ridiculous figure of himself, and, in a measure, of her. He had to set his teeth hard on that thought, and compress his lips.

He was on Simpson Street again. Yellow gas-light shone out of the windows of the Gleaner offices, over Hemple’s. Old Hump was hard at it.

He went up there.

3

Humphrey was sitting there, chin on chest, long legs stretched under the desk. He didn’t look up; only a slight start and a movement of one hand indicated that he heard.

Henry stood, confused, a thought alarmed, looking at him; moved aimlessly to his own desk and stirred papers about; came, finally, and sat on a corner of the exchange table, tapping his cane nervously against his knee.

‘Aren’t going to stay here all night, are you, Hump?’ he asked, rather huskily.

Humphrey’s hand moved again; he didn’t speak.

‘Hump! What’s the matter? Anything happened?’

Still no answer.

‘But you know we’re picking up in advertising, Hump?’

‘Not near enough.’ This was a non-committal growl.

‘And see the way our circulation’s been – ’

‘Losing money on it. Can’t carry it.’

‘But – but, Hump – ’

The senior partner waved his hand. His face was gray and grim, his voice restrained. He even smiled as he deliberately filled his pipe.

‘It’s bad, Hen. Very, very bad. I’ve tried to keep you from worrying, but you’ve got to know now. We paid a little over two thousand for this plant and the good will.

‘Cheap enough, wasn’t it?’ cried Henry.

‘If we’d really got her for that, yes. But look at the capital it takes. Building up. I had just a thousand more, a bond. Threw that in last month, you know.’

‘Oh’ – breathed Henry, fright in his eyes – ‘I forgot about that.’