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

‘And you can’t raise a cent.’

Henry tried to think this over. He started to speak; swallowed; slipped off the table; stood there; lifted his cane and sighted along it out the window.

‘I can – November seventh,’ he finally remarked.

Humphrey blew a smoke-ring; followed it with his eyes.

‘My boy, nations, worlds, constellations, may crash between now and November seventh.’

‘I – I could tackle my uncle again,’ murmured Henry, out of a despairing face.

There was at times an acid quality in Humphrey. Henry felt it in him now, as he said dryly: —

‘As I recall your last transaction with your uncle, Hen, he told you finally that you couldn’t have one cent of your principal before November seventh.’

‘He – well, yes, he did say that.’

‘Meant it, didn’t he?’

‘Y – yes. He meant it.’

‘He’s a business man, I believe.’ Humphrey smoked for a moment; then added, with that same biting quality in his voice, ‘And unless he’s insane he would hardly put money into this business now. As it stands – or doesn’t stand. And I presume he’s not insane. No, we’ll drop that subject.’

Henry felt Humphrey’s eyes on him. Sombre cold eyes. And he fell again, in his misery, to sighting along his cane. It seemed to Henry that the world was reeling to disaster. His young, over keen imagination was painting ugly, inescapable pictures of a savage world in which all effort seemed to fail.

Between Humphrey and himself a gulf had opened. It was growing wider every minute. Nothing he could say would help; words were no good. He was afraid he might try to talk. It would be like him; floods of talk, meaningless, mere words, really mere nerves. He clamped his lips on that fear.

If I understand Henry, the thing that had brought him to despair – and he was in despair – was neither the sorry condition of the business, nor the trouble with Cicely. These had confused and saddened him. But the hopelessness had come after he saw Humphrey’s face and eyes and caught that cool note in his voice. To the day of his death Henry couldn’t endure hostility in those close about him. He had to have friendly sympathy, an easy give and take of the spirit in which his naïveté would not be misunderstood. This sort of atmosphere provided, apparently, the only soil in which his faculties could take root and grow. Hostility in those he had been led to trust disarmed him, crushed him.

‘Hump,’ he ventured now, weakly, ‘I think – maybe – you’d better show me those figures. I – I’ll try to understand ‘em. I will.’

Humphrey gave a little snort; brushed the idea away with a sweep of a long hand.

‘No use!’ he said brusquely. He rolled down the desktop and locked it with a snap. ‘Getting stale myself. Sleep on it. Not a thing you can do, Hen!’ He knocked the ashes from his pipe, gloomily. Buttoned his vest. Suddenly he broke out with this: —

‘You’re a lucky brute, Hen!’

Henry started; glanced up; fumbled at his moustache. ‘You’re wondering why I said that. But, man, you’re a genius – Yes, you are! I have to plug for it. But you’ve got the flare. You know well enough what’s loaded all this circulation on us. Your stories! Not a thing else. You’ll do more of ‘em. You’ll be famous.’

‘Oh, no, Hump I You don’t know how I’ve – ’

‘Yes, you’ll be famous. I won’t. It’s a gift – fame, success. It’s a sort of edge God – or something – puts on a man. A cutting edge. You’ve simply got it. I simply haven’t.’

Henry pulled and pulled at his moustache.

‘And you’ve got a girl – a lovely girl. She’s mad about you – oh, yes she is! I know. I’ve seen her look at you.’

‘But, Hump, you don’t just know what – ’

‘She doesn’t have to hide her feelings. Not seriously, not with a lying smile. And you don’t have to hide yours. You haven’t got this furtive rope around your neck, strangling the breath of decent morality out of your soul. Thank God you don’t know what it means – that struggle. She’ll be announcing her engagement one of these days.

‘There’ll be presents and flowers. You’ll get stirred up and write something a thousand times better than you know how to write. Money will come – oh, yes it will! It’ll roll to you, Hen. For a time. Or at times. And you’ll marry – a nice clean wedding. God, just to think of it is like the May winds off the lake!’

He threw out his long arms. Henry thought, perversely enough, that he looked like Lincoln.

‘But the greatest thing of all is that you’re twenty. Think of it! Twenty!.. Hen, when I was twenty I put my life on a schedule for five years. They were up last month.

‘I was to be flying at twenty-four. Think of it – flying! Through the air, man! Like a gull! At twenty-five I was to be famous and rich. A conqueror! I slaved for that. Worked days and nights and Sundays for that. Sweated for the Old Man there on the Voice; put up with his stupid little insults.’

He sprang up; got into his coat; looked at his watch.

‘I’m late. Got to stop at the rooms too. Mildred’ll be wondering. You can stay here if you like.’

But Henry clung to him. Around the back street they went. And Humphrey talked on.

‘Well, I’m twenty-five! And where’ve I got? I love a woman. Hen, I hope you’ll never be torn as I’m torn now. You think you’ve been through things. Why, you’re an innocent babe. I’ve got a woman’s name – and that’s a woman’s life, Hen! – in my hands. It’s a muddle. Maybe there’s tragedy in it. May never work out. Sometimes I feel as if we were going straight over a precipice, she and I. It goes dark. It suffocates me… It’s costing me everything. It’ll take money – a lot of it – money I haven’t got. If the paper goes, my last hopes go with it. If we can’t turn that corner. Everything comes down bang. No use.’

Henry tried to say, ‘Oh, I guess we’ll turn our corner all right;’ but if the words passed his lips at all it was only as a whisper.

They were a hundred feet from the alley back of Parmenter’s. It was dark now, there in the shade of the double row of maples. Humphrey stopped short; pressed his hands to his eyes; then looked at Henry.

‘You coming to the rooms, too?’ he asked.

Henry nodded.

‘I don’t know’s I – I was forgetting, so many things – Oh well, come along. It hardly matters.’

At the alley entrance a man intercepted them; said, ‘This is Henry Calverly, ain’t it?’ Struck a match and read an extraordinary mumble of words. He struck other matches, and read hurriedly on. Then he moved apologetically away, leaving Henry backed limply against a board fence.

Humphrey stood waiting, a tall shadow of a man. To him Henry turned, feeling curiously weak in the legs and gone at the stomach.

‘What is it?’ he asked, weakly, meekly. ‘I couldn’t understand. Did he ar – arrest me or something?’

‘Charlie Waterhouse has sued you for libel. Ten thousand dollars. Come on. I can’t wait.’

‘But – but – but that’s foolish. He can’t – ’

‘That’s how it is.’ Humphrey was grim.

They walked in silence up the alley. Henry stood by while his partner unlocked the neat front door to the old barn, a white door, with one white step and an iron scraper. He could just make them out in the dusk. He wondered if he mightn’t presently wake up and find it a dream… Old Hump!

They stood in the shop. Humphrey had switched on one light; he looked now, his face deeply seamed, his eyes a little sunken, at the dim shadowy metal lathes, the huge reels of copper wire, the tool benches, the rows of wall boxes filled with machine parts, the small electric motors hanging by twisted strings or wires from the ceiling joists, the heavy steel wheels in frames, the great box kites and the spruce and silk planes, in sections, the gas engine, the water motor, the wheels, shafts, and belting overhead.

He bent his sombre eyes on Henry.

That youth, aching at heart, bruised of spirit, unaware of the figure he made, was too far gone to be further puzzled by the weary, mocking smile that flitted across Humphrey’s face.

‘Hump!’ he cried out: ‘What’ll we do!’

‘Do? Sleep over it. Raise some more money?’

‘But how?’

Humphrey waved a hand at the machinery. ‘All this. And my library upstairs. They’ve stood me more’n four thousand, altogether. Ought to fetch something.’

‘But – but – ten thousand!’ Henry whispered the amount with awe as well as misery.

‘Oh, that! Your trouble! Why, you’ll sleep over that, too, and to-morrow I suppose you’ll talk to Harry Davis’s father.’ The senior Davis, Arthur P., was a Simpson Street lawyer. ‘They’ll sting you. But they don’t expect any ten thousand.’

‘But what I said is true! Charlie Waterhouse is a – ’

‘What’s that got to do with it. You can’t prove it. And we aren’t strong enough to hire counsel and detectives and run him to earth. Doesn’t look as if we had the barest breath of life in us. Charlie’ll think of your uncle next, and attach your mother’s estate.’

He said this with unusual roughness. Then he went upstairs; stamped around for a brief time; came hurrying down.

Henry, now, was sitting dejectedly on a work-bench.

‘Hump – please! – you don’t know how I feel. I – ’

‘And,’ replied the senior partner, ‘I don’t care. I don’t care how I feel, either. We either save the paper this week or we don’t. That’s what I care about right now.’

‘I – I won’t let you sell your things, Hump.’ An unconvincing assertion, from the limp figure on the bench.

‘You?’ Humphrey stared at him with something near contempt – stared at the moustache and the cane. ‘You? You won’t let me?.. For God’s sake, shut up!’

With which he went out, slamming the door.

For a time Henry continued to sit there. Then he dragged himself upstairs, went to his bookcase and got the book entitled Will Power and Self Mastery.

He turned the pages until he hit upon these paragraphs: – ‘Every machine, every cathedral, every great ship was a thought before it could become a fact. Build in your brain.

‘Through the all-enveloping ether drifts the invisible electricity that is all life, all energy. Open yourself to it. Make yourself a conductor. Stupidity and fear are resistants; cast these out. Make your brain a dynamo and drive the world.’

This seemed a good idea.

4

Arthur P. Davis was just rising from the supper table when the door-bell rang. He answered it himself; found young Calverly there, in a state of haggard but vigorous youthful intensity. He contrived, after a slight initial difficulty, to draw out of the curiously verbose youth the essential facts. He considered the matter with a deliberation and caution that appeared irritating to the boy. But he had read and (in the bosom of his family) chuckled over Sinbad the Treasurer. He had wondered a little, though he didn’t mention the fact to Henry, whether Charlie wouldn’t sue. Charlie had a case.

When Henry left, clearly still in a confused condition, it was Mr Davis’s impression that Henry had placed the matter in his hands as counsel and further had distinctly agreed to shut his head.

Henry apparently understood it differently. Or, more likely, he didn’t understand at all. Henry was, at the moment, a storm centre with considerable emotional disturbance still to come. Any one who has followed Henry, who knows him at all, will understand that such disturbance within him led directly and always to action. Whatever he may have said to Mr Davis, he was helpless. He had to function in his own way. Probably Mr Davis’s use in the situation was to stimulate Henry’s already overactive brain. Hardly more.

Certainly it was hardly later than a quarter or twenty minutes past seven when Henry appeared at Charlie Waterhouse’s place on Douglass Street.

The town treasurer was on the lawn, shifting his sprinkler by the light of the arc lamp on the corner and smoking his after-supper cigar.

The conversation took place across the picket fence, one of the few surviving in Sunbury at this time.

Henry said, fiercely: —

‘I want to talk to you about that libel suit.’

‘Can’t talk to me, Henry. You’ll have to see my lawyer.’

‘Yay-ah, I know. I’ve got a lawyer too.’

‘All right. Let ‘em talk to each other.’

‘You know you can’t get any ten thousand dollars.’

‘Can’t talk about that.’

‘Yes, you can. You gotta.’

‘Oh, I’ve gotta, have I?’

‘Yes, you bet you have. Some people seem to think you’ve got a case.’

‘Guess there ain’t much doubt about that.’

‘Mebbe there ain’t. Even if what I said was true.’

‘Look here, Henry, I don’t care to have this kind o’ talk going on around here. You better go along.’

‘Go along nothing! I’ll say every word of it. And what’s more, you’ll listen. No, don’t you go. You stand right there.’

Charlie, a stoutish man in an alpaca coat, with a florid countenance and a huge moustache, gave a moment’s consideration to the blazing young crusader before him. The boy wasn’t going to be any too easy to handle. He had no need to see him clearly to become aware of that fact. Charlie shifted his cigar.

‘Lemme put it this way. S’pose you could sting me. You’d never get ten thousand. But s’pose, after I get through talking, you decide to go ahead and push the case – ’

‘Push the case? Well, rather!’

‘Wait a minute! All right, let’s say you’re going ahead and fight for part o’ that ten thousand. What you think you could get. Then what’m I going to do?’

‘Do you suppose I care what – ’

‘Oh, yes you do! Now listen! I want you to get this straight. You – ’

‘You want me to – ’

‘Keep still! Now here’s – ’

‘Look here, I won’t have you – ’

‘Yes, you will! Listen. If you fight, I’ll fight. I’ll go straight after you. I’ll run you to earth. I’ll hire detectives to shadow you. I know you ain’t straight, and I’ll show you up before the whole dam town. I’m right and I tell you right here I’m going to prove it! I’ll put you in prison! I’ll – ’

During most of this speech Charlie was talking too. But in so low a tone that he could hardly miss what Henry was saving. He broke in now with a loud: —

‘Shut up!’

Henry stopped really because he was out of breath. It gratified him to see that neighbours were appearing in their lighted windows. And a youthful chorus on a porch across the way was suddenly hushed.

‘Came here to make a scene, did you? Well, I’ll – ’

‘No, I didn’t come here to make a scene. I came here to make you listen to reason and I’m going to do it.’

‘Well, drop your voice a little, can’t you! No sense in yelling our private affairs.’

‘Sure I’ll drop my voice. You’re the one that started the yelling.’

‘Well, I don’t say you couldn’t make it hard for any man in my position if you want to be nasty – fight that way.’

‘You wait!’

‘But what I’d like to know is – what I’d like to know… Where you goin’ to get the money to hire all those detectives?’

‘Where’m I going to get the money to pay you if you win the suit?’

Though Charlie came back with, ‘Oh, I’ll win the suit all right, all right!’ this was clearly a facer. He added, pondering, ‘I guess Munson’ll manage to attach anything you’ve got.’ But he was at sea. ‘Fine dirty idea o’ yours, hounding a decent man, with detectives.’ And finally, ‘Well, what do you want?’

‘Listen! S’pose you did win. You’d never get ten thousand.’

‘I’d get five.’

‘No, you wouldn’t. Why don’t you act sensible and tell me what you’ll take to stop it.’

‘I’d have to think that over.’

‘You tell me now or I’ll bust this town open.’

‘No good talking that way, Henry. Can you get any money?’

‘Tell you for sure in twenty-four hours.’

‘But it ain’t the money. You’ve assailed my character. That’s what you’ve done. Will you retract in print?’

‘No, I won’t. But if you’ll come down to a decent price and promise to call off the boycott – ’

‘What boycott?’

‘Advertising. You know. You do that, and I’ll agree to leave you alone. Somebody else’ll have to find you out, that’s all. I’ve gotta help Hump Weaver pull the Gleaner out. I guess that’s my job now.’

He said this last sadly. He had read stories of wonderful young St Georges who slew a dozen political dragons at a time. Who never compromised or gave hostages to fortune. But there was only one chance for the paper and for old Hump. That chance was here and now.

He was sorry he couldn’t see Charlie Waterhouse’s face. ‘What’ll you give?’ asked that worthy, after thoughtfully chewing, his cigar.

‘A thousand.’

‘Lord, no. Four thousand.’

‘That’s impossible.’

‘Three, then.’

‘No, I won’t pay anything like three.’

‘I wouldn’t go a cent under two.’

‘Well – two thousand then. All right. I’ll let you know by to-morrow night.’

‘You understand, Henry, it ain’t the money. It’s for the good o’ the town I’m doing it. To keep peace, y’ understand. That’s why I’m doing it. Y’ understand that, Henry.’ He actually reached over the fence and hung to the boy’s arm.

‘We’d better shake hands on it,’ said Henry.

‘Sure! I’ll stand by it, if you will.’

‘I will. Good-bye, now.’

And Henry, somewhat confused regarding his ethical position, depressed at the thought that you couldn’t rise altogether out of this hard world, that you had to live right in it, compromise with it, let yourself be soiled by it – Henry, his eyes down to beads, flushed about the temples, caught the eight-six to Chicago.

He rode out to the West Side on a cable-car. It is an interesting item to note in the rather zig-zag development of Henry’s highly emotional nature that he never once weakened during that long ride. He was burning up, of course. It was like that wonderful week when he had written day and night, night and day, the Simpson Street stories. But it was, in a way, glorious. That ethereal electricity was flowing right through him. The Power was on him. He knew, not in his surface mind but in the deeper seat of all belief, in his feelings, that he couldn’t be stopped or headed. Not to-night.

5

‘You are not altogether clear, Henry. Let me understand this.’

The scene was Uncle Arthur’s ‘den.’

Henry had run the gauntlet of his cousins. Rich young cousins, brought up to respect their parents and think themselves poor. It was a proper home, with order, cleanliness, method shining out. He resented it. He resented them all.

Uncle Arthur was thin, and penetrating. His eyes bored at you. His nose was sharp, his brow furrowed. It seemed to Henry that he was always scowling a little.

His light sharp voice was going on, stating a disentangled, re-arranged version of Henry’s extraordinary outbursts: —

‘This man, the town treasurer, is suing you for libel, and you are advised that he has a case? But he will settle for two thousand dollars?’

‘Yes. He will.’

‘And you have come to me with the idea that I will pay over your mother’s money for the purpose?’

‘Well, I’ll be twenty-one anyway in less’n two months. But that ain’t – isn’t – it exactly, not all of it. I’ve really got to have the whole three thousand.’

‘Oh, you have?’

‘Yes. It’s like this. We bought the Gleaner, Hump Weaver and I. And we got it cheap, too. Two thousand – for plant, good will, the big press, everything.’

‘Hmm!’

‘Then I wrote those stories. They jumped our circulation way up. More’n we can afford. Queer about that. Because the paper’d been attacking Charlie Waterhouse, they got the advertiser’s to boycott us.’

‘Oh!’

‘Now Charlie’s promised me, if I pay him, to call off the boycott. It’ll give us all the Simpson Street advertising. And Hump says we’ll fail in a week if we don’t get it.’

‘Henry!’ Uncle Arthur’s voice rang out with unpleasant clarity. ‘You got from me a thousand dollars of your mother’s estate. You sank it in this paper. I let you have that thinking it would bring you to your senses.

It has not brought you to your senses. That is evident… Now I am going to tell you something extremely serious.

I tell you this because I believe that you are not, for one thing, dishonest. I have discovered that when I gave you that sum and took your receipt I was not protected. You are a minor. You cannot, in law, release me from my obligation as your guardian. After you have come of age you could collect it again from me.’

‘Oh, Uncle Arthur, I wouldn’t do that!’

‘I am sure you wouldn’t. But you can readily see, now, that it is utterly impossible for me to make any further advances to you. Even if I were willing. And I am distinctly not willing.’

‘But listen, Uncle Arthur! You’ve got to!’

The scowl of this narrow-faced man deepened.

‘I don’t care for impudence, Henry. We will not talk further about this.’

‘But we must, Uncle Arthur! Don’t you see, I’ve got to pay Charlie, and have Mr Davis get his receipt and the papers signed before they learn about you, or they’ll attach the estate. Why, Charlie might get all of it, and more too. They might just wreck me. I mustn’t lose a minute.’

Uncle Arthur sat straight up at this. Henry thought he looked even more deeply annoyed. But he spoke, after a long moment, quite calmly.

‘You are right there. That is a point. Putting it aside for a moment, what were you proposing to do with the other thousand dollars?’

Henry felt the sharp eyes focusing on him. He sprang up. His words came hotly.

‘Because Hump has put in a thousand more’n I have now. He said to-night he’d have to sell his library and his – his own things. I can’t let him do that. I won’t let him. I’ve got to stand with him.’ Henry choked up a little now.

‘Hump’s my friend, Uncle Arthur. He’s steady and honest and – ’ He faltered momentarily; Uncle Arthur was peculiarly the sort of person you couldn’t tell about Humphrey’s love affair; he wouldn’t be able then to see his strong points… ‘He edits the paper and gets the pay-roll and goes out after the ads. And he hates it! But he’s a wonderful fighter. I won’t desert him. I won’t! I can’t!.. Uncle Arthur, why won’t you come out and see our place and meet Hump and let him show you our books and how our circulation’s jumped and…’

His voice trailed off because Uncle Arthur too had sprung to his feet and was pacing the room. Henry’s arguments, his earnestness and young energy, something, was telling on him. Finally he turned and said, in that same quiet voice: —

‘All right, Henry. I’ll run out to-morrow and put this thing through for you. But – ’

‘Oh, no, Uncle Arthur! You mustn’t do that! Not to-morrow! Charlie’d get wise. Or some of that gang. Everybody in town’d know you were there. No, that wouldn’t do!’

Uncle Arthur took another turn about the room.

‘Just what is it that you want, Henry?’ he asked, in that same quiet voice.

‘Why, let’s see! You’d better give me two thousand in one cheque and one thousand in another. Mr Davis can fix it so your cheque doesn’t go to Charlie. I don’t want to put it in the bank. Charlie’s crowd’d get on. But I’ll fix it. Mr Davis’ll know.’

At the door Uncle Arthur looked severely at the dapper, excited youth on the steps.

‘It may make a man of you. It will certainly throw you on your own resources. I shall have to trust you to release me formally from all responsibility after your birthday. And’ – sharply – ‘understand, you are never to come to me for help. You have your chance. You have chosen your path.’

6

Eleven at night. The Country Club was bright; Henry passed it on the farther side of the street. He could hear music and laughter there. They choked him. With averted face he rushed by.

Henry entered at the gate before the old Dexter Smith mansion; then slipped off among the trees.

His throat was dry. He was giddy and hot about the head. He wondered, miserably, if he had a fever. Very likely.

There were lights here, too; downstairs.

Some one calling, perhaps – that friend of James B. Merchant’s.

Henry gritted his teeth.

It was too late to call. Yet he had had to come, had been drawn irresistibly to the spot.

What mattered it after all, who might be calling. He told himself that his life was to be, hereafter, one of sorrow, of frustration. He must be dignified about it. He must make it a life worthy of his love and his great sacrifice.

The front door opened.

A man and a woman came down the steps. An elderly couple. He stood very still, behind a tree, while they walked past him.