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

7

It was nearly five o’clock when Humphrey reached his barn at the rear of the Parmenter place. He found the outside door ajar.

‘Hen’s here now,’ he thought.

He stepped within the dim shop, that had once been a carriage room, called, ‘Hello there!’ and crossed to the narrow stairway. There was no answer. He went on up.

On the rug in the centre of the living-room floor was a heap consisting of an old trunk, a suit-case, a guitar in an old green woollen bag, two canes, an umbrella, and various loose objects – books, a small stand of shelves, two overcoats, hats, and a wire rack full of photographs.

The polished oak post at the head of the stairs was chipped, where they had pushed the trunk around. Humphrey fingered the spot; found the splinter on the floor; muttered, ‘I’ll glue it on, and rub over the cracks.’

He looked again at the disorderly heap in the centre of the room. ‘It didn’t occur to him to stow’em away,’ he mused. ‘Probably didn’t know where to put ‘em.’

He set to work, hauling the trunk into a little unfinished room next to his own bedroom. He had meant to make a kitchen of this some day. He carried in the other things; then got a dust-pan and brushed off the rug.

The rooms were clean and tidy. Humphrey was a born bachelor; he had the knack of living, alone in comfort. His books occupied all one wall of his bedroom, handy for night reading. He had running water there, and electric lights placed conveniently by the books, beside his mirror, and at the head of his bed.

He stood now in the living-room, humming softly and looking around with knit brows. After a few moments he stopped humming. He was struggling against a slight but definite depression. He had known it would be hard to give up room in his comfortable quarters to another; he had not known it would be as hard as it was now plainly to be. He started humming again, and moved about, straightening the furniture. This oddly pleasant home was his citadel. He had himself evolved it, in every detail, from a dusty, cobwebby old bam interior. He had run the wires and installed the water pipes and fixtures with his own hands. He seldom even asked his acquaintances in. There seemed no strong reason why he should do so.

‘Hen shouldn’t have left the door open like that,’ he mused.

He thrust his hands into his pockets and whistled a little. Then he sighed.

‘Well,’ he thought, ‘needn’t be a hog. It’s my chance to do a fairly decent turn. The boy hasn’t a soul. Not yet.

He isn’t the sort you can safely leave by himself. Got to be organised. Very likely I’ve got to build him over from the ground up. Might try making him read history. God knows he needs background. It’ll take time. And patience. All I’ve got. Help him, little by little, to get hold of his self-esteem. Teach the kid to laugh again. That’s it. I’ve taken it on. Can’t quit. It seems to be my job.’ And he sighed again. ‘Have to get him a key of his own.’

There were footsteps below. Henry, his arms full of personal treasures and garments he had overlooked in packing, came slowly up the stairs.

‘I put your things in there,’ Humphrey pointed. ‘We’ll move the box couch in for you to-night.’

‘That’ll be fine,’ said Henry, aimless of eye, weak of voice.

Humphrey’s eyes followed him as he passed into the improvised bedroom; and he compressed his lips and shook his head.

Shortly Henry came out and sank mournfully on a chair. It was time for the first lesson. ‘There’s simply no life in the boy,’ thought Humphrey. He cleared his throat, and said aloud: —

‘Tell you what, Hen. We’ll celebrate a little, this first evening. I’ve got a couple of chafing dishes and some odds and ends of food. And I make excellent drip coffee. If you’ll go over to Berger’s and get a pound or so of cheese for the rabbit, I’ll look the situation over and figure out a meal. Charge it to me. I have an account there.’

Henry, without change of expression, got slowly up, said, ‘All right,’ hung around for a little time, wandering about the room, and finally wandered off down the stairs and out.

He returned at twenty minutes past midnight.

Humphrey was abed, reading Smith’ on Torsion. He put down the book and waited. He had left lights on downstairs and in the living-room. Since six o’clock he had passed through many and extreme states of feeling; at present he was in a state of suspense between worry and strongly suppressed wrath.

Henry came into the room – a little flushed, bright of eye, the sensitive corners of his mouth twitching nervously, alertly, happily upward. He even actually chuckled.

‘Well, where – on – earth…

Henry waved a light hand. ‘Queerest thing happened. But say, I guess I owe you an apology, sorta. I ought to have sent word or something. Everything happened so quickly. You know how it is. When you’re sorta swept off your feet like that – ’

‘Like what!’

‘Oh – well, it was like this. I went over to get the cheese… Funny, it doesn’t seem as if it could have been to-day! Seems as if it was weeks ago that I moved my things over.’ His eyes roved about the room; lingered on the books; followed out the details of the neat surface wiring with sudden interest.

‘Go on!’ From Humphrey, this, with grim emphasis that was wholly lost on the self-absorbed youth.

‘Oh yes! Well, you see, I went over to Berger’s and got the cheese; and just as I was coming out I ran into Mrs Henderson and Corinne.’

‘Who!’

‘Corinne Doag. You know. She’s visiting there. Well, sir, I could have died right there. Fussed me so I turned around and was going back into the store. I was just plain rattled. And you were right about Mrs Henderson. She was kinda mad. She made me stand right up and take a scolding. Shook her finger at me right, there in front of Berger’s. That fussed me worse. Gee! I was red all over. But you see it sorta fussed Corinne Doag too – she was standing right there – and she got a little red. Wasn’t it a scene, though! Sorta made us acquainted right off. You know, threw us together. Then she – Mrs Henderson – said I didn’t deserve to meet a girl with verve and timbre, but just to show she wasn’t the kind to harbour angry feelings she’d introduce us. And – and – I walked along home with’em.’

He was looking again at the solid ranks of books that extended, floor to ceiling, across the end wall.

‘Say, Hump, you don’t mean to say you really read all those!’

‘You walked home with them. Go on.’

‘Oh, well, they asked me to stay to supper, and I did, and some folks came in, and we sang and things, and then we – oh, yes, how much was the cheese?’

‘How in thunder do I know?’

‘Well – there was a pound of it – Mrs Henderson made a rabbit.

The none too subtle chill in the atmosphere about Humphrey seemed at last to be meeting and somewhat subduing the exuberant good cheer that radiated from Henry. He fell to fingering his moustache, and studying the bed-posts. Once or twice, he looked up, hesitated on the brink of speech, only to lower his eyes again.

Then, unexpectedly, he chuckled aloud, and said, ‘She’s a wonderful girl. At first she seems quiet, but when you get to know her… going to take a walk with me to-morrow morning. She was going to church with Mrs H., but I told her we’d worship in God’s great outdoor temple.’

He yawned now. And stretched, deliberately, luxuriously like a healthy animal, his arms above his head.

‘Well,’ said he, ‘it’s late as all get out. I suppose you want to go to sleep.’ He got as far as the door, then leaned confidingly against the wall. ‘Look here, Hump, I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate your taking me in like this. It’s dam nice of you. Don’t know what I’d have done if it wasn’t for you. Well, good-night.’

He got part way out the door this time; then, brushed by a wave of his earlier moody self-consciousness, turned back. He even came in and leaned over the foot of the bed, and flushed a little. It occurred to Humphrey that the boy appeared to be momentarily ashamed of his present happiness.

‘Do you know what was the matter with me?’ he broke out. ‘It was just what you said. I was taking things too hard. The great thing is to be rational, normal. Thing with me was I used to go to one extreme and now these last two years I’ve been going with all my might to the other. Of course it wouldn’t work… Do you know who’s helped me a whole lot? You’d never guess.’ Rather shamefaced, he drew from his pocket a little book bound in olive-green ‘ooze’ leather. ‘It’s this old fellow. Epictetus. Listen to what he says – “To the rational animal only is the irrational intolerable.” That was the trouble with me. I just wasn’t a rational animal. I wasn’t… Well, I’ve got to say good-night.’

This time he went.

Humphrey heard him getting out of his clothes and into the bed that Humphrey himself had made up on the box couch. It seemed only a moment later that he was snoring – softly, slowly, comfortably, like a rational animal.

The minute hand of the alarm clock on Humphrey’s bureau crept up to twelve, the hour hand to one. Then came a single resonant, reverberating boom from the big clock up at the university.

Slowly, lips compressed, Humphrey got up, and in his pyjamas and slippers went downstairs and switched off the door light he found burning there. The stair light could be turned off upstairs.

Then, instead of going up, he opened the door and stood looking out on the calm village night.

‘Of all the – ’ he muttered inconclusively. ‘Why it’s – he’s a – Good God! It’s the limit! It’s – it’s intolerable.’

The word, floating from his own lips, caught his ear. His frown began, very slowly, to relax. A dry, grudging smile wrinkled its way across his mobile face. And he nodded, deliberately. ‘Epictetus,’ he remarked, ‘was right.’

II – IN SAND-FLY TIME

1

It was half-past nine of a Sabbath morning at the beginning of June. The beneficent sunshine streamed down on the dark-like streets, on the shingled roofs of the many decorous but comfortable homes, on the wide lawns, on the hundreds of washed and brushed little boys and starched little girls that were marching meekly to the various Sunday schools, Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal, Congregational, Baptist. Above the new cement sidewalk on Simpson Street – where all the stores were closed except two drug stores and Swanson’s flower shop – the sunshine quivered and wavered, bringing oppressive promise of the first really warm day of the young summer. Slow-swinging church bells sent out widening, reverberating circles of mellow tone through the still air.

The sun shone too on the old barn back of the Parmenter place.

The barn presented an odd appearance; the red paint of an earlier decade in the nineteenth century here faded to brown, there flaked off altogether, but the upstairs part, once the haymow, embellished with neat double windows. Below, giving on the alley, was a white-painted door with a single step and an ornamental boot scraper.

Within, in Humphrey’s room, the bed was neatly made, clothes hung in a corner, shoes and slippers stood in a row.

In Henry’s room the couch bed was a rumpled heap, a suit-case lay on the floor half-unpacked, a trunk was in the same condition, clothes, shoes, neckties, photographs were scattered about on table, chairs and floor, a box of books by the bed, the guitar in its old green woollen bag leaning against the door.

In a corner of the living-room the doors of an ingeniously contrived cupboard stood open, disclosing a sink, shelves of dishes, and a small ice-box.

Humphrey, in shirt, trousers and slippers, stood washing the breakfast things. He was smoking his cob pipe. His long, wrinkly, usually quizzical face, could Henry have seen it, was deathly sober.

Henry, however, could see only the lean back. And he looked at that only momentarily. He was busy smoothing the fringe along his upper lip and twisting it up at the ends. Too, he leaned slightly on his bamboo walking stick, staring down at it, watching it bend. Despite his white ducks and shoes, serge coat, creamy white felt hat on the back of his shapely head, despite the rather noticeable nose glasses with the black silk cord hanging from them to his lapel, he presented a forlorn picture. He wished Humphrey would say something. That long back was hostile. Henry was helpless before hostility, as before logic. Already they weren’t getting on. Little things like washing dishes and making beds and – dusting! Humphrey was proving an old fuss-budget. And Henry couldn’t think what to do about it. He could never: – never in the world – do those fussy things, use his hands. He couldn’t even flounder through the little mental processes that lead up to doing things with your hands. He wasn’t that sort of person. Humphrey was.

‘Oh, thunder – Hump!’ Thus Henry, weakly. ‘Let the old dishes slide a little while. I’ll be back. It ain’t my fault that I’ve got a date now.’

Humphrey set down a cup rather hard, rolled the dish-towel into a ball and threw it, with heat, after the cup, then strode to the window, nursing his pipe and staring out at the gooseberry and currant bushes in the back yard of the First Presbyterian parsonage across the alley.

Humphrey liked order. It was the breath of his life. Combined with solitude it spelled peace to his bachelor soul. But here it was only the second day and the place was a pigsty. What would it be in a week!

He was aware that Henry moved over, all hesitation, and with words, to shut the door of that hopelessly littered bedroom. The boy appeared to have no intention of picking up his things; he wasn’t even unpacking! Leaving his clothes that way 1… The words he was so confusedly uttering were the absurdest excuses: ‘Just shut the door – fix it all up when I get back – an hour or so…

It was in a wave of unaccustomed sentimentalism that Humphrey had gathered him in. Humphrey had few visitors. You couldn’t work with aimless youths hanging around. He knew all about that. Humphrey’s evenings were precious. His time was figured out, Monday morning to Saturday night, to the minute. And the Sundays were always an orgy of work. But this youth, to whom he had opened his quarters and his slightly acid heart, was the most aimless being he had ever known. An utter surprise; a shock. Yet here he was, all over the place.

Humphrey was trying, by a mighty effort of will, to get himself back into that maudlin state of pity which had brought on all this trouble. If he could only manage again to feel sorry for the boy, perhaps he could stand him. But he could only bite his pipe-stem. He was afraid he might say something he would be sorry for. No good in that, of course… No more peaceful study, all alone, propped up in bed, with a pipe and reading light! No more wonderful nights in the shop downstairs! No more holding to a delicately fresh line of thought – balancing along like a wire-walker over a street! The boy was over by the stairs now, all apologies, mumbling useless words. But he was going – no doubt whatever as to that.

‘I’m late now,’ he was saying.‘What else can I do, Hump? I promised. She’ll be looking for me now. If you just wouldn’t be in such a thundering hurry about those darn dishes… I can’t live like a machine. I just can’t!’

‘You could have cleaned up your room while you’ve been standing there,’ said Humphrey, in a rumbling voice.

‘No, I couldn’t! Put up all my pictures and books and things! I’m not like you. You don’t understand!’ Humphrey wheeled on him, pipe in hand, a cold light in his eyes, a none-too-agreeable smile wrinkling the lower part of his face.

‘I’m not asking much of you,’ he said.

‘Oh, thunder, Hump! Do you think I don’t appreciate – ’

‘I’d be glad to help you. But you’ve got to do a little on your own account. For God’s sake show some spine!’ Sand-fly! Damn it, this is more than I can stand! It smothers me! How can I work! How can I think!’ He stopped short; bit his lip; turned back to the window and thrust his pipe into his mouth.

Humphrey knew without looking that the boy was fussing endlessly at that absurd moustache. And sighing – he heard that. He bit hard on his pipe-stem. The day was wrecked already. He would be boiling up every few moments; tripping over Henry’s things; regretting his perhaps too harsh words. Yes, they were too harsh, of course.

Henry was muttering, mumbling, tracing out the pattern in the rug-border with his silly little stick. These words were audible: —

‘I don’t see why you asked me to come here. I suppose I… Of course, if you don’t want me to stay here with you, I suppose I… Oh, well! I guess I ain’t much good…’

The voice trailed huskily off into silence.

After all, there didn’t seem to be any place the boy could stay, if not here. Living alone in a boarding-house hadn’t worked at all. To send him out into the world would be like condemning him.

Henry moved off down the stairs, slowly, pausing once as if he had not yet actually determined to go.

Walking more briskly, he emerged from the alley and swung around into Filbert Avenue. The starched and shining children were pouring in an intermittent stream into the First Presbyterian chapel, behind the big church.

Gloom in his eyes, striking in a savage aimlessness with his cane at the grass, he passed the edifice. Walking thus, he felt a presence and lifted his eyes.

2

Approaching was a pleasant-looking young woman of twenty, of a good figure, a few girlish freckles across the bridge of her nose, abundant hair tucked in under her Sunday hat.

It was Martha Caldwell. She had a class in the Sunday-school.

Martha saw him. No doubt about that.

For the moment, in Henry’s abasement of spirit, he half forgot that she had cut him dead, publicly, on Simpson Street on the Saturday. Or if it was not a forgetting it was a vagueness. Henry was full to brimming of himself. Not in years had he craved sympathy as he craved it to-day. The word ‘craved,’ though, isn’t strong enough. It was an utter need. An outcast, perhaps literally homeless; for how could he go back to Humphrey’s after what had occurred! He must pack his things, of course.

He raised his hand – slowly, a thought stiffly – toward his hat.

Martha moved swiftly by, staring past him, fixedly, her lips compressed, her colour rising.

Henry’s hand hung suspended a moment, then sank to his side.

Henry himself was capable of any sort of heedlessness, but never of unkindness or of cutting a friend.

The colour surged hotly over his face and reddened his ears.

There was a chance – a pretty good chance, it seemed, as he recalled the pleasant Saturday evening over a rabbit – that he might find sympathy at Mrs Arthur V. Henderson’s. That was one place, where, within twelve hours, Henry Calverley, 3rd, had had some standing. They had seemed to like him. Mrs Henderson had unquestionably played up to him. And her guest was a peach!

At a feverish pace, almost running, he went there.

3

Corinne Doag was a big girl with blue-black hair and a profile like the Goddess of Liberty on the silver quarter of the period. Her full face rather belied the profile; it was an easy, good-natured face, though with a hint of preoccupation about the dark eyes. Her smile was almost a grin. She had the great gift of health. She radiated it. You couldn’t ignore her you felt her.

Though not a day older than Henry, Corinne was a singer of promise. At Mrs Henderson’s musicale, she had managed groups of Schumann, Schubert, Franz and Wolff, an Italian aria or two and some quaint French folk songs with ample evidence of sound training and coaching. Her voice had faults. It was still a little too big for her. It was a contralto without a hollow note in it, firm and strong, with a good upper range. There was in it more than a hint of power. It moved you, even in her cruder moments. Her speaking voice – slow, lazy, strongly sensuous – gave Henry thrills.

She and Henry strolled up the lake, along the bluff through and beyond the oak-clad campus, away up past the lighthouse. She seemed not to mind the increasing heat. She had the careless vitality of a young mountain lion, and the grace.

Henry himself minded no external thing. Corinne Doag was, at the moment, the one person in the world who could help him in his hour of deep trouble. It was not clear how she could help him, but somehow she could. He was blindly sure of it. If he could just impress himself on her, make her forget other men, other interests! He had started well, the night before. Things had gone fine.

He was leading her to a secluded breakwater, between the lighthouse and Pennyweather Point, where, under the clay bluff, the shell of an old boat-house gave you a back as you sat on a gray timber and shielded you at once from morning sun and from the gaze of casual strollers up the beach. Henry knew the place well, had guided various girls there. Martha had often spoken of it as ‘our’ breakwater. But no twinge of memory disturbed him now. His nervous intentness on this immediate, rather desperate task of conquering Corinne’s sympathy fully occupied his turbulent thoughts.

When they arrived at the spot he was stilted in manner, though atremble within. He ostentatiously took off his coat, spread it for her, overpowering her protests.

It had been thought by a number of girls and by a few of his elders that Henry had charm. He was aware of quality they called charm he could usually turn on and off like water at a faucet.

Now, of all occasions, was the time to turn it on. But he was breathlessly unequal to it.

Perversity seized his tongue. He had seen himself lying easily, not ungracefully beside her, saying (softly) the things she would most like to hear. Speak of her voice, of course. And sing with her (softly) while they idly watched the streaky, sparkling lake and the swooping, creaking gulls above it. But he did none of these. Instead he stood over her, glaring down rather fiercely, and saying nothing at all.

‘The shade does feel good,’ said she.

Still he groped for words, or for a mental attitude that might result in words. None came. Here she was, at his feet, and he couldn’t even speak.

He fell back, in pertubation, on physical display, became the prancing male.

‘I like to skip stones,’ he managed to say, with husky self-consciousness. He hunted flat stones; threw them hard and far, until his face shone with sweat and a damp spot appeared in his shirt between his shoulders.

To her, ‘Better let me hold your glasses,’ he responded with an irritable shake of the head.

But such physical violence couldn’t go on indefinitely. Not in this heat. He threw less vigorously. He wondered in something of a funk, why he couldn’t grasp his opportunity.

He became aware of a sound. A sound that in a more felicitous moment would have thrilled him.

She was singing, softly. Something French, apparently. Once she stopped, and did a phrase over, as if she were practising.

He stole a glance. She wasn’t even looking at him. She had sunk back on an elbow, her long frame stretched comfortably out, and seemed to be observing the gulls, rather absently.

Henry came over; sat on a spile; glared at her.

‘I skipped that last one seven times,’ said he.

She gave him an indulgent little smile, and hummed on.

‘She doesn’t know I’m here,’ he mused, with bitterness. ‘I don’t count. Nobody wants me.’ And added, ‘She’s selfish.’

Suddenly he broke out, tragically: ‘You don’t know what I’ve been through. I wouldn’t tell you.’

The tune came to an end. Still watching the gulls, still absently, she asked, after a pause, ‘Why not?’

‘You’d be like the others. You’d despise me.’

‘I doubt that. Mildred Henderson certainly doesn’t. You ought to hear her talk about you.’

‘She’ll be like the others too. My life has been very hard. Living alone with my way to make. Wha’d she say about me?’

‘That you’re a genius. She can’t make out why you’ve been burying yourself, working for a little country paper.’

Henry considered this. It was pleasing. But he might have wished for a less impersonal manner in Corinne. She kept following those gulls; speaking most casually, as if it was nothing or little to her what anybody thought about anybody.

Still – it was pleasing. He sat erect. A light glimmered in his eye; glimmered and grew. When he spoke, his voice took on body.