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

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.