Henry Is Twenty: A Further Episodic History of Henry Calverly, 3rd
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He snatched a hand from one pocket and felt hurriedly in another to see if the precious little box was there; the box with the magical name embossed on the cover, ‘Weldings.’
He reflected, exultantly, ‘I never bought anything there before.’
Then: ‘She’s a long time. They must be at the table still.’ He sat up; listened. But the dining-room in the Dexter Smith place was far back behind the ‘back parlour.’ The walls were thick. There were heavy hangings and vast areas of soft carpet. You couldn’t hear. ‘Gee!’ his thoughts raced on, ‘think of owning all this! Wonder how people ever get so much money. Wonder how it would seem.’
He caught himself twisting his neck nervously within his collar. And his hands were clenched; his toes, even, were drawn up tightly in his shoes.
‘Gotta relax,’ he told himself again.
Then he felt for the little box. This time he transferred it to a trousers pocket; held it tight in his hand there.
A door opened and closed. There was a distant rustling. Henry, paler, sprang to his feet.
‘I must be cool,’ he thought. ‘Think before I speak. Everything depends on my steadiness now.’
But the step was not Cicely’s. She was slim and light. This was a solid tread.
He gripped the little box more tightly. He was meeting with a curious difficulty in breathing.
Then, in the doorway, appeared the large person, the hooked nose, the determined mouth, the piercing, hawklike eyes of Madame Watt.
‘How d’do, Henry,’ she said, in her deep voice. ‘Sit down. I want to talk to you. About Cicely. I’m going to tell you frankly – I like you, Henry; I believe you’re going to amount to something one of these days – but I had no idea – now I want you to take this in the spirit I say it in – I had no idea things were going along so fast between Cicely and you. I’ve trusted you. I’ve let you two play together all you liked. And I won’t say I’d stand in the way, a few years from now —
‘A few years!..’
‘Now, Henry, I’m not going to have you getting all stirred up. Let’s admit that you’re fond of Cicely. You are, aren’t you? Yes? Well, now we’ll try to look at it sensibly. How old are you?’
‘I’m twenty, but – ’
‘When will you be twenty-one?’
‘Next month. You see – ’
‘Now tell me – try to think this out clearly – how on earth could you expect to take care of a girl who’s been brought up as Cicely has. Even if she were old enough to know her own mind, which I can’t believe she is.’
‘Oh, but she does!’
‘Fudge, Henry! She couldn’t. What experience has she had? Never mind that, though. Tell me, what is your income now. You’ll admit I have a right to ask.’
‘Twelve a week, but – ’
‘And what prospects have you? Be practical now! How far do you expect to rise on the Gleaner!’
‘Not very high, but our circulation – ’
‘What earthly difference can a little more or less circulation make when it’s a country weekly! No, Henry, believe me, I have a great deal of confidence in you – I mean that you’ll keep on growing up and forming character – but this sort of thing can not – simply can not – go on now. Why, Henry, you haven’t even begun your man’s life yet! Very likely you’ll write. It may be that you’re a genius. But that makes it all the more a problem. Can’t you see – ’
‘Yes, of course, but – ’
‘No, listen to me! I asked Cicely to-day why you were coming so often. I wasn’t at all satisfied with her answers to my questions. And when I forced her to admit that she has been as good as engaged to you – ’
‘But we aren’t engaged! It’s only an understanding.’
‘Understanding! Pah! Don’t excite me, Henry. I want to straighten this out just as pleasantly as I can. I am fond of you, Henry. But I never dreamed – Tell me, you and that young Weaver own the Gleaner, I think.’
‘Yes’m we own it. But – ’
‘Just what does that mean? That you have paid money – actual money – for it?’
‘Yes’m. It’s cost us about four thousand.’
‘Four thousand! Hmm!’
‘And then Charlie Waterhouse – he’s town treasurer – he sued me for libel – ten thousand dollars’ – Henry seemed a thought proud of this – ‘and I had to give him two thousand to settle. It was something in one of my stories – the one called Sinbad the Treasurer. Mr Davis – he’s my lawyer – he said Charlie had a case, but – ’
‘Wait a minute, Henry! Where did you get that money. It’s – let me see – about four thousand dollars – your share – ’
‘Yes’m four thousand. It was my mother’s. She left it to me. But – ’
‘I see. Your mother’s estate. How much is left of it – outside what you lost in this suit and the two thousand you’ve invested in the paper.’
‘Nothing. But – ’
‘Nothing! Now, Henry’ – no, don’t speak! I want you to listen to me a few minutes longer. And I want you to take seriously to heart what I’m going to say. First, about this paper, the Gleaner. It’s a serious question whether you’ll ever get your two thousand dollars back. If you ever have to sell out you won’t get anything like it. If you were older, and if you were by nature a business man – which you aren’t! – you might manage, by the hardest kind of work to build it up to where you could get twenty or thirty dollars a week out of it instead of twelve. But you’ll never do it. You aren’t fitted for it. You’re another sort of boy, by nature. And I’m sorry to say I firmly believe this money, or the most of it is certain to go after the other two thousand, that Mr Charlie Waterhouse got. But even considering that you boys could make the paper pay for itself, Cicely couldn’t be the wife of a struggling little country editor. I wouldn’t listen to that for a minute! No, my advice to you, Henry, is to take your losses as philosophically as you can, call it experience, and go to work as a writer. It’ll take you years – ’
‘Years! But – ’
‘Yes, to establish yourself. A success in a country town isn’t a New York success. Remember that. No, it’s a long road you’re going to travel. After you’ve got somewhere, when you’ve become a man, when you’ve found yourself, with some real prospects – it isn’t that I’d expect you to be rich, Henry, but I’d have to be assured that you were a going concern – why, then you might come to me again. But not now. I want you to go now – ’
‘Without seeing Cicely?’
‘Certainly. Above all things. I want you to go, and promise that you won’t try to see her. To-morrow she goes away for a long visit.’
‘For – a – long… But she’d see other men, and – Oh!..’
‘Exactly. I mean that she shall. Best way in the world to find out whether you two are calves or lovers. One way or the other, we’ll prove it. And now you must go! Remember you have my best wishes. I hope you’ll find the road one of these days and make a go of it.’
A moment more and the front door had closed on him. He stood before the house, staring up through the maple leaves at the starry sky, struggling, for the moment vainly, toward sanity. It was like the end of the world. If was unthinkable. It was awful.
But after waiting a while he went to Mr Merchant’s. There was nothing else to do.
5
Mr Merchant himself opened the door to Henry. He lived in one of the earliest of the apartment buildings that later were to work a deep change in the home life of Sunbury. ‘How are you, Calverly!’ he said, in his offhand, superior way. Then in a lower and distinctly less superior tone, almost friendly indeed, he added, ‘Got a bit of a surprise for you. Come in.’
The living-room was lighted by a single standing lamp with a red shade. Beneath it, curled up like a boy in a cretonne-covered wing chair, his shock of faded yellow hair mussed where his fingers had been, his heavy faded yellow moustache bushing out under a straight nose and pale cheeks, his old gray suit sadly wrinkled, sat a stranger reading from a handful of newspaper clippings.
Henry paused in the door. The man looked up, so quickly that Henry started, and fixed on him eyes that while they were a rather pale blue yet had an uncanny fire in them.
The man frowned as he cried, gruffly: —
‘Oh, come in! Needn’t be afraid of me!’ And coolly read on.
Henry stepped just inside the door. Turned mutely to his host. What a queer man! Had he had it within him at the moment to resent anything, he would have stiffened. But he was crushed to begin with.
The newspaper clippings had a faintly familiar look. From across the room he thought it the type and paper of the Gleaner. His stories, doubtless. Mr Merchant was making the man read them. Well, what of it! What was the good, if they made him so cross.
‘Calverly, if Mr Galbraith would stop reading for a minute – ’
‘I won’t. Don’t interrupt me!’
‘ – I would introduce him.’
Galbraith! The name brought colour to Henry’s cheek. Not… It couldn’t be!..
‘But whether you care to know it or not, this is Mr Calverly, the author of – ’
‘So I gathered. Keep still!’
Then the extraordinary gentleman, muttering angrily, gathered up the clippings and went abruptly off down the hall, apparently to one of the bedrooms.
‘That – that isn’t the Mr Galbraith?’ asked Henry, in voice tinged with awe.
‘That’s who it is. The creator of the modern magazine. We’ll have to wait till he’s finished now, or he’ll eat us alive.’
‘Henry tried to think. This sputtery little man! He was famous, and he wasn’t even dignified. Henry would have expected a frock coat; or at least a manner of businesslike calm.
Mr Merchant was talking, good-humoredly. Henry heard part of it. He even answered questions now and then. But all the time he was trying – trying – to think. He thrust his hands into his pockets. One hand closed on the little box. He winced; closed his eyes; fought desperately for some sort of a mental footing.
‘Calverly! What’s the matter with you? You look ill. Let me get you a drink.’
And Henry heard his own voice saying weakly: —
‘Oh, no, thank you. I never take anything. I just don’t feel very well. It’s been a – a hard day.’
‘Lie down on the sofa then. Rest a little while. For I’m afraid you’ve got a bit of excitement coming.’
Henry did this.
Shortly the great little Mr Galbraith returned. He came straight to Henry; stood over’ him; glared – angrily, Henry thought, with a fluttering of his wits – down at him.
It seemed to Henry that it would be politer to sit up. He did this, but the editor caught his shoulder and pushed him down again.
‘No,’ he cried, ‘stay as you were. If you’re tired, rest! Nothing so important – nothing! If I had learned that one small lesson twenty years ago, I’d be sole owner of my business to-day. Rest – that’s the thing! And the stomach. Two-thirds of our troubles are swallowed down our throats. What do you eat?’
‘I – I don’t know’s I – ’
‘For breakfast, say! What did you eat this morning for breakfast?’
‘Well, I had an orange, and some oatmeal, and – ’
‘Wait! Stop right there! Wrong at the beginning. I don’t doubt you had cream on the oatmeal?’
‘Well – milk, sorta.’
‘Exactly! Orange and milk! Now really – think that over – orange and milk! Isn’t that asking a lot of your stomach, right at the beginning of the day?’
Mr Merchant broke in here.
‘Galbraith, for heaven’s sake! Don’t bulldoze him.’
‘But this is important. It’s health! We’ve got to look out for that. Right from the start! Here, Calverly – how old are you?’
‘I’m – well – most – twenty-one.’
‘Most twenty-one! And you have to lie down before nine o’clock! Good God, boy, don’t you see – ’
‘Oh, come, Galbraith!’
‘Well, I’ll put it this way: – Here’s a young man that can work magic. Magic!’ He waved the bundle of clippings. ‘Nothing like it since Kipling and Stevenson! First thing’s to take care of him, isn’t it?’
Mr Merchant winked at the staring, crushed youth on the sofa.
‘Then you like the stories, Galbraith?’
‘Like’em! Of course I like ‘em. What do you think I’m talking about?.. Like ‘em! Hmpf! Tell you what I’m going to do. A new thing in American publishing. But they’re a new kind of stories. I’m going to reprint ‘em, as they stand, in Galbraith’s. What do you think o’ that? A bit original, eh? I’ll advertise that they’ve been printed before. Play it up. Tell how I found ‘em. Put over my new author.’ He shook his finger again at the author in question. ‘Understand, I’m going to pay you just as if you’d submitted the script to me. That’s how I work. Cut out all the old editorial nonsense. Red tape. If I like a thing I print it. I edit Galbraith’s to suit myself.
I succeed because there are a million and a half others like me. And I print the best. I’m the editor of Galbraith’s Oh, I keep a few desk men down there at the office. For the details. One of ‘em thought he was the editor. Little short fellow. I stood him a month. Had to go to England. The day I landed I walked in on him and said, “Frank, pack up! Get out! Take a month’s pay. I’m the editor.”’
He snorted at the memory, and paced down the room, waving the clippings. Henry sat up, following him with anxious eyes.
When the extraordinary little man came back he said, shortly: ‘All tyrants have short legs.’ And walked off again.
‘Who’s Calverly?’ he asked, the next time around.
‘It’s on the paper here – “Weaver and Calverly”? Father? Uncle?’
‘No,’ Henry managed to reply, ‘it’s – it’s me.’
‘You? Good heavens! We must stop that.’ He tapped Henry’s shoulder. ‘Don’t be a desk man! You’re an artist! You don’t seem to understand what we’re getting at. Man, I’m going to make you! You’re going to be famous in a year.’
He stopped short; took another swing around the room.
‘How many of these stories are there, Calverly?’
‘Twenty.’
‘Fine. Short, snappy, and enough of ‘em to make a very neat book. By the way, I’m starting a book department in the spring. ‘What do you want for ‘em?’
Henry could only look appealingly at his host.
‘I’ll pay liberally. I tell you frankly I mean to hold you. Make it worth your while. You’re going to be my author? Henry Calverly, a Galbraith author. What do you say to a hundred apiece. That’s two thousand.’
Henry would have gasped had he not felt utterly spent.
He sat motionless, hands limp on his knees, chin down.
‘Not enough,’ said Merchant.
Henry shifted one hand in ineffectual protest. He was frightened.
‘It’s pretty near enough. After all, Merchant, it’s a case of a new writer. I’ve got to make him. It’ll cost money.’
‘True. But I should think – ’
‘Say a hundred and fifty. That’s three thousand. Will you take that, Calverly?
‘What for?’ asked Merchant. ‘What are you buying exactly?’
‘Oh, serial rights. Pay a reasonable royalty on the book, of course. But I’ve got to publish the book, too. And I want a long-term contract. Here!’ He sat down and figured with a pencil on the edge of the evening paper. ‘How about this? I’m to have exclusive control of the Henry Calverly matter for five years – ’
‘Too long,’ said Mr Merchant.
‘Well – three years. I’m to see every word before he offers it elsewhere. And for what I accept I’d pay at the same rate per word as for these stories. And books at the same royalty as we agree on for this.’
‘Fine for you. Guarantees your control of him. But he gets nothing. No guarantee.’
‘What would be right then? I’d do the fair thing. He’ll never regret tying up with me.’
‘You’d better agree to pay him something – say twenty-five a week – as a minimum, to be charged against serial payments. That is, if you want to tie him up. I’m not sure I’d advise him to do even that, now.’
‘I’m going to tie him up, all right. I’d go the limit. Twenty-five a week, minimum, for three years. That’s agreed… How’re you fixed, Calverly? Want any money now?’
Henry looked again at his cool, accomplished host. ‘Yes. Better advance a little. He could use it. Couldn’t you, Calverly?’
‘Why – why – ’
‘What do you say to five hundred. That’d clinch the bargain. Here – wait!’
He produced a pocket cheque-book and a fountain pen, and wrote out the cheque.
‘Here you are, Calverly. That’d take care of you for the present. Mustn’t forget to send the stub to Miss Peters to-morrow. You’d better go now. Go home. Get a good night’s sleep. And watch that stomach. Cereal’s good, at your age. But cut out the orange… I’m going to bed, Merchant. Been travelling hard. Tired out myself… Calverly, I’ll send you the contract from New York.’
‘First, though’ – this from Mr Merchant – ‘I think you’d better write a letter – here, to-night – confirming the arrangement. You and I can do that. We’ll let Mr Calverly go.’
Mr Galbraith didn’t say good-night. Henry thought he was about to, and stood up, expectantly; but the little man suddenly dropped his eyes; looked hurriedly about; muttered – ‘Where’d I lay that fountain pen?’ – found it; and rushed off down the hall, trailing the clippings behind him.
Out in the hall, Mr Merchant pulled the door to.
‘Calverly,’ he said, ‘I congratulate you. And I shall congratulate Galbraith.’
Henry looked at him out of wan eyes.
Then suddenly he giggled aloud.
‘I know how you feel,’ said the older man kindly. ‘It is pleasant to succeed.’
‘I felt a little bad about – you know, what you said about making him write that letter. He might think I – ’
‘Don’t you worry about that. I’ll have the letter for you in the morning. I’m going to pin him right to it. He’ll never get out of this.’
‘You – you don’t mean that he’d – he’d – ’
‘Oh, he might forget it.’
‘Nor after he promised!’
‘Galbraith’s a genius. He gets excited. Over-cerebrates at times. Sometimes he offers young fellows more than he can deliver. Then he wakes up to it and takes a sudden trip to Europe.’
‘He acts very strange,’ said Henry critically. ‘I wonder if all geniuses are that way.’
‘They’re apt to be queer. But never forget that he’s a real one. No matter how mad he may seem to you, no matter how irresponsible, Galbraith is a great editor. He is wild about you. When he said he’d make you, I believe he meant it. And I believe he’ll do it. You’re on the high road now, Calverly. Through a lucky accident. But that’s how most men hit the high road. They happen to be where it is. They stumble on it. Within a year you’ll be known everywhere… Well, good-night!’
6
The immediate effect of this experience on Henry was acute depression. Perhaps because his excitement had passed its bearable summit. Though great good fortune always did depress him, even in his later life. It had the effect of suddenly delimiting the boundaries of his widely elastic imagination. It brought him sharply down to the actual.
He hadn’t enjoyed the bargaining for him. And the actual Galbraith was a shock from which he didn’t recover for years, an utter destruction of cherished illusions.
He walked down to Lake Shore Drive, struggling with these thoughts and with himself. The problem was to get himself able to think at all, about anything. His nerves were bow-strings, his mind a race-track. He was frightened for himself. Over and over he told himself that this amazing adventure was not a dream; that he had seen Galbraith, the Galbraith; that he had sold his stories, the work of a few weeks – he recalled how he had written the first ten during three mad days and nights; they had come tumbling out of his brain faster than he could write them down, as if an exuberant angel were dictating to him – had sold them for thousands of dollars; that an income, of a sort, was assured for three years. The stories, even now, seemed an accident. They were a thing that had happened to him. Such a thing might or might not happen again. Though he knew it would. But between times he wasn’t a genius; he wasn’t anything; just Henry Calverly, of Sunbury… He pushed back his hat; rubbed his blazing forehead; pressed his thumping temples.
‘I’ve got congestion,’ he muttered.
He stood at the railing and stared out ever the lake. It was lead black out there, with a tossing light or two; ore freighters or lumber boats headed for Chicago harbour. Beneath him, down the beach, great waves were pounding in, quickly, endlessly, tirelessly, one after the other. He could see the ghostly foam of each. He could feel the spindrift cutting at his face. The wind was so strong he had to lean against it. A gust tore off his glasses; he let them hang over his shoulder. He welcomed the rush and roar of it in his stormy soul.
After a time, having decided nothing, he hurried across town to the Dexter Smith place.
It was dark, upstairs and down.
He slipped in among the trees; drew near the great house. All the time the little box from Welding’s was gripped in his burning hand.
He stood by a large soft maple. He loved the trees of Sunbury; every year he budded, flowered, and died with them. He looked up; the great straight branches were bending before the wind. Leaves were falling about him; the bright yellow leaves of October. He caught at one; missed it. Caught at another. And another.
He laid a hand on the bark; then rested his cheek against it. It was cool to the touch. He stood thus, his arm about the tree, looking up at the dark house. Tears came; blinded him.
‘They’ve shut her up,’ he said. ‘They’re going to take her away. Because she loves me. They’re breaking her heart – and mine. Martha’ll be back to-morrow. And Mary’n’ her mother. It’ll be out then – what – what I did. Everybody’ll be talking. I’ll have to go away too. I can’t live here – not after that.’
A new and fascinating thought came.
‘The watchman’ll be coming around. Pretty soon, maybe. He’ll find me here. I s’pose he’ll shoot me. I don’t care. Let him. In the morning they’ll find my body. And the ring’ll be in my pocket. And Mr Galbraith’s cheque. And in the morning Mr Merchant’ll have that letter. Maybe they’ll discover I was some good after all. Maybe they’ll be sorry then.’
But on second thought this notion lost something of its appealing quality. He went away; after hours more appeared in the rooms and kept his long-suffering partner awake during much of the night.
At half-past eight the next morning he mounted the front steps of the Smith place and rang the bell. A mildly surprised butler showed him into the spacious parlour.
He waited, fiercely.
A door opened and closed. He heard a heavy step. Madame Watt entered the room, frowning a little. ‘What is it, Henry? Why did you come?’
‘I want you to see this,’ he said, thrusting the cheque into her hand. Then, before she could more than glance at the figures, he was forcing another paper on her. ‘And this!’ he cried. ‘Please read it!’
She, still frowning, turned the pages.
‘But what’s all this, Henry?’
‘Can’t you see? I went around this morning. Mr Merchant had it all ready for me. It’s Galbraith’s Magazine. They’re going to print my stories and pay me three thousand. That cheque’s for part of it. I get book royalties besides. And twenty-five a week for three years against the price of new work. That’s just so I won’t write for anybody else. And Mr Galbraith himself promised me he’d make me famous. He’s going to advertise me all over the country. Right away. This year. He says there’s been nothing like me since Kipling and Stevenson!’ Printed here, coldly, this impassioned outburst may seem to border on absurdity. But shrewd, strong-willed Madame Watt, taking it in, studying him, found it far from absurd. The egotism in it, she perceived, was that of youth as much as of genius. And the blazing eyes, the working face, the emotional uncertainty in the voice, these were to be reckoned with. They were youth – gifted, uncontrolled, very nearly irresistible youth. And as she said, brusquely – ‘Sit down, Henry!’ – and herself dropped heavily into a chair and began deliberately reading the document of the great Galbraith, she knew, in her curiously storm-beaten old heart, that she was sparring for time. Before her, still on his feet, apparently unaware that she had spoken, unaware of everything on earth outside of his own turbulent breast, stood an incarnation of primal energy.
She sighed, as she turned the page. Once she shook her head. She found momentary relief in the thought, so often the only comfort of weary old folk, that youth, at least, never knows its power.