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

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.