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

4

Mildred Henderson was little, slim, quick, with tiny feet and hands. Despite these latter she was the most accomplished pianist in Sunbury. She had snappy little eyes, and a way of smiling quickly and brightly. The Hendersons had lived four or five years in Sunbury. They had no children. They had no servant at this time – but she possessed the gift of getting up pleasant little meals without apparent effort.

After the arrival of Corinne and Henry she disappeared for a few moments, then called them to the dining-room.

‘It’s really a cold lunch,’ she said, as they gathered at the table – ‘chicken and salad and things. But there’s plenty for you, Henry. Do have some iced tea. I know they starve you at that old boarding-house. We’ve all had our little term at Mrs Wilcox’s.’

‘I – I’m not living there any more. I’ve moved.’

‘Not to Mrs Black’s?’

‘No… you see I work with Humphrey Weaver at the Voice office and he asked me to come and live with him.’

‘With him? And where does he live?’

‘Why, just back of the old Parmenter place.’

‘But there’s nothing back of the Parmenter place!’

‘Yes – you see, the barn – ’

‘Not that old red – ’

‘Yes. You’d be surprised! Humphrey’s put in hardwood and electricity and things. He’s really a wonderful person. Did the wiring himself. And the water pipes. You ought to see his books – and his shop downstairs. He’s an inventor, you know. Going to be. Don’t you think for a minute that he’s just a country editor. That’s just while he’s feeling his way. Oh, Hump’s a smart fellow. Mighty decent of him to take me in that way, too; because he’s busy and I know he’d rather live alone. You see, he’s quiet and orderly about things, and I – well, I’m different.’

‘Offhand,’ mused Mrs Henderson, ‘I shouldn’t suspect Humphrey Weaver of temperament. But tell me – how on earth do you live? Who cooks and cleans up?’

‘Well, Hump gets breakfast and – and we’ll probably take turns cleaning up.’

‘You remember Humphrey Weaver, Corinne,’ the little hostess breezed on. ‘You’ve met him. Tall, thin, face wrinkles up when he smiles or speaks to you.’ She added, as if musing aloud, ‘He has nice eyes.’ Then, to Henry:

‘But do you mean to say that so fascinating a man as that lives undiscovered, right under our noses, in this bourgeois town.’

Henry was rather vague about the meaning of ‘bourgeois,’ but he nodded gravely.

‘You must bring him down here, Henry. I can’t imagine what I’ve been thinking of to overlook him.

Tell you what, we’ll have a little rabbit to-morrow night. We four. We’ll devote an evening to drawing Mr Humphrey Weaver out of his shell.’

Her quick eyes caught a doubtful look in Corinne’s eyes. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘we did speak of letting Will and Fred take us in town, didn’t we?’

Corinne nodded.

It seemed to Henry that he ought to take the situation in hand. As regarded his relations with Humphrey he was sailing under false colours. Among his confused thoughts he sought, gropingly, a way out. The speech he did make was clumsy.

‘I don’t know whether I could make him come. He likes to read evenings, or work in his shop.’

Mrs Henderson took this in, then let her eyes rest a moment, thoughtfully, on Henry’s ingenuous countenance. An intent look crept into her eyes.

‘Do you mean that you two sweep and make beds and wash dishes and dust?’

‘Well’ – Henry’s voice faltered – ‘you see, I haven’t been – I just moved over there yesterday afternoon.’

‘Hm!’ There was a bright, flash in Mrs Henderson’s eyes. She chuckled abruptly. It was a sharp little chuckle that had the force of an interruption. ‘I’d like to see the corners of those rooms. There ought to be some woman that could take care of you.’ She turned again on Henry. ‘Be sure and bring him down to-morrow. Come in about six for a picnic supper. Or no – let me think – ’

Henry’s eyes were on Corinne. She was eating now, composedly, like an accomplished feminine fatalist, leaving the disposition of matters to her more aggressive hostess. The food he had eaten rested comfortably on his long ill-treated but still responsive young stomach. His nervous concern of the morning was giving place to a glow of snug inner well-being. Ice-cream was before him now, a heaping plate of it – vanilla, with hot chocolate sauce – and a huge slice of chocolate layer cake. He blessed Mrs Henderson for the rich cream as he let heaping spoonfuls slip down his throat and followed them with healthy bites of the cake. What a jolly little woman she was. No fuss.

Nothing stuck up about her. And he knew she was on his side.

She had sympathy. Even if she hadn’t yet heard – when she did hear – it wouldn’t matter. She would be on his side; he was sure of it.

Corinne’s hair, a loose curl of it, curved down over her ear and part of her cheek. She reached up a long hand and brushed it back. The motion thrilled him. He was quiveringly responsive to the faint down on her cheek, to the slight ebbing and flowing of the colour under her skin, to the whiteness of her temple, the curve of her rather heavy eyebrow, even to the ‘waist’ she wore – a simple garment, with an open throat and a wide collar that suggested the sea.

Mrs Henderson was talking about something or other, in her brisk way.

Henry only partly heard. He was day-dreaming, weaving an imaginative web of irridescent fancy about the healthy, rather matter-of-fact girl before him. And eating rapidly his second large helping of ice-cream, and his second piece of cake.

Little resentments were still popping up among his thoughts, taunting him. But tentative little hopes were struggling with these now. A sense of power, even, was stirring to life in his breast. This brought new thrills. It was a long, long time since he had felt as he was now beginning to feel. Life had dealt pretty harshly with him these two years. But he wasn’t beaten yet. Not even if nice men did give cameo brooches mounted on beaded gold.

He felt in his pocket. Nearly all of the week’s pay was there – about eight dollars. It wasn’t much. It wouldn’t buy gold brooches. Space-reporting on a country weekly at a dollar and a quarter a column, as a means of livelihood, was pretty hard sledding. He would have to scheme out something. There would be seventeen dollars more on the fifteenth from his Uncle Arthur, executor of his mother’s estate and guardian to Henry, but that had been mentally pledged to the purchase of necessary summer underwear and things. Still, he might manage somehow. You had to do a lot for girls, of course. They expected it. Expensive business.

He indulged himself a moment, shading his eyes with one hand and eating steadily on, in a momentary wave of bitterness against well-to-do young men who could lavish money on girls.

Corinne was speaking now, and he was answering. He even laughed at something she said. But the train of his thoughts rumbled steadily on.

After the coffee they all carried out the dishes and washed them. Henry amused them by wearing a full-length kitchen apron. Corinne tied the strings around his waist. He found an excuse to reach back, and for an instant his hands covered hers. She laughed a little. He danced about the kitchen and sang comic songs as he wiped dishes and took them to the china closet in the butler’s pantry.

This chore finished, they went to the living-room.

Mrs Henderson said: ‘Oh, Corinne, you must hear Henry sing “When Britain Really Ruled” from Iolanthe.’ She found the score and played for him. He sang lustily, all three verses.

‘Too much dinner,’ he remarked, beaming with pleasure, at the close. ‘Voice is rotten.’

‘It’s a good organ,’ said Corinne. ‘You ought to work at it.’

‘Perfect shame he won’t study,’ said Mrs Henderson. Henry found The Geisha on the piano.

‘Come on, Corinne,’ he cried. ‘Do the “Jewel of Asia.” Mrs Henderson’ll transpose it.’

Corinne leaned carelessly against the piano and sang the pleasant little melody with an ease and a steady flow of tone that brought a shine to Henry’s eyes. He had to hide it, dropping on the big couch and resting his head on his hand. He could look nowhere but at her. He ordered her to sing ‘The Amorous Goldfish.’

She fell into the spirit of it, and moved away from the piano, looking provocatively at Henry, gesturing, making an audience of him. She even danced a few steps at the end.

Henry sprang up. The power was upon him. Obstacles, difficulties, the little scene with Humphrey, while not forgotten, were swept aside. He was irresistible.

‘Tell you what,’ he said gaily, with supreme ease – ‘w’e’ll send those Chicago men a box of poisoned candy to-morrow, and – oh, yes w-e will! – and then we’ll have a party at the rooms. You’ll be chaperon, Mrs Henderson and Hump’ll cook things in the chafing dish, and – ’

‘What a perfectly lovely idea!’ said Mrs Henderson in a surprisingly calm voice. ‘I’ll bring the cold chicken, and a vegetable salad…

Henry watched Corinne.

For an instant – she was rummaging through the music – her eyes met his. ‘It’ll be fun,’ she said.

Henry felt a shock as if he had plunged unexpectedly, headlong, into ice-water; then a glow.

He was a daring soul. They didn’t understand him in Sunbury. He had temperament, a Bohemian nature. The thing was, he’d wasted two years trying to make another sort of himself. Kept account of every penny in a red book! All that! Book was in his pocket now.

He decided to tear it up. He wouldn’t be a coward another day. That plodding self-discipline hadn’t got him anywhere. Now really, had it?

Little inner voices were protesting weakly. People might find out about it. Have to be pretty quiet. And keep the shades down. It wouldn’t do for the folks in the parsonage, across the alley, to know that Mrs Arthur V. Henderson and her guest were in the Parmenter barn. Have to find some tactful way of suggesting that they come after dark…

As if she could read his thoughts, Mrs Henderson remarked calmly: ‘You come for us, Henry. Say about eight.’

Still the little voices of doubt and confusion. Even of fear. He mentally shouted them down; fixing his eyes on the disturbingly radiant Corinne, then glancing for moral support at the really pretty little Mrs Henderson who gave out such a reassuring air of knowing precisely what she was about, of being altogether in the right. Funny, knowing her all these years, he hadn’t realised she was so nice!

He had turned defeat into victory. Single-handed. Will and Fred could go sit on the Wells Street bridge and eat bananas. He had settled their hash.

5

To this lofty mood there came, promptly? an opposite and fully equal reaction.

Difficulties having arisen in connection with the problem of breaking the news to Humphrey, he couldn’t very well go back to the rooms.

The thing would have to be put right before Humphrey. He decided to think it over. That was the idea – think it over. Humphrey would be eating his supper, if not at the rooms, then at Stanley’s little restaurant on Simpson Street. So he could hardly go to Stanley’s. There was another little lunch room down by the tracks, but Humphrey had been known to go there. And of course it was impossible to return for a transient meal to Mrs Wilcox. For one thing, the student waiters would be off and Mamie Wilcox on duty in the dining-room. He didn’t want Mamie back in his life. Not if he could help it. He even went so far as to wonder, with a paralysing sense of helplessness in certain conceivable contingencies, if he could help it… So instead of eating supper he sat on a breakwater, alone, unobserved, while the golden sunset glow faded from lake and sky and darkness claimed him for her own.

Later, handkerchief over face, rushing and pawing his way through the myriads of sand-flies that swarmed about each corner light, he walked into the neighbourhood of Martha Caldwell’s house. He walked backhand forth for a time on the other side of the street, and stood motionless by trees. He found the situation trying, as he didn’t know why he had come, whether he wanted to see Martha or what he could say to her.

He could hear voices from the porch. And he thought he could see one white dress.

Then, because it seemed to be the next best thing to do, he crossed over and mounted the familiar front steps.

He found himself touching the non-committal hand of James B. Merchant, Jr., who carried the talk along glibly, ignoring the gloomy youth with the glasses and the tiny moustache who sat in a shadow and sulked. Finally, after deliberately, boldly arranging a driving party of two for Monday evening, the cotillion leader left.

Martha, when he had disappeared beyond the swirling, illuminated sand-flies at the corner, settled back in her chair and stared, silent, at the maples.

Henry struggled for speech.

‘Martha, look here,’ came from him, in a tired voice, ‘you’ve cut me dead. Twice. Now it seems to me – ’

‘I don’t want to talk about that,’ said Martha.

‘But it isn’t fair not to – ’

‘Please don’t try to tell me that you weren’t at Hoffmann’s with that horrid girl.’

‘I’m not trying to. But – ’

‘You took her there, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, but she – ’

‘She didn’t make you. You knew her pretty well. While you were going with me, too.’

‘Oh, well,’ he muttered. Then, ‘Thunder! If you’re just determined not to be fair —

‘I won’t let you say that to me.’ The snap in her voice stung him.

‘You’re not fair! You won’t even let me talk!’

‘What earthly good is talk!’

‘Oh, if you’re going to take that attitude – ’

She rose. So did he.

‘I can’t and I won’t talk about a thing like that,’ she said quickly, unevenly.

‘Then I suppose I’d better go,’ said he, standing motionless.

She made no reply.

They stood and stood there. Across the street, at B. F. Jones’s, a porch full of young people were singing Louisiana Lou. Henry, out of sheer nervousness, hummed it with them; then caught himself and turned to the steps.

‘Well,’ he remarked listlessly, ‘I’ll say good-night, then.’

Still she was silent. He lingered, but she gave him no help. He hadn’t believed that she could be as angry as this. He waited and waited. He even felt and weighed the impulses to go right to her and make her sit in the hammock with him and bring back something of the old time feeling.

But he found himself moving off down the steps and heading for the yellow cloud at the corner.

He hated the sand-flies. Their dead bodies formed a soft crunchy carpet on pavement and sidewalk. You couldn’t escape them. They came for a week or two in June. They were less than an inch long, pale yellow with gauzy wings. They had neither sting nor pincers. They overwhelmed these lake towns by their mere numbers. Down by the bright lights on Simpson Street they literally covered everything. You couldn’t see through a square inch of Donovan’s wide plateglass front. Mornings it was sometimes necessary to clear the sidewalks with shovels.

It was two or three hours later when Henry crept cautiously into Humphrey’s shop and ascended the stairs.

Humphrey had left lights for him. He was awake, too; there was a crack of light at the bottom of his bedroom door. But the door was shut tight.

Henry put out all the lights and shut himself in his own disorderly room.

He stood for a time looking at the mess; everything he owned, strewed about on chairs, table and floor. Everything where it had fallen.

He considered finishing unpacking the suit-case. Pushed it with his foot.

‘Just have to get at these things,’ he muttered aloud. ‘Make a job of it. Do it the first thing to-morrow, before I go to the office.’

Then he dug out the box of books that stood beside the bed, the volume entitled Will Power and Self Mastery.

He sat on the bed for an hour, reading one or another of the vehemently pithy sentences, then gazing at the wall, knitting his brows, and mumbling the words over and over until the small meaning they had ever possessed was lost.

6

He came almost stealthily into the office of The Weekly Voice of Sunbury on the Monday morning. He had not fallen really asleep until the small hours. When he awoke, Humphrey was long gone and the breakfast things stood waiting on the centre table. And there they were now. He hadn’t so much as rinsed them in the sink.

Humphrey sat behind his roll-top desk, back of the railing. Old Mr Boice, the proprietor, was at his own desk, out in front. At the first glimpse of his massive head and shoulders with the heavy white whiskers falling down on his shirt front, Henry, hesitating on the sill, gave a little quick sigh of relief. He let himself, moving with the self-consciousness that somewhat resembled dignity, through the gate in the railing and took his chair at the inkstained pine table that served him for a desk.

He felt Humphrey’s eyes on him, and said ‘Goodmorning!’ stiffly, without looking round. He looked through the papers on the table for he knew not what; snatched at a heap of copy paper, bit his pencil and made a business of writing nothing whatever.

At eleven Mr Boice, who was also postmaster, lumbered out and along Simpson Street toward the post office. Henry, discovering himself alone with Humphrey, rushed, muttering, to the press room and engaged Jim Smith, the foreman, in talk which apparently made it necessary for that blonde little man, whose bare forearms were elaborately tattooed and who chewed tobacco, to come in, sit on Henry’s table, and talk further.

Noon came.

Humphrey pushed back his chair, tapped on the edge of his desk, and thoughtfully wrinkled his long face. The natural thing was for Henry to come along with him for lunch at Stanley’s. He didn’t mind for himself. It was quite as pleasant to eat alone. In the present circumstances, more pleasant. It was awkward.

He got up; stood a moment.

He could feel the boy there, bending over proofs of the programmes for the Commencement ‘recital’ of the Music School, pencil poised, motionless, almost inert.

Suddenly Henry muttered again, sprang up, rushed to the press room, proof in hand; and Humphrey went to lunch alone.

Henry did not appear again at the office. This was not unusual. Monday was a slack day, and much of Henry’s work consisted in scouting along Simpson Street, looking up new real estate permits at the village office, new volumes at the library and other small matters.

The unusual thing was the note on Humphrey’s desk. Henry had put it on top of his papers and weighted it down conspicuously with the red ink bottle.

‘I’ve had to ask Mrs Henderson and Corinne Doag to the rooms to-night for a little party. I’ll bring them about eight.’ Pinned to the paper was a five-dollar banknote.

At supper-time, Humphrey, eating alone in Stanley’s, saw a familiar figure outside the wide front window. It was Henry, dressed in his newest white ducks, his blue coat newly pressed (while he waited, at the Swede tailor’s down the street), standing stiffly on the curb.

Occasionally he glanced around, peering into the restaurant.

The light was failing in the rear of the store. Mrs Stanley came from her desk by the door and lighted two gas-jets.

Henry again glanced around. He saw Humphrey and knew that Humphrey saw him.

A youth on a bicycle paused at the curb.

Through the screen door Humphrey heard this conversation: —

‘Hallo, Hen!’

‘Hallo, Al!’

‘Doing anything after?’

‘Why – yeah. Got a date.’

And as the other youth rode off, Henry glanced around once more, nervously.

He was carrying the bamboo stick he affected. He twirled this for a moment, and then wandered out of view.

But soon he reappeared, entered the restaurant and marched straight back to Humphrey’s table. His sensitive lips were compressed.

He said, ‘Hallo, Hump!’ and with only a moment’s hesitation took the chair opposite.

Humphrey buried his nose in his coffee cup.

Henry cleared his throat, twice; then, in a husky, weak voice, remarked: —

‘Get my note?’

There was a painfully long silence.

‘Yes,’ Humphrey replied then, ‘I did.’ And went at the pie.

Henry picked up a corner of the threadbare table-cloth and twisted it. He had been pale, but colour was coming now, richly.

‘Well,’ he mumbled, ‘I s’pose we’ve gotta say something about it.’

‘Not necessary,’ Humphrey observed briskly.

‘Well, but – we’ll have to plan – ’

‘Not at all.’

‘You mean – you – ’ Henry’s voice broke and faltered.

‘I mean – ’ Humphrey’s voice was clear, sharp.

‘Ssh! Not so loud, Hump.’

‘I mean that since you’ve done this extraordinary thing without so much as consulting me, I will see it through. I don’t want you for one minute to think that I like it. God knows what it’s going to mean – having women running in there! My privacy was the only thing I had. You’ve chosen to wreck it without a by-your-leave. I’ll be ready at eight. And I’ll see that the door of your room is shut.’

With which he rose, handed his ticket to Mrs Stanley to be punched, and left the restaurant.

Henry walked the streets, through gathering clouds of sand-flies, until it was time to call at Mrs Henderson’s.