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

8

Humphrey let himself into Mrs Henderson’s front hall, closed the screen door gently behind him, and looked about the dim interior. There seemed to be no one in the living-room. The girls were in the kitchen, doubtless, getting supper. Mildred had faithfully promised not to bother cooking anything hot. He hung up his hat.

Then he saw a feminine figure up the stairs, curled on the top-step, against the wall.

It was Corinne. She was pressing her finger to her lips and shaking her head.

She motioned him out toward the kitchen. There he found his hostess.

‘Seen Henry?’ he asked. ‘Old Boice fired him to-day, and he’s disappeared. Not at the rooms. And I looked in at the Y.M.C.A.’

‘He’s here,’ said Mildred. ‘A very interesting thing is happening, Humphrey. I’ve always told you he was a genius.’

‘But what’s up?’

‘We’ve got him upstairs at my desk. He’s writing something.

I think it’s a poem for Corinne.’

‘A poem! But – ’

‘It’s really quite wonderful. Now don’t you go and throw cold water on it, Humphrey.’ She came over, very trim and pretty in her long apron, her face flushed with the heat of the stove, slipped her hand through his arm, and looked up at him. ‘It’s really very exciting. I haven’t seen the boy act this way for two years. He came in here, all out of breath, and said he had to write. He didn’t seem to know what. He’s quite wild I never in my life saw such concentration. It seems that he’s promised Corinne a poem.’

‘Wonder what’s got into him,’ Humphrey mused.

Mildred returned to her salad dressing. ‘Genius has got into him,’ she said, a bright little snap in her eyes. ‘And it’s coming out. He’s been up there nearly two hours now. Corinne’s guarding. She’d kill you if you disturbed him. She peeked in a little while ago. She says there’s a lot of it – all over the floor – and he was writing like mad. She couldn’t see any of it. As soon as he saw her he yelled at her and waved her out.’

‘Hm!’ said Humphrey.

‘Humphrey, my dear,’ said Mildred then, ‘I’m really afraid we’ve got to watch those two a little. Something’s been happening to-day. Corinne has gone perfectly mad over him – to-day – all of a sudden. She fretted every minute he was away. Henry doesn’t know it, but Corinne is a pretty self-willed girl. And just now she’s got her mind on him.’

She came over again, took his arm, and looked up at Humphrey. She was at once sophisticating and confiding. There was a touch of something that, might have been tenderness, even wistfulness, in her voice as about her eyes.

‘I’ve really been worrying a little about them. About Henry particularly, for some reason.’ She gave a soft little laugh, and pressed his arm. ‘They’re so young, Humphrey – such green little things. Or he is, at least. I’ve been impatient for you to come.’

‘I got down as soon as I could,’ said Humphrey, looking down at her.

‘Of course, I know.’

‘I’ve been worrying about him, too.’

When the supper was ready, Mildred made Humphrey sit at the table and herself tiptoed up the stairs.

She came back, still on tiptoe, smiling as if at her own thoughts.

‘He won’t eat,’ she explained. ‘He’s still at it. I wish you could see my room. It’s a sight.’

‘Corinne coming down?’

‘Not she. She won’t budge from the stairs. And she flared up when I suggested bringing up a tray. I never thought that Corinne was romantic, but… Well, it gives us a nice little téte-à-tête supper. I’ve made iced coffee, Humphrey. Just dip into the salad, won’t you!’ After supper they went out to the hall. Corinne, still on the top step, had switched on the light and was sorting out a pile of loose sheets. She beckoned to them. They came tiptoeing up the stairs.

‘I can’t make it out,’ she whispered. ‘It isn’t poetry. And he doesn’t number his pages.’

‘How did you ever get them?’ asked Mildred.

‘Went in and gathered them up. He didn’t hear me. He’s still at it.’

Humphrey reached for the sheets; held them to the light; read bits of this sheet and that; found a few that went together and read them in order; finally turned a wrinkled astonished face to the two young women.

‘What is it?’ they asked.

He chuckled softly. ‘Well, it isn’t poetry.’

‘I saw that much,’ Corinne murmured, rather mournfully. ‘It’s – wait a minute! I couldn’t believe it at first. It – no – yes, that’s what it is.’

‘What!’

Then Humphrey dropped down at Mildred’s feet, and laughed, softly at first, then with increasing vigour.

Mildred clapped her hand over his mouth and ran him down the stairs and through into the living-room. There they dropped side by side on the sofa and laughed until tears came.

Corinne, laughing a little herself now, but perplexed, followed them.

‘Here,’ said Humphrey, when he could speak, ‘let’s get into this.’

They moved, to the table. Humphrey spread out the pages, and skimmed them over with a practised eye, arranging as he read.

Once he muttered, ‘What on earth!’ And shortly after: ‘Why, the young devil!’

‘Please – ’ said Corinne. ‘Please! I want to know what it is.’,

Humphrey stacked up the sheets, and laid them on the table.

‘Well,’ he remarked, ‘it is certainly an account of the Business Men’s Picnic. And it certainly was not written for The Weekly Voice of Sunbury. I’ll start in a minute and read it through. But from what I’ve seen – Well, while it may be a little Kiplingesque – naturally – still it comes pretty close to being a work of art.

‘Tell you what the boy’s done. He’s gone at that little community outing just about as an artistic god would have gone at it. As if he’d never seen any of these Simpson Street folks before. Berger, the grocer, and William F. Donovan, and Mr Wombast, and Charlie Waterhouse, and Weston of the bank, and – and, here, the little Dutchman that runs the lunch counter down by the tracks, and Heinie Schultz and Bill Schwartz, and old Boice! It’s a crime what he’s done to Boice. If this ever appears, Sunbury will be too small for Henry Calverly. But, oh, it’s grand writing… He’s got’em all in, their clothes, their little mannerisms – their tricks of speech… Wait, I’ll read it.’

Forty minutes later the three sat back in their chairs, weak from laughter, each in his own way excited, aware that a real performance was taking place, right here in the house.

‘One thing I don’t quite understand,’ said Mildred. ‘It’s a lovely bit of writing – he makes you see it and feel it – where Mr Boice and Charles Waterhouse were around behind the lemonade stand, and Mr Waterhouse is upset because the purse they’re going to surprise him with for being the most popular man in town isn’t large enough. What is all that, anyway?’

‘I know,’ said Humphrey. ‘I was wondering about that. It’s funny as the dickens, those two birds out there behind the lemonade stand quarrelling about it. It’s – let’s see – oh, yes! And Boice says, “It won’t help you to worry, Charlie. We’re doing what we can for you. But it’ll take time. And it’s a chance!”… Funny!’

He lowered the manuscript, and stared at the wall. ‘Hm!’ he remarked thoughtfully. ‘Mildred, got any cigarettes?’

‘Yes, I have, but I don’t care to be mystified like this. Take one, and tell me exactly what you’re thinking.’

‘I’m thinking that Bob McGibbon would give a hundred dollars for this story as it stands, right now.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s gunning for Charlie. And for Boice.’

‘And what’s this?’

‘Evidence.’ Humphrey was grave now. ‘Not quite it. But warm. Very warm.’

‘He’s really stumbled on something. How perfectly lovely!’

‘And he doesn’t know it. Sees nothing but the story value of it. But it may be serious. They’d duck him in the lake. They’d drown him.’

‘But how lovely if Henry, by one stroke of his pencil, should really puncture the frauds in this smug town.’

‘There is something in that,’ mused Humphrey.

‘Ssh!’ From Mildred.

They heard a slow step on the stairs.

A moment, and Henry appeared in the doorway. He stopped short when he saw them. His glasses hung dangling against his shirt front. He was coatless, but plainly didn’t know it. His straight brown hair was rumpled up on one side and down in a shock over the farther eye. He was pale, and looked tired about the eyes. He carried more of the manuscript.

He stared at them as if he couldn’t quite make them out, or as if not sure he had met them. Then he brushed a hand across his forehead and slowly, rather wanly, smiled.

‘I had no idea it was so late,’ he said.

Mildred and Corinne fed him and petted him while Humphrey drew a big chair into the dining-room, smoked cigarette after cigarette, and studied the brightening, expanding youth before him. He reflected, too, on the curious, instant responsiveness that is roused in the imaginative woman at the first evidence of the creative impulse in a man. As if the elemental mother were moved.

‘That’s probably it,’ he thought. ‘And it’s what the boy has needed. Martha Caldwell couldn’t give it to him – never in the world! He was groping to find it in that tough little Wilcox girl. It wouldn’t do to tell him – no, I mustn’t tell him; got to steady him down all I can – but I rather guess he’s been needing a Mildred and a Corinne. These two years.’

9

Humphrey stood up then, said he was going out for half an hour, and picked up the manuscript from the living-room table as he passed.

He went straight to Boice’s house on Upper Chestnut Avenue.

‘What has all this to do with me?’ asked Mr Boice, behind closed doors in his roomy library. ‘Let him write anything he likes.’

Humphrey sat back; slowly turned the pages of the manuscript.

‘This,’ he said, ‘is a real piece of writing. It’s the best picture of a community outing I ever read in my life. It’s vivid. The characters are so real that a stranger, after reading this, could walk up Simpson Street and call fifteen people by name. He’d know how their voices sound, what their weaknesses are, what they’re really thinking about Sunday mornings in church. It is humour of the finest kind. But they won’t know it on Simpson Street. They’ll be sore as pups, every man. He’s taken their skulls off and looked in. He’s as impersonal, as cruel, as Shakespeare.’

This sounded pretty highfalutin’ to Mr Boice. He made a reflective sound; then remarked: —

‘You think the advertisers wouldn’t like it,’

‘They’d hate it. They’d fight. It would raise Ned in the town. But McGibbon wouldn’t mind. Or if he didn’t have the nerve to print it, any Sunday editor in Chicago would eat it alive.’

‘Well, what – ’

Humphrey quietly interrupted.

‘Little scenes, all through. Funny as Pickwick. There really is a touch of genius in it. Handles you pretty roughly. But they’d laugh. No doubt about that. All sorts of scenes – you and Charlie Waterhouse behind the lemonade stand – Bill Parker’s little accident in the tug-of-war.’ He read on, to himself. But he knew that Mr Boice sat up stiffly in his chair, with a grunt. He heard him rise, ponderously, and move down the room; then come back.

When he spoke, Humphrey, aware of his perturbation, was moved to momentary admiration by his apparent calmness. He sounded just as usual.

‘What are you getting at?’ he asked. ‘You want something.’

‘I want you to take Hemy back at – say, twelve a week.’

‘Hm. Have him re-write this?’

‘No. Henry won’t be able to write another word this week. He’s empty. My idea is, Mr Boice, that you’ll want to do the cutting yourself. When you’ve done that, I’ll pitch in on the re-write. We can get our three columns out of it all right.’

‘Hm!’

‘There’s one thing you may be sure of. Henry doesn’t know what he’s written. No idea. It’s a flash of pure genius.’

‘Don’t know that we’ve got much use for a genius on the Voice,’ grunted Mr Boice. ‘He ought to go to Chicago or New York.’

‘He will, some day.’ Humphrey rose. ‘Will you send for him in the morning?’

There was a long silence. Then a sound. Then: – ‘Tell him to come around.’

‘Twelve a week, including this week?’

The massive yellowish-gray head inclined slowly.

‘Very well, I’ll tell him.’

‘You can leave the manuscript here, Weaver.’

‘No.’ Humphrey deliberately folded it and put it in an inside pocket. ‘Henry will have to give it to you himself. It’s his. Good-night.’

Out on the street, Humphrey reflected, with a touch of exuberance rare in his life: —

‘We won’t either of us be long on the Voice. Not now. But it’s great going while it lasts.’

And he wondered, with a little stir of excitement, just why that purse wasn’t enough for Charlie Waterhouse… just what old Boice knew… Why it was a chance! Curious! Something back of it, something that McGibbon was eternally pounding at – hinting – insinuating. Something real there; something that might never be known.

10

Humphrey felt that the little triumph – though it might indeed prove temporary; any victory over old Boice in Sunbury affairs was likely to be that – called for celebrating in some special degree. He had, it seemed, a few bottles of beer at the rooms.

So thither they adjourned; Mildred and Humphrey strolling slowly ahead, Corinne and Henry strolling still more slowly behind.

Henry seemed fagged. At least he was quiet.

Corinne, stirred with a sympathetic interest not common to her sort of nature, stole hesitant glances at him, even, finally, slipped her hand through his arm.

She hung back. Mildred and Humphrey disappeared in the shadows of the maples a block ahead.

‘I suppose you’re pretty tired, aren’t you?’ Corinne murmured.

Her voice seemed to waken him out of a dream.

‘I – I – what was that? Oh – tired? Why, I don’t know. Sorta.’

Her hand slipped down his forearm, within easy reach of his hand; but he was unaware.

‘I’m frightfully excited,’ he said, brightening. ‘If you knew what this meant to me! Feeling like this. The Power – but you wouldn’t know what that meant. Only it lifts me up. I know I’m all right now. It’s been an awful two years. You’ve no idea. Drudgery. Plugging along. But I’m up again now. I can do it any time I want. I’m free of this dam’ town. They can’t hold me back now.’

‘You’ll do big things,’ she said, a mournful note in her voice.

‘I know. I feel that.’

And now she stopped short. In a shadow.

‘What is it?’ he asked casually. ‘What’s the matter?’

She glanced at his face; then down.

‘Do you think you’ll write – a poem?’ she asked almost sullenly.

‘Maybe. I don’t know. It’s queer – you get all stirred up inside, and then something comes. You can’t tell what it’s going to be. It’s as if it came from outside yourself. You know. Spooky.’

She moved on now, bringing him with her.

‘Mildred and Humphrey’ll wonder where we are,’ she said crossly.

Henry glanced down at her; then at the shadowy arch of maples ahead. He wondered what was the matter with her. Girls were, of course, notoriously difficult. Never knew their own minds. He was exultantly happy. It had been a great day. Twelve a week now, and going up! Hump was a good old soul… He recalled, with a recurrence of both the thrill and the conservatism that had come then, that he had had a great time with Corinne in the early afternoon. Mustn’t go too far with that sort of thing, of course. But she was sure a peach. And she didn’t seem the sort that would be for ever trying to pin you down. He took her hand now. It was great to feel her there, close beside him.’

Corinne walked more rapidly. He didn’t know that she was biting her lip. Nor did he perceive what she saw clearly, bitterly; that she had unwittingly served a purpose in his life, which he would never understand. And she saw, too, that the little job was, for the present, at least, over and done with.

She stole another sidelong glance at him. He was twisting up the ends of his moustache. And humming.

IV – THE WHITE STAR