Part 15

'Touched up old Norton P. for fair. Made him sorer 'n a goat. My wife's literary, and she says it's worthy of Poe. And you ought to hear the people talking to-day about this new one.'

'_Sinbad the Treasurer!_' said Henry quickly, fearing another misquotation:

'Yay-ah. That. Ain't had time to read it yet myself. They say it's great.'

'Well--good-bye,' said Henry, and moved stiffly away toward the corner.

'Funny!' mused the grocer,' looking after him. 'These geniuses never have any business sense. I give him a real opening there.'

6

Simpson Street was always crowded of a Saturday morning with thoughtful housewives. The grocers and butchers bustled about. The rows of display racks along the sidewalk were heaped with fresh vegetables and fruits.

The majority of the shoppers came afoot, but the kerb was lined with buggies, surries, neat station wagons and dog-carts, crowded in between the delivery wagons. Sunbury boasted, as well, a number of Stanhopes, a barouche or two, and several landaus. The Jenkins family, among its several members, had a stable full of horses and ponies. William B. Snow owned a valuable chestnut team with silver-mounted harness. Here and there along the street one might have seen, on this occasion, several vehicles that might well have been described as smart.

But Sunbury had never seen anything like the equipage that, at a quarter to twelve--a little late for selective shopping in those days--came rolling smoothly, silently, on its rubber-shod wheels across the tracks and past the post-office, Nelson's bakery, the Sunbury National Bank, Duneen's and Donovan's to Swanson's flower shop.

Never, never had Sunbury seen anything quite like that. Mr Berger, hurrying through to the front of his store, stopped short, stared out across the street and after a breathless moment breathed the words, 'Holy Smoke!' Women stood motionless, holding heads of lettuce, boxes of raspberries and what not, and gazed in an amazement that was actually long minutes in reaching the normal mental state of critical appraisal.

The carriage was a Victoria, hung very low, varnished work glistening brilliantly in the sunshine. It was upholstered conspicuously in plum colour. The horses were jet black, glossy, perfectly matched, checked up so high that the necks arched prettily if uncomfortably; and they had docked tails. The harness they wore was mounted with a display of silver that made the silver on William B. Snow's team, standing just below Donovan's, look outright inconspicuous.

Leaning back in luxurious comfort as the carriage came so softly along the street, holding up a parasol of black lace, overshadowing her niece, pretty little Cicely Hamlin, who sat beside her, Madame Watt, her large person dressed with costly simplicity in black with a touch of colour at the throat, square of face, with an emphatic chin, a strongly hooked nose, penetrating black eyes, surveyed the street with a commanding dignity, an assertive dignity, if the phrase may be used. Or it may have been that a touch of self-consciousness within her showed through the enveloping dignity and made you think about it. Certainly there was a final outstanding reason for self-consciousness, even in the case of Madame Watt; for on the high box in front visible for blocks above the traffic of the street, sat, in wooden perfection as in plum-coloured livery, side by side, a coachman and a footman.

At Swanson's the footman leaped nimbly down and stood rigid by the step while Madame heavily descended and passed across the walk and into the shop.

The street lifted. Women's tongues moved briskly. Trade was resumed.

A pretty girl in the most wonderful carriage ever seen--a new girl, at that, bringing a stir of quickened interest to the younger set--is a magnet of considerable attracting power. Young people appeared--from nowhere, it seemed--and clustered about the carriage. Two couples hurried from the soda fountain in Donovan's. The de Casselles boys were passing on their way from the Country Club courts (which were still on the old grounds, down near the lake) in blazer coats and with expensive rackets in wooden presses. Alfred Knight was out collecting for the bank, and happened to be near. Mary Ames and Jane Bellman came over from Berger's, where Mary was scrutinising cauliflowers with a cool eye.

It was at this moment that Henry reached the corner by Berger's, paused, hopelessly, confused and torn in the swirl of success and disaster that marked this painful day, fighting down that mad impulse to talk out loud his resentments in a passionate torrent of words, saw the carriage, the girl in it and the crowd about it in one nervous glance, then, suddenly pale, lips tightly compressed, moved doggedly forward across the street.

He had nearly reached the opposite kerb--not turning; with the ugly little note that was clasped in his left hand, he could not trust himself to bow, he felt a miserable sort of relief that the distance might excuse his appearing not to see; and there had to be an excuse, or it would look to some like cowardice--when an errant summer breeze wandered around the corner and seized on his straw hat.

He felt it lifting; dropped his stick; reached then after both hat and stick and in doing so nearly dropped the paper. In another moment he was to be seen, desperately white, stick in one hand, a slip of paper in the other, running straight down Simpson Street after his hat, which whirled, sailed, rolled, sailed again, circled, and settled in the dust not two rods from the Watt carriage. The street, as streets, will, turned to look.

Henry lunged for the hat. It lifted, and rolled a little way on. He lunged again. It whirled over and over, then rolled rapidly straight down the street, just missing the hoofs of a delivery horse, passing under Mr George F. Smith's buggy without touching either horse or wheels, and sailed on.

Henry fell to one knee in his second plunge. And his pallor gave place to a hot flush.

Laughter came to his ears--jeering laughter. And it came unquestionably from the group about the Watt carriage. The first voices were masculine. Before he could get to his feet one or two of the girls had joined in. In something near despair of the spirit, helplessly, he looked up.

The whole group, still laughing, turned away. All, that is, but one. Cicely was not laughing. She was leaning a little forward, looking right at him, not even smiling, her lips parted slightly. He was too far gone even to speculate as to what her expression meant. It fell upon him as the final blow. He ran on and on. In front of Hemple's market a boy stopped the hat with his foot. Henry, trembling with rage, took it from him, muttered a word of thanks, and rushed, followed by curious eyes, around the corner to the north.

7

Humphrey found him, a little before one, at the rooms, and thought he looked ill. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at a small newspaper clipping. He looked up, through his doorway, saw his friend standing in the living-room, mumbled a colourless greeting, and let his heavy eyes fall again.

'What's all this?' asked Humphrey, with a rather weary, wrinkly smile.

Henry got up then and came slowly into the living-room.

'It's this,' he explained, in a voice that was husky and light, without its usual body. 'This thing. I've had it quite a while.'

Humphrey read:--

Positively No Commission HEIRS CAN BORROW On or sell their individual estate, income or future inheritance; lowest rates; strictly confidential Heirs' Loan Office.

And an address.

'What on earth are you doing with this, Hen?'

'Well, Hump, there's still a little more'n three thousand dollars in my legacy. I got a thousand this summer, you know, and lent it to McGibbon for my interest in the paper. But my uncle said he wouldn't give me a cent more until I'm twenty-one, in November. And so I was wondering... Look here! How much do you suppose I could get out of it from these people. They're all right, you see?

They've got a regular office and----'

'You'd just about get out with your underwear and shoes, Hen. They might leave you a necktie. What do you want it for--throw it in after the thousand?'

'Well, McGibbon's broke----'

'Yes, I know. They're saying on the street that Boice has got the _Gleaner_ already. Two compositors and your foreman were in our place half an hour ago asking for work. Boice went right down there. I saw him start climbing the stairs.'

'That's his second trip this morning, then, Hump. He offered Bob five hundred.'

'But it ought to be worth a few thousand.'

'Sure. And except for there not being any money it's going great. You'd be surprised! You know it's often that way. Bob says many a promising business has gone under just because they didn't have the money to tide it over a tight place. But he's getting the circulation. You've no idea! And when you get that you're bound to get the advertisers. Sooner or later. Bob says they just have to fall in line.'

Humphrey appeared to be only half listening to this eager little torrent of words. He deliberately filled his pipe; then moved over to a window and gazed soberly out at the back yard of the parsonage.

Henry, moody again, was staring at the advertisement, fairly hypnotising himself with it.

'Great to think of the Old Man having to climb those stairs twice,' Humphrey remarked, without turning. Then: 'Even with all the trouble you're going through, Hen, you're lucky not to be working for Boice. He does wear on one.'

He smoked the pipe out. Then, brow's knit, his long swarthy face wrinkled deeply with thought, he walked slowly over to the door of his own bedroom and leaned there, studying the interior.

'There's three thousand dollars' worth of books in here,' he remarked. 'Or close to it. Even at second hand they'd fetch something. You see, it's really a well built, pretty complete little scientific library. Now come downstairs.'

He had to say it again: 'Come on downstairs.'

Henry followed, then; hardly aware of the oddity of Humphrey's actions.

In the half-light that sifted dustily in through the high windows, the metal lathes, large and small, the tool benches, the two large reels of piano wire, the rows of wall boxes filled with machine jars, the round objects that might have been electric motors hanging by twisted strings or wires from the ceiling joists, the heavy steel wheels of various sizes mounted in frames, some with wooden handles at one side, the big box kites and the wood-and-silk planes stacked at one end of the room, the gas engine mounted at the other end, the water motor in a corner, the wheels, shafts and belting overhead--all were indistinct, ghostly. And all were covered with dust.

'See!' Humphrey waved his pipe. 'I've done no work here for six weeks. And I shan't do any for a good while. I can't. It takes leisure--long-evenings--Sundays when you aren't disturbed by a soul. And at that it means years and years, working as I've had to. You know, getting out the _Voice_ every week. You know how it's been with me, Hen. People are going to fly some day, Hen. As sure as we're walking now. Pretty soon. Chanute--Langley--they know! Those are Chanute gliders over there. By the kites. I've never told you; I've worked with 'em, moonlight nights, from the sand-dunes away up the beach. I've got some locked in an old boat-house up there, Hen'--he stood, very tall, a reminiscent, almost eager light in eyes that had been dull of late, a gaunt strong hand resting affectionately on a gyroscope--'I've flown over six hundred feet! Myself! Gliding, of course. Got an awful ducking, but I did it.

'But it takes money, Hen. I've thought I could be an inventor and do my job besides. Maybe I could. Maybe some day I'll succeed at it. But I've just come to see what it needs. Material, workmen, time--Hen, you've got to have a real shop and a real pay-roll to do it right. And...

'Oh, I'm not telling you the truth, Hen! Not the real truth!'

He took to walking around now, making angular gestures. Henry, watching him, coming slowly alive now to the complex life that was flowing around him, found himself confronted by a new, disturbed Humphrey. He had, during the year and more of their friendship, taken him for granted as an older, steadier influence, had leaned on him more than he knew. He had been a rock for the erratic Henry to cling to in the confusing, unstable swirl of life.

'Hen'--Humphrey turned on him--'you don't know, but I'm going to be married.'

Henry's jaw sagged.

'It's Mildred, of course.

'It's going to be hard on the little woman, Hen. She's got to get her divorce. She can't take money from her husband, of course; and she's only got a little. She'll need me.' His voice grew a thought unsteady; he waved his pipe, as if to indicate and explain the machinery. 'We've got to strike out--take the plunge--you know, make a little money. It's occurred to me... This machinery's worth more than the library, in a pinch. And I've got two bonds left. Just two. They're money, of course...... Hen, you said you _lent_ that thousand to McGibbon?'

Henry nodded. 'He gave me his note.'

'Let's see it.'

Henry ran up the stairs, and returned with a pasteboard box file, which, not without a momentary touch of pride in his quite new business sense, he handed to his friend.

Humphrey glanced at the carefully printed-out phrase on the back--'Henry Calverly, 3rd. Business Affairs'--but did not smile. He opened it and ran through the indexed leaves. It appeared to be empty.

'Look under “Me,”' said Henry.

The note was there. 'For three months,' Humphrey mused aloud.

Then he smiled. There was a whimsical touch in Humphrey that his few friends knew and loved. Even in this serious crisis it did not desert him. I believe it was even stronger then.

'Hen,' he said, 'got a quarter?'

The smile seemed to restore the rock that Henry had lately clung to. He found himself returning the smile, faintly but with a growing warmth. He replied, 'Just about.'

'Match me!' cried Humphrey.

'What for?'

'To settle a very important point. Somebody's name has got to come first. Best two out of three.'

'But I don't----'

'Match me! No--it's mine!... Now I'll match you--mine again! I win. Well--that's settled!'

'What's settled? I don't-----'

Humphrey sat on a tool bench; swung his legs; grinned. 'Life moves on, Hen,' he said. 'It's a dramatic old world.'

And Henry, puzzled, looking at him, laughed excitedly.

8

It was two o'clock in the afternoon. Simpson Street was quiet after the brisk business of the morning. The air quivered up from the pavement in the still heat. The occasional people about the street moved slowly. The collars of the few visible tradesmen were soft rags around their necks and they mopped red faces with saturated handkerchiefs. The morning breeze had died; the afternoon breeze would drift in at four o'clock or so; until which time Sunbury ladies took their naps and Sunbury business men dozed at their desks. Saturday closing had not made much headway at this period, though the still novel game of golf was beginning to work its mighty change in small-town life.

Through this calm scene, absorbed in their affairs, unaware of the heat, strode Humphrey and Henry--down past the long hotel veranda, where the yellow rocking chairs stood in endless empty rows, past Swanson's and Donovan's and Jackson's book store to the meat market and then, rapidly, up the long stairway.

They found McGibbon with his long legs stretched out under his desk, hands deep in pockets, thin face lined and weary, but eyes nervously bright as always. He was in his shirt-sleeves, of course. His drab brown hair seemed a little longer and even more ragged than usual where it met his wilted collar.

But he grinned at them, and waved a long hand.

'My God!' he cried, 'but it's good to see a human face. Look!' His hand swept around, indicating the dusty, deserted desks and the open press-room door. It was still out there; not a man hummed or whistled as he clicked type into his stick, not one of the four job presses rumbled out its cheerful drone of industry.

'Rats all gone!' McGibbon added. 'But the Caliph was up again.'

'Yes,' Henry, who found himself suddenly and deeply moved, breathed softly, 'we know.'

'Came up a hundred. He'll pay six hundred now. For all this. An actual investment of more'n four thousand.' The hand waved again. 'It's amusing. He doesn't know I'm on to him. You see the old fox's been nosing around to get up a petition to throw me into involuntary bankruptcy, but he can't find any creditors. Has to be five hundred dollars, you know.'

'What did you say to him?' asked Humphrey, thoughtfully.

'Showed him out. Second time to-day. It was a hard climb for him, too. He did puff some.'

Humphrey slowly drew a large envelope from an inner pocket and laid it on the table at his elbow.

McGibbon eyed it alertly.

'Here!' he said, his hand moving up toward the row of four or five cigars that projected from a vest pocket, 'smoke up, you fellows.'

Henry shook his head. Humphrey drew out his pipe; then raised his head, and said quietly:--

'Listen!'

There came the unmistakable sound of heavy feet on the stairs. Steadily, step by step, a slowly moving body mounted.

Then, framed in the doorway, stood the huge bulk of Norton P. Boice, breathless, red, and wet of face, his old straw hat pushed back, his yellowish-white, wavy beard covering his necktie and the upper part of his roundly protruding, slightly spotted vest, against which the heavy watch chain with its dangling fraternal insignia stood out prominently.

Boice's eyes, nearly expressionless, finally settled on Humphrey.

'What are you doing here?' he asked, between puffs.

Humphrey's only reply was a slight impatient gesture.

'You oughta be at your desk.'

Then he came into the room. Of the three men seated there Humphrey was the only one who knew by certain small external signs, that the Caliph of Simpson Street was blazing with wrath. For here was his own hired lieutenant hobnobbing with the boy whose agile, irresponsible pen had made him the laughing stock of the township and with the intemperate rival who had first attacked and then defied him. And then he had just climbed the stairs for the third and what he meant to be the last time.

He came straight to business.

'Have you decided to accept my offer?'

'Sit down,' said McGibbon, pushing a chair over with his foot.

Boice ignored this final bit of insolence.

'Have you decided to accept my offer?'

'Well'--McGibbon shrugged; spread out his hands--'I've decided nothing, but as it looks now I may find myself forced to accept it.'

'Then I suggest that you accept it now.'

'Well----' the hands went out again.

'Wait a moment,' said Humphrey.

'I think you had better go back to the office,' Boice broke in.

'Shortly. I have no intention of leaving you in the lurch, Mr Boice. But first I have business here.'

'_You_ have business!'

'Yes.' Humphrey opened the large envelope. 'Here, McGibbon, is your note to Henry for one thousand dollars, due in November.'

Before their eyes, deliberately, he tore it up, leaned over McGibbon's legs with an, 'I beg your pardon!' and dropped the pieces in the waste-basket. Next he produced a folded document engraved in green and red ink. 'Here,' he concluded, 'is a four per cent, railway bond that stands to-day at a hundred two and a quarter in the market. That's our price for the _Gleaner_.'

McGibbon's nervous eyes followed the movements of Humphrey's hands as if fascinated. During the hush that followed he sat motionless, chin on breast. Then, slowly, he drew in his legs, straightened up, reached for the bond, turned it over, opened it and ran his eye over the coupons, looked up and remarked:--

'The paper's yours.'

'Then, Mr Boice,' said Humphrey, 'the next issue of the _Gleaner_ will be published by Weaver and Calverly, and the stories you object to will run their course.'

But Mr Boice, creaking deliberately over the floor, was just disappearing through the doorway.'

9

The sunlight was streaming in through the living-room of the barn back of the old Parmenter place. Outside the maple leaves were rustling gently. Through the quiet air came the slow booming of the First Presbyterian bell across the block. From greater distances came the higher pitched bell of the Baptist Church, down on Filbert Avenue, and the faint note from the Second Presbyterian over on the West Side, across the tracks.

Humphrey had made coffee and toast. They sat at an end of the centre table. Humphrey in bath-robe and slippers, Henry fully dressed in his blue serge suit, neat silk four-in-hand tie, stiff white collar and carefully polished shoes.

'Where are you going with all that?' Humphrey asked.

Henry hesitated; flushed a little.

'To church,' he finally replied.

Humphrey's surprise was real. There had been a time, before they came to know each other, when the boy had sung bass in the quartet at the Second Presbyterian. But since that period he had not been a church-goer. Henry had been quiet all evening, and now this morning. He seemed all boxed up within himself. Preoccupied. As if the triumph over old Boice had merely opened up the way to new responsibilities. Which, for that matter, was just what it had done--done to both of them. Humphrey, not being given to prying, would have let the subject drop here, had not Henry surprised him by breaking hotly forth into words.

'It's my big fight, Hump!' he was saying now. 'Don't you see! This town. All they say. Look here!' He laid a rumpled bit of paper on the table. As if he had been holding it ready in his hand.'

'Oh, that letter,' said Humphrey.

'Yes. It's what I've got to fight. And I've got to win. Don't you see?'

'Yes,' Humphrey replied gravely, 'I see.'

'I think,' said Henry, 'it's being in love that's going to help me. We've got to hold our heads up, you and I. Build the _Gleaner_ into a real property. Win confidence. And there mustn't be any doubt. The way we step out and fight, you know. I've got to stand with you.'

Humphrey's eyes strayed to the sunlit window. He suppressed a little sigh.

'This note's right enough, in a way,' Henry went on. 'It wouldn't be fair to compromise her.' He leaned earnestly over the table. 'It's really a hopeless love. I know that, Hump. But it isn't like the others.' It makes me feel ashamed of them. All of them. I've got to show her, or at least show myself, that it's this love that has made a man of me. Without asking anything, you know.'

Humphrey listened in silence as the talk ran on. The boy was changing, no question about that. Even back of the romantic strain that was colouring his attitude, the suggestion of pose in it, there was real evidence of this change. At least his fighting blood was up. And he was taking punishment.