Part 17

White of face, eyes burning, his fist still poised on the piano, he stared at her.

She didn't know! Surely she didn't--not with that bright smile. __

She wore the informal, girlish costume of the moment--neatly fitting dark skirt; simple shirt-waist with the ballooning sleeves that were then necessary; stiff boyish linen collar propping the chin high, and little bow tie; darkish, crisply waving hair brought into the best order possible, parted in the middle and carried around and down over the ears to a knot low on the neck.

'I brought some candy,' he cried fiercely. 'There! On the table!'

She knit her brows for a brief moment. Then opened the box.

'How awfully nice of you... You'll have some?'

'No. I don't eat candy. I was thinking of--I want to get you out--Come on, let's take a walk!'

She smiled a little, around a chocolate. Surely she didn't know!

She had seemed, during her first days in Sunbury, rather timid at times. But there was in this smile more than a touch of healthy self-confidence. No girl, indeed, could find herself making so definite a success as Cicely had made here from her first day without acquiring at least the beginnings of self-confidence. It was a success that had forced Elbow Jenkins and Herb de Casselles to ignore small rebuffs and persist in fighting over her. It permitted her, even in a village where social conformity was the breath of life, to do odd, unexpected things. Such as allowing herself to be interested, frankly, in Henry Calverly.

So she smiled as she nibbled a chocolate.

He said it again, breathlessly:--

'I was thinking of asking you to take a walk.'

'Well'--still that smile--'why don't you?'

But he was still in a daze, and pressed stupidly on.

'It's a fine evening. And the moon'll be coming up.'

'I'll get my sweater,' she said quietly, and went out to the hall.

She was just turning away from the hall closet with the sweater--he, hat and stick in hand, was fighting back the memory of how Senator Watt had marched stiffly to that same closet--when Madame Watt came down the stairs, scowling intently, still breathing hard.

She saw them; came toward them; stood, pursing her lips, finally forcing a sort of smile.

'Oh, howdadoo!' she remarked, toward Henry.

Her black eyes focused pointedly on him. And while he was mumbling a greeting, she broke in on him with this:--'I didn't know you were here. Did you just come?' Henry's eyes lowered. Then, as utter silence fell, the colour surging to his face, he raised them. They met her black, alarmed stare. He felt that he ought to lie about this, lie like a good one. But he didn't know how.

Slowly, all confusion, he shook his head.

During a long moment they held that gaze, the vigorous, strangely interesting woman of wealth and of what must have been a violent past, and the gifted, sensitive youth of twenty. When she turned away, they had a secret.

'We thought of taking a little walk,' said Cicely.

Madame moved briskly away into the back parlour, merely throwing back over her shoulder, in a rather explosive voice: 'Have a good time!'

The remark evidently struck Cicely as somewhat out of character. She even turned, a little distrait, and looked after, her aunt.

Then, as they were passing out the door, Madame's voice boomed after them. She was hurrying back through the hall.

'By the way,' she said, with a frowning, determined manner, 'we are having a little theatre party Saturday night. A few of Cicely's friends. Dinner here at six. Then we go in on the seven-twenty. I know Cicely'll be glad to have you. Informal--don't bother to dress.'

'Oh, yes!' cried Cicely, looking at her aunt.

'I--Im sure I'd be delighted,' said Henry heavily.

Then they went out, and strolled in rather oppressive quiet toward the lake.

There was a summer extravaganza going, at the Auditorium. That must be the theatre. They hadn't meant to ask him, of course. Not at this late hour. It hurt, with a pain that, a day or so back, would have filled Henry's thoughts. But Cicely's smile, as she stood by the table, nibbling a chocolate, the poise of her pretty head--the picture stood out clearly against a background so ugly, so unthinkably vulgar, that it was like a deafening noise in his brain.

4

He glanced sidewise at Cicely. They were walking down Douglass Street. Just ahead lay the still, faintly shimmering lake, stretching out to the end of the night and beyond. Already the whispering sound reached their ears of ripples lapping at the shelving beach. And away out, beyond the dim horizon, a soft brightness gave promise of the approaching moonrise.

He stole another glance at Cicely. He could just distinguish her delicate profile.

He thought: 'How could she ask me? They wouldn't like it, her friends. Mary Ames mightn't want to come. Martha Caldwell, even. She's been nice to me. I mustn't make it hard for her. And she mustn't know about tonight. Not ever.'

Then a new thought brought pain. If there had been one such scene, there would be others. And she would have to live against that background, keeping up a brave face before the prying world of Sunbury. Perhaps she had already lived through something of the sort. That sad look about her mouth; when she didn't know you were looking.

They had reached the boulevard now, and were standing at the railing over the beach. A little talk had been going on, of course, about this and that--he hardly knew what.

He clenched his fist again, and brought it down on the iron rail.

'Oh,' he broke out--'about Saturday. I forgot. I can't come.'

'Oh, but please----'

'No. Awfully busy. You've no idea. You see Humphrey Weaver and I bought the _Gleaner_. I told you, didn't I? It's a big responsibility--getting the pay-roll every week, and things like that. Things I never knew about before. I don't believe I was made to be a business man. Lots of accounts and things. Hump's at it all the time--nights and everything. You see we've got to make the paper pay. We've _got_ to! It was losing, when Bob McGibbon had it. People hated him, and they wouldn't advertise. And now we have to get the advertising back.' If we fail in that, we'll go under, just as he did...'

Words! Words! A hot torrent of them! He didn't know how transparent he was.

She stood, her two hands resting lightly on the rail, looking out at the slowly spreading glow in the east.

'I'm so glad aunt asked you,' she said gravely. 'I wanted you to come. I want you to know. Won't you, please?'

He looked at her, but she didn't turn. There was more behind her words. Even Henry could see that. He had been discussed. As a problem. But she didn't say the rest of it.

Then his clumsy little artifice broke down, and the crude feeling rushed to the surface.

'You know I mustn't come!' he cried.

'No,' said she, with that deliberate gravity. 'I don't know that. I think you should.'

'I can't. You don't understand. They wouldn't like it, my being there. They talk about me. They don't speak to me, even.'

'Then oughtn't you to come? Face them? Show them that it isn't true?'

'But that will just make it hard for you.'

She was slow in answering this; seemed to be considering it. Finally she replied with:--

'I don't think I care about that. People have been awfully nice to me here. I'm having a lovely time. But it isn't as if I had always lived here and expected to stay for the rest of my life. My life has been different. I've known a good many different kinds of people, and I've had to think for myself a good deal. No, I'd like you to come. If you don't come---don't you see?--you're putting me with them. You're making me mean and petty. I don't want to be that way. If--if I'm to see you at all, they must know it.'

'Perhaps, then,' he muttered, 'you'd better not see me at all.'

'Please!'

'Well, I know; but--'

'No. I want to see you. If you want to come. I love your stories. You're more interesting than any of them.'

At this, he turned square around; stared at her. But she, very quietly, finished what she had to say. 'I think you're a genius. I think you're going to be famous. It's--it's exciting to see the way you write stories.... Wait, please! I'm going to tell you the rest of it. Now that we're talking it out, I think I've got to. It was aunt who didn't want to ask you. She likes you, but she thought--well, she thought it might be awkward, and--and hard for you. I told her what I've told you, that I've either got to be your friend before all of them or not at all. And now that she has asked you--don't you see, it's the way I wanted it all along.'

There wasn't another girl in Sunbury who could have, or would have, made quite that speech.

She looked delicately beautiful in the growing light. Her hair was a vignetted halo about her small head.

Henry, staring, his hands clenched at his sides, broke out with:--

'I love you!'

'Oh--h!' she breathed. 'Please!'

Words came from him, a jumble of words. About his hopes, the few thousand dollars that would be his on the seventh of November, when he would be twenty-one, the wonderful stories he would write, with her for inspiration.

Inwardly he was in a panic. He hadn't dreamed of saying such a thing. Never before, in all his little philanderings had he let go like this, never had he felt the glow of mad catastrophe that now seemed to be consuming him. Oh, once perhaps--something of it--years back--when he had believed he was in love with Ernestine Lambert. But that had been in another era. And it hadn't gone so deep as this.

'Anyway'--he heard her saying, in a rather tired voice--'anyway--it makes it hard, of course--you shouldn't have said that--'

'Oh, I _am_ making it hard! And I meant to----'

'--anyway, I think you'd better come. Unless it would be too hard for you.'

There was a long silence. Then Henry, his forehead wet with sweat, his feet braced apart, his hands gripping the rail as if he were holding for his life, said, with a sudden quiet that she found a little disconcerting:--

'All right. I'll come.... Your aunt said a quarter past six, didn't she?'

'No, six.'

5

Madame Watt appropriated Henry the moment he entered her door on Saturday evening. She was, despite her talk of offhand summer informality, clad in an impressive costume with a great deal of lace and the shimmer of flowered silk.

At her elbow, Henry moved through the crowd in the front hall. He felt cool eyes on him. He stood very straight and stiff. He was pale. He bowed to the various girls and fellows--Mary, Martha, Herb, Elbow, and the rest, with reserve. It was, from moment to moment, a battle.

Nobody but Madame Watt would have thought of giving such a party. It was so expensive--the dinner for twenty-two, to begin with; then all the railway fares; a bus from the station in Chicago to the theatre and back. The theatre tickets alone came to thirty-three dollars (these were the less expensive days of the dollar and a half seat). Sunbury still, at the time, was inclined to look doubtfully on ostentation.

You felt, too, in the case of Madame, that she was likely to speak, at any moment rather--well, broadly. All that Paris experience, whatever it was, seemed to be hovering about the snapping black eyes and the indomitable mouth. You sensed in her none of the reserve of movement, of speech, of mind, that were implied in the feminine standards of Sunbury. Yet she was unquestionably a person. If she laughed louder than the ladies of Sunbury, she had more to say.

To-night she was a dominantly entertaining hostess. She talked of the theatre, in Paris, London and New York--of the Coquelins, Gallipaux, Bernhardt, of Irving and Terry and Willard and Grossmith. Some of these she had met. She knew Sothem, it appeared. Even the extremely worldly Elbow and Herb were impressed.

She had Henry at her right. Boldly placed him there. At his right was a girl from Omaha who was visiting the Smiths and who made several efforts to be pleasant to the pale gloomy youth with the little moustache and the distinctly interesting gray-blue eyes.

By the time they were settled on the train Henry found himself grateful to the certainly strong, however coarse-fibred woman.

Efforts to identify her as she seemed now, with the woman of that hideous scene with the Senator brought only bewilderment. He had to give it up.

This woman was rapidly winning his confidence; even, in a curious sense, his sympathy.

At the farther end of the table the little Senator, all dignity and calm stilted sentences, made himself remotely agreeable to several girls at once.

At one side of the table sat Cicely, in lacy white with a wonderful little gauzy scarf about her shoulders. She looked at him only now and then, and just as she looked at the others. He wondered how she could smile so brightly.

Herb and Elbow made a great joke of fighting over her. Elbow had her at dinner; Herb on the train; Elbow again at the theatre.

Henry was fairly clinging to Madame by that time.

I think, among the confused thoughts and feelings that whirled ceaselessly around and around in his brain, the one that came up oftenest and stayed longest was a sense of stoical heroism. For Cicely's sake he must bear his anguish. For her he must be humble, kindly, patient. He had read, somewhere in his scattered acquaintance with books, that Abraham Lincoln had once been brought to the point of suicide through a disappointment in love. And to-night he thought much and deeply of Lincoln. He had already decided, during an emotionally turbulent two days, not to shoot himself.

During the first intermission the Senator stayed quietly in his seat.

When the curtain went down for the second time, he stroked his beard with a small, none-too-steady hand, coughed in the suppressed way he had, and glanced once or twice at Madame.

The young men were, apparently all of them, moving out for a smoke in the lobby.

Henry, with a tingling sense of defiance, a little selfconscious about staying alone with the girls, followed them.

And after him, walking up the aisle with his odd strutting air of importance, came the Senator.

He gathered the young men together in the lobby; pulled at his twisted beard; said, 'It will give me pleasure to offer you young gentlemen a little refreshment;' and led the way out to a convenient bar. It was a large, high-panelled room. There were great mirrors; rows and rows of bottles and shiny glasses; alcoves with tables; and enormous oil paintings in still more enormous gilt frames and lighted by special fixtures built out from the wall. The one over the bar exhibited an undraped female figure reclining on a couch.

They stood, a jolly group, naming their drinks.

Henry, who had no taste for liquor, stood apart, pale, sober, struggling to exhibit a _savoir faire_ that had no existence in his mercurial nature.

'I'll take ginger ale,' he said, in painful self-consciousness.

The Senator, his somewhat jaunty straw hat thrust back a little way off his forehead, took Scotch; drank it neat. It seemed to Henry incongruous when the prim little man tossed the liquor back against his palate with a long-practised flourish.

Back in his seat, between Madame and the girl from Omaha, Henry noted that the Senator had not returned with the others.

Madame turned and looked up the aisle.

The lights were dimmed. The curtain rose.

Cicely was in the row ahead, Herb on one side, Elbow on the other.

Elbow was calm, casual, humorous in a way, whispering phrases that had been found amusing by many girls.

Herb, the only man in what Henry still thought of as a 'full dress suit,' had a way of turning his head and studying Cicely's hair and profile whenever she turned toward Elbow, that stirred Henry to anguish.

'He's rich,' thought Henry, twisting in his chair, clasping and unclasping his hands. 'He's rich. He can do everything for her. And he loves her. He couldn't look that way if he didn't.'

A comedian was singing and dancing on the stage. Cicely watched him, her eyes alight, her lips parted in a smile of sheer enjoyment.

'How can she!' he thought. 'How _can_ she!' Then: 'I could do that. If I'd kept it up. If she'd seen me in _Iolanthe_ maybe she'd care.'

The curtain fell on a glittering finale.

With a great chattering the party moved up the aisle. Cicely told her two escorts that she didn't know when she had enjoyed anything so much. She was merry about it. Care free as a child.

Henry stopped short in the foyer; standing aside, half behind a framed advertisement on an easel; his hands clenched in his coat pockets; white of face; biting his lip.

'I can't go with them!' he was thinking. 'It's too much. I can't! I can't trust myself. I'd say something. But what'll they think?

'She won't know. She won't care. She's happy--my suffering is nothing to her.' This was youthful bitterness, of course. But it met an immediate counter in the following thought, which, to any one who knew the often selfcentred Henry would have been interesting. 'But that's the way it ought to be. She mustn't know how I suffer. It isn't her fault. A great love just comes to you. Nobody can help it. It's tragedy, of course. Even if I have to--to'--his lip was quivering now--'to shoot myself, I must leave a note telling her she wasn't to blame. Just that I loved her too much to live without her. But I haven't any money. I couldn't make her happy.'

His eyes, narrow points of fire, glanced this way and that. Almost furtively. Passion--a grown man's passion--was or seemed to him to be tearing him to pieces. And he hadn't a grown man's experience of life, the background of discipline and self-control, that might have helped him weather the storm. All he could do was to wonder if he had spoken aloud or only thought these words. He didn't know. Somebody might have heard. The crowd was still pouring slowly out past him. It seemed to him incredible that all the world shouldn't know about it.

The others of the party were somewhere out on the street now. They were going to a restaurant; then, in their bus, to the twelve-fourteen, the last train for Sunbury until daylight.

What could he do if he didn't take that train? He might hide up forward, in the smoker. But there were a hundred chances that he would be seen. No, that wouldn't do. He must hurry after them.

But he flatly couldn't. Why, the tears were coming to his eyes. A little weakness, whenever he was deeply moved, for which he despised himself. There was no telling what he might do--cry like a girl, break out into an impossible torrent of words. A scene. Anywhere; on the street, in the restaurant.

No, however awkward, whatever the cost, he couldn't rejoin them, he couldn't look at Cicely and Elbow and Herb and the others.

He felt in his pocket. Not enough money, of course. He never had enough. He couldn't ever plan intelligently. Yet he was earning twelve dollars a week!... He had a dollar, and a little change. Perhaps it was enough. He could go to a cheap hotel. He had seen them advertised--fifty or seventy-five cents for the night. And then an early morning train for Sunbury.

He would be worse off then than ever, of course. The people who had talked, would have fresh material. Running away from the party! They might say that he had got drunk. Though in a way he would welcome that. It was a sort of way out.

The crowd was nearly gone. They would be closing the doors soon. Then he would have to go--somewhere.

A big woman was making her way inward against the human current. But Henry, though he saw her and knew in a dreamy way that it was Madame Watt, still couldn't, for the moment, find place for her in his madly surging thoughts.

She passed him; looked into the darkened theatre; came back; stood before him.

Then came this brief conversation:--

'You haven't seen him, Henry?'

'No, I haven't.'

'Hm! Awkward--he took the pledge--he swore it--I am counting on you to help me.'

'Of course. Anything!'

'Were you out with him between the acts?'

'Why--yes.'

'Did he drink anything then?'

'Yes. He took Scotch.'

'Oh, he did?'

'Yes'm.'

'It's all off, then. See here, Henry, will you look? The same place? Be very careful. People mustn't know. And I must count on you. There's nobody else. We'll manage it, somehow. We've got to keep him quiet and get him out home. I'll be at the restaurant. You can send word in to me--have a waiter say I'm wanted at the telephone. Do that. And...'

It is to be doubted if Henry heard more than half of this speech. She was still speaking when he shot out to the street, dodged back of the waiting groups by the kerb and disappeared among the night traffic of the street in the direction of a certain bar.

6

The Senator's cheeks and forehead and nose were shining redly above the little white beard, which, for itself, looked more than ever askew. The straw hat was far back on his head. He waved a limp hand toward the enormous, brightly lighted painting that hung over the bar.

Henry, a painfully set look on his face, sat opposite, across the alcove, leaned heavily on the table, and watched him.

The passion had gone out of him. He was wishing, in a state near despair, that he had listened more attentively to what Madame Watt had said. Something about getting word to her--at the restaurant. But how could he? If it had seemed disastrously difficult before, full of his own trouble, to face that merry party, it was now, with this really tragic problem on his hands, flatly impossible.

And there wasn't a soul in the world to help him. He must work it out alone. Even if he might get word to Madame, what could she do? She couldn't leave her party. And she couldn't bring this pitiable object in among those young people.

Henry's lips pressed together. The world looked to him just now a savage wilderness.

'Consider women, for instance!' The Senator's hand waved again toward the picture. It was surprising to Henry that he could speak with such distinctness. 'Consider women! They toil not, neither do they spin. Yet at the last, they bite like a serpent and sting like an adder.'

Henry held his watch under the table; glanced down. It was five minutes past twelve. For nearly an hour he had been sitting there, helpless, beating his brain for schemes that wouldn't present themselves. The twelve-fourteen was as good as gone, of course. Though it had not for a minute been possible. He thought vaguely, occasionally, of a hotel. But stronger and more persistent was the feeling that he ought to get him out home if he could.

'Women...!' The Senator drooped in his chair. Then looked up; braced himself; shouted, 'Here, boy! A bit more of the same!' When the glass was before him he drank, brightened a little, and resumed. 'Woman, my boy, is th' root--No, I will go farther! I will state that woman is th' root 'n' branch of all evil.'

Henry, with a muttered, 'Excuse me, Senator!' got out of the alcove and stepped outside the door. He stood on the door-step; took off his hat and pressed a hand to his forehead.

Across the street, near the side door of the hotel, stood an old-fashioned closed hack. The driver lay curled up across his seat, asleep. The horses stood with drooping heads.

Henry gazed intently at the dingy vehicle. Slowly his eyes narrowed. He looked again at his watch. Then he moved deliberately across the way and woke the cabman.

'Hey!' he cried, as the man fumblingly put on his hat and blinked up the street and down. 'Hey, you! What'll you take to drive to Sunbury?'

'Sunbury? Oh, that's a long way. And it's pretty late at night.'

'I know all that! How much'll you take?'

The cabman pondered.

'How many?'

'Two.'

'Fifteen dollars.'

'Oh, say I, that's twice too much! Why----'

'Fifteen dollars.'

'But-----'

'Fifteen dollars.'

Henry swallowed. He felt very daring. He had heard of fellows and girls missing the late train and driving out. But the amount usually mentioned was ten dollars. However...

'All right. Drive across here.'