Part 18

He bent over the Senator, who was talking, still on the one topic, to a small picture just above Henry's empty seat.

'We're going home now, Senator. You'd better come with me.'

'Going home? No, not there. Not there. Back to the Senate, yes. Tha's different. But not home. If you knew what I've----'

Henry led him out. But first the Senator, with some difficulty in the managing, paid his check. Henry would have paid it, but hadn't nearly enough. It had never occurred to him that a single individual could spend so large a sum on himself within the space of less, considerably less, than three hours.

The cabman and Henry together got him into the hack.

'They are pop--popularly known as the weaker sex. All a ter'ble mistake, young man. They're stronger. Li'l do you dream how stronger--how great--how more stronger they are. Curious about words. At times one commands them with ease. Other times they elude one. Words are more tricky--few suspect--but women allure us only to destroy us. Women....'

Before the cab rolled across the Rush Street Bridge on its long journey to the northward he was asleep.

7

It was half-past two in the morning when a hack drawn by weary horses on whose flanks the later glistened, drew up at the porte cochère of the old Dexter Smith place in Sunbury.

The cabman lumbered down and opened the door. A youth, nervously wide awake, leaped out. Then followed this brief conversation.

'Help me carry him up, please.'

'You'd better pay me first. Fifteen dollars!

'I'll do that afterward.'

'I'll take it now.'

'I tell you I'm going to get it----'

'You mean you haven't got it?'

'Not on me.'

'Well, look here----'

'Ssh! You'll wake the whole house up! You've simply got to wait until I get home. You needn't worry. I'm going to pay you.'

'You'd better. Say, he'd ought to have it on him.'

'We're not going into his pockets. Now you do as I tell you.'

Together they lifted him out.

Henry looked up at the door. Madame Watt, somebody, had left this outside light burning. Doubtless the thing to do was just to ring the bell.

He brushed the cabman aside. The Senator was such a little man, so pitifully slender and light! And Henry himself was supple and strong. He took the little old gentleman up in his arms and carried him up the steps. And once again in the course of this strange night his eyes filled.

But not for himself this time. Henry's gift of insight, while it was now and for many years to come would be fitful, erratic, coming and going with his intensely varied moods, was none the less a real, at times a great, gift. And I think he glimpsed now, through the queer confusing mists of thought, something of the grotesque tragedy that runs, like a red and black thread, through the fabric of many human lives.

The Senator had been a famous man. Through nearly two decades, as even Henry dimly knew, he had stood out, a figure of continuous national importance. And now he was just--this. Here in Henry's arms; inert.

'Ring the bell, will you!' said Henry shortly.

The cabman moved.

There was a light step within. The lock turned. The door swung open, and Cicely stood there.

She was wrapped about in a wonderful soft garment of blue. She was pale. And her hair was all down, rippling about her shoulders and (when she stepped quickly back out of the cabman's vision) down her back below the waist.

Henry carried his burden in, and she quickly closed the door.

'Has anybody seen? Does anybody know?' she asked, in a whisper.

He leaned back against the wall.

'No. Nobody. But you----'

'I've been sitting up, watching. I was so afraid aunt might----'

'Then you know?'

'Know? Why--Tell me, do you think you can carry him to his room?'

'Me? Oh, easy! Why he doesn't weigh much of anything. Just look!'

'Then come. Quickly. Keep very quiet.'

Slowly, painstakingly, he followed her up the stairs and along the upper hall to an open door.

'Wait!' she whispered. 'I'll have to turn on the light.' He laid the limp figure on the bed.

Outside, in the still night, the horses stirred and stamped. A voice--the cabman's--cried,--

'Whoa there, you! Whoa!'

Cicely turned with a start.

'Oh, why can't he keep still!... You--you'd better go. I don't know why you're so kind. Those others would never----'

'Please!--You _do_ know!'

This remark appeared to add to her distress. She made a quick little gesture.

'Oh, no, I don't mean--not that I want you to----'

'Not so loud! Quick! Please go!'

'But it's so terribly hard for you. I can't bear--I can't bear to think of your having to--people just mustn't know about it, that's all! We've got to do something. She mustn't--You see, I love you, and....

Their eyes met.

A deep dominating voice came from the doorway.

'You had better go to your room, Cicely,' it said.

They turned like guilty children.

Cicely flushed, then quietly went.

Madame was a strange spectacle. She wore a quilted maroon robe, which she held clutched together at her throat. Most of the hair that was usually piled and coiled about her head had vanished; what little remained was surprisingly gray and was twisted up in front and over the ears in curl papers of the old-fashioned kind.

Henry lowered his gaze; it seemed indelicate to look at her. He discovered then that he was still wearing his hat, and took it off with a low, wholly nervous laugh that was as surprising to himself as it certainly was, for a moment, to Madame Watt, who surveyed him under knit brows before centring her attention on the unconscious figure on the bed.

'We owe you a great deal,' she said then. 'It was awkward enough. But it might have been a disaster. You've saved us from that.'

'Oh, it was nothing,' murmured Henry, blushing.

'Are you sure no one saw? You didn't take him to the station?'

'No. We drove straight out.'

'Hm! When you came did you ring our bell?'

'Me? Why, no. I was going to. But----'

'Yes?'

'She--your--Miss----'

'Do you mean Cicely?'

'Yes. She opened the door.'

Madame frowned again.

'But what on earth----'

Henry interrupted, looking up at her now.

'I'll tell you. I know. I can see it. And somebody's got to tell you.'

Madame looked mystified.

'She couldn't bear to have you know. She was afraid you----'

Madame raised her free hand. 'We won't go into that.'

'But we _must_. It was your temper she was----'

'We wont----'

'You _must_ listen! Can't you see the dread she lives under--the fear that you'll forget yourself and people will know! And can't you see what it drives--him--to? I heard him talk when he was telling his real thoughts. I know.'

'Oh, you do!'

'Yes, I know. And I know this town. They're very conservative. They watch new people. They're watching you. Like cats. And they'll gossip. I know that too. I've suffered from it. Things that aren't so. But what do they care? They'd spoil your whole life--like that!--and go to the Country Club early to get the best dances. Oh, I know, I tell you. You've got to be careful. It isn't what I say, but you've _got_ to! Or they'll find out, and they won't stop till they've hounded you out of town, and driven him to--this--for good, and broken her--your niece's--heart.'

He stopped, out of breath.

The fire that had flamed from his eyes died down, leaving them like gray ashes. Confusion smote him. He shifted his feet; turned his hat round and round between his hands. What--_what_--had he been saying!

Then he heard her voice, saying only this:--

'In a way--in a way--you have a right.... God knows it won't.... So much at stake.... Perhaps it had to be said.'

He felt that he had better retreat. Emotions were rising, and he was gulping them down. He knew now that he couldn't speak again; not a word.

She stood aside.

'It was very good of you,' she said.

But he rushed past her and down the stairs.

Humphrey, when he awoke in the morning, remembered dimly his temperamental young partner, a dishevelled, rather wild figure, bending over him, shaking him and saying, 'Gimme fifteen dollars! I'll explain to-morrow. Gosh, but I'm a wreck! You've no idea!'

And he remembered drawing to him the chair on which his clothes were piled and fumbling in various pockets for money.

8

When Henry awoke, at ten, he found himself alone in the rooms. The warm sunshine was streaming in, the university clock was booming out the hour. Then the mellow church bells set up their stately ringing.

He lay for a time drowsily listening. Then the bells brought recollections. Madame Watt, and Cicely, and often the Senator attended the First Presbyterian Church. Right across the alley, facing on Filbert Avenue. By merely turning his head, Henry could see the rear gable of the chapel and the windows of the Sunday-school room.

He sprang out of bed.

His blue serge coat was spotted. From the table in that bar-room, doubtless. He found a bottle of ammonia and sponged. It was also in need of a pressing, but he could do nothing about that now. He had to go to church.

No other course was thinkable. If only to sit where he could catch a glimpse now and then of her profile.

He heard a knock downstairs, but at first ignored it. No one would be coming here of a Sunday morning.

Finally he went down.

There, on the step, immaculately dressed, rather weary looking with dark areas under red eyes, stood Senator Watt.

'How do you do,' said he, with dignity.

'Won't you come in?' said Henry.

They mounted the stairs. The Senator sat stiffly on a small chair. Henry took the piano stool.

'I understand that you did me a very great service last night, Mr Calverly.'

'Oh, no,' Henry managed to say, in a mumbling voice, throwing out his hands. 'No, it wasn't really anything at all.'

'You will please tell me what it cost.'

'Oh--why--well, fifteen dollars.'

The Senator counted out the money.

'You have placed me greatly in your debt, Mr Calverly. I hope that I may some day repay you.'

'Oh, no! You see...'

Silence fell upon them.

The Senator rose to go.

'Drink,' he remarked then, 'is an unmitigated evil. Never surrender to it.'

'I really don't drink at all, Senator.'

'Good! Don't do it. Life is more complex than a young man of your age can perceive. At best it is a bitter struggle. Evil habits are a handicap. They aggravate every problem. Good day. We shall see you soon again at the house, I trust.'

Henry, moved, looked after him as he walked almost briskly away--an erect, precise little man.

Then Henry went to church.

Herb de Casselles ushered him to a seat. He could just see Cicely. He thought she looked very sad. Yet she sang brightly in the hymns. And after the benediction when Herb and Elbow and Dex Smith crowded about her in the aisle, she smiled quite as usual, and made her quick, eager Frenchy gestures.

He brushed his hand across his eyes Had he been living through a dream--a tragic sort of dream?

He made his way, between pews, to a side door, and hurried out. He couldn't speak to a soul; not now. He walked blindly, very fast, down to Chestnut Avenue, over to Simpson Street, then up toward the stores and shops.

Humphrey had a way of working at the office Sundays. He decided to go there. There was the matter of the fifteen dollars. And Humphrey would expect him for their usual Sunday dinner at Stanley's.

He was passing Stanley's now. Next came Donovan's drug store. Next beyond that, Swanson's flower shop.

A carriage--a Victoria--rolled softly by on rubber tyres. Silver jingled on the harness of the two black horses. Two men in plum-coloured livery sat like wooden things on the box. On the rear seat were Madame Watt and Cicely.

The carriage drew up before Swanson's. Madame Watt got heavily out and went into the shop.

Cicely had turned. She was waving her hand.

Henry found his vision suddenly blurred. Then he was standing by the carriage, and Cicely was speaking, leaning over close to him so that the men couldn't hear.

'It was dreadful the way I let you go! I didn't even say good-night. And all the time I wanted you to know....'

He couldn't speak. He stared at her, lips compressed; temples pounding.

She seemed to be smiling faintly.

'We--we might say good-night now.'

He heard her say that.

She thought he shivered. Then he said huskily:--

'I--I've wanted to call you--to call you--'

'Yes?'

'--Cicely.'.

There was a silence. She whispered, 'I think I've wanted you to.'

He had rested a hand on the plum upholstery beside her. In some way it touched hers; clasped it; gripped it feverishly.

The colour came rushing to his face. And to hers.

He saw, through a blinding mist, that there were tears in her eyes.

'Ci--Cicely, you don't, you can't mean--that you--too....'

'Please, Henry! Not here! Not now!'

They glanced up the street; and down.

'Come this afternoon,' she breathed.

'They'll be there.'

'Come early. Two o'clock. We'll take a walk.'

'Oh--Cicely!'

'Henry!'

Their hands were locked together until Madame came out.

The carriage rolled away.

Henry--it seemed to himself--reeled dizzily along Simpson Street to the stairway that you climbed to get to the _Gleaner_ office.

And all along this street of his struggles, his failures, his one or two successes, his dreams, the dingy, two-story buildings laughed and danced and cheered about him, with him, for him--Hemple's meat-market, Berger's grocery, Swanson's, Donovan's, Schultz and Schwartz's barber shop, Stanley's, the Sunbury National Bank, the postoffice--all reeled jubilantly with him in the ecstasy of young love!

IX--WHAT'S MONEY!

1

|Henry paused on the sill. The door he held open bore the legend, painted in black and white on a rectangle of tin:--

THE SUNBURY WEEKLY GLEANER

By Weaver and Calverly

'How late you going to stay, Hump?' he asked.

Humphrey raised his eyes, listlessly thrust his pencil back of his ear, and looked rather thoughtfully at the youth in the doorway; a dapper youth, in an obviously new 'Fedora' hat, a conspicuous cord of black silk hanging from his glasses, his little bamboo cane, caught by its crook in the angle of his elbow.

Humphrey's gaze wandered to the window; settled on the roof of the Sunbury National Bank opposite. He suppressed a sigh.

'I may want to talk with you, Hen. I've been figuring----'

The youth in the doorway shifted his position with a touch of impatience.

'See here, Hump, you know I can't make head or tail out of figures!'

Humphrey looked down at the desk.

'Anyway I'll see you at supper,' Henry added defensively.

'Mildred expects me down there for supper,' said Humphrey. The sigh came now. He pushed up the eyeshade and slowly rubbed his eyes. 'But I may not be able to get away. There are times, Hen, when you have to look figures in the face.'

The youth flushed at this, and replied, rather explosively;--

'A fellow has to do the sorta thing he _can_ do, Hump!'

'Well--will you be at the rooms this evening?' Humphrey's eyes were again taking in the natty costume. And surveying him, Humphrey answered his own question; dryly. 'I imagine not.'

'Well--I was going over to the Watts.'

There was a long silence:

Finally Henry let himself slowly out and closed the door.

Outside, on the landing, he paused again; but this time to button his coat and pull up the blue-bordered handkerchief in his breast pocket until a corner showed.

He looked too, by the fading light--it was mid-September, and the sun would be setting shortly, out over the prairie--at the tin legend on the door.

The sight seemed to reassure him somewhat. As did the other, similar tin legends that were tacked up between the treads of the long flight of stairs that led to Simpson Street, at each of which he turned to look.

Humphrey had before him a pile of canvas-bound account books, a spindle of unpaid bills, a little heap of business letters, and a pad covered with pencilled columns. He rested an elbow among the papers, turned his chair, and looked through the window down into the street.

A moment passed, then he saw Henry walking diagonally across toward Donovan's drug store.

For an ice-cream soda, of course; or one of those thick, 'frosted' fluids of chocolate or coffee flavour that he affected. And it was now within an hour of supper time.

Humphrey leaned forward. Yes, there he stood, on the kerb before Donovan's, looking, with a quick nervous jerking of the head, now up Simpson Street, now down. Yes, that was his hurry--the usual thing. Madame Watt made a point of driving down to meet the five-twenty-nine from town. Senator Watt always came out then. And usually Cicely Hamlin came along with her.

Humphrey sighed, rose, stood looking down at the bills and letters and canvas books; pressed a hand again against his eyes; wandered to the press-room door and looked, pursing his lips, knitting his brows, at the row of job presses, at the big cylinder press that extended nearly across the rear end of the long room, at the row of type cases on their high stands, at imposing-stones on heavy tables. He sniffed the odour of ink, damp paper, and long, respected dust that hung over the whole establishment. He smiled, moodily, as his eye rested on the gray and black roller towel that hung above the iron sink, recalling Bob Burdette's verses. He returned to the office, and stood for a few moments before the file of the _Gleaner_ on the wall desk by the door, turning the pages of recent issues. From each number a story by Henry Calverly, 3rd, seemed to leap out at his eyes and his brain. _The Caliph of Simpson Street, Sinbad the Treasurer, A Kerbstone Barmecide, The Cauliflowers of the Caliph, The Printer and the Pearls, Ali Anderson and the Four Policemen_--the very titles singing aloud of the boy's extraordinary gift.

'And it's all we've got here,' mused Humphrey, moving back to his own desk. 'That mad child makes us, or we break. I've got to humour him, protect him. Can't even show him these bills. Like getting all your light and heat from a candle that may get blown out any minute.' And before dropping heavily into his chair, glancing at his watch, drawing his eye-shade down, and plunging again at the heavy problem of keeping a country weekly alive without sufficient advertising revenue, he added, aloud, with a wry, wrinkly smile that yet gave him a momentary whimsical attractiveness: 'That's the devil of it!'

There was a step on' the stairs.

The door opened slowly. A red face appeared, under a tipped-down Derby hat; a face decorated with a bristling red moustache and a richly carmine nose.

Humphrey peered; then considered. It was Tim Niernan, one-time fire chief, now village constable.

'Young Calverly here?' asked the official in a husky voice.

Humphrey shook his head. His thoughts, momentarily disarranged, were darting this way and that.

'What is it, Tim? What do you want of him?'

Tim seemed embarrassed.

'Why----' he began, 'why----'

'Some trouble?'

'Why, you see Charlie Waterhouse's suing him.'

Humphrey tried to consider this.

'What for?'

'Well--libel. One o' them stories o' his. I liked 'em myself. My folks all say he's a great kid. But Charlie's pretty sore.'

'Suing for a lot, I suppose?'

'Why yes. Well--ten thousand.'

'Hm!'

'He lives with you, don't he--back of the Parmenter place?'

'Yes.' Humphrey's answer was short. At the moment he was not inclined to make Tim's task easy.

The constable went out. Humphrey watched him from the window. He passed Donovan's on the other side of the street and kept on toward the lake.

Humphrey returned to the wall file, and, standing there, read _Sinbad the Treasurer_ through.

There was an extraordinarily fresh, naive power in the story. Simpson Street was mentioned by name. There was but the one town treasurer, whether you called him 'Sinbad' or Waterhouse.

'He certainly did cut loose,' mused Humphrey. 'Charlie's got a case. Got his nerve, too.'

Then he dropped into his chair and sat, for a long time, very quiet, tapping out little tunes on his hollowed cheek with a pencil.

2

Henry turned away from Donovan's soda fountain, wiping froth from his moustache, and sauntered to the nearer of the two doors. His brows were knit in a slight frown that suggested anxiety. There was earnestness, intensity, in the usually pleasant gray-blue eyes as he peered now up the street, now down.

A low-hung Victoria, drawn by a glossy team in harness that glittered with silver, swung at a dignified pace around the corner of Filbert Avenue, two wooden men in plum-coloured livery on the box, two dignified figures on the rear seat, one middle-aged, large, formidable, commanding, sitting erect and high, the other slighter and not commanding.

Instantly, at the sight, Henry's frown gave place to a nervously eager smile, returned, went again. When the carriage at length drew up before Berger's grocery, across the way, however, he had both frown and smile under reasonable control and was a presentable if deadly serious young man.

The footman leaped down and stood at attention. The formidable one stepped out and entered Berger's. And the slight, fresh-faced girl, leaned out to welcome the youth who rushed across the street.

In Sunbury, in the nineties, a youth and a maiden could 'go together' without a thought of the future. The phrase implied frank pairing off, perhaps an occasionally shyly restrained sentimental passage, in general a monopoly of the other's spare time. An 'understanding,' on the other hand, was a. distinctly transitive state, leading to engagement and marriage as soon as the youth was old enough or could earn a living or the opposition of parents could be overcome.

The relationship between Cicely and Henry had lately hovered delicately between the two states. If it seemed, after each timid advance, to recede from the 'understanding' point; that was because of the burdens and the heavy responsibility that instantly claimed their thoughts at the mere suggestion of engagement and marriage:

There were among the parents of Henry's boyhood friends, couples that had married at twenty or even younger, and on no greater income than Henry's rather doubtful twelve dollars a week. But that day had gone by. An 'understanding' meant now, at the very least, that you were saving for a diamond. You could hardly ask a nice girl to become engaged without one.

And marriage meant good clothes for parties, receptions and Sundays, and the street; it meant membership in the Country Club, a reasonably priced pew in church, a rented house, at least, preferably not in South Sunbury and distinctly not out on the prairie or too near the tracks, a certain amount invested in furniture, dishes and other house fittings, and reasonable credit with the grocer and at the meat-market. You could hardly ask a nice girl to go in for less than that. You really couldn't afford to let her go in for less.

So they were marrying later now; six or eight or ten years later. And the girls were turning to older men. Here in Sunbury, Clemency Snow had married a man seven or eight years older whose younger brother had been among her playmates. Jane Bellman had married a shy little doctor of thirty-one or two. And Martha Caldwell, whom Henry had 'gone with' for two or three years, was permitting the rich, really old bachelor, James B. Merchant, Jr., to devote about all his time to her. He was thirty-eight if a day.

It was a disturbing condition for the town boys. Thoughts of it cast black shadows on Henry's undisciplined brain as he looked at the girl in the Victoria, felt, in the very air about them, her quick, bright smile, the delicately responsive liftings of her eyebrows, her marked desirability.

'Oh, Henry,' she was saying, 'I've just been hearing the most wonderful things about you! You can't imagine! At Mrs MacLouden's tea. There was a man there----'

Henry sniffed. A man at a tea! And talking to Cicely! Making up to her, doubtless.