At noon, no word had come from Uncle Arthur. Henry, all the morning, had flitted back and forth between McGibbon’s rear office and the telegraph office in the ‘depot.’

At twelve-thirty, they sent a peremptory message, demanding a reply by three o’clock. An ultimatum.

The reply came unexpectedly, with startling effect, at twenty-five minutes past two, requesting Henry to come directly into his uncle’s Chicago office.

He caught the two-forty-seven. McGibbon, who had missed nothing of the concern on Henry’s face at this brisk counter-offensive on the part of Uncle Arthur, was with him.

McGibbon waited in the corner drug store while Henry-went up in one of the elevators of the great La Salle Street office-building.

Uncle Arthur led the way into his inner office, closed the door, seated himself, and with austerity surveyed the youth before him, taking in with deliberate thought the far-from-inexpensive blue-serge suit, the five-dollar straw hat, the bamboo stick (which Henry carried anything but airily now), and the hopelessly futile little moustache.

‘Sit down,’ said Uncle Arthur.

Henry sat down.

Uncle Arthur opened a drawer, took up two slips of paper, deliberately laid them before his nephew.

‘There,’ he said, ‘is my cheque for one thousand forty-six dollars and twenty-nine cents. It is the value, with interest to this morning, of one bond which I am buying from you, at the price given in to-day’s quotations. Kindly sign the receipt. Right there.’

He dipped a pen and Henry signed, then, with shaky fingers, picked up the cheque, fingered it, laid it down again.

‘I want no misunderstandings about this, Henry. I am doing it because I regard you as a young fool. Perhaps you will be less of a fool after you have lost this money. Henry heard the words through a mist of confused feelings. ‘I will have no more letters and telegrams like these.’ He indicated the little sheaf of papers on his desk. ‘And I won’t have my character assailed either by you or by any cheap scoundrel whose advice you may be taking.’

‘But – but he’s not a cheap scoundrel!’

Uncle Arthur raised his eyebrows. His eyes, Henry felt, would burn holes in him if he stayed here much longer.

‘You’re hard on me, Uncle Arthur. You’re not fair I’m not going to lose – ’

The older man abruptly got up.

‘If you care for any advice at all from me, I suggest that you insist on a note from this man – a demand note, or, at the very outside, a three-months’ one. Don’t put money unsecured into a weak business. Make it a personal obligation on the part of the proprietor. And now, Henry, that is all. I really don’t care to talk to you further.

Henry stood still.

His uncle turned brusquely away.

‘But – but – ’ Henry said unsteadily, ‘Uncle Arthur – really! Money isn’t everything!’

His uncle turned on him as if about to speak; but on second thought merely raised his eyebrows again.

And then came the final humiliation, the little climax that was always to stand out with particular vividness in Henry’s memory of the scene. He turned to go. He had reached the door when he heard his uncle’s voice, saying, with a rasp: —

‘You have forgotten the cheque, Henry’

And he had to go back for it.

7

One effect of the scene was a slight coolness toward McGibbon.

‘I shall want your note,’ he said.

McGibbon turned his head away at this and looked out of the car window. Then, a moment later, he replied: —

‘Sure! Of course! It’s just as I told you – always watch a man who hesitates a minute in money matters.’

‘Three months,’ said Henry.

‘And we can arrange renewals in a friendly spirit between ourselves,’ said McGibbon.

At the Sunbury station, Henry drew a little red book from his pocket, knit his brows, and said: —

‘I owe you for those car fares. Two; wasn’t it? Or three?’

‘Oh, shucks! Don’t think of that!’

‘Was it two or three?’

‘Well – if you really – two.’

Henry gave him a dime. Then entered the item in the small book.

‘What’s that?’ asked McGibbon. ‘Keep accounts?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Henry replied; ‘I’m very careful about money.’

‘It’s a good way to be,’ said McGibbon.

The Gleaner office was over Hemple’s meat-market on Simpson Street, up a long flight of stairs. Here they paused.

‘Come up,’ said McGibbon jovially, ‘and pick out the place for your desk.’

‘No,’ said Henry; ‘not now. Got to hurry. But I’ll be right over.’

He had to hurry, because it was nearly five o’clock, and Mr Boice might be gone. And it seemed to Henry to be important that he should have the cheque still in his pocket at the moment.

His eyes were burning again. And his brain was racing.

‘Say!’ he cried abruptly. ‘Look here! Miss Dittenhoefer – ’

Their eyes met. I think McGibbon, for the first time, really felt the emotional power that was unquestionably in Henry. His own quick eyes now took on some of that fire.

‘Great!’ he answered. And would have talked on, but Henry had already torn away, almost running.

He rushed past the Gleaner office without a glance. It suddenly didn’t matter whether Mr Boice had gone or not. Henry was a firebrand now. He would unhesitatingly trail the man to his home, to the Sunbury Club, to Charlie Waterhouse’s, even to Mr Weston’s. The Power was on him!

Mr Boice had not gone. Even twenty minutes later, when Henry came into the office, he was still at his desk. Over it, between the dusty pile of the Congressional Record and the heap of ancient zinc etchings, his thick gray hair could be seen.

Henry entered, head erect, tread firm, marched in through the gate in the railing to his table, rummaged through the heaps of old exchanges, proofs, hand-bills, and programmes for a book that was there, and certain other little personal possessions. The two pencils and one penholder were his. Also, a small glass inkstand. He gathered these up, made a parcel in a newspaper. He felt Humphrey’s eyes on him. He heard old Boice move.

Then came the husky voice.

‘Henry!’ He went on tying the parcel. ‘Henry – come here!’

He turned to his friend.

‘Gotta do it, Hump. Tell you later.’

Then he moved deliberately to the desk out front, rested an elbow on it, looked down at the bulky, motionless figure sitting there.

‘Where’ve you been?’ asked Mr Boice.

‘Been attending to my own affairs.’

‘How do you expect your work to be done? The fiftieth anniversary of – ’

‘I haven’t any work here.’

‘Oh, you haven’t?’

‘No. Through with you. You owe me a little for this week, but I don’t want it. Wouldn’t take it as a gift.’ His voice was rising. He could feel Humphrey’s eyes over the top of his desk. And a stir by the press-room door told him that Jim Smith was listening there, with two or three compositors crowding pip behind him. ‘Not as a gift. It’s dirty money. I’m through with you. You and your crooked crowd!’

‘Oh, you are?’

‘Yes. Through with you. I’m on a decent paper now. A paper that ain’t afraid to print the truth.’

Mr Boice, still motionless, indulged his only nervous affection, making little sounds.’

‘Mmm!’ he remarked. ‘Hmm! Ump! Mmm!’ Then he said, ‘Meaning the Gleaner, I presume.’

‘Meaning the Gleaner.’

‘I suppose you know that McGibbon’s slated to fail within the month. He can’t so much as meet his pay-roll.’

‘I know more’n that!’ cried Henry, laughing nervously. ‘I know he’s got money because I put some in to-day. Miss Dittenhoefer’s quitting you this week, too. She’s enthusiastic about us. I’ve just seen her. We’re going to have a big property there. We’ll buy you out one o’ these days for a song. Then it’ll be the Gleaner and Voice. See? But, first, we’re going to clean up the town. You and Charlie Waterhouse and that-old whited sepulchre in the bank! I’ll show you you can’t fool with me!’

It was very youthful. Henry wished, in a swift review, that he had thought up something better and rehearsed it.

Then he saw the eyes of the huge, still man waver down to his desk. And his heart bounded.

‘He’s afraid of me!’ ran his thoughts. ‘I’ve licked him!’

It was the time to leave. Parcel under arm, he strode out.

Out on the sidewalk, he laughed aloud. Which wouldn’t do. He was a business man now. With investments. He mustn’t go grinning down Simpson Street.

But it was worth a thousand dollars. Just to feel this way once.

Jim Smith? out of breath, came sidling up to the corner. He had run around through the alley.

He wrung Henry’s hand.

‘Great!’ he cried. ‘Soaked it to the old boy, you did! Makes me think of a story. Maybe you’ve heard this one. If you have, just – ’

A hand fell on Henry’s shoulder.

It was Humphrey, hatless. He must have walked out right past Mr Boice. His face wrinkled into a grin.

‘My boy,’ he said, ‘right here and now I thank you for the joy you’ve brought into my young life. The impossible has happened. The beautifully impossible. It was great.’

‘Well,’ cried Henry, beaming, unstrung, a touch of nervous aggression in his voice, ‘I said it!’

‘Oh, you said it’ cried Humphrey.

Thus Henry closed a door behind him. And treading the air, trying desperately to control the upward-twitching corners of his mouth, humming the wedding-march from Lohengrin to the familiar words: —

Here comes the bride —
Get on to her stride!

– he marched, a conqueror, down Simpson Street. Yes, it was worth a thousand.

Back in the old Voice office, Mr Boice sat motionless, big hands sprawling across his thighs, making little sounds.

I think he was trying, in his deliberate way, to figure out what had happened. But he never succeeded in figuring it out. Not this particular incident. He couldn’t know that it is as well to face a tigress as an artist whose mental offspring you have injured.

No; to him, Henry, the boy of the silly little cane and the sillier moustache, had stepped out of character. He couldn’t know that Henry, the drifting, helpless youth, and Henry the blazing artist were two quite different persons. In Mr Boice’s familiar circles they played duplicate whist and talked business, but they were not acquainted with the mysteries of dual personality such as appear in the case of any genius, great or small.

Nor (for the excellent reason that he had never heard of William Blake or his works) did the immortal line come to mind; —

Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Mr Boice was obliged to give it up.

VI – ALADDIN ON SIMPSON STREET

1

Elberforce Jenkins was the most accomplished very young man-about-town in Sunbury. He appeared to have, even at twenty-one, the bachelor gift. He danced well. His golf was more than promising. He had lately taken up polo with the Dexter Smith boys and young de Casselles. He owned two polo ponies, a schooled riding horse, and a carriage team which he drove to a high cart. His allowance from his father by far overcame the weakness of his salary (he was with his brother, Jefferson, in a bond house on La Salle Street). His aptitude at small talk amounted to a gift. He liked, inevitably, the play that was popular and (though he read little) the novel that was popular. His taste in girls pointed him unerringly toward the most desirable among the newest.

He and Henry had been together in high school (Sunbury was democratic then). They had played together in the football team. They had – during one hectic month – been rivals for the hand of Ernestine Lambert.

In that instance, in so far as success had come, it had come to Henry. But those were Henry’s big days, when he was directing Iolanthe, the town at his feet. Life, these two years, had flowed swiftly on. The long dangling figure of Elbow Jenkins had filled out. His crude boyishness had given way to a smiling reserve. He was a young man of the world – self-assured, never indiscreet of tongue, always well-mannered, never individual or interesting.

While Henry still worked on Simpson Street. He hadn’t struck his gait. He was – if you bothered, these days, to think about him – a little queer. He wore that small moustache and a heavy cord hanging from his nose-glasses, and dressed a thought too conspicuously. As if impelled by some inner urge to assert a personality that might otherwise be overlooked… As I glance back upon the Henry of this period, it seems to me that there was more than a touch of pathos about that moustache. It was such a soft little thing. He fussed with it so much, and kept trying to twist it up at the ends. He didn’t seem to know that they weren’t twisting moustaches up at the ends that year. In fact, I think he lacked almost utterly the gift of conformity which was the strongest, element in Elbow Jenkins’s nature. And he never acquired it. In education, in work and preparation for life, he went it alone, stumbling, blundering, doing apparently stupid things, acting from baffling obscure motives, then suddenly coming through with an unexpected flash of insight and power.

From the period of Ernestine Lambert to the time of the present story Elbow Jenkins had been on Henry’s nerves. Whenever they met, that is; or when Henry saw him driving the newest, prettiest, best-dressed girl about in his cart. Two years earlier he would have had two ponies hitched tandem. But now, a little older, less willing to be conspicuous except in strict conformity with the conventions, he drove his carefully matched team side by side. His scat, his hold of the reins, the very turning-back of his tan gloves, all were correct. These, indeed, were details in the problem of living and moving about with success among one’s fellows that Elberforce Jenkins regarded as really important. Like one’s stance at golf, and cultivating the favour of men who could be influential in a business or social way.

Yes, Elbow was on Henry’s nerves.

But Elbow had long since forgotten Henry, except for a chance nod now and then. And occasionally a moment’s annoyance that Henry should insist on keeping alive a nickname that had with years and the beginnings of dignity become undesirable.

2

The blow fell on Henry at half-past five on the Tuesday.

I mark the time thus precisely because it perhaps adds a touch of interest to the consideration of what happened between then and Friday night, when McGibbon first saw what he had done. Of the importance of the blow in Henry’s life there is no doubt. It turned him sharply Not until he was approaching middle life could he look back on the occasion without wincing. And while wincing, he would say that it was what he had needed. Plainly. That it made a man of him, or started the process.

As to that, I can’t say. Perhaps it did. Life is not so simple as Henry had been taught it was. I am fatalist enough to believe that Henry would have become what he was to become in any event, because it was in him. I doubt if he could have been given any other direction. Though of course he might have gone under simply through a failure to get aroused. Something had to start him, of course.

The practical difficulty with Henry’s life was, of course, that he was strong. He didn’t know this himself. He thought he was weak. Some who observed him thought the same. There were reasons enough. But Mildred always declared flatly that he was a genius, that he was too good for Sunbury, against the smugness of which community she was inclined to rail. A debate on this point between Mrs Henderson and, say, William F. Donovan, the drug store man, would have been interesting. Mr Donovan’s judgments of human character were those of Simpson Street.

I say Henry was strong, because I can’t interpret his rugged nonconformity in any other way. A weaker lad would long since have given up, gone into Smith Brothers’ wholesale, taken his spiritual beating and fallen into step with his generation. But Henry’s resistance was so strong and so deep that he didn’t even know he was resisting. He was doing the only thing he could do, being what he was, feeling what he felt. And when instinct failed to guide, when ‘the Power’ lay quiescent, he was simply waiting and blundering along; but never falling into step. He had to wait until the Power should rise with him and take him out and up where he belonged.

There was a little scene the Monday evening before.

It was in the rooms. Mildred was there.

Henry stumbled in on the two of them, Mildred and Humphrey. They were at the piano, seated side by side. They had been studying Tristan and Isolde together for a week or so; Mildred playing out the motifs. She often played the love duet from the second act for him, too. Henry heard him, mornings, trying to hum it while he shaved.

They insisted that he take a chair. He, with a sense of intrusion, took the arm of one, and kept hat and stick (his thin bamboo) in his hands.

Mildred said reflectively: —

‘Corinne writes that she’ll be back for a week late in August.’ Then, noting the touch of dismay on Henry’s ingenuous countenance, she added, ‘But you mustn’t have her on your conscience, Henry.’

‘It isn’t that – ’

‘I’m fond of Corinne. But I can see now that you two would never get on long together. In a queer way you’re too much alike. At least, you both have positive qualities. Corinne will some day find a nice little husband who’ll look after the business side of her concerts. And you – well, Henry, you’ve got to have some one to mother you.’ She smiled at him thoughtfully. ‘Some one you can make a lot of.’

‘No.’ Henry’s colour was up. He was shaking his head. ‘You don’t understand. I’m through with girls. They’re nothing in my life. Nothing!’

She slowly shook her head. ‘That’s absurd, Henry. You’re particularly the kind. You’ll never be able to live without idealising some woman.’

‘I tell you they’re nothing to me. My life is different now. I’ve changed. I’ve put money – a lot of money – into the Gleaner. It means big responsibilities. You’ve no idea – ’

‘If I hadn’t, seen you writing,’ she mused aloud… ‘No, Henry. You won’t change. You’ll grow, but you won’t change. You’re going to write, Henry. And you’ll always write straight at a woman.’

‘No! No!’ Henry was sputtering. He appeared to be struggling. ‘Life means work to me. I’m through with – ’

She took down the Tristan score from the piano and turned the pages in her lap.

‘Love is the great vitaliser, Henry,’ she said.

‘No – it’s the mind. Thinking. We have to learn to think clearly – objectively.’

‘Objectively? No. Not you. And I’m glad, in a way. Because I know we’re going to be proud of you. But it’s love that makes the world go round. They don’t teach you that in the colleges, but it’s the truth… Take Wagner – and Tristan. He wrote it straight at a woman. And it’s the greatest opera ever written. And the greatest love story. It’s that because he was terribly in love when he wrote it. Do you Suppose, for one minute that if Wagner had never seen Mathilde Wesendonck we should have had Tristan?’

She paused, pursed her lips, studied the book with eyes that seemed to grow misty, then looked up at Humphrey.

He – tall, angular, very sober – met her gaze; then his swarthy face wrinkled up about the eyes and he hurriedly drew his cob pipe from his pocket and began filling it.

Henry stared at the rug; traced out the pattern with his stick. He couldn’t answer this last point, because he had never heard of Mathilde Wesendonck. And as he was supposed to be ‘musical’ it seemed best to keep quiet.

He made an excuse of some sort and went out for a walk. Down by the lake he thought of several strong arguments. Mildred was wrong. She had to be wrong. For he had cut girls out.

It was like Mildred to speak out in that curiously direct way. She was fond of Henry. And she had divined, out of her various, probably rather vivid contacts with life, certain half-truths that were not accepted in Sunbury.

I think she saw Henry pretty clearly, saw that he was driven by an emotional dynamo that was to bring him suffering and success both… Mildred, of course, never really belonged in a small town.

It was at the close of the following afternoon that Henry came in and found Humphrey’s long figure stretched out on the window-seat – he was smoking, of course – of all things, blowing endless rings up at the curtains Mildred had made and hung for him. His dark skin looked gray. There were deep lines in his face. He couldn’t speak at first. But he stared at Henry.

That young man put away hat and stick, had his coat off, and was rolling back his shirt sleeves for a wash, humming the refrain of Kentucky Babe. Then, through a slow moment, the queer silence about him, Humphrey’s attitude – that fact, for that matter, that Hump was here, at all; he was a great hand to work until six or after at the Voice office – these things worked in on him like a premonition. The little song died out. He went on, a few steps, toward the bathroom, then came to a stop, turned toward the silent figure on the window-seat, came slowly over.

Now he saw his friend clearly. As he sank on the arm of a chair – it was where he had sat the evening before – he caught his breath.

‘Wha – what is it?’ he asked. His voice was suddenly husky. His mind went blank. There was sensation among the roots of his hair. ‘What’s the matter, Hump?’

Finally Humphrey took out his pipe and spoke. His voice, too, was low and uncertain. But he gathered control of it as he went on.

‘Where’ve you been?’ he asked.

‘Me? Why, over at Rockwell Park. Bob McGibbon wanted me to see about a regular correspondent for the “Rockwell Park Doings.”’

‘Heard anything?’

‘Me? No. Why?.. Hump, what is it? What you getting at?’

‘Then I’ve got to tell you.’ He swung his feet around; sat up; emptied his pipe, then filled it.

‘Is it – is it – about me, Hump?’

‘Yes. It is.’

‘Well – then – hadn’t you better tell me?’

‘I’m trying to, Hen. It’s dam’ unpleasant. You remember – you told me once – early in the summer – ’ Humphrey, usually most direct, was having difficulty in getting it out – ‘you told me you rode a tandem up to Hoffmann’s Garden with that little Wilcox girl.’

‘Oh, that! That was nothing. Why all the time I lived at Mrs Wilcox’s I never – ’

‘Yes, I know. Let me try to tell this, Hen. It’s hard enough. She’s in a scrape. That girl. There’s a big row on. I’m not going into the details, so far as I’ve heard ‘em. There ugly. They wouldn’t help. But her mother’s collapsed. Her uncle and aunt have turned up and taken the girl off somewhere. He’s a butcher on the North Side.’ Henry was pale but attentive.

‘In all the time I lived there,’ he began again…

‘Please, Hen! Wait! It is one of those mean scandals that tear up a town like this every now and then. Boils up through the crust and has to be noticed. It’s a beastly thing. The number of men involved… some older ones… and young Bancroft Widdicombe has left town. There’s some queer talk about her marrying him. And they say one or two others have run away. Widdicombe got out before the storm broke. Jim Smith says he’s been heard from at San Francisco.’

‘But they can’t say of me – ’

‘Hen, they can and they do.’

‘But I can prove – ’

‘What can you prove? What chance will you have to prove anything? You were disturbed when Martha Caldwell and the party with Charles H. Merchant caught you with her up at Hoffmann’s – ’

‘But, Hump, I didn’t want to take her out that night! And it’s the only time I ever really talked to her except once or twice in the boarding-house.’

He was speaking with less energy now. He felt the blow. Not as he would feel it a few hours later; but he felt it.

Humphrey watched him.

‘It has brought things home to me,’ he said uncertainly. ‘The sort of thing that can happen. When you’re caught in a drift, you don’t think, of course… Now, Hen, listen! This is real trouble. It’s going to hit you about to-morrow – full force. It’s got to be faced. I don’t want to think that you’d run – ’

‘Oh, no,’ Henry put in mechanically, ‘I won’t run.’

‘I’m sure you won’t. But it’s got to be faced. You’re hit especially.’

‘But why, when I – ’

‘Because you lived alone there, in the boarding-house, for two years. And you were caught with her at Hoffmann’s, she in bloomers, drinking beer. Just a cheap little tough. And there isn’t a thing you can do but live it down. Nobody will say a direct word to you.’

‘That’s what I’ll do,’ said Henry, ‘live it down.’

‘It’ll be hard, Hen.’

Henry sighed. ‘I’ve faced hard things, Hump.’

‘Yes, you have, in a way.’

‘I’ll wash up. Where we going to eat? Stanley’s?’

‘I suppose. I don’t feel like eating much.’

It was not until they had started out that Henry gave signs of a deeper reaction.

On the outer doorstep he stood motionless.

‘Coming along?’ asked Humphrey, trying to hide his anxiety.

‘Why – yes. In a minute… Say, Hump, do you suppose they’ll – you know, I ain’t afraid’ – an uprush of feeling coloured his voice, brought a shake to it – ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I am afraid. All those people – you know, at Stanley’s…’

Humphrey did an unusual thing; laid his hand on Henry’s shoulder affectionately; then took his arm and led him along the alley, saying: —

‘We’ll go down to the lunch counter. It’s just as well, Hen. Better get sure of yourself first.’

He wondered, as they walked rapidly on – Henry had a tendency to walk fast and faster when brooding or excited – whether the boy would ever get sure of himself. There were queer, bitter, profoundly confusing thoughts in his own mind, and an emotional tension, but back of all this, coming through it and softening him, his feeling for Henry. It was something of an elder brother’s feeling, I think. Henry seemed very young. It was wicked that he had to suffer with all those cynical older men. It might mark the boy for life. Such things happened.

He decided to watch him closely. Sooner or later the thing would hit him full. He would have to be protected then. Even from himself, perhaps. In a way it oughtn’t to be worse for him than it had been after the Hoffmann’s Garden incident.

But it was worse. The other had been, after all, no more than an incident. This, now, was an overpowering fact. The town didn’t have to notice the other. And despite the gossiping instinct, your small community is rather glad to edge away from unpleasant surmises that are not established facts. Facts are so uncompromising. And so disrupting. And sometimes upsetting to standardised thought.

‘That’s it,’ thought Humphrey – he was reduced to thought Henry was striding on in white silence – ‘it’s a fact. They can’t evade it. Only thing they can do, if they’re to keep comfortable about their dam’ town, is to kill everybody connected with the mess. Have to revise party and dinner lists. And it’ll raise Ned with the golf tournament. They’ll resent all that. And they’ll have to show outsiders that the thing is an amazing exception. Nothing else going on like it. They’ll have to show that.’