The sensation struck Henry, full face, in the barber shop, Schütz and Schwartz’s, whither he went from Stanley’s. Professor Hennis, of the English department at the university, met him at the door and insisted on shaking hands.

‘These sketches of yours, Calverly – the two I have read – are remarkable. There is a freshness of characterisation that suggests Chaucer to me. Sunbury will live to be proud of you.’

This left Henry red and mumbling, rather dumbfounded.

Then, in the chair, Bill Schwartz – fat, exuberant – said, bending over him: —

‘Well, how does it feel to be famous, Henry?’ And added, ‘You’ve got ‘em excited along the street here. Henry Berger says Charlie Waterhouse’ll punch your head before night. Says he’ll have to. Can’t sue very well.’

It was after this and a few other evidences of the stir he was causing that Henry, as Humphrey had done a half-hour earlier, went prowling. He watched and followed the bellowing newsmen. He observed the lively scene at the depot when the nine-three train pulled out, from the cluttered-up window of Murphy’s cigar store.

Then, keeping off Simpson Street, which was by this time crowded with the Saturday morning shopping, he slipped around Hemple’s corner and up the stairs.

McGibbon sat alone in the front office – coat off, vest open, longish hair tousled, a lock straggling down across his high forehead, eyes strained and staring. He was deep in his swivel chair; long legs stretched out under the desk, smoking a five-cent cigar, hands deep in pockets.

He greeted Henry with a wry, thin-lipped smile, and waved his cigar.

‘Great days!’ he remarked dryly. ‘Gee!’ Henry dropped into a chair, laid his bamboo stick on the table, mopped a glistening face. ‘Gee! You do know how to get’em going!’

The cigar waved again.

‘Sure! Stir’em up! Soak it to’em! Only way.’

‘Everybody’s buying it.’

‘Rather! You’re a hit, son!’

‘Oh, I don’t know’s I’d say that.’

‘Rats! You’re a knockout. Never been anything like it. Two months of it and they’d be throwing your name around in Union Square, N.Y. If we only had the two months.’ He sighed.

‘Why!’ Henry, all nerves, caught his expression. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘We’re-out of paper.’

‘You mean to print on?’

A nod. ‘And we’re out of money to buy more.’

‘But with this big sale – ’

‘Costing four ‘n’ one-half times what we take in.’

‘But I don’t see – ’

‘Don’t you? That’s business, Hen. That’s this world. You pour your money in – whip up your sales – drive, drive, drive! After a while it goes of itself and you get your money back. Scads of it. You’re rich. That’s the way with every young business. Takes nerve I tell you, and vision! Why, I know stories of the early days of – look here, what we need is money. Got to have it. Right now, while they’re on the run. If we can’t get it, and get it quick, well’ – he reached deliberately forward, picked up a copy of the Gleaner and waved it high – ‘that – that, my son, is the last copy of the Gleaner!’

Henry stared with burning eyes out of a white face.

‘But my stories!’ he cried.

‘They go to the man that gets the paper. If we land in bankruptcy, as we doubtless shall, they will be held by the court as assets.’

‘But they’re mine!’ A note of bewilderment that was despair was in Henry’s voice.

McGibbon shook his head.

‘No, Hen. We’re known to have them. They’re in type here. You’re helpless. We’re both helpless. The thousand dollars you put in, too. You hold my note for that. You’ll get so many cents on the dollar when the plant is sold at auction. Or if Boice buys it. He was up here just now. Offered me five hundred dollars. Think of it – five hundred for our plant, the big press and everything.’

‘Wha – wha’d you say?’

‘Showed him out. Laughed at him. Of course! But it was just a play. Never. Now look here, Hen, you’ve got a little more, haven’t you? Your uncle – ’

Henry had reached the limits of his emotional capacity.’ He was far beyond the familiar mental process known as thinking. He was sitting on the edge of his chair, knees drawn up, hands clasped tightly, temples drumming, a flush spreading down over his cheeks.

But even in this condition, thoughts came.

One of these – or perhaps it was just a feeling, a manifestation of a sort of instinct – was of hostility to Bob here. It. brought a touch of guilty discomfort – hostility came hard, with Henry – yet it was distinctly there. Bob was doubtless right. All his experience. And his wonderful fighting nerve. Yet somehow he wouldn’t do.

‘No!’ said Henry. And again, ‘No! Not a cent from my uncle!’

McGibbon’s hand still held up the paper. He brought it down now with a bang. On the desk. And sprang up, speaking louder, with quick, intense gestures.

‘You don’t seem to get it, Hen!’ he cried. ‘We’re through – broke!’ He glanced around at the press-room door and controlled his voice. ‘No pay-roll – nothing! Nothing for the boys out there – or me – or you. I’ve been sitting here wondering how I can tell’em. Got to.’

‘Nothing!’ Henry echoed weakly, fumbling at his Little moustache – ‘for me?’

‘Not a cent.’

‘But – but – ’ Henry’s earthly wealth at the moment was about forty cents. His rough estimate of immediate expenditures was considerable.

‘Got to have money now, Hen! To-day. Before night. Can’t you get hold of that fact? Even a hundred – the pay-roll’s only ninety-six-fifty. If I could handle that, likely I could make a turn next week and get our paper stock in time.’

Henry heard his own voice saying: —

‘But don’t business men borrow – ’

‘Borrow! Me? In this town? They wouldn’t lend me the rope to hang myself with… Hold on there, Hen – ’

For the young man had picked up his stick and was moving toward the door. And as he hurried out he was saving, without looking back: —

‘No… No!’

He said it on the stairs, where none could hear. He rushed around the corner, around the block. Anything to keep off Simpson Street. He had a really rather desperate struggle to keep from talking his heart out – aloud – in the street – angrily – attacking Boice, Weston, and McGibbon in the same breath. His feeling against McGibbon amounted to bitterness now. But his feeling against old Boice had risen to the borders of rage. He thought of that silent, ponderous old man, sitting at his desk in the post-office, like a spider weaving his subtle web about the town, where helpless little human flies crawled innocently about their uninspired daily tasks.

So Mr Boice had offered five hundred for plant, good will, and the stories!

No mere legal, technical claim on those stories as property, as assets, held the slightest interest for Henry. He couldn’t understand that. They were his. He had created them, made them out of nothing – just a few one-cent lead pencils and a lot of copy paper. Bob had snatched them away to print them in the Gleaner. But they weren’t Bob’s.

‘They’re mine!’ he said aloud. ‘They’re mine! Old Boice shan’t have them! Never!’ He caught himself then; looked about sharply, all hot emotion and tingling nerves.

5

A little later – it was getting on toward noon – he found himself on Filbert Avenue approaching Simpson Street. Without plan or guidance, he was heading northward, toward the rooms. It would be necessary to cross Simpson Street. He was fighting down the impulse to go several blocks to the east, toward the lake, where the stores and shops gave place to homes and lawns and shade trees, where he could slip across unnoticed; but his feet were leading him straight toward the corner of Filbert and Simpson, the busiest, most conspicuous corner in town, where were the hotel and Berger’s grocery and, only a few doors off, Donovan’s drug store and Swanson’s flower shop and Duneen’s general store and the Voice office. It had come down, the warfare within him, to a question of proving to himself that he wasn’t a coward, that he could face disaster, even the complete disaster that seemed now to be upon him. It was like the end of the world.

In a pocket his fingers were tightly clasped about the anonymous note that had been the cloud over his troubled sleep of the night and his gloomy awakening of the morning. The note was now but a detail in the general crash. He decided to press on, march straight across Simpson Street, head high. He even brought out the note from his pocket; held it in his hand as he walked stiffly on. It was a somewhat bitter touch of bravado, but I find I like Henry none the less for it.

A little way short of the corner, it must be recorded, he faltered. It was by Berger’s rear door. There was a gate in the fence here, that now stood open. Two of the Berger delivery wagons were backed in there. And right by the gate Henry Berger himself, his ample person enveloped in a long white apron, was opening a crate.

Henry sensed him there; flushed (for it seemed that he could not speak to any human being now) and wrestled, in painful impotence of will, with the idea of moving on.

But then, through a slow moment after Mr Berger said, ‘How are you, Henry!’ he sensed something further; a note of good nature in the voice, a feeling that the man was smiling, a suggestion that all the genial quality had not, after all, been hardened out of life.

He turned; pulled at his moustache (paper in hand), and flicked at weeds with his stick.

Mr Berger was smiling. He drew his hand across a sweaty brow; shook the hand; then leaned on his hatchet.

‘Getting hot,’ he remarked.

Henry tried to reply, but found himself still inarticulate.

‘Old Boice is getting after you. Plenty.’

Henry winced; but felt slightly reassured when Mr Berger chuckled. All intercourse with Mr Berger was tempered, however, by the memory that Henry had been caught, within the decade, stealing fruit from the cases out front.

‘He was just here. Don’t mind telling you that he’s trying to get McGibbon’s creditors together and throw him into bankruptcy. Doesn’t look as if there was enough out against him, though. Got to be five hundred. It ain’t as if he had a family and was running up bills. Just living alone at the Wombasts, like he does. But old Boice is out gunning for fair. Never saw him quite like this. First it was the advertising boycott…’

Henry was shifting his weight from foot to foot.

‘Well,’ he said now, ‘I guess I’d better be getting along.’

‘I was just going to say, Henry, that you’ve give me a good laugh. Keep on like this and you’ll be famous some day… And say! Hold on a minute! I don’t know’s you’re in a position to do anything about it, but I was just going to say, I rather guess the old Gleaner could be picked up for next to nothing right now. And there’s folks here that ain’t so anxious to see Boice get the market all to hisself. Not so dam anxious… Wait a minute! I mean, I guess once McGibbon was got rid of the Old Boy’d find it wouldn’t be so easy to hold this boycott together. There’s folks that would break away – Well, that’s about all that was on my mind. Only I’d sorta hate to see your yarns suppressed. They’re grand reading, Henry. My wife like to ‘a’ died over that one last week —The Sultan of Simpson Street.’

‘“Caliph!”’ said Henry, with a nervous eagerness. ‘The Caliph of Simpson Street.’

‘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.