Tell you what, we’ll have a little rabbit to-morrow night. We four. We’ll devote an evening to drawing Mr Humphrey Weaver out of his shell.’
Her quick eyes caught a doubtful look in Corinne’s eyes. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘we did speak of letting Will and Fred take us in town, didn’t we?’
Corinne nodded.
It seemed to Henry that he ought to take the situation in hand. As regarded his relations with Humphrey he was sailing under false colours. Among his confused thoughts he sought, gropingly, a way out. The speech he did make was clumsy.
‘I don’t know whether I could make him come. He likes to read evenings, or work in his shop.’
Mrs Henderson took this in, then let her eyes rest a moment, thoughtfully, on Henry’s ingenuous countenance. An intent look crept into her eyes.
‘Do you mean that you two sweep and make beds and wash dishes and dust?’
‘Well’ – Henry’s voice faltered – ‘you see, I haven’t been – I just moved over there yesterday afternoon.’
‘Hm!’ There was a bright, flash in Mrs Henderson’s eyes. She chuckled abruptly. It was a sharp little chuckle that had the force of an interruption. ‘I’d like to see the corners of those rooms. There ought to be some woman that could take care of you.’ She turned again on Henry. ‘Be sure and bring him down to-morrow. Come in about six for a picnic supper. Or no – let me think – ’
Henry’s eyes were on Corinne. She was eating now, composedly, like an accomplished feminine fatalist, leaving the disposition of matters to her more aggressive hostess. The food he had eaten rested comfortably on his long ill-treated but still responsive young stomach. His nervous concern of the morning was giving place to a glow of snug inner well-being. Ice-cream was before him now, a heaping plate of it – vanilla, with hot chocolate sauce – and a huge slice of chocolate layer cake. He blessed Mrs Henderson for the rich cream as he let heaping spoonfuls slip down his throat and followed them with healthy bites of the cake. What a jolly little woman she was. No fuss.
Nothing stuck up about her. And he knew she was on his side.
She had sympathy. Even if she hadn’t yet heard – when she did hear – it wouldn’t matter. She would be on his side; he was sure of it.
Corinne’s hair, a loose curl of it, curved down over her ear and part of her cheek. She reached up a long hand and brushed it back. The motion thrilled him. He was quiveringly responsive to the faint down on her cheek, to the slight ebbing and flowing of the colour under her skin, to the whiteness of her temple, the curve of her rather heavy eyebrow, even to the ‘waist’ she wore – a simple garment, with an open throat and a wide collar that suggested the sea.
Mrs Henderson was talking about something or other, in her brisk way.
Henry only partly heard. He was day-dreaming, weaving an imaginative web of irridescent fancy about the healthy, rather matter-of-fact girl before him. And eating rapidly his second large helping of ice-cream, and his second piece of cake.
Little resentments were still popping up among his thoughts, taunting him. But tentative little hopes were struggling with these now. A sense of power, even, was stirring to life in his breast. This brought new thrills. It was a long, long time since he had felt as he was now beginning to feel. Life had dealt pretty harshly with him these two years. But he wasn’t beaten yet. Not even if nice men did give cameo brooches mounted on beaded gold.
He felt in his pocket. Nearly all of the week’s pay was there – about eight dollars. It wasn’t much. It wouldn’t buy gold brooches. Space-reporting on a country weekly at a dollar and a quarter a column, as a means of livelihood, was pretty hard sledding. He would have to scheme out something. There would be seventeen dollars more on the fifteenth from his Uncle Arthur, executor of his mother’s estate and guardian to Henry, but that had been mentally pledged to the purchase of necessary summer underwear and things. Still, he might manage somehow. You had to do a lot for girls, of course. They expected it. Expensive business.
He indulged himself a moment, shading his eyes with one hand and eating steadily on, in a momentary wave of bitterness against well-to-do young men who could lavish money on girls.
Corinne was speaking now, and he was answering. He even laughed at something she said. But the train of his thoughts rumbled steadily on.
After the coffee they all carried out the dishes and washed them. Henry amused them by wearing a full-length kitchen apron. Corinne tied the strings around his waist. He found an excuse to reach back, and for an instant his hands covered hers. She laughed a little. He danced about the kitchen and sang comic songs as he wiped dishes and took them to the china closet in the butler’s pantry.
This chore finished, they went to the living-room.
Mrs Henderson said: ‘Oh, Corinne, you must hear Henry sing “When Britain Really Ruled” from Iolanthe.’ She found the score and played for him. He sang lustily, all three verses.
‘Too much dinner,’ he remarked, beaming with pleasure, at the close. ‘Voice is rotten.’
‘It’s a good organ,’ said Corinne. ‘You ought to work at it.’
‘Perfect shame he won’t study,’ said Mrs Henderson. Henry found The Geisha on the piano.
‘Come on, Corinne,’ he cried. ‘Do the “Jewel of Asia.” Mrs Henderson’ll transpose it.’
Corinne leaned carelessly against the piano and sang the pleasant little melody with an ease and a steady flow of tone that brought a shine to Henry’s eyes. He had to hide it, dropping on the big couch and resting his head on his hand. He could look nowhere but at her. He ordered her to sing ‘The Amorous Goldfish.’
She fell into the spirit of it, and moved away from the piano, looking provocatively at Henry, gesturing, making an audience of him. She even danced a few steps at the end.
Henry sprang up. The power was upon him. Obstacles, difficulties, the little scene with Humphrey, while not forgotten, were swept aside. He was irresistible.
‘Tell you what,’ he said gaily, with supreme ease – ‘w’e’ll send those Chicago men a box of poisoned candy to-morrow, and – oh, yes w-e will! – and then we’ll have a party at the rooms. You’ll be chaperon, Mrs Henderson and Hump’ll cook things in the chafing dish, and – ’
‘What a perfectly lovely idea!’ said Mrs Henderson in a surprisingly calm voice. ‘I’ll bring the cold chicken, and a vegetable salad…
Henry watched Corinne.
For an instant – she was rummaging through the music – her eyes met his. ‘It’ll be fun,’ she said.
Henry felt a shock as if he had plunged unexpectedly, headlong, into ice-water; then a glow.
He was a daring soul. They didn’t understand him in Sunbury. He had temperament, a Bohemian nature. The thing was, he’d wasted two years trying to make another sort of himself. Kept account of every penny in a red book! All that! Book was in his pocket now.
He decided to tear it up. He wouldn’t be a coward another day. That plodding self-discipline hadn’t got him anywhere. Now really, had it?
Little inner voices were protesting weakly. People might find out about it. Have to be pretty quiet. And keep the shades down. It wouldn’t do for the folks in the parsonage, across the alley, to know that Mrs Arthur V. Henderson and her guest were in the Parmenter barn. Have to find some tactful way of suggesting that they come after dark…
As if she could read his thoughts, Mrs Henderson remarked calmly: ‘You come for us, Henry. Say about eight.’
Still the little voices of doubt and confusion. Even of fear. He mentally shouted them down; fixing his eyes on the disturbingly radiant Corinne, then glancing for moral support at the really pretty little Mrs Henderson who gave out such a reassuring air of knowing precisely what she was about, of being