5
To this lofty mood there came, promptly? an opposite and fully equal reaction.
Difficulties having arisen in connection with the problem of breaking the news to Humphrey, he couldn’t very well go back to the rooms.
The thing would have to be put right before Humphrey. He decided to think it over. That was the idea – think it over. Humphrey would be eating his supper, if not at the rooms, then at Stanley’s little restaurant on Simpson Street. So he could hardly go to Stanley’s. There was another little lunch room down by the tracks, but Humphrey had been known to go there. And of course it was impossible to return for a transient meal to Mrs Wilcox. For one thing, the student waiters would be off and Mamie Wilcox on duty in the dining-room. He didn’t want Mamie back in his life. Not if he could help it. He even went so far as to wonder, with a paralysing sense of helplessness in certain conceivable contingencies, if he could help it… So instead of eating supper he sat on a breakwater, alone, unobserved, while the golden sunset glow faded from lake and sky and darkness claimed him for her own.
Later, handkerchief over face, rushing and pawing his way through the myriads of sand-flies that swarmed about each corner light, he walked into the neighbourhood of Martha Caldwell’s house. He walked backhand forth for a time on the other side of the street, and stood motionless by trees. He found the situation trying, as he didn’t know why he had come, whether he wanted to see Martha or what he could say to her.
He could hear voices from the porch. And he thought he could see one white dress.
Then, because it seemed to be the next best thing to do, he crossed over and mounted the familiar front steps.
He found himself touching the non-committal hand of James B. Merchant, Jr., who carried the talk along glibly, ignoring the gloomy youth with the glasses and the tiny moustache who sat in a shadow and sulked. Finally, after deliberately, boldly arranging a driving party of two for Monday evening, the cotillion leader left.
Martha, when he had disappeared beyond the swirling, illuminated sand-flies at the corner, settled back in her chair and stared, silent, at the maples.
Henry struggled for speech.
‘Martha, look here,’ came from him, in a tired voice, ‘you’ve cut me dead. Twice. Now it seems to me – ’
‘I don’t want to talk about that,’ said Martha.
‘But it isn’t fair not to – ’
‘Please don’t try to tell me that you weren’t at Hoffmann’s with that horrid girl.’
‘I’m not trying to. But – ’
‘You took her there, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, but she – ’
‘She didn’t make you. You knew her pretty well. While you were going with me, too.’
‘Oh, well,’ he muttered. Then, ‘Thunder! If you’re just determined not to be fair —
‘I won’t let you say that to me.’ The snap in her voice stung him.
‘You’re not fair! You won’t even let me talk!’
‘What earthly good is talk!’
‘Oh, if you’re going to take that attitude – ’
She rose. So did he.
‘I can’t and I won’t talk about a thing like that,’ she said quickly, unevenly.
‘Then I suppose I’d better go,’ said he, standing motionless.
She made no reply.
They stood and stood there. Across the street, at B. F. Jones’s, a porch full of young people were singing Louisiana Lou. Henry, out of sheer nervousness, hummed it with them; then caught himself and turned to the steps.
‘Well,’ he remarked listlessly, ‘I’ll say good-night, then.’
Still she was silent. He lingered, but she gave him no help. He hadn’t believed that she could be as angry as this. He waited and waited. He even felt and weighed the impulses to go right to her and make her sit in the hammock with him and bring back something of the old time feeling.
But he found himself moving off down the steps and heading for the yellow cloud at the corner.
He hated the sand-flies. Their dead bodies formed a soft crunchy carpet on pavement and sidewalk. You couldn’t escape them. They came for a week or two in June. They were less than an inch long, pale yellow with gauzy wings. They had neither sting nor pincers. They overwhelmed these lake towns by their mere numbers. Down by the bright lights on Simpson Street they literally covered everything. You couldn’t see through a square inch of Donovan’s wide plateglass front. Mornings it was sometimes necessary to clear the sidewalks with shovels.
It was two or three hours later when Henry crept cautiously into Humphrey’s shop and ascended the stairs.
Humphrey had left lights for him. He was awake, too; there was a crack of light at the bottom of his bedroom door. But the door was shut tight.
Henry put out all the lights and shut himself in his own disorderly room.
He stood for a time looking at the mess; everything he owned, strewed about on chairs, table and floor. Everything where it had fallen.
He considered finishing unpacking the suit-case. Pushed it with his foot.
‘Just have to get at these things,’ he muttered aloud. ‘Make a job of it. Do it the first thing to-morrow, before I go to the office.’
Then he dug out the box of books that stood beside the bed, the volume entitled Will Power and Self Mastery.
He sat on the bed for an hour, reading one or another of the vehemently pithy sentences, then gazing at the wall, knitting his brows, and mumbling the words over and over until the small meaning they had ever possessed was lost.
6
He came almost stealthily into the office of The Weekly Voice of Sunbury on the Monday morning. He had not fallen really asleep until the small hours. When he awoke, Humphrey was long gone and the breakfast things stood waiting on the centre table. And there they were now. He hadn’t so much as rinsed them in the sink.
Humphrey sat behind his roll-top desk, back of the railing. Old Mr Boice, the proprietor, was at his own desk, out in front. At the first glimpse of his massive head and shoulders with the heavy white whiskers falling down on his shirt front, Henry, hesitating on the sill, gave a little quick sigh of relief. He let himself, moving with the self-consciousness that somewhat resembled dignity, through the gate in the railing and took his chair at the inkstained pine table that served him for a desk.
He felt Humphrey’s eyes on him, and said ‘Goodmorning!’ stiffly, without looking round. He looked through the papers on the table for he knew not what; snatched at a heap of copy paper, bit his pencil and made a business of writing nothing whatever.
At eleven Mr Boice, who was also postmaster, lumbered out and along Simpson Street toward the post office. Henry, discovering himself alone with Humphrey, rushed, muttering, to the press room and engaged Jim Smith, the foreman, in talk which apparently made it necessary for that blonde little man, whose bare forearms were elaborately tattooed and who chewed tobacco, to come in, sit on Henry’s table, and talk further.
Noon came.
Humphrey pushed back his chair, tapped on the edge of his desk, and thoughtfully wrinkled his long face. The natural thing was for Henry to come along with him for lunch at Stanley’s. He didn’t mind for himself. It was quite as pleasant to eat alone. In the present circumstances, more pleasant. It was awkward.
He got up; stood a moment.
He could feel the boy there, bending over proofs of the programmes for the Commencement ‘recital’ of the Music School, pencil poised, motionless, almost inert.
Suddenly