The unusual thing was the note on Humphrey’s desk. Henry had put it on top of his papers and weighted it down conspicuously with the red ink bottle.
‘I’ve had to ask Mrs Henderson and Corinne Doag to the rooms to-night for a little party. I’ll bring them about eight.’ Pinned to the paper was a five-dollar banknote.
At supper-time, Humphrey, eating alone in Stanley’s, saw a familiar figure outside the wide front window. It was Henry, dressed in his newest white ducks, his blue coat newly pressed (while he waited, at the Swede tailor’s down the street), standing stiffly on the curb.
Occasionally he glanced around, peering into the restaurant.
The light was failing in the rear of the store. Mrs Stanley came from her desk by the door and lighted two gas-jets.
Henry again glanced around. He saw Humphrey and knew that Humphrey saw him.
A youth on a bicycle paused at the curb.
Through the screen door Humphrey heard this conversation: —
‘Hallo, Hen!’
‘Hallo, Al!’
‘Doing anything after?’
‘Why – yeah. Got a date.’
And as the other youth rode off, Henry glanced around once more, nervously.
He was carrying the bamboo stick he affected. He twirled this for a moment, and then wandered out of view.
But soon he reappeared, entered the restaurant and marched straight back to Humphrey’s table. His sensitive lips were compressed.
He said, ‘Hallo, Hump!’ and with only a moment’s hesitation took the chair opposite.
Humphrey buried his nose in his coffee cup.
Henry cleared his throat, twice; then, in a husky, weak voice, remarked: —
‘Get my note?’
There was a painfully long silence.
‘Yes,’ Humphrey replied then, ‘I did.’ And went at the pie.
Henry picked up a corner of the threadbare table-cloth and twisted it. He had been pale, but colour was coming now, richly.
‘Well,’ he mumbled, ‘I s’pose we’ve gotta say something about it.’
‘Not necessary,’ Humphrey observed briskly.
‘Well, but – we’ll have to plan – ’
‘Not at all.’
‘You mean – you – ’ Henry’s voice broke and faltered.
‘I mean – ’ Humphrey’s voice was clear, sharp.
‘Ssh! Not so loud, Hump.’
‘I mean that since you’ve done this extraordinary thing without so much as consulting me, I will see it through. I don’t want you for one minute to think that I like it. God knows what it’s going to mean – having women running in there! My privacy was the only thing I had. You’ve chosen to wreck it without a by-your-leave. I’ll be ready at eight. And I’ll see that the door of your room is shut.’
With which he rose, handed his ticket to Mrs Stanley to be punched, and left the restaurant.
Henry walked the streets, through gathering clouds of sand-flies, until it was time to call at Mrs Henderson’s.
7
They stood on the threshold.
‘This is the shop,’ Henry explained, ‘where Hump works.’
‘How perfectly fascinating!’ exclaimed Mrs Henderson. Her quick eyes took in lathes, kites, models of gliders, tools. ‘Bring him ‘straight down here. I won’t stir from this room till he’s explained everything.’
‘Hump!’ called Henry, with austere politeness, up the stairway: ‘Would you mind coming down?’
He came – tall, stooping under the low lintel, in spotless white, distant in manner, but courteous, firmly courteous.
Mrs Henderson, prowling about, lifted a wheel in a frame.
‘What on earth is this thing?’ she asked.
‘A gyroscope.’
‘What do you do with it?’
Humphrey wound a long twine about the handle and set the wheel spinning like a top.
‘Hold it by the handle,’ said he. ‘Now try to wave it around.’
The apparently simple machine swung itself back to the horizontal with a jerk so violent that Mrs Henderson nearly lost her footing. Humphrey, with evident hesitation, caught her elbow and steadied her. She turned her eyes up to his, laughing, all interest.
‘Sit right down in that chair and explain it to me,’ she cried. ‘How on earth did it do that? It’s uncanny.’ And she seated herself on a work-bench, with a light little spring.
When Henry showed Corinne up the stairs, Humphrey was talking with an eager interest that had not before been evident in him. And Mrs Henderson was listening, interrupting him where his easy flow of scientific terms and mechanical axioms ran too fast for her.
Henry’s pulse beat faster. Suddenly the pleasantly arranged old barn looked, felt different. Charm had entered it. And the exciting possibility of fellowship – a daring fellowship. He was up in the living-room now. Corinne was moving lazily, comfortably about, humming a song by the sensational new Richard Strauss who was upsetting all settled musical tradition just then, and prying into corners and shelves. She wore a light, shimmery, silky dress that gave out a faint odour of violets. It drugged Henry, that odour. He felt for the first time as if he belonged in these rooms himself.
Corinne found the kitchen cupboard’, and exclaimed.
‘Mildred!’ she called down the stairs, in her rich drawling voice, ‘come right up here – the cutest thing!’
To which Mildred Henderson coolly replied: —
‘Don’t bother me with cute things now. Play with Henry and keep quiet.’
And Humphrey’s voice droned on down there.
Henry dropped on the piano stool. Corinne was certainly less indifferent. A little.
He struck chords; all he knew. He hummed a phrase of the Colonel’s song in Patience.
Corinne drew a chair to the end of the keyboard and settled herself comfortably. ‘Sing something,’ she said. ‘I love your voice.’
‘It’s no good,’ said he, flushing with delight.
Surely her interest was growing. He added: —
‘I’d a lot rather hear you.’ But then, when she smilingly shook her head, promptly broke into —
‘If you want a receipt for that popular mystery
Known to the world as a Heavy Dragoon,
Take all the remarkable people of history,
Rattle them off to a popular tune.’
It is the trickiest and most brilliant patter song ever written, I think, not even excepting the Major General’s song in The Pirates. Which, by the way, Henry sang next.
‘How on earth can you remember all those words!’ Corinne murmured. ‘And the way you get your tongue around them. I could never do it.’
She tried it, with him; but broke down with laughter.
‘I know hundreds of ‘em,’ he said expansively, and sang on.
It was an opportunity he had not foreseen during this dreadful day. But here it was, and he seized it. The stage was set for his kind of things; all