‘Yes. And Mary Ames and her mother. They were with Mr Merchant’s party.’
‘James B., Junior?’
‘Yes. They drove up in a trap. I saw it outside. We weren’t but three tables away from them. They saw everything. Mamie, she – ’
‘After all, Hen. It’s disturbing and all that, but you were getting pretty tired of Martha – ’
‘It isn’t that, Hump 1 I don’t know that I was. I get mixed. But it’s the shame, the disgrace. The Ameses have been down on me anyway, for something that happened two years ago. And now…! And Martha, she’s – well, can’t you see, Hump? It’s just as if there’s no use of my trying to stay in this town any longer. They’ll all be down on me now. They’ll whisper about me. They’re doing it now. I feel it when I walk up Simpson Street. They’re going to mark me for that kind of fellow, and I’m not.’
His face sank into his hands.
Humphrey considered him; said, ‘Of course you’re not;’ considered him further. Then he said, reflectively: ‘It’s unpleasant, of course, but I’ll confess I can’t see that what you’ve told me justifies the words “shame” and “disgrace.” They’re strong words, my boy. And as for leaving town… See here, Hen | Is there anything you haven’t told me?’
The bowed head inclined a little farther.
‘Hadn’t you better tell me? Did anything happen afterward? Has the girl got – well, a real hold on you?’ The head moved slowly sidewise. ‘We fought afterward, all the way home. Rowed. Jawed at each other like a pair of little muckers. No, it isn’t that. I hated her all the time. I told her I was through with her. She tried to catch me in the hall this morning, up on the third floor. Came sneaking to my room again. With towels. That’s why I wrote in the library.’
‘But you aren’t telling me what the rest of it was.’
‘She – oh, she drank beer, and – ’
‘That’s what most everybody does at Hoffmann’s. The beer’s good there.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t like the stuff.’
‘Come, Hen, tell me. Or drop it. Either.’
‘I’ll tell you. But I get so mad. It’s – she – well, she wore pants.’
Humphrey’s sympathy and interest were real, and he did not smile as he queried: ‘Bloomers?’
‘No, pants. Britches. I never saw anything so tight. Nothing else like ‘em in the whole place. People nudged each other and laughed and said things, right out loud. Hump, it was terrible. And we walked clear through – past hundreds of tables – and away over in the corner – and there were the Ameses, and Martha, and – ’
His head was up now; there was fire in his eyes; his voice trembled with the passion of a profound moral indignation.
‘Hump, she’s tough. She rides with that crowd from Pennyweather Point. She smokes cigarettes. She – she leads a double life.’
And neither did it occur to Humphrey, looking at the blazing youth before him, to smile at that last remark.
Humphrey had reached a point of real concern over Henry. He thought about him the last thing that night – pictured him living a lonely, spasmodically ascetic life, in the not over cheerful boarding-house of Mrs Wilcox – and the first thing the next morning.
The curious revelation of the later morning nettled him, perhaps, as a responsible editor, but, if anything, deepened his concern. He had the boy on his conscience, that was the size of it. He thought him over all the morning, before and after the revelation. After it he smoked steadily and hard, and knit his brows, and shook his head gravely, and chuckled.
Henry always came in between half-past eleven and twelve Saturdays to clip his contributions from the paper and paste them, end to end, in a ‘string.’ Then Humphrey would measure the string with a two-foot rule and fill out an order on the Voice Company for payment at the rate of a dollar and a quarter a column, or something less than seven cents an inch. Henry despairing of a raise from nine dollars a week had, months back, elected to work ‘on space.’
That the result had not been altogether happy – he was averaging something less than nine dollars a week now – does not concern us here.
Humphrey contrived to keep busy until the string was made and measured; then proposed lunch.
At Stanley’s, the food ordered, he leaned on his lank elbows and surveyed the dejected young man before him.
‘Hen,’ he remarked dryly, ‘do you really think Anne Mayer Stelton’s voice has a velvet suavity?’
Henry glanced up from his barley soup, coloured perceptibly, then dropped his eyes and consumed several spoonfuls of the tepid fluid.
‘Why not?’ said he.
‘You feel, do you, that her art has deepened and broadened appreciably since she last appeared in Sunbury?’
Henry centred all his attention on the soup.
‘You feel that she has really added a superstructure of technique during her study abroad?’
Henry’s ears were scarlet now.
Humphrey, his soup turning cold between his elbows, looked steadily at his deeply unhappy friend.
For a moment longer Henry went on eating. But then he quietly laid down his spoon, sank rather limply back in his chair, and wanly met Humphrey’s gaze.
‘There was a moment this morning, Hen, when I could have wrung your neck. A moment.’
Henry’s voice was colourless. His expression was that of a man who has absorbed his maximum of punishment, to whom nothing more matters much. ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘What happened?’
‘Madame Stelton fell in the Chicago station, hurrying for the train, and sprained her ankle. Miss Doag gave the entire programme.’
Henry sat a little time considering this. Finally he raised his eyes.
‘Hump,’ he said, ‘I don’t know that I’m sorry. I’m rather glad you caught me, I think.’
It was a difficult speech to meet. Humphrey even found it a moving speech.
‘You had an unlucky day,’ he said.
Henry nodded. The roast beef and potato were before them now; but Henry pushed his aside. He ate nothing more.
‘Mrs Henderson was in,’ Humphrey added. ‘I don’t care what they say about her, she’s a really pretty woman and bright as all get out.’
‘Was she mad, Hump?’
‘I – well, yes, I gathered the impression that you’d better not try to talk to her for a while. There she was, you see – came straight down to the office or stopped on her way to the train. Had Miss Doag along. Unusual dark brown eyes – almost black. A striking girl. But you won’t meet her – not this trip. Though she couldn’t help laughing once or twice. Over your phrases. You see you laid it on unnecessarily thick. Verve. Timbre. It puts you – I won’t say in a Bad light – but certainly in a rather absurd light.’
‘Yes,’ said Henry, gently, meekly, ‘it does. It sorta completes the thing. I picked up some of the town talk this morning. They’re laughing at me. And Martha cut me dead, not an hour ago. I’ve lost my friends. I’m sort of an outcast, I suppose. A – a pariah.’
There was a long silence.
‘You’d better eat some food,’ said Humphrey.
‘I can’t.’ Henry was brooding, a tired droop to his mouth, a look of strain about the eyes. He began thinking aloud, rather aimlessly. ‘It ain’t as if I did that sort of thing. I never asked her to come in. I couldn’t very well refuse to talk with her. She suggested the tandem. It did seem like a good idea to get her out of town, if I had to risk being seen