‘I’m late now,’ he was saying.‘What else can I do, Hump? I promised. She’ll be looking for me now. If you just wouldn’t be in such a thundering hurry about those darn dishes… I can’t live like a machine. I just can’t!’
‘You could have cleaned up your room while you’ve been standing there,’ said Humphrey, in a rumbling voice.
‘No, I couldn’t! Put up all my pictures and books and things! I’m not like you. You don’t understand!’ Humphrey wheeled on him, pipe in hand, a cold light in his eyes, a none-too-agreeable smile wrinkling the lower part of his face.
‘I’m not asking much of you,’ he said.
‘Oh, thunder, Hump! Do you think I don’t appreciate – ’
‘I’d be glad to help you. But you’ve got to do a little on your own account. For God’s sake show some spine!’ Sand-fly! Damn it, this is more than I can stand! It smothers me! How can I work! How can I think!’ He stopped short; bit his lip; turned back to the window and thrust his pipe into his mouth.
Humphrey knew without looking that the boy was fussing endlessly at that absurd moustache. And sighing – he heard that. He bit hard on his pipe-stem. The day was wrecked already. He would be boiling up every few moments; tripping over Henry’s things; regretting his perhaps too harsh words. Yes, they were too harsh, of course.
Henry was muttering, mumbling, tracing out the pattern in the rug-border with his silly little stick. These words were audible: —
‘I don’t see why you asked me to come here. I suppose I… Of course, if you don’t want me to stay here with you, I suppose I… Oh, well! I guess I ain’t much good…’
The voice trailed huskily off into silence.
After all, there didn’t seem to be any place the boy could stay, if not here. Living alone in a boarding-house hadn’t worked at all. To send him out into the world would be like condemning him.
Henry moved off down the stairs, slowly, pausing once as if he had not yet actually determined to go.
Walking more briskly, he emerged from the alley and swung around into Filbert Avenue. The starched and shining children were pouring in an intermittent stream into the First Presbyterian chapel, behind the big church.
Gloom in his eyes, striking in a savage aimlessness with his cane at the grass, he passed the edifice. Walking thus, he felt a presence and lifted his eyes.
2
Approaching was a pleasant-looking young woman of twenty, of a good figure, a few girlish freckles across the bridge of her nose, abundant hair tucked in under her Sunday hat.
It was Martha Caldwell. She had a class in the Sunday-school.
Martha saw him. No doubt about that.
For the moment, in Henry’s abasement of spirit, he half forgot that she had cut him dead, publicly, on Simpson Street on the Saturday. Or if it was not a forgetting it was a vagueness. Henry was full to brimming of himself. Not in years had he craved sympathy as he craved it to-day. The word ‘craved,’ though, isn’t strong enough. It was an utter need. An outcast, perhaps literally homeless; for how could he go back to Humphrey’s after what had occurred! He must pack his things, of course.
He raised his hand – slowly, a thought stiffly – toward his hat.
Martha moved swiftly by, staring past him, fixedly, her lips compressed, her colour rising.
Henry’s hand hung suspended a moment, then sank to his side.
Henry himself was capable of any sort of heedlessness, but never of unkindness or of cutting a friend.
The colour surged hotly over his face and reddened his ears.
There was a chance – a pretty good chance, it seemed, as he recalled the pleasant Saturday evening over a rabbit – that he might find sympathy at Mrs Arthur V. Henderson’s. That was one place, where, within twelve hours, Henry Calverley, 3rd, had had some standing. They had seemed to like him. Mrs Henderson had unquestionably played up to him. And her guest was a peach!
At a feverish pace, almost running, he went there.
3
Corinne Doag was a big girl with blue-black hair and a profile like the Goddess of Liberty on the silver quarter of the period. Her full face rather belied the profile; it was an easy, good-natured face, though with a hint of preoccupation about the dark eyes. Her smile was almost a grin. She had the great gift of health. She radiated it. You couldn’t ignore her you felt her.
Though not a day older than Henry, Corinne was a singer of promise. At Mrs Henderson’s musicale, she had managed groups of Schumann, Schubert, Franz and Wolff, an Italian aria or two and some quaint French folk songs with ample evidence of sound training and coaching. Her voice had faults. It was still a little too big for her. It was a contralto without a hollow note in it, firm and strong, with a good upper range. There was in it more than a hint of power. It moved you, even in her cruder moments. Her speaking voice – slow, lazy, strongly sensuous – gave Henry thrills.
She and Henry strolled up the lake, along the bluff through and beyond the oak-clad campus, away up past the lighthouse. She seemed not to mind the increasing heat. She had the careless vitality of a young mountain lion, and the grace.
Henry himself minded no external thing. Corinne Doag was, at the moment, the one person in the world who could help him in his hour of deep trouble. It was not clear how she could help him, but somehow she could. He was blindly sure of it. If he could just impress himself on her, make her forget other men, other interests! He had started well, the night before. Things had gone fine.
He was leading her to a secluded breakwater, between the lighthouse and Pennyweather Point, where, under the clay bluff, the shell of an old boat-house gave you a back as you sat on a gray timber and shielded you at once from morning sun and from the gaze of casual strollers up the beach. Henry knew the place well, had guided various girls there. Martha had often spoken of it as ‘our’ breakwater. But no twinge of memory disturbed him now. His nervous intentness on this immediate, rather desperate task of conquering Corinne’s sympathy fully occupied his turbulent thoughts.
When they arrived at the spot he was stilted in manner, though atremble within. He ostentatiously took off his coat, spread it for her, overpowering her protests.
It had been thought by a number of girls and by a few of his elders that Henry had charm. He was aware of quality they called charm he could usually turn on and off like water at a faucet.
Now, of all occasions, was the time to turn it on. But he was breathlessly unequal to it.
Perversity seized his tongue. He had seen himself lying easily, not ungracefully beside her, saying (softly) the things she would most like to hear. Speak of her voice, of course. And sing with her (softly) while they idly watched the streaky, sparkling lake and the swooping, creaking gulls above it. But he did none of these. Instead he stood over her, glaring down rather fiercely, and saying nothing at all.
‘The shade does feel good,’ said she.
Still he groped for words, or for a mental attitude that might result in words. None came. Here she was, at his feet, and he couldn’t even speak.
He fell back, in pertubation, on physical display, became the prancing male.
‘I like to skip stones,’ he managed to say, with husky self-consciousness. He hunted flat stones; threw them hard and far, until his face shone with sweat and a damp spot appeared in his shirt between his shoulders.
To her, ‘Better let me hold your glasses,’ he responded with