V. Henderson, of Lower Chestnut Avenue. Name of Doge, or Doag, or something like that.
Henry himself had been whispered about. Very recently. He had been seen at Hoffmann’s Garden, up the shore, with a vulgar young woman in extremely tight bloomers. Of the working girl type. Had her out on a tandem. Drinking beer.
So it was, unable to forget those secretly stirring Iolanthe days, that Miss Wombast had looked about among her book types for a key to Henry, but without success. He didn’t appear to be in De Maupassant. Nor in Balzac. In Meredith and James there was no one who said ‘Yeah’ and ‘Gotta’ and spoke with the crude if honest throat ‘r’ of the Middle West and went with nice girls and vulgar girls and carried that silly cane and wore the sillier moustache; who had, or had had, gifts of creation and command, yet now, month in, month out, hung about Donovan’s soda fountain; who never smoked and, apart from the Hoffmann’s Garden incident, wasn’t known to drink; and who, when you faced him, despite the massed evidence, gave out an impression of earnest endeavour. Even of moral purpose.
Had she known him better Miss Wombast would have found herself the more puzzled. For Miss Wombast, despite her rather complicated reading, still clung in some measure to the moralistic teachings of her youth, believing that people either had what she thought of as character or else didn’t have it, that people were either industrious or lazy, bright or stupid, vulgar or nice. Therefore the fact that Henry, while still wrecking his stomach with fountain drinks and (a recently acquired habit) with lemon meringue pie between meals, had not touched candy for two years – not a chocolate cream, not even a gum drop! – and this by sheer force of character, would have been confusing.
And to read his thoughts, as he stood there before her desk, would have carried her confusion on into bewilderment.
Mostly these thoughts had to do with money, and bordered on the desperate. Tentative little schemes for getting money – even a few dollars – were forming and dissolving rapidly in his mind.
He was concerned because his sudden little flirtation with Corinne Doag, after a flashing start, had lost its glow. Only the preceding evening. He hadn’t held her interest. The thrill had gone. Which plunged him into moods and brought to his always unruly tongue the sarcastic words that made matters worse. He was lunching down there to-day – he and Humphrey – and dreaded it, with moments of a rather futile, flickering hope. Deep intuition informed him that the one sure solution was money. You couldn’t get on with a girl without it. Just about so far, then things dragged. And this, of course, brought him around the circle, back to the main topic.
He was thinking about his clothes. They, at least, should move Corinne. Along with the moustache, the cane, the cord on his glasses. He didn’t see how people could help being a little impressed. Miss Wombast, even, who didn’t matter. It seemed to him that she was impressed.
He was thinking about Martha Caldwell., She was pretty frankly going with James B. Merchant, Jr., now. Henry was jealous of James B. Merchant, Jr. And about Martha his thoughts hovered with a tinge of romantic sadness. He would like her to see him to-day, in these clothes, with his moustache and cane.
He was wondering, with the dread that the prospect of mental effort always roused in him, how on earth he was ever to write three whole columns about the Annual Business Men’s Picnic of the preceding afternoon. Describing in humorous yet friendly detail the three-legged race, the ball game between the fats and the leans, the dinner in the grove, the concert by Foote’s full band of twenty pieces, the purse given to Charlie Waterhouse as the most popular man on Simpson Street. He had a thick wad of notes up at the rooms, but his heart was not in the laborious task of expanding them. He knew precisely what old man Boice expected of him – plenty of ‘personal mention’ for all the advertisers, giving space for space. Each day that he put it off would make the task harder. If he didn’t have the complete story in by Thursday night, Humphrey would skin him alive; yet here it was Wednesday morning, and he was planning to spend as much of the day as possible with the increasingly unresponsive Corinne. Life was difficult!
He was aware of a morbid craving in his digestive tract. He decided to get an ice-cream soda on the way back to the office. He would have liked about half a pound of chocolate creams. The Italian kind, with all the sweet in the white part. But here character intervened.
A corner of his mind dwelt unceasingly on queer difficult feelings that came. These had flared out in the unpleasant incident of Mamie Wilcox and the tandem; and again in the present flirtation with Corinne. In a way that he found perplexing, this stir of emotion was related to his gifts. He couldn’t let one go without the other. There had been moments – in the old days – when a feeling of power had surged through him. It was a wonderful, irresistible feeling. Riding that wave, he was equal to anything. But it had frightened him. The memory of it frightened him now. He had put Iolanthe through, it was true, but he had also nearly eloped with Ernestine Lambert. He had completely lost his head – debts, everything!
Yes, it was as well that Miss Wombast couldn’t read his thoughts. She wouldn’t have known how to interpret them. She hadn’t the capacity to understand the wide swift stream of feeling down which an imaginative boy floats all but rudderless into manhood. She couldn’t know of his pitifully inadequate little attempts to shape a course, to catch this breeze and that, even to square around and breast the current of life.
Henry said politely: —
‘Good-morning, Miss Wombast. I just looked in for the notes of new books.’
‘Oh,’ she replied quickly. ‘I’m sorry you troubled. Mr Boice asked me to mail it to the office at the end of the month. I just sent it – this morning.’
She saw his face fall. He mumbled something that sounded like, ‘Oh – all right! Doesn’t matter.’ For a moment he stood waving his stick in jerky, aimless little circles. Then went off down the stairs.
2
Emerging from Donovan’s drug store Henry encountered the ponderous person of old Boice – six feet an inch and a half, head sunk a little between the shoulders, thick yellowish-white whiskers waving down over a black bow tie and a spotted, roundly protruding vest, a heavy old watch chain with insignia of a fraternal order hanging as a charm; inscrutable, washed-out blue eyes in a deeply lined but nearly expressionless face.
Henry stopped short; stared at his employer.
Mr Boice did not stop. But as he moved deliberately by, his faded eyes took in every detail of Henry’s not unremarkable personal appearance.
Henry was thinking: ‘Old crook. Wish I had a paper of my own here and I’d get back at him. Run him out of town, that’s what!’ And after he had nodded and rushed by, his colouring mounting: ‘Like to know why I should work my head off just to make money for him. No sense in that!’
Henry came moodily into the Voice office, dropped down at his inkstained, littered table behind the railing, and sighed twice. He picked up a pencil and fell to outlining ink spots.
The sighs were directed at Humphrey, who sat bent over his desk, cob pipe in mouth, writing very rapidly. ‘He’s got wonderful concentration,’ thought Henry, his mind wandering a brief moment from his unhappy self.
Humphrey spoke without looking up. ‘Don’t let that Business Men’s Picnic get away from you, Hen. Really ought to be getting it in type now. Two compositors loafing out there.’
Henry sighed again; let his pencil fall on the table; gazed heavily, helplessly at the wall…
‘Old man say anything to you about the “Library Notes”?’
Humphrey glanced up and removed his pipe. His swarthy long face wrinkled thoughtfully. ‘Yes. Just now. He’s going to have Miss Wombast send ‘em in direct every month.’
‘And I don’t have ‘em any more.’
Humphrey considered this fact. ‘It doesn’t amount to very much, Hen.’
‘Oh, no – works out about sixty cents to a dollar. It ain’t that altogether – it’s the principle. I’m getting tired of it!’
The press-room door was