Henry Is Twenty: A Further Episodic History of Henry Calverly, 3rd. Merwin Samuel

begged for seven months. A year of that, a lot more work – You know! “Club Notes,” this library stuff, “Real Estate Happenings,” “Along Simpson Street,” reading proof – ’

      Humphrey slowly nodded as he smoked.

      ‘ – And I asked for ten a week. Would he give it? No! I knew I was worth more than that, so I offered to take space rates instead. Then what does he do? You know, Hump. Been clipping me off, one thing after another, and piling on the proof and the office work. Here’s one thing more gone to-day. Last week my string was exactly seven dollars and forty-six cents. Dam it, it ain’t fair! I can’t live! I won’t stand it. Gotta be ten a week or I – I’ll find out why. Show-down.’

      He rushed to the door. Then, as if his little flare of indignation had burnt out, fingered there, knitting his brows and looking up and down the street and across at the long veranda of the Sunbury House, where people sat in a row in yellow rocking chairs.

      Humphrey smoked and considered him. After a little he remarked quietly: —

      ‘Look here, Hen, I don’t like it any more than you do. I’ve seen what he was doing. I’ve tried to forestall him once or twice – ’

      ‘I know it, Hump.’ Henry turned. He was quite listless now. ‘He’s a tricky old fox. If I only knew of something else I could do – or that we could do together – ’

      ‘But – this was what I was going to say – no matter how we feel, I’m going to be really in trouble if I don’t get that picnic story pretty soon. Mr Boice asked about it this morning.’

      Henry leaned against Mr Boice’s desk, up by the window; dropped his chin into one hand.

      ‘I’ll do it, Hump. This afternoon. Or to-night. We’re going down to Mildred’s this noon, of course.’

      ‘That’s part of what’s bothering me. God knows how soon after that you’ll break away from Corinne.’

      ‘Pretty dam soon,’ remarked Henry sullenly, ‘the way things are going now… I’ll get at it, Hump. Honest I will. But right now’ – he moved a hand weakly through the air – ‘I just couldn’t. You don’t know how I feel. I couldn’t!’

      ‘Where you going now?’

      ‘I don’t know.’ The hand moved again. ‘Walk around. Gotta be by myself. Sorta think it out. This is one of the days… I’ve been thinking – be twenty-one in November. Then I’ll show him, and all the rest of ‘em. Have a little money then. I’ll show this hypocritical old town a few things – a few things…’

      His voice died to a mumble. He felt with limp fingers at his moustache.

      ‘I’ll be ready quarter or twenty minutes past twelve,’ Humphrey called after him as he moved mournfully out to the street.

      3

      Mr Boice moved heavily along, inclining his massive head, without a smile, to this acquaintance and that, and turned in at Schultz and Schwartz’s.

      The spectacle of Henry Calverly – in spotless white and blue, with the moustache, and the stick – had irritated him. Deeply. A boy who couldn’t earn eight dollars a week parading Simpson Street in that rig, on a week-day morning! He felt strongly that Henry had no business sticking out that way, above the village level. Hitting you in the eyes. Young Jenkins was bad enough, but at least his father had the money. Real money. And could let his son waste it if he chose. But a conceited young chump like Henry Calverly! Ought to be chucked into a factory somewhere. Stoke a furnace. Carry boxes. Work with his hands. Get down to brass tacks and see if he had any stuff in him. Doubtful.

      Mr Boice made a low sound, a wheezy sound between a grunt and a hum, as he handed his hat to the black, muscular, bullet-headed, grinning Pinkie Potter, who specialised in hats and shoes in Sunbury’s leading barber shop.

      He made another sound that was quite a grunt as he sank into the red plush barber chair of Heinie Schultz. His massive frame was clumsy, and the twinges of lumbago, varied by touches of neuritis, that had come steadily upon him since middle life, added to the difficulties of moving it about. He always made these sounds. He would stop on the street, take your hand non-committally in his huge, rather limp paw, and grunt before he spoke, between phrases, and when moving away.

      Heinie Schultz, who was straw-coloured, thin, listlessly patient (Bill Schwartz was the noisy fat one), knew that the thick, yellowish gray hair was to be cut round in the back and the neck shaved beneath it. The beard was to be trimmed delicately, reverently – ‘not cut, just the rags taken off’ – and combed out. Heinie had attended to this hair and beard for sixteen years.

      ‘Heard a good one,’ murmured Heinie, close to his patron’s ear. ‘There was a bride and groom got on the sleeping car up to Duluth – ’

      A thin man of about thirty-five entered the shop, tossed his hat to Pinkie, and dropped into Bill Schwartz’s chair next the window. The new-comer had straight brown hair, worn a little long over ears and collar. His face was freckled, a little pinched, nervously alert. Behind his gold rimmed spectacles his small sharp eyes appeared to be darting this way and that, keen, penetrating through the ordinary comfortable surfaces of life.

      This was Robert A. McGibbon, editor and proprietor of the Sunbury Weekly Gleaner. He had appeared in the village hardly six months back with a little money – enough, at least, to buy the presses, give a little for good will, assume the rent and the few business debts that Nicholas Simms Godfrey had been able to contract before his health broke, and to pay his own board at the Wombasts’ on Filbert Avenue. His appearance in local journalism had created a new tension in the village and his appearance now in the barber shop created tension there. Heinie’s vulgar little anecdote froze on his lips. Mr Boice, impassive, heavily deliberate, after one glimpse of the fellow in the long mirror before him, lay back in the chair, gazed straight upward at the fly-specked ceiling.

      Mr Boice, when face to face with Robert A. McGibbon on the street, inclined his head to him as to others. But up and down the street his barely expressed disapproval of the man was felt to have a root in feelings and traditions infinitely deeper than the mere natural antagonism to a fresh competitor in the local field.