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.
For McGibbon was—the term was a new one that had caught the popular imagination and was worming swiftly into the American language—a yellow journalist. He had worked, he boasted openly, on a sensationally new daily in New York. In the once staid old Gleaner he used boldfaced headlines, touched with irritating acumen on scandal, assailed the ruling political triumvirate, and made the paper generally fascinating as well as disturbing. As a result, he was picking up subscribers rapidly. Advertising, of course, was another matter. And Boice had all the village and county printing.
The political triumvirate mentioned above was composed of Boice himself, Charles H. Waterhouse, town treasurer, and Mr Weston of the Sunbury National Bank. For a decade their rule had not been questioned along the street. The other really prominent men of Sunbury all had their business interests in Chicago, and at that time used the village merely for sleeping and as a point of departure for the very new golf links. Such men, I mean, as B. L. Ames, John W. MacLouden, William B. Snow, and J. E. Jenkins.
The experience of withstanding vulgar attacks was new to the triumvirate. (McGibbon referred to them always as the 'Old Cinch.') The Gleaner had come out for annexation to Chicago. It demanded an audit of Charlie Waterhouse's town accounts by a new, politically disinterested group. It accused the bank of withholding proper support from men of whom old Boice disapproved. It demanded a share of the village printing.
The 'Old Cinch' were taking these attacks in silence, as beneath their notice. They took pains, however, in casual mention of the new force in town, to refer to him always as a 'Democrat.' This damned him with many. He called himself an 'Independent.' Which amused Charlie Waterhouse greatly. Everybody knew that a man who wasn't a decent Republican had to be a Democrat. In the nature of things.
And they were waiting for his money and his energy to give out. Giving him, as Charlie Waterhouse jovially put it, the rope to hang himself with.
Bill Schwartz took McGibbon's spectacles, tucked the towel around his scrawny neck, lathered chin and cheeks, and seizing his head firmly in a strong right hand turned it sidewise on the head-rest.
McGibbon lay there a moment, studying the yellowish-white whiskers that waved upward above the towels in the next chair. Bill stropped his razor.
'How are you, Mr Boice?' McGibbon observed, quite cheerfully.
Mr Boice made a sound, raised his head an inch. Heinie promptly pushed it down.
'Quite a story you had last week about the musicale at Mrs Arthur V. Henderson's.'
Mr Boice lay motionless. What was up! Distinctly odd that either journal should be mentioned between them. Bad taste. He made another sound.
'Who wrote it?'
No answer.
'Henry Calverly?'
A grunt.
'Thought so!' McGibbon chuckled.
Mr Boice twisted his head around, trying to see the fellow in the mirror. Heinie pulled it back.
'Got it here. Hand me my glasses, Bill, will you. Thanks.' McGibbon was sitting up, his face all lather, digging in his pocket. He produced a clipping. Read aloud with gusto:—
'“Mrs Stelton's art has deepened and broadened appreciably since she last appeared in Sunbury. Always gifted with a splendid singing organ, always charming in personality and profoundly, rhythmically musical in temperament, she now has added a superstructure of technical authority which gives to each passage, whether bravura or pianissimo, a quality and distinction.”'
McGibbon was momentarily choked by his own almost noiseless laughter. Bill pushed his head down and went swiftly to work on his right cheek. Two other customers had come in.
'Great stuff that!' observed McGibbon cautiously, under the razor. '“Profoundly, rhythmically musical in temperament “! “A superstructure of technical authority”! Great! Fine! That boy'll do something yet. Handled right. Wish he was working for me.'
Mr Boice, from whom sounds had been coming for several moments, now raised his voice. It was the first time Heinie had ever heard him raise it. Bill paused, razor in air, and glanced around. Pinkie Potter looked up from the shoes he was polishing.
'Well,' he roared huskily, 'what in hell's the matter with that!'
Just then Bill turned McGibbon's head the other way. He too raised his voice. But cheerfully.
'Nothing much. Nice lot o' words. Only Mrs Stelton wasn't there. Sprained her ankle in the Chicago station on the way out.'
Bill Schwartz had a trumpet-like Prussian voice. The situation seemed to him to contain the elements of humour. He laughed boisterously.
Heinie Schultz, more politic, tittered softly, shears against mouth.
Pinkie Potter laughed convulsively, and beat out an intricate rag-time tattoo on his bootblack's stand with his brush.