3
I have spoken of McGibbon's perception. He knew before reading three paragraphs that Henry had a touch of genius. Before finishing A Kerbstone Barmecide he knew—knew with a mental grasp that was pitifully wasted on the petty business of a country weekly—that nothing comparable had appeared anywhere in the English-speaking world since Plain Tales from the Hills and Soldiers Three. He knew, further, what no Sunbury seems ever able to recognise, that it is your occasional Henry who, as he mentally put it, 'rings the bell.' A queer young man, slightly dudish in dress, unable to fit in any conventional job, unable really to fall into step with his generation, blunderingly but incorrigibly a non-conformist, a moodily earnest yet absurdly susceptible young man, slightly self-conscious, known here and there among those of his age as 'sarcastic,' brilliant occasionally, dogged some of the time, dreamy and irresponsible the rest, yet with charm. A youth who not infrequently was guilty of queer, rather unsocial acts; not of meanness or unkindness, rather of an inability to feel with and for others, to fit. A youth destined to work out his salvation, if at all, alone.
Yes, McGibbon read the signs shrewdly. For which Sunbury owes that erratic editor a small debt that remains unpaid and unrecorded to-day. No doubt that McGibbon brought him out. Encouraged him, spurred him, held him to it.
It was tradition in Sunbury that the two weekly papers should come decorously into the world each Saturday morning for the first delivery of mail. A small pile of each, toward noon was put on sale in Jackson's book store (formerly B. F. Jones's). That was all.
And that was why McGibbon was able, on this Saturday of our story, to shake the town.
Poor old Sunbury was shaken heavily and often that summer. First by the Mamie Wilcox scandal. The sort of thing that didn't, couldn't happen. Men leaving town, and all that. A miserable, hastily contrived marriage. Henry's name dragged in, unjustly (as it happened), but convincingly. Though Henry always worked best after some sort of a blow. He had to be shaken out of himself. I think. It isn't likely that he could or would have written Satraps of the Simple if this particular blow hadn't fallen. It was a feverish job. He was stung, quivering, helpless. And then his great gift functioned.
Then Madame Watt happened to Sunbury. And shook the village to its roots.
And then came Bob McGibbon's last and mightiest effort.
When all commuting Sunbury converged on the old red brick 'depot' that morning for the seven-eleven and the seven forty-six and the eight-three and the eight-twenty-nine, hoarsely bellowing newsboys held the two ends of the platform. They wore cotton caps with 'The Weekly Gleaner' printed around the front. They were big, deep-throated roughs, the sort that shout 'extras' through the cities. They crowded the local newsdealer, little Mr Beamer, back into one of the waiting-rooms.
They fairly intimidated the town. People bought the Gleaner in self-defence, even boarded trains and rode off to Chicago without their regular Tribune or Record or Inter Ocean.
Other newsmen roamed the shady, pleasant residence streets, bellowing. Housewives, old gentlemen, servants, hurried out to buy.
There were posters on the fences, and, along the billboards from Rockwell Park on the south to Borea on the north. McGibbon actually rented the space from the Northern Billboard Company. And there were newsmen with caps, in the afternoon, attacking the North Shore home-comers in the Chicago station, the very heart of things. All this—posters screaming like the news-men; big wood type, red and black—to advertise Sinbad the Treasurer and the rest of the long series and Henry Calverly.
'Attack' is the word. McGibbon was assaulting the town and the region as it had hardly been assaulted before. If it was his last, it was surely his most outrageous act from the local point of view. People talked, boiled, raged. The blatancy of the thing irritated them to the point of impotent mutterings. They were helpless. McGibbon was breaking no laws. He was stirring them, however feverish his condition of mind, with deliberate intent. It was his notion of advertising. Reaching the mark, regardless of obstacles, indifference, difficulties. And had his personal circumstances been less harrowing he could have chuckled happily at the result.
The noise fell upon the ear drums of Charlie Waterhouse as he walked down-town. A ragged, red-faced pirate thrust a Gleaner into his hand, snatched his nickel, and rushed off, bellowing.
Charlie began reading Sinbad the Treasurer as he walked. He finished it standing on the turf by the sidewalk, ignoring passing acquaintances, nervously biting and mouthing a cigar that had gone out. In the same condition he read bits of it again. He stood for a while, wavering; then went back home, and spoke roughly to Mrs Waterhouse when she asked him why. He hid the paper from her, to no particular purpose. He didn't appear at the town hall all day, but caught a trolley into Chicago and went to a dime museum. Later in the day he was seen by two venturesome youths sitting alone in the rear of a stage box at Sam T. Jack's.
Norton P. Boice became aware of the sensation on his familiar way to the Voice office.
Humphrey, at his own editorial desk behind the railing, waited, apparently buried in galley proofs, for the explosion. He had caught it all after leaving Henry at Stanley's door, and had prowled a bit, taking it in.
But Mr Boice simply made little sounds—'Hmm!' and 'mmp!' and 'Hmm!' again. Then, slowly lifting his ponderous figure, the upper half of his face expressionless as always above his long yellowish-white beard, went out.
For an hour he was shut up with Mr Weston in the director's room at the bank; his huge bulk disposed in an armchair; little, low-voiced, neatly bearded Mr Weston standing by the mantel. It came down to this:—
'Could throw him into bankruptcy. He must be about broke.'
Thus Boice. 'We'd get the stories that way. Suppress 'em.'
The old gentleman was still wincing from the artlessly subtle stabs he had suffered a week back in The Caliph of Simpson Street. Everybody within four miles of the postoffice knew who the Caliph was. He had caught people hiding their smiles. Mentally he was considering a new drawn head for the Voice, with the phrase 'And The Weekly Gleaner' neatly printed just below. There never had been room for two papers in Sunbury anyway.
Mr Weston was shaking his head. 'May as well sit tight, Nort. What harm's to be done, is done already. He'll have to come down. We'll get him then.'
'You haven't got any of his paper here, have you?'
'There was one note. I called that some time ago.'
'Wha'd he do?'
'Paid it. He seems still to have a little something. But he can't last. Not without advertising.'
'But he's selling his paper fast. If he can keep that up maybe he'll begin to pick up a little along the street.'
Mr Weston was still shaking his head. 'Better wait, Nort.'
'No, I'll offer him a few hundred. The old Gleaner plant's worth something.'
'Of course, there's no harm in that.'
So Mr Boice crossed the street to Hemple's market and laboriously lifted his great body up the stairway beside it to the quarters of the Gleaner upstairs, where a coatless, rumpled, rather wild-eyed McGibbon listened to him and then, with suspiciously, alert and smiling politeness, showed him out and down again.