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

by Samuel Merwin

4

To Cicely's house Henry hurried after bolting a supper at Stanley's restaurant and managing to evade Humphrey's amused questions when he heard them.

It was early, barely half-past seven. The Watt household had dinner (not supper) at seven. They would hardly be through. He couldn't help that. He had waited as long as he could.

He rang the bell. The butler showed him in. He sat on the piano stool in the spacious, high-ceiled parlour, where he had waited so often before.

To-night it looked like a strange room.

He told himself that it was absurd to feel so nervous. He and Cicely understood each other well enough. She cared for him. She had said so, more than once.

Of course, the little matter of facing Madame Watt... though, after all, what could she do?

He tried to control the tingling of his nerves.

'I must relax,' he thought.

With this object he moved over to the heavily upholstered sofa and settled himself on it; stretched out his legs; thrust his hands into his pockets.

But there was an extraordinary pressure in his temples; a pounding.

He snatched a hand from one pocket and felt hurriedly in another to see if the precious little box was there; the box with the magical name embossed on the cover, 'Weldings.'

He reflected, exultantly, 'I never bought anything there before.'

Then: 'She's a long time. They must be at the table still.' He sat up; listened. But the dining-room in the Dexter Smith place was far back behind the 'back parlour.' The walls were thick. There were heavy hangings and vast areas of soft carpet. You couldn't hear. 'Gee!' his thoughts raced on, 'think of owning all this! Wonder how people ever get so much money. Wonder how it would seem.'

He caught himself twisting his neck nervously within his collar. And his hands were clenched; his toes, even, were drawn up tightly in his shoes.

'Gotta relax,' he told himself again.

Then he felt for the little box. This time he transferred it to a trousers pocket; held it tight in his hand there.

A door opened and closed. There was a distant rustling. Henry, paler, sprang to his feet.

'I must be cool,' he thought. 'Think before I speak. Everything depends on my steadiness now.'

But the step was not Cicely's. She was slim and light. This was a solid tread.

He gripped the little box more tightly. He was meeting with a curious difficulty in breathing.

Then, in the doorway, appeared the large person, the hooked nose, the determined mouth, the piercing, hawklike eyes of Madame Watt.

'How d'do, Henry,' she said, in her deep voice. 'Sit down. I want to talk to you. About Cicely. I'm going to tell you frankly—I like you, Henry; I believe you're going to amount to something one of these days—but I had no idea—now I want you to take this in the spirit I say it in—I had no idea things were going along so fast between Cicely and you. I've trusted you. I've let you two play together all you liked. And I won't say I'd stand in the way, a few years from now——

'A few years!...'

'Now, Henry, I'm not going to have you getting all stirred up. Let's admit that you're fond of Cicely. You are, aren't you? Yes? Well, now we'll try to look at it sensibly. How old are you?'

'I'm twenty, but——'

'When will you be twenty-one?'

'Next month. You see——'

'Now tell me—try to think this out clearly—how on earth could you expect to take care of a girl who's been brought up as Cicely has. Even if she were old enough to know her own mind, which I can't believe she is.'

'Oh, but she does!'

'Fudge, Henry! She couldn't. What experience has she had? Never mind that, though. Tell me, what is your income now. You'll admit I have a right to ask.'

'Twelve a week, but——'

'And what prospects have you? Be practical now! How far do you expect to rise on the Gleaner!'

'Not very high, but our circulation——'

'What earthly difference can a little more or less circulation make when it's a country weekly! No, Henry, believe me, I have a great deal of confidence in you—I mean that you'll keep on growing up and forming character—but this sort of thing can not—simply can not—go on now. Why, Henry, you haven't even begun your man's life yet! Very likely you'll write. It may be that you're a genius. But that makes it all the more a problem. Can't you see——'

'Yes, of course, but——'

'No, listen to me! I asked Cicely to-day why you were coming so often. I wasn't at all satisfied with her answers to my questions. And when I forced her to admit that she has been as good as engaged to you——'

'But we aren't engaged! It's only an understanding.'

'Understanding! Pah! Don't excite me, Henry. I want to straighten this out just as pleasantly as I can. I am fond of you, Henry. But I never dreamed—— Tell me, you and that young Weaver own the Gleaner, I think.'

'Yes'm we own it. But——'

'Just what does that mean? That you have paid money—actual money—for it?'

'Yes'm. It's cost us about four thousand.'

'Four thousand! Hmm!'

'And then Charlie Waterhouse—he's town treasurer—he sued me for libel—ten thousand dollars'—Henry seemed a thought proud of this—'and I had to give him two thousand to settle. It was something in one of my stories—the one called Sinbad the Treasurer. Mr Davis—he's my lawyer—he said Charlie had a case, but——'

'Wait a minute, Henry! Where did you get that money. It's—let me see—about four thousand dollars—your share—'

'Yes'm four thousand. It was my mother's. She left it to me. But——'

'I see. Your mother's estate. How much is left of it—outside what you lost in this suit and the two thousand you've invested in the paper.'

'Nothing. But——'

'Nothing! Now, Henry'—no, don't speak! I want you to listen to me a few minutes longer. And I want you to take seriously to heart what I'm going to say. First, about this paper, the Gleaner. It's a serious question whether you'll ever get your two thousand dollars back. If you ever have to sell out you won't get anything like it. If you were older, and if you were by nature a business man—which you aren't!—you might manage, by the hardest kind of work to build it up to where you could get twenty or thirty dollars a week out of it instead of twelve. But you'll never do it. You aren't fitted for it. You're another sort of boy, by nature. And I'm sorry to say I firmly believe this money, or the most of it is certain to go after the other two thousand, that Mr Charlie Waterhouse got. But even considering that you boys could make the paper pay for itself, Cicely couldn't be the wife of a struggling little country editor. I wouldn't listen to that for a minute! No, my advice to you, Henry, is to take your losses as philosophically as you can, call it experience, and go to work as a writer. It'll take you years——'

'Years! But——'

'Yes, to establish yourself. A success in a country town isn't a New York success. Remember that. No, it's a long road you're going to travel. After you've got somewhere, when you've become a man, when you've found yourself, with some real prospects—it isn't that I'd expect you to be rich, Henry, but I'd have to be assured that you were a going concern—why, then you might come to me again. But not now. I want you to go now——'

'Without seeing Cicely?'

'Certainly. Above all things. I want you to go, and promise that you won't try to see her. To-morrow she goes away for a long visit.'

'For—a—long... But she'd see other men, and—Oh!...'

'Exactly. I mean that she shall. Best way in the world to find out whether you two are calves or lovers. One way or the other, we'll prove it. And now you must go! Remember you have my best wishes. I hope you'll find the road one of these days and make a go of it.'

A moment more and the front door had closed on him. He stood before the house, staring up through the maple leaves at the starry sky, struggling, for the moment vainly, toward sanity. It was like the end of the world. If was unthinkable. It was awful.

But after waiting a while he went to Mr Merchant's. There was nothing else to do.