7
The sky out over the lake was a luminous vault of deep rose shading off into the palest pink. The flat surface of the water, as far as they could see, was like burnished metal.
Henry flung out a trembling arm.
'Look!' he said huskily. 'That star.'
It was still incandescent, still radiating its little points of light.
'Hump,' he said, a choke in his voice—'I'm shaken. I'm beginning life again to-night, to-day.'
'I'm shaken too, Hen. The real thing has come. At last. It's got me. It'll be a fight, of course. But we're going through with it. I want you to come to know her better, Hen. Even you—you don't know. She's wonderful. She's going to help with my work in the shop, help me do the real things, creative work, get away from grubbing jobs.'
It was a moment of flashing insight for Henry. He couldn't reply; couldn't even look at his friend. His misgivings were profound. Yet the thing was done. Humphrey's life had taken irrevocably a new course. No good even wasting regrets on it. So he fell, in a tumbling rush of emotion, to talking about himself.
'I'm beginning again. I—I let go a little. Hump, I can't do it. It's too strong for me. I go to pieces. You don't know. I've got to fight—all the time. Do the things I used to do—make myself work hard, hard. Keep accounts. Every penny. Leave girls alone. It means grubbing.
I can't bear to think of it.' He spread out his hands. 'In some ways it seems to help to let go. You know—stirs me. Brings the Power. Makes me want to write, create things. But it's too much like burning the candle at both ends.'
Humphrey got out his old cob pipe, and carefully scraped it.
'That's probably just what it is,' he remarked.
'Oh, Hump, what is it makes us feel this way! You know—girls, and all that.'
Humphrey lighted his pipe.
'You don't know how it makes me feel to see you and Mildred. Just the way she looks. And you. Corinne and I don't look like that. We were flirting. I didn't mean it. She didn't, either. It's been beastly. But still it didn't seem beastly all the time.'
'It wasn't,' said Humphrey, between puffs. 'Don't be too hard on yourself. And you haven't hurt Corinne. She likes you. But just the same, she's only flirting. She'd never give up her ambitions for you.'
'There's something I want to feel. Something wonderful. I've been thinking of it, looking at that star. I want to love like—like that. Or nothing.'
Humphrey leaned on the railing over the beach, and smoked reflectively. The rose tints were deepening into scarlet and gold. The star was fading.
'Hen,' said Humphrey, speaking out of a sober reverie, 'I don't know that I've ever seen anybody reach a star. Our lives, apparently, are passed right here on this earth.'
Henry couldn't answer this. But he felt himself in opposition to it. His hands were clenched at his side.
'I begin my life to-day,' he thought.
But back of this' determination, like a dark current that flowed silently but irresistibly out of the mists of time into the mists of other time, he dimly, painfully knew that life, the life of this earth, was carrying him on. And on. As if no resolution mattered very much. As if you couldn't help yourself, really.
He set his mouth. And thrust out his chin a little. He had not read Henley's Invictus. It would have helped him, could he have seen it just then.
'Let's walk,' he said.
They breakfasted at Stanley's.
Here there was a constant clattering of dishes and a smell of food. People drifted in and out—men who worked along Simpson Street, and a few family groups—said 'Good-morning. Looks like a warm day.' Picked their teeth. Paid their checks to Mrs Stanley at the front table, or had their meal tickets punched.
They walked slowly up the street as far as the Sunbury House corner, and crossed over to the Voice office. Each glanced soberly at the hotel as they passed.
They went in through the railing that divided front and rear offices. Humphrey took off his coat and dropped into his swivel chair before the roll-top desk. Henry took off his and dropped on the kitchen chair before the littered pine table. Jim Smith, the foreman, came in, his bare arms elaborately tattooed, chewing tobacco, and told 'a new one,' sitting on the corner of Henry's table. Henry sat there, pale of face, toying with a pencil, and wincing.
After Jim had gone, Henry sat still, gazing at the pencil, wondering weakly if the rough stuff of life was too much for him.
He glanced over toward the desk. Humphrey, pipe in mouth, was already at work. Hump had the gift of instant concentration. Even this morning, after all that had happened, he was hard at it. Though he had something to work for.
A sob was near. Henry had to close his eyes for a moment. His sensitive lips quivered.
Humphrey would be, seeing his Mildred again at the close of the day. Henry found himself entertaining the possibility of crawling shamefacedly around to Corinne.
Then he sat up stiffly. Felt in one pocket after another until he found a little red account-book. He hadn't made an entry for a week. Before Corinne came into his life he hadn't missed an entry for nearly two years.
He sat staring at it, pencil in hand.
His mouth set again.
He wrote:—
'Bkfst. Stanleys... 20c.'
He slipped the book into his pocket; compressed his lips for an instant; then reached for a wad of copy paper.
And gave a little sigh of relief. It was to be a long, perhaps an endless battle with self. But he had started.