7
He was back at the rooms by nine-fifteen. Before the university clock boomed out the hour of noon, he had written that elusive, extraordinary little classic, A Kerbstone Barmecide, and had jotted down suggestive notes for the story that was later to be known as The Printer and the Pearls.
By this time all thoughts of civic reform had faded out. Charlie Waterhouse, now that The Caliph of Simpson Street was done and, in a surface sense, forgotten, no longer appeared to him as a crook who should be ousted from the local political triumvirate and from town office; he was but a bit of ore in the rich lode of human material with which Henry's fancy was playing. The important fact about the new Waterhouse store-and-office building in South Sunbury, was not that there was reason to believe Charlie had built it with town money but that he had put a medallion bas-relief of himself in terra cotta in the front wall.
Charlie figured, though, unquestionably, in Sinbad the Treasurer.
At noon, deciding that he would stroll out after a little and eat a bite, Henry stretched out on the lounge. Here he dozed, very lightly for an hour or two.
Humphrey stole in, found him tossing there, fully dressed, mumbling in his sleep, and stole out.
But early in the afternoon Henry leaped up. His brain, or his emotions, or whatever the source of his ideas, was a glowing, boiling, seething crater of tantalising, obscurely associated concepts and scraps of characterisation and queerly vivid, half-glimpsed dramatic moments, situations, contrasts. They amounted to a force that dragged him on. The thought that some bit might escape before he could catch it and get it written down kept his pulse racing.
At about half-past four he finished that curious fantasy, Roc's Eggs, Strictly Fresh.
This accomplishment brought a respite. He could see his book clearly now. The cover, the title page and particularly the final sentence. He knew that the concluding story was to be called The Old Man of the Street. He printed out this title; printed, too, several titles of others yet to be written—Ali Anderson and the Four Policemen and Scheherazade in a Livery Stable, and one or two more.
His next performance I find particularly interesting in retrospect. During the long two years of his extreme self-suppression in the vital matters of candy, girls, and charge-accounts, Henry had firmly refused to sing. Without a murmur he had foregone the four or five dollars a Sunday he could easily have picked up in church quartet work, the occasional sums from substituting in this or that male quartet and singing at funerals. It was even more extraordinary that he should have given up, as he did, his old habit of singing to girls. The only explanation he had ever offered of this curious stand was the rather obscure one he gave Humphrey that singing was 'too physical.' Whatever the real complex of motives, it had been a rather violent, or at least a complete reaction.
But now he strode about the room, chin up, chest expanded, brows puckered, roaring out scales and other vocalisings in his best voice. The results naturally were somewhat disappointing, after the long silence, but he kept at it.
He was still roaring, half an hour later, when McGibbon came anxiously in.
'Saw Humphrey Weaver down-town,' said the editor of the Gleaner, 'and he said I'd better look you up.'
An hour later McGibbon—red spots in his cheeks, a nervous glitter in his eyes—hurried down to the Gleaner office with the pencilled manuscripts of four of the 'Caliph' stories. He was hurrying because it seemed to him highly important to get them into type. For one thing, something might happen to them—fire, anything. For another, it might occur to Henry to sell them to an eastern magazine.
When Humphrey came in, just before six, Henry was already well into Scheherazade in a Livery Stable, and was chuckling out loud as he wrote.
Friday night was press night at the Gleaner office. Henry strolled in about ten o'clock and carelessly dropped a thick roll of script on McGibbon's desk.
That jaded editor leaned back, ran thin fingers through his tousled hair, and wearily looked over the dishevelled, yawning, exhausted, grinning youth before him. Never in his life had he seen an expression of such utter happiness on a human face.
'How many stories is this?' he asked.
'Ten.'
'Good Lord! That's a whole book!'
'No—hardly. I've thought of some more. There'll be fifteen or twenty altogether. I just thought of one, coming over here. Think I'll call it. The Story of the Man from Jerusalem. It's about the life of a little Jew storekeeper in a town like this. Struck me all of a sudden—you know, how he must feel. I don't think I'll write it to-night—just make a few notes so it won't get away from me.'
Bob McGibbon rose up, put on coat and hat, took, Henry firmly by the arm, and marched him, protesting, home.
'Now,' he said, 'you go to bed.'
'Sure, Bob! What's the matter with you! I'm just going to jot down a few notes———'
'You're going to bed!' said McGibbon.
And he stood there, earnest, even grim, until Henry was undressed and stretched out peacefully asleep.'
Henry slept until nearly three o'clock Saturday afternoon.