9

The sunlight was streaming in through the living-room of the barn back of the old Parmenter place. Outside the maple leaves were rustling gently. Through the quiet air came the slow booming of the First Presbyterian bell across the block. From greater distances came the higher pitched bell of the Baptist Church, down on Filbert Avenue, and the faint note from the Second Presbyterian over on the West Side, across the tracks.

Humphrey had made coffee and toast. They sat at an end of the centre table. Humphrey in bath-robe and slippers, Henry fully dressed in his blue serge suit, neat silk four-in-hand tie, stiff white collar and carefully polished shoes.

'Where are you going with all that?' Humphrey asked.

Henry hesitated; flushed a little.

'To church,' he finally replied.

Humphrey's surprise was real. There had been a time, before they came to know each other, when the boy had sung bass in the quartet at the Second Presbyterian. But since that period he had not been a church-goer. Henry had been quiet all evening, and now this morning. He seemed all boxed up within himself. Preoccupied. As if the triumph over old Boice had merely opened up the way to new responsibilities. Which, for that matter, was just what it had done—done to both of them. Humphrey, not being given to prying, would have let the subject drop here, had not Henry surprised him by breaking hotly forth into words.

'It's my big fight, Hump!' he was saying now. 'Don't you see! This town. All they say. Look here!' He laid a rumpled bit of paper on the table. As if he had been holding it ready in his hand.'

'Oh, that letter,' said Humphrey.

'Yes. It's what I've got to fight. And I've got to win. Don't you see?'

'Yes,' Humphrey replied gravely, 'I see.'

'I think,' said Henry, 'it's being in love that's going to help me. We've got to hold our heads up, you and I. Build the Gleaner into a real property. Win confidence. And there mustn't be any doubt. The way we step out and fight, you know. I've got to stand with you.'

Humphrey's eyes strayed to the sunlit window. He suppressed a little sigh.

'This note's right enough, in a way,' Henry went on. 'It wouldn't be fair to compromise her.' He leaned earnestly over the table. 'It's really a hopeless love. I know that, Hump. But it isn't like the others.' It makes me feel ashamed of them. All of them. I've got to show her, or at least show myself, that it's this love that has made a man of me. Without asking anything, you know.'

Humphrey listened in silence as the talk ran on. The boy was changing, no question about that. Even back of the romantic strain that was colouring his attitude, the suggestion of pose in it, there was real evidence of this change. At least his fighting blood was up. And he was taking punishment.

Sitting there sipping his coffee, Humphrey, half listening, soberly considered his younger friend. Henry was distinctly odd, a square peg in a round world. He was capable of curiously outrageous acts, yet most of them seemed to arise from a downright inability to sense the common attitude, to feel with his fellows. He could be heedless, neglectful, self-centred; but Humphrey had never found meanness or unkindness in him. And he was capable of a passionate generosity. He had, indeed, for Humphrey, the fascination that an erratic and ingenuous but gifted person often exerts on older, steadier natures. You could be angry at him; but you couldn't get over the feeling that you had to take care of him. And it always seemed, even when he was out and out exasperating, that the thing that was the matter with him was the very quality that underlay his astonishing gifts; that he was really different from others; the difference ran all through, from his unexpected, rather self-centred ways of acting and reacting clear up to the fact that he could write what other people couldn't write. 'If they could,' thought Humphrey now, shrewdly, 'very likely they'd be different too.' Take this business of dressing up like a born suburbanite and going to church. It was something of a romantic gesture, But that wasn't all it was. The fight was real, whatever unexpected things it might lead him to do from day to day.

Herbert de Casselles, wooden-faced, dressed impeccably in frock coat, heavy 'Ascot' tie, gray striped trousers perfectly creased, (Henry had never owned a frock coat) ushered him half-way down the long aisle to a seat in Mrs Ellen F. Wilson's pew. He felt eyes on him as he walked, imagined whispers, and set his face doggedly against them all. He had set out in a sort of fervor; but now the thing was harder to do than he had imagined. The people looked cold and hostile. It was to be a long fight. He might never win. The more successful he might come to be, the more some of them would hate him and fight him down... It was queer, Herb de Casselles ushering him.

The organist slid on to his seat, up in the organ loft behind the pulpit; spread out his music and turned up the corners; pulled and pushed on stops and couplers; glanced up into his narrow mirror; adjusted his tie; fussed again with the stops; began to play.

Henry sat up stiffly, even boldly, and looked about. Across the church, in a pew near the front, sat the Watts: the Senator, on the aisle, looking curiously insignificant with his meek, red face and his little, slightly askew chin beard; Madame Watt sitting wide and high over him, like a stout hawk, chin up, nose down, beady eyes fixed firmly on the pulpit; Cicely Hamlin almost fragile beside her, eyes downcast—or was she looking at the hymns?

When Cicely was talking, with her nervous eagerness, her quick smile, her almost Frenchy gestures, she seemed gay. When in repose, as now, her delicate sensitiveness, her slightly sad expression, were evident, even to Henry.

Made him feel in the closing scene of The Prisoner of Zenda, where he was bidding the Princess who could never be his a last farewell; the mere sight of her thrilled him with a deep romantic sorrow.

Through the prayers, the announcements, the choir numbers and collection, his sacrificial mood grew more and more intense. It was something of a question whether he could hide his emotion before all these hostile people. The long fight ahead to rebuild his name in the village loomed larger and larger, began to take on an aspect that was almost terrifying. For the first time to-day he felt weakness but she made him feel something as Sothem had made in his heart. He sat very quiet, hands clenched on his knees, and unconsciously thrust out his chin a little.

When the doxology was sung and his head was bowed for the benediction, he had to struggle with a mad impulse to rush out, run down the aisle while people were picking up their hats and things. The thing to do, of course, was to take his time, be natural, move out with the rest. This he did, blazing with self-consciousness, his chin forward.

It was difficult. Several persons—older persons, who had known his mother—stopped him and congratulated him on the brilliant work he was doing. This in the midst of the unuttered hostility that seemed like hundreds of little barbed darts penetrating his skin from every side. He could only blush and mumble. Elderly, innocent Mrs Bedford of Filbert Avenue actually introduced him to her nieces from Boston as a young man of whom all Sunbury was proud. He had to blush and mumble here for a long time, while the line of people crowded decorously past.

At last he got to the door. Stiffly raising his hat as one or two groups of young people recognised him, he moved out to the sidewalk. There he raised his eyes. They met, for a fleeting instant, but squarely, over Herb de Casselles' shoulder, the dark eyes of Cicely Hamlin.

She was sitting on the little forward seat in the black-and-plum Victoria. Madame Watt was settling herself in the back seat. The Senator was stepping in. The plum-coloured footman stood stiffly by. The plum-coloured driver sat stiffly on the box.

Herb de Casselles turned, with a wry smile.

Henry raised his hat, bit his lip, hesitated, hurried on.

Then he heard her voice.

'Oh, Mr Calverly!'

He had to turn back. He knew he was fiery red. He knew, too, that in this state of tortured bewilderment he couldn't trust his tongue for a moment.

Cicely leaned out, with outstretched hand.

He had to take it. The thrill the momentary touch of it gave, him but added a wrench to the torture. Then the Senator's hand had to be taken; finally Madame's.

His pulse was racing; pounding at his temples. What did all this mean!

Cicely, her own colour up a little, speaking quickly, her face lighting up, her hands moving, cried:—

'Oh, Mr Calverly! We heard this morning that the Gleaner has failed and that Mr Boice has it and we aren't to see your stories any more.'

'No,' said Henry, a faint touch of assurance appearing in his heart, mind, voice, 'that isn't so. Mr Boice hasn't got it. We've got it—Humphrey Weaver and I.'

'You mean you have purchased it?' This from the Senator.

'Yay-ah, We bought it yesterday.'

'No!' cried Cicely. 'Really?'

'Yay-ah. We bought it.'

'Then,' commented the Senator, 'you must permit me indeed to congratulate you. It is unusual to find business acumen and enterprise combined with such a literary talent as yours.'

This was pleasing, if stilted. It was beginning to be possible for Henry to smile.

Then Cicely clinched matters.

'You promised to come and read me the others, Mr Calverly. Oh, but you did! You must come. Really! Let me see—I know I shall be at home to-morrow evening.'

Then, for a moment, Cicely seemed to falter. She turned questioningly to her aunt.

Madame Watt certainly knew the situation. She had heard Henry discussed in relation to the Mamie Wilcox incident. She knew how high feeling was running in the village. Just what her motives were, I cannot say. Perhaps it was her tendency to make her own decisions and if possible to make different decisions from those of the folk about her. The instinct to stand out aggressively in all matters was strong within her. And she liked Henry. The flare of extreme individuality in him probably reached her and touched a curiously different strain of extreme individuality within herself. She hated sheep. Henry was not a sheep.

As for Cicely's part of it, I know she had been thrilled when Henry read her the first ten stories. She had read more than the Sunbury girls; and she saw more in his oddities than they were capable of seeing. To fail in any degree to conform to the prevailing customs and thought was to be ridiculous in Sunbury. But she had no more forgotten the jeers that had followed Henry from this very carriage as he chased his hat down Simpson Street the preceding day than had Henry himself. Nor had she forgotten that Herbert de Casselles had been one of that unkind group. And as she certainly knew what she was about, despite her impulsiveness, I prefer to think that her action was deliberately kind and deliberately brave.

'Come to dinner,' said Madame Watt shortly but with a sort of rough cordiality. 'Seven o'clock. To-morrow evening. Informal dress. All right, Watson.'

Cicely settled back, her eyes bright; but gave Henry only the same suddenly impersonal little nod of good-bye that she gave Herbert de Casselles.

The footman leaped to the box. The remarkable carriage rolled luxuriously away on its rubber tyres.

Henry turned, grinning in foolish happiness, on the young man in the frock coat who had not been asked to dinner.

'Walking up toward Simpson, Herb?' he asked.

'Me—why—no, I'm going this way.' And Herb pointed hurriedly southward.

'Well—so long!' said Henry, and headed northward.

The warm sunlight filtered down through the dense foliage. Birds twittered up there. The church procession moving slowly along was brightly dressed; pleasant to see. Henry, head up, light of foot, smiling easily when this or that person, after a moment's hesitation, bowed to him, listened to the birds, expanded his chest in answer to the mellowing sunshine, and gave way, with a fresh little thrill, to the thought:—

'I must buy a frock coat for to-morrow night.'