Yes, Elbow was on Henry's nerves.
But Elbow had long since forgotten Henry, except for a chance nod now and then. And occasionally a moment's annoyance that Henry should insist on keeping alive a nickname that had with years and the beginnings of dignity become undesirable.
2
The blow fell on Henry at half-past five on the Tuesday.
I mark the time thus precisely because it perhaps adds a touch of interest to the consideration of what happened between then and Friday night, when McGibbon first saw what he had done. Of the importance of the blow in Henry's life there is no doubt. It turned him sharply Not until he was approaching middle life could he look back on the occasion without wincing. And while wincing, he would say that it was what he had needed. Plainly. That it made a man of him, or started the process.
As to that, I can't say. Perhaps it did. Life is not so simple as Henry had been taught it was. I am fatalist enough to believe that Henry would have become what he was to become in any event, because it was in him. I doubt if he could have been given any other direction. Though of course he might have gone under simply through a failure to get aroused. Something had to start him, of course.
The practical difficulty with Henry's life was, of course, that he was strong. He didn't know this himself. He thought he was weak. Some who observed him thought the same. There were reasons enough. But Mildred always declared flatly that he was a genius, that he was too good for Sunbury, against the smugness of which community she was inclined to rail. A debate on this point between Mrs Henderson and, say, William F. Donovan, the drug store man, would have been interesting. Mr Donovan's judgments of human character were those of Simpson Street.
I say Henry was strong, because I can't interpret his rugged nonconformity in any other way. A weaker lad would long since have given up, gone into Smith Brothers' wholesale, taken his spiritual beating and fallen into step with his generation. But Henry's resistance was so strong and so deep that he didn't even know he was resisting. He was doing the only thing he could do, being what he was, feeling what he felt. And when instinct failed to guide, when 'the Power' lay quiescent, he was simply waiting and blundering along; but never falling into step. He had to wait until the Power should rise with him and take him out and up where he belonged.
There was a little scene the Monday evening before.
It was in the rooms. Mildred was there.