Henry Is Twenty: A Further Episodic History of Henry Calverly, 3rdMerwin, Samuel
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Henry Is Twenty: A Further Episodic History of Henry Calverly, 3rd
Merwin, Samuel
Young men -- Fiction
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?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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