Back in the old _Voice_ office, Mr Boice sat motionless, big hands sprawling across his thighs, making little sounds. I think he was trying, in his deliberate way, to figure out what had happened. But he never succeeded in figuring it out. Not this particular incident. He couldn't know that it is as well to face a tigress as an artist whose mental offspring you have injured. No; to him, Henry, the boy of the silly little cane and the sillier moustache, had stepped out of character. He couldn't know that Henry, the drifting, helpless youth, and Henry the blazing artist were two quite different persons. In Mr Boice's familiar circles they played duplicate whist and talked business, but they were not acquainted with the mysteries of dual personality such as appear in the case of any genius, great or small. Nor (for the excellent reason that he had never heard of William Blake or his works) did the immortal line come to mind;-- Did He who made the lamb make thee? Mr Boice was obliged to give it up. VI--ALADDIN ON SIMPSON STREET 1 |Elberforce Jenkins was the most accomplished very young man-about-town in Sunbury. He appeared to have, even at twenty-one, the bachelor gift. He danced well. His golf was more than promising. He had lately taken up polo with the Dexter Smith boys and young de Casselles. He owned two polo ponies, a schooled riding horse, and a carriage team which he drove to a high cart. His allowance from his father by far overcame the weakness of his salary (he was with his brother, Jefferson, in a bond house on La Salle Street). His aptitude at small talk amounted to a gift. He liked, inevitably, the play that was popular and (though he read little) the novel that was popular. His taste in girls pointed him unerringly toward the most desirable among the newest. He and Henry had been together in high school (Sunbury was democratic then). They had played together in the football team. They had--during one hectic month--been rivals for the hand of Ernestine Lambert. In that instance, in so far as success had come, it had come to Henry. But those were Henry's big days, when he was directing _Iolanthe_, the town at his feet. Life, these two years, had flowed swiftly on. The long dangling figure of Elbow Jenkins had filled out. His crude boyishness had given way to a smiling reserve. He was a young man of the world--self-assured, never indiscreet of tongue, always well-mannered, never individual or interesting.