Читать книгу Henry Is Twenty - Samuel Merwin - Страница 14

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Approaching was a pleasant-looking young woman of twenty, of a good figure, a few girlish freckles across the bridge of her nose, abundant hair tucked in under her Sunday hat.

It was Martha Caldwell. She had a class in the Sunday-school.

Martha saw him. No doubt about that.

For the moment, in Henry's abasement of spirit, he half forgot that she had cut him dead, publicly, on Simpson Street on the Saturday. Or if it was not a forgetting it was a vagueness. Henry was full to brimming of himself. Not in years had he craved sympathy as he craved it to-day. The word 'craved,' though, isn't strong enough. It was an utter need. An outcast, perhaps literally homeless; for how could he go back to Humphrey's after what had occurred! He must pack his things, of course.

He raised his hand—slowly, a thought stiffly—toward his hat.

Martha moved swiftly by, staring past him, fixedly, her lips compressed, her colour rising.

Henry's hand hung suspended a moment, then sank to his side.

Henry himself was capable of any sort of heedlessness, but never of unkindness or of cutting a friend.

The colour surged hotly over his face and reddened his ears.

There was a chance—a pretty good chance, it seemed, as he recalled the pleasant Saturday evening over a rabbit—that he might find sympathy at Mrs Arthur V. Henderson's. That was one place, where, within twelve hours, Henry Calverley, 3rd, had had some standing. They had seemed to like him. Mrs Henderson had unquestionably played up to him. And her guest was a peach!

At a feverish pace, almost running, he went there.