Читать книгу Henry Is Twenty - Samuel Merwin - Страница 15

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Corinne Doag was a big girl with blue-black hair and a profile like the Goddess of Liberty on the silver quarter of the period. Her full face rather belied the profile; it was an easy, good-natured face, though with a hint of preoccupation about the dark eyes. Her smile was almost a grin. She had the great gift of health. She radiated it. You couldn't ignore her you felt her.

Though not a day older than Henry, Corinne was a singer of promise. At Mrs Henderson's musicale, she had managed groups of Schumann, Schubert, Franz and Wolff, an Italian aria or two and some quaint French folk songs with ample evidence of sound training and coaching. Her voice had faults. It was still a little too big for her. It was a contralto without a hollow note in it, firm and strong, with a good upper range. There was in it more than a hint of power. It moved you, even in her cruder moments. Her speaking voice—slow, lazy, strongly sensuous—gave Henry thrills.

She and Henry strolled up the lake, along the bluff through and beyond the oak-clad campus, away up past the lighthouse. She seemed not to mind the increasing heat. She had the careless vitality of a young mountain lion, and the grace.

Henry himself minded no external thing. Corinne Doag was, at the moment, the one person in the world who could help him in his hour of deep trouble. It was not clear how she could help him, but somehow she could. He was blindly sure of it. If he could just impress himself on her, make her forget other men, other interests! He had started well, the night before. Things had gone fine.

He was leading her to a secluded breakwater, between the lighthouse and Pennyweather Point, where, under the clay bluff, the shell of an old boat-house gave you a back as you sat on a gray timber and shielded you at once from morning sun and from the gaze of casual strollers up the beach. Henry knew the place well, had guided various girls there. Martha had often spoken of it as 'our' breakwater. But no twinge of memory disturbed him now. His nervous intentness on this immediate, rather desperate task of conquering Corinne's sympathy fully occupied his turbulent thoughts.

When they arrived at the spot he was stilted in manner, though atremble within. He ostentatiously took off his coat, spread it for her, overpowering her protests.

It had been thought by a number of girls and by a few of his elders that Henry had charm. He was aware of quality they called charm he could usually turn on and off like water at a faucet.

Now, of all occasions, was the time to turn it on. But he was breathlessly unequal to it.

Perversity seized his tongue. He had seen himself lying easily, not ungracefully beside her, saying (softly) the things she would most like to hear. Speak of her voice, of course. And sing with her (softly) while they idly watched the streaky, sparkling lake and the swooping, creaking gulls above it. But he did none of these. Instead he stood over her, glaring down rather fiercely, and saying nothing at all.

'The shade does feel good,' said she.

Still he groped for words, or for a mental attitude that might result in words. None came. Here she was, at his feet, and he couldn't even speak.

He fell back, in pertubation, on physical display, became the prancing male.

'I like to skip stones,' he managed to say, with husky self-consciousness. He hunted flat stones; threw them hard and far, until his face shone with sweat and a damp spot appeared in his shirt between his shoulders.

To her, 'Better let me hold your glasses,' he responded with an irritable shake of the head.

But such physical violence couldn't go on indefinitely. Not in this heat. He threw less vigorously. He wondered in something of a funk, why he couldn't grasp his opportunity.

He became aware of a sound. A sound that in a more felicitous moment would have thrilled him.

She was singing, softly. Something French, apparently. Once she stopped, and did a phrase over, as if she were practising.

He stole a glance. She wasn't even looking at him. She had sunk back on an elbow, her long frame stretched comfortably out, and seemed to be observing the gulls, rather absently.

Henry came over; sat on a spile; glared at her.

'I skipped that last one seven times,' said he.

She gave him an indulgent little smile, and hummed on.

'She doesn't know I'm here,' he mused, with bitterness. 'I don't count. Nobody wants me.' And added, 'She's selfish.'

Suddenly he broke out, tragically: 'You don't know what I've been through. I wouldn't tell you.'

The tune came to an end. Still watching the gulls, still absently, she asked, after a pause, 'Why not?'

'You'd be like the others. You'd despise me.'

'I doubt that. Mildred Henderson certainly doesn't. You ought to hear her talk about you.'

'She'll be like the others too. My life has been very hard. Living alone with my way to make. Wha'd she say about me?'

'That you're a genius. She can't make out why you've been burying yourself, working for a little country paper.'

Henry considered this. It was pleasing. But he might have wished for a less impersonal manner in Corinne. She kept following those gulls; speaking most casually, as if it was nothing or little to her what anybody thought about anybody.

Still—it was pleasing. He sat erect. A light glimmered in his eye; glimmered and grew. When he spoke, his voice took on body.

'So she says I'm a genius, eh! Well, maybe it's true. Maybe I am. I'm something. Or there's something in me. Sometimes I feel it. I get all on fire with it. I've done a few things. I put on Iolanthe here. When I was only eighteen. Chorus of fifty, and big soloists. I ran it—drilled 'em——'

'I know. Mildred told me. Mildred really did say you were wonderful.'

'I'll do something else one of these days.'

'I'm sure you will,' she murmured politely.

It was going none too well. She wasn't really interested. He hadn't touched her. Perhaps he had better not talk about himself. He thought it over, and decided another avenue of approach would be better.

'That's an awfully pretty brooch,' he ventured.

She glanced down; touched it with her long fingers. The brooch was a cameo, white on onyx, set in beaded old gold.

'It was a present,' she said. 'From one of the nicest men I ever knew.'

This chilled Henry's heart. His own emotions were none too stable. Out of his first-hand experience he had been able at times, in youthfully masculine company, to expound general views regarding the sex that might be termed cynical. But confronted with the particular girl, the new girl, Henry was an incorrigible idealist.

It had only vaguely occurred to him that Corinne had men friends. It hurt, just to think of it. And presents—things like that, gold in it—the thing had cost many a penny! His bitterness swelled; blackened his thoughts.

'That's it,' these ran now. 'Presents! Money! That's what girls want. Keep you dancing. String you. Make you spend a lot on 'em. That's what they're after!'

The situation was so painful that he got up abruptly and again skipped stones. Until the fact that she let him do it, amused herself practising songs and drinking in the beauty of the place and the day, became quite too much for him.

When he came gloomily over, she remarked:—

'We must be starting back.'

He stood motionless; even let her get up, with an amused expression throw his coat over her arm, and take a few steps along the beach.

'Oh, come on, don't go yet,' he begged. 'Why, we've only just got here.'

'It's a long walk. And it's hot. We'll never get back for dinner if we don't start. I mustn't keep Mildred waiting.'

He thought, 'A lot she'd care if she wanted to be with me!'

He said, 'What you doing to-night?'

'Oh, a couple of Chicago men are coming out.'

'Oh!' It was between a grunt and a snort. He struck out at such a gait that she finally said:—

'If you want to walk at that pace I'm afraid you'll have to walk alone.'

So far a failure. Just as with Humphrey, the situation had given him no opportunity to display his own kind of thing. The picturesque slang phrase had not then been coined; but Henry was in wrong and knew it. It was defeat.

The first faint hope stirred when Mrs Henderson rose from a hammock and came to the top step to clasp his hand. She thought him a genius. Well, she had been accompanist through all those rehearsals for Iolanthe. She ought to know.

She asked him now, in her alertly offhand way, to stay to dinner. He accepted instantly.