# McClure's Magazine/Volume 49/Number 3/Soap and Sophocles

from McClure's Magazine, July 1917, pp. 18–20, 50, 52. Accompanying by illustrations may be omitted.
Soap and Sophocles
Henry of Greenwich Village—to Say Nothing of Mary!
by Earl Derr Biggers
Illustrations by John Alonzo Williams
When the boy came into the room and announced that Mr. Henry Trimmer wished to see me, I thought of course it was Henry Trimmer the younger, and there was no enthusiasm in my tone when I said: “Have him come in.” Then my door was pushed open and Henry Trimmer the father entered, as buoyant, as vigorous, as refreshing as a night letter from a new salesman who has just landed a twenty-thousand-dollar order.
I had not seen him for two years or more, and I was mighty glad to see him now. From my earliest boyhood I had admired this man who, starting as a ragged, barefoot boy in a flax-mill, was now the soap king of the country, and had made the name of our little town out in the Middle West known wherever men aspire to cleanliness. He sat on the edge of his chair, fairly vibrating with energy, and talked. He talked of his wife, the best woman in the world; of his four automobiles, the finest made; of his business, the most prosperous in existence; of his town, the fairest and fastest growing on the little old map. It wasn't brag and bluster, either: it was just the enthusiasm of a great lover talking about the things he loved. So that as I listened my spirits, drooping at the end of a hard day, began to rise, and outside my window in the winter dusk I was conscious of New York alight, a city fine and flaming.
For ten minutes he talked, and not once did he mention Henry Trimmer, Junior. It was an omission to be noted, and I began to worry over it.
Finally he took out a couple of expensive cigars, handed one to me, and bit the end from the other with that savageness which is often commented on in novels. When he had completed the ceremony of lighting, he thoughtfully laid the match down on an ash-tray, and spoke what was on his mind,
“Jim,” he said, “you were several years ahead of my boy in college, but you promised to keep an eye on him, and I reckon you kept your word. If you did, you couldn't help but form some opinion of Henry, and I'm here to find out what that opinion is.”
I considered carefully.
“Well,” I began slowly, “Henry's a very nice boy——”
“Listen,” broke in the old man, leaning forward earnestly, “nobody can fool me—you know that I want your honest opinion, and don't try to spare my feelings.”
“Why, Henry's all right,” I said quickly. “Perhaps he's not just the son you wanted. He's somewhat frail, and he's quite—quite visionary. Studious—very studious. I recall that when I went to see him once, he was reading Sophocles in the original.”
“The original what?” asked Trimmer, worried.
“Greek,” said I. “He was reading Sophocles in the original Greek.”
“My God!” said Trimmer. “Can Henry do that?”
He sat for a moment, appalled, thoughtful.
“When I saw Henry last,” I went on, “he seemed to be suffering from a malady quite common among the youth of our day. In other words, I am afraid Henry is inclined to think he thinks.”
“Exactly.” Trimmer, slapping his knee with a great, burly hand. “He thinks he thinks. And the idea has just plumb made a fool of him.”
“I wouldn't worry if I were you,” I said. “It is an affliction that age is bound to cure——”
“Jim,” said old Henry Trimmer, “you was at the station back home the morning I sent my boy away to school for the first time. I wasn't ashamed to have you see tears in my eyes, and I ain't ashamed now to tell you there was a troublesome lump in my throat. He was all I had, and I was sending him off to that high-faluting eastern college. I was sending him off fine and clean and human, and I couldn't help wondering what they would give me back.”
He sat puffing at his costly cigar.
“I wanted him to come back a fine, clean, human man, and take over the business I had been building for him through the years. I ain't ashamed of my business. The world is cleaner for Trimmer's soap—and you know what cleanliness is next to. So I waited for Henry—a little puzzled by some of the things he seemed to be up to out there in the East, but supposing they must be necessary to the making of a gentleman—I waited hopefully.”
“Yes?” said I.
“Jim,” said Trimmer, “that highbrow bunch has never given me back my boy at all. He's been out of college two years, and he ain't my boy any more. There's a gulf as wide as the Atlantic, and me and the soap business is on one side, and Henry and a fellow named Karl Marx is on the other.”
“Nonsense,” I answered. “Henry will soon get over that——”
“Perhaps. I wonder. We don't see much of him any more. At Christmas I persuaded him to come home, for his mother's sake. He came—and he made a few remarks about soap. He worried his mother sick by coming down to breakfast every morning with a new God he'd thought up in the night. After Christmas, which he tolerated as a childish affair for keeping old folks amused, he hurried back here to New York.”
“Where is he now?” I inquired.
“Now,” said Trimmer, “he's down in Greenwich Village. I don't know much about Greenwich Village, but so far as I can gather it's a sort of nursery where a lot of little, new-born radicals are playing with some pretty dangerous toys.”
“That seems to describe it,” I smiled. “So Henry has come to Bohemia?”
“With bells on,” Trimmer sighed. “He's an anarchist, a socialist, an internationalist, a pacifist, an advocate of birth control, a suffragist, and a lot of other things that I can't think of, but he can. Yes, Jim, that education I gave him seems to have gone to his head and befuddled him—like strong drink. And—I haven't told you the worst.”
“Good heavens—what——”
Poor old Trimmer sadly shook his head.
"My boy's a poet,” he said, looking as though he expected me to rise at that and throw him from the room.
“That too will pass,” I comforted the old man.
“Worse yet—he ain't an honest, hard-working poet—the kind that sits up nights hunting rhymes. He won't be bound by the old conventions, Henry won't—he's too blamed lazy. He writes—he writes this here——verhs li-ber.”
“Oh—free verse,” said I.
An expression of joy spread over the old man's face.
“Is that the English of it?” he cried. “Thanks, Jim, for telling me. Every time we tried to curse him out about it, I've got all tangled up with the French, and my remarks have lost their punch. But—free verse—I can get my teeth into that.”
“I don't recall having seen any of his—er—work,” I reflected.
“I should hope not,” replied Trimmer. “You won't, unless you take to reading these little misspelled magazines of protest printed on wrapping-paper in a cellar, sometimes humorously called a garret. Lovely sentiments you'll find in them, Jim—things that will make you blush if you haven't forgot all the good old Middle West teaching. That's where Henry shines, with his lazy, unrhymed odes to a rat, or his lines praising some woman no better than she should be. Thank God, none of those miserable sheets ever get out home. So far, I've been able to keep his literary endeavors from his mother.”
He put down the cigar, which he had already smoked to within an inch of extinction.
“I suppose there's a humorous side to this situation,” he said. “But I can't see it, Jim. He's all I've got, Henry is, and I've been planning for him ever since he lay in his cradle, and looking forward—always looking forward——”
He walked to the window and stood gazing out, unable to say any more. And as I sat staring at his broad, honest back, I felt a hot wave of anger toward the silly, vapid-faced little son who had so grievously disappointed him.
“Have you had a talk with Henry?” I asked.
“Yes, Jim—I reckon I've had too many,” he said. “They only seem to make things worse. Yesterday I had him uptown for lunch—and—well, we had more or less of a row. He returned my last check, and said he was through taking money from me. And now—I'm not going to see him again. I've got pride, too—I've got more than he has. I'm through. He can go his way. If he never comes back to me I—I suppose I'll just have to make the best of it.”
“It's a rotten shame,” I cried.
“I had an idea—a sort of a last hope,” said Trimmer. “Jim—I want to ask a favor of you. Go down and have a talk with him—I'll give you his address—the south side of Washington Square. He used to have some respect for your opinion. I'll be at the Waldorf a few days longer. Could you see him tonight?”
The assignment did not appeal to me, but here was an old friend in trouble.
“Surely,” I said. “I'll do my best.”
“That's mighty good of you. Come to dinner with me tomorrow night and report. And—Jim——”
“Yes.”
“Explain to him how I feel about the free verse. I may have been too excited to make myself clear—but I figure it shoves a weak character. If he wants to shirk his responsibility to the soap business—all right. But why should he shirk his responsibility to his new enthusiasms, too? And that's what he's doing when he writes poetry that don't rhyme. Ask him if he can't—for my sake—make it rhyme, Jim.”
“I'll ask him,” I promised.
With no show of the vigor that had accompanied him into the room, Henry Trimmer left it. My poor old friend!
At a quarter-past six that evening I went down to Washington Square. During my first years in New York I, too, had lived there in the shadow of the Arch. Saner days those, for the little radicals were as yet unborn. Serious minded artists and writers labored hard all day, and if in the evening they called in Giuseppi, the hurdy-gurdy man, and danced to his music, they did so because they wanted relaxation, and not because they hoped the Sunday newspapers would use the story, with pictures. What a change since then! Whence have they come, these wild-eyed women with the bobbed hair, these anemic boys with a fondness for flowing ties and a loud scorn for home ones? Come they have, unaccountable offspring of middle-class shopkeepers, to fox-trot and debate; to make of the Square and of Greenwich Village to the west a poseurs' paradise.
I had decided that my meeting with Henry Trimmer, Junior, would be more effective if it seemed an accident, so I sought for him through the dingy eating places of the neighborhood. I had sampled the odors of five of these basements before I discovered him at last, hardly distinguishable through the smoke that floated about the tables of the “Foodery.” He seemed a little more pale and unsubstantial than when I had seen him last, and a pipe, almost as large as he, hung from a corner of mouth.
“Well, Henry,” I cried with apparent enthusiasm, “this is luck. Can you make room for me?”
He pushed his chair to one side, and I crowded in.
“Never expected to see you down here,” he said.
“Oh, I often come,” I lied. “I find it very refreshing after the marts of trade.”
“I should think you would,” said Henry.
As I sat down I was conscious of a most unwelcome female at my right. Her hair, of course, was bobbed; her face had the sallowness of the mental dyspeptic; she smoked a cheap, unsavory cigarette. As for her costume, it was a green, flowing sort of thing in which she should never have been seen outside her own bathroom. Bad taste and she unquestionably were pals; this showed not alone in her gown and in her choice of cigarettes, but also in the intimate topic which she was discussing in a high-pitched, strident voice.
“Henry!” she cried. “Henry—this is cruel of you—it is unworthy. Tell him the truth!”
“That's May Martin beside you,” said Henry, and added, admiringly: “She's an artist. Perhaps you saw her last cover on The Yelp of Pain.”
“I never see The Yelp of Pain,” I told him.
“You are missing,” said Henry gravely, “the most significant single factor in the literature of your day.”
“I am not interested in the literature of my day,” I replied. “Alas! I am more interested in finding a good hair-restorer. You see, I am growing old.”
At that the woman, whom I had not suspected of listening, turned and shot a look at me.
“Growing old?” she rasped. “Then this is no place for you.” And returned to her debate.
There were present a number of other devotees of bad taste, male and female. They wrestled valiantly with words. It is not permissible to set down here the topics they discussed. I must indeed be growing old, for they annoyed me greatly. Particularly the women, whose voices were reminiscent of a trolley-car turning a sharp curve on a frosty night. Occasionally the women laughed, hysterically. They went on laughing long after they had forgotten the banality that amused them. They seemed unable to stop.
The debate grew louder and louder—a climax seemed impending. It came. Somebody put a nickel in a mechanical piano, and a wild fox-trot ensued. You will find that it is the usual peroration to debate in Greenwich Village. A friend who lives near the Liberty Club tells me that his nights are made hideous by the mad revels of the master minds.
When the riot was at its height I paid my check—and Henry's—and we went out into the night. It was a blessed relief. I was surprised to realize that up in the sky the cold little stars were twinkling, while over the yellow church flamed the familiar Cross.
“Well, Henry,” I said, as we walked across the Square, “all this is great fun—I envy you. How amusing it must be to be able to study these odd creatures at close range. It will give you something to chuckle over when you go back home at last.”
He stopped and stared at me. “Back home!” he cried, “You don't suppose I'm ever going back there?”
“Why I thought——” I stammered.
“Perish the thought. I'd die. I tried it at Christmas. The Philistines! The Philistines! Bound by all the old conventions. Slaves to the ancient superstitions. They're living in the dark.”
“But your father, Henry. You're all he has. He depended on you.”
"Too bad. But it can't be helped. My path lies far from soap and the Middle West.”
“I saw your father yesterday,” I ventured. “Henry, he is suffering——”
“Inevitable. Age must suffer, because youth must advance. I shall write some verses about that:
“'Youth must advance!
Over the fallen forms of those beloved——'
I'll work it out tonight.”
I subdued an impulse to throttle him.
“You'll soon tire of this,” I said weakly. “You'll be glad to go back to those who love you——”
We had reached the house where Henry lived. He held out his hand.
“Glad I saw you,” he announced. “Good night.”
I had known that my errand was foredoomed to failure, but it seemed treason to the father to give up so easily.
“If you don't mind,” I said, “I'll come in and smoke a cigar with you.”
Henry hesitated. He seemed a bit startled at the suggestion. “I was going to work on the verses,” he said. “However—come along.”
We ascended the steps. At the door he paused, and fumbled with his keys.
“You—er—you mustn't be surprised,” he stammered, “if there should be—er—a young woman in my place.”
“Of course not,” I answered.
“Miss Mary Elkhart,” he prepared me further. “She has consented to share my struggles—to be my inspiration—my—er—my very good friend.”
“Your wife?” I asked quite casually.
Henry laughed.
“Obsolete term,” he said. “Poor old Jim. Wake up! The world do move!”
He preceded me up the stairs. I gasped a little as I followed. I thought of our town back home on a Sunday morning, with the crowds winding down the Avenue to church, the frock-coated citizens and their prim little wives. Good Lord! If they could see our Henry now!
I was prepared to be very angry with the designing woman who had snared this silly boy, for I expected another like the green-robed creature of the restaurant. Then Henry opened the door, and I got the surprise of my life. For the little girl who advanced to meet us had an honest, pretty face, and her eyes were clear and untroubled. I transferred my anger to Henry, who was introducing me to “Miss Elkhart.”
“Poor old Jim,” laughed Henry. “He wanted to know if we were married.”
The indelicate little puppy! I was pleased to note that the girl blushed and seemed embarrassed.
“Poor old Jim must know,” she said, “that in Greenwich Village marriage is the one disgrace that can't he lived down. Won't you have some coffee?”
I said I would, and as I helped her with the things she said:
“I often make it for Henry, when he is writing——”
“Oh, yes,” I answered. “Are you doing much, Henry?”
“I am getting under way,” he told me, strutting up and down and running his hand through his pompadour. “I write only when the spirit moves. There are big things coming. I feel it here.” He hammered his chest.
“Must be a fine feeling,” I muttered.
“It is. I will write the name of Henry Trimmer where the years cannot obliterate it. Poor old father—he engraves the name on six hundred thousand cakes of soap a day. What of it? A twist of the wrist under a faucet, and the name is gone. But I—I——”
The girl shut him off with a cup of coffee.
“We are so excited about tomorrow night,” she said.
“Tomorrow night?” I questioned.
“The turning point in my career,” waved Henry. “Tomorrow night the Pantry Shelf Players change their bill.”
“The Pantry Shelf Players?” I repeated, surprised. I thought I had heard of them all.
“Do you mean to say you don't know about the Pantry Shelf?” cried Henry in anguish. “There was a story about us in the Sunday World not long ago.” He handed me a much-thumbed clipping. “You've never seen us?”
“No—but Ive seen others just as bad.” I said unkindly.
“You are sneering,” proclaimed Henry, “at the greatest force for good that has come into the American theatre during its long history. I do not venture that on my own authority—I am merely quoting the famous dramatic critic——”
“Just what,” I broke in, “has the change of bill at the Pantry Shelf Playhouse to do with you?”
“They are going to present my new one-act drama in free verse,” he replied. “My heart's blood has gone into the writing of it. I may tell you that the man who has staged it says that in the tragic inevitability of its ending it is comparable to the work of Sophocles. And he ought to know. He once worked a week for Arthur Hopkins.”
“You used to be rather fond of Sophocles,” I smiled.
“I'm fond of him still—Philistine though he is,” said Henry. “Really, I'd like to have you see this play of mine. I call it 'Should a Child Be Told?' It deals with——”
“I know just what it deals with,” I said hastily.
“I should like to feel, tomorrow night,” Henry went on, “that there was someone from my old town in the audience, someone who could, at least in a measure, understand my noble—almost holy purpose in writing this thing.”
“I would do my best Henry,” I promised
“Could I write you a pass?”
“I don't know. Could you?”
“Easiest thing in the world.” He wrote it, with a great flourish. “There you are. Bring a friend.”
“Just where is the Pantry Shelf Playhouse?” I inquired.
“It is up an alley to the north of the Square,” he said. “Up a very dark alley. It was a Bishop's woodshed, but we converted it. Yes, sir—up a dark alley you will find the one theatre in New York where the flame of inspiration burns bright, where there are no sordid commercial motives, where the best minds of the country——”
“Yes, yes, Henry,” I said. “I'll try to find the alley. And now I really must be going——”
I shook hands with Henry's inspiration, and left Henry himself in the midst of a lecture on what he proposed to do for the poor old drama.
Out in the Square I looked up at the stars, and shuddered. Again I saw our old home town on a Sabbath morning. I saw Henry's mother, stiff-backed, unbending, sitting with her prayer-book in the family pew. And without enthusiasm I looked forward to my dinner the next evening with Henry Trimmer, Senior. It must prove for me, 1 felt, one vast orgy of deception.
Nevertheless, I went to the Waldorf the following night outwardly smiling and cheerful. Henry Trimmer the father met me in the lobby. He was quite handsome in a dinner-coat; to look at him few would have guessed that he had never had one on until he was well past forty. There was a question in his fine old eyes.
“Any luck, Jim?” he inquired.
“I'm sorry——” I began.
“I sent you on a useless errand,” he sighed. “I wasted your time. Forgive me.”
“Not at all,” I said. “I had a very interesting visit.”
We sat down at a table in the grill.
“But your visit was entirely without result?” he questioned wistfully.
“Not entirely,” I told him. “It inspired a poem. Henry has probably completed it by now. It is to the effect that youth must advance, over the fallen forms of those beloved——”
“I suppose I'm a fallen form?” said Trimmer.
“Undoubtedly.”
“The young idiot! I'd like to rise up and trip him.”
“My advice,” I said, “is to let Henry strictly alone for a year. If he has any stuff in him at all, he's bound to weary in time of the shallow young frauds that surround him. Then, too, he has always been used to money. The market price of free verse is little or nothing. There will ensue painful moments. Landlords are insistent, even in Washington square.”
“I suppose that's all I can do,” answered Trimmer. “But I'd do it a lot more cheerfully if I was surer of Henry. I don't like to say it, Jim, but the boy he's—he's a weakling. Why? I've asked myself over and over. I'm no mollycoddle. Our people have always been strong.”
He shook his head.
“What Henry needs is a firm hand,” he sighed. “I've been hoping some good girl would get hold of him. But it's no use. She'd never waste her time on Henry.”
I choked on my soup as Miss Mary Elkhart was thus suddenly recalled to me. With intense relief I heard Trimmer drop the topic of his son and turn to other matters.
He told me of the old town, on the pavements of which I had not set foot in years; he gloated over the results of the last census; he let his imagination soar as he prophesied the next. Then soap enthralled him. There was much of the old vivacity in his manner as he talked along.
We had reached the coffee before young Henry came back into the conversation. Then Trimmer startled me by inquiring:
“Jim—just what is the Pantry Shelf Playhouse?”
“Oh,” I said, “it's another of these back-alley efforts to resuscitate the drama.”
“Then it ain't a regular theatre?”
“No—it's one more irregular one. They're very numerous. Every little group of serious thinkers in town has its own. They satisfy a fierce, hot longing for the white glare of publicity——”
“Jim—do you know that the Pantry Shelf Players are going to stage a play of Henry's tonight?”
“Why—yes,” said I. “Henry told me. How did you happen to hear of it?”
He took a clipping from his pocket.
“I ran across it in the paper this morning,” he answered. Henry's play is called 'Should a Child Be Told?' Sounds as if it might be a little fairy story, or something like that.”
“Perhaps.”
“Or maybe it's about Santa Claus.”
The simple old soul appalled me. I could not answer.
“I thought of that,” he went on, “because I remembered back to the time we told Henry there was no Santa Claus. He was a funny kid+~he cried for two days. Poor little fellow!”
This was pathetic. I sought vainly some way of turning the conversation.
“Perhaps he's made a play of that, Jim,” he went on.
“The play is in free verse,” I said, not knowing exactly what that had to do with it.
“What of it? It might be good, at that. I tell you, Jim, if the boy really could write—I mean about decent things—if he had the divine spark—there's nothing I wouldn't do for him. I'd be a proud man. And—maybe he can. I mean to find out. You and I are going down to this theatre tonight.”
“No—no——” I gasped.
“Why not?”
“You wouldn't like it. The plays are young; the acting is young—and awful. The settings are after the manner of the new school, which means they look as though they had been made by loving hands at home. Have you seen the new musical show at the——”
“Nonsense. Come along—it's getting late.”
I wanted to seize him by the coat, to drag him uptown, not down. But I felt as weak as Henry, Junior looked.
“All right,” I said at last. “Here's a pass Henry wrote for me. He told me to bring a friend.”
Trimmer took the scrap of paper and smiled at it. “Fine!” he said. “Come on, Jim. Where is this Playhouse?”
“It's up an alley. It was once a Bishop's woodshed.”
“A woodshed!” He roared with laughter. “That's where I used to take Henry across my knee.”
I shuddered. It seemed to me inevitable that the Bishop's woodshed would shortly see an ancient rite repeated.
After a protracted search, we found the alley. It was very dark, as Henry had predicted; the bright flame of inspiration did not appear to be on the job. In front of the theatre Trimmer took out Henry's pass and, tearing it into bits, scattered the white remnants over the cobblestones.
“We'll pay our way, Jim,” he said. “We'll do our share to help.”
He handed a yellow bill to the young man at the door. The young man trembled and there was quite a flurry of excitement. The situation appeared unprecedented; a great cry for change went up. Commercialism, which the serious thinkers scorned, was creeping in; soap was succoring art, and art didn't appear to find it so very unpleasant, either.
While we waited for the change, lean young radicals whispered all about us. There was a rumor that the police would raid, because of the frankness of the plays. They spoke hopefully, but even the most sanguine among them seemed to realize that this was too good to be true.
We took our seats on a hard bench halfway down the little room. The curtain rose on the first of three one-act plays. This one dealt with a man and a girl who were living together in Greenwich Village without benefit of clergy. The topic was inevitable; so also was the attempt to out-Bernard Shaw in dealing with it. Henry Trimmer did not flinch. He sat staring this raw little play full in the face. When it was ended he made a solitary comment.
“I hope the Bishop don't need any wood tonight,” he said. “I'd feel mighty uncomfortable to have him come through that door.”
“Cheer up,” I answered. “The Bishop's dead and gone.”
The second playlet was not bad at all; it was so good, in fact, that I forgot for a moment the imminence of “Should a Child Be Told?” written out of the heart's blood of Henry Trimmer, Junior. Then the curtain went down, the lights flared for the last intermission, and I began to hope passionately that the place would catch fire, the police come, the leading man drop dead—for any untoward event, in short, that would prevent the presentation of young Henry's masterpiece.
My hopes were dashed; the curtain rose for the final play. By my side the father fidgeted nervously in his seat.
Henry's play was all that I had dreaded. Perhaps it was even more. I got no very clear idea of the thing. I was conscious of a terrific verbal wrestle with the problems of sex; of a confused stream of ideas on the subject stolen from continental writers, hashed over, warmed up, and served to us by Henry. As I watched, all I could think of was the father's prophecy that no doubt Henry had made a play of the Santa Claus myth. The simple old man, breathing hard at my side, seemed more pathetic than ever before.
The curtain went down on Henry's grand climax, and his father slipped to his knees. For one wild moment I thought he might be praying, but he was only searching for his hat. He rescued it from beneath the restless feet of the radicals; he seized me by the arms and propelled me toward the door. The young mob was shouting for Trimmer.
“Let's get out quick, Jim,” the old man panted. In the alley-way he stopped.
“Take me somewhere where I can think,” he directed.
I took him to the café of the Lafayette. He dropped wearily into his chair, and for a long time said nothing. Finally he spoke bitterly.
“Should a Child Be Told?” he cried. “My God, Jim—that's not the question. Let one of these bright young men write me a play on the other side of it. Should a Parent Be Told? Should a parent be allowed to learn the thoughts that are in the mind of his radical son? I say—no! It's cruel, it's inhuman, it's barbarous.”
He paused. “For thirty years,” he said, “I've been working to make the name of Trimmer stand for cleanliness. And now my son wants to make it stand for dirt. I won't have it!” His face was pale with anger; he brought his heavy fist down on the frail table. “I won't stand it! I'll go to him—I'll give him one last chance to come home—and if he won't, then I'm through with him—forever. I'll go to him tonight.”
“Don't do that,” I cried, appalled.
“Tonight!” he thundered.
“No,” I pleaded. “You would strike him at the very worst time—fresh from what he no doubt considers a great triumph. You wouldn't have a chance. Wait till tomorrow—send for him——”
“I'm going tonight, Jim,” said Trimmer, gravely. “This is my job. I'd like to have you come with me, if you will. If not——”
“I'll come,” I said, but my heart yearned toward the green busses running north along the lighted Avenue.
We pressed the button above Henry's mail-box, and the lock clicked joyously. No doubt Henry thought that it was Fame ringing his bell at midnight, determined to rout him out. Inside the door I pushed ahead of the old man and tore up the stairs like mad.
“Follow me,” I called.
I beat him by a flight of stairs; I knocked at Henry's door and pushed it open. Henry was there, so also was the girl.
“Your father's with me, Henry,” I warned.
Without a word the girl went into the other room and closed the door. Henry and I turned just as the elder Trimmer marched upon the scene.
“Good evening, Henry,” he said, panting from the climb.
Henry removed the semi-detachable pipe from his vacant face, which held more color than usual.
“Hello, Father,” he said. “You're out rather late—for you.”
“I happened to be in the neighborhood,” answered Trimmer. “I have just attended t performance at the Pantry Shelf Playhouse.”
“You were there?” cried Henry. “Then you witnessed my triumph. You heard the cheers—the calls for Trimmer. You realized that, whatever you may think of my work——”
“I am not here to discuss my opinion of your work,” his father said. “I am here on a serious errand. I am here to give you one last chance. You know me well enough to understand that I mean what I say I want you to come home.”
“Home?” sneered Henry. “Back among the Philistines——”
“My Lord, boy,” Trimmer cried, “you were born and raised out there. They're your own people. Have you no affection for the place, like Jim and I have? Don't you ever think of the quiet Avenue on a warm spring night, with the screen doors slamming, and the little Fords creeping by in the dusk and old Ed Smith out watering his lawn? Or of Main Street on a hot afternoon, with the clerks loafing in the doorways——”
“I despise it,” Henry cut in. “It is a hot-bed of narrowness, of ignorance——”
“Think hard before you answer. You won't come back?”
“Come back! After tonight? At this, the turning point in my career——”
“All right.” Trimmer's face was set and hard. “That ends it. Stay here and drag our name through the mire. Stay here and muddle and fail. You're no son of mine. I'm through with you. Good night.”
He turned to go. And suddenly he saw thrown over a chair, a woman's coat. He picked it up. It was all quite like a play.
“Is this your coat, Henry?” he inquired.
“Put that down!” raged Henry. “Of course it's not my coat. It belongs to Mary Elkhart—to the girl who has consented to share my poverty, my struggles, to help me climb to the heights——”
“Are you married?” The old man's tone sent shivers up and down my spine.
“Put it down, I say!” Little Henry was almost in tears. “What's that to you——”
“Are you married?”
“Marriage! Bah! How you cling to the old superstitions. Marriage is for the butcher's boy—the chambermaid. People who really think cannot be bound by archaic ties—they must be free to live their lives——”
Tragedy had pushed comedy back into the wings. Henry Trimmer, Senior looked very old and worn; his face was gray. He threw the coat from him.
“This will kill your mother,” he said hoarsely.
At that the door to the other room opened, and Mary Elkhart stood there on the threshold. Her cheeks were wet with tears; she seemed taller, and of finer grain, than I had thought her.
“Henry!” she cried as we all faced her. “Henry—this is cruel of you—it is unworthy. Tell him the truth!”
Henry did not reply. He sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands.
“What is the truth?” asked Henry Trimmer, Senior.
The girl advanced to him, and held out her hand—her left hand.
“My wedding-ring,” she said. “Yes, Henry—I took it from the drawer and put it on.” Again she turned to the father. “Henry and I were married before I came here to live,” she said. “Henry insisted on it.”
“Henry insisted——” Trimmer gasped.
“If he hadn't,” she went on, “I shouldn't have come. Of course, we couldn't tell his friends—Henry would have lost his standing in the Village. So we had to fake—to pretend——” She laughed. “It's ludicrous, isn't it? We're all trying so hard to be devilish and bohemian—but—few of us can. We're so hopelessly middle class—there are too many generations of Puritans behind us. My father is a Methodist minister out in Indiana.”
“Mary!” pleaded Henry in anguish.
“Oh, yes,” she said, “we're mostly frauds and fakes—we advanced thinkers in the Village. There's many a horrible secret like the one I've just revealed. And I'm sick of it all—I'm deathly sick of it. Just now, Mr. Trimmer, when you spoke of your little Avenue in the evening—I sobbed behind that door. I want to go back to a town like that——”
Henry raised a startled head.
“I want a little house with pansies planted round the porch—I want a nursery and a hired girl. I want to get away from all this radical foolishness, and go out there, and be what I was meant to be.” She raised her voice, which was usually soft and gentle. “That's what I'm going to do,” she announced. “We'll go back with your father, Henry——”
“What!” screamed Henry. “You tell me this tonight—tonight when I have put my foot on the first rung of the ladder—when my play that has been compared to Sophocles——”
“Yes,” said the girl, “we're going back to the worth-while things. Don't rant, Henry—you can't impress me.” She held out her hands to the old man. “You and I together,” she said, “we must make him see.”
Trimmer's face was beautiful.
“Ive always wanted a daughter,” he smiled. “And by the Lord Harry—I've got one—a real one—now.”
He kissed her. From the depths of his chair Henry was muttering: “Back among the Philistines.”
No one was noticing me. So I opened the door very softly, and slipped out.
All this happened several months ago. Today's mail brought a letter from Henry Trimmer, Senior. I will close with a quotation:
“You'd never know Henry now,” he writes. “The little lady is a wonder, Jim. She's got a firm hand, and it's on Henry. He needed it. They've got a dandy little house up on Maple Avenue. Henry comes down to the office every morning at nine, and goes home at five. I've turned the correspondence over to him. Sometimes there's a queer sort of rhythm to his letters, and I suspect him of working a little free verse into a story of how two cases of Trimmer's Ocean Foam, Shipment E-47, happened to go astray. But I overlook it. Of course he hasn't entirely reformed. He's working in his spare time on a novel, which he says is to be in the Russian manner. But Mary tells me the Russians are mighty long-winded, and that he'll probably never finish it, especially now that he's taken up golf. Mary is working on some baby clothes.”
And a postscript:
“Henry says he expects the novel to keep the name of Trimmer alive in Greenwich Village. I pointed out to him that we are now engraving that name on eight hundred thousand cakes of soap a day. He just shook his head. I guess he's like me; he's got a sort of a—kind of a feeling that the radicals will never see it there.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1933, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 90 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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