'Oh, no,' Henry put in mechanically, 'I won't run.'
'I'm sure you won't. But it's got to be faced. You're hit especially.'
'Because you lived alone there, in the boarding-house, for two years. And you were caught with her at Hoffmann's, she in bloomers, drinking beer. Just a cheap little tough. And there isn't a thing you can do but live it down. Nobody will say a direct word to you.'
'That's what I'll do,' said Henry, 'live it down.'
Henry sighed. 'I've faced hard things, Hump.'
'I'll wash up. Where we going to eat? Stanley's?'
'I suppose. I don't feel like eating much.'
It was not until they had started out that Henry gave signs of a deeper reaction.
On the outer doorstep he stood motionless.
'Coming along?' asked Humphrey, trying to hide his anxiety.
'Why--yes. In a minute... Say, Hump, do you suppose they'll--you know, I ain't afraid'--an uprush of feeling coloured his voice, brought a shake to it--'I don't know. Perhaps I _am_ afraid. All those people--you know, at Stanley's...'
Humphrey did an unusual thing; laid his hand on Henry's shoulder affectionately; then took his arm and led him along the alley, saying:--
'We'll go down to the lunch counter. It's just as well, Hen. Better get sure of yourself first.'
He wondered, as they walked rapidly on--Henry had a tendency to walk fast and faster when brooding or excited--whether the boy would ever get sure of himself. There were queer, bitter, profoundly confusing thoughts in his own mind, and an emotional tension, but back of all this, coming through it and softening him, his feeling for Henry. It was something of an elder brother's feeling, I think. Henry seemed very young. It was wicked that he had to suffer with all those cynical older men. It might mark the boy for life. Such things happened.
He decided to watch him closely. Sooner or later the thing would hit him full. He would have to be protected then. Even from himself, perhaps. In a way it oughtn't to be worse for him than it had been after the Hoffmann's Garden incident.
But it was worse. The other had been, after all, no more than an incident. This, now, was an overpowering fact. The town didn't have to notice the other. And despite the gossiping instinct, your small community is rather glad to edge away from unpleasant surmises that are not established facts. Facts are so uncompromising. And so disrupting. And sometimes upsetting to standardised thought.