I Walked in Arden Part 11

"I'm not yet the d.u.c.h.ess of Towers," came her reply, as she vanished through the door. So she knew _Peter Ibbetson_!

Turning toward my little flat on the other side of the town came to me the bitter after the sweet. She had not invited me to call! I had not liked to ask, held back by a kind of stupid pride. Besides, I had been most certain she would ask me, and she hadn't. The rest of my walk was deep in gloom again.

Knowlton was sitting up for me. He made free of my rooms whenever he liked.

"Well," he greeted me, "how do you like the F. F.'s of Deep Harbor?"

"The dinner party was rather mixed, but on the whole not bad."

"From that I infer that the mixture contained at least one charming ingredient."

This shot was too near home for comfort; therefore I did not deign a reply.

"Don't forget to make your party call," grinned Knowlton at me as I undressed.

"I am not in the habit of overlooking dinner calls," I snapped back at him.

After Knowlton had grinned himself out of my rooms I sat on the edge of my bed and meditated. It was good to have pleasant thoughts again and to believe that a large part of the world was contained in a pair of grey eyes. "I am not in love," I considered, as I struggled, with the aid of a fountain pen, to say something appropriate in my diary. The devil of diaries is, unless one is a Mr. Pepys, that all the appropriate things are said on the uneventful, unemotional days. "No, it isn't love--it's recognition of kinship"--like some one in an old Greek story, after many wanderings I had, quite by chance, stumbled upon a woman, and when we had compared the tokens each of us carried, behold, they fitted perfectly! "I am not yet the d.u.c.h.ess of Towers," she said. "Not yet"--then I again thought of Bened.i.c.k and the dangers of inference founded upon feminine remarks. I had not been asked to call. For all I knew it was over. I might never see her again. I took down a copy of William Morris's "The Sundering Flood," for I remembered the heroine had grey eyes. All of William Morris's heroines had, I reflected. It was part of the pre-Raphaelite scheme of interior decorating; nevertheless it was comforting to read of grey-eyed beauty, especially as the pages of the diary blankly refused to be written upon. It grew late, and it was hard to separate my thoughts, my dreams, and what I was reading from the other. Indeed, they blended most deliciously--a sort of sentimental intoxication giving me a glimpse of the earthly paradise. Yet Reason kept whispering that it wasn't love; that I was mistaking sentimental self-deception for reality. "What a colossal and ridiculous structure you are erecting upon nothing," said Reason. "Upon a pair of grey eyes,"

I retorted. "Empires have been built upon less." "Ah," came back Reason, "that pair of grey eyes cared nothing for you, or they would have asked you to call." That was, for the moment, unanswerable. I was annoyed at Reason for waking me up, and for spite decided to write a poem. I was not in the habit of writing verses, for I had an abominable ear for rhythm. Nevertheless, writing a sonnet was the most efficient way of banishing Reason for that night. I got as far as the idea--something about two travellers in the desert of life meeting by chance at a well-rim, only to part again--when, mercifully, sleep overcame me; disgustingly sound, dreamless sleep, and I knew no more until next morning's alarm.

I got up to find Reason, reinforced by her auxiliary, bright sunshine, most firmly in the saddle. Ahead loomed a factory and a seven-o'clock whistle; gone were the magic shadows of the night and all the enchanted garden of sentimental fancies. I attacked my test tubes in a frenzy of efficiency. My eye was clear and my hand steady; ideas flowed fast.

Reason was triumphant. Then came a telephone call for me; Reason came a nasty cropper under Instinct's sudden leap. I knew what the call meant before I took the receiver down. Knowlton's cynical eye was upon me as I answered; I cared nothing for him this time.

"This is Helen Claybourne," came a soft voice over the wire.

"Yes, I know," I said; not perhaps the right words.

"I am glad you remember"--I felt her smile, half nave, half mischievous. "I meant last evening to ask you to call, and I forgot."

Reason's forces fled in a panic, scattered by the wild surge of my blood. "Mother will be pleased to have you next Thursday, if that is convenient."

"I'm awfully grateful," I stammered feebly. Why wouldn't words come?

"Until Thursday, then," the heavenly voice said calmly, and there was a click in my ear. The receiver had been hung up at the other end.

"Grat.i.tude is a feeling I never before heard you express," commented Knowlton drily, as I turned away with a sigh, tingling from head to foot. I was reckless with a wild, joyous insanity.

"Philosophy is a fool, Knowlton," I exclaimed gaily, "as you recall Hamlet long ago pointed out to Horatio, not in just these words. Nor does a peripeteia necessarily carry with it a tragic catastrophe, Aristotle notwithstanding."

"You crazy idiot," remarked Knowlton, "I'm not going to send you to any more parties if you come back with a hangover. You certainly have a h.e.l.l of a cla.s.sic education for a chemist," he added, "and how you like to show it off! What was that word you used--perry what?"

"Peripeteia, you mean," I condescended. "It is a reversal of fortune, marking the turning point of a Greek tragedy."

"Well, I'll show you a first-cla.s.s American tragedy if you don't go back to your lab and work," he grinned. "I don't admire the influence of the female s.e.x upon you, Ted."

"You are generalizing from a single example," I flung back as I left the room.

It was Tuesday, and Thursday seemed further away than does the week-end viewed from Monday morning. Knowlton pursued me remorselessly, trying to make me confess who my new friend was. All his cross-examinations were in vain. I took delight in hugging my happiness to myself, and in answering Knowlton's questions in the most extravagant and flambuoyant language I could think of. In the end I could not tell whether he was amused or annoyed. I worked night and day in the laboratory to pa.s.s the time. My hopes were soaring so high that I trembled for fear that Reason's sunbeams would melt the wax of their wings and send us crashing down. And with my work Knowlton was content. Industry was the sure pa.s.s to his favour.

On Thursday at the noon hour, however, Knowlton exploded a bombsh.e.l.l.

"We are going to work the plant twenty-four hours a day, Ted," he announced, "and I've put you in charge of the night-shift, beginning tonight."

My throat went dry. Which of the seven devils of h.e.l.l had led him to choose this night of all nights?

"It's tough on you, Ted, for you'll have to work right through the whole twenty-four hours the first day. But I want you to let the lab go tonight and simply act as superintendent. You'll be able to s.n.a.t.c.h some sleep in the office."

"I have an engagement this evening--it's very awkward," I began.

"Well, you've got two now, and the one at the factory is the one you'll keep."

In spite of Knowlton's decisiveness, we reached a compromise. He agreed to let me off from six o'clock until midnight, provided I would make up the time later, a concession which I eagerly accepted.

A few minutes after eight found me walking out Myrtle Boulevard, Deep Harbor's street of streets, toward the Claybourne residence. I had dressed in dinner clothes with exceeding care; no one could have guessed that my business for most of the night was to superintend the night-shift at a factory. The latter task was infinitely remote; if it crossed my mind at all, it was only as something mechanical, to be wound up later and left to run by itself. The important matter in hand was to verify first impressions concerning a pair of grey eyes.

A maid opened the door of a pleasant oak-panelled hallway, and before I had time to get my bearings the grey eyes were introducing me to "Mother." In an instant I had the feeling that the latter was not prepared to be enthusiastic. Strange young men from the outlands, of unknown origin, were evidently to be resisted. I looked at her closely, as I made my best and politest bow, hoping that my manners might carry a little conviction. Mrs. Claybourne was short and sallow, the latter caused, as I was later to learn, by her mania for tinkering with her health. She was a little fretful, with a tendency to imply that the world was not very considerate. "I told Helen I was too tired tonight to be very entertaining," was her wail, as I shook hands, "but she would ask you."

"We are not going to bother you at all, mother dear," Helen, as I dared think of her, interposed hastily. "Now do sit down in your big chair and read your magazine. We are going out on the side porch."

"Mr. Claybourne is at the club playing cards. I must apologize for his not being here--but then he seldom is," Mrs. Claybourne went on plaintively. "Helen, this room is so untidy it's a positive disgrace. I do think you might have Jane straighten it up a little when you expect callers. No one ever thinks of me. My nerves make me a very poor housekeeper, Mr. Jevons."

The room appeared to me most comfy and home-like. There were books and magazines and the atmosphere of a place in which people really lived. I murmured some deprecatory reply as Helen took me out on to the side porch. The latter was a heavenly place shut in by vines heavy with the odour of honeysuckle. There were deep wicker-basket chairs and a marvellous couch-like hammock. Unlike the Deep Harbor with which I was familiar, this spot was quiet and restful. The early October air was tinged with a delicious hint of frosts to come; the stars shone large and clear; the Milky Way seemed fairly to romp across the sky.

"You mustn't mind mother," said Helen, as we sat in two of the large chairs. "She isn't quite happy unless she has a grievance."

I laughed. It was so like the comment I had hoped her capable of making.

"I'm afraid I'm her grievance tonight--I wish I thought a happy one."

"I'm afraid that's partly true," Helen replied. "Mother is an extreme stickler for the conventions. She complains that no one knows who you are. It was useless for me to tell her that I knew you and didn't care who you are--Mother says I am hopelessly of this generation--and regards that as an argument against you. I finally told her you were coming anyway--and, well--," she laughed,--"here you are."

So she had defended me and fought for me! My invitation to call was therefore no mere empty social form such as common politeness toward a stranger, but an offer of friendship.

"I really can set your mother's mind at rest," I said. "I belong to one or two decent clubs--so does my father--"

"Please don't--I'm not asking for a pa.s.sport," she interrupted. "As for mother, she will get used to you in time."

This was encouraging, for it deliberately implied other calls to come.

Of course, the upshot was that I told her all about myself, pouring out the pent-up loneliness acc.u.mulated since my arrival. She listened as only a sympathetic girl can listen to a man talking endlessly about himself. At times there came delicious silences during which we stared at the stars, and again a gentle question from her would start me off once more. It was with a shock that we suddenly noticed "mother"

silhouetted in the doorway.

"Helen!" came the complaining voice. "It's half past ten." "Good Lord,"

I groaned inwardly, "I might have stayed all night." I rose hastily, Helen more deliberately.

"Very well, mother," her soft voice said, "Ted is just going." It was the first time she had called me Ted. I fell over a wicker tabouret in my delirium. As we pa.s.sed into the living room, Mrs. Claybourne b.u.t.tonholed me.

"Have you a grandfather, young man?"