I Walked in Arden Part 30

Helen smiled and turned over the pages of a book I had given her.

"Yesterday," she replied, "the family tolerated us, but really ignored the fact of our engagement. Today they regard it as something that has actually happened--and all because we sat at table with a lot of friends and told them what they knew already."

"The world, it appears to me, is conducted by a series of meaningless ceremonies," I remarked in my wise manner. "It will be the same over our marriage. Nothing could make us mean any more to each other than we do now--but the family will attach great importance to the marriage."

"Don't be silly, Ted," said Helen,--unexpectedly, to me, taking the side of convention. "Of course they will. We have to be married."

"I'm not arguing against it," I said, and Helen gently slapped me. "But I wonder why?"

"My mother," Helen answered simply, "has a genuine belief in the ceremony of the church. To her, marriage is a sacrament."

"And what do you think?" I queried.

Helen looked out of the window thoughtfully. "I don't know, Ted, dear. I felt it was a sacrament when I opened my eyes, after the horse fell with me, and I found you holding me in your arms. I know then that nothing on earth could make us belong any more to each other than we did then. I think that would have been all I should have asked--just to know you loved me."

"That is all I want to know, Helen dear," I said, taking her in my arms.

"But of course we shall get married according to the rules."

"You delicious idiot," Helen laughed, "of course we shall. Can you imagine Deep Harbor, if we didn't?"

The prospect was dazzling to the imagination. Miss Hershey and the daily _Eagle_ between them--I laughed at the thought.

"I wouldn't do anything to hurt dad," Helen added softly, and I again held her close.

"I was only moralizing on this question of ceremonies, Helen precious,"

I whispered. "It has always amazed me that people attach such great value to them. I suppose it is, after all, because ceremonies have to be public, and they are thus a public acknowledgement of a.s.sumed obligations."

"If the church means anything to you, then its sanction must be a tremendous comfort," Helen mused. "I sometimes wish I knew what I believed, don't you, Ted?"

"I am trying to find out, but I don't know. Sometimes I think chemistry is the key to the mystery--and then it isn't. Chemistry didn't make your grey eyes, sweetheart. There is a Helen in them that no chemistry made."

"I don't think chemistry made Ted, either," she smiled shyly. "For if it did, he would be more logical."

"There's a nasty knock in that somewhere, young lady," I said in mock anger, "but I'm blest if I know where it is."

"I never know," she came back inconsequentially, "whether I love you more when you don't think, or when you tangle yourself up in whimsies trying to think."

"Neither of us has the faintest idea what truth is"--I began, preparing another disquisition. She cut me short: "No, Ted, we haven't. We begin life with just one certain fact and no more."

"What is that certain fact?" I asked.

"Can you ask, Ted? We love each other--that's all we know."

"It's enough," I said, kissing her mouth. She smiled at me, her face close.

"We'll begin with that, Ted darling."

Chapter Eleven

WE SEEK AND OBTAIN CONSENT

During that winter and early spring the business, under Knowlton's shrewd management, was making good progress. It was clear that, although it would take a much greater investment of capital to turn the factory into a producer of fortunes, nevertheless the plant was now on the way to becoming a steady income-maker for its owners. Knowlton thought it might be possible to get local capital and expand; he exchanged several letters and cables with my father in London on the subject. One day authorization came to him to go ahead.

"That will be one of your jobs, Ted," he remarked to me one evening in my room, as he tossed over my father's cable for me to read.

"What will?" I asked.

"Going around and talking to our local magnates. They are all your social friends out at the country club. Let's see what your friends are worth to you," and he grinned one of his favourite grins.

"H'm," I said, studying the cable. "What have we got to put up to them?"

"Listen to Teddy," shouted Knowlton, chuckling. "Talking like a regular business man! You wouldn't have used that language six months ago."

"I am beginning to pick up a few sc.r.a.ps of the vernacular," I retorted, a little nettled. Knowlton grinned number two grin. He proceeded to lecture me on the present merits and future possibilities of our company. It was all to be put down in black and white for me to study, with what he called "the best talking points" underlined.

"Go after them hard," he advised at the conclusion. "Don't take 'no' for an answer, and don't be afraid of their questions. We are as promising-looking an outfit as there is in town. Why, they ought to swing this thing for us as a matter of local pride. We'll bring money to the place."

"Since we are making a fairly good thing of it as we stand, why not leave well enough alone?" I queried by way of final objection.

"My boy, it can't be done. If you try to stand still, you only slide down hill. It's a law of business. Get on or get out--that's our American jungle law. Besides, it's a question now of obeying the old man's orders."

"You mean my father?" I suggested.

Knowlton grinned: "I beg your pardon. It's our master's voice."

I got up and hunted for my tobacco. "The devil with you, Knowlton, is that every time I begin to imagine everything is all right, you have some infernal new anxiety to thrust under my nose."

"Shove your pipe under it instead and shut up," he laughed. "That's life, my boy. You can't sit it out in a rocking chair. If you try, they take away the front porch from under you when you aren't looking."

I filled my pipe and studied Knowlton's face as I did so. It came to me with a start that I had been taking him for granted for several months now. I no longer a.n.a.lysed him, or tried to, as I had done at first.

Suppose Knowlton was not himself on the square and I had been careless?

The idea was disturbing. There he sat, characteristically enough, with his legs crossed, the tips of his fingers together, a big cigar in his mouth, and his sharp eyes puckered at the corners with crows' feet. He was oblivious to my scrutiny, for he was turning over the new proposition in his mind. He could day dream in arithmetic as a poet could upon hearing the song of a lark. His face was hard, but there was a rugged honesty in it, a touch of the old Scots' stock from which he sprang, with the superimposed keenness and alertness of the trail-following American. Besides, I remembered his confidences to me that Christmas Eve out at the country club. He too was a sentimentalist--and such as we, who are sentimentalists, are apt to be dishonest only to ourselves or to those we love; the money form of dishonesty is abhorrent to an emotional man. Knowlton was of the common type who masked deep feeling by an outward hard glamour of efficiency. I must have gone on too long staring at him, for he suddenly turned around with a slight narrowing of the eyes.

"Wondering if I am big enough for the job, Ted?" he asked casually, as he tried to remedy the faulty burning of his cigar. "I wondered it about you. It's only fair for you to have your turn," he went on.

"I don't know," I answered. "I don't know whether either of us is. It's a big responsibility we are starting out to face."

"Everything is. It's a responsibility to buy a basketful of hot dogs and sell them at a street corner. It might rain," he countered.

"I know," I laughed. "Hotspur said the same thing."

"Shakespeare again?"

I nodded. He suddenly laid down his cigar. "By G.o.d, Ted," he exclaimed, "were you thinking I might not be on the square?"