I Walked in Arden Part 43

"My going stale has cost you a lot of money," I muttered.

"Experience always costs money, Ted. I don't grudge paying for it, if one really learns from it. You told me something about the process of elimination once. The next time you eliminate, go all the way."

"The consulting chemists we called in didn't find the trouble."

"No, they were experts, like you."

I smiled at this, because I knew I deserved it.

"That's better, Ted," my father said when he saw me smile. "The whole trouble has been that you lost your sense of humour over this job. Don't lose it again."

"Suppose," I said at bed-time that evening, "that we find nothing the matter with the acid?"

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Now you and Helen pack up in the morning, clear out for a week, and I'll have the acid examined while you are away."

Upstairs, I sat before our study fire without daring to look at Helen.

She stopped brushing out her hair and perched on the arm of my chair, putting her cheek against mine.

"What do you want me to say, Ted?"

"If you speak the truth you'll say that you have married an incompetent fool who messes up everything he tries to do."

"Don't let it hurt you so, Ted, darling."

"It was my job to find out, and I didn't. You can't get away from that."

Helen rumpled my hair pensively. Each of us had several things to say; the difficulty was to say them. Helen went on silently stroking my head.

"I try to think--why the devil does it always seem afterwards as if I hadn't thought at all?"

I proposed this conundrum to her. Helen gave me her hand to kiss.

"I won't be so stupid as to try to make excuses for you," said Helen, tucking up snugly against my shoulder. "Let's own up honestly we made a mistake, Ted. For I must be to blame somewhere, too. Yes, Ted dear--I know it. Don't go on shaking your head. It isn't comfy. We mustn't make a mistake like this again--that's all. It isn't like us."

"It wasn't just a case of putting my foot in it, sweetheart. I went and sat down in the spilt milk."

Helen laughed gently. "Poor old boy, your pride has had a nasty knock, hasn't it? So has mine, dear."

I thought this over in silence. We were young enough to take each other tragically. But I had my first doubt as to whether I was of heroic stuff--I mean that for the first time I wondered if success were inevitably mine. Suppose I was only a commonplace person who got along amiably enough, yet never pulled off anything big? In that case all the hopes Helen had in me would prove to be vain dreams. Then what would happen? Would she love me then--or didn't love demand the heroic? It was Knowlton who had made Deep Harbor a success, and now my father had stepped in and saved me again. Where was the missing cog in my mechanism? What could I do--what ought I to do--how could I find out?

"It isn't your fault, hubby-boy," Helen said, her face against mine.

"You aren't meant to be a chemist. Your father has had you learn a profession which at best is no more than a secret anxiety to you. It haunts you with a never-ending fear, because it is not really your work.

It's only a part you are trying to play to please him."

I sat up straight and stared at her.

"I've watched you every day, Ted, sweetheart, during these months we have been together--and I have seen you struggling to fight down that fear of failure in you. You've tried to hide it from me, dearest"--she smiled and shook a finger at me--"you can't fool me, because I love you.

I've wanted to tell you I knew, and I was afraid, if I did, you couldn't work at all."

"Well," I said slowly, "it's true. I hate chemistry--and I have always hated it--or is it only work I hate?"

Helen shook her head: "We must get to your real work, Ted, as soon as we can. There is your toy-theatre all ready for you on top of the bookcase.

We'll begin writing for it, dear. When the company is all right, we'll give up chemistry forever and begin for ourselves."

I stood up and drew her to me under the light. I took her face in both my hands, turned it toward mine, and looked into her grey eyes.

"Do you still love me, Helen?"

She closed her eyes. "So much, Ted, it hurts and hurts clear down in me." Her hands clutched my shoulders until the skin grew white over her finger knuckles....

It is not possible that two persons could have been any happier than Helen and I were during Christmas week at Winchester. Others may have equalled our happiness; no couple have surpa.s.sed it. Not only was it the first time we had been by ourselves since on board the steamer, but also Winchester itself, as that very Camelot we had made up stories about in the woods back of Deep Harbor, was to us a speechless delight. I had not been there before, and thus its quaintness was as new to me as to Helen.

We ate and slept in a hotel somewhere off the High Street. The rest of the time (despite the oncoming event of Edward Jevons, Junior) we wandered about or sat in the nave of the long bare cathedral. Helen actually got as far afoot as the summit of St. Catherine's hill. We took a fly and drove out to St. Cross, where we designed a new dream cottage from its mediaeval gables and timbers. The same faithful fly conducted us to other delights when I thought Helen had walked enough. There are more things in Winchester than can be set down, save in the book of memory. Jane Austen's house, the cathedral, the school, the river Itchen where old Izaak Walton fished--one can go on for a long time wandering among mysteries and dreaming. We grew technical over architecture and had an argument about it with a verger in the cathedral. On the High Street we likewise discovered a satisfactory second-hand bookshop containing a lot of theatrical memoirs. Joys of joys, we bought ourselves as a Christmas present Bell's British Theatre, complete with all the plates! To be sure, it was but a shilling a volume; yet no collector ever walked out of Christie's more proud than we. Forty shillings had been set aside for Christmas recklessness. Bell and his collection of plays made quite a hole in this, even at only a shilling a volume.

On the night before Christmas there was a telegram from my father. The trouble had been successfully located in the commercial acid; there was no doubt that with pure acid the trouble of manufacturing would be cleared up. More good news was to come next morning. There was a letter from Deep Harbor containing a present of one hundred dollars for Helen, as well as the announcement that her father purposed, from this time forth, to give his daughter one hundred dollars a month pocket money.

"Ted, Ted!" she cried, pouring her letter and its contents into my lap, her eyes dancing, "we can get all the books we want! See here! And we'll have five more pounds of our own to spend on our week-ends."

Curiously enough, it did not cross the mind of either of us that we could possibly have any other use for that money. Perhaps we had been badly brought up, both of us--I don't know. At any rate we always had a lot of fun out of our extravagance. And on this morning, as soon as we could get there, we furiously rang the doorbell of the bookshop, in spite of the closed shutters. We knew we could rout the old codger, the owner, out, if we made noise enough, for he lived over his shop. He grumbled at first; then, when he found us equipped to buy, cheerfully let us in. No, we did not spend all of the twenty pounds, but we made a good hole in that, too. He had a rather good _Memoirs of Charles Matthews_, extra-ill.u.s.trated. It was a new kind of pleasure for us to own such a wanton luxury as that.

A day or two after Boxing Day we returned to London. Going up in the train, I said: "Well, Lady Grey Eyes, the second Christmas didn't turn out so black as we'd painted it, did it?" Helen simply looked things at me.

"They'll all be as wonderful as this one, dear," I added, Helen's eyes clouded. "Don't say it, Ted! Don't!" and she touched the wood of the railway carriage beside her. We were alone in the compartment, so my reply may be imagined.

It was some time in the spring that a trained nurse came to live with us in the little house in Kensington. Her advent set the whole household bustling over the preparations for the expected arrival of Edward Jevons, Jr. It was my mother who insisted upon Helen's having a nurse, long before the day was due, although she still maintained her att.i.tude of being officially polite to Helen and almost ignoring my existence. I had not yet atoned for my fatal attempt at setting matters right. Things were going swimmingly at the factory. I was naturally busy enough, for I had to train the whole staff, with the result that production was not yet on a large scale. But what we were making was right, orders were coming in, and every week I was able to report increased production.

Chitty was one smile as he watched me whistling at my work.

Helen and I were now under no worry or anxiety concerning the event to befall her. The doctor was cheery, Helen's health and physique were splendid; the trained nurse kept a sharp look-out. Our only regrets were over the interruptions of our week-ends and the presence of the confounded nurse always under foot. A stranger in one's household, on an intimate footing, is a supreme test of one's forbearance. It must also be quite a test for the stranger. This nurse was willing, capable, and good-humoured; yet there were times when Helen and I wished her elsewhere. She packed Helen off to bed at nine; Helen and I were accustomed to sitting up till all hours, talking or reading in the study. She frowned upon the theatre and forbade the pit altogether, although, now Helen and I were in funds, that prohibition did not worry us so much. We were not permitted to dine of a Sat.u.r.day night at the Cafe Royal or have luncheon at Kettner's. Indeed, Helen's diet was prescribed for her--a great hardship, as neither of us liked "wholesome"

food and things that "were good" for you. I had to feed Helen chocolates on the sly. My own movements were curtailed, because it was no fun doing things without Helen. Not for worlds would I have bought an old book unless Helen were along to share in the joy of the purchase.

About Edward Jevons, Junior, and his future we talked very little. We were, ridiculous as it sounds, a little shy about him and, again, we thought the whole idea of our having a baby of our own the biggest joke imaginable. It did seem too absurd.

"Ted, I simply can't imagine a baby! I'm not sure I want one interfering with us, dear. Isn't it dreadful?"

I couldn't imagine one, either, looking at Helen sitting there before the fire in a dressing gown with her hair down, to please me. She looked almost like a baby herself. Her face was still, with all its grave and tender beauty, the face of a school-girl. I think the nurse was shocked at our behaviour. She used to lecture us on the care and rearing of infants. I gathered from her that it was a task of more complexity than we had realized.

"I suppose they _will_ get colic?" I ventured, as a contribution to the discussion one day. I had loosed the flood. The nurse insisted upon showing me a medical book full of disgusting pictures, containing an absolutely terrifying account of the things that could, would, and did happen to babies. Helen had to rescue me. It had been in vain for me to protest that I should always send for a doctor. My protests went unheeded until Helen spared me further details.

There came a day when the doctor remained after his morning call, and I found myself banished from Helen's bedside. Nor could I get at my study, because that opened off Helen's room. I had time only to kiss Helen hurriedly, tell her to be game, and glance at a ba.s.sinette which had been placed in the room. The nurse was moving about in her room, and Frances had been sent away to visit some friends. The house was impossible; and yet I couldn't go out to the factory at Willesden. I was driven to reading a political leader in _The Times_. The country appeared to be in a bad way, judging from what I read, so that didn't cheer me up. I felt somehow that I ought to have profound emotions.

Instead, I was worried fearfully about Helen and wanted her. I could not bear to think of pain.

Once or twice the doctor came downstairs. He seemed, however, to consider brusqueness the proper professional att.i.tude. The nurse was worse, for she told me not to "bother" her, when I asked her about Helen. She refused to take a note up to Helen, although all I had written was "love--Ted" on a slip of paper. There was only Sims, my mother's maid, to sympathize with me, and I strongly suspected her sympathy was tinged with dislike for the nurse. Sims had refused one morning to carry up hot water for the nurse. My mother had promptly squelched that incipient revolt.

"I 'ates them as gives themselves airs in other people's 'ouses," had been Sims' verdict on the nurse. "Fancy 'er speakin' like that to you, Master Ted, when it's you givin' 'er employment! Stuck up, I calls it.

That's wot it is."