The Road to Understanding Part 15

She was willful and fretful, and she certainly did not know how to give a fellow a decent meal or a comfortable place to stay. For his part, he did not think a girl had any right to marry until she knew something about running a simple home.

Then there was her constant chatter. Was she not ever going to talk about anything but the silly little everyday happenings of her work? A fellow wanted to hear something, when he came home tired at night, besides complaints that the range didn't work, or that the grocer forgot his order, or that the money was out.

Why, Helen used to be good company, cheerful, often witty. Where were her old-time sparkle and radiance? Her talk now was a meaningless chatter of trivial things, or an irritating, wailing complaint of everything under the sun, chiefly revolving around the point of "how different everything was" from what she expected. Great Scott! As if _he_ had not found some things different! _That_ evidently was what marriage was--different. But talking about it all the time did not help any.

Couldn't she read? But, then, if she did read, it would be only the newspaper account of the latest murder; and then she would want to talk about that. She never read anything worth while.

And it was for this, this being married to Helen, that he had given up so much: dad, his home, everything. She didn't appreciate it--Helen didn't. She did not rightly estimate what he was being made to suffer.

That there was any especial meaning in all this that he himself should take to heart--that there was any course open to him but righteous discontent and rebellion--never occurred to Burke. His training of frosted cakes and toy shotguns had taught him nothing of the traditional "two bears," "bear" and "forbear." The marriage ceremony had not meant to him "to be patient, tender, and sympathetic." It had meant the "I will" of self-a.s.sertion, not the "I will" of self-discipline. That Helen ought to change many of _her_ traits and habits he was convinced. That there might be some in himself that needed changing, or that the mere fact of his having married Helen might have entailed upon himself certain obligations as to making the best of what he had deliberately chosen, did not once occur to him.

As for Helen--Helen was facing her own disillusions. She was not trying now to be the daintily gowned wife welcoming her husband to a well-kept home. She had long since decided that that was impossible--on sixty dollars a month. She was tired of being a martyr wife. Even the laurel wreath of praise had lost its allurement: she would not get it, probably, even if she earned it; and, anyway, she would be dead from trying to get it. And for her part she would rather have some fun while she was living.

But she wasn't having any fun. Things were so different. Everything was different. She had not supposed being married was like this: one long grind of housework from morning till night, and for a man who did not care. And Burke did not care--now. Once, the first thing he wanted when he came into the house was a kiss and a word from her. Now he wanted his dinner. And he was so fussy, too! _She_ could get along with cold things; but he wanted hot ones, and lots of them. And he always wanted finger-bowls and lots of spoons, and everything fixed just so on the table, too. He said it wasn't that he wanted "style." It was just that he wanted things decent. As if she hadn't had things decent herself--and without all that fuss and clutter!

After dinner he never wanted to talk now, or to go to walk. He just wanted to read or study. He said he was studying; something about his work. As if once he would have cared more for any old work than for her!

And she was so lonely! There was n.o.body now for her to be with. Mrs.

Jones had moved away, and there were never any callers now. She had returned every one of the calls she had had from Burke's fine friends.

She had put on her new red dress and her best hat with the pink roses; and she had tried to be just as bright and entertaining as she knew how to be. But they never came again, so of course she could not go to see them. She _had_ gone, once or twice. But Burke said she must not do that. It was not proper to return your own calls. If they wanted to see her they would come themselves. But they never came. Probably, anyhow, they did not want to see her; and that was the trouble. Not that she cared! They were a "stuck-up" lot, anyway; and she was just as good as they were. She had told one woman so, once--the woman that carried her eyegla.s.ses on the end of a little stick and stared. That woman always had made her mad. So it was just as well, perhaps, that they did not come any more, after all. Burke was ashamed of her, anyway, when they did come. She knew that. He did not like anything she did nowadays. He was always telling her he did wish she would stop saying "you was," or holding her fork like that, or making so much noise eating soup, and a dozen other things. As if n.o.body in the house had a right to do anything but _his_ way!

It had been so different at home! There everything she did was just right. And she was never lonely. There were the parties and the frolics and the sleigh-rides, and the girls running in all the time, and the boys every evening on the porch, or in the parlor, or taking her buggy-riding. Nothing there was ever complete without her. While here-- Well, who supposed being married meant working like a slave all day, and being cooped up all the evening with a man whose nose was buried in a book, and who scarcely spoke to you!

And there was the money. Burke acted, for all the world, as if he thought she ate money, and ate it whether she was hungry or not, just to spite him. As if she didn't squeeze every penny till it fairly shrieked, now; and as if anybody could make ten dollars a week go further than she did! To be sure, at first she had been silly and extravagant, running up bills, and borrowing of Mrs. Jones, as she did.

And of course she was a little unreasonable and childish about keeping that account-book. But that was only at the first, when she was quite ignorant and inexperienced. It was very different now. She kept a cash account, and most of the time it came right. How she wished she had an allowance, though! But Burke utterly refused to give her that. Said she'd be extravagant and spend it all the first day. As if she had not learned better than that by bitter experience! And as if anything could be worse than the way they were trying to get along now, with her teasing for money all the time, and him insisting on seeing the bills, and then asking how they _could_ manage to eat so many eggs, and saying he should think she used b.u.t.ter to oil the floors with. He didn't see how it could go so fast any other way!

And wasn't he always telling her she did not manage right? And didn't he give her particular fits one day and an awful lecture on wastefulness, just because he happened to find half a loaf of mouldy bread in the jar?

Just as if _he_ didn't spend something--and a good big something, too!--on all those cigars he smoked. Yet he flew into fits over a bit of mouldy bread of _hers_.

To be sure, when she cried, he called himself a brute, and said he didn't mean it, and it was only because he hated so to have her pinching and saving all the time that it made him mad--raving mad. Just as if she was to blame that they did not have any money!

But she was to blame, of course, in a way. If it had not been for her, he would be living at home with all the money he wanted. Sometimes it came to her with sickening force that maybe Burke was thinking that, too. Was he? Could it be that he was sorry he had married her? Very well--her chin came up proudly. He need not stay if he did not want to.

He could go. But--the chin was not so high, now--he was all there was.

She had n.o.body but Burke now. _Could_ it be--

She believed she would ask Dr. Gleason some time. She liked the doctor.

He had been there several times now, and she felt real well acquainted with him. Perhaps he would know. But, after all, she was not going to worry. She did not believe that really Burke wished he had not married her. It was only that he was tired and fretted with his work. It would be better by and by, when he had got ahead a little. And of course he would get ahead. They would not always have to live like this!

It was in March that Burke came home to dinner one evening with a radiant face, yet with an air of worried excitement.

"It's dad. He's sent for me," he explained, in answer to his wife's questions.

"Sent for you!"

"Yes. He isn't very well, Brett says. He wants to see me."

"Humph! After all this time! I wouldn't go a step if I was you."

"Helen! Not go to my father?"

Helen quaked a little under the fire in her husband's eyes; but she held her ground.

"I don't care. He's treated you like dirt. You know he has."

"I know he's sick and has sent for me. And I know I'm going to him.

That's enough for me to know--at present," retorted the man, getting to his feet, and leaving his dinner almost untasted.

Half an hour later he appeared before her, freshly shaved, and in the radiant good humor that seems to follow a bath and fresh garments as a natural consequence. "Come, chicken, give us a kiss," he cried gayly; "and don't sit up for me: I may be late."

"My, but ain't we fixed up!" pouted Helen jealously. "I should think you was going to see your best girl."

"I am," laughed Burke boyishly. "Dad was my best girl--till I got you.

Good-bye! I'm off."

"Good-bye." Helen's lips still pouted, and her eyes burned somberly as she sat back in her chair.

Outside the house Burke drew a long breath, and yet a longer one. It seemed as if he could not inhale deeply enough the crisp, bracing air.

Then, with an eager stride that would cover the distance in little more than half the usual time, he set off toward Elm Hill. There was only joyous antic.i.p.ation in his face now. The worry was all gone. After all, had not Brett said that this illness of dad's was nothing serious?

For a week Burke had known that something was wrong--that his father was not at the Works. In vain had he haunted office doors and corridors for a glimpse of a face that never appeared. Then had come the news that John Denby was ill. A paralyzing fear clutched the son's heart.

Was this to be the end, then? Was dad to--die, and never to know, never to read his boy's heart? Was this the end of all hopes of some day seeing the old look of love and pride in his father's eyes? Then it would, indeed, be the end of--everything, if dad died; for what was the use of struggling, of straining every nerve to make good, if dad was not to be there to--know?

It had been at this point that Burke, in spite of his hurt pride, and of his very lively doubts as to the cordiality of his reception, had almost determined to go himself to the old home and demand to see his father.

Then, just in time, had come Brett's wonderful message that his father wished to see him, and that he was not, after all, fatally or even seriously ill.

Dad was not going to die, then; and dad wished to see him--_wished_ to see him!

Burke drew in his breath now again, and bounded up the great stone steps of Denby Mansion, two at a time. The next minute, for the first time since his marriage the summer before, he stood in the wide, familiar hallway.

Benton, the old butler, took his hat and coat; and the way he took them had in it all the flattering deference of the well-trained servant, and the rapturous joy of the head of a house welcoming a dear wanderer home.

Burke looked into the beaming old face and shining eyes--and swallowed hard before he could utter an unsteady "How are you, Benton?"

"I'm very well, sir, thank you, sir. And it's glad I am to see you, Master Burke. This way, please. The master's in the library, sir."

Unconsciously Burke Denby lifted his chin. A long-lost something seemed to have come back to him. He could not himself have defined it; and he certainly could not have told why, at that moment, he should suddenly have thought of the supercilious face of his hated "boss" at the Works.

Behind Benton's noiseless steps Burke's feet sank into luxurious velvet depths. His eyes swept from one dear familiar object to another, in the great, softly lighted hall, and leaped ahead to the open door of the library. Then, somehow, he found himself face to face with his father in the dear, well-remembered room.

"Well, Burke, my boy, how are you?"

They were the same words that had been spoken months before in the President's office at the Denby Iron Works, and they were spoken by the same voice. They were spoken to the accompaniment of an outstretched hand, too, in each case. But, to Burke, who had heard them on both occasions, they were as different as darkness and daylight. He could not have defined it, even to himself; but he knew, the minute he grasped the outstretched hand and looked into his father's eyes, that the hated, impenetrable, insurmountable "wall" was gone. Yet there was nothing said, nothing done, except a conventional "Just a little matter of business, Burke, that I wanted to talk over with you," from the elder man; and an equally conventional "Yes, sir," from his son.

Then the two sat down. But, for Burke, the whole world had burst suddenly into song.

It was, indeed, a simple matter of business. It was not even an important one. Ordinarily it would have been Brett's place, or even one of his a.s.sistants', to speak of it. But the President of the Denby Iron Works took it up point by point, and dwelt lovingly on each detail. And Burke, his heart one wild paean of rejoicing, sat with a grave countenance, listening attentively.