The Road to Understanding Part 18

"But I should think you'd let me name my own baby," wailed his wife.

Burke choked back a hasty word and a.s.sumed his pet "I'll-be-patient-if-it-kills-me" air.

"And you shall name it," he soothed her. "Listen! Here are pencil and paper. Now, write down a whole lot of names that you'd like, and I'll promise to select one of them. Then you'll be naming the baby all right.

See?"

Helen did not "see," quite, that she would be naming the baby; but, knowing from past experience of her husband's temper that resistance would be unpleasant, she obediently took the paper and spent some time writing down a list of names.

Burke frowned a good deal when he saw the list, and declared that it was pretty poor pickings, and that he ought to have known better than to have bound himself to a silly-fool promise like that. But he chose a name (he said he would keep his word, of course), and he selected "Dorothy Elizabeth" as being less impossible than its accompanying "Veras," "Violets," and "Clarissa Muriels."

For the first few months after the baby's advent, Burke spent much more time at home, and seemed very evidently to be trying to pay especial attention to his wife's comfort and welfare. He was proud of the baby, and declared it was the cutest little kid going. He poked it in its ribs, thrust a tentative finger into the rose-leaf of a hand (emitting a triumphant chuckle of delight when the rose-leaf became a tightly clutching little fist), and even allowed the baby to be placed one or twice in his rather reluctant and fearful arms. But, for the most part, he contented himself with merely looking at it, and asking how soon it would walk and talk, and when would it grow its teeth and hair.

Burke was feeling really quite keenly these days the solemnity and responsibility of fatherhood. He had called into being a new soul. A little life was in his hands to train. By and by this tiny pink roll of humanity would be a prattling child, a little girl, a young lady. And all the way she would be turning to him for companionship and guidance.

It behooved him, indeed, to look well to himself, that he should be in all ways a fit pattern.

It was a solemn thought. No more tempers, tantrums, and impatience. No more idle repinings and useless regrets. What mattered it if he were disillusioned and heartsick? Did he want this child of his, this beautiful daughter, to grow up in such an atmosphere? Never! At once, therefore, he must begin to cultivate patience, contentment, tranquillity, and calmness of soul. He, the pattern, must be all things that he would wish her to be.

And how delightful it would be when she was old enough to meet him on his own ground--to be a companion for him, the companion he had not found in his wife! She would be pretty, of course, sweet-tempered, and cheerful. (Was he not to train her himself?) She would be capable and sensible, too. He would see to that. To no man, in the future, should she bring the tragedy of disillusionment that her mother had brought to _him_. No, indeed! For that matter, however, he should not let her marry any one for a long time. He should keep her himself. Perhaps he would not let her marry at all. He did not think much of this marriage business, anyway. Not that he was going to show that feeling any longer now, of course. From now on he was to show only calm contentment and tranquillity of soul, no matter what the circ.u.mstances. Was he not a father? Had he not, in the hollow of his hand, a precious young life to train?

Again all this was very well in theory. But in practice--

Dorothy Elizabeth was not six months old before the young father discovered that parenthood changed conditions, not people. He felt just as irritated at the way Helen b.u.t.tered a whole slice of bread at a time, and said "swell" and "you was," as before; just as impatient because he could not buy what he wanted; just as annoyed at the purple cushion on the red sofa.

He was surprised and disappointed. He told himself that he had supposed that when a fellow made good resolutions, he was given some show of a chance to keep them. But as if any one _could_ cultivate calm contentment and tranquillity of soul as he was situated!

First, there were not only all his old disappointments and annoyances to contend with, but a mult.i.tude of new ones. It was as if, indeed, each particular torment had taken unto itself wife and children, so numerous had they become. There was really now no peace at home. There was nothing but the baby. He had not supposed that any one thing or person could so monopolize everything and everybody.

When the baby was awake, Helen acted as if she thought the earth swung on its axis solely to amuse it. When it slept, she seemed to think the earth ought to stand still--lest it wake Baby up. With the same wholesale tyranny she marshaled into line everything and everybody on the earth, plainly regarding nothing and no one as of consequence, except in its relationship to Baby.

Such unimportant things as meals and housework, in comparison with Baby, were of even less than second consequence; and Burke grew to feel himself more and more an alien and a nuisance in his own home. Moreover, where before he had found disorder and untidiness, he now found positive chaos. And however fond he was of the Baby, he grew unutterably weary of searching for his belongings among Baby's rattles, b.a.l.l.s, shirts, socks, milk bottles, blankets, and powder-puffs.

The "cool, calm serenity" of his determination he found it difficult to realize; and the delights and responsibilities of fatherhood began to pall upon him. It looked to be so long a way ahead, even to teeth, talking, and walking, to say nothing of the charm and companionship of a young lady daughter!

Children were all very well, of course,--very desirable. But did they never do anything but cry? Couldn't they be taught that nights were for sleep, and that other people in the house had some rights besides themselves? And must they _always_ choose four o'clock in the morning for a fit of the colic? Helen said it was colic. For his part, he believed it was nothing more or less than temper--plain, right-down temper!

And so it went. Another winter pa.s.sed, and spring came. Matters were no better, but rather worse. A series of incompetent maids had been adding considerably to the expense--and little to the comfort--of the household. Helen, as a mistress, was not a success. She understood neither her own duties nor those of the maid--which resulted in short periods of poor service and frequent changes.

July came with its stifling heat, and Dorothy Elizabeth, now twenty months old, showed a daily increasing disapproval of life in general and of her own existence in particular. Helen, worn and worried, and half sick from care and loss of sleep, grew day by day more fretful, more difficult to get along with. Burke, also half sick from loss of sleep, and consumed with a fierce, inward rebellion against everything and everybody, including himself, was no less difficult to get along with.

Of course this state of affairs could not continue forever. The tension had to snap sometime. And it snapped--over a bottle of ink in a baby's hand.

It happened on Bridget's "afternoon out," when Helen was alone with the baby. Dorothy Elizabeth, propped up in her high-chair beside the dining-room table, where her mother was writing a letter, reached covetous hands toward the fascinating little fat black bottle. The next instant a wild shout of glee and an inky tide surging from an upside-down bottle, held high above a golden head, told that the quest had been successful.

Things happened then very fast. There were a dismayed cry from Helen, half a-dozen angry spats on a tiny hand, a series of shrieks from Dorothy Elizabeth, and a rapidly spreading inky pall over baby, dress, table, rug, and Helen's new frock.

At that moment Burke appeared in the door.

With wrathful eyes he swept the scene before him, losing not one detail of scolding woman, shrieking child, dinnerless table, and inky chaos.

Then he strode into the room.

"Well, by George!" he snapped. "Nice restful place for a tired man to come to, isn't it? This is your idea of a happy home, I suppose!"

The overwrought wife and mother, with every nerve tingling, turned sharply.

"Oh, yes, that's right--blame me! Blame me for everything! Maybe you think _I_ think this is a happy, restful place, too! Maybe you think this is what _I_ thought 'twould be--being married to you! But I can tell you it just isn't! Maybe you think I ain't tired of working and pinching and slaving, and never having any fun, and being scolded and blamed all the time because I don't eat and walk and stand up and sit down the way you want me to, and-- Where are you goin'?" she broke off, as her husband reached for the hat he had just tossed aside, and started for the door.

Burke turned quietly. His face was very white.

"I'm going down to the square to get something to eat. Then I'm going up to father's. And--you needn't sit up for me. I shall stay all night."

"_All--night!_"

"Yes. I'd like to sleep--for once. And that's what I can't do--here."

The next moment the door had banged behind him.

Helen, left alone with the baby, fell back limply.

"Why, Baby, he--he--" Then she caught the little ink-stained figure to her and began to cry convulsively.

In the street outside Burke strode along with his head high and his jaw sternly set. He was very angry. He told himself that he had a right to be angry. Surely a man was ent.i.tled to _some_ consideration!

In spite of it all, however, there was, in a far-away corner of his soul, an uneasy consciousness of a tiny voice of scorn dubbing this running away of his the act of a coward and a cad.

Very resolutely, however, he silenced this voice by recounting again to himself how really abused he was. It was a long story. It served to occupy his mind all through the unappetizing meal he tried to eat at the cheap restaurant before climbing Elm Hill.

His father greeted him cordially, and with no surprise in voice or manner--which was what Burke had expected, inasmuch as he had again fallen into the way of spending frequent evenings at the old home.

To-night, however, Burke himself was constrained and ill at ease. His jaw was still firmly set and his head was still high; but his heart was beginning to fail him, and his mind was full of questionings.

How would his father take it--this proposition to stay all night? He would understand something of what it meant. He could not help but understand. But what would he say? How would he act? Would he say in actions, if not in words, that dreaded "I told you so"? Would it unseal his lips on a subject so long tabooed, and set him into a lengthy dissertation on the foolishness of his son's marriage? Burke believed that, as he felt now, he could not stand that; but he could stand less easily going back to the Dale Street flat that night. He could go to a hotel, of course. But he did not want to do that. He wanted dad. But he did not want dad--to talk.

"How's the baby?" asked John Denby, as Burke dropped himself into a chair on the cool, quiet veranda. "I thought she was not looking very well the last time Helen wheeled her up here." Always John Denby's first inquiry now was for his little granddaughter.

"Eh? The baby? Oh, she--she's all right. That is"--Burke paused for a short laugh--"she's _well_."

John Denby took his cigar from his lips and turned sharply.

"But she's _not_--all right?"

Burke laughed again.

"Oh, yes, she's all right, too, I suppose," he retorted, a bit grimly.

"But she was--er--humph! Well, I'll tell you." And he gave a graphic description of his return home that night.

"Jove, what a mess!--and _ink_, too," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed John Denby, with more than a tinge of sympathy in his voice. "How'd she ever manage to clean it up?"

Burke shrugged his shoulders.

"Ask me something easy. I don't know, I'm sure. I cleared out."