The Road to Understanding Part 39

"Yes; that's what they called it. And he made good money, too,--doin'

nothin'. Wish't they'd want me for one! Well, as I was sayin', they had all this comp'ny, an' more an' more of it; and they give receptions an'

asked the hull town, sometimes. My wife went, and my darter. They said it was fine and grand, and all that, but that they didn't believe old John liked it very well. But Mr. Burke liked it. That was easy to be seen. And there was a pretty little widder there lots, and _she_ liked it. Some said as how they thought there'd be a match there, sometime, if he could get free. But I guess there wa'n't anythin' ter that. Anyhow, all of a sudden, somethin' happened. Everythin' stopped right off short--all the gay doin's and parties--and everybody went home. Then, the next thing we knew, the old house was dark and empty again, and the Denbys gone to Australia with another bridge."

"Yes, I know. I remember--that," interposed the doctor, alert and interested.

"Did you see 'em--when they come back?"

"No."

"Well, they didn't look like the same men. And ever since they've been different, somehow. Stern and silent, with never a smile for anybody, skursley. No b.a.l.l.s an' parties now, you bet ye! Week in and week out, jest shut up in that big silent house--never goin' out at all except to the Works! Then we heard he was sick--Mr. John. But he got better, and was out again. The end come sudden. n.o.body expected that. But he was a good man--a grand good man--John Denby was!"

"He was, indeed," agreed the doctor, with a long sigh, as he turned away.

This story, with here and there a new twist and turn, the doctor heard on all sides. And always he listened attentively, hopefully, eager, if possible, to find some detail that would help him in some further plea to Burke Denby in behalf of the far-away wife. Even the women wanted to talk to him, and did, sometimes to his annoyance. Once, only, however, did his irritation get the better of his manners. It was when the woman of whom he bought his morning paper at the station newsstand, accosted him--

"Stranger in these parts, ain't ye? Come to the fun'ral, didn't ye?"

"Why--y-yes."

"Hm-m; I thought so. He was a fine man, I s'pose. Still, I didn't think much of him myself. Used to know him too well, maybe. Used to live next his son--same floor. My name's Cobb--and I used to see--" But the doctor had turned on his heel without even the semblance of an apology.

Ten minutes later he boarded the train for Boston.

To his sister again he told the story of a Dalton trip, and, as before, he omitted not one detail.

"But I can't write, of course, to Helen, now," he finished gloomily.

"That is, I can't urge her coming back--not in the face of Burke's angry a.s.sertion that he never wants to see her again."

"Of course not. But don't worry, dear. I haven't given up hope, by any means. Burke worshiped his father. His heart is almost breaking now, at his loss. It is perfectly natural, under the circ.u.mstances, that he should have this intense anger toward anything that ever grieved his loved father. But wait. That's all we can do, anyway. I'll write to Helen, of course, and tell her of her father-in-law's death, but--"

"You wouldn't tell her what Burke said, Edith!"

"Oh, no, no, indeed!--unless I _have_ to, Frank--unless she asks me."

But Helen did ask her. By return steamer came her letter expressing her shocked distress at John Denby's death, and asking timidly, but urgently, if, in Mrs. Thayer's opinion, it were the time now when she should come home--if she would be welcomed by her husband. To this, of course, there was but one answer possible; and reluctantly Mrs. Thayer gave it.

"And to think," groaned the doctor, "that when now, for the first time, Helen is willing to come, we have to tell her--she can't!"

"I know, but"--Edith Thayer resolutely blinked off the tears--"I haven't given up yet. Just wait."

And the doctor waited. It was, indeed, as his sister said, all that he could do. From time to time he went up to Dalton and made his way up the old familiar walk to have a chat with the taciturn, somber-eyed man sitting alone in the great old library. The doctor never spoke of Helen.

He dared not take the risk. Burke Denby's only interests plainly were business, books, and the rare curios he and his father had collected. A Mrs. Gowing, a distant cousin, had come to be his housekeeper, but the doctor saw little of her. She seemed to be a quiet, inoffensive little woman, plainly very much in the background.

There came an evening finally, however, when, much to the doctor's beatific surprise, Burke Denby, of his own accord, mentioned his wife.

It was nearly two years after John Denby's death. The doctor had run up to Dalton for an overnight visit, and had noticed at once a peculiar restlessness in his host's manner, an odd impatience of voice and gesture. Then, abruptly, in answer to the doctor's own a.s.sertion that Burke needed something to get him away from his constant brooding in the old library,--

"Need something?" he exclaimed. "Of course I need something! I need my wife and child. I need to live a normal life like other men. I need-- But what's the use?" he finished, with outflung hands.

"I know; but--you, yourself--" By a supreme effort the doctor was keeping himself from shouting aloud with joy.

"Oh, yes, I know it's all my own fault," cut in Burke crisply. "You can't tell me anything new on that score, that I haven't told myself.

Yes, and I know I haven't even been willing to have her name spoken," he went on recklessly, answering the amazement in the doctor's face. "For that matter, I don't know why I'm talking like this now--unless it's because I've always said to you more than I've said to any one else--except dad--about Helen. And now, after being such a cad, it seems almost--due to her that I should say--something. Besides, doesn't somebody say somewhere that confession is good for the soul?"

There was a quizzical smile on his lips, but there was no smile in his eyes.

The doctor nodded dumbly. Afraid of saying the wrong thing, he dared not open his lips. But, terrified at the long silence that followed, he finally ventured unsteadily:--

"But why--this sudden change, Burke?"

"It's not so sudden as you think." Burke's eyes, gloomily fixed on the opposite wall, did not turn as he spoke. "It's been coming gradually for a long time. I can see that now. Still, the real eye-opener finally came from--mother."

"_Your--mother!_"

"Yes, her diary--or, rather, diaries. I found them a month ago among father's things. I can't tell you what was in them. I wouldn't, of course, if I could. They're too--sacred. Perhaps you think even I should not have read them; perhaps I shouldn't. But I did, and I'm glad I did; and I believe she'd have wanted me to.

"Of course, at first, when I picked one of them up, I didn't know what it was. Then I saw my name, and I read--page after page. I was a baby--her baby. Gleason, can you imagine what it would be to look deep down into the soul of a good woman and read there all her love, hopes, prayers, and ambitions for her boy--and then suddenly realize that you yourself were that boy?"

There was no answer; and Burke, evidently expecting none, went on with the rush of abandonment that told of words suddenly freed from long restraint.

"I took up then the first one--the diary she kept that first year of her marriage; and if I had felt small and mean and unworthy before-- On and on I read; and as I read, I began to see, dimly, what marriage means--for a woman. They were very poor then. Father was the grandson of the younger, runaway son, Joel, and had only his trade and his day wages. They lived in a shabby little cottage on Mill Street, long since destroyed. This house belonged to the other branch of the family, and was occupied by a rich old man and his daughter. Mother was gently reared, and was not used to work. Those first years of poverty and privation must have been wickedly hard for her. But the little diaries carried no complaints. They did carry weariness, often, and sometimes a pitiful terror lest she be not strong enough for what was before her, and so bring disappointment and grief to 'dear John.' But always, for 'dear John,' I could see there was to be nothing but encouragement and a steadfast holding forth of high aims and the a.s.surance of ultimate success.

"Then, one by one, came the babies, with all the agony and fears and hopes they brought with them. Three came and slipped away into the great unknown before I came--to stay. About that time father's patents began to bring success, and soon the money was pouring in. They bought this house. It had been one of their dreams that they would buy it. The old man had died, and the daughter had married and moved away, and the house had been for sale for some time. So they bought it, and soon after I was born we came here to live. Then, when I was four years old, mother died.

"That is the story--the bald story. But that doesn't tell you anything of what those diaries were to me. In the light they shed I saw my own marriage--and I was ashamed. I never thought of marriage before from Helen's standpoint. I never thought what she had to suffer and endure, and adapt herself to. I know now. Of course, very soon after our marriage, I realized that she and I weren't suited to each other. But what of it? I had married her. I had effectually prevented her from finding happiness with any other man; yet it didn't seem to occur to me that I had thereby taken on myself the irrevocable duty of trying to make her happy. I have no doubt that my ways and aims and likes and dislikes annoyed her as much as hers did me. But it never occurred to me that my soft greens and browns and Beethoven harmonies got on her nerves just exactly as her pinks and purples and ragtime got on mine. I was never in the habit of looking at anybody's happiness but my own; and _I_ wasn't happy. So I let fling, regardless."

Burke paused, and drew a long sigh. The doctor, puffing slowly at his cigar, sedulously kept his face the other way. The doctor, in his fancy, had already peopled the old room with a joyous Helen and Dorothy Elizabeth; and he feared, should he turn, that his face would sing a veritable Hallelujah Chorus--to the consequent amazement of his host.

"Mother had trials of her own--lots of them," resumed Burke, after a moment's silence. "She even had some not unlike mine, I believe, for I think I could read between the lines that dad was more than a bit careless at times in manner and speech compared to the polished ways of the men of her family and social circle. But mother neither whined nor ran away. She just smiled and kept bravely straight ahead; and by and by they were under her feet, where they belonged--all those things that plagued. But I--I both whined and ran away--because I didn't like the way my wife ate her soup and spread her bread. They seem so small now--all those little ways I hated--small beside the big things that really counted. Do you know? I believe if more people would stop making the little things big and the big things little, there'd be a whole heap more happiness lying around in this old world! And Helen--poor Helen!

She tried-- I know she tried. Lots of times, when I was reading in the diaries what mother said about dad,--how she mustn't let him get discouraged or downhearted; how she must tell him she just knew he was going to succeed,--lots of times then I'd think of Helen. Helen used to talk that way to me at the first! I wonder now if Helen kept a diary!

And I can't help wondering if, supposing I had been a little less apt to notice the annoyances, and a little more inclined to see the good-- Bah!

There, there, old man, forgive me," he broke off, with a shrug. "I didn't mean to run on like this. I really didn't--for all the world like the heart-to-heart advice to the lovelorn in a daily news column!"

"I'm glad you did, Burke." The doctor's carefully controlled voice expressed cheery interest; that was all. "And now what do you propose to do?"

"Do? How? What do you mean?"

"Why, about--your wife, of course."

"Nothing. There's nothing I can do. And that's the pity of it. She will go on, of course, to the end of her life, thinking me a cad and a coward."

"But if you could be--er--brought together again," suggested the doctor in a voice so coldly impersonal it was almost indifferent.

"Oh, yes, of course--perhaps. But that's not likely. I don't know where she is, remember; and she's not likely to come back of her own accord, after all this time. Besides, if she did, who's to guarantee that a few old diaries have changed me from an unbearably selfish brute to a livably patient and pleasant person to have about the house? Not but what I'd jump at the chance to try, but-- Well, we'll wait till I get it," he finished dryly, with a lightness that was plainly a.s.sumed.

"Well, anyway, Burke, you've never found any one else!" The Hallelujah Chorus did almost sing through the doctor's voice this time.

"No, I've been spared that, thank Heaven. There was one--a Mrs.

Carrolton."