The Road to Understanding Part 5

"She wouldn't--for long."

"You wait and see."

"Too great a risk to run, my boy."

"I'll risk it. I'm going to risk it."

Again there was a moment's silence. Again the stern lines deepened around the man's lips. Then very quietly there came the words:--

"Burke, if you marry this girl, you will choose between her and me. It seems to me that I ought not to need to tell you that you cannot bring her here. She shall never occupy your mother's chair as the mistress of this house."

"That settles it, then: I'll take her somewhere else."

If Burke had not been so blind with pa.s.sion he would have seen and felt the anguish that leaped to his father's eyes. But he did not stop to see or to feel. He snapped out the words, jerked himself free, and left the room.

This did not "settle it," however. There were more words--words common to stern parents and amorous youths and maidens since time immemorial. A father, appalled at the catastrophe that threatened, not only his cherished companions.h.i.+p with his only son, but, in his opinion, the revered sanct.i.ty of his wife's memory, wrapped himself in forbidding dignity. An impetuous lover, torn between the old love of years and the new, quite different one of weeks, alternately stormed and pleaded. A young girl, undisciplined, very much in love, and smarting with hurt pride and resentment, blew hot and cold in a manner that tended to drive every one concerned to distraction. As soon as possible a shocked, distressed Sister Eunice packed her trunks and betook herself and her offending household away.

In time, then, a compromise was effected. Burke should leave college immediately and go into the Works with his father, serving a short apprentices.h.i.+p from the bottom up, as had been planned for him, that he might be the master of the business, in deed as well as in name, when he should some day take his father's place. Meanwhile, for one year, he was not to see or to communicate with Helen Barnet. If at the end of the year, he was still convinced that his only hope of happiness lay in marriage to this girl, all opposition would be withdrawn and he might marry when he pleased--though even then he must not expect to bring his bride to the old home. They must set up an establishment for themselves.

"We should prefer that,--under the circ.u.mstances," had been the prompt and somewhat haughty rejoinder, much to the father's discomfiture.

Grieved and dismayed as he was at the airy indifference with which his son appeared to face a fatherless future, John Denby was yet pinning his faith on that year of waiting. Given twelve months with the boy quite to himself, free from the hateful spell of this designing young woman, and there could be no question of the result--in John Denby's mind. In all confidence, therefore, and with every sense alert to make this year as perfect as a year could be, John Denby set himself to the task before him.

It was just here, however, that for John Denby the ghosts walked--ghosts of innumerable toy pistols and frosted cakes. Burke Denby, accustomed all his life to having what he wanted, and having it _when_ he wanted it, moped the first week, sulked the second, covertly rebelled the third, and ran away the last day of the fourth, leaving behind him the customary note, which, in this case, read:--

_Dear Dad_: I've gone to Helen. I had to. I've lived a _year_ of misery in this last month: so, as far as I am concerned, I _have_ waited my year already. We shall be married at once. I wrote Helen last week, and she consented.

Now, dad, you'll just have to forgive me. I'm twenty-one.

I'm a man now, not a boy, and a man has to decide these things for himself. And Helen's a dear. You'll see, when you know her. We'll be back in two weeks. Now don't bristle up.

I'm not going to bring her home, of course (at present), after the very cordial invitation you gave me not to! We're going into one of the Reddington apartments. With my allowance and my--er--wages (!) we can manage that all right--until "the stern parent" relents and takes his daughter home--as he should!

Good-bye, BURKE.

John Denby read the letter once, twice; then he pulled the telephone toward him and gave a few crisp orders to James Brett, his general manager. His voice was steady and--to the man at the other end of the wire--ominously emotionless. When he had finished talking five minutes later, certain words had been uttered that would materially change the immediate future of a certain willful youth just then setting out on his honeymoon.

There would be, for Burke Denby, no "Reddington apartment." There would also be no several-other-things; for there would be no "allowance" after the current month. There would be only the "wages," and the things the wages could buy.

There was no disputing the fact that John Denby was very angry. But he was also sorely distressed and grieved. Added to his indignation that his son should have so flouted him was his anguish of heart that the old days of ideal companions.h.i.+p were now gone forever. There was, too, his very real fear for the future happiness of his boy, bound in marriage to a woman he believed would prove to be a most uncongenial mate. But overtopping all, just now, was his wrath at the flippant a.s.surance of his son's note, and the very evident confidence in a final forgiveness that the note showed. It was this that caused the giving of those stern, momentous orders over the telephone--John Denby himself had been somewhat in the habit of having his own way!

The hara.s.sed father did not sleep much that night. Until far into the morning hours he sat before the fireless grate in his library, thinking.

He looked old, worn, and wholly miserable. In his hand, and often under his gaze, was the miniature of a beautiful woman--his wife.

CHAPTER III

HONEYMOON DAYS

It was on a cool, cloudy day in early September that Mr. and Mrs. Burke Denby arrived at Dalton from their wedding trip.

With characteristic inclination to avoid anything unpleasant, the young husband had neglected to tell his wife that they were not to live in the Denby Mansion. He had argued with himself that she would find it out soon enough, anyway, and that there was no reason why he should spoil their wedding trip with disagreeable topics of conversation. Burke always liked to put off disagreeable things till the last.

Helen was aware, it is true, that Burke's father was much displeased at the marriage; but that this displeasure had gone so far as to result in banishment from the home, she did not know. She had been planning, indeed, just how she would win her father-in-law over--just how sweet and lovely and daughterly she would be, as a member of the Denby household; and so sure was she of victory that already she counted the battle half won.

In the old days of her happy girlhood, Helen Barnet had taken as a matter of course the succ.u.mbing of everything and everybody to her charm and beauty. And although this feeling had, perforce, been in abeyance for some eighteen months, it had been very rapidly coming back to her during the past two weeks, under the devoted homage of her young husband and the admiring eyes of numberless strangers along their honeymoon way.

It was a complete and disagreeable surprise to her now, therefore, when Burke said to her, a trifle nervously, as they were nearing Dalton:--

"We'll have to go to a hotel, of course, Helen, for a few days, till we get the apartment ready. But 'twon't be for long, dear."

"Hotel! Apartment! Why, Burke, aren't we going home--to _your_ home?"

"Oh, no, dear. We're going to have a home of our own, you know--_our_ home."

"No, I didn't know." Helen's lips showed a decided pout.

"But you'll like it, dear. You just wait and see." The man spoke with determined cheeriness.

"But I can't like it better than your old home, Burke. I _know_ what that is, and I'd much rather go there."

"Yes, yes, but--" Young Denby paused to wet his dry lips. "Er--you know, dear, dad wasn't exactly--er--pleased with the marriage, anyway, and--"

"That's just it," broke in the bride eagerly. "That's one reason I wanted to go there--to show him, you know. Why, Burke, I'd got it all planned out lovely, how nice I was going to be to him--get his paper and slippers, and kiss him good-morning, and--"

"Holy smoke! Kiss--" Just in time the fastidious son of a still more fastidious father pulled himself up; but to a more discerning bride, his face would already have finished his sentence. "Er--but--well, anyhow, dear," he stammered, "that's very kind of you, of course; but you see it's useless even to think of it. He--he has forbidden us to go there."

"Why, the mean old thing!"

"Helen!"

Helen's face showed a frown as well as a pout.

"I don't care. He is mean, if he is your father, not to let--"

"Helen!"

At the angry sharpness of the man's voice Helen stopped abruptly. For a moment she gazed at her husband with reproachful eyes. Then her chin began to quiver, her breath to come in choking little gasps, and the big tears to roll down her face.

"Why, Burke, I--"

"Oh, great Scott! Helen, dearest, don't, _please_!" begged the dismayed and distracted young husband, promptly capitulating at the awful sight of tears of which he was the despicable cause. "Darling, don't!"

"But you never sp-poke like that to me b-before," choked the wife of a fortnight.

"I know. I was a brute--so I was! But, sweetheart, _please_ stop," he pleaded desperately. "See, we're just pulling into Dalton. You don't want them to see you crying--a bride!"