I Walked in Arden Part 26

Mr. Claybourne looked doubtfully about the room. I sympathized with his feelings, for a sick room is the last place one would choose for a banquet.

"That would be too much like writing _Hamlet_ in a charnel house. Can't you carry me downstairs? and I'll sit with Leonidas before the fire while the rest of you gorge," I urged.

"How about that, Miss Conover?" Claybourne asked. Miss Conover looked at me, and I suspected revenge to be brooding in her eye. Helen added her entreaty, and the nurse wavered.

"I suppose there'll be less trouble in the end if we carry him down, though what Dr. Sinclair will say, goodness knows," Miss Conover conceded grudgingly. "But it'll only be for an hour, and then no more talk or visitors today."

"Agreed," I cried; "any price you say, nurse."

"Miss Conover," she corrected.

"I beg your pardon--good nature made me careless." Helen giggled. I was rolled up in dressing gown and blankets and carried downstairs by Mr.

Claybourne, Helen and Miss Conover followed with pillows and miscellaneous gla.s.sware. Leonidas took a sniff at me and then greeted me with the most exuberant enthusiasm, knocking over at least one piece of furniture by the sheer power in his wagging tail. I had an armchair before a fire of crackling hickory logs; there was a small table beside me, with some of Helen's violets in a little vase in the centre.

Helen, her father, and Miss Conover sat at their gaily decked table, on which was a mountain of autumn fruit piled about an enormous pumpkin.

The maid brought in a turkey as big as a boar's head. Mr. Claybourne busied himself with opening a bottle of champagne. Helen insisted that the turkey be placed before me and helped me carve the first slice before it was removed to Mr. Claybourne's seat.

"Isn't it a shame you can't eat any of it," Helen cried. Just then I did not care to. To tell the truth, the smell of the food made me feel so ill I was not certain I could stick the dinner out. But I knew better than to give Miss Conover an inkling of this. "It isn't as if one could make a dash for the upper deck, either," I thought to myself. At a critical moment the nurse placed some jellied bouillon before me and threatened forcible feeding. "One inch nearer with a spoonful of that stuff, and there'll be a real catastrophe," I murmured inwardly. I violently waved it away. Helen flew to my rescue. "I think if we leave Ted quite alone, he'll eat it by himself when he feels like it," she advised Miss Conover.

"The doctor ordered him to eat it," the nurse stubbornly contended.

Helen conquered her, and I was left, not exactly at peace, but in a state of armed neutrality within. By concentrating my attention on the dancing flames in the chimney I kept the internal factions quiet.

Mr. Claybourne ran through his series of champagne toasts, repeating all the funny ones we had heard last time. He was eager for me to have one sip, but Helen stood firm. Miss Conover sat in stern disapproval of the champagne, her gla.s.s inverted before her, as if to emphasize with a kind of crystal exclamation point her opinion of such proceedings.

"Where is Miss Hershey?" I asked, as soon as I had the stomach for such a question.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you, Ted. She's dining out with an ex-governor of Georgia--I believe a third cousin twice removed of her mother's aunt, or some complicated Southern family relations.h.i.+p like that."

"I thought she said he was her cousin," Mr. Claybourne corrected. Helen winked at me; Miss Hershey would have called it "unmaidenly."

"I believe all Southerners who are anybody are each other's cousins, dad. Anyway, she said they didn't pay much attention to Thanksgiving in the South, and she preferred not to be here."

"The b.l.o.o.d.y s.h.i.+rt again, eh?" said Mr. Claybourne.

"I can't imagine Miss Hershey in a b.l.o.o.d.y s.h.i.+rt," I murmured.

"Really Mr. Edward!" Miss Conover exclaimed, half rising from the table.

Helen laughed. "I don't think such remarks is nice," Miss Conover continued.

"H'm," said Mr. Claybourne, evidently wondering what it was all about.

"How's your foot, Ted?" Helen called out.

"There's nothing the matter with Ted's foot, is there?" said Mr.

Claybourne.

"Not a thing!" snapped Miss Conover.

"There's your answer, Lady Grey Eyes," I laughed.

"What are we talking about?" Mr. Claybourne inquired.

"It's just a private joke between Ted and me, dad. You wouldn't understand," Helen explained.

"Then I don't think it's very polite of you to refer to it before others," her father grumbled. "I'm surprised at you, Ted."

"My opinion exactly," Miss Conover hastened to agree.

The tension was broken by the arrival of the maid with three kinds of pie--mince, pumpkin, and cranberry. Upon the later arrival of coffee, Miss Conover got up from the table.

"Time's up," she announced. "We'll carry Mr. Edward upstairs."

"A bargain's a bargain, and I'll go quietly," I said, "but d.a.m.n it all just the same."

"Edward, will you oblige me by not swearing before Helen," Mr.

Claybourne declaimed.

"I beg your pardon--and Helen's, if she wants it. Happiness has a bad effect on my manners."

They put me away in the dark room....

In the morning Knowlton dropped in to see me on the way to the office.

Dr. Sinclair had called first and expressed approval of my progress. He also gave permission to talk business for half an hour, which was why I had Knowlton summoned by telephone.

"Well, Ted, our friend nearly did for you," he said with his diabolic grin, as he drew a chair alongside my bed. "I certainly was scared until the doc said he thought he could pull you through." I knew that for Knowlton to admit this much was for him to confess he had pa.s.sed through an emotional crisis. Of course the way he put it was part of the "hard-headed" pose of all our race, whether English or American. It is the half-unconscious way in which we hide our sentimentality when the latter collides with reality.

"Thanks, Knowlton," I replied; "it would be awkward for the business if I got out ahead of time." I could not resist teasing him this much.

"Wasn't just what I meant, Ted," he said, squirming uncomfortably.

"Well, I guess it doesn't matter. The point now is that the Owens people sent us a crackerjack, A-number-one man, and he a.n.a.lyzed the Texas formula in a jiffy, so to speak. Prospero lost us only four days, and the Owens man has speeded us up so we have made that good. He costs like h.e.l.l, though, and as soon as you can get out again, Ted, I'll let him go."

"When will I be back, do you think?"

"Not until after Christmas--and then no more night work. We'll move you back to the day-s.h.i.+ft. It's a d.a.m.ned nuisance."

"It's something of a nuisance for me, too," I said, "having your pet employee trying to murder me. I hope you appreciate it has been inconvenient."

Knowlton grinned: "Good boy, Ted, that's the stuff. Never lose your nerve."

"Why did Prospero do it?--that's what I can't understand."

"Paranoia, Ted--delusion of persecution: he worked with you, so he chose you for his best hallucination. Thought you were stealing his great idea about electricity direct from coal."

"How do you know? Did he leave a confession sticking out of his right boot?" I tried what I imagined to be sarcasm.

"No, but he used to tell me all about it. Said you dogged his every step. I warned you, Ted, to look out for him. I never thought he'd pull anything off in the factory with three hundred workmen all around.