I Walked in Arden Part 28

Miss Hershey carried off Helen to make a list of guests; Mr. Claybourne took me into the library. We sat down, I in my usual trepidation when confronted with practical details.

"I have had a letter from your father, Edward," he began, taking out a familiar envelope. I was surprised, for as yet I had received only a cable of good wishes. "He appears pleased with the step you have taken."

I bent my face into a smile. "I have been just a trifle uneasy for fear that his disapproval might affect your future. He is, on the contrary, ready to do what he can to a.s.sist."

This time I really smiled--not that I had had any doubt, but it was pleasant to learn of my father's absolute trust in me.

"He is not too encouraging over finances, but seems to think he can give you employment that will enable you to take care of Helen--and of any addition."

"Addition?" I asked, puzzled. Mr. Claybourne looked at me over the rims of his gla.s.ses, and tapped his letter on the corner of the table.

"I a.s.sume that young married people usually have additions to their family," he said. I blushed furiously.

"Ye-yes," I murmured feebly. "I hadn't thought of that."

"I sometimes wonder, Edward, if you and Helen think of any one but yourselves," he said, gazing out the window. I was stung by this rebuke, perhaps because its truth struck me forcibly. "But I am not surprised; it is entirely natural for young people to be selfish--" I made a gesture of protest, which he ignored. "They think they can make the world over in their own image. Sometimes they forget the world has been in business longer than they have. The point is, however, that in being selfish together you mustn't be selfish to each other. I am glad neither of you have much money, but I also want Helen to be comfortable. That, I conclude from your father's letter, will be the case. The less you have, down to a certain point, the harder you will work for each other. Have you anything to say, Edward?"

I thought, but no ideas occurred to me. I looked around uneasily, wis.h.i.+ng Helen were there to back me up.

"I notice, Edward, that you have already formed the habit of leaning on Helen's decisions. I admit that she is a young woman with force of character beyond her years." He smiled slightly, with a reminiscent air.

"I'm not always immune myself; your engagement is proof of that," he laughed. "But I am telling you this for your good, Ted. Be your own boss; Helen will respect you all the more, and so will I. Besides, Edward, it's a pretty important element in success in life."

Again no suitable reply from me was forthcoming. This rather plain hint about "success in life" fitted with the weakness-of-character theory that had come to me upon the Ridge Road earlier in the afternoon. I wondered how true it was. If true, was it curable? Mr. Claybourne seemed to be waiting, for I heard him cough. Helen saved the situation by coming in and sitting on the arm of my chair.

"What have you been saying to Ted, dad?"

"One or two things he ought to know, my daughter," Mr. Claybourne replied gravely.

"That's an awfully unfair advantage to take of any one, dad. Of course Ted didn't know what to say back to you?" she teased, rumpling my hair.

"You are both two ignorant young fools," Mr. Claybourne exploded ungrammatically.

"What else do you expect us to be, dad? Besides, according to Mr. Pope's famous line, it would be silly of us to be anything else. Look it up, dad, in your Bartlett's _Familiar Quotations_."

Mr. Claybourne chewed the end off a fresh cigar, obviously in a bad humour.

"Well, Helen, all I can say is that I hope the world won't give you too hard a knock, when it decides to take the conceit out of you. Other people have been in love before," he added with what I thought was irrelevance.

"Of course they have, dad dear. But not just like Ted and me."

Mr. Claybourne uttered a pardonable snort.

"As long as we have each other, nothing can happen to either of us,"

Helen said simply, in a tone that made me grip her arm tightly.

"As long as--" Mr. Claybourne said slowly to himself without finis.h.i.+ng the sentence. A boy stopped outside the window and lit the street lamp.

The room was growing dark, and a new moon was just visible above the opposite roof. There was a long silence, during which Mr. Claybourne puffed at his cigar.

"Why, what a gloom you are, dad, trying to frighten us out of our happiness with all your pessimistic grown-up ideas," Helen cried, flinging her arms impulsively about him, knocking the ash off his cigar, and seriously deranging his dignity. Nevertheless he patted his daughter on the back and was secretly much pleased.

"Well, little girl," he smiled, "getting 'round your old dad just as you always do," and he kissed her.

"Of course!" she laughed. "That's what dads are for."

Even Miss Hershey's meticulously exact explanation, at dinner, of how the lists of guests for the engagement dinner and dance had been selected, together with much family history of the individuals, could not drive away the fit of depression the afternoon had brought me. I had really never thought of the future as something to be approached with dread and suspicion; it had always seemed sufficient to blunder into it gaily and unquestioningly. I had never doubted it could be other than pleasant. Forethought could always prevent tragedies.... Could it? If one knew what tragedy to expect--yes; how if there were tragedies that crept upon one unawares? What was it the Bible said about "a thief in the night"? It was the old peril of too much happiness. The whole world was enthralled to this superst.i.tion and called its childish fears "commonsense precaution." With this fairly satisfactory and optimistic solution I finally went to bed.

A week before the dinner dance Mrs. Claybourne returned, quite limp from her journey in a Pullman and the onward rush of events at home. She felt utterly discouraged, she said, at the hopelessness of it all, and the general lack of consideration. Helen and I were made to feel like criminals detected in the midst of some clandestine crime. Helen had to have a new evening gown and an afternoon dress; she ought really to have a new set of furs, but that was out of the question, because of the terrible expense of the dance. Miss Hershey clicked and oozed sympathy from the background. Mr. Claybourne put a stop to his wife's beating of her breast by ordering Helen and her mother to New York to get everything needed.

"You can send the bills to me, and I'll do the worrying up at the office," he finished.

"I think I'll go along and do my shopping in New York, too," I put in, without pausing to think. This produced a renewed outburst. It wasn't proper, was the sum and substance.

"I've got something important to do in New York," I contended stubbornly. "Helen has to have an engagement ring."

Helen and her father took my part. It was better, he thought, for some one to go along who could look after the party and keep Helen amused.

Helen simply remarked that the idea I was not to go was preposterous.

Besides, the change would do me good. I would come back refreshed and ready to resume work. Mrs. Claybourne yielded, after first fleeing to her room in tears. It was settled I was to go along.

Chapter Ten

WE SHARE OUR FIRST CHRISTMAS

Christmas Eve was only three days away, bringing with it the formal announcement of our engagement. I received several letters from my father, as well as from my mother and sister. They accepted the situation, but I knew the family well enough to detect considerable uneasiness between the lines. My mother was once or twice frankly doubtful. Did I know America well enough to choose the right type?--a question which made me smile, as I thought of Helen. My sister asked even more feminine questions. What was Helen like? Was she fond of sports? A good sort? Or was she very serious-minded, like so many Americans? My sister, who was much younger than myself, had been born in England and had never set foot in America. I felt a certain difficulty in explaining Helen to her, although I had no doubt the two girls would be good pals on sight. My father was not so disconcerting; yet there was also an under-current of doubt and displeasure in his comments. Nothing but taking Helen to England and displaying her there would really straighten this out, I concluded.

Meanwhile I concealed all this from Helen. The family wrote her cordial and welcoming letters. We were busy with our preparations, and the factory was also an inescapable task. Knowlton was remorseless. I received no special favours at his hands in the way of extra time off.

After I had quite recovered from my part in Prospero's tragic melodrama, the grindstone was held to my nose again. The young people of Deep Harbor, particularly the girls, took an absorbing interest in Helen and me. It was all so romantic, they said--the horseback riding, the attempt to murder me, and our resolution to go abroad. "It is such a consolation for you, my dear," a delicious old lady said to Helen, "that you are going to live in England, for you will always have your own church wherever you go."

Mr. Claybourne, having reached his decision, apparently more or less dismissed us from his mind as much as was possible. I dined on Sundays at the house as a matter of course. Mrs. Claybourne kept up her wailing, as was natural to her temperament. I think she enjoyed having a standing grievance. It saved her the trouble of inventing a fresh one each day.

When friends dropped in to talk matters over, a pastime to which Deep Harbor was much addicted, she would burst into tears at each mention of the word "England." What would become of her, with her only daughter over four thousand miles away, she did not know. But of course no one in the house had any consideration for her feelings, she would go on to explain--least of all her own daughter, who seemed actually to be looking forward to the separation. This was not fair to Helen, who loved her father with a pa.s.sionate devotion and was sympathetically affectionate toward her mother. As a matter of fact, there were times when Helen minded the thought of leaving her family a great deal, and I had, upon those occasions, to paint the future in the brightest possible colours. Not that Helen doubted for an instant the love which had governed our choice. It was the natural reaction of a young girl not yet out of her teens to the realization that her new and unknown life to come would mean the breaking of all her old ties. She felt it more than even her father or her mother seemed to guess.

In the evening we read aloud, a rather sober occupation for two young lovers. Helen was eager to know the books I liked, and I to know hers, while together we explored new fields and made them our own. We were given the back drawing room to ourselves, and there, before a natural gas fire, which was the usual Deep Harbor translation of the Yule log, we would sit on a little sofa, Helen with her feet tucked up under her and her head on my shoulder, while I read. We read hardly any slush and but little romance, for of the latter we had now enough of our own. We were too young and eager to be at life to have any patience with slush.

We did not know its value as an anodyne, for we had no need of anaesthetics of any kind. We wanted to get into life as quickly as possible and fas.h.i.+on it to suit ourselves. We were therefore more interested in Ibsen and Shaw, in Hauptmann and Nietzsche, in William Morris and Anatole France, than in the current novels from the circulating library.

I don't think we were priggish in our seriousness. We kept our reading to ourselves and never spoke of it to others. We looked upon it as necessary preparatory study before embarking together upon our future.

We wanted to know, as far as we had time to learn, what writers and thinkers had to say about this world that seemed so beautiful to us.

When they were bitter, hard, or cynical, we laughed and pitied them. But most of all we enjoyed the new vistas they revealed, and neither Anatole France nor Nietzsche frightened us one bit. We looked upon a great man's mind as something independent of his experience. That he said life was cruel did not to us imply anything further than an interesting point of view which it was good fun to discuss. We felt sure that William Morris was right and the others wrong. We laughed over Shaw because we could feel him striking into Deep Harbor's vitals--and it amused us, knowing Deep Harbor, to see the skill with which he did it and the latter's blissful unconcern. The Deep Harbor _Eagle_ ran a leader one morning to prove Shaw a clown and a mountebank. We were tempted to cut it out and send it to Shaw, but we didn't know his address.

On Christmas eve was to be our dinner and dance at the country club. The country club was situated several miles out of town upon the lake sh.o.r.e.

It was a large wooden building of "Colonial" architecture, which means that it had a broad verandah, facing the lake, with high wooden columns in front, walls covered with white s.h.i.+ngles, and shutters painted green.

You drove out via the west lake road. Its members.h.i.+p was rigidly limited to four hundred, and the dues were absurdly high. Only the financially elite could afford to belong and play upon its tame nine-hole course. It boasted a waiting list of over a hundred names. Sons were put down for it before going away to college, in the hope that they would be elected by the time they had graduated. All the important social functions of Deep Harbor took place there, and some, if gossip were true, not quite so decorous as these.

It was Miss Hershey, the professional chaperone, who had decided upon the country club as the only suitable rostrum from which to announce our engagement. The dinner party was to be a small one, not over twenty couples, and the other young people were to come in later for the dance.