Part 9 (1/2)

”Er--ah--oh, yes, very well--er--very well.”

”That's good. I'm glad.”

There was a brief pause. A torrent of words swept to the tip of the younger man's tongue; but nothing found voice except another faltering ”Er--yes, very well!” which Burke had not meant to say at all. There was a second brief pause, then John Denby sat down.

”You will find Brett in his office. You have come to work, I dare say,”

he observed, as he turned to the letters on his desk.

”Er--yes,” stammered the young man. The next moment he found himself alone, white and shaken, the other side of his father's door.

To work? Oh, yes, he had come to work; but he had come first to talk.

There were a whole lot of things he had meant to say to his father.

First, of course, there would have had to be something in the nature of an apology or the like to patch up the quarrel. Then he would tell him how he was really going to make good--he and Helen. After that they could get down to one of their old-time chats. They always had been chums--he and dad; and they hadn't had a talk for four weeks. Why, for three weeks he had been saving up a story, a dandy story that dad would appreciate! And there were other things, serious things, that--

And here already he had seen his father, and it was over. And he had not said a word--nothing of what he had meant to say. He believed he would go back--

With an angry gesture Burke Denby turned and extended his hand halfway toward the closed door. Then, with an impatient shrug, he whirled about and strode toward the door marked ”J. A. Brett, General Manager.”

If young Denby had obeyed his first impulse and reentered his father's office he would have found the man with his head bowed on the desk, his arms outflung.

John Denby, too, was white and shaken. He, too, had been dreading this meeting, and longing for it--that it might be over. There was now, however, on his part, no feeling of chagrin and impotence because of things that had not been said. There was only a shuddering relief that things had _not_ been said; that he had been able to carry it straight through as he had planned; that he had not shown his boy how much he--cared. He was glad that his pride had been equal to the strain; that he had not weakly succ.u.mbed at the first glimpse of his son's face, the first touch of his son's hand, as he had so feared that he would do.

And he had not succ.u.mbed--though he had almost gone down before the quick terror and affectionate dismay that had leaped into his son's voice and eyes at sight of his own changed appearance. (Why _could_ not he keep those abominable portions of his anatomy from being so wretchedly telltale?) But he had remembered in time. Did the boy think, then, that a mere word of sympathy now could balance the scale against so base a disregard of everything loyal and filial a month ago? Then he would show that it could not.

And he had shown it.

What if he did know now, even better than he had known it all these last miserable four weeks, that his whole world had lain in his boy's hand, that his whole life had been bounded by his boy's smile, his whole soul immersed in his boy's future? What if he did know that all the power and wealth and fame of name that he had won were as the dust in his fingers--if he might not pa.s.s them on to his son? He was not going to let Burke know this. Indeed, no!

Burke had made his own bed. He should lie in it. Deliberately he had chosen to cast aside the love and companions.h.i.+p of a devoted father at the beck of an almost unknown girl's hand. Should the father then offer again the once-scorned love and companions.h.i.+p? Had he no pride--no proper sense of simple right and justice? No self-respect, even?

It was thus, and by arguments such as these, that John Denby had lashed himself into the state of apparently cool, courteous indifference that had finally carried him successfully through the interview just closed.

For a long time John Denby sat motionless, his arms outflung across the letters that might have meant so much, but that did mean so little, to him--now. Then slowly he raised his head and fixed somber, longing eyes on the door that had so recently closed behind his son.

The boy was in there with Brett now--his boy. He was being told that his wages for the present were to be fifteen dollars a week, and that he was expected to live within his income--that the wages were really very liberal, considering his probable value to the company at the first. He _would_ begin at the bottom, as had been planned years ago; but with this difference: he would be promoted now only when he had earned it. He would have been pushed rapidly ahead to the top, had matters been as they once were. Now he must demonstrate and prove his ability.

All this Brett was telling Burke now. Poor Burke! Brett was so harsh, so uncompromising. As if it weren't tough enough to have to live on a paltry fifteen dollars a week, without--

John Denby sighed and rose to his feet. Aimlessly he fidgeted about the s.p.a.cious, well-appointed office. Twice he turned toward the door as if to leave the room. Once he reached a hesitating hand toward the push-b.u.t.ton on this desk. Then determinedly he sat down and picked up one of his letters.

Brett was right. It was the best way; the only way. And it was well, indeed, that Brett had been delegated to do the telling. If it had been himself now--! Shucks! If it had been himself, the boy would only have had to _look_ his reproach--and his wages would have been doubled on the spot! Fifteen dollars a week--_Burke!_ Why, the boy could not-- Well, then, he need not have been so foolish, so headstrong, so heartlessly disregardful of his father's wishes. He had brought it upon himself, entirely, entirely!

Whereupon, with an angry exclamation, John Denby s.h.i.+fted about in his hand the letter which for three minutes he had been holding before his eyes upside down.

CHAPTER V

THE WIFE

Helen Denby had never doubted her ability to be a perfect wife. As a girl, her vision had pictured a beauteous creature moving through a glorified world of love and admiration, ease and affluence.