Part 24 (1/2)
”He's left me.”
”Left you! Impossible!”
”Yes.” She drew in her breath convulsively. ”He says it's only to Alaska with his father; but that's just to let me down easy.”
”Oh, but, Mrs. Denby--”
”You needn't try to make me think any different,” she interposed wearily, sinking into the chair the doctor placed for her; ”'cause you can't. I've been over everything you could say. All the way down here I didn't have anything to do only just to think and think. And I see now--such lots of things that I never saw before.”
”But, why--how do you know--what made you think he has--left you?”
stammered the doctor.
”Because he's ashamed of me; and--”
”Oh, Mrs. Denby!”
”You don't have to say anything about that, either,” said Mrs. Denby very quietly. And before the dumb agony in the eyes turned full upon him, he fell silent.
”There ain't any question as to what _has_ been done; it's just what I'm _going_ to _do_,” she went on wearily again. ”He sent me ten thousand dollars--Burke's father did; and--”
”John Denby sent you ten thousand dollars!” exploded the doctor, sitting erect.
”Yes; a check. I've got it here. He sent it for a playday, you know,”
nodded Mrs. Denby, s.h.i.+fting the weight of the heavy baby in her arms.
”And--and that's why I came to you.”
”To--to me,” stammered the doctor, growing suddenly alertly miserable and nervous again. ”A--a playday! But I--I--that is--how--”
”Oh, I'm not going to take the playday. I couldn't even _think_ play--now,” she choked. ”It's--” Then in a breathless burst it came.
”Doctor, you can--you _will_ help me, won't you?--to learn to stand and walk and talk and eat soup and wear the right clothes and finger nails and hair, you know, and not say the wrong things, and everything the way Burke's friends do--you and all the rest of them--_you_ know, so _I_ can be swell and grand, too, and he won't be ashamed of me! And _is_ ten thousand dollars enough to pay--for learning all that?”
From sheer inability to speak, the man could only fall back in his chair and stare dumbly.
”Please, _please_ don't look at me like that,” besought the young woman frenziedly. ”It's just as if you said you _couldn't_ help me. But you can! I know you can. And I can _do_ it. I know that, too. I read it in a book, once, about a girl who--who was like me. And she went away and got perfectly grand clothes, and learning, and all; and then she came back; and he--he didn't know her at first--her husband, and he fell in love with her all over again. And she didn't have near so much money as I've got. Doctor, you _will_ help me?”
The doctor, with his shocked, amazed eyes on the piteously pleading face opposite, threw up his hands in despair.
”But I--you--Burke-- Oh, Heavens, my dear lady! How utterly, utterly impossible this all is! Come, come, what am I thinking of?--and you with not even your hat off yet! And that child! I'll call Hawkins at once. He and his wife are all there are left here, just now,--my sister's at the beach. But they'll make you and little Miss Dorothy Elizabeth here comfortable for the night. Then, to-morrow, after a good sleep, we'll--we'll fix it all up. I'll get Burke on the long distance, and--”
”Dr. Gleason,” interrupted Helen Denby, with a calmness that would have deceived him had he not seen her eyes, ”my husband isn't worrying about me. He thinks I'm at home now. When he finds I'm not, he'll think I've gone to my old home town where he _told_ me to go for a visit. He won't worry then. So that's all right. Don't you see? He's sent me away--_sent_ me. If you tell him now that I am here, I will walk right straight out of that door, and neither you nor him nor anybody else I know shall ever see me again.”
”Oh, come, come,” protested the doctor, again helplessly.
Once more Helen interrupted.
”Doctor, why can't you be straight with me?” she pleaded. ”I had to come to you. There wasn't anybody else I _could_ go to. And there isn't any other way out of it--but this. I tell you I've been doing some _thinking_. All the way down here it's been just think, think, think.”