The Road to Understanding
Copyright© 2024 by Eleanor H. Porter
Chapter 3: 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 succumbing 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!”
Mrs. Burke Denby drew in her breath convulsively, and lifted a hurried hand to brush the tears from her eyes. The next moment she smiled, tremulously, but adorably. She looked very lovely as she stepped from the car a little later; and Burke Denby’s heart swelled with love and pride as he watched her. If underneath the love and pride there was a vague something not so pleasant, the man told himself it was only a natural regret at having said anything to cast the slightest shadow on the home-coming of this dear girl whom he had asked to share his life. Whatever this vague something was, anyway, Burke resolutely put it behind him, and devoted himself all the more ardently to the comfort of his young wife.
In spite of himself, Burke could not help looking for his father’s face at the station. Never before had he come home (when not with his father), and not been welcomed by that father’s eager smile and outstretched hand. He missed them both now. Otherwise he was relieved to see few people he knew, as he stepped to the platform, though he fully realized, from the sly winks and covert glances, that every one knew who he was, and who also was the lady at his side.
With only an occasional perfunctory greeting, and no introductions, therefore, the somewhat embarrassed and irritated bridegroom hurried his bride into a public carriage, and gave the order to drive to the Hancock Hotel.
All the way there he talked very fast and very tenderly of the new home that was soon to be theirs.
“‘Twill be only for a little—the hotel, dear,” he plunged in at once. “And you won’t mind it, for a little, while we’re planning, will you, darling? I’m going to rent one of the Reddington apartments. You remember them—on Reddington Avenue; white stone with dandy little balconies between the big bay windows. They were just being finished when you were here. They’re brand-new, you see. And we’ll be so happy, there, dearie, —just us two!”
“Us two! But, Burke, there’ll be three. There’ll have to be the hired girl, too, you know,” fluttered the new wife, in quick panic. “Surely you aren’t going to make me do without a hired girl!”
“Oh, no—no, indeed,” asserted the man, all the more hurriedly, because he never had thought of a “hired girl,” and because he was rather fearfully wondering how much his father paid for the maids, anyway. There would have to be one, of course; but he wondered if his allowance would cover it, with all the rest. Still, he could smoke a cigar or two less a day, he supposed, if it came to a pinch, and—but Helen was speaking.
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