Chapter 9: A Bottle of Ink

Burke Denby did not attempt to deceive himself after that Sunday dinner. His marriage had been a mistake, and he knew it. He was disappointed, ashamed, and angry. He told himself that he was heartbroken; that he still loved Helen dearly—only he did not like to be with her now. She made him nervous, and rubbed him the wrong way. Her mood never seemed to fit in with his. She had so many little ways—

Sometimes he told himself irritably that he believed that, if it were a big thing like a crime that Helen had committed, he could be heroic and forgiving, and glory in it. But forever to battle against a succession of never-ending irritations, always to encounter the friction of antagonistic aims and ideals—it was maddening. He was ashamed of himself, of course. He was ashamed of lots of things that he said and did. But he could not help an explosion now and then. He felt as if somewhere, within him, was an irresistible force driving him to it.

And the pity of it! Was he not, indeed, to be pitied? What had he not given up? As if it were his fault that he was now so disillusioned! He had supposed that marriage with Helen would be a fresh joy every morning, a new delight every evening, an unbelievable glory of happiness—just being together.

Now—he did not want to be together. He did not want to go home to fretfulness, fault-finding, slovenliness, and perpetual criticism. He wanted to go home to peace and harmony, big, quiet rooms, servants that knew their business, and—dad.

And that was another thing—dad. Dad had been right. He himself had been wrong. But that did not mean that it was easy to own up that he had been wrong. Sometimes he hardly knew which cut the deeper: that he had been proved wrong, thus losing his happiness, or that his father had been proved right, thus placing him in a position to hear the hated “I told you so.”

That Helen could never make him happy Burke was convinced now. Never had he realized this so fully as since seeing her at his father’s table that Sunday. Never had her “ways” so irritated him. Never had he so poignantly realized the significance of what he had lost—and won. Never had he been so ashamed—or so ashamed because he was ashamed—as on that day. Never, he vowed, would he be placed in the same position again.

As to Helen’s side of the matter—Burke quite forgot that there was such a thing. When one is so very sorry for one’s self, one forgets to be sorry for anybody else. And Burke was, indeed, very sorry for himself. Having never been in the habit of taking disagreeable medicine, he did not know how to take it now. Having been always accustomed to consider only himself, he considered only himself now. That Helen, too, might be disappointed and disillusioned never occurred to him.

It was perhaps a month later that another invitation to dinner came from John Denby. This time Burke did not stutter out a joyous, incoherent acceptance. He declined so promptly and emphatically that he quite forgot his manners, for the moment, and had to attach to the end of his refusal a hurried and ineffectual “Er—thank you; you are very kind, I’m sure!” He looked up then and met his father’s eyes. But instantly his gaze dropped.

“Er—ah—Helen is not well at all, dad,” he still further added, nervously. “Of course I’ll speak to her. But I don’t think we can come.”

There was a moment’s pause. Then, very gravely, John Denby said: “Oh, I am sorry, son.”

Burke, with a sudden tightening of his throat, turned and walked away.

“He didn’t laugh, he didn’t sneer, he didn’t look anyhow, only just plain sorry,” choked the young man to himself. “And he had such a magnificent chance to do—all of them. But he just—understood.”

Burke “spoke to Helen” that night.

“Father asked us to dinner next Sunday; but—I said I didn’t think we could go. I told him you weren’t feeling well. I didn’t think you’d want to go; and—I didn’t want to go myself.”

Helen frowned and pouted.

“Well, I’ve got my opinion of folks who refuse an invitation without even asking ‘em if they want to go,” she bridled. “Not that I mind much, in this case, though, —if it’s just a dinner. I thought once, maybe he meant something—that he was giving in, you know. But I haven’t seen any signs of that. And as for just going to dinner—I can’t say I am ‘specially anxious for that—mean as I feel now.”

“No, I thought not,” said Burke.

And there the matter ended. As the summer passed, Burke fell into the way of going often to see his father, though never at meal-time. He went alone. Helen said she did not care to go, and that she did not see what fun Burke could find in it, anyway.

To Burke, these hours that he spent with his father chatting and smoking in the dim old library, or on the vine-shaded veranda, were like a breeze blowing across the desert of existence—like water in a thirsty land. From day to day he planned for these visits. From hour to hour he lived upon them.

To all appearances John Denby and his son had picked up their old comradeship exactly where the marriage had severed it. Even to Burke’s watchful, sensitive eyes the “wall” seemed quite gone. There was, however, one difference: mother was never mentioned. John Denby never spoke of her now.

There was plenty to talk about. There were all the old interests, and there was business. Burke was giving himself heart and soul to business these days. In July he won another promotion, and was given an advance in wages. Often, to Burke’s infinite joy, his father consulted him about matters and things quite beyond his normal position, and showed in other ways his approval of his son’s progress. Helen, the marriage, and the Dale Street home life were never mentioned—for which Burke was thankful.

“He couldn’t say anything I’d want to hear,” said Burke to himself, at times. “And I—I can’t say anything he wants to hear. Best forget it—if we can.”

To “forget it” seemed, indeed, in these days, to be Burke’s aim and effort. Always had Burke tried to forget things. From the day his six-months-old fingers had flung the offending rattle behind him had Burke endeavored to thrust out of sight and mind everything that annoyed—and Helen and marriage had become very annoying. Systematically, therefore, he was trying to forget them. His attitude, indeed, was not unlike that of a small boy who, weary of his game of marbles, cries, “Oh, come, let’s play something else. I’m tired of this!”—an attitude which, naturally, was not conducive to happiness, either for himself or for any one else—particularly as the game he was playing was marriage, not marbles.

The summer passed and October came. Life at the Dale Street flat had settled into a monotony of discontent and dreariness. Helen, discouraged, disappointed, and far from well, dragged through the housework day by day, wishing each night that it were morning, and each morning that it were night—a state of mind scarcely conducive to happiness on her part.

For all that Burke was away so many evenings now, Helen was not so lonely as she had been in the spring; for in Mrs. Jones’s place had come a new neighbor, Mrs. Cobb. And Mrs. Cobb was even brighter and more original than Mrs. Jones ever was, and Helen liked her very much. She was a mine of information as to housekeeping secrets, and she was teaching Helen how to make the soft and dainty little garments that would be needed in November. But she talked even more loudly than Mrs. Jones had talked; and her laugh was nearly always the first sound that Burke heard across the hall every morning. Moreover, she possessed a phonograph which, according to Helen, played “perfectly grand tunes”; and some one of these tunes was usually the first thing that Burke heard every night when he came home. So he called her coarse and noisy, and declared she was even worse than Mrs. Jones; whereat Helen retorted that of course he wouldn’t like her, if she did—which (while possibly true) did not make him like either her or Mrs. Cobb any better.

The baby came in November. It was a little girl. Helen wanted to call her “Vivian Mabelle.” She said she thought that was a swell name, and that it was the name of her favorite heroine in a perfectly grand book. But Burke objected strenuously. He declared very emphatically that no daughter of his should have to go through life tagged like a vaudeville fly-by-night.

Of course Helen cried, and of course Burke felt ashamed of himself. Helen’s tears had always been a potent weapon—though, from over-use, they were fast losing a measure of their power. The first time he saw her cry, the foundations of the earth sank beneath him, and he dropped into a fathomless abyss from which he thought he would never rise. It was the same the next time, and the next. The fourth time, as he felt the now familiar sensation of sinking down, down, down, he outflung desperate hands and found an unexpected support—his temper. After that it was always with him. It helped to tinge with righteous indignation his despair, and it kept him from utterly melting into weak subserviency. Still, even yet, he was not used to them—his wife’s tears. Sometimes he fled from them; sometimes he endured them in dumb despair behind set teeth; sometimes he raved and ranted in a way he was always ashamed of afterwards. But still they had the power, in a measure, to make his heart like water within him.

So now, about the baby’s name, he called himself a brute and a beast to bring tears to the eyes of the little mother—toward whom, since the baby’s advent, he felt a remorseful tenderness. But he still maintained that he could have no man, or woman, call his daughter “Vivian Mabelle.”

“But I should think you’d let me name my own baby,” wailed his wife.

Burke choked back a hasty word and assumed his pet “I’ll-be-patient-if-it-kills-me” air.

“And you shall name it,” he soothed her. “Listen! Here are pencil and paper. Now, write down a whole lot of names that you’d like, and I’ll promise to select one of them. Then you’ll be naming the baby all right. See?”

Helen did not “see,” quite, that she would be naming the baby; but, knowing from past experience of her husband’s temper that resistance would be unpleasant, she obediently took the paper and spent some time writing down a list of names.

Burke frowned a good deal when he saw the list, and declared that it was pretty poor pickings, and that he ought to have known better than to have bound himself to a silly-fool promise like that. But he chose a name (he said he would keep his word, of course), and he selected “Dorothy Elizabeth” as being less impossible than its accompanying “Veras,” “Violets,” and “Clarissa Muriels.”