NEST-BUILDING
It is so much easier to say than to do. But nothing in the experience of
either Burke Denby or of Helen, his wife, had demonstrated this fact for
them. Quite unprepared, therefore, and with confident courage, they
proceeded to pass from the saying to the doing.
True, in the uncompromising sunlight of the next morning, the world did
look a bit larger, a shade less easily conquerable; and a distinctly
unpleasant feeling of helplessness assailed both husband and wife. Yet
with a gay "Now we'll go house-hunting right away so as to save paying
here!" from Helen, and an adoring "You darling--but it's a burning
shame!" from Burke, the two sallied forth, after the late hotel
breakfast.
The matter of selecting the new home was not a difficult one--at first.
They decided at once that, if they could not have an apartment in the
Reddington Chambers, they would prefer a house. "For," Burke said, "as
for being packed away like sardines in one of those abominable little
cheap flat-houses, I won't!" So a house they looked for at the start.
And very soon they found what Helen said was a "love of a place"--a
pretty little cottage with a tiny lawn and a flower-bed.
"And it's so lucky it's for rent," she exulted. "For it's just what we
want, isn't it, dearie?"
"Y-yes; but--"
"Why, Burke, don't you like it? _I_ think it's a dear! Of course it
isn't like your father's house. But we can't expect that."
"Expect that! Great Scott, Helen,--we can't expect this!" cried the man.
"Why, Burke, what do you mean?"
"It'll cost too much, dear,--in this neighborhood. We can't afford it."
"Oh, that'll be all right. I'll economize somewhere else. Come; it says
the key is next door."
"Yes, but, Helen, dearest, I know we can't--" But "Helen, dearest," was
already halfway up the adjoining walk; and Burke, with a despairing
glance at her radiant, eager face, followed her. There was, indeed, no
other course open to him, as he knew, unless he chose to make a scene on
the public thorough-fare--and Burke Denby did not like scenes.
The house was found to be as attractive inside as it was out; and
Helen's progress from room to room was a series of delighted
exclamations. She was just turning to go upstairs when her husband's
third desperate expostulation brought her feet and her tongue to a
pause.
"Helen, darling, I tell you we can't!" he was exclaiming. "It's out of
the question."
"Burke!" Her lips began to quiver. "And when you know how much I want
it!"
"Sweetheart, don't, please, make it any harder for me," he begged. "I'd
give you a dozen houses like this if I could--and you know it. But we
can't afford even this one. The rent is forty dollars. I heard her tell
you when she gave you the key."
"Never mind. We can economize other ways."
"But, Helen, I only get sixty all told. We can't pay forty for rent."
"Oh, but, Burke, that leaves twenty, and we can do a lot on twenty. Just
as if what we ate would cost us that! I don't care for meat, anyhow,
much. We'll cut that out. And I hate grapefruit and olives. They cost a
lot. Mrs. Allen was always having them, and--"
The distraught husband interrupted with an impatient gesture.
"Grapefruit and olives, indeed! And as if food were all of it! Where are
our clothes and coal and--and doctor's bills, and I don't-know-what-all
coming from? Why, great Scott, Helen, I smoke half that in a week,
sometimes,--not that I shall now, of course," he added hastily. "But,
honestly, dearie, we simply can't do it. Now, come, be a good girl, and
let's go on. We're simply wasting time here."
Helen, convinced at last, tossed him the key, with a teary "All
right--take it back then. I shan't! I know I should c-cry right before
her!" The next minute, at sight of the abject woe and dismay on her
husband's face, she flung herself upon him with a burst of sobs.
"There, there, Burke, here I am, so soon, making a fuss because we can't
afford things! But I won't any more--truly I won't! I was a mean, horrid
old thing! Yes, I was," she reiterated in answer to his indignant
denial. "Come, let's go quick!" she exclaimed, pulling herself away, and
lifting her head superbly. "I don't want the old place, anyhow. Truly, I
don't!" And, with a dazzling smile, she reached out her hand and tripped
enticingly ahead of him toward the door; while the man, bewildered, but
enthralled by this extraordinary leap from fretful stubbornness to gay
docility, hurried after her with an incoherent jumble of rapturous
adjectives.
Such was Mr. and Mrs. Burke Denby's first experience of home-hunting.
The second, though different in detail, was similar in disappointment.
So also were the third and the fourth experiences. Not, indeed, until
the weary, distracted pair had spent three days in time, all their
patience, and most of their good nature, did they finally arrive at a
decision. And then their selection, alas, proved to be one of the
despised tiny flats, in which, according to the unhappy young
bridegroom, they were destined to be packed like sardines.
After all, it had been the "elegant mirror in the parlor," and the "just
grand" tiled and tessellated entrance, that had been the determining
factors in the decision; for Burke, thankful that at last something
within reach of his pocketbook had been found to bring a sparkle to his
beloved's eyes, had stifled his own horror at the tawdry cheapness of
it all, and had given a consent that was not without a measure of relief
born of the three long days of weary, well-nigh hopeless search.
Dalton, like most manufacturing towns of fifteen or twenty thousand
souls, had all the diversity of a much larger place. There was West
Hill, where were the pillared and porticoed residences of the
pretentious and the pretending, set in painfully new, wide-sweeping,
flower-bordered lawns; and there was Valley Street, a double line of
ramshackle wooden buildings with broken steps and shutterless windows,
where a blade of grass was a stranger and a flower unknown, save for
perhaps a sickly geranium on a tenement window sill. There was Old
Dalton, with its winding, tree-shaded streets clambering all over the
slope of Elm Hill, where old colonial mansions, with an air of aloofness
(borrowed quite possibly from their occupants), seemed ever to be
withdrawing farther and farther away from plebeian noise and publicity.
There was, of course, the mill district, where were the smoke-belching
chimneys and great black buildings that meant the town's bread and
butter; and there were the adjoining streets of workmen's houses, fitted
to give a sensitive soul the horrors, so seemingly endless was the
repetition of covered stoop and dormer window, always exactly the same,
as far as eye could reach. There was, too, the bustling, asphalted,
brick-blocked business center; and there were numerous streets of
simple, pretty cottages, and substantial residences, among which, with
growing frequency, there were beginning to appear the tall,
many-windowed apartment houses, ranging all the way from the exclusive,
expensive Reddington Chambers down to the flimsy structures like the one
whose tawdry ornamentation had caught the fancy of Burke Denby's
village-bred wife.
To Burke Denby himself, late of Denby House (perhaps the most aloof of
all the "old colonials"), the place was a nightmare of horror. But
because his wife's eyes had glistened, and because his wife's lips had
caroled a joyous "Oh, Burke, I'd _love_ this place, darling!"--and
because, most important of all, if it must be confessed, the rent was
only twenty dollars a month, he had uttered a grim "All right, we'll
take it." And the selection of the home was accomplished.
Not until they were on the way to the hotel that night did there come to
the young husband the full realizing sense that housekeeping meant
furniture.
"Oh, of course I _knew_ it did," he groaned, half-laughingly, after his
first despairing ejaculation. "But I just didn't think; that's all. Our
furniture at home we'd always had. But of course it does have to be
bought--at first."
"Of course! And _I_ didn't think, either," laughed Helen. "You see, we'd
always had _our_ furniture, too, I guess. But then, it'll be grand to
buy it. I love new things!"
Burke Denby frowned.
"Buy it! That's all right--if we had the money to pay. Heaven only
knows how much it'll cost. I don't."
"But, Burke, you've got _some_ money, haven't you? You took a big roll
out of your pocket last night."
He gave her a scornful glance.
"Big roll, indeed! How far do you suppose that would go toward
furnishing a home? Of course I've got some money--a little left from my
allowance--but that doesn't mean I've got enough to furnish a home."
"Then let's give up housekeeping and board," proposed Helen. "Then we
won't have to buy any furniture. And I think I'd like it better anyhow;
and I _know_ you would--after you'd sampled my cooking," she finished
laughingly.
But her husband did not smile. The frown only deepened as he
ejaculated:--
"Board! Not much, Helen! We _couldn't_ board at a decent place. 'Twould
cost too much. And as for the cheap variety--great Scott, Helen! I
wonder if you think I'd stand for that! Heaven knows we'll be enough
gossiped about, as it is, without our planting ourselves right under the
noses of half the tabby-cats in town for them to 'oh' and 'ah' and 'um'
every time we turn around or don't turn around! No, ma'am, Helen! We'll
shut ourselves up somewhere within four walls we can call home, even if
we have to furnish it with only two chairs and a bed and a kitchen
stove. It'll be ours--and we'll be where we won't be stared at."
Helen laughed lightly.
"Dear, dear, Burke, how you do run on! Just as if one minded a little
staring! I rather like it, myself,--if I know my clothes and my back
hair are all right."
"Ugh! Helen!"
"Well, I do," she laughed, uptilting her chin. "It makes one feel so
sort of--er--important. But I won't say 'board' again, _never_,--unless
you begin to scold at my cooking," she finished with an arch glance.
"As if I could do that!" cried the man promptly, again the adoring
husband. "I shall love everything you do--just because it's _you_ that
do it. The only trouble will be, _you_ won't get enough to eat--because
I shall want to eat it all!"
"You darling! Aren't you the best ever!" she cooed, giving his arm a
surreptitious squeeze. "But, really, you know, I am going to be a
bang-up cook. I've got a cookbook."
"So soon? Where did you get that?"
"Yesterday, while you went into Stoddard's for that house-key. I saw one
in the window next door and I went in and bought it. 'Twas two dollars,
so it ought to be a good one. And that makes me think. It took all the
money I had, 'most, in my purse. So I--I'm afraid I'll have to have some
more, dear."
"Why, of course, of course! You mustn't go without money a minute." And
the young husband, with all the alacrity of a naturally generous nature
supplemented by the embarrassment of this new experience of being asked
for money by the girl he loved, plunged his hand into his pocket and
crowded two bills into her unresisting fingers. "There! And I won't be
so careless again, dear. I don't ever mean you to have to _ask_ for
money, sweetheart."
"Oh, thank you," she murmured, tucking the bills into her little
handbag. "I shan't need any more for ever so long, I'm sure. I'm going
to be economical _now_, you know."
"Of course you are. You're going to be a little brick. _I_ know."
"And we won't mind anything if we're only together," she breathed.
"There won't be anything to mind," he answered fervently, with an ardent
glance that would have been a kiss had it not been for the annoying
presence of a few score of Dalton's other inhabitants on the street
together with themselves.
The next minute they reached the hotel.
At nine o'clock the following morning Mr. and Mrs. Burke Denby sallied
forth to buy the furniture for their "tenement," as Helen called it,
until her husband's annoyed remonstrances changed the word to
"apartment."
Burke Denby learned many things during the next few hours. He learned
first that tables and chairs and beds and stoves--really decent ones
that a fellow could endure the sight of--cost a prodigious amount of
money. But, to offset this, and to make life really worth the living,
after all, it seemed that one might buy a quantity sufficient for one's
needs, and pay for them in installments, week by week. This idea, while
not wholly satisfactory, seemed the only way of stretching their limited
means to cover their many needs; and, after some hesitation, it was
adopted.
There remained then only the matter of selection; and it was just here
that Burke Denby learned something else. He learned that two people,
otherwise apparently in perfect accord, could disagree most violently
over the shape of a chair or the shade of a rug. Indeed, he would not
have believed it possible that such elements of soul torture could lie
in a mere matter of color or texture. And how any one with eyes and
sensibilities could wish to select for one's daily companions such a
mass of gingerbread decoration and glaring colors as seemed to meet the
fancy of his wife, he could not understand. Neither could he understand
why all his selections and preferences were promptly dubbed "dingy" and
"homely," nor why nothing that he liked pleased her at all. As such was
certainly the case, however, he came to express these preferences less
and less frequently. And in the end he always bought what she wanted,
particularly as the price on her choice was nearly always lower than the
one on his--which was an argument in its favor that he found it hard to
refute.
Tractable as he was as to quality, however, he did have to draw a sharp
line as to quantity; for Helen;--with the cheerful slogan, "Why, it's
only twenty-five cents a week more, Burke!"--seemed not to realize that
there was a limit even to the number of those one might spend--on sixty
dollars a month. True, at the beginning she did remind him that they
could "eat less" till they "got the things paid for," and that her
clothes were "all new, anyhow, being a bride, so!" But she had not said
that again. Perhaps because she saw the salesman turn his back to laugh,
and perhaps because she was a little frightened at the look on her
husband's face. At all events, when Burke did at last insist that they
had bought quite enough, she acquiesced with some measure of grace.
Burke himself, when the shopping was finished, drew a sigh of relief,
yet with an inward shudder at the recollection of certain things marked
"Sold to Burke Denby."
"Oh, well," he comforted himself. "Helen's happy--and that's the main
thing; and I shan't see them much. I'm away days and asleep nights." Nor
did it occur to him that this was not the usual attitude of a supposedly
proud bridegroom toward his new little nest of a home.
Getting settled in the little Dale Street apartment was, so far as Burke
was concerned, a mere matter of moving from the hotel and dumping the
contents of his trunk into his new chiffonier and closet. True, Helen,
looking tired and flurried (and not nearly so pretty as usual), brought
to him some borrowed tools, together with innumerable curtains and rods
and nails and hooks that simply must be put up, she said, before she
could do a thing. But Burke, after a half-hearted trial,--during which
he mashed his thumb and bored three holes in wrong places,--flew into a
passion of irritability, and bade her get the janitor who "owned the
darn things" to do the job, and to pay him what he asked--'twould be
worth it, no matter what it was!
With a very hasty kiss then Burke banged out of the house and headed for
the Denby Iron Works.
It was not alone the curtains or the offending hammer that was wrong
with Burke Denby that morning. The time had come when he must not only
meet his fellow employees, and take his place among them, but he must
face his father. And he was dreading yet longing to see his father. He
had not seen him since he bade him good-night and went upstairs to his
own room the month before--to write that farewell note.
Once, since coming back from his wedding trip, he had been tempted to
leave town and never see his father again--until he should have made for
himself the name and the money that he was going to make. Then he would
come back and cry: "Behold, this is I, your son, and this is Helen, my
wife, who, you see, has _not_ dragged me down!" He would not, of course,
_talk_ like that. But he would show them. He would! This had been when
he first learned from Brett of the allowance-cutting, and of his
father's implacable anger.
Then had come the better, braver decision. He would stay where he was.
He would make the name and the money right here, under his father's very
eyes. It would be harder, of course; but there would then be all the
more glory in the winning. Besides, to leave now would look like
defeat--would make one seem almost like a quitter. And his father hated
quitters! He would like to show his father. He _would_ show his father.
And he would show him right here. And had not Helen, his dear wife, said
that she would aid him? As if he could help winning out under those
circumstances!
It was with thoughts such as these that he went now to meet his father.
Especially was he thinking of Helen, dear Helen,--poor Helen, struggling
back there with those abominable hooks and curtains. And he had been
such a brute to snap her up so crossly! He would not do it again. It was
only that he was so dreading this first meeting with his father. After
that it would be easier. There would not be anything then only just to
keep steadily going till he'd made good--he and Helen. But now--father
would be proud to see how finely he was taking it!
With chin up and shoulders back, therefore, Burke Denby walked into his
father's office.
"Well, father," he began, with cheery briskness. Then, instantly, voice
and manner changed as he took a hurried step forward. "Dad, what is it?
Are you ill?"
So absorbed had Burke Denby been over the part he himself was playing in
this little drama of Denby and Son, that he had given no thought as to
the probable looks or actions of any other member of the cast. He was
quite unprepared, therefore, for the change in the man he now saw before
him--the pallor, the shrunken cheeks, the stooped shoulders, the
unmistakable something that made the usually erect, debonair man look
suddenly worn and old.
"Dad, you are ill!" exclaimed Burke in dismay.
John Denby got to his feet at once. He even smiled and held out his
hand. Yet Burke, who took the hand, felt suddenly that there were
uncounted miles of space between them.
"Ah, Burke, how are you? No, I'm not ill at all. And you--are you well?"
"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 succumbed 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 succumbed--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 pass 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 companionship 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 companionship? 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
spacious, well-appointed office. Twice he turned toward the door as if
to leave the room. Once he reached a hesitating hand toward the
push-button 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 shifted about in his
hand the letter which for three minutes he had been holding before his
eyes upside down.