He told himself that it was just that he wanted to convince himself that his father did not look quite so bad, after all. But he knew in his heart that it was because he hoped his father would speak to him in the old way, and that it might lead to the tearing down of this horrible high wall of indifference and formality that had risen between them.

Burke hated that wall.

The wall was there, however, always. Nothing ever came of these connivings and loiterings except (if it were during working hours) a terse hint from the foreman, perhaps, to get back on his job. How Burke hated that foreman!

And that was another thing--his position among his fellow workmen. He was with them, but not of them. His being among them at all was plainly a huge joke--and when one is acting a tragedy in all seriousness, one does not like to hear chuckles as at a comedy. But, for that matter, Burke found the comedy element always present, wherever he went. The entire town took himself, his work, and his marriage as a huge joke--a subject for gay badinage, jocose slaps on the back, and gleeful cries of:--

"Well, Denby, how goes it? How doth the happy bridegroom?"

And Burke hated that, too.

It seemed to Burke, indeed, sometimes, that he hated everything but Helen. Helen, of course, was a dear--the sweetest little wife in the world. As if any one could help loving Helen! And however disagreeable the day, there was always Helen to go home to at night.

Oh, of course, he had to take that abominable flat along with Helen--naturally, as long as he could not afford to put her in a more expensive place. But that would soon be remedied--just as soon as he got a little ahead.

This "going home to Helen" had been one of Burke's happiest antic.i.p.ations ever since his marriage. It would be so entrancing to find Helen and Helen's kiss waiting for him each night! Often had such thoughts been in his mind during his honeymoon trip; but never had they been so poignantly promising of joy as they were on that first day at the Works, after his disheartening interview with his father. All the rest of that miserable day it seemed to Burke that the only thing he was living for was the going home to Helen that night.

"Home," to Burke, had always meant a place of peace and rest, of luxurious ease and noiseless servants, of orderly rooms and well-served meals, of mellow lights and softly blended colors. Unconsciously now home still meant the same, with the addition of Helen--Helen, the center of it all. It was this dear vision, therefore, that he treasured all through his honeymoon trip, that he hugged to himself all that wretched first day of work, and that was still his star of hope as he hurried that night toward the Dale Street flat. If he had stopped to think, he would have realized at once that this new home of a day was not the old home of years. But he did not stop to think of anything except that for the first time in his life he was going home from work to Helen, his wife.

Burke Denby never forgot the shock of that first home-going. He opened the door of his apartment--and confronted chaos: a surly janitor struggling with a curtain pole, a confusion of trunks, chairs, a stepladder, and a floor-pail, a disorder of dishes on a coverless table, a smell of burned milk, and a cross, tired, untidy wife who flung herself into his arms with a storm of sobs.

"Home," after that, meant quite something new to Burke Denby. It meant Helen, of course, but--

Still it would be only for a little while, after all, he consoled himself each day. Just as soon as he got ahead a little, it would be different. He could sell the stuff, then; and the very first thing to go would be that hideous purple pillow on the red plush sofa--for that matter, the sofa would follow after mighty quick. And the chairs, too.

They were a little worse to sit on than to look at--which was unnecessary. As for the rugs--when it came to those, it would be his turn to select next time. At all events, he would not be obliged to have one that, the minute you opened the door, bounced into your face and screamed "Hullo! I'm here. See me!" How he hated that rug! And the pictures and those cheap gilt vases--everything, of course, would be different in the new home.

Nor did Burke stop to think that this constant shifting, in one's mind, of things that are, to things that may some time be, scarcely makes for content.

Still, Burke could not have forgotten his house-furnishings, even if he had tried to do so, for he had to make payments on them "every few minutes," as he termed it. Indeed, one of the unsolved riddles of his life these days was as to why there were so many more Mondays (the day he paid his installments) than there were Sat.u.r.days (the day the Works paid him) in a week. For that matter, after all was said and done, perhaps to nothing was Burke Denby giving more thought these days than to money.

Burke's experience with money heretofore had been to draw a check for what he wanted. True, he sometimes overdrew his account a trifle; but there was always his allowance coming the first of the month; and neither he nor the bank worried.

Now it was quite different. There was no allowance, and no bank--save his pocket, and there was only fifteen dollars a week coming into that.

He would not have believed that fifteen dollars a week could go so quickly, and buy so little. Very early in the first month of housekeeping all that remained of his allowance was gone. What did not go at once to make payments on the furniture was paid over to Helen to satisfy some of her many requests for money.

And that was another of Burke's riddles--why Helen needed so much money just to get them something to eat. True, of late, she had not asked for it so frequently. She had not, indeed, asked for any for some time--for which he was devoutly thankful. He would not have liked to refuse her; and he certainly was giving her all that he could afford to give, without her asking. A fellow must smoke some--though Heaven knew he had cut his cigars down, both in quant.i.ty and quality, until he had cut out nearly all the pleasure!

Still he was glad to do it for Helen. Helen was a little brick. How pretty she looked when she was holding forth on his "making good," and her not "dragging" him "down"! Bless her heart! As if she could be guilty of such a thing as that! Why, she was going to drag him up--Helen was!

And she was doing pretty well, too, running the little home, for a girl who did not know a thing about it, to begin with. She was doing a whole lot better than at first. Breakfast had not been late for two weeks, nor dinner, either. And she was almost always at the door to kiss him now, too, while at the first he had to hunt her up, only to find her crying in the kitchen, probably--something wrong somewhere.

Oh, to be sure, he _was_ getting a little tired of potato salad, and he always had abhorred those potato-chippy things; and he himself did not care much for cold meat. But, of course, after she got a little more used to things she wouldn't serve that sort of trash quite so often. He would be getting real things to eat, pretty soon--good, juicy beefsteaks and roasts, and nice fresh vegetables and fruit shortcakes, with m.u.f.fins and griddle-cakes for breakfast. But Helen was a little brick--Helen was. And she was doing splendidly!

CHAPTER VII

STUMBLING-BLOCKS

Mrs. Burke Denby was a little surprised at the number of letters directed to her husband in the morning mail that first day of November, until she noticed the familiar names in the upper left-hand corners of several of the envelopes.

"Oh, it's the bills," she murmured, drawing in her breath a little uncertainly. "To-day's the first, and they said they'd send them then.

But I didn't think there'd be such a lot of them. Still, I've had things at all those places. Well, anyway, he'll be glad to pay them all at once, without my teasing for money all the time," she finished with resolute insistence, as she turned back to her work.

If, now that the time had come, and the bills lay before her in all their fearsome reality, Helen was beginning to doubt the wisdom of her financial system, she would not admit it, even to herself. And she still wore a determinedly cheerful face when her husband came home to dinner that night. She went into the kitchen as he began to open his mail--she was reminded of a sudden something that needed her attention. Two minutes later she nearly dropped the dish of potato salad she was carrying, at the sound of his voice from the doorway.

"Helen, what in Heaven's name is the meaning of these bills?" He was in the kitchen now, holding out a sheaf of tightly clutched papers in each hand.

Helen set the potato salad down hastily.

"Why, Burke, don't--don't look at me so!"

"But what does this mean? What are these things?"

"Why, they--they're just bills, I suppose. They _said_ they'd be."

"Bills! Great Caesar, Helen! You don't mean to say that you _do_ know about them--that you bought all this stuff?"

Helen's lip began to quiver.

"Burke, don't--please don't look like that. You frighten me."

"Frighten you! What do you think of _me_?--springing a thing like this!"

"Why, Burke, I--I thought you'd _like_ it."

"_Like_ it!"

"Y-yes--that I didn't have to ask you for money all the time. And you'd have to p-pay 'em some time, anyhow. We had to eat, you know."

"But, great Scott, Helen! We aren't a hotel! Look at that--'salad'--'salad'--'salad,'" he exploded, pointing a shaking finger at a series of items on the uppermost bill in his left hand. "There's tons of the stuff there, and I always did abominate it!"

"Why, Burke, I--I--" And the floods came.

"Oh, thunderation! Helen, Helen, don't--please don't!"

"But I thought I was going to p-please you, and you called me a h-hotel, and said you a-abominated it!" she wailed, stumbling away blindly.

With a despairing e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n Burke flung the bills to the floor, and caught the sob-shaken little figure of his wife in his arms.

"There, there, I was a brute, and I didn't mean it--not a word of it.

Sweetheart, don't, please don't," he begged. "Why, girlie, all the bills in Christendom aren't worth a tear from your dear eyes. Come, _won't_ you stop?"

But Helen did not stop, at once. The storm was short, but tempestuous.

At the end of ten minutes, however, together they went into the dining-room. Helen carried the potato salad (which Burke declared he was really hungry for to-day), and Burke carried the bills crumpled in one hand behind his back, his other arm around his wife's waist.

That evening a remorseful, wistful-eyed wife and a husband with an "I'll-be-patient-if-it-kills-me" air went over the subject of household finances, and came to an understanding.