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Road to Understanding, The

<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2> <h3>A WOMAN'S WILL</h3> Dr. Gleason's Arctic trip, designed to cover a year of research and discovery, prolonged itself into three years and two months. Shipwrecks, thrilling escapes, months of silence, and a period when hope for the safety of the party was quite gone, all figured in the story before the heroic rescue brought a happier ending to what had come so near to being another tragedy of the ice-bound North. It was June when Frank Gleason, in the care of a nurse and a physician, arrived at his sister's summer cottage by the sea. For a month after his coming Frank Gleason was too ill to ask many questions. But with returning strength came an insistence upon an answer to a query he had already several times put to his sister. "Edith, what of the Denbys? Where is Helen? Why do you always evade any questions about her?" "She is here with me." "Here—still?" "Yes. And she's a great comfort and help to me." "And Burke doesn't know yet where she is?" "Not that we know of." "Impossible—all this time!" "Oh, I don't know. All our friends know her as 'Mrs. Darling.' The Denbys never come here, and they'd never think of looking here for her, anyway. We figured that out long ago." "But it can't go on forever! When is she going back?" An odd look crossed Mrs. Thayer's face. "I don't know, Frank; but not for some time—if ever—I should judge, from present indications." "'If ever'! Good Heavens, Edith, what do you mean?" demanded the doctor, pulling himself up in his chair. "I knew no good would come of this tom-foolishness!" "There, there, dear, never mind all this now," begged his sister. "Please don't try to talk about it any more." "But I will talk about it, Edith. I want to know—and you might just as well tell me in the first place, and not hang back and hesitate," protested the doctor, with all the irritability of a naturally strong man who finds himself so unaccountably weak in his convalescence. "What's the trouble? Hasn't that—er—fool-improvement business worked out? Well, I didn't think it would!" Edith Thayer laughed softly. "On the contrary, it's working beautifully. Wait till you see her. She's a dear—a very charming woman. She's developed wonderfully. But along with it all has come to her a very deep and genuine, and rather curious, humility, together with a pride, the chief aim of which is to avoid anything like the position in which she found herself as the mortifying, distress-causing wife of Burke Denby." "Humph!" commented the doctor. "That Burke doesn't love her, she is thoroughly convinced. To go to him now, tacitly asking to be taken back, she feels to be impossible. She has no notion of going where she isn't wanted; and she feels very sure she isn't wanted by either Burke or his father. Of course the longer it runs, and the longer she stays away, the harder it seems for her to make herself known." "Oh, but this can't go on forever," protested Frank Gleason again, restlessly. "I'll see Burke. As soon as I'm on my feet again I shall run up there." "But you've given your promise not to tell, remember." "Yes, yes, I know. I shan't tell, of course. But I can bring back something, I'm sure, that will—will cause this stubborn young woman to change her mind." "I doubt it. Helen says she's not ready to go back yet, anyway." "Not sufficiently 'improved,' I suppose," laughed the doctor, a little grimly. "Perhaps. Then, too, she has other plans all made." "Oh, she has!" "Yes. She's going abroad. Do you remember Angie Reynolds?—Angie Ried, you know—married Ned Reynolds." "Yes. Nice girl!" "Well, they're going abroad for some years—some business for the firm, I believe. Anyway, Ned will have to be months at a time in different cities, and Angie and little Gladys are going with him. They have asked Helen and Betty to go, too; and Helen has agreed to go." "And leave you?" At the indignant expression on her brother's face, Edith Thayer laughed merrily. "But, my dear Frank, I thought you were just threatening to get Helen to leave me!" she challenged. "So I was," retorted the doctor, nothing daunted. "But it was to get her to go home, where she belonged; not on any wild-goose chase like this abroad business. What does she want?—to be presented at court? Maybe she thinks that's going to do the job!" "Oh, come, come, Frank, now you're sarcastic!" Mrs. Thayer's voice was earnest, though her eyes were twinkling. "It isn't a wild-goose chase a bit. It's a very sensible plan. In the first place, it takes Helen out of the country—which is wise, if she's still going to try to keep her whereabouts a secret from Burke; for eventually some one, somewhere, would see her—some one who knew her face. She can't always live so secluded a life as she has these past three years, of course,—we have spent the greater share of that time at the beach here, coming early and staying late. "But that isn't all. Angie has taken a great fancy to both Helen and Dorothy Elizabeth, and she likes to have Gladys with them. The children are the same age—about five, you know—and great cronies. Angie is taking Helen as a sort of companion-governess. Her duties will be light and congenial. Both the children will be in her charge, and their treatment and advantages will be identical. There will be a nursery governess under her, and she herself will be much with Angie, which will be invaluable to her, in many ways. And, by the way, Frank, the fact that a woman like Angie Reynolds is taking her for a traveling companion shows, more conclusively than anything else could, how greatly improved Helen is—what a really charming woman she has come to be. But it is a splendid chance for her, certainly, and especially for Betty—her whole life centers now in Betty—and I urged her taking it. At first she demurred, on account of leaving me; but I succeeded in convincing her that it was altogether too good an opportunity to lose." "Opportunity, indeed! When does she go?" "The last of next month." "Oh, that's all right, then. I shall see Burke long before that." The doctor settled back in his chair with a relieved sigh. His sister eyed him with a disturbed frown. "Frank, dear, you can't do anything," she ventured at last. "Didn't I tell you she wasn't ready to go back?" "But she'll have to go—some time." "Perhaps. But wait. I'm not going to say another word now, nor let you. Wait till you see her—and you shall see her in a day or two—just as soon as you are strong enough. But not another word now." And to make sure that he obeyed, Mrs. Thayer rose laughingly and left the room. It was four days later that Frank Gleason for the first time ventured downstairs and out into the warm sunshine on the south veranda. Hearing a child's gleeful laugh and a woman's gently remonstrative voice,—a voice that he thought he recognized,—he walked the length of the veranda and rounded the corner. His slippered feet made no sound, so quite unheralded he came upon the woman and the little girl on the wide veranda steps. Neither one saw him, and he stopped short at the corner, his eyes alight with sudden admiration. Frank Gleason thought he had never seen a more lovely little girl. Blue-eyed, golden-haired, and rosy-cheeked, she was the typical child-beautiful of picture and romance. A-tiptoe on the topmost step she was reaching one dimpled hand for a gorgeous red geranium blooming in a pot decorating the balustrade. In the other hand, tightly clutched, was another gorgeous blossom, sadly crushed and broken. She was laughing gleefully. Near her, but not attempting to touch her, was a woman the doctor recognized at once. It was Helen—but Helen with a subtle difference of face, eyes, hair, dress, and manner that was at once illuminating but baffling. "Betty, dear," she was saying gently, "no, no! Mother said not to pick the flowers." The child turned roguish, willful eyes. "But I wants to pick 'em." "Mother can't let you, dear. And see, they are so much prettier growing!" The small red lips pouted. The little curly head gave a vigorous shake. "But I wants 'em to grow in my hands—so," insisted a threateningly tearful voice, as the tightly clutched flower was thrust forward for inspection. "But they won't grow there, darling. See!—this one is all crumpled and broken now. It can't even lift its poor little head. Come, we don't want the rest to be like that, do we? Come! Come away with me." The young eyes grew mutinous. "I wants 'em to grow in my hand," insisted the red lips again. "But mother doesn't." There was a resolute note of decision in the quiet voice now; but suddenly it grew wonderfully soft and vibrant. "And daddy wouldn't, either, dearie. Only think how sorry daddy would be to see that poor little flower in Betty's hand!" As if in response to a potent something in her mother's voice, Betty's eyes grew roundly serious. "Why—would daddy—be sorry?" "Because daddy loves all beautiful things, and he wants them to stay beautiful. And this poor little flower in Betty's hand won't be beautiful much longer, I fear. It is all broken and crushed; and daddy—" With a sudden sense of guilt, as if trespassing on holy ground, the doctor strode forward noisily. "So this is Dorothy Elizabeth and her mother—" he began gayly; but he could get no further. Helen Denby turned with a joyous cry and an eagerly extended hand. "Oh, Dr. Gleason, I'm so glad! You are better, aren't you? I'm so glad to see you!" "Yes, I'm better. I'm well—only I can't seem to make people believe it. And you— I don't need to ask how you are. And so this big girl is the little Dorothy Elizabeth I used to know. You have your mother's eyes, my dear. Come, won't you shake hands with me?" The little girl advanced slowly, her gaze searching the doctor's face. Then, in her sweet, high-pitched treble, came the somewhat disconcerting question:— "Is you—daddy?" The doctor laughed lightly. "No, my dear. I'm a poor unfortunate man who hasn't any little girl like you; but we'll hope, one of these days, you'll see—daddy." He turned to Helen Denby with suddenly grave, questioning eyes. "Betty, dear,"—Mrs. Denby refused to meet the doctor's gaze,—"go carry the flower to Annie and ask her please to put it in water for you; then run out and play with Bessie in the garden. Mother wants to talk to Dr. Gleason a few minutes." Then, to the doctor, she turned an agitated face. "Surely, didn't your sister—tell you? I'm going to London with Mrs. Reynolds." "Yes, she told me. But perhaps I was hoping to persuade you—to do otherwise." Her eyes grew troubled. "But it's such a fine chance—" "For more of this 'improvement' business, I suppose," cut in the doctor, a bit brusquely. She turned reproachful eyes upon him. "Oh, please, doctor, don't make fun of me like—" "As if I'd make fun of you, child!" cut in the doctor, still more sharply. "Oh, but I can't blame you, of course," she smiled wistfully; "and especially now that I see myself how absurd I was to think, for a minute, that I could make myself over into a—a—the sort of wife that Burke Denby would wish to have." "Absurd that you could— Come, come! Now what nonsense are you talking?" snapped the doctor. "But it isn't nonsense," objected Helen Denby earnestly. "Don't you suppose I know now? I used to think it was something you could learn as you would a poem, or that you could put on to you, as you would a new dress. But I know now it's something inside of you that has to grow and grow just as you grow; and I'm afraid all the putting on and learning in the world won't get me there." "Oh, come, come, Mrs. Denby!" expostulated the doctor, in obvious consternation. "But it's so. Listen," she urged tremulously. "Now I—I just can't like the kind of music Burke does,—discords, and no tune, you know,—though I've tried and tried to. Day after day I've gone into the music-room and put in those records,—the classics and the operatic ones that are the real thing, you know,—but I can't like them; and I still keep liking tunes and ragtime. And there are the books, too. I can't help liking jingles and stories that tell something; and I don't like poetry—not real poetry like Browning and all the rest of them." "Browning, indeed! As if that counted, child!" "Oh, but it's other things—lots of them; vague, elusive things that I can't put my finger on. But I know them now, since I've been here with your sister and her friends. Why, sometimes it isn't anything more than the way a woman speaks, or the way she sits down and gets up, or even the way a bit of lace falls over her hand. But they all help. And they've helped me, too,—oh, so much. I'm so glad now of this chance to thank you. You don't know—you can't know, what it's been for me—to be here." "But I thought you just said that you—you couldn't—that is, that you'd—er—given up," floundered the doctor miserably, as if groping for some sort of support on a topsy-turvy world. "Given up? Perhaps I have—in a way—for myself. You see, I know now that you have to begin young. That's why I'm so happy about Betty. I don't mind about myself any more, if only I can make it all right for her. Dr. Gleason, I couldn't—I just couldn't have her father ashamed of—Betty!" "Ashamed of that child! Well, I should say not," blustered the doctor incoherently; "nor of you, either, you brave little woman. Why—" "Betty is a dear, isn't she?" interrupted the mother eagerly. "You do think she'll—she'll be everything he could wish? I'm keeping him always before her—what he likes, how he'd want her to do, you know. And almost always I can make her mind now, with daddy's name, and—" The doctor interrupted with a gesture of impatience. "My dear lady, can't you see that now—right now is just the time for you to go back to your husband?" The eager, pleading, wistful-eyed little mother opposite became suddenly the dignified, stern-eyed woman. "Has he said he wanted me, Dr. Gleason?" "Why—er—y-yes; well, that is, he— I know he has wanted to know where you were." "Very likely; but that isn't wanting me. Dr. Gleason, don't you think I have any pride, any self-respect, even? My husband was ashamed of me. He asked me to go away for a time. He wrote me with his own hand that he wanted a vacation from me. Do you think now, without a sign or a word from him, that I am going creeping back to him and ask him to take me back?" "But he doesn't know where you are, to give you a sign," argued the doctor. "You've seen him, haven't you?" "Why, y-yes—but not lately. But—I'm going to." A startled look came into her eyes. The next minute she smiled sadly. "Are you? Very well; we'll see—if he says anything. You won't tell him where I am, I know. I have your promise. But, Dr. Gleason,"—her voice grew very sweet and serious,—"I shall not be satisfied now with anything short of a happy married life. I know now what marriage is, where there is love, and trust in each other, and where they like to do and talk about the same things. I've seen your sister and her husband. Unless I can know that I'm going to bring that kind of happiness to Burke, I shall not consent to go back to him. I will give him his daughter. Some time, when she is old enough, I want him to see her. When I know that he is proud of my Betty, I may not—mind the rest so much, perhaps. But now—now—" With a choking little cry she turned and fled down the steps and out on to the garden path. Baffled, irritated, yet frowningly admiring, the doctor stalked into the house. In the hall he came face to face with his sister. She fluttered into instant anxiety. "Why, Frank—outdoors? Who said you could do that?" "I did. Oh, the doctor said so, too," he flung out hurriedly, answering the dawning disapproval in her eyes. "I'm going to Dalton next week." "Oh, but, Frank—" "Now, please don't argue. I'm going. If you and the doctor can get me well enough to go—all right. But I'm going whether I'm well enough or not." "But, Frank, dear, you can't do anything. You know you promised." "Oh, I shan't break any promises, of course. But I'm going to see Burke. I'm going to find out if he really is ninny enough to keep on holding off, at the end of a silly quarrel, the sweetest little wife a man ever had, and—" "I opine you've seen Helen," smiled Edith Thayer, with a sudden twinkle. "I have, and—doesn't like Browning, indeed! And can't help liking tunes! Oh, good Heavens, Edith, if Burke Denby doesn't— Well, we'll see next week," he glowered, striding away, followed by the anxious but still twinkling eyes of his sister. In accordance with his threat, and in spite of protests, the doctor went to Dalton the next week. But almost by return train he was back again, stern-lipped and somber-eyed. "Why, Frank, so soon as this?" cried his sister. "Surely Burke Denby didn't—" "I didn't see him." "His father, then?" "Neither one. They're gone. South America. Bridge contract. Went themselves this time." "Oh, that explains it—why we haven't heard from them since you came back. I had thought it strange, Frank, that not a word of congratulation or even inquiry had come from them." "Yes, I know. I—I'd thought it strange myself—a little. But that doesn't help this thing any. I can't very well go to South America to see Burke, just now—though I'd like to." "Of course not. Besides, don't forget that you very likely wouldn't accomplish anything if you did see him." So deep was the sudden gloom on the doctor's face at her words that the lady added quickly: "You did find out something in Dalton, Frank! I know you did by your face. You saw some one." "Oh, I saw—Brett." "Who's he?" "Denby's general manager and chief factotum." "Well, he ought to know—something." "He does—everything. But he won't tell—anything." "Oh!" "And it's right that he shouldn't, of course. It's his business to keep his mouth shut—and he knows his business as well as any man I can think of. Oh, he was perfectly civil, and apparently very gracious and open-hearted in what he said." "What did he say?" "He said that they had gone to South America on a big bridge contract, and that they wouldn't be home for four or five months yet. He said that they were very well, and that, probably, when they came back from this trip, they would go to South Africa for another six months. I couldn't get anywhere near asking about Helen, and Burke's present state of mind concerning her. He could scent a question of that sort forty words away; and he invariably veered off at a tangent long before I got to it. It was like starting for New York and landing in Montreal! I had to give it up. So far as anything I could learn to the contrary, Mr. Burke Denby and his father are well, happy, and perfectly content to build bridges for heathens and Hottentots the rest of their natural existence. And there you are! How, pray, in the face of that, are we going to keep Helen from running off to London?" "I shouldn't try." "But—oh, hang it all, Edith! This can't go on." "Oh, yes, it can, my dear; and I'm inclined to think it's going on just right. Very plainly they aren't ready for each other—yet. Let her go to London and make the best of all these advantages for herself and Betty; and let him go on with his bridge-building for the Hottentots. 'Twill do them good—both of them, and will be all the better for them when they do come together." "Oh, then they are to come together some time!" "Why, Frank, of course they are! You couldn't keep them apart," declared the lady, with smiling confidence. "But, Edith, you haven't ever talked like this—before," puzzled the doctor, frowning. "I've never known before that Burke Denby was building bridges for the Hottentots." "Nonsense! That's their business. They've always built bridges." "Yes, but Master Burke and his father haven't always gone to superintend their construction," she flashed. "In other words, if Burke Denby is trying so strenuously to get away from himself, it's a pretty sure sign that there's something in himself that he wants to get away from! You see?" "Well, I should like to see," sighed the doctor, with very evident doubt. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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