"Hm-m; just about what I expected she'd say," commented the doctor's sister tranquilly, as she laid the letter down.

"Oh, you women!" flung out the doctor, springing to his feet and turning wrathfully on his heel.

The doctor was relieved, but not wholly eased in his mind some days later when he heard indirectly that Denby Mansion was closed, and that the Denbys were off again to some remote corner of the world.

"Well, anyhow, the widow isn't with him now," he comforted himself aloud.

"Building bridges for the Hottentots again?" smiled his sister.

"Yes. Australia this time."

"Hm-m; that's nice and far," mused the lady.

"Oh, yes, it's far, all right," growled the doctor, somewhat belligerently. "Anyhow, it's too far for the widow, thank Heaven!"

The doctor went himself "far" before the month was out. Already his plans were made for a six months' trip with a research party to his pet hunting-ground--the grotto land of northern Spain. Once more the calmness of silence and absence left Edith Thayer with only Helen Denby's occasional letters to remind her of Burke Denby and his matrimonial problem.

CHAPTER XVIII

A LITTLE BUNCH OF DIARIES

It was three years before the doctor went up to Dalton again. It was on a sad errand this time. John Denby had died suddenly, and after an hour's hesitation, the doctor went up to the funeral.

There were no garish lights and shrieking violins to greet him as he pa.s.sed once more up the long, familiar walk. The warm September sun touched lovingly the old bra.s.s knocker, and peeped behind the stately colonial pillars of the long veranda. It gleamed for a moment on the bald heads of the somber-coated men filing slowly through the wide doorway, and it tried to turn to silver the sable c.r.a.pe hanging at the right of the door.

Not until that evening, after the funeral, did the doctor have the opportunity for more than a formal word of greeting and sympathy with Burke Denby. He had been shocked in the afternoon at the changes in the young man's face; but he was more so when, at eight o'clock, he called at the house.

He found Burke alone in the library--the library whose every book and chair and curio spoke with the voice of the man who was gone--the man who had loved them so well.

Burke himself, to the doctor, looked suddenly old and worn, and infinitely weary of life. He did not at once speak of his father. But when he did speak of him, a little later, he seemed then to want to talk of nothing else. Things that his father had done and said, his little ways, his likes and dislikes, the hours of delight they had pa.s.sed together, the trips they had taken, even the tiddledywinks and Mother Goose of childhood came in for their share. On and on until far into the night he talked, and the doctor listened, with a word now and then of sympathy or appreciation; but with a growing ache in his heart.

"You have been, indeed, a wonderful father and son," he said at last unsteadily.

"There was never another like us." The son's voice was very low.

There was a moment's silence. The doctor, his beseeching eyes on the younger man's half-averted face, was groping in his mind for the right words to introduce the subject which all the evening had been at the door of his lips--Helen. He felt that now, with Burke's softened heart to lend lenience, and with his lonely life in prospect to plead the need of companionship, was the time, if ever, that an appeal for Helen might be successful. But the right words of introduction had not come to him when Burke himself began to speak again.

"And it's almost as if I'd lost both father and mother," he went on brokenly; "for dad talked so much of mother. To him she was always with us, I think. I can remember, when I was a little boy, how real she was to me. In all we did or said she seemed to have a part. And always, all the way up, he used to talk of her--except for the time when--"

He stopped abruptly. The doctor, watching, wondered at the white compression that came suddenly to his lips. In a moment it was gone, however, and he had resumed speaking.

"Of late years, dad has seemed to talk more than ever of mother, and he spoke always as if she were with us. And now I'm alone--so utterly alone. Gleason--how ever am I going to live--without--dad!"

The doctor's heart leaped with mingled fear and elation: fear at what he was about to do; elation that his chance to do it had come. He cleared his throat and began, courageously, though not quite steadily.

"But--there's your wife, Burke. If only you--" He stopped short in dismay at the look that had come into Burke Denby's face.

"My wife! My wife! Don't speak of my wife now, man, if you want me to keep my reason! The woman who brought more sorrow to my father than any other living being! What do you think I wouldn't give if I could blot out the memory of the anguish my marriage brought to dad? I can see his eyes now, when he was pleading with me--_before_ it. Afterwards--Do you know what a brick dad was afterwards? Well, I'll tell you. Never by so much as a look--much less a word--has he reproached or censured me. At first he--he just put up a wall between us. But it was a wall of grief and sore hurt. It was never anger. I know that now. Then, one day, somehow, I found that wall down, and I looked straight into dad's eyes.

It was never there again--that wall. I knew, of course, that dad had never--forgotten. The hurt and grief were still there,--that I could so disobey him, disregard his wishes,--but he would not let them be a wall between us any longer. Then, when it all turned out as it did-- But he never once said, 'I told you so,' nor even looked it. And he was kind and good to Helen always. But when I think how I--I, who love him so--brought to him all that grief and anguish of heart, I-- My wife, indeed! Gleason, I never want to see her face again, or hear her name spoken!"

"But your--your child," stammered the dismayed doctor faintly.

A shadow of quick pain crossed the other's face.

"I know. And that's another thing that grieved dad. He was fond of his little granddaughter. He used to speak of her, often, till I begged him not to. She's mine, of course; but she's Helen's, too,--and she is being brought up by Helen--not me. I can imagine what she's being taught--about her father," he finished bitterly.

"Oh, but I'm sure-- I know she's--" With a painful color the doctor, suddenly warned from within just in time, came to a frightened pause.

Burke, however, lifting a protesting hand, changed the subject abruptly; and the relieved doctor was glad, for once, not to have him wish to talk longer of his missing wife and daughter.

Very soon the doctor said good-night and left the house. But his heart was heavy.

"Perhaps, after all," he sighed to himself, "it wasn't just the time to get him to listen to reason about Helen--when it was his runaway marriage that had so grieved his father years ago; and his father now--just gone."

From many lips, before he left town the next morning, Dr. Gleason learned much of the life and doings of the Denbys during the past few years. Perhaps the death of John Denby had made the Dalton tongues garrulous. At all events they were nothing loath to talk; and the doctor, eager to obtain anything that would enable him to understand Burke Denby, was nothing loath to listen.

"Yes, sir, he hain't been well for years--John Denby hain't," related one old man into the doctor's attentive, sympathetic ears. "And I ain't sayin' I wonder, with all he's been through. But you said you was a friend of his, didn't ye?"

The doctor inclined his head.

"I am, indeed, an old friend of the family."

"Well, it's likely, then, you know something yourself of what's happened--though 'course you hain't lived here to see it all. First, ye know, there was his son's marriage. And that cut the old man all up--runaway, and not what the family wanted at all. _You_ know that, of course. But they made the best of it, apparently, after a while, and young Denby took hold first-rate at the Works. Right down to the beginnin' he went, too,--overalls and day wages. And he done well--first-rate!--but it must 'a' galled some. Why, once, fur a spell, he worked _under my son_--he did. The men liked him, too, when they got over their grinnin' and nonsense, and see he was in earnest. _You_ know what a likely chap young Denby _can_ be, when he wants to."

"None better!" smiled the doctor.

"Yes. Well, to resume and go on. Somethin' happened one day--in his domestic affairs, I mean. The pretty young wife and kid lit out for parts unknown. And the son went back to his dad. (He and his dad always was more like pals than anythin' else.) Some says he sent her away--the wife, I mean. Some says she runned away herself. Like enough _you_ know the rights of it."

There was a suggestion of a pause, and a sly, half-questioning glance; but at the absolute non-committalism of the other's face, the narrator went on hastily.

"Well, whatever was the rights or wrongs of it, she went, and hain't been seen in these 'ere parts since, as I know of. Not that I _should_ know her if I did see her, howsomever! Well, that was a dozen--yes, fourteen years ago, I guess, and the old man hain't been the same since.

He hain't been the same since the boy's marriage, for that matter.

"Well, at first, after she went, the Denbys went kitin' off on one o'

them trips o' theirn, that they're always takin'; then they come home and opened up the old house, and things went on about as they used to 'fore young Denby was married. But the old man fell sick--first on the trip, then afterwards, once or twice. He wa'n't well; but that didn't hinder his goin' off again. This time they went with one of their bridges. Always, before, they'd let Henry or Grosset manage the job; but this time they went themselves. After that they went lots--to South America, Africa, Australia, and I don't know where. They seemed restless and uneasy--both of 'em.

"Then they begun ter bring folks home with 'em: chaps who wore purple silk socks and neckties, and looked as if they'd never done a stroke of work in their lives; and women with high heels and false hair. My, but there was gay doin's there! Winters there was b.a.l.l.s and parties and swell feeds with n.i.g.g.e.r waiters from Boston, and even the dishes and what they et come from there, too, sometimes, they say. Summers they rode in hayracks and autymobiles, and danced outdoors on the gra.s.s--shows, you know. And they was a show with the women barefooted and barearmed, and--and not much on generally. My wife seen 'em once, and she was that shocked she didn't get over it for a month. She said she was brought up to keep a modest dress on her that had a decent waist and skirt to it. But my Bill (he's been in Boston two years now) says it's a pageant and Art, and all right. That you can do it in pageants when you can't just walkin' along the street, runnin' into the neighbors'. See?"

"I see," nodded the doctor gravely.

"Oh, well, of course they didn't go 'round like that all the time. They played that thing lots where they have them little b.a.l.l.s and queer-looking sticks to knock 'em with. They played it all over Pike's Hill and the Durgin pasture in Old Dalton; and they got my grandson to be a--a--"

"Caddie?" hazarded the doctor.