Chapter I: Come Face to Face with the Future (4)

"Ted! Please don't forget our trunks," Helen cautioned, as I was about to climb in. My father went with me to the luggage van, a porter following. We left Helen chattering away at mother and sister as if there were no such thing in the world as embarrassment.

"I like the look of her, Ted," my father said.

"I'm not surprised," I answered, trying to imitate one of Knowlton's grins. We fished out the trunks and started back.

"Pleasant passage?" my father inquired. "Helen wasn't seasick, I hope."

"A bit off her feed one day--remarkably smooth voyage."

"Ah--it's certain to be a good crossing in August."

"Quite," I replied.

We got into the omnibus, after Helen had completed taking the census of the luggage.

"Don't trust Ted with anything like that," my mother remarked. "He's left my boxes all over the Continent."

I sat beside Helen, for I wanted to watch her face when she first saw the streets of London.

"Ted, look!" she cried, as we emerged from the classic gateway of Euston Station, "there's a huge horse with fluffy feet."

"It's a Clydesdale--aren't they beauties?"

"I never saw such a splendid horse."

My mother was sitting quietly watching us. I am afraid she felt I had gone a long way from her--or perhaps it was the effect of Leonidas. We had forgotten to warn the family he was coming. The first sight of Leonidas was always a shock to any one. Even my sister, who was thoroughly doggy, had recoiled when he smiled at her at the station. Helen was finding a succession of wonders through the omnibus window.

"We've taken a small house out Kensington way, where you'll live with us for the present, Ted." I looked up in surprise at my father's words.

"It will be much more economical and in every way better, until Helen learns English housekeeping," my mother said.

"I suppose you've some work for me to do?" I asked anxiously, for I thought I saw the first trace of a cloud on Helen's face.

"We'll talk about that later," my father replied, with a desire to change the subject obvious in his tone.

It is a long drive from Euston to Kensington. I sat close to Helen and pointed out the streets and buildings we passed. Her interest was keen, eager, for the panorama contained many places that we had talked about--the Marble Arch, Park Lane, Hyde Park Corner, Knightsbridge. Names were changing into realities before her eyes--and all the while my sister and mother sat studying Helen. I was extremely quick to detect my mother's unexpressed opinions and impressions, chiefly because I had differed so often with them that instinct had taught me how to anticipate, when possible, her displeasure. And I could feel, with absolute certainty, as our bus trotted on down Knightsbridge, that she had made up her mind to be hostile. "Very well," I thought to myself, "Helen and I must fight it out alone, then." My father was looking out the rear window; I recognized from his attitude that he had sensed the same thing I had. Perhaps the news had not been so well received as letters had led me to suppose. I was hoping desperately that the sensitive girl by my side would not notice the growing tension in the air.

It was a pleasant house before which we stopped. There were a few shrubs in front, and the yellow cream stucco residence appeared to hint at a bit of garden behind. It was on a quiet side street and stood in the centre of a row of other houses exactly like it.

Chitty, now three years our man-of-all-work, and Sims, my mother's maid, received us. Chitty drew himself up and saluted me, a thing he always did on my homecomings. He had been an officer's batman. "Glad to see you home, sir," he said.

"Thanks, Chitty. Kiddies all well?" He had a numerous family who lived out.

"Thank you, sir. Every one quite fit."

"It's good to see you back again, master Ted," Sims contributed. Chitty and Sims attacked the pile of luggage on the roof of the bus, after a preliminary run-in between Chitty and the driver concerning the best method to pursue. There was a new housemaid, who curtseyed to us as we entered.

"Your rooms are up here, Edward," said my mother. Helen and I followed her upstairs hand in hand. My sister tagged along in the rear. We were shown into a cozy little bedroom, with a cozier study off it. The windows looked out into the bit of garden which I had guessed was there. All my books and furniture were arranged as I had always had them, but in the bedroom there were several new things for Helen. A little box of a dressing room completed our quarters, which were tiny but ours. Helen's eyes lighted as she looked around. Then she walked straight up to my mother and kissed her. My mother received it coldly, making no return. Helen was so delighted with all that had been done for her that I don't think she noticed.

"Are you pleased, Ted?" my mother asked.

"Of course, mother. Why do you ask?"

Chitty arrived, bowed beneath a trunk. My mother and sister left us. The total of our baggage swamped our little rooms. It was all in at last and the door closed. The belated Sims arrived with hot water, just as Helen had seated herself on my lap in the study for a talk.

"Anything else I can fetch you, Mrs. Ted?" Sims inquired. We got her out of the way.

"Mrs. Ted!" Helen cried gleefully,--"what a delicious name for me! I love it!"

"Old Sims is a privileged character, dear. She is one of my earliest recollections. She is also the family safety-valve. Every one curses her when anything goes wrong."

Helen laughed. "What a delightfully absurd country, Ted. Imagine a Deep Harbor servant being any one's earliest recollection."

She began that feminine mystery known as "changing," still talking to me over her shoulder.

"Ted, I'll have to pinch myself--I can't believe I'm awake. Is it all really true?"

"Absolutely true," I answered, kissing her mouth.

"And to think you never told me about Chitty. He's marvellous. Where did you get him?"

"He's one of my finds," I answered. "I met this big chap one day on the street--looking for work. An ex-soldier with a good many years in India to his credit. I liked his face and the way he stood up to my questions. I offered him a job, and now I don't think he could be driven away. My father pays him, but when I am home, he regards himself as my exclusive property."

"We'll take him to the cottage with us, Ted. I won't have you without Chitty."

"I'd put on a dinner gown, Helen," I said, as I saw her getting out one of her afternoon dresses from a trunk.

"Just to dine at home with the family, Ted?"

"My mother is rather fussy about dinner. It is the one ceremony she believes in. And besides, I want Helen to look her beautifullest tonight."

I helped her unpack a bit, for she began to exclaim over the condition of her dresses as she took them out.

"You might as well leave them," I objected. "Sims will see to them."

I made her put on all her finery, including the few pieces of simple jewelry that had been among her wedding presents. The total effect was most satisfactory to my eyes. She seemed more beautiful every time I looked at her.

* * * * *

The dinner gong had gone about five minutes before we were ready to come down. I had clumsily mussed Helen's hair at the last moment, and there had been a pause to repair the damage.

"I wish, Ted, you would try, while you are in my house, to be on time to dinner," my mother said as we sat down.

The dinner began under an air of constraint, for it was always difficult for me to conceal my irritation when my mother rebuked me. My sister smiled sympathy and reassurance across the table at me, and Chitty hovered about me with the hock. Helen felt that I had been put off and kept her eyes on her plate. Right after the soup, Leonidas was ordered out of the room. I was on the verge of a protest when I felt Helen's hand on my arm. Instead, there was another silence.

"Helen, where did you and Ted get that extraordinary dog?" my sister asked, meaning well.

"Let us talk about something pleasant, if we can," my mother cut in. Revolt came near to breaking forth. My father saved the situation this time by telling me rapidly some story of an occurrence during my absence.

The table was cleared at last, and I was left with my father and our glasses of port. I could hear my mother playing a Beethoven sonata, which I knew for an ominous sign. The piano was her refuge in times of stress. When things were very bad, she played Bach. My father and I looked at each other, each waiting for the other to begin. I was damned if I would, for I felt most emphatically that Helen required no explanation. Any one who could not see by looking once at her that she was the most adorable girl in the world--words failed even my thoughts.

"It isn't Helen--it's you," my father said, studying his cigar.

"I don't see--" I began.

"Steady, Ted. Listen to me. There are a good many factors in the problem. Your mother idolizes you--"

"It has been fairly well dissembled tonight--"

"Be quiet, Ted! I won't have you speak in that way. If you knew more about the world--or about women--you would know that it is very hard for your mother to forgive the woman who marries you--you are an only son--Ted, you must not explode until I have finished. Last of all, she can't quite forgive you for getting married when she was not there. Nothing has ever hurt her so much as not being at your wedding. Can't you understand?"

"Well, what am I to do? Sit quiet while she insults Helen?"

"You are riding for trouble, Ted, if you go at it like that. Helen will bring her around in no time, provided you behave yourself. I think your wife has commonsense--she has a level-headed look in her face--"

"Thank you very much," I sneered.

"She's good old American stock like the rest of us, Ted, and I'll back her to win. I haven't been home much, Ted, for a good many years, but I recognized her type the instant I saw her at Euston. Now the thing for you to do is to go out of your way to be nice to your mother--and leave the rest to Helen."

"Considering everything," I replied, "I think my mother might meet me at least half way. I've been out in America for over a year, working ten hours a day in a bloody factory, and when I come home with the best wife in the world, I am regarded as having done something criminal."

"Don't be an ass, Ted--or try to make yourself sorry for yourself. You had a damned good time with your ten hours a day, as you call it, and you got a jolly sight better reward for it than you deserve. In my humble opinion, Helen is too good for you."

"We agree on one thing--that's a blessing," I answered, feeling that I was losing when I really had a good case. "I'll do what I can, but I won't sit by and see Helen--"

"Oh, shut up, Ted! To use plain American, you make me tired. Go into the drawing room and be nice to your mother. Tell her what you have been doing. She'll like to hear about the ten hours a day. You can pitch it strong."

I looked up and saw Helen standing at the door. "Won't you come into the drawing room, Ted? I think your mother expects you."

"Come here, little girl," my father said to Helen. She went and sat on his lap. "Can you manage that boy?"

Helen smiled at me and kissed her father-in-law by way of answer.

"You speak American, don't you?"

Helen nodded her head vigorously.

"Well, will you please tell him to keep his hair on?"

Helen came to me with a laugh and caught me by the arm.

"Come, Ted."

I followed her meekly.

When we reached the drawing room, my sister said: "Mother has gone up to bed."

We kissed Frances good night and climbed to our own quarters. I went into my study to look out some of my old books. Upon my return I found Helen lying on her bed, sobbing.

"What is it, my love?"--I flew to her and whispered in her ear.

"Ted, darling--will you ever forgive me? I'm homesick."

She sobbed herself asleep in my arms that night. I lay awake, thinking of many things.

* * * * *

A week later the deadlock between my mother and me was still unbroken. Helen, however, was rapidly finding her feet in the joy of exploring London. We went the second evening of our homecoming to the Lyceum to see Henry Irving in _The Bells_ and the next night to his _Charles I_. We lunched out, sometimes at Kettner's in Greek Street, Soho, or down in the City at Crosby Hall or at The Ship and Turtle. Helen could not get enough of riding on the tops of the busses. We used no other conveyance except for going to the theatres. We did a certain standard thing each morning, such as going to the Abbey, St. Paul's, or The Tower, and the rest of the time we rode or walked about without plan or purpose. It was enough to be in London--it mattered little where one went or why, there were marvels to be seen in any direction. We sat a lot in quiet old City churches, particularly in St. Bartholomew's in Smithfield. The restoration had not quite done for the simple majesty of its Norman pillars. I could see London literally soaking into Helen's blood. And she greeted the bookshops on Charing Cross Road like a discovery of old friends. We bought all the plays we could find in the sixpenny boxes.

We went out each day early in the morning and returned only in time to dress for dinner. The family were quiescent; no comment was made on our comings and goings, except the daily question whether we were to be expected at luncheon. My mother never said an unkind word to Helen, but she treated her with a stiff, formal politeness that resisted all advances. Frances, my sister, was in despair, not knowing with whom to side. She adored her mother and at the same time had always been a good pal of mine--as much of one, in fact, as the discrepancy in our ages had permitted. Once or twice she went out for the day with us, but our energetic sight-seeing tired her out. She had been born in London and had never lived anywhere else, and its lions did not appeal to her as they did to Helen. Helen and Frances were already fast friends, wandering about the house in the mornings with their arms about each other or exchanging mysterious whispered conferences and giggles in their dressing gowns. They had reached at a bound the intimacy which involved borrowing each other's stockings, garters, and gloves. If Helen had felt homesick again, she said nothing about it.

Then at the end of the week my father requested me to see him in the library. I could tell from the way he was examining a pile of papers that he had something to say to me that he found difficult to express. He never smoked in the morning--a habit which was in itself a handicap.

"Ted," he said at the conclusion of a few commonplaces, "I am sending you to Berlin tomorrow for a month."

"What fun that will be for Helen," I exclaimed, springing to my feet.

"Sit down--I haven't finished." I resumed my chair with an unpleasant foreboding. "I can't afford to send Helen with you--you are going alone."

"Hell!" I ejaculated impolitely. "You might have told me a few days ago."

"I didn't want to interfere with your first week."

"What am I to do in Berlin?"

"I want you to learn a new chemical process we are going to handle. The money from the sale of the Deep Harbor factory has been entirely used to found a new company here. Until we get that on its feet we shall be rather hard-up. But we are playing for big stakes now, Ted. If this goes, you will be free to do as you please."

"I suppose I receive a salary."

"Not enough for you and Helen to live on--that's why you must live with us for the present. But I'll give you a ten per cent. interest in the new company, and it will be up to you to make it good. Meanwhile your salary is the nominal one of two pounds a week."

"But we can't go to the theatre on that," I exclaimed. It was rather a shock, for in Deep Harbor I had been well paid. "I can get a better job on my own."

"I have no doubt of it," replied my father. "Your chemical work is reported as expert. If you want to back out now and leave me in the lurch, go ahead."

I opened my mouth to speak--and paused. A recollection of my interview with Knowlton on this very subject crossed my mind. I heard him say--"play the skunk and leave you flat, Ted." On the other hand, what was my duty to Helen?

"We'll be paying dividends after the first twelve months, Ted. Then you'll be all right. Your interest in the company will be worth a lot of money."

"It's more or less of a gamble, I suppose?"

"All business is," said my father. "But I was flattering myself I had a son who had the grit to gamble for big stakes, and the brains to play the game."

"Damn," I said, getting up and walking about the room. My father began writing with an abominably scratchy nib.

"I ought to consult Helen," I turned and shot at him. He looked up from his letter and shrugged. The nib scratched on. "I told her I had excellent prospects when I married her--that Knowlton and I had made good with the Deep Harbor Manufacturing Company--" I paused in my argument, for my father appeared to be ignoring my remarks. He began another letter.

"Take it or leave it, Ted," he said after another silence. "All I ask is that you let me know definitely by lunch time. If you don't go, I must send another chemist to Berlin. I've made you the best offer in my power. A father can't do more than that."

"I wish you could see my point of view."

"I see it perfectly. Facts, however, overrule a point of view. If I had the means, I'd set you free this minute. As I haven't, there is nothing to argue about."

"Facts are damned unfair."

"They are," agreed my father.

"If I put it up to Helen, she'll tell me, of course, to stick by you, no matter what the sacrifice."

"In that case I should decide for myself, if I were you. It's a poor plan to try to shift your responsibilities on to some other person."

I had a suspicion my father was secretly laughing at me. I had a knack of making the worst possible showing in a crisis.

"I want to be fair to you and to Helen," I exclaimed.

"I'm not impressed by heroics," my father answered coldly. "I don't think either of you is being very hardly used--you have a comfortable home offered you and a good opportunity to work for. I am not asking favours--I'm giving them."

In one sense this was, of course, strictly true; yet there was something to be said on my side. Nothing was to be gained by stating it; I therefore kept silent. Ten minutes more must have passed while I turned the problem over. My father imperturbably continued to write, address, and seal letters.

"Do you know which way I am going to decide?" I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.

"Frankly," my father replied, "I don't. I'm not bluffing, Ted. I have never understood you very well. We've always been good chums; still, I have known that inwardly you go your own gait."

"I don't think I have ever disobeyed an important command."

"No, I don't believe you have--perhaps I have never asked you to do anything I didn't think was for the best. You didn't like being sent to Deep Harbor. Are you sorry now you went?"

"You can't take the credit to yourself for Helen and make that into an argument," I said. "Logic has its limits."

"I never went to college, so logic doesn't bother me," my father smiled. It was the first time his face had relaxed since I came in.

"I'll go," I announced. My father opened a desk drawer and took out a bundle of papers.

"Here's your railway ticket--Harwich--Hook of Holland. You leave from Victoria. And here's your instructions and a letter of introduction to the Treptow Chemische Gesellschaft. When you know how to use the process you will be taught, come home. The quicker you learn, the quicker you get back. But you must know it thoroughly."

"Then you did think I'd accept," I remarked, rather indignant again.

"My dear boy, it never crossed my mind you would make a fuss. You took me entirely by surprise."

"I always seem to be wrong," I growled.

"But fortunately you often end up by doing right," my father smiled.

Helen was a brick. We talked the whole thing over, and she scolded me for having hesitated. Helen's scoldings were very affectionate affairs. She smiled and assured me she would be all right. It might be the best way to win my mother over, and so on. Besides she would do a thousand things with Frances and would write me every day. At the end I rang for Chitty and told him to pack enough things for a month's journey.

"Will you be playing golf, sir?" he asked. Helen squealed with delight from the bed, where she was sitting with her feet tucked under her.

"No--business, Chitty. No riding clothes."

"Very good, sir. Thank you."

Helen saw me off the next evening, accompanied by the family. Her eyes were swimming, but she didn't let go. She was the last to kiss me, after a formal kiss from my mother and a huge puppy embrace from Frances.

"Don't worry, Ted darling. I promise not to be homesick. I love you."

A guard most unceremoniously slammed the door between us. The train pulled out. I sat and swore nearly all the way to Harwich.

* * * * *

The month did not pass quickly, although I worked hard, for long hours. The process was intricate and complicated, quite beyond the range of anything I had done before. The German chemists did their best to help me, and at the same time made no secret of their contempt for my training.

Helen wrote amusing and cheerful letters, in which Leonidas and Frances chiefly figured. She spoke little of my mother, and only to reassure me that "everything was all right." I knew, therefore, that no progress had been made there. One piece of news, which, I thought might possibly come, did not. That had been one of my chief anxieties over leaving Helen.

I saw a lot of Berlin and went nightly to cheap seats at the theatre. My experiences of this city are not, however, germane to this narrative. It was not until the middle of the fifth week of my stay that the Treptow Chemische Gesellschaft notified me that I had now performed the process successfully several times and was in a position to return to instruct others. I made one of the quickest trips to a telegraph office known to German history. From there to my hotel and on to the Bahnhof I at least equalled any existing record. Twenty-four hours later Helen was in my arms on the platform of Victoria Station.

The family were at dinner when we reached Kensington. I hope Gabriel's trumpet is not timed for the dinner hour, for it is quite certain my mother will not allow even that to postpone her sitting down.

"Have you got it, Ted?" my father asked.

"What isn't in my head is in the bag upstairs," I replied.

Right after dinner Helen and I fled to our retreat, brutally closing the door in Frances's face. We sat on the floor before a fire and talked. Berlin and London--we compared notes until after midnight. As we were about to go to bed, Helen whispered:

"There's one thing more, Ted, I haven't told you."

And then came the big news I had been expecting while away.

"I just had to tell you yourself, darling. I didn't want to write it."

God! If anything should happen to my beloved! and I went sick and cold at the thought. But she did not know this fear, for I held her tight, kissing her eyes. We sat on before the fire, far into the night, talking of the new future this revealed, of the new wonder that had come into our lives.

"Edward Jevons, Junior," Helen murmured as she fell asleep on my shoulder.

Chapter Fourteen

WE FIND NEW LIFE AND NEW LOVE

The new factory was at Willesden Junction, which I reached regularly every morning by the 8.10 from Earl's Court Road, returning home to the little house in Kensington about seven. It was a long day, made longer by the railway journey at each end. The present equipment was on a comparatively small scale, future expansion depending largely on what it was to be hoped our laboratory could accomplish. Two young English chemists, graduates of a technical school, were assigned to work with me. The rest of the research staff included a machinist and pipe fitter, a general utility girl, a glass blower to make special apparatus, and Chitty.

The latter I ruthlessly took from his duties as general house man to do odd jobs for me. He gloried in his new work, for he had a positive awe of chemistry. To him it was the last word in the mysterious achievements of the educated human intellect. With his awe was a wholesome fear of possible eventualities. There was not a day that it wasn't his secret belief that we should all be blown to atoms. Nevertheless, on the rare occasions when minor accidents did occur, he was the first person I found standing at my elbow. I sometimes amused myself by devising harmless bangs or unexpected puffs of smoke, to see Chitty come on the run to my side. The day I really spilt some acid on myself, I thought the man would get his hands badly burned before I could stop him from tearing my clothes off. He was, however, like a perfectly trained dog. A sharp word of command brought him up all standing. I saved his hands from serious burns and got out of my clothes without damage to myself.

"Chitty," I said another time, "if this place ever gets on fire you are to get out the first window without delay."

"Not until I see you going, sir, thank you," he replied. And he meant it.

On pleasant Saturday afternoons, during the early autumn, Helen came out to meet me. Chitty used to prepare my luncheons for me every day; on Saturdays he catered for two. His army training taught him to use any utensils handy, and Helen laughed until the tears came at finding his kitchen a series of Bunsen burners, his crockery mainly Meissen ware and Bohemian glass beakers. He could cook sausages and grill tomatoes fit for an epicure. It was true his range was strictly limited, being restricted to what might be put in a frying pan or plain boiled, but within its limits it was unexcelled.

Luncheon over, we would take the train back and prowl about for an hour or two before tea or see a matinee from the pit. Our finances made it necessary for us to keep to simple pleasures. Still, by saving all our pennies for Saturdays and Sundays we did ourselves surprisingly well. During the week the company paid for my railway ticket and luncheons. Thus the week-end found us with thirty or a few more shillings to spend. In those pre-war days two could do a lot in London on thirty shillings. For example, if we wished to be really extravagant and "go a bust" we lunched at Kettner's for 3/6 each, table d'hote, total 7 shillings--a shilling for the waiter--eight; a bottle of table chianti, 3 bob; or eleven in all, leaving nineteen shillings over. Setting aside a half crown for tea, we still had 16/6. Suppose we went to a pit--half a crown apiece; total, 5 shillings--we yet were rich with eleven and six remaining. Plenty over for Sunday, especially if we took luncheon with us from home. We did not lack for clothes; Helen's trousseau would last a long time--and the next year the company was going to pay dividends.

Meanwhile there was one deep disappointment mixed with our improvident happiness. I had no time for writing or even for keeping in touch with my theatrical and literary friends. They had begun by dropping in at the house, never to find me at home, and in a few months a caller for us was rare. My absence in America had broken a good many threads, and there was no opportunity to spin new ones. The work and friendships we had planned to do and form together while riding over the hills of Deep Harbor could not be done and formed. I had to live and think chemistry. The evenings were rarely free, for laboratory reports of the day's work had to be prepared then. The week-ends were so precious that Helen and I could not spare them for anything but our own companionship.

Along with the first fogs, in November, I realized that the work at the laboratory was getting on slowly. I had not yet been able to begin quantity production. My father called one day to ask me to look over the special expenditures on behalf of research. He wanted to know if economies were not possible, and where I thought we were going. For many hours I reviewed the accounts and the results to date, as set down in the laboratory diary and reports. There was nothing to show on the side of practical accomplishments. The experiments gave evidence we were on the right track; it was equally clear we had not arrived. The German process worked well on a small scale with carefully selected chemicals; it did not work at all on a commercial scale.

"Well, Ted, what are we going to do about it?" my father inquired at the end of my survey. "My associates are getting restless; we have spent a great deal of money. What have we to show for it?"

I turned over my notes again, as one does in such cases, hoping some overlooked solution will leap from the pages.

"I am certain I can do it," I said.

"When? And how much will it cost?"

"That I can't say. It may be tomorrow--it may be next month. The answer perhaps is filtering now in the next room, or it may be a question of several weeks' experiment."

"Not good enough, Ted."

"You told me it would be a year before you expected results."

"A year before we paid dividends. If you can't begin manufacture, how can you expect to make a profit? Your experiments have eaten a deep hole in our resources, and we are where we were at the beginning. In short, Ted, if you don't tell me you are ready to manufacture before the next three months are up, we'll have to close down."

"We might get one of the Germans over and let him have a look at what I'm doing." I went into the next room and came back with a sample. "Here is the stuff--I make it every day in there. But when it goes through in quantity downstairs, I can't get it."

"What are you doing about it?"

"Analyzing all our raw materials to see if I can trace the probable impurity that is blocking us. The apparatus downstairs has been tested and examined a dozen times. I can find nothing the matter there. I thought, at first, lubricating oil might be leaking into the mixers."

"Suppose you can't find the cause?"

I shrugged. "If the world comes to an end, there's not much good planning what you will do. There is a cause, and I've got to find it. There's nothing mysterious about it. Such matters are a problem of elimination. You must be careful not to overlook any possibility. In the end you run it down--corner it. But it may take time."

"Is there any possibility our German friends have done us?"

"I've thought of that. Yet if that is the case, why the devil does the stuff come out all right on a small scale? Here it is in my hand. There _is_ such a thing. They haven't faked it--there it is."

"Will you write a special report tonight for me to show the board of directors tomorrow?"

"Yes. You still own the controlling interest, don't you?"

"Up till now I do," my father replied. "I may have to let that go, Ted, if you don't find the answer soon."

I gave up my Saturday afternoons and often my Sundays. The answer did not appear. All this was hard on Helen. The family tension did not tend to relax in the face of our difficulties at the factory. My own nerves were being stretched taut, and I had to fight to keep Helen from noticing too much the strain I was under. I laid off my two assistant chemists, to reduce expenses. Their help had never been valuable except for doing routine things. Occasionally, when there was an experiment on that couldn't be left unfinished, I worked at Willesden until late at night. It was Helen's calm faith in me that kept me at it and gave me self-control. I talked little with her--or with any one--about this damned problem, preferring, with her, to read and dream as we had always done; and I kept my mouth shut as far as possible before my father, to prevent his noting that I was badly frightened. Chitty realized that I had a facer. His anxiety was pathetic; I would look up from an experiment and find him watching my face eagerly, to see if now I had a ray of hope. Of course, Helen knew why I did not come home on Saturday afternoons, but her confidence kept her so optimistic she scarcely worried at all. I cursed German chemistry from A to Z before Chitty; elsewhere I was grimly silent on the subject.

My mother in no wise changed her attitude; Helen was treated with the formality of a guest, and I should have worried more than I did about this if I had not discovered by accident that she was closeted with Sims a great part of each day in her own room making baby clothes. Poor mother, how happy she could have made Helen by letting her know this! But she didn't. Helen sat all day working in her room on little things, and my mother in hers, and neither woman spoke to the other of what she was doing. "While I'm seeking answers to chemical riddles, I wish some one would explain to me the riddle of human nature," I thought to myself. One night I decided to act on this idea and seek the latter answer for myself. I went to my mother's room.

"What do you wish, Ted?" she asked as I sat down. It had been a great many years since we had exchanged any confidences face to face. Her devotion to me had always alarmed me--it put me off when I came near her. I knew I didn't think as she thought, and I was afraid a misunderstanding hopeless to reconcile would come. It sounds paradoxical, I know--that I should fear her love to the point that I believed it dangerous--but so it was. "If we ever really quarrel," I had said to myself, "nothing on earth will patch it up." So it came about that for years I had avoided intimacy with her, preferring a queer aloofness to any attempt at understanding, since by nature we were such opposites.

"I shan't pretend, mother. It's about Helen," I said in answer to her question.

"What about Helen?" my mother replied coldly.

I wondered what to say. She sat there looking at me calmly, but there was a hardness in her expression which indicated that all defences were fully manned. "I'll make a mess of it--get the worst of it, I know, and go out of here thoroughly in the wrong," I said to myself. "But, damn it all, I ought to be able to think of the right thing."

"You wished to speak to me about Helen?"

"Helen likes you," I blurted out, at the same time realizing I had made the worst of all possible starts.

"She has only to tell me this herself." My mother's voice was level.

"Would it do any good?" I blundered on.

"I am sure I have not the least idea what you mean, Ted. I think it would be much better if you went up to your own room."

I began to be desperate. There ought to be some facial flag of truce, indicating unconditional surrender, that one could wave with a look. At that moment I would have given anything, except Helen's love, to have my mother relent. Instead, she picked up a book and made an elaborate show of reading. I meditated flying into a childish rage, thus forcing the issue, but I was so truly hurt and angry I didn't dare. I knew I should probably say something I should afterwards regret. I got upon my feet.

"I am sorry you do not approve of my marriage, mother"--adding mistake number three to the two I was certain I had made.

"It is not for me to approve or disapprove of your marriage, Edward. I was not consulted. It is no affair of mine."

"Of course, you don't mean it," I said. "That remark is silly enough to have been made by me." I was quite appalled at my boldness, but anger was fast mastering me.

"I do not wish to have any further discussion with you on this subject, either now or in the future. Whatever else you learned in Deep Harbor, it wasn't manners."

"Rot!" I exclaimed. She lifted her eyebrows and turned a page. I stood a second irresolute. "I mean I didn't intend to be rude--you know what I mean--only you won't admit it."

"I don't expect an apology. Good night, Edward."

"Now you've done it, you blithering idiot," I said as I clumped upstairs to Helen. "I knew I'd end in the wrong." Helen gently told me, at the conclusion of my story, words to the same effect.

"Am I a blithering idiot, Helen dear?"

"No, sweetheart, you are just a boy," was Helen's exit line for this episode.

* * * * *

Our second Christmas together was drawing near, and it promised to be far different from the one we had looked forward to the year before. The factory problem was still unsolved; the building which my father had anticipated would be humming with prosperous activity stood silent. Only in the laboratory upstairs was there any work being done, labour which still seemed but a beating of the air. I had called in more than one consulting chemist; they merely suggested that I do the things I had been doing. The advice from Germany was to the same effect. Analyze and search for the cause among the raw materials. I had outside analyses made on these, to check my own by, and no clue developed. The board of directors called upon me collectively and singly to offer the inane suggestions which non-technical men always make when they wish to be helpful over a technical matter.

A week before Christmas I sat staring at samples of my raw materials spread over the laboratory table. Chitty was rinsing test tubes at the sink.

"It does beat the devil, Chitty," I said, "to think that the answer to all our trouble is staring right at us from one of these heaps of samples, and we can't find it."

"Yessir," Chitty agreed. "Don't give up, sir; 'ave another try."

I looked at my watch. It was three o'clock; the short winter day was already dusk without. A London and Northwestern express screeched past our windows.

"I'd like my overcoat, please, Chitty. I'm going home." A queer, startled look came into his face.

"You're not giving up, Mister Edward? You won't tell them you're beaten? 'Ave another shot at your last experiment. I don't mind working late tonight, sir."

"Chitty," I said, "sometimes it pays to cut your losses and start afresh. We're up a blind passage. Let's turn round and walk out of it."

He helped me into my great coat with a doubtful air.

"Don't let them say it's done you in, sir," he said. "Come back tomorrow morning. You never know your luck, sir."

"I'll be here at the usual time, Chitty." And with this I left him.

My father, luckily, was in when I got back to Kensington. I saw him studying me carefully as I came into the library and sat down. He laid aside his pipe and waited. I was in no hurry to begin speaking.

"Discouraged, Ted?" my father at last inquired.

"No. I'm through."

"That sounds rather tragic, Ted. Just what do you mean?"

"I have been thinking this thing over. We've reached an absolutely blank wall. I can neither climb over it, tunnel under it, nor walk around it."

"Facts, please," my father interrupted. "Cut your rhetoric." I gave him a brief recapitulation of my failure, together with my reasons for believing that it was no use going on doing the same useless experiments over and over again. He listened patiently, without giving any sign of emotion.

"It doesn't make pleasant telling," I ended, "to confess one has failed."

"Have you your laboratory notebooks and diary here?"

"Yes," I admitted, "but they won't mean anything to you--they are mainly full of chemical formulae and abbreviated notes."

"Nevertheless, I wish to see them."

I went out to my bag in the passage and brought them in.

"I'm not a scientist, Ted, but it isn't common sense that an experiment which you can do on a small scale should fail on a large scale. You have overlooked something."

"Shall I stay and explain my notes to you?"

"No, go upstairs and talk to Helen."

* * * * *

I came down to dinner very glum. Helen had done her best to buck me up; this time, however, even she had failed to restore my confidence. To my surprise, my father was all smiles, hinting the while at mysterious delights to come. I thought he was trying to cheer me up--an annoying thing to have any one do when one has resolved to be miserable.

"How would you and Helen like to have a little trip all by yourselves at Christmas--say to Winchester? It will do Helen good, if you are careful not to let her get tired." This he had saved up for dessert. Helen and I stared at each other, not entirely certain he wasn't having a joke at our expense.

"I'm serious, children," he added. "Your mother and I--with Frances, of course--are going down to Hayling Island. I want to get in some golf."

"I thought we were hard up," I growled, not rid of my suspicions.

"Well, we've enough for that, I think, Ted. The plant will be running full blast in January."

I sat up. "What have found out from my notes? Don't deceive yourself, father."

He laughed uproariously. "Thanks for the advice. But, Ted, I'm an old newspaper man, and I spent a good many years finding out things I was not supposed to know about. When I went over your notes I observed something I think you have missed."

My face burned. If true, of course it meant I was a damned incompetent person to trust with a responsible job. I felt Helen's hand on my knee.

"It isn't your fault, Ted--don't look so melodramatic. Now listen to me. You have tested and analyzed all your raw materials--and have bought different lots of them from various sources?"

"Yes--I have been all over the market for them."

"But you have bought your most important reagent--a commercial acid--from only one particular firm. Did you analyze that acid?"

"No."

"I thought not. There was no record of it in your books."

The sensation of feeling an utter fool is not comfortable. It was the even pressure of Helen's hand on my knee that kept me from an outburst. The instant my father had asked me the question about the acid, I knew he had found the only untested link. But why in the name of all that is intelligent had I missed it? Simply because I had been working on the set idea that the raw materials furnished contained somewhere an impurity, and I had taken the reagent on faith.

"Well," my father called out gaily, "is the old man right?"

"You are right, and I have been wrong."

"Damn it, Ted, don't be so ridiculous with that long jaw. It's all in the family. Take a week off with Helen and come back fresh to your job. You went a bit stale, that's all."

"My going stale has cost you a lot of money," I muttered.

"Experience always costs money, Ted. I don't grudge paying for it, if one really learns from it. You told me something about the process of elimination once. The next time you eliminate, go all the way."

"The consulting chemists we called in didn't find the trouble."

"No, they were experts, like you."

I smiled at this, because I knew I deserved it.

"That's better, Ted," my father said when he saw me smile. "The whole trouble has been that you lost your sense of humour over this job. Don't lose it again."

"Suppose," I said at bed-time that evening, "that we find nothing the matter with the acid?"

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Now you and Helen pack up in the morning, clear out for a week, and I'll have the acid examined while you are away."

Upstairs, I sat before our study fire without daring to look at Helen. She stopped brushing out her hair and perched on the arm of my chair, putting her cheek against mine.

"What do you want me to say, Ted?"

"If you speak the truth you'll say that you have married an incompetent fool who messes up everything he tries to do."

"Don't let it hurt you so, Ted, darling."

"It was my job to find out, and I didn't. You can't get away from that."

Helen rumpled my hair pensively. Each of us had several things to say; the difficulty was to say them. Helen went on silently stroking my head.

"I try to think--why the devil does it always seem afterwards as if I hadn't thought at all?"

I proposed this conundrum to her. Helen gave me her hand to kiss.

"I won't be so stupid as to try to make excuses for you," said Helen, tucking up snugly against my shoulder. "Let's own up honestly we made a mistake, Ted. For I must be to blame somewhere, too. Yes, Ted dear--I know it. Don't go on shaking your head. It isn't comfy. We mustn't make a mistake like this again--that's all. It isn't like us."

"It wasn't just a case of putting my foot in it, sweetheart. I went and sat down in the spilt milk."

Helen laughed gently. "Poor old boy, your pride has had a nasty knock, hasn't it? So has mine, dear."

I thought this over in silence. We were young enough to take each other tragically. But I had my first doubt as to whether I was of heroic stuff--I mean that for the first time I wondered if success were inevitably mine. Suppose I was only a commonplace person who got along amiably enough, yet never pulled off anything big? In that case all the hopes Helen had in me would prove to be vain dreams. Then what would happen? Would she love me then--or didn't love demand the heroic? It was Knowlton who had made Deep Harbor a success, and now my father had stepped in and saved me again. Where was the missing cog in my mechanism? What could I do--what ought I to do--how could I find out?

"It isn't your fault, hubby-boy," Helen said, her face against mine. "You aren't meant to be a chemist. Your father has had you learn a profession which at best is no more than a secret anxiety to you. It haunts you with a never-ending fear, because it is not really your work. It's only a part you are trying to play to please him."

I sat up straight and stared at her.

"I've watched you every day, Ted, sweetheart, during these months we have been together--and I have seen you struggling to fight down that fear of failure in you. You've tried to hide it from me, dearest"--she smiled and shook a finger at me--"you can't fool me, because I love you. I've wanted to tell you I knew, and I was afraid, if I did, you couldn't work at all."

"Well," I said slowly, "it's true. I hate chemistry--and I have always hated it--or is it only work I hate?"

Helen shook her head: "We must get to your real work, Ted, as soon as we can. There is your toy-theatre all ready for you on top of the bookcase. We'll begin writing for it, dear. When the company is all right, we'll give up chemistry forever and begin for ourselves."

I stood up and drew her to me under the light. I took her face in both my hands, turned it toward mine, and looked into her grey eyes.

"Do you still love me, Helen?"

She closed her eyes. "So much, Ted, it hurts and hurts clear down in me." Her hands clutched my shoulders until the skin grew white over her finger knuckles....

* * * * *

It is not possible that two persons could have been any happier than Helen and I were during Christmas week at Winchester. Others may have equalled our happiness; no couple have surpassed it. Not only was it the first time we had been by ourselves since on board the steamer, but also Winchester itself, as that very Camelot we had made up stories about in the woods back of Deep Harbor, was to us a speechless delight. I had not been there before, and thus its quaintness was as new to me as to Helen. We ate and slept in a hotel somewhere off the High Street. The rest of the time (despite the oncoming event of Edward Jevons, Junior) we wandered about or sat in the nave of the long bare cathedral. Helen actually got as far afoot as the summit of St. Catherine's hill. We took a fly and drove out to St. Cross, where we designed a new dream cottage from its mediaeval gables and timbers. The same faithful fly conducted us to other delights when I thought Helen had walked enough. There are more things in Winchester than can be set down, save in the book of memory. Jane Austen's house, the cathedral, the school, the river Itchen where old Izaak Walton fished--one can go on for a long time wandering among mysteries and dreaming. We grew technical over architecture and had an argument about it with a verger in the cathedral. On the High Street we likewise discovered a satisfactory second-hand bookshop containing a lot of theatrical memoirs. Joys of joys, we bought ourselves as a Christmas present Bell's British Theatre, complete with all the plates! To be sure, it was but a shilling a volume; yet no collector ever walked out of Christie's more proud than we. Forty shillings had been set aside for Christmas recklessness. Bell and his collection of plays made quite a hole in this, even at only a shilling a volume.