He and Helen had come home at his insistence. He must look after his business, he said. And, indeed, it had been sadly neglected, his mind being on other things. There were plenty of things about his business to worry about if he had only chosen to remember it.
They came home about the middle of the morning just after the mail had arrived, and then trouble descended upon them.
Helen looked up brightly from her sheaf of letters and invitations.
“Listen!” she cried, an open letter in her hand. “Max Copley has invited us to a house party! It’s to be the end of this week. Isn’t that swanky? I must get a couple of new dresses for it. I might go in town this afternoon and look around.”
“No!” said her husband sharply. “Not with any idea of going to a party at that man’s house. I want nothing to do with him or any crowd in which he moves. He isn’t fit for you to speak to!”
“Oh really?” said Helen, with lifted brows. “Now that poisonous mind and tongue of yours is going to give another exhibition, is it? What a veritable old crab you are getting to be, and so soon after we are married! Well, I supposed it wouldn’t last, but I didn’t think you would change so soon. However, do as you like for yourself. I’m going! Get me? You can’t tie me down to your age!”
The gray look that was getting to be habitual on Mr. Disston’s face suddenly descended.
“Not my age, perhaps, Helen, but to my station at least, surely.”
“No, not to your station, either, not if you are determined to live in a past generation. I’m stepping out, and you can go with me or stay behind for all I care. It’s entirely up to you, darling. But you can’t tie me down, for I won’t be tied! And I’m going into town to get a few new clothes! I’d like some money, if you don’t mind. You’d better give it to me now so I won’t be delayed about it after lunch. I want to get an early start.”
A still grayer look came over Mr. Disston’s face.
“I’m sorry,” he said after an instant’s hesitation. “I can’t give you any now. In fact, I’m afraid I can’t give you any more till the first of the month. We’ve been spending a good deal more than usual, and I find I am running a little short.” He said it in an apologetic tone, but Helen’s face flushed red.
“Really?” she said with a touch of scorn on her lips. “Well, you certainly have gone to the end of your resources in a hurry. We haven’t been doing very much for a honeymoon. Just a few weekends.”
“We’ve been to the best hotels always, and you’ve wanted all the extras. Besides, we’ve had a great deal of company. You’ve no idea how that adds up. Of course, you haven’t had much experience in housekeeping yet.”
“Oh, I suppose your model daughter would have done better!” flashed Helen angrily.
“I didn’t say that, Helen,” said Mr. Disston sadly, “but, of course, those new servants you got did bring the bills up a great deal. I was rather appalled at the bills. They all came to the office yesterday. And coming just now when business is at the very lowest ebb it makes it pretty hard.”
Helen stared at him with vexed eyes and then flounced up from her chair, letting fall a sheaf of letters to the floor, and went and looked out the window.
“Oh well,” she said, still offended, “of course, I can always charge things, but I hate to be hampered this way. When you are married you naturally consider that you can have a few things the way they ought to be. Well”—with a sigh—“never mind, I can charge things.”
Disston glanced up with a look in his eyes that was almost frightened.
“No, Helen, please don’t do that, either. I’ve had several insistent letters from the places where you have been buying. It seems you have already been charging things, and I thought I had given you money enough in all reason for the things you said you wanted to buy.”
“Oh, my goodness!” snapped Helen. “Have I got to be watched and spied on? I hate a spy! And I hate a tightfisted man. I supposed, of course, you wanted your wife to appear as well as she could. I only got what I absolutely had to have.”
“Helen, you distress me, dear. Come and sit down, and let me explain to you.”
“You distress me, too,” said Helen bitterly. But she came and sat down.
“Well, it’s just this way. I don’t want to trouble you with my business affairs any more than is necessary, but just this last week a situation has arisen which makes it necessary that I save every penny possible, for a short time at least. You will remember that I have been much away from the office during the past month, and it seems a number of critical situations arose during my absence that had to be met by my subordinates. They did the best they knew, but it was not what I would have done if I had been there, and therefore things have got into a serious tangle. Of course, I am hoping that I shall be able to right matters soon, and all will yet go well, but just for the present, until I tell you further, I shall have to ask you to spend just as little as possible. You must know that this is mortifying to me, just after our marriage, to have to say this to you, but I am sure you will cooperate with me in this matter until we have clear sailing before us again.”
He looked at her wistfully, but she regarded him stonily.
“I suppose,” she said in a hard voice, “that what is really the case is that you have made such a fool of yourself over this matter of Diana’s going away that you aren’t fit to put your mind on your business. Oh, you needn’t talk to me. I have eyes. I can see. You care far more for Diana than you ever did for me. I ought never to have married you. I might have known you were too old to give up your life habits!”
And suddenly Helen let fall two enormous, well-calculated tears straight down into her lap and splash on her diamond engagement ring, which twinkled at her troubled husband enormously and expensively and reminded him that it was not yet paid for, as also were several other things that Helen had lately acquired at her own insistence.
“There, there, child!” he said, coming over to her and laying his hand upon her head, as he might have done to Diana. “I didn’t mean to trouble you. I’m sorry. I’m only asking you to be a little careful, for a few weeks at least, till I can get things in hand again. You know I do not want to spoil your pleasure—”
“Oh yes you do!” sobbed Helen adroitly. “And I’m not a child! I’m a grown woman, and I know what I want, and you said you were going to make me happy!”
“My dear! I certainly want to make you happy. Just as far as I am able. And I confidently expect soon to have everything in shape so that our good income will be assured again. Come, Helen, be reasonable—I can’t give you anything more just now.”
“But now is when I need it,” pouted Helen. “Why can’t you put a mortgage on this house, then, and get some more money? People do that. I know they do. Max was telling that his house is mortgaged up to its full value. Or why can’t we sell the old thing? I just hate it, anyway. I want a house over on the west side where all my friends live. There’s a darling house over there we could buy for a little more than the value of this. In fact, I’ve already got a buyer for you!”
Helen’s tears were forgotten now, and her impish smile bloomed out like April sunshine. “He’s a friend of Max’s, and he’s coming out sometime today or tomorrow to look at it.”
Her eyes were bright with the few recent tears, her cheeks a lovely rose. She had a mischievous beauty all her own, and her troubled husband looked at her hopelessly, a stern weariness overspreading his face, with a kind of gentleness around his eyes, as when one tries to explain serious matters to a lovely child.
“My dear,” he said, “that would be quite impossible.”
“There! I thought you’d say that!” stormed Helen, stamping a costly little shoe and biting her lips until the tears appeared on the horizon again.
“Well, my dear, it is impossible. This house cannot be sold nor mortgaged, either.”
“Just why, I’d like to know?” demanded Helen, whirling upon him, a fierce light in her eyes. “That’s silly! Of course i
t can. Any house can be sold or mortgaged. Why can’t this? I’ve always hated this house, and I won’t live in it. I won’t, do you hear me? Not another day! Won’t you sell it for me?”
She suddenly dropped into her sweetest wheedling tones.
“I cannot,” said Stephen Disston. “Helen, this house is not my own.”
“Not your own? Have you already sold it or mortgaged it, then?” she asked, looking with startled eyes at him. “You have done that and did not tell me?”
“No, I have not,” he said sadly. “I have no right either to sell or mortgage it. This house belongs to Diana. Her mother left it to her!”
“To Diana!” cried Helen indignantly. “The perfect idea! If that is true, how do you happen to be occupying it?”
“I have the right of residence during my lifetime,” said Stephen Disston gravely.
Helen stared for a minute, and then her shrewd eyes narrowed on her husband’s face once more.
“But how could Diana live in a house like this without money?” she asked contemptuously. “If you refused her money, she could not keep it up.”
“Diana has money,” said her father quietly. “She has enough to keep this place and live in comfort here. She will come of age in a few weeks now.”
There was silence while Helen took this in.
“But you are her trustee and guardian,” said Helen with assurance. “You could easily persuade her to sell this house.”
“No,” said Diana’s father, “that is one of the provisions of the will, that the house shall not be sold during Diana’s lifetime. If she has children, it will pass on to them.”
Helen’s brows grew black.
“That’s a raw deal for you!” she said icily. “A nice thing for Marilla to do to you.”
“It was my wish!” said Stephen Disston quietly. “I knew that the house was given to Marilla with that idea in mind, of making it a family homestead from one generation to another.”
There was an ominous silence in the room for several minutes, and then Helen whirled around from the window with one of her lightning changes of mood.
“Well, then let’s get out of it!” she said. “You couldn’t hire me to stay here any longer. You knew what you were bringing me into when you married me, now you’ve got to do something about it. Come on, let’s pack and go to the city to a hotel. We’ll stay there till we can find a new house. If this is Diana’s, that’s probably why she left, till we got out.”
“No, Diana is not like that!” said her father sadly. “Besides, Diana does not yet know that the house is hers. Her mother did not want her to know until she came of age.”
Helen turned and faced him, giving him a long, significant look, and then said, “Oh-h-h-h-oh!” with lifted brows. Then after a minute she added, “Then you could do something about it. Right now you could, before she comes of age, and you owe it to me to do it, too! Those things can always be managed. A good lawyer will find a way out of it, and Diana will never make a fuss about it anyway. I know Diana! You can just tell her that it seemed best for you to sell, you had a good chance. I think I can make this man that wants to buy pay a little more, enough to get the other house I want. I’m sure I can.”
Mr. Disston rose and faced his wife, amazed consternation on his face.
“Helen!” he said sternly, holding her glance with his eyes, and said no more, but it was as if he had said, “Get thee behind me, Satan!”
Helen faced him unflinchingly, but her own eyes narrowed for an instant and grew shifty. Then came one of those sudden changes. She was a little innocent thing misjudged.
“Now, what have I said? What can I have done?” she quivered like a hurt child. “Wouldn’t that be perfectly proper for you to do if you thought it was best for Diana? But anyway, I only meant it for a joke, and you took it seriously.”
Stephen Disston was an honorable man. It went deep to have his wife suggest something dishonorable, and it was some time before Helen could finally convince him, or partly convince him, that she had meant nothing dishonorable by her suggestion.
But having at last won him back to his usual gentle self, she went upstairs with averted face and furtive eyes in which there dwelt a degree of triumph. She had won him over to say that he would take her away, at least for a few days. He would have to go to the office perhaps every morning and stay all day, but she could do what she pleased. So she hurried upstairs to pack.
As they drove away from the house late that afternoon, Stephen Disston turned his eyes regretfully back to his home and sighed. Then he looked at his wife apprehensively. He dared not even sigh in these days, things were in such a precarious state. He spoke quickly to cover his sigh. “You will remember what I said about spending money, dear, won’t you? It really means a lot to our future.”
“I’ll try,” said Helen meekly, though there was a sullen gleam in her eyes. “It’s awfully hard to meet that, though, right at the beginning of my married life when everybody thinks I’ve done so well. I didn’t suppose when I married you that I would have to go on scrimping all the rest of my days.”
Her red lips were pouted prettily, and Stephen Disston foresaw another bout of weeping and complaint, so he hastened to say, “I hope it won’t be for long, dear. I hope soon to get things straightened out. If we could just find Diana and my mind were free, I am sure I could easily work things out.”
“There it goes again!” sobbed Helen suddenly. “You don’t care for me. You only want Diana! It’s nothing to you that I am here with you all the time, giving my youth to keep your days happy! You just want Diana. And that’s what I told you would happen! I told you you would tire of me and want to make her happy! I told you she would resent my coming! But you said, no, no, it would be all right and we would all be happy together! You don’t c-c-care for me anymore!”
Stephen Disston cast a distracted glance toward the taxi driver and another out the window at the people they were passing on the street, for Helen’s voice was high and shrill, and her sobs were unmistakable.
“Darling!” he said with quick eagerness. “Don’t do that! You know that is not true. You know that you are very dear to me!” And even as he put out his hand to lay it on hers he was suddenly filled with a great question, whether what he was saying was strictly true. Was she, after all, so dear as he had thought?
He put the idea from him at once. He was an honorable man. But it hung around and haunted him, made him unnatural in his efforts to soothe Helen. He groaned within himself at the new trouble that beset him. Would he never get this thing straightened out, this hasty marriage that he now saw Helen herself had really persuaded him into? Oh, if he had only taken a little more time and talked it over with Diana, he would have been assured of her usually sweet cooperation. He should have talked everything thoroughly over in a reasonable way with them both. With everybody cooperating, surely things would have gone all right!
It seemed to Stephen Disston that it was a hundred miles into the city, but he finally managed to placate Helen in plenty of time for her to get out of the taxi and into the hotel in radiant form. Helen never showed her tears afterward, and that was a thing that came to puzzle her husband in thinking it over.
She made him take her to a concert and was charming all that evening, and irresistible the next morning when she pled with him to stay with her, to take her down to the stores and let the old business go. She knew he wouldn’t stay. In fact, it would have greatly upset her plans if he had, but she created an impression that she was inconsolable without him. Then as soon as he was gone, she flew around frantically to get ready to go out.
She made a careful study of the business directory of the telephone book, and then she went down a little back street in the lower part of the city and made a few purchases. Returning to the hotel, she changed her garments, stowed her purchases in a soft blue tooled leather bag that was capacious yet artistic to carry, and went out again, a look of impishness dancing in her eyes, her face all a-sparkle with determination
.
Down in his office Stephen Disston was opening his mail, scanning eagerly every letter, hoping that there might be one from Diana, sighing as he laid each one aside, only half taking in its message. But suddenly his thoughts were brought to a sharp focus by a letter that involved a large sum of money owing him, which he had hoped was soon to be paid. The letter said there was no immediate hope of getting anything out of it. If that were literally true, then it spelled ruin for the Disston business, an old and respected firm originally started by Stephen Disston’s father and later continued by the three sons. The other two sons had died within the past ten years, leaving Stephen Disston the sole remaining member of the firm.
He had thought that the business was on a solid foundation until a year before, but even then he had made hasty retrenchments and had sold off some of his land, which was by his wife’s will left to him, clearing all indebtedness and giving a fair outlook for the future. This contract, which involved so much money, had seemed no risk at all, but the man who had guaranteed it, a lifelong friend in whom he trusted, had been killed in an accident a few months ago, and his profligate son was managing his affairs. The result was that a small technicality that under the father’s regime would have been entirely safe had proved a loophole through which the unscrupulous son had slipped and taken with him the money that would have meant security to the Disston business! The result was crushing.
Stephen Disston lifted a ghastly face from the letter he held in a trembling hand and stared across his office at the blank wall, and for a moment everything in the room reeled.
Chapter 19
Little by little he took in his situation and what it was going to mean, not only in the business world but also in his home. Home! Did he have a home anymore? Of course, there was a place there in the old house that was Diana’s where he might stay all the rest of his days, but could he, with Helen? He was bound to Helen now, and how was he going to support her? And what of Diana, his precious daughter? Oh, what a fool he had been! If only this blow had come before he involved Helen also.
The Flower Brides Page 45