The Road to Understanding

by Eleanor H. Porter

Burke Denby learned many things during the next few hours. He learned first that tables and chairs and beds and stoves—really decent ones that a fellow could endure the sight of—cost a prodigious amount of money. But, to offset this, and to make life really worth the living, after all, it seemed that one might buy a quantity sufficient for one's needs, and pay for them in installments, week by week. This idea, while not wholly satisfactory, seemed the only way of stretching their limited means to cover their many needs; and, after some hesitation, it was adopted.

There remained then only the matter of selection; and it was just here that Burke Denby learned something else. He learned that two people, otherwise apparently in perfect accord, could disagree most violently over the shape of a chair or the shade of a rug. Indeed, he would not have believed it possible that such elements of soul torture could lie in a mere matter of color or texture. And how any one with eyes and sensibilities could wish to select for one's daily companions such a mass of gingerbread decoration and glaring colors as seemed to meet the fancy of his wife, he could not understand. Neither could he understand why all his selections and preferences were promptly dubbed "dingy" and "homely," nor why nothing that he liked pleased her at all. As such was certainly the case, however, he came to express these preferences less and less frequently. And in the end he always bought what she wanted, particularly as the price on her choice was nearly always lower than the one on his—which was an argument in its favor that he found it hard to refute.

Tractable as he was as to quality, however, he did have to draw a sharp line as to quantity; for Helen;—with the cheerful slogan, "Why, it's only twenty-five cents a week more, Burke!"—seemed not to realize that there was a limit even to the number of those one might spend—on sixty dollars a month. True, at the beginning she did remind him that they could "eat less" till they "got the things paid for," and that her clothes were "all new, anyhow, being a bride, so!" But she had not said that again. Perhaps because she saw the salesman turn his back to laugh, and perhaps because she was a little frightened at the look on her husband's face. At all events, when Burke did at last insist that they had bought quite enough, she acquiesced with some measure of grace.

Burke himself, when the shopping was finished, drew a sigh of relief, yet with an inward shudder at the recollection of certain things marked "Sold to Burke Denby."

"Oh, well," he comforted himself. "Helen's happy—and that's the main thing; and I shan't see them much. I'm away days and asleep nights." Nor did it occur to him that this was not the usual attitude of a supposedly proud bridegroom toward his new little nest of a home.

Getting settled in the little Dale Street apartment was, so far as Burke was concerned, a mere matter of moving from the hotel and dumping the contents of his trunk into his new chiffonier and closet. True, Helen, looking tired and flurried (and not nearly so pretty as usual), brought to him some borrowed tools, together with innumerable curtains and rods and nails and hooks that simply must be put up, she said, before she could do a thing. But Burke, after a half-hearted trial,—during which he mashed his thumb and bored three holes in wrong places,—flew into a passion of irritability, and bade her get the janitor who "owned the darn things" to do the job, and to pay him what he asked—'twould be worth it, no matter what it was!

With a very hasty kiss then Burke banged out of the house and headed for the Denby Iron Works.

It was not alone the curtains or the offending hammer that was wrong with Burke Denby that morning. The time had come when he must not only meet his fellow employees, and take his place among them, but he must face his father. And he was dreading yet longing to see his father. He had not seen him since he bade him good-night and went upstairs to his own room the month before—to write that farewell note.

Once, since coming back from his wedding trip, he had been tempted to leave town and never see his father again—until he should have made for himself the name and the money that he was going to make. Then he would come back and cry: "Behold, this is I, your son, and this is Helen, my wife, who, you see, has not dragged me down!" He would not, of course, talk like that. But he would show them. He would! This had been when he first learned from Brett of the allowance-cutting, and of his father's implacable anger.

Then had come the better, braver decision. He would stay where he was. He would make the name and the money right here, under his father's very eyes. It would be harder, of course; but there would then be all the more glory in the winning. Besides, to leave now would look like defeat—would make one seem almost like a quitter. And his father hated quitters! He would like to show his father. He would show his father. And he would show him right here. And had not Helen, his dear wife, said that she would aid him? As if he could help winning out under those circumstances!