The wall was there, however, always. Nothing ever came of these connivings and loiterings except (if it were during working hours) a terse hint from the foreman, perhaps, to get back on his job. How Burke hated that foreman!
And that was another thing—his position among his fellow workmen. He was with them, but not of them. His being among them at all was plainly a huge joke—and when one is acting a tragedy in all seriousness, one does not like to hear chuckles as at a comedy. But, for that matter, Burke found the comedy element always present, wherever he went. The entire town took himself, his work, and his marriage as a huge joke—a subject for gay badinage, jocose slaps on the back, and gleeful cries of:—
"Well, Denby, how goes it? How doth the happy bridegroom?"
And Burke hated that, too.
It seemed to Burke, indeed, sometimes, that he hated everything but Helen. Helen, of course, was a dear—the sweetest little wife in the world. As if any one could help loving Helen! And however disagreeable the day, there was always Helen to go home to at night.
Oh, of course, he had to take that abominable flat along with Helen—naturally, as long as he could not afford to put her in a more expensive place. But that would soon be remedied—just as soon as he got a little ahead.
This "going home to Helen" had been one of Burke's happiest anticipations ever since his marriage. It would be so entrancing to find Helen and Helen's kiss waiting for him each night! Often had such thoughts been in his mind during his honeymoon trip; but never had they been so poignantly promising of joy as they were on that first day at the Works, after his disheartening interview with his father. All the rest of that miserable day it seemed to Burke that the only thing he was living for was the going home to Helen that night.
"Home," to Burke, had always meant a place of peace and rest, of luxurious ease and noiseless servants, of orderly rooms and well-served meals, of mellow lights and softly blended colors. Unconsciously now home still meant the same, with the addition of Helen—Helen, the center of it all. It was this dear vision, therefore, that he treasured all through his honeymoon trip, that he hugged to himself all that wretched first day of work, and that was still his star of hope as he hurried that night toward the Dale Street flat. If he had stopped to think, he would have realized at once that this new home of a day was not the old home of years. But he did not stop to think of anything except that for the first time in his life he was going home from work to Helen, his wife.
Burke Denby never forgot the shock of that first home-going. He opened the door of his apartment—and confronted chaos: a surly janitor struggling with a curtain pole, a confusion of trunks, chairs, a stepladder, and a floor-pail, a disorder of dishes on a coverless table, a smell of burned milk, and a cross, tired, untidy wife who flung herself into his arms with a storm of sobs.
"Home," after that, meant quite something new to Burke Denby. It meant Helen, of course, but—