"I'll send the new chemist up to see you in a couple of days, Ted. Give him all our formulas and experiments you can think of. Good luck!" and he was gone.
Within two or three days I was allowed to come downstairs and sit at the big living-room window, where one could see the sleighs passing up and down Myrtle Boulevard. Helen, with Leonidas at her feet, would sit beside me, and we read or talked or kept silent as the fancy seized us. Miss Hershey discreetly kept in the library, where she alternated embroidering with copious letter-writing. Her correspondents were apparently endless, for fully half her time was occupied with letters. Helen and I used to try to guess their contents; once we found a half finished one on the library table, and it was only by the exercise of the strongest will-power that we resisted the temptation to read it. The handwriting was angular and large, sprawling diagonally across the page: like Miss Hershey, it was conscious of its excellent social connections. Occasionally we indulged in a little teasing at Miss Hershey's expense, but without solving the mystery of her correspondence. One thing we did that horrified her: we bought a scrap book and pasted in all the lurid accounts of the "tragedy" collected from the pages of the Eagle and Evening Star. Helen was particularly fond of the passage in which she was described as nursing "a scion of the English nobility back from the Valley of the Shadow." We used to read it aloud to Miss Hershey until the latter protested it was sacrilegious. There was also a beautiful map of my laboratory, with dotted lines, foot prints, and two crosses to show where Prospero and I were found.
We also had some correspondence of our own on our hands. There was my family to write to; the cable had already informed them of the accident and my recovery, but we had to tell them all about our engagement and future plans. Helen was shy and diffident about it, nor did I blame her. It was no easy task to write to a mother and sister she had never seen. She studied their pictures a long time before beginning and asked for advice often as she wrote. Then she wouldn't show me the finished letters, and we almost squabbled over it. She got out of it at last by telling me that some of the things she had said about me would make me too conceited. I retaliated by refusing to let her see my letters. All this took the whole of a happy morning.
Although we had delayed formal announcement of our engagement until Mrs. Claybourne's return at Christmas, all Deep Harbor knew it, thanks to the Eagle, and every day Helen's friends dropped in to congratulate us and give us good wishes. Every one was friendly and cordial; I felt as if the town had adopted me and now counted me as part of it. Even the Herr Lieutenant Ludwig von Oberhausen made a call, stiffer and more formal than ever, as the importance of the occasion demanded. He was making great headway with the wealthy Miss Greyson, and it was rumoured their engagement would be announced at about the same time as ours.
Soon the doctor gave me permission to go out in the afternoons for a short walk; Helen and I went back and forth on Myrtle Boulevard, all bundled up in wraps and furs, for nearly every day now a screaming north wind blew off the lake. There was snow on the ground, several inches of it, but not so much, Helen said, as there would be after Christmas. The cold was greater than any I had ever experienced, and in my weakened condition I felt it keenly. On some days the air in one's lungs was almost painful; the snow underfoot squeaked annoyingly as one trod upon it. Helen throve on these sharp days; her cheeks glowed with a rosy tint, and the grey of her eyes took on new depths of color and an added sparkle. I liked to watch an escaped lock of her brown hair blowing across her face as I walked beside her, or to see the radiant health shown by her springing step, her quickly aroused laugh, and her interest in everything that the earth had to offer. On these expeditions Sir Leonidas de la Patte Jaune was our delighted escort. Although no person passed upon the street without turning to smile at his uncouth appearance,—he would not have attracted more attention if he had been a hippogriff,—Sir Leonidas's happy spirit was irrepressible. He had a sniff and a wag for all comers and an abiding faith in the goodness of human nature. Occasionally we dropped in to return calls, stopping here and there at various large piles of rough stone with rounded arches which comprised the architecture of Myrtle Boulevard's newer residences.
On one gorgeous sunshiny afternoon, when the breeze from the lake was like iced champagne, Dr. Sinclair prescribed a sleigh ride, on condition that Helen did the driving. We consulted by telephone my old friends at the "livery and feed" stable, with the result that they delivered at our front door a shiny equipage all bells and fur. It was my first experience with a sleigh, and I was much amused to watch Helen's preparations. She could not have done more had we been planning a dash for the Pole. Hot bricks and steamer rugs were merely preliminaries. I was tucked in like a baby and wrapped up until only my eyes and nose were left visible. All having been done to her satisfaction, this handsome young lady took her seat beside me, and we were off. The motor-car had not as yet become such a common experience as to deaden us for all lesser forms of speed; thus it was that this first sleigh-ride seemed to me a most exhilarating thing. The low seat comparatively close to the ground, and the absence of any noise save for the bells, did much to increase the illusion of rapid motion. No wonder Henry Irving had been struck with the dramatic nature of sleigh bells. I told Helen about that strange old melodrama, The Bells, as we whizzed along our favourite Ridge Road. "We shall go to see Irving together in it next year when we are in London, Ted," she whispered. I thrilled with delight, as I always did whenever Helen referred to the golden future we were to share. We were intensely happy in the present, yet "next year" enshrined everything we really wanted; we looked upon our present, happy as it was, as something of a hand-to-mouth existence. Next year we should begin to live.
"I think I shall take some courses at South Kensington Museum," Helen remarked casually, awakening me from a dream of next year.
"South Kensington—what on earth do you know about it?"
"I've naturally been looking up a few things, Ted dear, about the city where I am to spend the rest of my life—"