The dance came to an end at last, since there is a limit to the physical endurance of even the youth of Deep Harbor. I was fagged, and, now the excitement had passed, there were deep circles under Helen's eyes. "Take me home, Ted," she whispered, and with infinite craft and skill, we eluded Miss Hershey and got a carriage to ourselves.
We sat for a long time in silence, as we bounced over the ruts, her hand resting in mine.
"It is Christmas day, dearest," I bent over her and said. She looked into my eyes.
"Our first Christmas together, Ted. How many will there be?" Suddenly there came a little catch in her voice, and she cried against my shoulder, as if frightened. I comforted her, and she again looked up, a smile coming through wet eyes.
"Christmas. We'll never forget, will we Ted?"
We looked out at the arc lamps of Deep Harbor ahead. On the left, the frozen, snow-covered lake looked like some strange continent of the moon in the glowing light. The fields and vineyards were dimly white, with dark patches showing. The snow had been thinned by a thaw. We looked together, now ahead, now left, now right, that we might impress the scene on our memories forevermore. It was very still save for the rattle of the carriage and the occasional voice of the driver speaking to his horses. Far on the other side of the town the flare of a Bessemer steel works suddenly lit up the sky, for its furnaces never rested, day or night.
I kissed her good-night at her door and walked down Myrtle Boulevard, in the dawn, alone. At my rooms I found a letter from my father, together with a generous check. "Buy Helen a Christmas present out of this," was his only comment on sending me the money. I could not sleep, but the factory was to be shut down on Christmas Day, so the loss of sleep did not matter. The future stood before me like an impenetrable wall. I wanted to see the other side. It seemed absurd, preposterous, that one couldn't fathom that mystery. It was not fair to make one face life without knowing what to expect. Of what use were hopes or plans, if out of that void some unforeseen thing struck at one? Yet fear, I knew, was more deadly than any blow that could come from the dark. One must grope ahead, like a child going into a cellar, but if one feared the dark, then the thing would become intolerable. It would add terrors that were not there and deprive one of the power to deal with the things that were.
What was it Helen had asked? How many Christmas days would there be for us? Granting three score and ten as the limit, there should be not less than fifty such days. Fifty times to remember all that today meant to us. "I wonder why most stories stop when they are married?" I asked myself. "Don't they dare tell the rest of it?" Reason refused to make any comment, for Reason, too, was baffled by that mystery of the future.
Christmas dinner was a solemn family function held at three o'clock in the afternoon. Besides Helen, Mrs. Claybourne, Mr. Claybourne, and me, there were Helen's Uncle Peter, from Dayton, Ohio, and his wife. Uncle Peter and Aunt Ethel had come to Deep Harbor with a double motive—to spend Christmas and to inspect the potential nephew-in-law. Uncle Peter was affable and jocose, slightly older than his brother, Mr. Claybourne, but similar in type. He had not quite the same force of character or skill in business, I decided after hearing one of his anecdotes. Anecdotes are a sore betrayer of man's mental make-up. They should be told only by persons who have nothing to fear from self-revelation. Aunt Ethel was a woman of firmness and impregnable self-complacency. "In Dayton we—" was her regular introduction to the simplest statement. She wore gold-bowed invisible glasses and had pastry-coloured hair. Of the two I immediately plumped for Uncle Peter and his anecdotes. They were more reassuring than Aunt Ethel's views upon conduct.