DAVID telephoned to the hotel early in the afternoon and found Fidelia in her room. His father had left and when David asked if she had had a very hard morning, she replied: "What do you think, David? I actually got him into a canoe. Then we had lunch here." Consequently, David felt relieved. He always was bothered when his father was in town and particularly when his father was calling upon Fidelia; he was glad this call was over without having hurt her unusually.
Of course David understood her far better than did his father yet David had little comprehension of the habit of concealment of her hurts and troubles which Fidelia practiced. She was so affectionate and she showed her happiness so obviously that he supposed, if she felt unhappy, she must show that too. But he did not realize the effect upon Fidelia of having been cast upon her own very early in life. At seven when she was sent away to school, already she had learned to keep her griefs to herself and her long lack of home, her continuous attendance at schools had fixed her habit.
Her diary became her outlet. When she was only ten she had learned that if she wrote out a trouble she lost the pressure of the feeling that she had to tell it.
David never suspected this use for her diary; he looked upon it as her personal record of the past and sometimes he wished that she would want him to read it; sometimes he felt more content not to know. For she had cut herself off from her past prior to her appearance in Evanston, with a completeness which became more and more disquieting to David as the years went on.
She wrote regularly to, and as regularly heard from, Mr. Jessop in the bank at White Falls; occasionally, in the large envelopes which contained her income checks and the periodical statements of the condition of her affairs, there seemed to be other enclosures but nothing to indicate even a haphazard correspondence with friends. She never mentioned to David anybody whom she had known before, except Mr. and Mrs. Jessop, her aunt Minna and Bolton, and of him, David knew no more than he had learned three years ago. Fidelia had loved him once and had had a dangerous adventure with him; then she had sent him away; he was dead.
David wondered often upon what days in the year the events with Bolton had occurred; he wondered what anniversaries ran in Fidelia's mind, as there ran in his the yearly return of May second, the day upon which Alice and he had become engaged. Then there was Alice's birthday, which was October tenth. The approach of that day still set him planning; he felt himself vaguely avoiding engagements on October tenth and, when the day came, he felt queerly guilty.
The occasions of his father's visits, though they were not made upon fixed dates, also had the effects of summoning Alice to David's mind. For he had had Alice in his arms, not Fidelia, when he had declared his original defiance of Eternity and spoken his denial of his father's God by the graveyard. For Alice, not for Fidelia, had he borrowed the ten thousand dollars. He was following, in business at least, the plan which Alice and he had made together and it was succeeding as they together had hoped.
For Snelgrove-Herrick were prospering. The mahogany furnished office in which David awaited his father, was his own. Upon his desk, between his telephone and his bronze clock, were five little ivory-topped buttons. Press button one and his stenographer appeared; button two brought instant response from the manager of the used car department; button three rang the foreman of the service shop; buttons four and five had no functions yet but they would be assigned to the task of summoning others from additional office space soon to be required by Snelgrove-Herrick.
The painted announcement over the entrance door, proclaiming that Snelgrove-Herrick had the biggest increase in sales in the price-class of the Hamilton car, was literally true. Three times in three years the agency had doubled its business.
The sales amply justified the wide front of plate-glass window display facing the boulevard and necessitated the service shop and the used car department. Whether or not they warranted the present scale of Snelgrove's entertainings and his largess to his down-and-out friends, might be a matter of doubt; but David never needed to overdraw at the office to meet, on Monday morning, the weekly hotel account for Fidelia and himself; and promptly and without embarrassment he sent his remittances to his mother at Itanaca.
To be sure, he had not yet returned to Mr. Fuller the ten thousand dollars which, on that night when he had held Alice in his arms, he had listed as the first debt to be paid; but Mr. Fuller was still as satisfied as he had been when David reported on this matter to Alice long ago. Indeed, Mr. Fuller had willingly increased his investment in the agency to enable it to have the capital to take care of its growing business. So David now owed to him twenty-five thousand dollars.
To secure this debt, David had insured his life for the same amount in favor of Mr. Fuller and when Ephraim Herrick was told of it, he called it the pledging of his son's body to Mr. Fuller after David had sold his soul. It was, of course, only an ordinary business procedure and his father's description of it offended David; it hurt David, too, when he took no pride in David's success. For, deny it as he might, David wanted his father's "well done" more than the praise of any one else.
"But I've got to do it in business. I'll make him see it," David swore to himself. He wondered this afternoon, while he waited for his father, what it meant that Fidelia had got his father out in a canoe. Was it possible that his father was relenting, even a little?
When his father came into the office, David knew at once there had been no relenting; his father was tired and silent. He denied being tired.
"I've just been walking a little," he said. "I came from the hotel by the elevated and I got off a mile or so away to walk down and consider."
"Consider what?"
"I must consult with mother; before I take the next step, I must consult with her."
David felt the threat and he paled; then he said: "I don't care what step you take about me. No; that's not true. Of course I care but I mean it doesn't make any difference what you do to me. I can take care of myself. But don't hurt Fidelia, father! She doesn't deserve it."
He stopped and his father remained silent so David went on: "She wasn't brought up by ideas like ours; she wasn't brought up with any ideas at all except what a girl could pick up for herself from a bank and from schools. I didn't ask her about any ideas when I married her. I just asked her to marry me and she did She's my wife and I won't have you hurt her.
"You can say I am not living up to myself, if you think that way; but you can't say she isn't. She's herself; she's just herself; that's what she is and you shan't hurt her."
Still his father made no reply; he sat down and took off his hat and yet said nothing until, after a few minutes, he arose to start for the station.
"I'll drive you," David said and he did; and he went out with his father to the trainshed and a dusty day-coach for Itanaca.
They passed the parlor car with its clean, white covers over the comfortable chairs, where the electric fans were spinning; David passed the car without idea of suggesting entering it. Following his father, the smell of the old, sooty day-coaches assailed David and restored to him the sensations of long ago with his father, particularly of the time when he stepped upon a car platform on the hot, September day when he first set out from Itanaca on his way to Northwestern.
His father turned on the platform, and David reached a hand after him—David gulped; he could not help it. Pride in him and hope, high aspirations for him then had burned in his father's eyes and thrilled in the grasp of his father's fingers; now was disappointment, disillusion.
"Good-by, father," David said. "I'm sorry I spoke so; but—I meant it."
"Good-by, boy," his father said.
David did not wait for the train to go out but, when he passed the fruit stand, he bought the biggest basket there and he ran back and thrust it in the open window beside his father. "For mother," he cried, as the train started. "Make her take care of herself."
He stood watching the train till it was out of sight; and then, from the assertion of old habit, barely thinking what he was doing, he entered a telephone booth in the station. So far as he thought, he meant to call Fidelia; but it happened to be the hour at which, long ago, he had never failed to telephone to Alice and after he had spoken a number, he did not realize what he had done, even after the call was answered.
A voice said: "Yes."
Since the switchboard girl at the hotel usually answered differently, he asked: "Who is this, please?"
The voice said: "Is it David?"
He replied, "Yes," and he knew what he had done.
She said: "I'm Alice."
"Yes," he said. "Yes, I called you." And he could not leave it at that; he could not cut off. He had to say something and he had no choice but to go on. "Father was just here. I just saw him off. I—I called your number, Alice."
She said: "I see. Of course I see. You meant to call Fidelia." And quietly, not sharply at all, she cut off.