The Breaking Point (43 page)

David went carefully down the stairs and into his office, and there, at
his long deserted desk, commenced a letter to Dick.

He was sitting there when Dick came up the street...

The thought that he was going home had upheld Dick through the days that
followed Bassett's departure for the West. He knew that it would be a
fight, that not easily does a man step out of life and into it again,
but after his days of inaction he stood ready to fight. For David, for
Lucy, and, if it was not too late, for Elizabeth. When Bassett's wire
came from Norada, "All clear," he set out for Haverly, more nearly happy
than for months. The very rhythm of the train sang: "Going home; going
home."

At the Haverly station the agent stopped, stared at him and then nodded
gravely. There was something restrained in his greeting, like the
voices in the old house the night before, and Dick felt a chill of
apprehension. He never thought of Lucy, but David... The flowers and
ribbon at the door were his first intimation, and still it was David
he thought of. He went cold and bitter, standing on the freshly washed
pavement, staring at them. It was all too late. David! David!

He went into the house slowly, and the heavy scent of flowers greeted
him. The hall was empty, and automatically he pushed open the door to
David's office and went in. David was at the desk writing. David was
alive. Thank God and thank God, David was alive.

"David!" he said brokenly. "Dear old David!" And was suddenly shaken
with dry, terrible sobbing.

There was a great deal to do, and Dick was grateful for it. But first,
like David, he went in and sat by Lucy's bed alone and talked to her.
Not aloud, as David did, but still with that same queer conviction that
she heard. He told her he was free, and that she need not worry about
David, that he was there now to look after him; and he asked her, if she
could, to help him with Elizabeth. Then he kissed her and went out.

He met Elizabeth that day. She had come to the house, and after her
custom now went up, unwarned, to David's room. She found David there and
Harrison Miller, and—it was a moment before she realized it—Dick by
the mantel. He was greatly changed. She saw that. But she had no feeling
of pity, nor even of undue surprise. She felt nothing at all. It gave
her a curious, almost hard little sense of triumph to see that he had
gone pale. She marched up to him and held out her hand, mindful of the
eyes on her.

"I'm so very sorry, Dick," she said. "You have a sad home-coming."

Then she withdrew her hand, still calm, and turned to David.

"Mother sent over some things. I'll give them to Minnie," she said, her
voice clear and steady. She went out, and they heard her descending the
stairs.

She was puzzled to find out that her knees almost gave way on the
staircase, for she felt calm and without any emotion whatever. And she
finished her errand, so collected and poised that the two or three women
who had come in to help stared after her as she departed.

"Do you suppose she's seen him?"

"She was in David's room. She must have."

Mindful of Mike, they withdrew into Lucy's sitting-room and closed the
door, there to surmise and to wonder. Did he know she was engaged to
Wallie Sayre? Would she break her engagement now or not? Did Dick for a
moment think that he could do as he had done, go away and jilt a girl,
and come back to be received as though nothing had happened? Because, if
he did...

To Dick Elizabeth's greeting had been a distinct shock. He had not known
just what he had expected; certainly he had not hoped to pick things up
where he had dropped them. But there was a hard friendliness in it that
was like a slap in the face. He had meant at least to fight to win back
with her, but he saw now that there would not even be a fight. She was
not angry or hurt. The barrier was more hopeless than that.

David, watching him, waited until Harrison had gone, and went directly
to the subject.

"Have you ever stopped to think what these last months have meant to
Elizabeth? Her own worries, and always this infernal town, talking,
talking. The child's pride's been hurt, as well as her heart."

"I thought I'd better not go into that until after—until later,"
he explained. "The other thing was wrong. I knew it the moment I saw
Beverly and I didn't go back again. What was the use? But—you saw her
face, David. I think she doesn't even care enough to hate me."

"She's cared enough to engage herself to Wallace Sayre!"

After one astounded glance Dick laughed bitterly.

"That looks as though she cared!" he said. He had gone very white. After
a time, as David sat silent and thoughtful, he said: "After all, what
right had I to expect anything else? When you think that, a few days
ago, I was actually shaken at the thought of seeing another woman, you
can hardly blame her."

"She waited a long time."

Later Dick made what was a difficult confession under the circumstances.

"I know now—I think I knew all along, but the other thing was like that
craving for liquor I told you about—I know now that she has always
been the one woman. You'll understand that, perhaps, but she wouldn't.
I would crawl on my knees to make her believe it, but it's too late.
Everything's too late," he added.

Before the hour for the services he went in again and sat by Lucy's bed,
but she who had given him wise counsel so many times before lay in her
majestic peace, surrounded by flowers and infinitely removed. Yet she
gave him something. Something of her own peace. Once more, as on the
night she had stood at the kitchen door and watched him disappear in the
darkness, there came the tug of the old familiar things, the home sense.
Not only David now, but the house. The faded carpet on the stairs, the
old self-rocker Lucy had loved, the creaking faucets in the bathroom,
Mike and Minnie, the laboratory,—united in their shabby strength, they
were home to him. They had come back, never to be lost again. Home.

Then, little by little, they carried their claim further. They were
not only home. They were the setting of a dream, long forgotten but now
vivid in his mind, and a refuge from the dreary present. That dream had
seen Elizabeth enshrined among the old familiar things; the old house
was to be a sanctuary for her and for him. From it and from her in the
dream he was to go out in the morning; to it and to her he was to come
home at night, after he had done a man's work.

The dream faded. Before him rose her face of the morning, impassive and
cool; her eyes, not hostile but indifferent. She had taken herself
out of his life, had turned her youth to youth, and forgotten him. He
understood and accepted it. He saw himself as he must have looked to
her, old and worn, scarred from the last months, infinitely changed. And
she was young. Heavens, how young she was!...

Lucy was buried the next afternoon. It was raining, and the quiet
procession followed Dick and the others who carried her light body under
grotesquely bobbing umbrellas. Then he and David, and Minnie and Mike,
went back to the house, quiet with that strange emptiness that follows a
death, the unconscious listening for a voice that will not speak again,
for a familiar footfall. David had not gone upstairs. He sat in Lucy's
sitting-room, in his old frock coat and black tie, with a knitted afghan
across his knees. His throat looked withered in his loose collar. And
there for the first time they discussed the future.

"You're giving up a great deal, Dick," David said. "I'm proud of
you, and like you I think the money's best where it is. But this is a
prejudiced town, and they think you've treated Elizabeth badly. If you
don't intend to tell the story—"

"Never," Dick announced, firmly. "Judson Clark is dead." He smiled
at David with something of his old humor. "I told Bassett to put up a
monument if he wanted to. But you're right about one thing. They're not
ready to take me back. I've seen it a dozen times in the last two days."

"I never gave up a fight yet." David's voice was grim.

"On the other hand, I don't want to make it uncomfortable for her.
We are bound to meet. I'm putting my own feeling aside. It doesn't
matter—except of course to me. What I thought was—We might go into the
city. Reynolds would buy the house. He's going to be married."

But he found himself up against the stone wall of David's opposition. He
was too old to be uprooted. He liked to be able to find his way around
in the dark. He was almost childish about it, and perhaps a trifle
terrified. But it was his final argument that won Dick over.

"I thought you'd found out there's nothing in running away from
trouble."

Dick straightened.

"You're right," he said. "We'll stay here and fight it out together."

He helped David up the stairs to where the nurse stood waiting, and then
went on into his own bedroom. He surveyed it for the first time since
his return with a sense of permanency and intimacy. Here, from now on,
was to center his life. From this bed he would rise in the morning,
to go back to it at night. From this room he would go out to fight for
place again, and for the old faith in him, for confiding eyes and the
clasp of friendly hands.

He sat down by the window and with the feeling of dismissing them
forever retraced slowly and painfully the last few months; the night on
the mountains, and Bassett asleep by the fire; the man from the cabin
caught under the tree, with his face looking up, strangely twisted, from
among the branches; dawn in the alfalfa field, and the long night tramp;
the boy who had recognized him in Chicago; David in his old walnut bed,
shrivelled and dauntless; and his own going out into the night,
with Lucy in the kitchen doorway, Elizabeth and Wallace Sayre on the
verandah, and himself across the street under the trees; Beverly, and
the illumination of his freedom from the old bonds; Gregory, glib and
debonair, telling his lying story, and later on, flying to safety. His
half-brother!

All that, and now this quiet room, with David asleep beyond the wall and
Minnie moving heavily in the kitchen below, setting her bread to rise.
It was anti-climacteric, ridiculous, wonderful.

Then he thought of Elizabeth, and it became terrible.

After Reynolds came up he put on a dressing-gown and went down the
stairs. The office was changed and looked strange and unfamiliar. But
when he opened the door and went into the laboratory nothing had been
altered there. It was as though he had left it yesterday; the microscope
screwed to its stand, the sterilizer gleaming and ready. It was as
though it had waited for him.

He was content. He would fight and he would work. That was all a man
needed, a good fight, and work for his hands and brain. A man could live
without love if he had work.

He sat down on the stool and groaned.

One thing Dick knew must be done and got over with. He would have to see
Elizabeth and tell her the story. He knew it would do no good, but she
had a right to the fullest explanation he could give her. She did not
love him, but it was intolerable that she should hate him.

He meant, however, to make no case for himself. He would have to stand
on the facts. This thing had happened to him; the storm had come,
wrought its havoc and passed; he was back, to start again as nearly as
he could where he had left off. That was all.

He went to the Wheeler house the next night, passing the door twice
before he turned in and rang the bell, in order that his voice might be
calm and his demeanor unshaken. But the fact that Micky, waiting on the
porch, knew him and broke into yelps of happiness and ecstatic wriggling
almost lost him his self-control.

Walter Wheeler opened the door and admitted him.

"I thought you might come," he said. "Come in."

There was no particular warmth in his voice, but no unfriendliness. He
stood by gravely while Dick took off his overcoat, and then led the way
into the library.

"I'd better tell you at once," he said, "that I have advised Elizabeth
to see you, but that she refuses. I'd much prefer—" He busied himself
at the fire for a moment. "I'd much prefer to have her see you,
Livingstone. But—I'll tell you frankly—I don't think it would do much
good."

He sat down and stared at the fire. Dick remained standing. "She doesn't
intend to see me at all?" he asked, unsteadily.

"That's rather out of the question, if you intend to remain here. Do
you?"

"Yes."

An unexpected feeling of sympathy for the tall young man on the hearth
rug stirred in Walter Wheeler's breast.

"I'm sorry, Dick. She apparently reached the breaking point a week or
two ago. She knew you had been here and hadn't seen her, for one thing."
He hesitated. "You've heard of her engagement?"

"Yes."

"I didn't want it," her father said drearily. "I suppose she knows her
own business, but the thing's done. She sent you a message," he added
after a pause. "She's glad it's cleared up and I believe you are not to
allow her to drive you away. She thinks David needs you."

"Thank you. I'll have to stay, as she says."

There was another uncomfortable silence. Then Walter Wheeler burst out:

"Confound it, Dick, I'm sorry. I've fought your battles for months,
not here, but everywhere. But here's a battle I can't fight. She isn't
angry. You'll have to get her angle of it. I think it's something like
this. She had built you up into a sort of superman. And she's—well, I
suppose purity is the word. She's the essence of purity. Then, Leslie
told me this to-night, she learned from him that you were back with the
woman in the case, in New York."

And, as Dick made a gesture:

"There's no use going to him. He was off the beaten track, and he knows
it. He took a chance, to tell her for her own good. He's fond of her. I
suppose that was the last straw."