The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  Only once did he seem shaken. That was when Elizabeth came swiftly in and put her arms around him as he sat. He held her close to him, saying nothing for a long time. Then he drew a deep breath.

  "I was feeling mighty lonely, my dear," he said.

  He was the better for her visit. He insisted on dressing that evening, and on being helped down the stairs. The town, which had seemed inimical for so long, appeared to him suddenly to be holding out friendly hands. More than friendly hands. Loving, tender hands, offering service and affection and old-time friendship. It moved about sedately, in dark clothes, and came down the stairs red-eyed and using pocket-hand-kerchiefs, and it surrounded him with love and loving kindness.

  When they had all gone Harrison Miller helped him up the stairs to where his tidy bed stood ready, and the nurse had placed his hot milk on a stand. But Harrison did not go at once.

  "What about word to Dick, David?" he inquired awkwardly, "I've called up Bassett, but he's away. And I don't know that Dick ought to come back anyhow. If the police are on the job at all they'll be on the lookout now. They'll know he may try to come."

  David looked away. Just how much he wanted Dick, to tide him over these bad hours, only David knew. But he could not have him. He stared at the glass of hot milk.

  "I guess I can fight this out alone, Harrison," he said. "And Lucy will understand."

  He did not sleep much that night. Once or twice he got up and tip-toed across the hall into Lucy's room and looked at her. She was as white as her pillow, and quite serene. Her hands, always a little rough and twisted with service, were smooth and rested.

  "You know why he can't come, Lucy," he said once. "It doesn't mean that he doesn't care. You have to remember that." His sublime faith that she heard and understood, not the Lucy on the bed but the Lucy who had not yet gone on to the blessed company of heaven, carried him back to his bed, comforted and reassured.

  He was up and about his room early. The odor of baking muffins and frying ham came up the stair-well, and the sound of Mike vigorously polishing the floor in the hall. Mixed with the odor of cooking and of floor wax was the scent of flowers from Lucy's room, and Mrs. Sayre's machine stopped at the door while the chauffeur delivered a great mass of roses.

  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.

  XLVI

  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."

  He sat still, a troubled figure, middle-aged and unhandsome, and very weary.

  "It's a bad business, Dick," he said.

  After a time Dick stirred.

  "When I first began to remember," he said, "I wanted whisky. I would have stolen it, if I couldn't have got it any other way. Then, when I got it, I didn't want it. It sickened me. This other was the same sort of thing. It's done with."

  Wheeler nodded.

  "I under
stand. But she wouldn't, Dick."

  "No. I don't suppose she would."

  He went away soon after that, back to the quiet house and to David. Automatically he turned in at his office, but Reynolds was writing there. He went slowly up the stairs.

  Ann Sayre was frankly puzzled during the next few days. She had had a week or so of serenity and anticipation, and although things were not quite as she would have had them, Elizabeth too impassive and even Wallie rather restrained in his happiness, she was satisfied. But Dick Livingstone's return had somehow changed everything.

  It had changed Wallie, too. He was suddenly a man, and not, she suspected, a very happy man. He came back one day, for instance, to say that he had taken a partnership in a brokerage office, and gave as his reason that he was sick of "playing round." She rather thought it was to take his mind off something.

  A few days after the funeral she sent for Doctor Reynolds. "I caught cold at the cemetery," she said, when he had arrived and was seated opposite her in her boudoir. "I really did," she protested, as she caught his eye. "I suppose everybody is sending for you, to have a chance to talk."

  "Just about."

  "You can't blame us. Particularly, you can't blame me. I've got to know something, doctor. Is he going to stay?"

  "I think so. Yes."

  "Isn't he going to explain anything? He can't expect just to walk back into his practise after all these months, and the talk that's been going on, and do nothing about it."

  "I don't see what his going away has to do with it. He's a good doctor, and a hard worker. When I'm gone--"

  "You're going, are you?"

  "Yes. I may live here, and have an office in the city. I don't care for general practise; there's no future in it. I may take a special course in nose and throat."

  But she was not interested in his plans.

  "I want to know something, and only you can tell me. I'm not curious like the rest; I think I have a right to know. Has he seen Elizabeth Wheeler yet? Talked to her, I mean?"