The Breaking Point

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  THE BREAKING POINT

  By Mary Roberts Rinehart

  I

  "Heaven and earth," sang the tenor, Mr. Henry Wallace, owner of theWallace garage. His larynx, which gave him somewhat the effect of havingswallowed a crab-apple and got it only part way down, protruded abovehis low collar.

  "Heaven and earth," sang the bass, Mr. Edwin Goodno, of the meat marketand the Boy Scouts. "Heaven and earth, are full--" His chin, large andfleshy, buried itself deep; his eyes were glued on the music sheet inhis hand.

  "Are full, are full, are full," sang the soprano, Clare Rossiter, of theyellow colonial house on the Ridgely Road. She sang with her eyes turnedup, and as she reached G flat she lifted herself on her toes. "Of themajesty, of Thy glory."

  "Ready," barked the choir master. "Full now, and all together."

  The choir room in the parish house resounded to the twenty voices of thechoir. The choir master at the piano kept time with his head. Earnestand intent, they filled the building with the Festival Te Deum of DudleyBuck, Opus 63, No. 1.

  Elizabeth Wheeler liked choir practice. She liked the way in which,after the different parts had been run through, the voices finallyblended into harmony and beauty. She liked the small sense ofachievement it gave her, and of being a part, on Sundays, of theservice. She liked the feeling, when she put on the black cassock andwhite surplice and the small round velvet cap of having placed in herlocker the things of this world, such as a rose-colored hat and a bluegeorgette frock, and of being stripped, as it were, for aspirations.

  At such times she had vague dreams of renunciation. She saw herselfcloistered in some quiet spot, withdrawn from the world; a place wherethere were long vistas of pillars and Gothic arches, after a photographin the living room at home, and a great organ somewhere, playing.

  She would go home from church, however, clad in the rose-colored hat andthe blue georgette frock, and eat a healthy Sunday luncheon; and by twoo'clock in the afternoon, when the family slept and Jim had gone to thecountry club, her dreams were quite likely to be entirely different.Generally speaking, they had to do with love. Romantic, unclouded younglove dramatic only because it was love, and very happy.

  Sometime, perhaps, some one would come and say he loved her. That wasall. That was at once the beginning and the end. Her dreams led up tothat and stopped. Not by so much as a hand clasp did they pass thatwall.

  So she sat in the choir room and awaited her turn.

  "Altos a little stronger, please."

  "Of the majesty, of the majesty, of the majesty, of Thy gl-o-o-ry," sangElizabeth. And was at once a nun and a principal in a sentimental dreamof two.

  What appeared to the eye was a small and rather ethereal figure withsleek brown hair and wistful eyes; nice eyes, of no particular color.Pretty with the beauty of youth, sensitive and thoughtful, infinitelyloyal and capable of suffering and not otherwise extraordinary wasElizabeth Wheeler in her plain wooden chair. A figure suggestive of nodrama and certainly of no tragedy, its attitude expectant and waiting,with that alternate hope and fear which is youth at twenty, when all oflife lies ahead and every to-morrow may hold some great adventure.

  Clare Rossiter walked home that night with Elizabeth. She was a tallblonde girl, lithe and graceful, and with a calculated coquetry in herclothes.

  "Do you mind going around the block?" she asked. "By Station Street?"There was something furtive and yet candid in her voice, and Elizabethglanced at her.

  "All right. But it's out of your way, isn't it?"

  "Yes. I--You're so funny, Elizabeth. It's hard to talk to you. But I'vegot to talk to somebody. I go around by Station Street every chance Iget."

  "By Station Street? Why?"

  "I should think you could guess why."

  She saw that Clare desired to be questioned, and at the same timeshe felt a great distaste for the threatened confidence. She loathedarm-in-arm confidences, the indecency of dragging up and exposing, inwhispers, things that should have been buried deep in reticence. Shehesitated, and Clare slipped an arm through hers.

  "You don't know, then, do you? Sometimes I think every one must know.And I don't care. I've reached that point."

  Her confession, naive and shameless, and yet somehow not without acertain dignity, flowed on. She was mad about Doctor Dick Livingstone.Goodness knew why, for he never looked at her. She might be the dirtunder his feet for all he knew. She trembled when she met him in thestreet, and sometimes he looked past her and never saw her. She didn'tsleep well any more.

  Elizabeth listened in great discomfort. She did not see in Clare'shopeless passion the joy of the flagellant, or the self-dramatizationof a neurotic girl. She saw herself unwillingly forced to peer intothe sentimental windows of Clare's soul, and there to see Doctor DickLivingstone, an unconscious occupant. But she had a certain fugitivesense of guilt, also. Formless as her dreams had been, vague and shy,they had nevertheless centered about some one who should be tall, likeDick Livingstone, and alternately grave, which was his professionalmanner, and gay, which was his manner when it turned out to be only acold, and he could take a few minutes to be himself. Generally speaking,they centered about some one who resembled Dick Livingstone, but whodid not, as did Doctor Livingstone, assume at times an air of frightfulmaturity and pretend that in years gone by he had dandled her on hisknee.

  "Sometimes I think he positively avoids me," Clare wailed. "There'sthe house, Elizabeth. Do you mind stopping a moment? He must be in hisoffice now. The light's burning."

  "I wish you wouldn't, Clare. He'd hate it if he knew."

  She moved on and Clare slowly followed her. The Rossiter girl's flowof talk had suddenly stopped. She was thoughtful and impulsivelysuspicious.

  "Look here, Elizabeth, I believe you care for him yourself."

  "I? What is the matter with you to-night, Clare?"

  "I'm just thinking. Your voice was so queer."

  They walked on in silence. The flow of Clare's confidences had ceased,and her eyes were calculating and a trifle hard.

  "There's a good bit of talk about him," she jerked out finally. "Isuppose you've heard it."

  "What sort of talk?"

  "Oh, gossip. You'll hear it. Everybody's talking about it. It's doinghim a lot of harm."

  "I don't believe it," Elizabeth flared. "This town hasn't anything elseto do, and so it talks. It makes me sick."

  She did not attempt to analyze the twisted motives that made Clarebelittle what she professed to love. And she did not ask what the gossipwas. Half way up Palmer Lane she turned in at the cement path betweenborders of early perennials which led to the white Wheeler house. Shewas flushed and angry, hating Clare for her unsolicited confidence andher malice, hating even Haverly, that smiling, tree-shaded suburb which"talked."

  She opened the door quietly and went in. Micky, the Irish terrier, layasleep at the foot of the stairs, and her father's voice, reading aloud,came pleasantly from the living room. Suddenly her sense of resentmentdied. With the closing of the front door the peace of the houseenveloped her. What did it matter if, beyond that door, there wereunrequited love and petty gossip, and even tragedy? Not that she put allthat into conscious thought; she had merely a sensation of sanctuaryand peace. Here, within these four walls, were all that one should need,love and security and quiet happiness. Walter Wheeler, pausing to turn apage, heard her singing as she went up the stairs. In the moment of theturning he too had a flash of content. Twenty-five years of married lifeand all well; Nina married, Jim out of college, Elizabeth singing herway up the stairs, and here by the lamp his wife quietly knitting whilehe read to her. He was reading Paradise Lost: "The mind is its ownplace, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."

  He did a certain amount of serious read
ing every year.

  On Sunday mornings, during the service, Elizabeth earnestly tried tobanish all worldly thoughts. In spite of this resolve, however, she wasalways conscious of a certain regret that the choir seats necessitatedturning her profile to the congregation. At the age of twelve she haddecided that her nose was too short, and nothing had happened sinceto change her conviction. She seldom so much as glanced at thecongregation. During her slow progress up and down the main aisle behindthe Courtney boy, who was still a soprano and who carried the great goldcross, she always looked straight ahead. Or rather, although she wasunconscious of this, slightly up. She always looked up when she sang,for she had commenced to take singing lessons when the piano music rackwas high above her head.

  So she still lifted her eyes as she went up the aisle, and was extremelyserious over the whole thing. Because it is a solemn matter to take anumber of people who have been up to that moment engrossed in thoughtsof food or golf or servants or business, and in the twinkling of an eye,as the prayer book said about death, turn their minds to worship.

  Nevertheless, although she never looked at the pews, she was alwaysconscious of two of them. The one near the pulpit was the Sayres' and itwas the social calendar of the town. When Mrs. Sayre was in it, it wasthe social season. One never knew when Mrs. Sayre's butler would call upand say:

  "I am speaking for Mrs. Sayre. Mrs. Sayre would like to have thepleasure of Miss Wheeler's company on Thursday to luncheon, atone-thirty."

  When the Sayre pew was empty, the town knew, if it happened to bewinter, that the Florida or Santa Barbara season was on; or in summerthe Maine coast.

  The other pew was at the back of the church. Always it had one occupant;sometimes it had three. But the behavior of this pew was very erratic.Sometimes an elderly and portly gentleman with white hair and fierceeyebrows would come in when the sermon was almost over. Again, a handwould reach through the grill behind it, and a tall young man whohad had his eyes fixed in the proper direction, but not always onthe rector, would reach for his hat, get up and slip out. On theseoccasions, however, he would first identify the owner of the hand andthen bend over the one permanent occupant of the pew, a little old lady.His speech was as Yea, yea, or Nay, nay, for he either said, "I'll beback for dinner," or "Don't look for me until you see me."

  And Mrs. Crosby, without taking her eyes from the sermon, would nod.

  Of late years, Doctor David Livingstone had been taking less and lessof the "Don't-look-for-me-until-you-see-me" cases, and Doctor Dick hadacquired a car, which would not freeze when left outside all night likea forgotten dog, and a sense of philosophy about sleep. That is, thateleven o'clock P.M. was bed-time to some people, but was just eleveno'clock for him.

  When he went to church he listened to the sermon, but rather oftenhe looked at Elizabeth Wheeler. When his eyes wandered, as the mostfaithful eyes will now and then, they were apt to rest on the flag thathad hung, ever since the war, beside the altar. He had fought for hiscountry in a sea of mud, never nearer than two hundred miles to thebattle line, fought with a surgical kit instead of a gun, but he wascontent. Not to all the high adventure.

  Had he been asked, suddenly, the name of the tall blonde girl who sangamong the sopranos, he could not have told it.

  The Sunday morning following Clare Rossiter's sentimental confession,Elizabeth tried very hard to banish all worldly thoughts, as usual,and to see the kneeling, rising and sitting congregation as there forworship. But for the first time she wondered. Some of the faces wereblank, as though behind the steady gaze the mind had wandered farafield, or slept. Some were intent, some even devout. But for the firsttime she began to feel that people in the mass might be cruel, too.How many of them, for instance, would sometime during the day pass on,behind their hands, the gossip Clare had mentioned?

  She changed her position, and glanced quickly over the church. TheLivingstone pew was fully occupied, and well up toward the front, WallieSayre was steadfastly regarding her. She looked away quickly.

  Came the end of the service. Came down the aisle the Courtney boy, cleanand shining and carrying high his glowing symbol. Came the choir, two bytwo, the women first, sopranos, altos and Elizabeth. Came the men,bass and tenor, neatly shaved for Sunday morning. Came the rector, Mr.Oglethorpe, a trifle wistful, because always he fell so far below themark he had set. Came the benediction. Came the slow rising from itsknees of the congregation and its cheerful bustle of dispersal.

  Doctor Dick Livingstone stood up and helped Doctor David into hisnew spring overcoat. He was very content. It was May, and the sun wasshining. It was Sunday, and he would have an hour or two of leisure. Andhe had made a resolution about a matter that had been in his mind forsome time. He was very content.

  He looked around the church with what was almost a possessive eye. Thesepeople were his friends. He knew them all, and they knew him. They had,against his protest, put his name on the bronze tablet set in the wallon the roll of honor. Small as it was, this was his world.

  Half smiling, he glanced about. He did not realize that behind theirbows and greetings there was something new that day, something not somuch unkind as questioning.

  Outside in the street he tucked his aunt, Mrs. Crosby, against thespring wind, and waited at the wheel of the car while David entered withthe deliberation of a man accustomed to the sagging of his old side-barbuggy under his weight. Long ago Dick had dropped the titular "uncle,"and as David he now addressed him.

  "You're going to play some golf this afternoon, David," he said firmly."Mike had me out this morning to look at your buggy springs."

  David chuckled. He still stuck to his old horse, and to the ancientvehicle which had been the signal of distress before so many doors forforty years. "I can trust old Nettie," he would say. "She doesn't freezeher radiator on cold nights, she doesn't skid, and if I drop asleepshe'll take me home and into my own barn, which is more than anyautomobile would do."

  "I'm going to sleep," he said comfortably. "Get Wallie Sayre--I see he'sback from some place again--or ask a nice girl. Ask Elizabeth Wheeler. Idon't think Lucy here expects to be the only woman in your life."

  Dick stared into the windshield.

  "I've been wondering about that, David," he said, "just how muchright--"

  "Balderdash!" David snorted. "Don't get any fool notion in your head."

  Followed a short silence with Dick driving automatically and thinking.Finally he drew a long breath.

  "All right," he said, "how about that golf--you need exercise. You'reputting on weight, and you know it. And you smoke too much. It's eitherless tobacco or more walking, and you ought to know it."

  David grunted, but he turned to Lucy Crosby, in the rear seat:

  "Lucy, d'you know where my clubs are?"

  "You loaned them to Jim Wheeler last fall. If you get three of them backyou're lucky." Mrs. Crosby's voice was faintly tart. Long ago shehad learned that her brother's belongings were his only by right ofpurchase, and were by way of being community property. When, earlyin her widowhood and her return to his home, she had found that herprotests resulted only in a sort of clandestine giving or lending, shehad exacted a promise from him. "I ask only one thing, David," shehad said. "Tell me where the things go. There wasn't a blanket for theguest-room bed at the time of the Diocesan Convention."

  "I'll run around to the Wheelers' and get them," Dick observed, in acarefully casual voice. "I'll see the Carter baby, too, David, and thatclears the afternoon. Any message?"

  Lucy glanced at him, but David moved toward the house.

  "Give Elizabeth a kiss for me," he called over his shoulder, and wentchuckling up the path.