The Breaking Point

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  XXXVII

  Wallie stared at his mother. His mind was at once protesting thefact and accepting it, with its consequences to himself. There wasa perceptible pause before he spoke. He stood, if anything, somewhatstraighter, but that was all.

  "Are you sure it was Livingstone?"

  "Positive. I talked to him. I wasn't sure myself, at first. He lookedshabby and thin, as though he'd been ill, and he had the audacity topretend at first he didn't know me. He closed the door on me and--"

  "Wait a minute, mother. What door?"

  "He was driving a taxicab."

  He looked at her incredulously.

  "I don't believe it," he said slowly. "I think you've made a mistake,that's all."

  "Nonsense. I know him as well as I know you."

  "Did he acknowledge his identity?"

  "Not in so many words," she admitted. "He said I had made a mistake, andhe stuck to it. Then he shut the door and drove me to the station. Theonly other chance I had was at the station, and there was a line ofcabs behind us, so I had only a second. I saw he didn't intend to admitanything, so I said: 'I can see you don't mean to recognize me, DoctorLivingstone, but I must know whether I am to say at home that I've seenyou.' He was making change for me at the time--I'd have known his hands,I think, if I hadn't seen anything else-and when he looked up his facewas shocking. He said, 'Are they all right?' 'David is very ill,' Isaid. The cars behind were waiting and making a terrific din, and atraffic man ran up then and made him move on. He gave me the strangestlook as he went. I stood and waited, thinking he would turn and comeback again at the end of the line, but he didn't. I almost missed mytrain."

  Wallie's first reaction to the news was one of burning anger andcondemnation.

  "The blackguard!" he said. "The insufferable cad! To have run away ashe did, and then to let them believe him dead! For that's what they dobelieve. It is killing David Livingstone, and as for Elizabeth--She'llhave to be told, mother. He's alive. He's well. And he has deliberatelydeserted them all. He ought to be shot."

  "You didn't see him, Wallie. I did. He's been through something, I don'tknow what. I didn't sleep last night for thinking of his face. It haddespair in it."

  "All right," he said, angrily pausing before her. "What do you intend todo? Let them go on as they are, hoping and waiting; lauding him to theskies as a sort of superman? The thing to do is to tell the truth."

  "But we don't know the truth, Wallie. There's something behind it all."

  "Nothing very creditable, be sure of that," he pronounced. "Do you thinkit is fair to Elizabeth to let her waste her life on the memory of a manwho's deserted her?"

  "It would be cruel to tell her."

  "You've got to be cruel to be kind, sometimes," he said oracularly."Why, the man may be married. May be anything. A taxi driver! Doesn'tthat in itself show that he's hiding from something?"

  She sat, a small obese figure made larger by her furs, and stared at himwith troubled eyes.

  "I don't know, Wallie," she said helplessly. "In a way, it might bebetter to tell her. She could put him out of her mind, then. But I hateto do it. It's like stabbing a baby."

  He understood her, and nodded. When, after taking a turn or two aboutthe room he again stopped in front of her his angry flush had subsided.

  "It's the devil of a mess," he commented. "I suppose the square thingto do is to tell Doctor David, and let him decide. I've got too much atstake to be a judge of what to do."

  He went upstairs soon after that, leaving her still in her chair,swathed in furs, her round anxious face bent forward in thought. Hehad rarely seen her so troubled, so uncertain of her next move, and hesurmised, knowing her, that her emotions were a complex of anxiety forhimself with Elizabeth, of pity for David, and of the memory of DickLivingstone's haggard face.

  She sat alone for some time and then went reluctantly up the stairs toher bedroom. She felt, like Wallie, that she had too much at stake todecide easily what to do.

  In the end she decided to ask Doctor Reynolds' advice, and in themorning she proceeded to do it. Reynolds was interested, even a littleexcited, she thought, but he thought it better not to tell David. Hewould himself go to Harrison Miller with it.

  "You say he knew you?" he inquired, watching her. "I suppose there is nodoubt of that?"

  "Certainly not. He's known me for years. And he asked about David."

  "I see." He fell into profound thought, while she sat in her chair atrifle annoyed with him. He was wondering how all this would affect himand his prospects, and through them his right to marry. He had walkedinto a good thing, and into a very considerable content.

  "I see," he repeated, and got up. "I'll tell Miller, and we'll get towork. We are all very grateful to you, Mrs. Sayre--"

  As a result of that visit Harrison Miller and Bassett went that night toChicago. They left it to Doctor Reynolds' medical judgment whether Davidshould be told or not, and Reynolds himself did not know. In the end hepassed the shuttle the next evening to Clare Rossiter.

  "Something's troubling you," she said. "You're not a bit like yourself,old dear."

  He looked at her. To him she was all that was fine and good and sane ofjudgment.

  "I've got something to settle," he said. "I was wondering while you weresinging, dear, whether you could help me out."

  "When I sing you're supposed to listen. Well? What is it?" She perchedherself on the arm of his chair, and ran her fingers over his hair.She was very fond of him, and she meant to be a good wife. If sheever thought of Dick Livingstone now it was in connection with her ownreckless confession to Elizabeth. She had hated Elizabeth ever since.

  "I'll take a hypothetical case. If you guess, you needn't say. Of courseit's a great secret."

  She listened, nodding now and then. He used no names, and he saidnothing of any crime.

  "The point is this," he finished. "Is it better to believe the man isdead, or to know that he is alive, but has cut himself off?"

  "There's no mistake about the recognition?"

  "Somebody from the village saw him in Chicago within day or two, andtalked to him."

  She had the whole picture in a moment. She knew that Mrs. Sayre had beenin Chicago, that she had seen Dick there and talked to him. She turnedthe matter over in her mind, shrewdly calculating, planning her smallrevenge on Elizabeth even as she talked.

  "I'd wait," she advised him. "He may come back with them, and in thatcase David will know soon enough. Or he may refuse to, and that wouldkill him. He'd rather think him dead than that."

  She slept quietly that night, and spent rather more time than usual indressing that morning. Then she took her way to the Wheeler house. Shesaw in what she was doing no particularly culpable thing. She had nogreat revenge in mind; all that she intended was an evening of the scorebetween them. "He preferred you to me, when you knew I cared. But he hasdeserted you." And perhaps, too, a small present jealousy, for she wasto live in the old brick Livingstone house, or in one like it, while allthe village expected ultimately to see Elizabeth installed in the houseon the hill.

  She kept her message to the end of her visit, and delivered her blowstanding.

  "I have something I ought to tell you, Elizabeth. But I don't know howyou'll take it."

  "Maybe it's something I won't want to hear."

  "I'll tell you, if you won't say where you heard it."

  But Elizabeth made a small, impatient gesture. "I don't like secrets,Clare. I can't keep them, for one thing. You'd better not tell me."

  Clare was nearly balked of her revenge, but not entirely.

  "All right," she said, and prepared to depart. "I won't. But you mightjust find out from your friend Mrs. Sayre who it was she saw in Chicagothis week."

  It was in this manner, bit by bit and each bit trivial, that the caseagainst Dick was built up for Elizabeth. Mrs. Sayre, helpless before herquiet questioning, had to acknowledge one damning thing after another.He had known her; he had not asked for Elizabeth, but only for David;he looke
d tired and thin, but well. She stood at the window watchingElizabeth go down the hill, with a feeling that she had just seensomething die before her.