IV

David did not sleep well that night. He had not had his golf after

all, for the Homer baby had sent out his advance notice early in the

afternoon, and had himself arrived on Sunday evening, at the hour when

Minnie was winding her clock and preparing to retire early for the

Monday washing, and the Sayre butler was announcing dinner. Dick had

come in at ten o'clock weary and triumphant, to announce that Richard

Livingstone Homer, sex male, color white, weight nine pounds, had been

safely delivered into this vale of tears.

David lay in the great walnut bed which had been his mother's, and read

his prayer book by the light of his evening lamp. He read the Evening

Prayer and the Litany, and then at last he resorted to the thirty-nine

articles, which usually had a soporific effect on him. But it was no

good.

He got up and took to pacing his room, a portly, solid old figure in

striped pajamas and the pair of knitted bedroom slippers which were

always Mrs. Morgan's Christmas offering. “To Doctor David, with love and

a merry Xmas, from Angeline Morgan.”

At last he got his keys from his trousers pocket and padded softly down

the stairs and into his office, where he drew the shade and turned on

the lights. Around him was the accumulated professional impedimenta of

many years; the old-fashioned surgical chair; the corner closet which

had been designed for china, and which held his instruments; the

bookcase; his framed diplomas on the wall, their signatures faded, their

seals a little dingy; his desk, from which Dick had removed the old

ledger which had held those erratic records from which, when he needed

money, he had been wont--and reluctant--to make out his bills.

Through an open door was Dick's office, a neat place of shining linoleum

and small glass stands, highly modern and business-like. Beyond the

office and opening from it was his laboratory, which had been the fruit

closet once, and into which Dick on occasion retired to fuss with slides

and tubes and stains and a microscope.

Sometimes he called David in, and talked at length and with enthusiasm

about such human interest things as the Staphylococcus pyogenes aureus,

and the Friedlander bacillus. The older man would listen, but his eyes

were oftener on Dick than on the microscope or the slide.

David went to the bookcase and got down a large book, much worn, and

carried it to his desk.

An hour or so later he heard footsteps in the hall and closed the book

hastily. It was Lucy, a wadded dressing gown over her nightdress and a

glass of hot milk in her hand.

“You drink this and come to bed, David,” she said peremptorily. “I've

been lying upstairs waiting for you to come up, and I need some sleep.”

He had no sort of hope that she would not notice the book.

“I just got to thinking things over, Lucy,” he explained, his tone

apologetic. “There's no use pretending I'm not worried. I am.”

“Well, it's in God's hands,” she said, quite simply. “Take this up and

drink it slowly. If you gulp it down it makes a lump in your stomach.”

She stood by while he replaced the book in the bookcase and put out the

lights. Then in the darkness she preceded him up the stairs.

“You'd better take the milk yourself, Lucy,” he said. “You're not

sleeping either.”

“I've had some. Good-night.”

He went in and sitting on the side of his bed sipped at his milk. Lucy

was right. It was not in their hands. He had the feeling all at once of

having relinquished a great burden. He crawled into bed and was almost

instantly asleep.

So sometime after midnight found David sleeping, and Lucy on her knees.

It found Elizabeth dreamlessly unconscious in her white bed, and Dick

Livingstone asleep also, but in his clothing, and in a chair by the

window. In the light from a street lamp his face showed lines of fatigue

and nervous stress, lines only revealed when during sleep a man casts

off the mask with which he protects his soul against even friendly eyes.

But midnight found others awake. It found Nina, for instance, in her

draped French bed, consulting her jeweled watch and listening for

Leslie's return from the country club. An angry and rather heart-sick

Nina. And it found the night editor of one of the morning papers

drinking a cup of coffee that a boy had brought in, and running through

a mass of copy on his desk. He picked up several sheets of paper, with

a photograph clamped to them, and ran through them quickly. A man in a

soft hat, sitting on the desk, watched him idly.

“Beverly Carlysle,” commented the night editor. “Back with bells on!” He

took up the photograph. “Doesn't look much older, does she? It's a queer

world.”

Louis Bassett, star reporter and feature writer of the Times-Republican,

smiled reminiscently.

“She was a wonder,” he said. “I interviewed her once, and I was crazy

about her. She had the stage set for me, all right. The papers had been

full of the incident of Jud Clark and the night he lined up fifteen

Johnnies in the lobby, each with a bouquet as big as a tub, all of them

in top hats and Inverness coats, and standing in a row. So she played up

the heavy domestic for me; knitting or sewing, I forget.”

“Fell for her, did you?”

“Did I? That was ten years ago, and I'm not sure I'm over it yet.”

“Probably that's the reason,” said the city editor, drily. “Go and see

her, and get over it. Get her views on the flapper and bobbed hair, for

next Sunday. Smith would be crazy about it.”

He finished his coffee.

“You might ask, too, what she thinks has become of Judson Clark,” he

added. “I have an idea she knows, if any one does.” Bassett stared at

him.

“You're joking, aren't you?”

“Yes. But it would make a darned good story.”

V

When he finished medical college Dick Livingstone had found, like other

men, that the two paths of ambition and duty were parallel and did not

meet. Along one lay his desire to focus all his energy in one direction,

to follow disease into the laboratory instead of the sick room, and

there to fight its unsung battles. And win. He felt that he would win.

Along the other lay David.

It was not until he had completed his course and had come home that he

had realized that David was growing old. Even then he might have felt

that, by the time David was compelled to relinquish his hold on his

practice, he himself would be sufficiently established in his specialty

to take over the support of the household. But here there was interposed

a new element, one he had not counted on. David was fiercely jealous of

his practice; the thought that it might pass into new and alien hands

was bitter to him. To hand it down to his adopted son was one thing; to

pass it over to “some young whipper-snapper” was another.

Nor were David's motives selfish or unworthy. His patients were his

friends. He had a sense of responsibility to them, and very little

faith in the new modern methods. He thought there was a great deal of

tomfoolery about them, and he viewed the gradual loss of faith in drugs

with alarm. When Dick wore rubber gloves during their first obstetric

case together he snorted.

“I've delivered about half the population of this town,” he said, “and

slapped 'em to make 'em breathe with my own bare hands. And I'm still

here and so are they.”

For by that time Dick had made his decision. He could not abandon

David. For him then and hereafter the routine of a general practice in a

suburban town, the long hours, the varied responsibilities, the feeling

he had sometimes that by doing many things passably he was doing none of

them well. But for compensation he had old David's content and greater

leisure, and Lucy Crosby's gratitude and love.

Now and then he chafed a little when he read some article in a medical

journal by one of his fellow enthusiasts, or when, in France, he saw

men younger than himself obtaining an experience in their several

specialties that would enable them to reach wide fields at home. But

mostly he was content, or at least resigned. He was building up the

Livingstone practice, and his one anxiety was lest the time should come

when more patients asked for Doctor Dick than for Doctor David. He did

not want David hurt.

After ten years the strangeness of his situation had ceased to be

strange. Always he meant some time to go back to Norada, and there to

clear up certain things, but it was a long journey, and he had very

little time. And, as the years went on, the past seemed unimportant

compared with the present. He gave little thought to the future.

Then, suddenly, his entire attention became focused on the future.

Just when he had fallen in love with Elizabeth Wheeler he did not know.

He had gone away to the war, leaving her a little girl, apparently, and

he had come back to find her, a woman. He did not even know he was in

love, at first. It was when, one day, he found himself driving past the

Wheeler house without occasion that he began to grow uneasy.

The future at once became extraordinarily important and so also, but

somewhat less vitally, the past. Had he the right to marry, if he could

make her care for him?

He sat in his chair by the window the night after the Homer baby's

arrival, and faced his situation. Marriage meant many things. It meant

love and companionship, but it also meant, should mean, children. Had he

the right to go ahead and live his life fully and happily? Was there

any chance that, out of the years behind him, there would come some

forgotten thing, some taint or incident, to spoil the carefully woven

fabric of his life?

Not his life. Hers.

On the Monday night after he had asked Elizabeth to go to the theater

he went into David's office and closed the door. Lucy, alive to every

movement in the old house, heard him go in and, rocking in her chair

overhead, her hands idle in her lap, waited in tense anxiety for the

interview to end. She thought she knew what Dick would ask, and what

David would answer. And, in a way, David would be right. Dick, fine,

lovable, upstanding Dick, had a right to the things other men had, to

love and a home of his own, to children, to his own full life.

But suppose Dick insisted on clearing everything up before he married?

For to Lucy it was unthinkable that any girl in her senses would refuse

him. Suppose he went back to Norada? He had not changed greatly in ten

years. He had been well known there, a conspicuous figure.

Her mind began to turn on the possibility of keeping him away from

Norada.

Some time later she heard the office door open and then close with

Dick's characteristic slam. He came up the stairs, two at a time as

was his custom, and knocked at her door. When he came in she saw what

David's answer had been, and she closed her eyes for an instant.

“Put on your things,” he said gayly, “and we'll take a ride on the

hill-tops. I've arranged for a moon.”

And when she hesitated:

“It makes you sleep, you know. I'm going, if I have to ride alone and

talk to an imaginary lady beside me.”

She rather imagined that that had been his first idea, modified by his

thought of her. She went over and put a wrinkled hand on his arm.

“You look happy, Dick,” she said wistfully.

“I am happy, Aunt Lucy,” he replied, and bending over, kissed her.

On Wednesday he was in a state of alternating high spirits and periods

of silence. Even Minnie noticed it.

“Mr. Dick's that queer I hardly know how to take him.” she said to

Lucy. “He came back and asked for noodle soup, and he put about all the

hardware in the kitchen on him and said he was a knight in armor. And

when I took the soup in he didn't eat it.”

It was when he was ready to go out that Lucy's fears were realized. He

came in, as always when anything unusual was afoot, to let her look him

over. He knew that she waited for him, to give his tie a final pat, to

inspect the laundering of his shirt bosom, to pick imaginary threads off

his dinner coat.

“Well?” he said, standing before her, “how's this? Art can do no more,

Mrs. Crosby.”

“I'll brush your back,” she said, and brought the brush. He stooped to

her, according to the little ceremony she had established, and she made

little dabs at his speckless back. “There, that's better.”

He straightened.

“How do you think Uncle David is?” he asked, unexpectedly.

“Better than he has been in years. Why?”

“Because I'm thinking of taking a little trip. Only ten days,” he added,

seeing her face. “You could house-clean my office while I'm away. You

know you've been wanting to.”

She dropped the brush, and he stooped to pick it up. That gave her a

moment.

“'Where?” she managed.

“To Dry River, by way of Norada.”

“Why should you go back there?” she asked, in a carefully suppressed

voice. “Why don't you go East? You've wanted to go back to Johns Hopkins

for months?”

“On the other hand, why shouldn't I go back to Norada?” he asked, with

an affectation of lightness. Then he put his hand on her shoulders. “Why

shouldn't I go back and clear things up in my own mind? Why shouldn't I

find out, for instance, that I am a free man?”

“You are free.”

“I've got to know,” he said, almost doggedly. “I can't take a chance. I

believe I am. I believe David, of course. But anyhow I'd like to see the

ranch. I want to see Maggie Donaldson.”

“She's not at the ranch. Her husband died, you know.”

“I have an idea I can find her,” he said. “I'll make a good try,

anyhow.”

When he had gone she got her salts bottle and lay down on her bed. Her

heart was hammering wildly.

Elizabeth was waiting for him in the living-room, in the midst of

her family. She looked absurdly young and very pretty, and he had a

momentary misgiving that he was old to her, and that--Heaven save the

mark!--that she looked up to him. He considered the blue dress the

height of fashion and the mold of form, and having taken off his

overcoat in the hall, tried to put on Mr. Wheeler's instead in his

excitement. Also, becoming very dignified after the overcoat incident,

and making an exit which should conceal his wild exultation and show

only polite pleasure, he stumbled over Micky, so that they finally

departed to a series of staccato yelps.

He felt very hot and slightly ridiculous as he tucked Elizabeth into

the little car, being very particular about her feet, and starting

with extreme care, so as not to jar her. He had the feeling of being

entrusted temporarily with something infinitely precious, and very, very

dear. Something that must never suffer or be hurt.