IX

Elizabeth had gone about all day with a smile on her lips and a sort of

exaltation in her eyes. She had, girl fashion, gone over and over the

totally uneventful evening they had spent together, remembering small

speeches and gestures; what he had said and she had answered.

She had, for instance, mentioned Clare Rossiter, very casually. Oh

very, very casually. And he had said: “Clare Rossiter? Oh, yes, the tall

blonde girl, isn't she?”

She was very happy. He had not seemed to find her too young or

particularly immature. He had asked her opinion on quite important

things, and listened carefully when she replied. She felt, though, that

she knew about one-tenth as much as he did, and she determined to

read very seriously from that time on. Her mother, missing her that

afternoon, found her curled up in the library, beginning the first

volume of Gibbon's “Rome” with an air of determined concentration, and

wearing her best summer frock.

She did not intend to depend purely on Gibbon's “Rome,” evidently.

“Are you expecting any one, Elizabeth?” she asked, with the frank

directness characteristic of mothers, and Elizabeth, fixing a date in

her mind with terrible firmness, looked up absently and said:

“No one in particular.”

At three o'clock, with a slight headache from concentration, she went

upstairs and put up her hair again; rather high this time to make her

feel taller. Of course, it was not likely he would come. He was very

busy. So many people depended on him. It must be wonderful to be like

that, to have people needing one, and looking out of the door and

saying: “I think I see him coming now.”

Nevertheless when the postman rang her heart gave a small leap and then

stood quite still. When Annie slowly mounted the stairs she was already

on her feet, but it was only a card announcing: “Mrs. Sayre, Wednesday,

May fifteenth, luncheon at one-thirty.”

However, at half past four the bell rang again, and a masculine voice

informed Annie, a moment later, that it would put its overcoat here,

because lately a dog had eaten a piece out of it and got most awful

indigestion.

The time it took Annie to get up the stairs again gave her a moment

so that she could breathe more naturally, and she went down very

deliberately and so dreadfully poised that at first he thought she was

not glad to see him.

“I came, you see,” he said. “I intended to wait until to-morrow, but I

had a little time. But if you're doing anything--”

“I was reading Gibbon's 'Rome,'” she informed him. “I think every one

should know it. Don't you?”

“Good heavens, what for?” he inquired.

“I don't know.” They looked at each other, and suddenly they laughed.

“I wanted to improve my mind,” she explained. “I felt, last night, that

you--that you know so many things, and that I was frightfully stupid.”

“Do you mean to say,” he asked, aghast, “that I--! Great Scott!”

Settled in the living-room, they got back rather quickly to their status

of the night before, and he was moved to confession.

“I didn't really intend to wait until to-morrow,” he said. “I got up

with the full intention of coming here to-day, if I did it over the

wreck of my practice. At eleven o'clock this morning I held up a

consultation ten minutes to go to Yardsleys and buy a tie, for this

express purpose. Perhaps you have noticed it already.”

“I have indeed. It's a wonderful tie.”

“Neat but not gaudy, eh?” He grinned at her, happily. “You know, you

might steer me a bit about my ties. I have the taste of an African

savage. I nearly bought a purple one, with red stripes. And Aunt Lucy

thinks I should wear white lawn, like David!”

They talked, those small, highly significant nothings which are only the

barrier behind which go on the eager questionings and unspoken answers

of youth and love. They had known each other for years, had exchanged

the same give and take of neighborhood talk when they met as now. To-day

nothing was changed, and everything.

Then, out of a clear sky, he said:

“I may be going away before long, Elizabeth.”

He was watching her intently. She had a singular feeling that behind

this, as behind everything that afternoon, was something not spoken.

Something that related to her. Perhaps it was because of his tone.

“You don't mean-not to stay?”

“No. I want to go back to Wyoming. Where I was born. Only for a few

weeks.”

And in that “only for a few weeks” there lay some of the unspoken

things. That he would miss her and come back quickly to her. That she

would miss him, and that subconsciously he knew it. And behind that,

too, a promise. He would come back to her.

“Only for a few weeks,” he repeated. “I thought perhaps, if you wouldn't

mind my writing to you, now and then--I write a rotten hand, you know.

Most medical men do.”

“I should like it very much,” she said, primly.

She felt suddenly very lonely, as though he had already gone, and

slightly resentful, not at him but at the way things happened. And then,

too, everyone knew that once a Westerner always a Westerner. The West

always called its children. Not that she put it that way. But she had

a sort of vision, gained from the moving pictures, of a country of wide

spaces and tall mountains, where men wore quaint clothing and the women

rode wild horses and had the dash she knew she lacked. She was stirred

by vague jealousy.

“You may never come back,” she said, casually. “After all, you were born

there, and we must seem very quiet to you.”

“Quiet!” he exclaimed. “You are heavenly restful and comforting. You--”

he checked himself and got up. “Then I'm to write, and you are to make

out as much of my scrawl as you can and answer. Is that right?”

“I'll write you all the town gossip.”

“If you do--!” he threatened her. “You're to write me what you're doing,

and all about yourself. Remember, I'll be counting on you.”

And, if their voices were light, there was in both of them the sense

of a pact made, of a bond that was to hold them, like clasped hands,

against their coming separation. It was rather anti-climacteric after

that to have him acknowledge that he didn't know exactly when he could

get away!

She went with him to the door and stood there, her soft hair blowing, as

he got into the car. When he looked back, as he turned the corner, she

was still there. He felt very happy affable, and he picked up an elderly

village woman with her and went considerably out of his way to take her

home.

He got back to the office at half past six to find a red-eyed Minnie in

the hall.

X

AT half past five that afternoon David had let himself into the house

with his latch key, hung up his overcoat on the old walnut hat rack, and

went into his office. The strain of the days before had told on him, and

he felt weary and not entirely well. He had fallen asleep in his buggy,

and had wakened to find old Nettie drawing him slowly down the main

street of the town, pursuing an erratic but homeward course, while the

people on the pavements watched and smiled.

He went into his office, closed the door, and then, on the old leather

couch with its sagging springs he stretched himself out to finish his

nap.

Almost immediately, however, the doorbell rang, and a moment later

Minnie opened his door.

“Gentleman to see you, Doctor David.”

He got up clumsily and settled his collar. Then he opened the door into

his waiting-room.

“Come in,” he said resignedly.

A small, dapper man, in precisely the type of clothes David most

abominated, and wearing light-colored spats, rose from his chair and

looked at him with evident surprise.

“I'm afraid I've made a mistake. A Doctor Livingstone left his seat

number for calls at the box office of the Annex Theater last night--the

Happy Valley company--but he was a younger man. I--”

David stiffened, but he surveyed his visitor impassively from under his

shaggy white eyebrows.

“I haven't been in a theater for a dozen years, sir.”

Gregory was convinced that he had made a mistake. Like Louis Bassett,

the very unlikeliness of Jud Clark being connected with the domestic

atmosphere and quiet respectability of the old house made him feel

intrusive and absurd. He was about to apologize and turn away, when he

thought of something.

“There are two names on your sign. The other one, was he by any chance

at the theater last night?”

“I think I shall have to have a reason for these inquiries,” David said

slowly.

He was trying to place Gregory, to fit him into the situation; straining

back over ten years of security, racking his memory, without result.

“Just what have you come to find out?” he asked, as Gregory turned and

looked around the room.

“The other Doctor Livingstone is your brother?”

“My nephew.”

Gregory shot a sharp glance at him, but all he saw was an elderly man,

with heavy white hair and fierce shaggy eyebrows, a portly and dignified

elderly gentleman, rather resentfully courteous.

“Sorry to trouble you,” he said. “I suppose I've made a mistake. I--is

your nephew at home?”

“No.”

“May I see a picture of him, if you have one?”

David's wild impulse was to smash Gregory to the earth, to annihilate

him. His collar felt tight, and he pulled it away from his throat.

“Not unless I know why you want to see it.”

“He is tall, rather spare? And he took a young lady to the theater last

night?” Gregory persisted.

“He answers that description. What of it?”

“And he is your nephew?”

“My brother's son,” David said steadily.

Somehow it began to dawn on him that there was nothing inimical in this

strange visitor, that he was anxious and ill at ease. There was, indeed,

something almost beseeching in Gregory's eyes, as though he stood ready

to give confidence for confidence. And, more than that, a sort of not

unfriendly stubbornness, as though he had come to do something he meant

to do.

“Sit down,” he said, relaxing somewhat. “Certainly my nephew is making

no secret of the fact that he went to the theater last night. If you'll

tell me who you are--”

But Gregory did not sit down. He stood where he was, and continued to

eye David intently.

“I don't know just what it conveys to you, Doctor, but I am Beverly

Carlysle's brother.”

David lowered himself into his chair. His knees were suddenly weak under

him. But he was able to control his voice.

“I see,” he said. And waited.

“Something happened last night at the theater. It may be important. I'd

have to see your nephew, in order to find out if it is. I can't afford

to make a mistake.”

David's ruddy color had faded. He opened a drawer of his desk and

produced a copy of the photograph of Dick in his uniform. “Maybe this

will help you.”

Gregory studied it carefully, carrying it to the window to do so. When

he confronted David again he was certain of himself and his errand for

the first time, and his manner had changed.

“Yes,” he said, significantly. “It does.”

He placed the photograph on the desk, and sitting down, drew his chair

close to David's. “I'll not use any names, Doctor. I think you know what

I'm talking about. I was sure enough last night. I'm certain now.”

David nodded. “Go on.”

“We'll start like this. God knows I don't want to make any trouble. But

I'll put a hypothetical case. Suppose that a man when drunk commits a

crime and then disappears; suppose he leaves behind him a bad record

and an enormous fortune; suppose then he reforms and becomes a useful

citizen, and everything is buried.”

Doctor David listened stonily. Gregory lowered his voice.

“Suppose there's a woman mixed up in that situation. Not guiltily, but

there's a lot of talk. And suppose she lives it down, for ten years,

and then goes back to her profession, in a play the families take the

children to see, and makes good. It isn't hard to suppose that neither

of those two people wants the thing revived, is it?”

David cleared his throat.

“You mean, then, that there is danger of such a revival?”

“I think there is,” Gregory said bitterly. “I recognized this man last

night, and called a fellow who knew him in the old days, Saunders,

our stage manager. And a newspaper man named Bassett wormed it out of

Saunders. You know what that means.”

David heard him clearly, but as though from a great distance.

“You can see how it appears to Bassett. If he's found it, it's the big

story of a lifetime. I thought he'd better be warned.”

When David said nothing, but sat holding tight to the arms of his old

chair, Gregory reached for his hat and got up.

“The thing for him to do,” he said, “is to leave town for a while. This

Bassett is a hound-hog on a scent. They all are. He is Bassett of the

Times-Republican. And he took Jud--he took your nephew's automobile

license number.”

Still David sat silent, and Gregory moved to the door.

“Get him away, to-night if you can.”

“Thank you,” David said. His voice was thick. “I appreciate your

coming.”

He got up dizzily, as Gregory said, “Good-evening” and went out. The

room seemed very dark and unsteady, and not familiar. So this was what

had happened, after all the safe years! A man could work and build and

pray, but if his house was built on the sand--

As the outer door closed David fell to the floor with a crash.