Lucy Crosby was dead. One moment she was of the quick, moving about the
house, glancing in at David, having Minnie in the kitchen pin and unpin
her veil; and the next she was still and infinitely mysterious, on her
white bed. She had fallen outside the door of David's room, and lay
there, her arms still full of fresh bath towels, and a fixed and intense
look in her eyes, as though, outside the door, she had come face to face
with a messenger who bore surprising news. Doctor Reynolds, running up
the stairs, found her there dead, and closed the door into David's room.
But David knew before they told him. He waited until they had placed her
on her bed, had closed her eyes and drawn a white coverlet over her, and
then he went in alone, and sat down beside her, and put a hand over her
chilling one.
“If you are still here, Lucy,” he said, “and have not yet gone on, I
want you to carry this with you. We are all right, here. Everybody is
all right. You are not to worry.”
After a time he went back to his room and got his prayer-book. He could
hear Harrison Miller's voice soothing Minnie in the lower hall, and
Reynolds at the telephone. He went back into the quiet chamber, and
opening the prayer-book, began to read aloud.
“Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them
that slept--”
His voice tightened. He put his head down on the side of the bed.
He was very docile that day. He moved obediently from his room for
the awful aftermath of a death, for the sweeping and dusting and clean
curtains, and sat in Dick's room, not reading, not even praying, a
lonely yet indomitable old figure. When his friends came, elderly men
who creaked in and tried to reduce their robust voices to a decorous
whisper, he shook hands with them and made brief, courteous replies.
Then he lapsed into silence. They felt shut off and uncomfortable, and
creaked out again.
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.