The Breaking Point (13 page)

He lived up to his resolve the next day, bought his flowers as usual,
but this time for Nina and took them with him. And went home with the
orchids which were really an offering to his own conscience.

But Nina was not at home. The butler reported that she was dining at
the Wheelers', and he thought the man eyed him with restrained
commiseration.

"Did she say I am expected there?" he asked.

"She ordered dinner for you here, sir."

Even for Nina that sounded odd. He took his coat and went out again to
the car; after a moment's hesitation he went back and got the orchids.

Dick Livingstone's machine was at the curb before the Wheeler house,
and in the living-room he found Walter Wheeler, pacing the floor. Mr.
Wheeler glanced at him and looked away.

"Anybody sick?" Leslie asked, his feeling of apprehension growing.

"Nina is having hysterics upstairs," Mr. Wheeler said, and continued his
pacing.

"Nina! Hysterics?"

"That's what I said," replied Mr. Wheeler, suddenly savage. "You've made
a nice mess of things, haven't you?"

Leslie placed the box of orchids on the table and drew off his gloves.
His mind was running over many possibilities.

"You'd better tell me about it, hadn't you?"

"Oh, I will. Don't worry. I've seen this coming for months. I'm not
taking her part. God knows I know her, and she has as much idea of
making a home as—as"—he looked about—"as that poker has. But that's
the worst you can say of her. As to you—"

"Well?"

Mr. Wheeler's anxiety was greater than his anger. He lowered his voice.

"She got a bill to-day for two or three boxes of flowers, sent to some
actress." And when Leslie said nothing, "I'm not condoning it, mind you.
You'd no business to do it. But," he added fretfully, "why the devil,
if you've got to act the fool, don't you have your bills sent to your
office?"

"I suppose I don't need to tell you that's all there was to it? Flowers,
I mean."

"I'm taking that for granted. But she says she won't go back."

Leslie was aghast and frightened. Not at the threat; she would go back,
of course. But she would always hold it against him. She cherished small
grudges faithfully. And he knew she would never understand, never see
her own contribution to his mild defection, nor comprehend the actual
innocence of those afternoons of tea and talk.

There was no sound from upstairs. Mr. Wheeler got his hat and went out,
calling to the dog. Jim came in whistling, looked in and said: "Hello,
Les," and disappeared. He sat in the growing twilight and cursed himself
for a fool. After all, where had he been heading? A man couldn't eat his
cake and have it. But he was resentful, too; he stressed rather hard his
own innocence, and chose to ignore the less innocent impulse that lay
behind it.

After a half hour or so he heard some one descending and Dick
Livingstone appeared in the hall. He called to him, and Dick entered the
room. Before he sat down he lighted a cigarette and in the flare of
the match Leslie got an impression of fatigue and of something new, of
trouble. But his own anxieties obsessed him.

"She's told you about it, I suppose?"

"I was a fool, of course. But it was only a matter of a few flowers
and some afternoon calls. She's a fine woman, Livingstone, and she is
lonely. The women have given her a pretty cold deal since the Clark
story. They copy her clothes and her walk, but they don't ask her into
their homes."

"Isn't the trouble more fundamental than that, Ward? I was thinking
about it upstairs. Nina was pretty frank. She says you've had your good
time and want to settle down, and that she is young and now is her only
chance. Later on there may be children, you know. She blames herself,
too, but she has a fairly clear idea of how it happened."

"Do you think she'll go back home?"

"She promised she would."

They sat smoking in silence. In the dining-room Annie was laying the
table for dinner, and a most untragic odor of new garden peas began
to steal along the hall. Dick suddenly stirred and threw away his
cigarette.

"I was going to talk to you about something else," he said, "but this is
hardly the time. I'll get on home." He rose. "She'll be all right. Only
I'd advise very tactful handling and—the fullest explanation you can
make."

"What is it? I'd be glad to have something to keep my mind occupied.
It's eating itself up just now."

"It's a personal matter."

Ward glanced up at him quickly.

"Yes?"

"Have you happened to hear a story that I believe is going round? One
that concerns me?"

"Well, I have," Leslie admitted. "I didn't pay much attention. Nobody is
taking it very seriously."

"That's not the point," Dick persisted. "I don't mind idle gossip. I
don't give a damn about it. It's the statement itself."

"I should say that you are the only person who knows anything about it."

Dick made a restless, impatient gesture.

"I want to know one thing more," he said. "Nina told you, I suppose.
Does—I suppose Elizabeth knows it, too?"

"I rather think she does."

Dick turned abruptly and went out of the room, and a moment later
Leslie heard the front door slam. Elizabeth, standing at the head of the
stairs, heard it also, and turned away, with a new droop to her usually
valiant shoulders. Her world, too, had gone awry, that safe world of
protection and cheer and kindliness. First had come Nina, white-lipped
and shaken, and Elizabeth had had to face the fact that there were such
things as treachery and the queer hidden things that men did, and that
came to light and brought horrible suffering.

And that afternoon she had had to acknowledge that there was something
wrong with Dick. No. Between Dick and herself. There was a formality in
his speech to her, an aloofness that seemed to ignore utterly their new
intimacy. He was there, but he was miles away from her. She tried hard
to feel indignant, but she was only hurt.

Peace seemed definitely to have abandoned the Wheeler house. Then
late in the evening a measure of it was restored when Nina and Leslie
effected a reconciliation. It followed several bad hours when Nina had
locked her door against them all, but at ten o'clock she sent for Leslie
and faced him with desperate calmness.

To Elizabeth, putting cold cloths on her mother's head as she lay on the
bed, there came a growing conviction that the relation between men and
women was a complicated and baffling thing, and that love and hate were
sometimes close together.

Love, and habit perhaps, triumphed in Nina's case, however, for at
eleven o'clock they heard Leslie going down the stairs and later on
moving about the kitchen and pantry while whistling softly. The servants
had gone, and the air was filled with the odor of burning bread. Some
time later Mrs. Wheeler, waiting uneasily in the upper hall, beheld her
son-in-law coming up and carrying proudly a tray on which was toast of
an incredible blackness, and a pot which smelled feebly of tea.

"The next time you're out of a cook just send for me," he said
cheerfully.

Mrs. Wheeler, full and overflowing with indignation and the piece of her
mind she had meant to deliver, retired vanquished to her bedroom.

Late that night when Nina had finally forgiven him and had settled down
for sleep, Leslie went downstairs for a cigar, to find Elizabeth sitting
there alone, a book on her knee, face down, and her eyes wistful and
with a question in them.

"Sitting and thinking, or just sitting?" he inquired.

"I was thinking."

"Air-castles, eh? Well, be sure you put the right man into them!" He
felt more or less a fool for having said that, for it was extremely
likely that Nina's family was feeling some doubt about Nina's choice.

"What I mean is," he added hastily, "don't be a fool and take Wallie
Sayre. Take a man, while you're about it."

"I would, if I could do the taking."

"That's piffle, Elizabeth." He sat down on the arm of a chair and looked
at her. "Look here, what about this story the Rossiter girl and a few
others are handing around about Dick Livingstone? You're not worrying
about it, are you?"

"I don't believe it's true, and it wouldn't matter to me, anyhow."

"Good for you," he said heartily, and got up. "You'd better go to bed,
young lady. It's almost midnight."

But although she rose she made no further move to go.

"What I am worrying about is this, Leslie. He may hear it."

"He has heard it, honey."

He had expected her to look alarmed, but instead she showed relief.

"I'll tell you the truth, Les," she said. "I was worrying. I'm terribly
fond of him. It just came all at once, and I couldn't help it. And I
thought he liked me, too, that way." She stopped and looked up at him to
see if he understood, and he nodded gravely. "Then to-day, when he came
to see Nina, he avoided me. He—I was waiting in the hall upstairs, and
he just said a word or two and went on down."

"Poor devil!" Leslie said. "You see, he's in an unpleasant position, to
say the least. But here's a thought to go to sleep on. If you ask me,
he's keeping out of your way, not because he cares too little, but
because he cares too much."

Long after a repentant and chastened Leslie had gone to sleep, his arm
over Nina's unconscious shoulder, Elizabeth stood wide-eyed on the
tiny balcony outside her room. From it in daylight she could see
the Livingstone house. Now it was invisible, but an upper window was
outlined in the light. Very shyly she kissed her finger tips to it.

"Good-night, dear," she whispered.

Louis Bassett had left for Norada the day after David's sudden illness,
but ten days later found him only as far as Chicago, and laid up in his
hotel with a sprained knee. It was not until the day Nina went back to
the little house in the Ridgely Road, having learned the first lesson of
married life, that men must not only be captured but also held, that he
was able to resume his journey.

He had chafed wretchedly under the delay. It was true that nothing in
the way of a story had broken yet. The Tribune had carried a photograph
of the cabin where Clark had according to the Donaldson woman spent the
winter following the murder, and there were the usual reports that he
had been seen recently in spots as diverse as Seattle and New Orleans.
But when the following Sunday brought nothing further he surmised that
the pack, having lost the scent, had been called off.

He confirmed this before starting West by visiting some of the offices
of the leading papers and looking up old friends. The Clark story was
dead for the time. They had run a lot of pictures of him, however, and
some one might turn him up eventually, but a scent was pretty cold in
ten years. The place had changed, too. Oil had been discovered five
years ago, and the old settlers had, a good many of them, cashed in and
moved away. The town had grown like all oil towns.

Bassett was fairly content. He took the night train out of Chicago and
spent the next day crossing Nebraska, fertile, rich and interesting. On
the afternoon of the second day he left the train and took a branch
line toward the mountains and Norada, and from that time on he became an
urbane, interested and generally cigar-smoking interrogation point.

"Railroad been here long?" he asked the conductor.

"Four years."

"Norada must have been pretty isolated before that."

"Thirty miles in a coach or a Ford car."

"I was reading the other day," said Bassett, "about the Judson Clark
case. Have a cigar? Got time to sit down?"

"You a newspaper man?"

"Oil well supplies," said Bassett easily. "Well, in this article it
seemed some woman or other had made a confession. It sounded fishy to
me."

"Well, I'll tell you about that." The conductor sat down and bit off the
end of his cigar. "I knew the Donaldsons well, and Maggie Donaldson was
an honest woman. But I'll tell you how I explain the thing. Donaldson
died, and that left her pretty much alone. The executors of the Clark
estate kept her on the ranch, but when the estate was settled three
years ago she had to move. That broke her all up. She's always said he
wasn't dead. She kept the house just as it was, and my wife says she had
his clothes all ready and everything."

"That rather sounds as though the story is true, doesn't it?"

"Not necessarily. It's my idea she got from hoping to moping, so to
speak. She went in to town regular for letters for ten years, and the
postmaster says she never got any. She was hurt in front of the post
office. The talk around here is that she's been off her head for the
last year or two."

"But they found the cabin."

"Sure they did," said the conductor equably. "The cabin was no secret.
It was an old fire station before they put the new one on Goat Mountain.
I spent a month in it myself, once, with a dude who wanted to take
pictures of bear. We found a bear, but it charged the camera and I'd be
running yet if I hadn't come to civilization."

When he had gone Bassett fell into deep thought. So Maggie Donaldson
had gone to the post office for ten years. He tried to visualize those
faithful, wearisome journeys, through spring mud and winter snow, always
futile and always hopeful. He did not for a moment believe that she had
"gone off her head." She had been faithful to the end, as some women
were, and in the end, too, as had happened before, her faith had killed
her.

And again he wondered at the curious ability of some men to secure
loyalty. They might go through life, tearing down ideals and destroying
illusions to the last, but always there was some faithful hand to
rebuild, some faithful soul to worship.

He was somewhat daunted at the size and bustling activity of Norada.
Its streets were paved and well-lighted, there were a park and a public
library, and the clerk at the Commercial Hotel asked him if he wished
a private bath! But the development was helpful in one way. In the
old Norada a newcomer might have been subjected to a friendly but
inquisitive interest. In this grown-up and self-centered community a man
might come and go unnoticed.