The Breaking Point (45 page)

"You can't get away from this, Mrs. Wheeler. So long as she stands off,
and you behind her, the town is going to take her side. She doesn't know
it, but that's how it stands. It all hangs on her. If he wasn't the man
he is, I'd say his salvation hangs on her. I don't mean she ought to
take him back; it's too late for that, if she's engaged. But a little
friendliness and kindness wouldn't do any harm. You too. Do you ever
have him here?"

"How can I, as things are?"

"Well, be friendly, anyhow," he argued. "That's not asking much. I
suppose he'd cut my throat if he knew, but I'm a straight-to-the-mark
sort of person, and I know this: what this house does the town will do."

"I'll talk to Mr. Wheeler. I don't know. I'll say this, Mr. Bassett.
I won't make her unhappy. She has borne a great deal, and sometimes I
think her life is spoiled. She is very different."

"If she is suffering, isn't it possible she cares for him?"

But Margaret did not think so. She was so very calm. She was so calm
that sometimes it was alarming.

"He gave her a ring, and the other day I found it, tossed into a drawer
full of odds and ends. I haven't seen it lately; she may have sent it
back."

Elizabeth came home shortly before Christmas, undeniably glad to be back
and very gentle with them all. She set to work almost immediately on the
gifts, wrapping them and tying them with methodical exactness, sticking
a tiny sprig of holly through the ribbon bow, and writing cards with
neatness and care. She hung up wreaths and decorated the house, and
when she was through with her work she went to her room and sat with her
hands folded, not thinking. She did not think any more.

Wallie had sent her a flexible diamond bracelet as a Christmas gift and
it lay on her table in its box. She was very grateful, but she had not
put it on.

On the morning before Christmas Nina came in, her arms full of packages,
and her eyes shining and a little frightened. She had some news for
them. She hadn't been so keen about it, at first, but Leslie was like a
madman. He was so pleased that he was ordering her that sable cape she
had wanted so. He was like a different man. And it would be July.

Elizabeth kissed her. It seemed very unreal, like everything else. She
wondered why Leslie should be so excited, or her mother crying. She
wondered if there was something strange about her, that it should see so
small and unimportant. But then, what was important? That one got up
in the morning, and ate at intervals, and went to bed at night? That
children came, and had to be fed and washed and tended, and cried a
great deal, and were sick now and then?

She wished she could feel something, could think it vital whether Nina
should choose pink or blue for her layette, and how far she should
walk each day, and if the chauffeur drove the car carefully enough.
She wished she cared whether it was going to rain to-morrow or not, or
whether some one was coming, or not coming. And she wished terribly that
she could care for Wallie, or get over the feeling that she had saved
her pride at a cost to him she would not contemplate.

After a time she went upstairs and put on the bracelet. And late in the
afternoon she went out and bought some wool, to make an afghan. It eased
her conscience toward Nina. She commenced it that evening while she
waited for Wallie, and she wondered if some time she would be making an
afghan for a coming child of her own. Hers and Wallace Sayre's.

Suddenly she knew she would never marry him. She faced the future, with
all that it implied, and she knew she could not do it. It was horrible
that she had even contemplated it. It would be terrible to tell Wallie,
but not as terrible as the other thing. She saw herself then with the
same clearness with which she had judged Dick. She too, leaving her
havoc of wrecked lives behind her; she too going along her headstrong
way, raising hopes not to be fulfilled, and passing on. She too.

That evening, Christmas eve, she told Wallie she would not marry him.
Told him very gently, and just after an attempt of his to embrace her.
She would not let him do it.

"I don't know what's come over you," he said morosely. "But I'll let you
alone, if that's the way you feel."

"I'm sorry, Wallie. It—it makes me shiver."

In a way he was prepared for it but nevertheless he begged for time,
for a less unequivocal rejection. But he found her, for the first time,
impatient with his pleadings.

"I don't want to go over and over it, Wallie. I'll take the blame. I
should have done it long ago."

She was gentle, almost tender with him, but when he said she had spoiled
his life for him she smiled faintly.

"You think that now. And don't believe I'm not sorry. I am. I hate not
playing the game, as you say. But I don't think for a moment that you'll
go on caring when you know I don't. That doesn't happen. That's all."

"Do you know what I think?" he burst out. "I think you're still mad
about Livingstone. I think you are so mad about him that you don't know
it yourself."

But she only smiled her cool smile and went on with her knitting. After
that he got himself in hand, and—perhaps he still had some hope. It
was certain that she had not flinched at Dick's name—told her very
earnestly that he only wanted her happiness. He didn't want her unless
she wanted him. He would always love her.

"Not always," she said, with tragically cold certainty. "Men are not
like women; they forget."

She wondered, after he had gone, what had made her say that.

She did not tell the family that night. They were full of their own
concerns, Nina's coming maternity, the wrapping of packages behind
closed doors, the final trimming of the tree in the library. Leslie
had started the phonograph, and it was playing "Stille Nacht, heilige
Nacht."

Still night, holy night, and only in her was there a stillness that was
not holy.

They hung up their stockings valiantly as usual, making a little
ceremony of it, and being careful not to think about Jim's missing one.
Indeed, they made rather a function of it, and Leslie demanded one of
Nina's baby socks and pinned it up.

"I'm starting a bank account for the little beggar," he said, and
dropped a gold piece into the toe. "Next year, old girl."

He put his arm around Nina. It seemed to him that life was doing
considerably better than he deserved by him, and he felt very humble and
contrite. He felt in his pocket for the square jeweler's box that lay
there.

After that they left Walter Wheeler there, to play his usual part at
such times, and went upstairs. He filled the stockings bravely, an
orange in each toe, a box of candy, a toy for old time's sake, and then
the little knickknacks he had been gathering for days and hiding in
his desk. After all, there were no fewer stockings this year than last.
Instead of Jim's there was the tiny one for Nina's baby. That was the
way things went. He took away, but also He gave.

He sat back in his deep chair, and looked up at the stockings,
ludicrously bulging. After all, if he believed that He gave and took
away, then he must believe that Jim was where he had tried to think him,
filling a joyous, active place in some boyish heaven.

After a while he got up and went to his desk, and getting pen and paper
wrote carefully.

"Dearest: You will find this in your stocking in the morning, when you
get up for the early service. And I want you to think over it in the
church. It is filled with tenderness and with anxiety. Life is not so
very long, little daughter, and it has no time to waste in anger or in
bitterness. A little work, a little sleep, a little love, and it is all
over.

"Will you think of this to-day?"

He locked up the house, and went slowly up to bed. Elizabeth found the
letter the next morning. She stood in the bleak room, with the ashes of
last night's fire still smoking, and the stockings overhead not festive
in the gray light, but looking forlorn and abandoned. Suddenly her eyes,
dry and fiercely burning for so long, were wet with tears. It was true.
It was true. A little work, a little sleep, a little love. Not the
great love, perhaps, not the only love of a man's life. Not the love of
yesterday, but of to-day and to-morrow.

All the fierce repression of the last weeks was gone. She began to
suffer. She saw Dick coming home, perhaps high with hope that whatever
she knew she would understand and forgive. And she saw herself failing
him, cold and shut away, not big enough nor woman enough to meet him
half way. She saw him fighting his losing battle alone, protecting David
but never himself; carrying Lucy to her quiet grave; sitting alone in
his office, while the village walked by and stared at the windows; she
saw him, gaining harbor after storm, and finding no anchorage there.

She turned and went, half blindly, into the empty street.

She thought he was at the early service. She did not see him, but she
had once again the thing that had seemed lost forever, the warm sense of
his thought of her.

He was there, in the shadowy back pew, with the grill behind it through
which once insistent hands had reached to summon him. He was there, with
Lucy's prayer-book in his hand, and none of the peace of the day in his
heart. He knelt and rose with the others.

"O God, who makest us glad with the yearly remembrance of the birth of
Thy Son—"

David was beaten; most tragic defeat of all, beaten by those he had
loved and faithfully served.

He did not rise on Christmas morning, and Dick, visiting him after an
almost untasted breakfast, found him still in his bed and questioned him
anxiously.

"I'm all right," he asserted. "I'm tired, Dick, that's all. Tired of
fighting. You're young. You can carry it on, and win. But I'll never see
it. They're stronger than we are."

Later he elaborated on that. He had kept the faith. He had run with
courage the race that was set before him. He had stayed up at night and
fought for them. But he couldn't fight against them.

Dick went downstairs again and shutting himself in his office fell to
pacing the floor. David was right, the thing was breaking him. Very
seriously now he contemplated abandoning the town, taking David with
him, and claiming his estate. They could travel then; he could get
consultants in Europe; there were baths there, and treatments—

The doorbell rang. He heard Minnie's voice in the hail, not too
friendly, and her tap at the door.

"Some one in the waiting-room," she called.

When he opened the connecting door he found Elizabeth beyond it, a
pale and frightened Elizabeth, breathless and very still. It was a
perceptible moment before he could control his voice to speak. Then:

"I suppose you want to see David. I'm sorry, but he isn't well to-day.
He is still in bed."

"I didn't come to see David, Dick."

"I cannot think you want to see me, Elizabeth."

"I do, if you don't mind."

He stood aside then and let her pass him into the rear office.

But he was not fooled at all. Not he. He had been enough. He knew
why she had come, in the kindness of heart. (She was so little. Good
heavens, a man could crush her to nothing!) She had come because she was
sorry for him, and she had brought forgiveness. It was like her. It was
fine. It was damnable.

His voice hardened, for fear it might be soft.

"Is this a professional visit, or a Christmas call, Elizabeth? Or
perhaps I shouldn't call you that."

"A Christmas call?"

"You know what I mean. The day of peace. The day—what do you think I'm
made of, Elizabeth? To have you here, gentle and good and kind—"

He got up and stood over her, tall and almost threatening.

"You've been to church, and you've been thinking things over, I know. I
was there. I heard it all, peace on earth, goodwill to men. Bosh. Peace,
when there is no peace. Good will! I don't want your peace and good
will."

She looked up at him timidly.

"You don't want to be friends, then?"

"No. A thousand times, no," he said violently. Then, more gently: "I'm
making a fool of myself. I want your peace and good will, Elizabeth. God
knows I need them."

"You frighten me, Dick," she said, slowly. "I didn't come to bring
forgiveness, if that is what you mean. I came—"

"Don't tell me you came to ask it. That would be more than I can bear."

"Will you listen to me for a moment, Dick? I am not good at explaining
things, and I'm nervous. I suppose you can see that." She tried to smile
at him. "A—a little work, a sleep, a little love, that's life, isn't
it?"

He was watching her intently.

"Work and trouble, and a long sleep at the end for which let us be duly
thankful—that's life, too. Love? Not every one gets love."

Hopelessness and despair overwhelmed her. He was making it hard for her.
Impossible. She could not go on.

"I did not come with peace," she said tremulously, "but if you don't
want it—" She rose. "I must say this, though, before I go. I blame
myself. I don't blame you. You are wrong if you think I came to forgive
you."

She was stumbling toward the door.

"Elizabeth, what did bring you?"

She turned to him, with her hand on the door knob. "I came because I
wanted to see you again."

He strode after her and catching her by the arm, turned her until he
faced her.

"And why did you want to see me again? You can't still care for me.
You know the story. You know I was here and didn't see you. You've seen
Leslie Ward. You know my past. What you don't know—"

He looked down into her eyes. "A little work, a little sleep, a little
love," he repeated. "What did you mean by that?"

"Just that," she said simply. "Only not a little love, Dick. Maybe you
don't want me now. I don't know. I have suffered so much that I'm not
sure of anything."