The Breaking Point (8 page)

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.

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.

Bassett lounged outside the neat privet hedge which it was Harrison
Miller's custom to clip with his own bachelor hands, and waited. And
as he waited he tried to imagine what was going on inside, behind the
neatly curtained windows of the old brick house.

He was tempted to ring the bell again, pretend to have forgotten
something, and perhaps happen in on what might be drama of a rather high
order; what, supposing the man was Clark after all, was fairly sure to
be drama. He discarded the idea, however, and began again his interested
survey of the premises. Whoever conceived this sort of haven for Clark,
if it were Clark, had shown considerable shrewdness. The town fairly
smelt of respectability; the tree-shaded streets, the children in socks
and small crisp-laundered garments, the houses set back, each in its
square of shaved lawn, all peaceful, middle class and unexciting. The
last town in the world for Judson Clark, the last profession, the last
house, this shabby old brick before him.

He smiled rather grimly as he reflected that if Gregory had been right
in his identification, he was, beyond those windows at that moment, very
possibly warning Clark against himself. Gregory would know his type,
that he never let go. He drew himself up a little.

The house door opened, and Gregory came out, turning toward the station.
Bassett caught up with him and put a hand on his arm.

"Well?" he said cheerfully. "It was, wasn't it?"

Gregory stopped dead and stared at him. Then:

"Old dog Tray!" he said sneeringly. "If your brain was as good as your
nose, Bassett, you'd be a whale of a newspaper man."

"Don't bother about my brain. It's working fine to-day, anyhow. Well,
what had he to say for himself?"

Gregory's mind was busy, and he had had a moment to pull himself
together.

"We both get off together," he said, more amiably. "That fellow isn't
Jud Clark and never was. He's a doctor, and the nephew of the old doctor
there. They're in practice together."

"Did you see them both?"

"Yes."

Bassett eyed him. Either Gregory was a good actor, or the whole trail
ended there after all. He himself had felt, after his interview, with
Dick, that the scent was false. And there was this to be said: Gregory
had been in the house scarcely ten minutes. Long enough to acknowledge a
mistake, but hardly long enough for any dramatic identification. He was
keenly disappointed, but he had had long experience of disappointment,
and after a moment he only said: