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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Breaking Point, by Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Breaking Point
+
+Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
+Posting Date: September 21, 2008 [EBook #1601]
+Release Date: January, 1999
+[This file last updated: February 21, 2011]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BREAKING POINT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Anonymous Project Gutenberg Volunteers
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BREAKING POINT
+
+By Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+"Heaven and earth," sang the tenor, Mr. Henry Wallace, owner of the
+Wallace garage. His larynx, which gave him somewhat the effect of having
+swallowed a crab-apple and got it only part way down, protruded above
+his low collar.
+
+"Heaven and earth," sang the bass, Mr. Edwin Goodno, of the meat market
+and the Boy Scouts. "Heaven and earth, are full--" His chin, large and
+fleshy, buried itself deep; his eyes were glued on the music sheet in
+his hand.
+
+"Are full, are full, are full," sang the soprano, Clare Rossiter, of the
+yellow colonial house on the Ridgely Road. She sang with her eyes turned
+up, and as she reached G flat she lifted herself on her toes. "Of the
+majesty, of Thy glory."
+
+"Ready," barked the choir master. "Full now, and all together."
+
+The choir room in the parish house resounded to the twenty voices of the
+choir. The choir master at the piano kept time with his head. Earnest
+and intent, they filled the building with the Festival Te Deum of Dudley
+Buck, Opus 63, No. 1.
+
+Elizabeth Wheeler liked choir practice. She liked the way in which,
+after the different parts had been run through, the voices finally
+blended into harmony and beauty. She liked the small sense of
+achievement it gave her, and of being a part, on Sundays, of the
+service. She liked the feeling, when she put on the black cassock and
+white surplice and the small round velvet cap of having placed in her
+locker the things of this world, such as a rose-colored hat and a blue
+georgette frock, and of being stripped, as it were, for aspirations.
+
+At such times she had vague dreams of renunciation. She saw herself
+cloistered in some quiet spot, withdrawn from the world; a place where
+there were long vistas of pillars and Gothic arches, after a photograph
+in the living room at home, and a great organ somewhere, playing.
+
+She would go home from church, however, clad in the rose-colored hat and
+the blue georgette frock, and eat a healthy Sunday luncheon; and by two
+o'clock in the afternoon, when the family slept and Jim had gone to the
+country club, her dreams were quite likely to be entirely different.
+Generally speaking, they had to do with love. Romantic, unclouded young
+love dramatic only because it was love, and very happy.
+
+Sometime, perhaps, some one would come and say he loved her. That was
+all. That was at once the beginning and the end. Her dreams led up to
+that and stopped. Not by so much as a hand clasp did they pass that
+wall.
+
+So she sat in the choir room and awaited her turn.
+
+"Altos a little stronger, please."
+
+"Of the majesty, of the majesty, of the majesty, of Thy gl-o-o-ry," sang
+Elizabeth. And was at once a nun and a principal in a sentimental dream
+of two.
+
+What appeared to the eye was a small and rather ethereal figure with
+sleek brown hair and wistful eyes; nice eyes, of no particular color.
+Pretty with the beauty of youth, sensitive and thoughtful, infinitely
+loyal and capable of suffering and not otherwise extraordinary was
+Elizabeth Wheeler in her plain wooden chair. A figure suggestive of no
+drama and certainly of no tragedy, its attitude expectant and waiting,
+with that alternate hope and fear which is youth at twenty, when all of
+life lies ahead and every to-morrow may hold some great adventure.
+
+Clare Rossiter walked home that night with Elizabeth. She was a tall
+blonde girl, lithe and graceful, and with a calculated coquetry in her
+clothes.
+
+"Do you mind going around the block?" she asked. "By Station Street?"
+There was something furtive and yet candid in her voice, and Elizabeth
+glanced at her.
+
+"All right. But it's out of your way, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes. I--You're so funny, Elizabeth. It's hard to talk to you. But I've
+got to talk to somebody. I go around by Station Street every chance I
+get."
+
+"By Station Street? Why?"
+
+"I should think you could guess why."
+
+She saw that Clare desired to be questioned, and at the same time
+she felt a great distaste for the threatened confidence. She loathed
+arm-in-arm confidences, the indecency of dragging up and exposing, in
+whispers, things that should have been buried deep in reticence. She
+hesitated, and Clare slipped an arm through hers.
+
+"You don't know, then, do you? Sometimes I think every one must know.
+And I don't care. I've reached that point."
+
+Her confession, naive and shameless, and yet somehow not without a
+certain dignity, flowed on. She was mad about Doctor Dick Livingstone.
+Goodness knew why, for he never looked at her. She might be the dirt
+under his feet for all he knew. She trembled when she met him in the
+street, and sometimes he looked past her and never saw her. She didn't
+sleep well any more.
+
+Elizabeth listened in great discomfort. She did not see in Clare's
+hopeless passion the joy of the flagellant, or the self-dramatization
+of a neurotic girl. She saw herself unwillingly forced to peer into
+the sentimental windows of Clare's soul, and there to see Doctor Dick
+Livingstone, an unconscious occupant. But she had a certain fugitive
+sense of guilt, also. Formless as her dreams had been, vague and shy,
+they had nevertheless centered about some one who should be tall, like
+Dick Livingstone, and alternately grave, which was his professional
+manner, and gay, which was his manner when it turned out to be only a
+cold, and he could take a few minutes to be himself. Generally speaking,
+they centered about some one who resembled Dick Livingstone, but who
+did not, as did Doctor Livingstone, assume at times an air of frightful
+maturity and pretend that in years gone by he had dandled her on his
+knee.
+
+"Sometimes I think he positively avoids me," Clare wailed. "There's
+the house, Elizabeth. Do you mind stopping a moment? He must be in his
+office now. The light's burning."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't, Clare. He'd hate it if he knew."
+
+She moved on and Clare slowly followed her. The Rossiter girl's flow
+of talk had suddenly stopped. She was thoughtful and impulsively
+suspicious.
+
+"Look here, Elizabeth, I believe you care for him yourself."
+
+"I? What is the matter with you to-night, Clare?"
+
+"I'm just thinking. Your voice was so queer."
+
+They walked on in silence. The flow of Clare's confidences had ceased,
+and her eyes were calculating and a trifle hard.
+
+"There's a good bit of talk about him," she jerked out finally. "I
+suppose you've heard it."
+
+"What sort of talk?"
+
+"Oh, gossip. You'll hear it. Everybody's talking about it. It's doing
+him a lot of harm."
+
+"I don't believe it," Elizabeth flared. "This town hasn't anything else
+to do, and so it talks. It makes me sick."
+
+She did not attempt to analyze the twisted motives that made Clare
+belittle what she professed to love. And she did not ask what the gossip
+was. Half way up Palmer Lane she turned in at the cement path between
+borders of early perennials which led to the white Wheeler house. She
+was flushed and angry, hating Clare for her unsolicited confidence and
+her malice, hating even Haverly, that smiling, tree-shaded suburb which
+"talked."
+
+She opened the door quietly and went in. Micky, the Irish terrier, lay
+asleep at the foot of the stairs, and her father's voice, reading aloud,
+came pleasantly from the living room. Suddenly her sense of resentment
+died. With the closing of the front door the peace of the house
+enveloped her. What did it matter if, beyond that door, there were
+unrequited love and petty gossip, and even tragedy? Not that she put all
+that into conscious thought; she had merely a sensation of sanctuary
+and peace. Here, within these four walls, were all that one should need,
+love and security and quiet happiness. Walter Wheeler, pausing to turn a
+page, heard her singing as she went up the stairs. In the moment of the
+turning he too had a flash of content. Twenty-five years of married life
+and all well; Nina married, Jim out of college, Elizabeth singing her
+way up the stairs, and here by the lamp his wife quietly knitting while
+he read to her. He was reading Paradise Lost: "The mind is its own
+place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."
+
+He did a certain amount of serious reading every year.
+
+On Sunday mornings, during the service, Elizabeth earnestly tried to
+banish all worldly thoughts. In spite of this resolve, however, she was
+always conscious of a certain regret that the choir seats necessitated
+turning her profile to the congregation. At the age of twelve she had
+decided that her nose was too short, and nothing had happened since
+to change her conviction. She seldom so much as glanced at the
+congregation. During her slow progress up and down the main aisle behind
+the Courtney boy, who was still a soprano and who carried the great gold
+cross, she always looked straight ahead. Or rather, although she was
+unconscious of this, slightly up. She always looked up when she sang,
+for she had commenced to take singing lessons when the piano music rack
+was high above her head.
+
+So she still lifted her eyes as she went up the aisle, and was extremely
+serious over the whole thing. Because it is a solemn matter to take a
+number of people who have been up to that moment engrossed in thoughts
+of food or golf or servants or business, and in the twinkling of an eye,
+as the prayer book said about death, turn their minds to worship.
+
+Nevertheless, although she never looked at the pews, she was always
+conscious of two of them. The one near the pulpit was the Sayres' and it
+was the social calendar of the town. When Mrs. Sayre was in it, it was
+the social season. One never knew when Mrs. Sayre's butler would call up
+and say:
+
+"I am speaking for Mrs. Sayre. Mrs. Sayre would like to have the
+pleasure of Miss Wheeler's company on Thursday to luncheon, at
+one-thirty."
+
+When the Sayre pew was empty, the town knew, if it happened to be
+winter, that the Florida or Santa Barbara season was on; or in summer
+the Maine coast.
+
+The other pew was at the back of the church. Always it had one occupant;
+sometimes it had three. But the behavior of this pew was very erratic.
+Sometimes an elderly and portly gentleman with white hair and fierce
+eyebrows would come in when the sermon was almost over. Again, a hand
+would reach through the grill behind it, and a tall young man who
+had had his eyes fixed in the proper direction, but not always on
+the rector, would reach for his hat, get up and slip out. On these
+occasions, however, he would first identify the owner of the hand and
+then bend over the one permanent occupant of the pew, a little old lady.
+His speech was as Yea, yea, or Nay, nay, for he either said, "I'll be
+back for dinner," or "Don't look for me until you see me."
+
+And Mrs. Crosby, without taking her eyes from the sermon, would nod.
+
+Of late years, Doctor David Livingstone had been taking less and less
+of the "Don't-look-for-me-until-you-see-me" cases, and Doctor Dick had
+acquired a car, which would not freeze when left outside all night like
+a forgotten dog, and a sense of philosophy about sleep. That is, that
+eleven o'clock P.M. was bed-time to some people, but was just eleven
+o'clock for him.
+
+When he went to church he listened to the sermon, but rather often
+he looked at Elizabeth Wheeler. When his eyes wandered, as the most
+faithful eyes will now and then, they were apt to rest on the flag that
+had hung, ever since the war, beside the altar. He had fought for his
+country in a sea of mud, never nearer than two hundred miles to the
+battle line, fought with a surgical kit instead of a gun, but he was
+content. Not to all the high adventure.
+
+Had he been asked, suddenly, the name of the tall blonde girl who sang
+among the sopranos, he could not have told it.
+
+The Sunday morning following Clare Rossiter's sentimental confession,
+Elizabeth tried very hard to banish all worldly thoughts, as usual,
+and to see the kneeling, rising and sitting congregation as there for
+worship. But for the first time she wondered. Some of the faces were
+blank, as though behind the steady gaze the mind had wandered far
+afield, or slept. Some were intent, some even devout. But for the first
+time she began to feel that people in the mass might be cruel, too.
+How many of them, for instance, would sometime during the day pass on,
+behind their hands, the gossip Clare had mentioned?
+
+She changed her position, and glanced quickly over the church. The
+Livingstone pew was fully occupied, and well up toward the front, Wallie
+Sayre was steadfastly regarding her. She looked away quickly.
+
+Came the end of the service. Came down the aisle the Courtney boy, clean
+and shining and carrying high his glowing symbol. Came the choir, two by
+two, the women first, sopranos, altos and Elizabeth. Came the men,
+bass and tenor, neatly shaved for Sunday morning. Came the rector, Mr.
+Oglethorpe, a trifle wistful, because always he fell so far below the
+mark he had set. Came the benediction. Came the slow rising from its
+knees of the congregation and its cheerful bustle of dispersal.
+
+Doctor Dick Livingstone stood up and helped Doctor David into his
+new spring overcoat. He was very content. It was May, and the sun was
+shining. It was Sunday, and he would have an hour or two of leisure. And
+he had made a resolution about a matter that had been in his mind for
+some time. He was very content.
+
+He looked around the church with what was almost a possessive eye. These
+people were his friends. He knew them all, and they knew him. They had,
+against his protest, put his name on the bronze tablet set in the wall
+on the roll of honor. Small as it was, this was his world.
+
+Half smiling, he glanced about. He did not realize that behind their
+bows and greetings there was something new that day, something not so
+much unkind as questioning.
+
+Outside in the street he tucked his aunt, Mrs. Crosby, against the
+spring wind, and waited at the wheel of the car while David entered with
+the deliberation of a man accustomed to the sagging of his old side-bar
+buggy under his weight. Long ago Dick had dropped the titular "uncle,"
+and as David he now addressed him.
+
+"You're going to play some golf this afternoon, David," he said firmly.
+"Mike had me out this morning to look at your buggy springs."
+
+David chuckled. He still stuck to his old horse, and to the ancient
+vehicle which had been the signal of distress before so many doors for
+forty years. "I can trust old Nettie," he would say. "She doesn't freeze
+her radiator on cold nights, she doesn't skid, and if I drop asleep
+she'll take me home and into my own barn, which is more than any
+automobile would do."
+
+"I'm going to sleep," he said comfortably. "Get Wallie Sayre--I see he's
+back from some place again--or ask a nice girl. Ask Elizabeth Wheeler. I
+don't think Lucy here expects to be the only woman in your life."
+
+Dick stared into the windshield.
+
+"I've been wondering about that, David," he said, "just how much
+right--"
+
+"Balderdash!" David snorted. "Don't get any fool notion in your head."
+
+Followed a short silence with Dick driving automatically and thinking.
+Finally he drew a long breath.
+
+"All right," he said, "how about that golf--you need exercise. You're
+putting on weight, and you know it. And you smoke too much. It's either
+less tobacco or more walking, and you ought to know it."
+
+David grunted, but he turned to Lucy Crosby, in the rear seat:
+
+"Lucy, d'you know where my clubs are?"
+
+"You loaned them to Jim Wheeler last fall. If you get three of them back
+you're lucky." Mrs. Crosby's voice was faintly tart. Long ago she
+had learned that her brother's belongings were his only by right of
+purchase, and were by way of being community property. When, early
+in her widowhood and her return to his home, she had found that her
+protests resulted only in a sort of clandestine giving or lending, she
+had exacted a promise from him. "I ask only one thing, David," she
+had said. "Tell me where the things go. There wasn't a blanket for the
+guest-room bed at the time of the Diocesan Convention."
+
+"I'll run around to the Wheelers' and get them," Dick observed, in a
+carefully casual voice. "I'll see the Carter baby, too, David, and that
+clears the afternoon. Any message?"
+
+Lucy glanced at him, but David moved toward the house.
+
+"Give Elizabeth a kiss for me," he called over his shoulder, and went
+chuckling up the path.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Mrs. Crosby stood on the pavement, gazing after the car as it moved off.
+She had not her brother's simplicity nor his optimism. Her married years
+had taken her away from the environment which had enabled him to live
+his busy, uncomplicated life; where, the only medical man in a growing
+community, he had learned to form his own sturdy decisions and then to
+abide by them.
+
+Black and white, right and wrong, the proper course and the improper
+course--he lived in a sort of two-dimensional ethical world. But to Lucy
+Crosby, between black and white there was a gray no-man's land of doubt
+and indecision; a half-way house of compromise, and sometimes David
+frightened her. He was so sure.
+
+She passed the open door into the waiting-room, where sat two or three
+patient and silent figures, and went back to the kitchen. Minnie, the
+elderly servant, sat by the table reading, amid the odor of roasting
+chicken; outside the door on the kitchen porch was the freezer
+containing the dinner ice-cream. An orderly Sunday peace was in the air,
+a gesture of homely comfort, order and security.
+
+Minnie got up.
+
+"I'll unpin your veil for you," she offered, obligingly. "You've got
+time to lie down about ten minutes. Mrs. Morgan said she's got to have
+her ears treated."
+
+"I hope she doesn't sit and talk for an hour."
+
+"She'll talk, all right," Minnie observed, her mouth full of pins.
+"She'd be talking to me yet if I'd stood there. She's got her nerve,
+too, that woman."
+
+"I don't like to hear you speak so of the patients who come to the
+house, Minnie."
+
+"Well, I don't like their asking me questions about the family either,"
+said Minnie, truculently. "She wanted to know who was Doctor Dick's
+mother. Said she had had a woman here from Wyoming, and she thought
+she'd known his people."
+
+Mrs. Crosby stood very still.
+
+"I think she should bring her questions to the family," she said, after
+a silence. "Thank you, Minnie."
+
+Bonnet in hand, she moved toward the stairs, climbed them and went into
+her room. Recently life had been growing increasingly calm and less
+beset with doubts. For the first time, with Dick's coming to live with
+them ten years before, a boy of twenty-two, she had found a vicarious
+maternity and gloried in it. Recently she had been very happy. The war
+was over and he was safely back; again she could sew on his buttons and
+darn his socks, and turn down his bed at night. He filled the old house
+with cheer and with vitality. And, as David gave up more and more of
+the work, he took it on his broad shoulders, efficient, tireless, and
+increasingly popular.
+
+She put her bonnet away in its box, and suddenly there rose in her frail
+old body a fierce and unexpected resentment against David. He had chosen
+a course and abided by it. He had even now no doubt or falterings. Just
+as in the first anxious days there had been no doubt in him as to the
+essential rightness of what he was doing. And now--This was what came of
+taking a life and moulding it in accordance with a predetermined plan.
+That was for God to do, not man.
+
+She sat down near her window and rocked slowly, to calm herself. Outside
+the Sunday movement of the little suburban town went by: the older
+Wheeler girl, Nina, who had recently married Leslie Ward, in her smart
+little car; Harrison Miller, the cynical bachelor who lived next door,
+on his way to the station news stand for the New York papers; young
+couples taking small babies for the air in a perambulator; younger
+couples, their eyes on each other and on the future.
+
+That, too, she reflected bitterly! Dick was in love. She had not watched
+him for that very thing for so long without being fairly sure now. She
+had caught, as simple David with his celibate heart could never have
+caught, the tone in Dick's voice when he mentioned the Wheelers. She had
+watched him for the past few months in church on Sunday mornings, and
+she knew that as she watched him, so he looked at Elizabeth.
+
+And David was so sure! So sure.
+
+The office door closed and Mrs. Morgan went out, a knitted scarf
+wrapping her ears against the wind, and following her exit came the slow
+ascent of David as he climbed the stairs to wash for dinner.
+
+She stopped rocking.
+
+"David!" she called sharply.
+
+He opened the door and came in, a bulky figure, still faintly aromatic
+of drugs, cheerful and serene.
+
+"D'you call me?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes. Shut the door and come in. I want to talk to you." He closed the
+door and went to the hearth-rug. There was a photograph of Dick on the
+mantel, taken in his uniform, and he looked at it for a moment. Then he
+turned. "All right, my dear. Let's have it."
+
+"Did Mrs. Morgan have anything to say?" He stared at her.
+
+"She usually has," he said. "I never knew you considered it worth
+repeating. No. Nothing in particular."
+
+The very fact that Mrs. Morgan had limited her inquiry to Minnie
+confirmed her suspicions. But somehow, face to face with David, she
+could not see his contentment turned to anxiety.
+
+"I want to talk to you about Dick."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I think he's in love, David."
+
+David's heavy body straightened, but his face remained serene.
+
+"We had to expect that, Lucy. Is it Elizabeth Wheeler, do you think?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+For a moment there was silence. The canary in its cage hopped about, a
+beady inquisitive eye now on one, now on the other of them.
+
+"She's a good girl, Lucy."
+
+"That's not the point, is it?"
+
+"Do you think she cares for him?"
+
+"I don't know. There's some talk of Wallie Sayre. He's there a good
+bit."
+
+"Wallie Sayre!" snorted David. "He's never done a day's work in his
+life and never will." He reflected on that with growing indignation. "He
+doesn't hold a candle to Dick. Of course, if the girl's a fool--"
+
+Hands thrust deep into his pockets David took a turn about the room.
+Lucy watched him. At last:
+
+"You're evading the real issue, David, aren't you?"
+
+"Perhaps I am," he admitted. "I'd better talk to him. I think he's got
+an idea he shouldn't marry. That's nonsense."
+
+"I don't mean that, exactly," Lucy persisted. "I mean, won't he want a
+good many things cleared up before he marries? Isn't he likely to want
+to go back to Norada?"
+
+Some of the ruddy color left David's face. He stood still, staring at
+her and silent.
+
+"You know he meant to go three years ago, but the war came, and--"
+
+Her voice trailed off. She could not even now easily recall those days
+when Dick was drilling on the golf links, and that later period of
+separation.
+
+"If he does go back--"
+
+"Donaldson is dead," David broke in, almost roughly.
+
+"Maggie Donaldson is still living."
+
+"What if she is? She's loyal to the core, in the first place. In the
+second, she's criminally liable. As liable as I am."
+
+"There is one thing, David, I ought to know. What has become of the
+Carlysle girl?"
+
+"She left the stage. There was a sort of general conviction she was
+implicated and--I don't know, Lucy. Sometimes I think she was." He
+sighed. "I read something about her coming back, some months ago, in
+'The Valley.' That was the thing she was playing the spring before
+it happened." He turned on her. "Don't get that in your head with the
+rest."
+
+"I wonder, sometimes."
+
+"I know it."
+
+Outside the slamming of an automobile door announced Dick's return, and
+almost immediately Minnie rang the old fashioned gong which hung in the
+lower hall. Mrs. Crosby got up and placed a leaf of lettuce between the
+bars of the bird cage.
+
+"Dinner time, Caruso," she said absently. Caruso was the name Dick had
+given the bird. And to David: "She must be in her thirties now."
+
+"Probably." Then his anger and anxiety burst out. "What difference can
+it make about her? About Donaldson's wife? About any hang-over from that
+rotten time? They're gone, all of them. He's here. He's safe and happy.
+He's strong and fine. That's gone."
+
+In the lower hall Dick was taking off his overcoat.
+
+"Smell's like chicken, Minnie," he said, into the dining room.
+
+"Chicken and biscuits, Mr. Dick."
+
+"Hi, up there!" he called lustily. "Come and feed a starving man. I'm
+going to muffle the door-bell!"
+
+He stood smiling up at them, very tidy in his Sunday suit, very boyish,
+for all his thirty-two years. His face, smilingly tender as he watched
+them, was strong rather than handsome, quietly dependable and faintly
+humorous.
+
+"In the language of our great ally," he said, "Madame et Monsieur, le
+diner est servi."
+
+In his eyes there was not only tenderness but a somewhat emphasized
+affection, as though he meant to demonstrate, not only to them but to
+himself, that this new thing that had come to him did not touch their
+old relationship. For the new thing had come. He was still slightly
+dazed with the knowledge of it, and considerably anxious. Because he had
+just taken a glance at himself in the mirror of the walnut hat-rack, and
+had seen nothing there particularly to inspire--well, to inspire what he
+wanted to inspire.
+
+At the foot of the stairs he drew Lucy's arm through his, and held her
+hand. She seemed very small and frail beside him.
+
+"Some day," he said, "a strong wind will come along and carry off Mrs.
+Lucy Crosby, and the Doctors Livingstone will be obliged hurriedly to
+rent aeroplanes, and to search for her at various elevations!"
+
+David sat down and picked up the old fashioned carving knife.
+
+"Get the clubs?" he inquired.
+
+Dick looked almost stricken.
+
+"I forgot them, David," he said guiltily. "Jim Wheeler went out to look
+them up, and I--I'll go back after dinner."
+
+It was sometime later in the meal that Dick looked up from his plate and
+said:
+
+"I'd like to cut office hours on Wednesday night, David. I've asked
+Elizabeth Wheeler to go into town to the theater."
+
+"What about the baby at the Homer place?"
+
+"Not due until Sunday. I'll leave my seat number at the box office,
+anyhow."
+
+"What are you going to see, Dick?" Mrs. Crosby asked. "Will you have
+some dumplings?"
+
+
+"I will, but David shouldn't. Too much starch. Why, it's 'The Valley,' I
+think. An actress named Carlysle, Beverly Carlysle, is starring in it."
+
+He ate on, his mind not on his food, but back in the white house on
+Palmer Lane, and a girl. Lucy Crosby, fork in air, stared at him, and
+then glanced at David.
+
+But David did not look up from his plate.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+The Wheeler house was good, modern and commonplace. Walter Wheeler and
+his wife were like the house. Just as here and there among the furniture
+there was a fine thing, an antique highboy, a Sheraton sideboard or
+some old cut glass, so they had, with a certain mediocrity their own
+outstanding virtues. They liked music, believed in the home as the unit
+of the nation, put happiness before undue ambition, and had devoted
+their lives to their children.
+
+For many years their lives had centered about the children. For years
+they had held anxious conclave about whooping cough, about small early
+disobediences, later about Sunday tennis. They stood united to protect
+the children against disease, trouble and eternity.
+
+Now that the children were no longer children, they were sometimes
+lonely and still apprehensive. They feared motor car accidents, and
+Walter Wheeler had withstood the appeals of Jim for a half dozen years.
+They feared trains for them, and journeys, and unhappy marriages, and
+hid their fears from each other. Their nightly prayers were "to keep
+them safe and happy."
+
+But they saw life reaching out and taking them, one by one. They saw
+them still as children, but as children determined to bear their own
+burdens. Jim stayed out late sometimes, and considered his manhood in
+question if interrogated. Nina was married and out of the home, but
+there loomed before them the possibility of maternity and its dangers
+for her. There remained only Elizabeth, and on her they lavished the
+care formerly divided among the three.
+
+It was their intention and determination that she should never know
+trouble. She was tenderer than the others, more docile and gentle. They
+saw her, not as a healthy, normal girl, but as something fragile and
+very precious.
+
+Nina was different. They had always worried a little about Nina,
+although they had never put their anxiety to each other. Nina had always
+overrun her dress allowance, although she had never failed to be sweetly
+penitent about it, and Nina had always placed an undue emphasis on
+things. Her bedroom before her marriage was cluttered with odds and
+ends, cotillion favors and photographs, college pennants and small
+unwise purchases--trophies of the gayety and conquest which were her
+life.
+
+And Nina had "come out." It had cost a great deal, and it was not so
+much to introduce her to society as to put a family recognition on a
+fact already accomplished, for Nina had brought herself out unofficially
+at sixteen. There had been the club ballroom, and a great many flowers
+which withered before they could be got to the hospital; and new
+clothing for all the family, and a caterer and orchestra. After that,
+for a cold and tumultuous winter Mrs. Wheeler had sat up with the
+dowagers night after night until all hours, and the next morning had
+let Nina sleep, while she went about her household duties. She had aged,
+rather, and her determined smile had grown a little fixed.
+
+She was a good woman, and she wanted her children's happiness more than
+anything in the world, but she had a faint and sternly repressed
+feeling of relief when Nina announced her engagement. Nina did it with
+characteristic sangfroid, at dinner one night.
+
+"Don't ring for Annie for a minute, mother," she said. "I want to tell
+you all something. I'm going to marry Leslie Ward."
+
+There had been a momentary pause. Then her father said:
+
+"Just a minute. Is that Will Ward's boy?"
+
+"Yes. He's not a boy."
+
+"Well, he'll come around to see me before there's any engagement. Has
+that occurred to either of you?"
+
+"Oh, he'll be around. He'd have come to-night, but Howard Moore is
+having his bachelor dinner. I hope he doesn't look shot to pieces
+to-morrow. These bachelor things--! We'd better have a dinner or
+something, mother, and announce it."
+
+There had been the dinner, with a silver loving cup bought for the
+occasion, and thereafter to sit out its useless days on the Sheraton
+sideboard. And there had been a trousseau and a wedding so expensive
+that a small frown of anxiety had developed between Walter Wheeler's
+eyebrows and stayed there.
+
+For Nina's passion for things was inherent, persisting after her
+marriage. She discounted her birthday and Christmases in advance, coming
+around to his office a couple of months before the winter holidays and
+needing something badly.
+
+"It's like this, daddy," she would say. "You're going to give me a check
+for Christmas anyhow, aren't you? And it would do me more good now. I
+simply can't go to another ball."
+
+"Where's your trousseau?"
+
+"It's worn out-danced to rags. And out of date, too."
+
+"I don't understand it, Nina. You and Leslie have a good income. Your
+mother and I--"
+
+"You didn't have any social demands. And wedding presents! If one more
+friend of mine is married--"
+
+He would get out his checkbook and write a check slowly and
+thoughtfully. And tearing it off would say:
+
+"Now remember, Nina, this is for Christmas. Don't feel aggrieved when
+the time comes and you have no gift from us."
+
+But he knew that when the time came Margaret, his wife, would hold out
+almost to the end, and then slip into a jeweler's and buy Nina something
+she simply couldn't do without.
+
+It wasn't quite fair, he felt. It wasn't fair to Jim or to Elizabeth.
+Particularly to Elizabeth.
+
+Sometimes he looked at Elizabeth with a little prayer in his heart,
+never articulate, that life would be good to her; that she might keep
+her illusions and her dreams; that the soundness and wholesomeness of
+her might keep her from unhappiness. Sometimes, as she sat reading or
+sewing, with the light behind her shining through her soft hair, he saw
+in her a purity that was almost radiant.
+
+He was in arms at once a night or two before Dick had invited Elizabeth
+to go to the theater when Margaret Wheeler said:
+
+"The house was gayer when Nina was at home."
+
+"Yes. And you were pretty sick of it. Full of roistering young idiots.
+Piano and phonograph going at once, pairs of gigglers in the pantry
+at the refrigerator, pairs on the stairs and on the verandah,
+cigar-ashes--my cigars--and cigarettes over everything, and more
+infernal spooning going on than I've ever seen in my life."
+
+He had resumed his newspaper, to put it down almost at once.
+
+"What's that Sayre boy hanging around for?"
+
+"I think he's in love with her, Walter."
+
+"Love? Any of the Sayre tribe? Jim Sayre drank himself to death, and
+this boy is like him. And Jim Sayre wasn't faithful to his wife. This
+boy is--well, he's an heir. That's why he was begotten."
+
+Margaret Wheeler stared at him.
+
+"Why, Walter!" she said. "He's a nice boy, and he's a gentleman."
+
+"Why? Because he gets up when you come into the room? Why in
+heaven's name don't you encourage real men to come here? There's Dick
+Livingstone. He's a man."
+
+Margaret hesitated.
+
+"Walter, have you ever thought there was anything queer about Dick
+Livingstone's coming here?"
+
+"Darned good for the town that he did come."
+
+"But--nobody ever dreamed that David and Lucy had a nephew. Then he
+turns up, and they send him to medical college, and all that."
+
+"I've got some relations I haven't notified the town I possess," he said
+grimly.
+
+"Well, there's something odd. I don't believe Henry Livingstone, the
+Wyoming brother, ever had a son."
+
+"What possible foundation have you for a statement like that?"
+
+"Mrs. Cook Morgan's sister-in-law has been visiting her lately. She says
+she knew Henry Livingstone well years ago in the West, and she never
+heard he was married. She says positively he was not married."
+
+"And trust the Morgan woman to spread the good news," he said with angry
+sarcasm. "Well, suppose that's true? Suppose Dick is an illegitimate
+child? That's the worst that's implied, I daresay. That's nothing
+against Dick himself. I'll tell the world there's good blood on the
+Livingstone side, anyhow."
+
+"You were very particular about Wallie Sayre's heredity, Walter."
+
+"That's different," he retorted, and retired into gloomy silence behind
+his newspaper. Drat these women anyhow. It was like some fool female to
+come there and rake up some old and defunct scandal. He'd stand up for
+Dick, if it ever came to a show-down. He liked Dick. What the devil did
+his mother matter, anyhow? If this town hadn't had enough evidence of
+Dick Livingstone's quality the last few years he'd better go elsewhere.
+He--
+
+He got up and whistled for the dog.
+
+"I'm going to take a walk," he said briefly, and went out. He always
+took a walk when things disturbed him.
+
+On the Sunday afternoon after Dick had gone Elizabeth was alone in her
+room upstairs. On the bed lay the sort of gown Nina would have called
+a dinner dress, and to which Elizabeth referred as her dark blue. Seen
+thus, in the room which was her own expression, there was a certain
+nobility about her very simplicity, a steadiness about her eyes that was
+almost disconcerting.
+
+"She's the saintly-looking sort that would go on the rocks for some
+man," Nina had said once, rather flippantly, "and never know she was
+shipwrecked. No man in the world could do that to me."
+
+But just then Elizabeth looked totally unlike shipwreck. Nothing seemed
+more like a safe harbor than the Wheeler house that afternoon, or
+all the afternoons. Life went on, the comfortable life of an upper
+middle-class household. Candles and flowers on the table and a neat
+waitress to serve; little carefully planned shopping expeditions; fine
+hand-sewing on dainty undergarments for rainy days; small tributes of
+books and candy; invitations and consultations as to what to wear; choir
+practice, a class in the Sunday school, a little work among the poor;
+the volcano which had been Nina overflowing elsewhere in a smart little
+house with a butler out on the Ridgely Road.
+
+She looked what she was, faithful and quietly loyal, steady--and serene;
+not asking greatly but hoping much; full of small unvisualized dreams
+and little inarticulate prayers; waiting, without knowing that she was
+waiting.
+
+Sometimes she worried. She thought she ought to "do something." A good
+many of the girls she knew wanted to do something, but they were vague
+as to what. She felt at those times that she was not being very useful,
+and she had gone so far as to lay the matter before her father a couple
+of years before, when she was just eighteen.
+
+"Just what do you think of doing?" he had inquired.
+
+"That's it," she had said despondently. "I don't know. I haven't any
+particular talent, you know. But I don't think I ought to go on having
+you support me in idleness all my life."
+
+"Well, I don't think it likely that I'll have to," he had observed,
+dryly. "But here's the point, and I think it's important. I don't intend
+to work without some compensation, and my family is my compensation.
+You just hang around and make me happy, as you do, and you're fulfilling
+your economic place in the nation. Don't you forget it, either."
+
+That had comforted her. She had determined then never to marry but to
+hang around, as he suggested, for the rest of her life. She was quite
+earnest about it, and resolved.
+
+She picked up the blue dress and standing before her mirror, held it up
+before her. It looked rather shabby, she thought, but the theater was
+not like a dance, and anyhow it would look better at night. She had been
+thinking about next Wednesday evening ever since Dick Livingstone
+had gone. It seemed, better somehow, frightfully important. It was
+frightfully important. For the first time she acknowledged to herself
+that she had been fond of him, as she put it, for a long time. She had
+an odd sense, too, of being young and immature, and as though he had
+stooped to her from some height: such as thirty-two years and being in
+the war, and having to decide about life and death, and so on.
+
+She hoped he did not think she was only a child.
+
+She heard Nina coming up the stairs. At the click of her high heels on
+the hard wood she placed the dress on the bed again, and went to the
+window. Her father was on the path below, clearly headed for a walk. She
+knew then that Nina had been asking for something.
+
+Nina came in and closed the door. She was smaller than Elizabeth and
+very pretty. Her eyebrows had been drawn to a tidy line, and from the
+top of her shining head to her brown suede pumps she was exquisite with
+the hours of careful tending and careful dressing she gave her young
+body. Exquisitely pretty, too.
+
+She sat down on Elizabeth's bed with a sigh.
+
+"I really don't know what to do with father," she said. "He flies off
+at a tangent over the smallest things. Elizabeth dear, can you lend me
+twenty dollars? I'll get my allowance on Tuesday."
+
+"I can give you ten."
+
+"Well, ask mother for the rest, won't you? You needn't say it's for me.
+I'll give it to you Tuesday."
+
+"I'm not going to mother, Nina. She has had a lot of expenses this
+month."
+
+"Then I'll borrow it from Wallie Sayre," Nina said, accepting her defeat
+cheerfully. "If it was an ordinary bill it could wait, but I lost it at
+bridge last night and it's got to be paid."
+
+"You oughtn't to play bridge for money," Elizabeth said, a bit primly.
+"And if Leslie knew you borrowed from Wallace Sayre--"
+
+"I forgot! Wallie's downstairs, Elizabeth. Really, if he wasn't so
+funny, he'd be tragic."
+
+"Why tragic? He has everything in the world."
+
+"If you use a little bit of sense, you can have it too."
+
+"I don't want
+
+"Pooh! That's what you think now. Wallie's a nice person. Lots of girls
+are mad about him. And he has about all the money there is." Getting
+no response from Elizabeth, she went on: "I was thinking it over last
+night. You'll have to marry sometime, and it isn't as though Wallie was
+dissipated, or anything like that. I suppose he knows his way about, but
+then they all do."
+
+She got up.
+
+"Be nice to him, anyhow," she said. "He's crazy about you, and when I
+think of you in that house! It's a wonderful house, Elizabeth. She's got
+a suite waiting for Wallie to be married before she furnishes it."
+
+Elizabeth looked around her virginal little room, with its painted
+dressing table, its chintz, and its white bed with the blue dress on it.
+
+"I'm very well satisfied as I am," she said.
+
+While she smoothed her hair before the mirror Nina surveyed the room and
+her eyes lighted on the frock.
+
+"Are you still wearing that shabby old thing?" she demanded. "I do wish
+you'd get some proper clothes. Are you going somewhere?"
+
+"I'm going to the theater on Wednesday night."
+
+"Who with?" Nina in her family was highly colloquial.
+
+"With Doctor Livingstone."
+
+"Are you joking?" Nina demanded.
+
+"Joking? Of course not."
+
+Nina sat down again on the bed, her eyes on her sister, curious and not
+a little apprehensive.
+
+"It's the first time it's ever happened, to my knowledge," she declared.
+"I know he's avoided me like poison. I thought he hated women. You know
+Clare Rossiter is--"
+
+Elizabeth turned suddenly.
+
+"Clare is ridiculous," she said. "She hasn't any reserve, or dignity,
+or anything else. And I don't see what my going to the theater with Dick
+Livingstone has to do with her anyhow."
+
+Nina raised her carefully plucked eyebrows.
+
+"Really!" she said. "You needn't jump down my throat, you know." She
+considered, her eyes on her sister. "Don't go and throw yourself away on
+Dick Livingstone, Sis. You're too good-looking, and he hasn't a cent. A
+suburban practice, out all night, that tumble-down old house and two
+old people hung around your necks, for Doctor David is letting go pretty
+fast. It just won't do. Besides, there's a story going the rounds about
+him, that--"
+
+"I don't want to hear it, if you don't mind."
+
+She went to the door and opened it.
+
+"I've hardly spoken a dozen words to him in my life. But just remember
+this. When I do find the man I want to marry, I shall make up my own
+mind. As you did," she added as a parting shot.
+
+She was rather sorry as she went down the stairs. She had begun to
+suspect what the family had never guessed, that Nina was not very happy.
+More and more she saw in Nina's passion for clothes and gaiety, for
+small possessions, an attempt to substitute them for real things. She
+even suspected that sometimes Nina was a little lonely.
+
+Wallie Sayre rose from a deep chair as she entered the living-room.
+
+"Hello," he said, "I was on the point of asking Central to give me this
+number so I could get you on the upstairs telephone."
+
+"Nina and I were talking. I'm sorry."
+
+Wallie, in spite of Walter Wheeler's opinion of him, was an engaging
+youth with a wide smile, an air of careless well-being, and an obstinate
+jaw. What he wanted he went after and generally secured, and Elizabeth,
+enlightened by Nina, began to have a small anxious feeling that
+afternoon that what he wanted just now happened to be herself.
+
+"Nina coming down?" he asked.
+
+"I suppose so. Why?"
+
+"You couldn't pass the word along that you are going to be engaged for
+the next half hour?"
+
+"I might, but I certainly don't intend to."
+
+"You are as hard to isolate as a--as a germ," he complained. "I gave
+up a perfectly good golf game to see you, and as your father generally
+calls the dog the moment I appear and goes for a walk, I thought I might
+see you alone."
+
+"You're seeing me alone now, you know."
+
+Suddenly he leaned over and catching up her hand, kissed it.
+
+"You're so cool and sweet," he said. "I--I wish you liked me a little."
+He smiled up at her, rather wistfully. "I never knew any one quite like
+you."
+
+She drew her hand away. Something Nina had said, that he knew his way
+about, came into her mind, and made her uncomfortable. Back of him,
+suddenly, was that strange and mysterious region where men of his sort
+lived their furtive man-life, where they knew their way about. She had
+no curiosity and no interest, but the mere fact of its existence as
+revealed by Nina repelled her.
+
+"There are plenty like me," she said. "Don't be silly, Wallie. I hate
+having my hand kissed."
+
+"I wonder," he observed shrewdly, "whether that's really true, or
+whether you just hate having me do it?"
+
+When Nina came in he was drawing a rough sketch of his new power boat,
+being built in Florida.
+
+Nina's delay was explained by the appearance, a few minutes later, of
+a rather sullen Annie with a tea tray. Afternoon tea was not a Wheeler
+institution, but was notoriously a Sayre one. And Nina believed in
+putting one's best foot foremost, even when that resulted in a state of
+unstable domestic equilibrium.
+
+"Put in a word for me, Nina," Wallie begged. "I intend to ask Elizabeth
+to go to the theater this week, and I think she is going to refuse."
+
+"What's the play?" Nina inquired negligently. She was privately
+determining that her mother needed a tea cart and a new tea service.
+There were some in old Georgian silver--
+
+"'The Valley.' Not that the play matters. It's Beverly Carlysle."
+
+"I thought she was dead, or something."
+
+"Or something is right. She retired years ago, at the top of her
+success. She was a howling beauty, I'm told. I never saw her. There was
+some queer story. I've forgotten it. I was a kid then. How about it,
+Elizabeth?"
+
+"I'm sorry. I'm going Wednesday night."
+
+He looked downcast over that, and he was curious, too. But he made no
+comment save:
+
+"Well, better luck next time."
+
+"Just imagine," said Nina. "She's going with Dick Livingstone. Can you
+imagine it?"
+
+But Wallace Sayre could and did. He had rather a stricken moment, too.
+Of course, there might be nothing to it; but on the other hand, there
+very well might. And Livingstone was the sort to attract the feminine
+woman; he had gravity and responsibility. He was older too, and that
+flattered a girl.
+
+"He's not a bit attractive," Nina was saying. "Quiet, and--well, I don't
+suppose he knows what he's got on."
+
+Wallie was watching Elizabeth.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," he said, with masculine fairness. "He's a good sort,
+and he's pretty much of a man."
+
+He was quite sure that the look Elizabeth gave him was grateful.
+
+He went soon after that, keeping up an appearance of gaiety to the end,
+and very careful to hope that Elizabeth would enjoy the play.
+
+"She's a wonder, they say," he said from the doorway. "Take two hankies
+along, for it's got more tears than 'East Lynne' and 'The Old Homestead'
+put together."
+
+He went out, holding himself very erect and looking very cheerful until
+he reached the corner. There however he slumped, and it was a rather
+despondent young man who stood sometime later, on the center of the
+deserted bridge over the small river, and surveyed the water with moody
+eyes.
+
+In the dusky living-room Nina was speaking her mind.
+
+"You treat him like a dog," she said. "Oh, I know you're civil to him,
+but if any man looked at me the way Wallie looks at you--I don't know,
+though," she added, thoughtfully. "It may be that that is why he is so
+keen. It may be good tactics. Most girls fall for him with a crash."
+
+But when she glanced at Elizabeth she saw that she had not heard. Her
+eyes were fixed on something on the street beyond the window. Nina
+looked out. With a considerable rattle of loose joints and four
+extraordinarily worn tires the Livingstone car was going by.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+David did not sleep well that night. He had not had his golf after
+all, for the Homer baby had sent out his advance notice early in the
+afternoon, and had himself arrived on Sunday evening, at the hour when
+Minnie was winding her clock and preparing to retire early for the
+Monday washing, and the Sayre butler was announcing dinner. Dick had
+come in at ten o'clock weary and triumphant, to announce that Richard
+Livingstone Homer, sex male, color white, weight nine pounds, had been
+safely delivered into this vale of tears.
+
+David lay in the great walnut bed which had been his mother's, and read
+his prayer book by the light of his evening lamp. He read the Evening
+Prayer and the Litany, and then at last he resorted to the thirty-nine
+articles, which usually had a soporific effect on him. But it was no
+good.
+
+He got up and took to pacing his room, a portly, solid old figure in
+striped pajamas and the pair of knitted bedroom slippers which were
+always Mrs. Morgan's Christmas offering. "To Doctor David, with love and
+a merry Xmas, from Angeline Morgan."
+
+At last he got his keys from his trousers pocket and padded softly down
+the stairs and into his office, where he drew the shade and turned on
+the lights. Around him was the accumulated professional impedimenta of
+many years; the old-fashioned surgical chair; the corner closet which
+had been designed for china, and which held his instruments; the
+bookcase; his framed diplomas on the wall, their signatures faded, their
+seals a little dingy; his desk, from which Dick had removed the old
+ledger which had held those erratic records from which, when he needed
+money, he had been wont--and reluctant--to make out his bills.
+
+Through an open door was Dick's office, a neat place of shining linoleum
+and small glass stands, highly modern and business-like. Beyond the
+office and opening from it was his laboratory, which had been the fruit
+closet once, and into which Dick on occasion retired to fuss with slides
+and tubes and stains and a microscope.
+
+Sometimes he called David in, and talked at length and with enthusiasm
+about such human interest things as the Staphylococcus pyogenes aureus,
+and the Friedlander bacillus. The older man would listen, but his eyes
+were oftener on Dick than on the microscope or the slide.
+
+David went to the bookcase and got down a large book, much worn, and
+carried it to his desk.
+
+An hour or so later he heard footsteps in the hall and closed the book
+hastily. It was Lucy, a wadded dressing gown over her nightdress and a
+glass of hot milk in her hand.
+
+"You drink this and come to bed, David," she said peremptorily. "I've
+been lying upstairs waiting for you to come up, and I need some sleep."
+
+He had no sort of hope that she would not notice the book.
+
+"I just got to thinking things over, Lucy," he explained, his tone
+apologetic. "There's no use pretending I'm not worried. I am."
+
+"Well, it's in God's hands," she said, quite simply. "Take this up and
+drink it slowly. If you gulp it down it makes a lump in your stomach."
+
+She stood by while he replaced the book in the bookcase and put out the
+lights. Then in the darkness she preceded him up the stairs.
+
+"You'd better take the milk yourself, Lucy," he said. "You're not
+sleeping either."
+
+"I've had some. Good-night."
+
+He went in and sitting on the side of his bed sipped at his milk. Lucy
+was right. It was not in their hands. He had the feeling all at once of
+having relinquished a great burden. He crawled into bed and was almost
+instantly asleep.
+
+So sometime after midnight found David sleeping, and Lucy on her knees.
+It found Elizabeth dreamlessly unconscious in her white bed, and Dick
+Livingstone asleep also, but in his clothing, and in a chair by the
+window. In the light from a street lamp his face showed lines of fatigue
+and nervous stress, lines only revealed when during sleep a man casts
+off the mask with which he protects his soul against even friendly eyes.
+
+But midnight found others awake. It found Nina, for instance, in her
+draped French bed, consulting her jeweled watch and listening for
+Leslie's return from the country club. An angry and rather heart-sick
+Nina. And it found the night editor of one of the morning papers
+drinking a cup of coffee that a boy had brought in, and running through
+a mass of copy on his desk. He picked up several sheets of paper, with
+a photograph clamped to them, and ran through them quickly. A man in a
+soft hat, sitting on the desk, watched him idly.
+
+"Beverly Carlysle," commented the night editor. "Back with bells on!" He
+took up the photograph. "Doesn't look much older, does she? It's a queer
+world."
+
+Louis Bassett, star reporter and feature writer of the Times-Republican,
+smiled reminiscently.
+
+"She was a wonder," he said. "I interviewed her once, and I was crazy
+about her. She had the stage set for me, all right. The papers had been
+full of the incident of Jud Clark and the night he lined up fifteen
+Johnnies in the lobby, each with a bouquet as big as a tub, all of them
+in top hats and Inverness coats, and standing in a row. So she played up
+the heavy domestic for me; knitting or sewing, I forget."
+
+"Fell for her, did you?"
+
+"Did I? That was ten years ago, and I'm not sure I'm over it yet."
+
+"Probably that's the reason," said the city editor, drily. "Go and see
+her, and get over it. Get her views on the flapper and bobbed hair, for
+next Sunday. Smith would be crazy about it."
+
+He finished his coffee.
+
+"You might ask, too, what she thinks has become of Judson Clark," he
+added. "I have an idea she knows, if any one does." Bassett stared at
+him.
+
+"You're joking, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes. But it would make a darned good story."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+When he finished medical college Dick Livingstone had found, like other
+men, that the two paths of ambition and duty were parallel and did not
+meet. Along one lay his desire to focus all his energy in one direction,
+to follow disease into the laboratory instead of the sick room, and
+there to fight its unsung battles. And win. He felt that he would win.
+
+Along the other lay David.
+
+It was not until he had completed his course and had come home that he
+had realized that David was growing old. Even then he might have felt
+that, by the time David was compelled to relinquish his hold on his
+practice, he himself would be sufficiently established in his specialty
+to take over the support of the household. But here there was interposed
+a new element, one he had not counted on. David was fiercely jealous of
+his practice; the thought that it might pass into new and alien hands
+was bitter to him. To hand it down to his adopted son was one thing; to
+pass it over to "some young whipper-snapper" was another.
+
+Nor were David's motives selfish or unworthy. His patients were his
+friends. He had a sense of responsibility to them, and very little
+faith in the new modern methods. He thought there was a great deal of
+tomfoolery about them, and he viewed the gradual loss of faith in drugs
+with alarm. When Dick wore rubber gloves during their first obstetric
+case together he snorted.
+
+"I've delivered about half the population of this town," he said, "and
+slapped 'em to make 'em breathe with my own bare hands. And I'm still
+here and so are they."
+
+For by that time Dick had made his decision. He could not abandon
+David. For him then and hereafter the routine of a general practice in a
+suburban town, the long hours, the varied responsibilities, the feeling
+he had sometimes that by doing many things passably he was doing none of
+them well. But for compensation he had old David's content and greater
+leisure, and Lucy Crosby's gratitude and love.
+
+Now and then he chafed a little when he read some article in a medical
+journal by one of his fellow enthusiasts, or when, in France, he saw
+men younger than himself obtaining an experience in their several
+specialties that would enable them to reach wide fields at home. But
+mostly he was content, or at least resigned. He was building up the
+Livingstone practice, and his one anxiety was lest the time should come
+when more patients asked for Doctor Dick than for Doctor David. He did
+not want David hurt.
+
+After ten years the strangeness of his situation had ceased to be
+strange. Always he meant some time to go back to Norada, and there to
+clear up certain things, but it was a long journey, and he had very
+little time. And, as the years went on, the past seemed unimportant
+compared with the present. He gave little thought to the future.
+
+Then, suddenly, his entire attention became focused on the future.
+
+Just when he had fallen in love with Elizabeth Wheeler he did not know.
+He had gone away to the war, leaving her a little girl, apparently, and
+he had come back to find her, a woman. He did not even know he was in
+love, at first. It was when, one day, he found himself driving past the
+Wheeler house without occasion that he began to grow uneasy.
+
+The future at once became extraordinarily important and so also, but
+somewhat less vitally, the past. Had he the right to marry, if he could
+make her care for him?
+
+He sat in his chair by the window the night after the Homer baby's
+arrival, and faced his situation. Marriage meant many things. It meant
+love and companionship, but it also meant, should mean, children. Had he
+the right to go ahead and live his life fully and happily? Was there
+any chance that, out of the years behind him, there would come some
+forgotten thing, some taint or incident, to spoil the carefully woven
+fabric of his life?
+
+Not his life. Hers.
+
+On the Monday night after he had asked Elizabeth to go to the theater
+he went into David's office and closed the door. Lucy, alive to every
+movement in the old house, heard him go in and, rocking in her chair
+overhead, her hands idle in her lap, waited in tense anxiety for the
+interview to end. She thought she knew what Dick would ask, and what
+David would answer. And, in a way, David would be right. Dick, fine,
+lovable, upstanding Dick, had a right to the things other men had, to
+love and a home of his own, to children, to his own full life.
+
+But suppose Dick insisted on clearing everything up before he married?
+For to Lucy it was unthinkable that any girl in her senses would refuse
+him. Suppose he went back to Norada? He had not changed greatly in ten
+years. He had been well known there, a conspicuous figure.
+
+Her mind began to turn on the possibility of keeping him away from
+Norada.
+
+Some time later she heard the office door open and then close with
+Dick's characteristic slam. He came up the stairs, two at a time as
+was his custom, and knocked at her door. When he came in she saw what
+David's answer had been, and she closed her eyes for an instant.
+
+"Put on your things," he said gayly, "and we'll take a ride on the
+hill-tops. I've arranged for a moon."
+
+And when she hesitated:
+
+"It makes you sleep, you know. I'm going, if I have to ride alone and
+talk to an imaginary lady beside me."
+
+She rather imagined that that had been his first idea, modified by his
+thought of her. She went over and put a wrinkled hand on his arm.
+
+"You look happy, Dick," she said wistfully.
+
+"I am happy, Aunt Lucy," he replied, and bending over, kissed her.
+
+On Wednesday he was in a state of alternating high spirits and periods
+of silence. Even Minnie noticed it.
+
+"Mr. Dick's that queer I hardly know how to take him." she said to
+Lucy. "He came back and asked for noodle soup, and he put about all the
+hardware in the kitchen on him and said he was a knight in armor. And
+when I took the soup in he didn't eat it."
+
+It was when he was ready to go out that Lucy's fears were realized. He
+came in, as always when anything unusual was afoot, to let her look him
+over. He knew that she waited for him, to give his tie a final pat, to
+inspect the laundering of his shirt bosom, to pick imaginary threads off
+his dinner coat.
+
+"Well?" he said, standing before her, "how's this? Art can do no more,
+Mrs. Crosby."
+
+"I'll brush your back," she said, and brought the brush. He stooped to
+her, according to the little ceremony she had established, and she made
+little dabs at his speckless back. "There, that's better."
+
+He straightened.
+
+"How do you think Uncle David is?" he asked, unexpectedly.
+
+"Better than he has been in years. Why?"
+
+"Because I'm thinking of taking a little trip. Only ten days," he added,
+seeing her face. "You could house-clean my office while I'm away. You
+know you've been wanting to."
+
+She dropped the brush, and he stooped to pick it up. That gave her a
+moment.
+
+"'Where?" she managed.
+
+"To Dry River, by way of Norada."
+
+"Why should you go back there?" she asked, in a carefully suppressed
+voice. "Why don't you go East? You've wanted to go back to Johns Hopkins
+for months?"
+
+"On the other hand, why shouldn't I go back to Norada?" he asked, with
+an affectation of lightness. Then he put his hand on her shoulders. "Why
+shouldn't I go back and clear things up in my own mind? Why shouldn't I
+find out, for instance, that I am a free man?"
+
+"You are free."
+
+"I've got to know," he said, almost doggedly. "I can't take a chance. I
+believe I am. I believe David, of course. But anyhow I'd like to see the
+ranch. I want to see Maggie Donaldson."
+
+"She's not at the ranch. Her husband died, you know."
+
+"I have an idea I can find her," he said. "I'll make a good try,
+anyhow."
+
+When he had gone she got her salts bottle and lay down on her bed. Her
+heart was hammering wildly.
+
+Elizabeth was waiting for him in the living-room, in the midst of
+her family. She looked absurdly young and very pretty, and he had a
+momentary misgiving that he was old to her, and that--Heaven save the
+mark!--that she looked up to him. He considered the blue dress the
+height of fashion and the mold of form, and having taken off his
+overcoat in the hall, tried to put on Mr. Wheeler's instead in his
+excitement. Also, becoming very dignified after the overcoat incident,
+and making an exit which should conceal his wild exultation and show
+only polite pleasure, he stumbled over Micky, so that they finally
+departed to a series of staccato yelps.
+
+He felt very hot and slightly ridiculous as he tucked Elizabeth into
+the little car, being very particular about her feet, and starting
+with extreme care, so as not to jar her. He had the feeling of being
+entrusted temporarily with something infinitely precious, and very, very
+dear. Something that must never suffer or be hurt.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+On Wednesday morning David was in an office in the city. He sat
+forward on the edge of his chair, and from time to time he took out
+his handkerchief and wiped his face or polished his glasses, quite
+unconscious of either action. He was in his best suit, with the tie Lucy
+had given him for Christmas.
+
+Across from him, barricaded behind a great mahogany desk, sat a small
+man with keen eyes and a neat brown beard. On the desk were a spotless
+blotter, an inkstand of silver and a pen. Nothing else. The terrible
+order of the place had at first rather oppressed David.
+
+The small man was answering a question.
+
+"Rather on the contrary, I should say. The stronger the character the
+greater the smash."
+
+David pondered this.
+
+"I've read all you've written on the subject," he said finally.
+"Especially since the war."
+
+The psycho-analyst put his finger tips together, judicially. "Yes. The
+war bore me out," he observed with a certain complacence. "It added a
+great deal to our literature, too, although some of the positions are
+not well taken. Van Alston, for instance--"
+
+"You have said, I think, that every man has a breaking point."
+
+"Absolutely. All of us. We can go just so far. Where the mind is strong
+and very sound we can go further than when it is not. Some men, for
+instance, lead lives that would break you or me. Was there--was there
+such a history in this case?"
+
+"Yes." Doctor David's voice was reluctant.
+
+"The mind is a strange thing," went on the little man, musingly. "It
+has its censors, that go off duty during sleep. Our sternest and often
+unconscious repressions pass them then, and emerge in the form of
+dreams. But of course you know all that. Dream symbolism. Does
+the person in this case dream? That would be interesting, perhaps
+important."
+
+"I don't know," David said unhappily.
+
+"The walling off, you say, followed a shock?"
+
+"Shock and serious illness."
+
+"Was there fear with the shock?"
+
+David hesitated. "Yes," he said finally. "Very great fear, I believe."
+
+Doctor Lauler glanced quickly at David and then looked away.
+
+"I see," he nodded. "Of course the walling off of a part of the
+past--you said a part--?"
+
+"Practically all of it. I'll tell you about that later. What about the
+walling off?"
+
+"It is generally the result of what we call the protective mechanism of
+fear. Back of most of these cases lies fear. Not cowardice, but perhaps
+we might say the limit of endurance. Fear is a complex, of course.
+Dislike, in a small way, has the same reaction. We are apt to forget
+the names of persons we dislike. But if you have been reading on the
+subject--"
+
+"I've been studying it for ten years."
+
+"Ten years! Do you mean that this condition has persisted for ten
+years?"
+
+David moistened his dry lips. "Yes," he admitted. "It might not have
+done so, but the--the person who made this experiment used suggestion.
+The patient was very ill, and weak. It was desirable that he should
+not identify himself with his past. The loss of memory of the period
+immediately preceding was complete, but of course, gradually, the cloud
+began to lift over the earlier periods. It was there that suggestion
+was used, so that such memories as came back were,--well, the patient
+adapted them to fit what he was told."
+
+Again Doctor Lauler shot a swift glance at David, and looked away.
+
+"An interesting experiment," he commented. "It must have taken courage."
+
+"A justifiable experiment," David affirmed stoutly. "And it took
+courage. Yes."
+
+David got up and reached for his hat. Then he braced himself for the
+real purpose of his visit.
+
+"What I have been wondering about," he said, very carefully, "is this:
+this mechanism of fear, this wall--how strong is it?"
+
+"Strong?"
+
+"It's like a dam, I take it. It holds back certain memories, like a
+floodgate. Is anything likely to break it down?"
+
+"Possibly something intimately connected with the forgotten period might
+do it. I don't know, Livingstone. We've only commenced to dig into
+the mind, and we have many theories and a few established facts. For
+instance, the primal instincts--"
+
+He talked on, with David nodding now and then in apparent understanding,
+but with his thoughts far away. He knew the theories; a good many of
+them he considered poppycock. Dreams might come from the subconscious
+mind, but a good many of them came from the stomach. They might be
+safety valves for the mind, but also they might be rarebit. He didn't
+want dreams; what he wanted was facts. Facts and hope.
+
+The office attendant came in. She was as tidy as the desk, as obsessed
+by order, as wooden. She placed a pad before the small man and withdrew.
+He rose.
+
+"Let me know if I can be of any further assistance, Doctor," he said.
+"And I'll be glad to see your patient at any time. I'd like the record
+for my files."
+
+"Thank you," David said. He stood fingering his hat.
+
+"I suppose there's nothing to do? The dam will either break, or it
+won't."
+
+"That's about it. Of course since the conditions that produced the
+setting up of the defensive machinery were unhappy, I'd say that
+happiness will play a large part in the situation. That happiness and
+a normal occupation will do a great deal to maintain the status quo.
+Of course I would advise no return to the unhappy environment, and no
+shocks. Nothing, in other words, to break down the wall."
+
+Outside, in the corridor, David remembered to put on his hat. Happiness
+and a normal occupation, yes. But no shock.
+
+Nevertheless, he felt vaguely comforted, and as though it had helped to
+bring the situation out into the open and discuss it. He had carried his
+burden alone for ten years, or with only the additional weight of Lucy's
+apprehensions. He wandered out into the city streets, and found himself,
+some time later, at the railway station, without remembering how he got
+there.
+
+Across from the station was a large billboard, and on it the name of
+Beverly Carlysle and her play, "The Valley." He stood for some time and
+looked at it, before he went in to buy his ticket. Not until he was in
+the train did he realize that he had forgotten to get his lunch.
+
+He attended to his work that evening as usual, but he felt very tired,
+and Lucy, going in at nine o'clock, found him dozing in his chair, his
+collar half choking him and his face deeply suffused. She wakened him
+and then, sitting down across from him, joined him in the vigil that was
+to last until they heard the car outside.
+
+She had brought in her sewing, and David pretended to read. Now and then
+he looked at his watch.
+
+At midnight they heard the car go in, and the slamming of the stable
+door, followed by Dick's footsteps on the walk outside. Lucy was very
+pale, and the hands that held her sewing twitched nervously. Suddenly
+she stood up and put a hand on David's shoulder.
+
+Dick was whistling on the kitchen porch.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Louis Bassett was standing at the back of the theater, talking to the
+publicity man of The Valley company, Fred Gregory. Bassett was calm and
+only slightly interested. By the end of the first act he had realized
+that the star was giving a fine performance, that she had even grown in
+power, and that his sentimental memory of her was considerably dearer
+than the reality.
+
+"Going like a house afire," he said, as the curtain fell.
+
+Beside his robust physique, Gregory, the publicity man, sank into
+insignificance. Even his pale spats, at which Bassett had shot a
+contemptuous glance, his highly expensive tailoring, failed to make him
+appear more than he was, a little, dapper man, with a pale cold eye and
+a rather too frequent smile. "She's the best there is," was his comment.
+He hesitated, then added: "She's my sister, you know. Naturally, for
+business reasons, I don't publish the relationship."
+
+Bassett glanced at him.
+
+"That so? Well, I'm glad she decided to come back. She's too good to
+bury."
+
+But if he expected Gregory to follow the lead he was disappointed. His
+eyes, blank and expressionless, were wandering over the house as the
+lights flashed up.
+
+"This whole tour has been a triumph. She's the best there is," Gregory
+repeated, "and they know it."
+
+"Does she know it?" Bassett inquired.
+
+"She doesn't throw any temperament, if that's what you mean. She--"
+
+He checked himself suddenly, and stood, clutching the railing, bent
+forward and staring into the audience. Bassett watched him, considerably
+surprised. It took a great deal to startle a theatrical publicity man,
+yet here was one who looked as though he had seen a ghost.
+
+After a time Gregory straightened and moistened his dry lips.
+
+"There's a man sitting down there--see here, the sixth row, next the
+aisle; there's a girl in a blue dress beside him. See him? Do you know
+who he is?"
+
+"Never saw him before."
+
+For perhaps two minutes Gregory continued to stare. Then he moved over
+to the side of the house and braced against the wall continued his close
+and anxious inspection. After a time he turned away and, passing behind
+the boxes, made his way into the wings. Bassett's curiosity was aroused,
+especially when, shortly after, Gregory reappeared, bringing with him
+a small man in an untidy suit who was probably, Bassett surmised, the
+stage manager.
+
+He saw the small man stare, nod, stand watching, and finally disappear,
+and Gregory resume his former position and attitude against the side
+wall. Throughout the last act Gregory did not once look at the stage. He
+continued his steady, unwavering study of the man in the sixth row seat
+next the aisle, and Bassett continued his study of the little man.
+
+His long training made him quick to scent a story. He was not sure, of
+course, but the situation appeared to him at least suggestive. With the
+end of the play he wandered out with the crowd, edging his way close to
+the man and girl who had focused Gregory's attention, and following them
+into the street. He saw only a tall man with a certain quiet distinction
+of bearing, and a young and pretty girl, still flushed and excited, who
+went up the street a short distance and got into a small and shabby car.
+Bassett noted, carefully, the license number of the car.
+
+Then, still curious and extremely interested, he walked briskly around
+to the stage entrance, nodded to the doorkeeper, and went in.
+
+Gregory was not in sight, but the stage manager was there, directing the
+striking of the last set.
+
+"I'm waiting for Gregory," Bassett said. "Hasn't fainted, has he?"
+
+"What d'you mean, fainted?" inquired the stage manager, with a touch of
+hostility.
+
+"I was with him when he thought he recognized somebody. You know who.
+You can tell him I got his automobile number."
+
+The stage manager's hostility faded, and he fell into the trap. "You
+know about it, then?"
+
+"I was with him when he saw him. Unfortunately I couldn't help him out."
+
+"It's just possible it's a chance resemblance. I'm darned if I know.
+Look at the facts! He's supposed to be dead. Ten years dead. His money's
+been split up a dozen ways from the ace. Then--I knew him, you know--I
+don't think even he would have the courage to come here and sit through
+a performance. Although," he added reflectively, "Jud Clark had the
+nerve for anything."
+
+Bassett gave him a cigar and went out into the alley way that led to the
+street. Once there, he stood still and softly whistled. Jud Clark! If
+that was Judson Clark, he had the story of a lifetime.
+
+For some time he walked the deserted streets of the city, thinking and
+puzzling over the possibility of Gregory's being right. Sometime after
+midnight he went back to the office and to the filing room. There, for
+two hours, he sat reading closely old files of the paper, going through
+them methodically and making occasional brief notes in a memorandum.
+Then, at two o'clock he put away the files, and sitting back, lighted a
+cigar.
+
+It was all there; the enormous Clark fortune inherited by a boy who had
+gone mad about this same Beverly Carlysle; her marriage to her leading
+man, Howard Lucas; the subsequent killing of Lucas by Clark at his
+Wyoming ranch, and Clark's escape into the mountains. The sensational
+details of Clark's infatuation, the drama of a crime and Clark's
+subsequent escape, and the later certainty of his death in a mountain
+storm had filled the newspapers of the time for weeks. Judson Clark had
+been famous, notorious, infamous and dead, all in less than two years. A
+shameful and somehow a pitiful story.
+
+But if Judson Clark had died, the story still lived. Every so often it
+came up again. Three years before he had been declared legally dead, and
+his vast estates, as provided by the will of old Elihu Clark, had gone
+to universities and hospitals. But now and then came a rumor. Jud Clark
+was living in India; he had a cattle ranch in Venezuela; he had been
+seen on the streets of New Orleans.
+
+Bassett ran over the situation in his mind.
+
+First then, grant that Clark was still living and had been in the
+theater that night. It became necessary to grant other things. To grant,
+for instance, that Clark was capable of sitting, with a girl beside him,
+through a performance by the woman for whom he had wrecked his life, of
+a play he had once known from the opening line to the tag. To grant that
+he could laugh and applaud, and at the drop of the curtain go calmly
+away, with such memories behind him as must be his. To grant, too, that
+he had survived miraculously his sensational disappearance, found a new
+identity and a new place for himself; even, witness the girl, possible
+new ties.
+
+At half past two Bassett closed his memorandum book, stuffed it into his
+pocket, and started for home. As he passed the Ardmore Hotel he looked
+up at its windows. Gregory would have told her, probably. He wondered,
+half amused, whether the stage manager had told him of his inquiries,
+and whether in that case they might not fear him more than Clark
+himself. After all, they had nothing to fear from Clark, if this were
+Clark.
+
+No. What they might see and dread, knowing he had had a hint of a
+possible situation, was the revival of the old story she had tried so
+hard to live down. She was ambitious, and a new and rigid morality was
+sweeping the country. What once might have been an asset stood now to be
+a bitter liability.
+
+He slowed down, absorbed in deep thought. It was a queer story. It might
+be even more queer than it seemed. Gregory had been frightened rather
+than startled. The man had even gone pale.
+
+Motive, motive, that was the word. What motive lay behind action.
+Conscious and unconscious, every volitional act was the result of
+motive.
+
+He wondered what she had done when Gregory had told her.
+
+As a matter of fact, Beverly Carlysle had shown less anxiety than
+her brother. Still pale and shocked, he had gone directly to her
+dressing-room when the curtain was rung down, had tapped and gone in.
+She was sitting wearily in a chair, a cigarette between her fingers.
+Around was the usual litter of a stage dressing-room after the play, the
+long shelf beneath the mirror crowded with powders, rouge and pencils,
+a bunch of roses in the corner washstand basin, a wardrobe trunk, and a
+maid covering with cheese-cloth bags the evening's costumes.
+
+"It went all right, I think, Fred."
+
+"Yes," he said absently. "Go on out, Alice. I'll let you come back in a
+few minutes."
+
+He waited until the door closed.
+
+"What's the matter?" she asked rather indifferently. "If it's more
+quarreling in the company I don't want to hear it. I'm tired." Then she
+took a full look at him, and sat up.
+
+"Fred! What is it?"
+
+He gave her the truth, brutally and at once.
+
+"I think Judson Clark was in the house to-night."
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+"Neither would I, if somebody told me," he agreed sullenly. "I saw
+him. Don't you suppose I know him? And if you don't believe me, call
+Saunders. I got him out front. He knows."
+
+"You called Saunders!"
+
+"Why not? I tell you, Bev, I was nearly crazy. I'm nearly crazy now."
+
+"What did Saunders say?"
+
+"If he didn't know Clark was dead, he'd say it was Clark."
+
+She was worried by that time, but far more collected than he was. She
+sat, absently tapping the shelf with a nail file, and reflecting.
+
+"All right," she said. "Suppose he was? What then? He has been in hiding
+for ten years. Why shouldn't he continue to hide? What would bring him
+out now? Unless he needed money. Was he shabby?"
+
+"No," he said sulkily. "He was with a girl. He was dressed all right."
+
+"You didn't say anything, except to Saunders?"
+
+"No I'm not crazy."
+
+"I'd better see Joe," she reflected. "Go and get him, Fred. And tell
+Alice she needn't wait."
+
+She got up and moved about the room, putting things away and finding
+relief in movement, a still beautiful woman, with rather accentuated
+features and an easy carriage. Without her make-up the stage illusion
+of her youth was gone, and she showed past suffering and present strain.
+Just then she was uneasy and resentful, startled but not particularly
+alarmed. Her reason told her that Judson Clark, even if he still lived
+and had been there that night, meant to leave the dead past to care for
+itself, and wished no more than she to revive it. She was surprised to
+find, as she moved about, that she was trembling.
+
+Her brother came back, and she turned to meet him. To her surprise he
+was standing inside the door, white to the lips and staring at her with
+wild eyes.
+
+"Saunders!" he said chokingly, "Saunders, the damned fool! He's given it
+away."
+
+He staggered to a chair, and ran a handkerchief across his shaking lips.
+
+"He told Bassett, of the Times-Republican," he managed to say. "Do
+you--do you know what that means? And Bassett got Clark's automobile
+number. He said so."
+
+He looked up at her, his face twitching. "They're hound dogs on a scent,
+Bev. They'll get the story, and blow it wide open."
+
+"You know I'm prepared for that. I have been for ten years."
+
+"I know." He was suddenly emotional. He reached out and took her hand.
+"Poor old Bev!" he said. "After the way you've come back, too. It's a
+damned shame."
+
+She was calmer than he was, less convinced for one thing, and better
+balanced always. She let him stroke her hand, standing near him with her
+eyes absent and a little hard.
+
+"I'd better make sure that was Jud first," he offered, after a time,
+"and then warn him."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Bassett will be after him."
+
+"No!" she commanded sharply. "No, Fred. You let the thing alone. You've
+built up an imaginary situation, and you're not thinking straight.
+Plenty of things might happen. What probably has happened is that this
+Bassett is at home and in bed."
+
+She sent him out for a taxi soon after, and they went back to the hotel.
+But, alone later on in her suite in the Ardmore she did not immediately
+go to bed. She put on a dressing gown and stood for a long time by her
+window, looking out. Instead of the city lights, however, she saw a
+range of snow-capped mountains, and sheltered at their foot the Clark
+ranch house, built by the old millionaire as a place of occasional
+refuge from the pressure of his life. There he had raised his fine
+horses, and trained them for the track. There, when late in life he
+married, he had taken his wife for their honeymoon and two years later,
+for the birth of their son. And there, when she died, he had returned
+with the child, himself broken and prematurely aged, to be killed by one
+of his own stallions when the boy was fifteen.
+
+Six years his own master, Judson had been twenty-one to her twenty, when
+she first met him. Going the usual pace, too, and throwing money right
+and left. He had financed her as a star, ransacking Europe for her
+stage properties, and then he fell in love with her. She shivered as she
+remembered it. It had been desperate and terrible, because she had cared
+for some one else.
+
+Standing by the window, she wondered as she had done over and over again
+for ten years, what would have happened if, instead of marrying Howard,
+she had married Judson Clark? Would he have settled down? She had felt
+sometimes that in his wildest moments he was only playing a game that
+amused him; that the hard-headed part of him inherited from his father
+sometimes stood off and watched, with a sort of interested detachment,
+the follies of the other. That he played his wild game with his tongue
+in his cheek.
+
+She left the window, turned out the lights and got into her bed. She
+was depressed and lonely, and she cried a little. After a time she
+remembered that she had not put any cream on her face. She crawled out
+again and went through the familiar motions in the dark.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Dick rose the next morning with a sense of lightness and content that
+sent him singing into his shower. In the old stable which now housed
+both Nettie and the little car Mike was washing them both with
+indiscriminate wavings of the hose nozzle, his old pipe clutched in
+his teeth. From below there came up the odors of frying sausages and of
+strong hot coffee.
+
+The world was a good place. A fine old place. It had work and play and
+love. It had office hours and visits and the golf links, and it had soft
+feminine eyes and small tender figures to be always cared for and looked
+after.
+
+She liked him. She did not think he was old. She thought his profession
+was the finest in the world. She had wondered if he would have time to
+come and see her, some day. Time! He considered very seriously, as he
+shaved before the slightly distorted mirror in the bathroom, whether
+it would be too soon to run in that afternoon, just to see if she was
+tired, or had caught cold or anything? Perhaps to-morrow would look
+better. No, hang it all, to-day was to-day.
+
+On his way from the bathroom to his bedroom he leaned over the
+staircase.
+
+"Aunt Lucy!" he called.
+
+"Yes, Dick?"
+
+"The top of the morning to you. D'you think Minnie would have time to
+press my blue trousers this morning?"
+
+There was the sound of her chair being pushed back in the dining-room,
+of a colloquy in the kitchen, and Minnie herself appeared below him.
+
+"Just throw them down, Doctor Dick," she said. "I've got an iron hot
+now."
+
+"Some day, Minnie," he announced, "you will wear a halo and with the
+angels sing."
+
+This mood of unreasoning happiness continued all morning. He went from
+house to house, properly grave and responsible but with a small song in
+his heart, and about eleven o'clock he found time to stop at the village
+haberdasher's and to select a new tie, which he had wrapped and stuffed
+in his pocket. And which, inspected in broad day later on a country
+road, gave him uneasy qualms as to its brilliance.
+
+At the luncheon table he was almost hilarious, and David played up to
+him, albeit rather heavily. But Lucy was thoughtful and quiet. She had a
+sense of things somehow closing down on them, of hands reaching out from
+the past, and clutching; Mrs. Morgan, Beverly Carlysle, Dick in love and
+possibly going back to Norada. Unlike David, who was content that one
+emergency had passed, she looked ahead and saw their common life a
+series of such chances, with their anxieties and their dangers.
+
+She could not eat.
+
+Nevertheless when she herself admitted a new patient for Dick that
+afternoon, she had no premonition of trouble. She sent him into the
+waiting-room, a tall, robust and youngish man, perhaps in his late
+thirties, and went quietly on her way to her sitting-room, and to her
+weekly mending.
+
+On the other hand, Louis Bassett was feeling more or less uncomfortable.
+There was an air of peace and quiet respectability about the old house,
+a domestic odor of baking cake, a quietness and stability that somehow
+made his errand appear absurd. To connect it with Judson Clark and his
+tumultuous past seemed ridiculous.
+
+His errand, on the surface, was a neuralgic headache.
+
+When, hat in hand, he walked into Dick's consulting room, he had made up
+his mind that he would pay the price of an overactive imagination for a
+prescription, walk out again, and try to forget that he had let a chance
+resemblance carry him off his feet.
+
+But, as he watched the man who sat across from him, tilted back in his
+swivel chair, he was not so sure. Here was the same tall figure, the
+heavy brown hair, the features and boyish smile of the photograph he had
+seen the night before. As Judson Clark might have looked at thirty-two
+this man looked.
+
+He made his explanation easily. Was in town for the day. Subject to
+these headaches. Worse over the right eye. No, he didn't wear glasses;
+perhaps he should.
+
+It wasn't Clark. It couldn't be. Jud Clark sitting there tilted back
+in an old chair and asking questions as to the nature of his fictitious
+pain! Impossible. Nevertheless he was of a mind to clear the slate and
+get some sleep that night, and having taken his prescription and paid
+for it, he sat back and commenced an apparently casual interrogation.
+
+"Two names on your sign, I see. Father and son, I suppose?"
+
+"Doctor David Livingstone is my uncle."
+
+"I should think you'd be in the city. Limitations to this sort of thing,
+aren't there?"
+
+"I like it," said Dick, with an eye on the office clock.
+
+"Patients are your friends, of course. Born and raised here, I suppose?"
+
+"Not exactly. I was raised on a ranch in Wyoming. My father had a ranch
+out there."
+
+Bassett shot a glance at him, but Dick was calm and faintly smiling.
+
+"Wyoming!" the reporter commented. "That's a long way from here.
+Anywhere near the new oil fields?"
+
+"Not far from Norada. That's the oil center," Dick offered,
+good-naturedly. He rose, and glanced again at the clock. "If those
+headaches continue you'd better have your eyes examined."
+
+Bassett was puzzled. It seemed to him that there had been a shade of
+evasion in the other man's manner, slightly less frankness in his eyes.
+But he showed no excitement, nothing furtive or alarmed. And the open
+and unsolicited statement as to Norada baffled him. He had to admit to
+himself either that a man strongly resembling Judson Clark had come from
+the same neighborhood, or--
+
+"Norada?" he said. "That's where the big Clark ranch was located, wasn't
+it? Ever happen to meet Judson Clark?"
+
+"Our place was very isolated."
+
+Bassett found himself being politely ushered out, considerably more at
+sea than when he went in and slightly irritated. His annoyance was not
+decreased by the calm voice behind him which said:
+
+"Better drink considerable water when you take that stuff. Some stomachs
+don't tolerate it very well."
+
+The door closed. The reporter stood in the waiting-room for a moment.
+Then he clapped on his hat.
+
+"Well, I'm a damned fool," he muttered, and went out into the street.
+
+He was disappointed and a trifle sheepish. Life was full of queer
+chances, that was all. No resemblance on earth, no coincidence of
+birthplace, could make him believe that Judson Clark, waster, profligate
+and fugitive from the law was now sitting up at night with sick
+children, or delivering babies.
+
+After a time he remembered the prescription in his hand, and was about
+to destroy it. He stopped and examined it, and then carefully placed it
+in his pocket-book. After all, there were things that looked queer. The
+fellow had certainly evaded that last question of his.
+
+He made his way, head bent, toward the station.
+
+He had ten minutes to wait, and he wandered to the newsstand. He made
+a casual inspection of its display, bought a newspaper and was turning
+away, when he stopped and gazed after a man who had just passed him from
+an out-bound train.
+
+The reporter looked after him with amused interest. Gregory, too! The
+Livingstone chap had certainly started something. But it was odd, too.
+How had Gregory traced him? Wasn't there something more in Gregory's
+presence there than met the eye? Gregory's visit might be, like his own,
+the desire to satisfy himself that the man was or was not Clark. Or it
+might be the result of a conviction that it was Clark, and a warning
+against himself. But if he had traced him, didn't that indicate that
+Clark himself had got into communication with him? In other words, that
+the chap was Clark, after all? Gregory, having made an inquiry of a
+hackman, had started along the street, and, after a moment's thought,
+Bassett fell into line behind him. He was extremely interested and
+increasingly cheerful. He remained well behind, and with his newspaper
+rolled in his hand assumed the easy yet brisk walk of the commuters
+around him, bound for home and their early suburban dinners.
+
+Half way along Station Street Gregory stopped before the Livingstone
+house, read the sign, and rang the doorbell. The reporter slowed down,
+to give him time for admission, and then slowly passed. In front of
+Harrison Miller's house, however, he stopped and waited. He lighted a
+cigarette and made a careful survey of the old place. Strange, if this
+were to prove the haven where Judson Clark had taken refuge, this old
+brick two-story dwelling, with its ramshackle stable in the rear, its
+small vegetable garden, its casual beds of simple garden flowers set in
+a half acre or so of ground.
+
+A doctor. A pill shooter. Jud Clark!
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+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:
+
+"Well, that's that. He certainly looked like Clark to me."
+
+"I'll say he did."
+
+"Rather surprised him, didn't you?"
+
+"Oh, he was all right," Gregory said. "I didn't tell him anything, of
+course."
+
+Bassett looked at his watch.
+
+"I was after you, all right," he said, cheerfully. "But if I was barking
+up the wrong tree, I'm done. I don't have to be hit on the head to
+make me stop. Come and have a soda-water on me," he finished amiably.
+"There's no train until seven."
+
+But Gregory refused.
+
+"No, thanks. I'll wander on down to the station and get a paper."
+
+The reporter smiled. Gregory was holding a grudge against him, for a bad
+night and a bad day.
+
+"All right," he said affably. "I'll see you at the train. I'll walk
+about a bit."
+
+He turned and started back up the street again, walking idly. His
+chagrin was very real. He hated to be fooled, and fooled he had been.
+Gregory was not the only one who had lost a night's sleep. Then,
+unexpectedly, he was hailed from the curbstone, and he saw with
+amazement that it was Dick Livingstone.
+
+"Take you anywhere?" Dick asked. "How's the headache?"
+
+"Better, thanks." Bassett stared at him. "No, I'm just walking around
+until train-time. Are you starting out or going home, at this hour?"
+
+"Going home. Well, glad the head's better."
+
+He drove on, leaving the reporter gazing after him. So Gregory had
+been lying. He hadn't seen this chap at all. Then why--? He walked
+on, turning this new phase of the situation over in his mind. Why
+this elaborate fiction, if Gregory had merely gone in, waited for ten
+minutes, and come out again?
+
+It wasn't reasonable. It wasn't logical. Something had happened inside
+the house to convince Gregory that he was right. He had seen somebody,
+or something. He hadn't needed to lie. He could have said frankly
+that he had seen no one. But no, he had built up a fabric carefully
+calculated to throw Bassett off the scent.
+
+He saw Dick stop in front of the house, get out and enter. And coming
+to a decision, he followed him and rang the doorbell. For a long time no
+one answered. Then the maid of the afternoon opened the door, her eyes
+red with crying, and looked at him with hostility.
+
+"Doctor Richard Livingstone?"
+
+"You can't see him."
+
+"It's important."
+
+"Well, you can't see him. Doctor David has just had a stroke. He's in
+the office now, on the floor."
+
+She closed the door on him, and he turned and went away. It was all
+clear to him; Gregory had seen, not Clark, but the older man; had told
+him and gone away. And under the shock the older man had collapsed. That
+was sad. It was very sad. But it was also extremely convincing.
+
+He sat up late that night again, running over the entries in his
+notebook. The old story, as he pieced it out, ran like this:
+
+It had been twelve years ago, when, according to the old files,
+Clark had financed Beverly Carlysle's first starring venture. He had,
+apparently, started out in the beginning only to give her the publicity
+she needed. In devising it, however, he had shown a sort of boyish
+recklessness and ingenuity that had caught the interest of the press,
+and set newspaper men to chuckling wherever they got together.
+
+He had got together a dozen or so of young men like himself, wealthy,
+idle and reckless with youth, and, headed by him, they had made the
+exploitation of the young star an occupation. The newspapers referred
+to the star and her constellation as Beverly Carlysle and her Broadway
+Beauties. It had been unvicious, young, and highly entertaining, and it
+had cost Judson Clark his membership in his father's conservative old
+clubs.
+
+For a time it livened the theatrical world with escapades that were
+harmless enough, if sensational. Then, after a time, newspaper row began
+to whisper that young Clark was in love with the girl. The Broadway
+Beauties broke up, after a wild farewell dinner. The audiences ceased
+to expect a row of a dozen youths, all dressed alike with gardenias in
+their buttonholes and perhaps red neckties with their evening suits, to
+rise in their boxes on the star's appearance and solemnly bow. And the
+star herself lost a little of the anxious look she frequently wore.
+
+The story went, after a while, that Judson Clark had been refused, and
+was taking his refusal badly. Reporters saw him, carelessly dressed,
+outside the stage door waiting, and the story went that the girl had
+thrown him over, money and all, for her leading man. One thing was
+clear; Clark, not a drinker before, had taken to drinking hard, and
+after a time, and some unpleasant scenes probably, she refused to see
+him any more.
+
+When the play closed, in June, 1911, she married Howard Lucas,
+her leading man; his third wife. Lucas had been not a bad chap, a
+good-looking, rather negligible man, given to all-day Sunday poker,
+carefully valeted, not very keen mentally, but amiable. They had bought
+a house on East Fifty-sixth Street, and were looking for a new play
+with Lucas as co-star, when he unaccountably went to pieces nervously,
+stopped sleeping, and developed a slight twitching of his handsome,
+rather vacuous face.
+
+Judson Clark had taken his yacht and gone to Europe, and was reported
+from here and there not too favorably. But when he came back, in early
+September, he had apparently recovered from his infatuation, was his
+old, carefully dressed self again, and when interviewed declared his
+intention of spending the winter on his Wyoming ranch.
+
+Of course he must have heard of Lucas's breakdown, and equally, of
+course, he must have seen them both. What happened at that interview, by
+what casual attitude he allayed Lucas's probable jealousy and the girl's
+own nervousness, Bassett had no way of discovering. It was clear that
+he convinced them both of his good faith, for the next note in the
+reporter's book was simply a date, September 12, 1911.
+
+That was the day they had all started West together, traveling in
+Clark's private car, with Lucas, twitching slightly, smiling and waving
+farewell from a window.
+
+The big smash did not come until the middle of October.
+
+Bassett sat back and considered. He had a fairly clear idea of the
+conditions at the ranch; daily riding, some little reading, and a great
+deal too much of each other. A sick man, too, unhappy in his exile,
+chafing against his restrictions, lonely and irritable. The girl, early
+seeing her mistake, and Clark's jealousy of her husband. The door into
+their apartment closing, the thousand and one unconscious intimacies
+between man and wife, the breakfast for two going up the stairs, and
+below that hot-eyed boy, agonized and passionately jealous, yet meeting
+them and looking after them, their host and a gentleman.
+
+Lucas took to drinking, after a time, to allay his sheer boredom. And
+Jud Clark drank with him. At the end of three weeks they were both
+drinking heavily, and were politely quarrelsome. Bassett could fill
+that in also. He could see the girl protesting, watching, increasingly
+anxious as she saw that Clark's jealousy was matched by her husband's.
+
+A queer picture, he reflected, the three of them shut away on the great
+ranch, and every day some new tension, some new strain.
+
+Then, one night at dinner, they quarreled, and Beverly left the table.
+She was going to pack her things and go back to New York. She had felt,
+probably, that something was bound to snap. And while she was upstairs
+Clark had shot and killed Howard Lucas, and himself disappeared.
+
+He had run, testimony at the inquest revealed, to the corral, and
+saddled a horse. Although it was only October, it was snowing hard,
+but in spite of that he had turned his horse toward the mountains. By
+midnight a posse from Norada had started out, and another up the Dry
+River Canyon, but the storm turned into a blizzard in the mountains, and
+they were obliged to turn back. A few inches more snow, and they could
+not have got their horses out. A week or so later, with a crust of ice
+over it, a few of them began again, with no expectation, however, of
+finding Clark alive. They came across his horse on the second day, but
+they did not find him, and there were some among them who felt that,
+after all, old Elihu Clark's boy had chosen the better way.
+
+Bassett closed his notebook and lighted a cigar.
+
+There was a big story to be had for the seeking, a whale of a story. He
+could go to the office, give them a hint, draw expense money and start
+for Norada the next night. He knew well enough that he would have to
+begin there, and that it would not be easy. Witnesses of the affair
+at the ranch would be missing now, or when found the first accuracy of
+their statements would either be dulled by time or have been added to
+with the passing years. The ranch itself might have passed into other
+hands. To reconstruct the events of ten years ago might be impossible,
+or nearly so. But that was not his problem. He would have to connect
+Norada with Haverly, Clark with Livingstone. One thing only was simple.
+If he found Livingstone's story was correct, that he had lived on a
+ranch near Norada before the crime and as Livingstone, then he would
+acknowledge that two men could look precisely alike and come from the
+same place, and yet not be the same. If not--
+
+But, after he had turned out his light and got into bed, he began to
+feel a certain distaste for his self-appointed task. If Livingstone
+were Clark, if after years of effort he had pulled himself up by his own
+boot-straps, had made himself a man out of the reckless boy he had been,
+a decent and useful citizen, why pull him down? After all, the world
+hadn't lost much in Lucas; a sleek, not over-intelligent big animal,
+that had been Howard Lucas.
+
+He decided to sleep over it, and by morning he found himself not only
+disinclined to the business, but firmly resolved to let it drop. Things
+were well enough as they were. The woman in the case was making good.
+Jud was making good. And nothing would restore Howard Lucas to that
+small theatrical world of his which had waved him good-bye at the
+station so long ago.
+
+He shaved and dressed, his resolution still holding. He had indeed
+almost a conscious glow of virtue, for he was making one of those
+inglorious and unsung sacrifices which ought to bring a man credit in
+the next world, because they certainly got him nowhere in this. He was
+quite affable to the colored waiter who served his breakfasts in the
+bachelor apartment house, and increased his weekly tip to a dollar and a
+half. Then he sat down and opened the Times-Republican, skimming over
+it after his habit for his own space, and frowning over a row of
+exclamation and interrogation points unwittingly set behind the name of
+the mayor.
+
+On the second page, however, he stopped, coffee cup in air. "Is Judson
+Clark alive? Wife of former ranch manager makes confession."
+
+A woman named Margaret Donaldson, it appeared, fatally injured by an
+automobile near the town of Norada, Wyoming, had made a confession on
+her deathbed. In it she stated that, afraid to die without shriving her
+soul, she had sent for the sheriff of Dallas County and had made the
+following confession:
+
+That following the tragedy at the Clark ranch her husband, John
+Donaldson, since dead, had immediately following the inquest, where he
+testified, started out into the mountains in the hope of finding Clark
+alive, as he knew of a deserted ranger's cabin where Clark sometimes
+camped when hunting. It was his intention to search for Clark at this
+cabin and effect his escape. He carried with him food and brandy.
+
+That, owing to the blizzard, he was very nearly frozen; that he was
+obliged to abandon his horse, shooting it before he did so, and that,
+close to death himself, he finally reached the cabin and there found
+Judson Clark, the fugitive, who was very ill.
+
+She further testified that her husband cared for Clark for four days,
+Clark being delirious at the time, and that on the fifth day he started
+back on foot for the Clark ranch, having left Clark locked in the cabin,
+and that on the following night he took three horses, two saddled, and
+one packed with food and supplies. That accompanied by herself they went
+back to the cabin in the mountains and that she remained there to
+care for Clark, while her husband returned to the ranch, to prevent
+suspicion.
+
+That, a day or so later, looking out of her window, she had perceived
+a man outside in the snow coming toward the cabin, and that she had
+thought it one of the searching party. That her first instinct had been
+to lock him outside, but that she had finally admitted him, and that
+thereafter he had remained and had helped her to care for the sick man.
+
+Unfortunately for the rest of the narrative it appeared that the injured
+woman had here lapsed into a coma, and had subsequently died, carrying
+her further knowledge with her.
+
+But, the article went on, the story opened a field of infinite surmise.
+In all probability Judson Clark was still alive, living under some
+assumed identity, free of punishment, outwardly respectable. Three years
+before he had been adjudged legally dead, and the estate divided, under
+bond of the legatees.
+
+Close to a hundred million dollars had gone to charities, and Judson
+Clark, wherever he was, would be dependent on his own efforts for
+existence. He could have summoned all the legal talent in the country to
+his defense, but instead he had chosen to disappear.
+
+The whole situation turned on the deposition of Mrs. Donaldson, now
+dead. The local authorities at Norada maintained that the woman had not
+been sane for several years. On the other hand, the cabin to which she
+referred was well known, and no search of it had been made at the time.
+Clark's horse had been found not ten miles from the town, and the cabin
+was buried in snow twenty miles further away. If Clark had made that
+journey on foot he had accomplished the impossible.
+
+Certain facts, according to the local correspondent, bore out Margaret
+Donaldson's confession. Inquiry showed that she was supposed to have
+spent the winter following Judson Clark's crime with relatives in Omaha.
+She had returned to the ranch the following spring.
+
+A detailed description of Judson Clark, and a photograph of him
+accompanied the story. Bassett re-read the article carefully, and
+swore a little, under his breath. If he had needed confirmation of
+his suspicions, it lay to his hand. But the situation had changed over
+night. There would be a search for Clark now, as wide as the knowledge
+of his disappearance. Local police authorities would turn him up in
+every city from Maine to the Pacific coast. Even Europe would be on the
+lookout and South America.
+
+But it was not the police he feared so much as the press. Not all of the
+papers, but some of them, would go after that story, and send their best
+men on it. It offered not so much a chance of solution as an opportunity
+to revive the old dramatic story. He could see, when he closed his eyes,
+the local photographers climbing to that cabin and later sending its
+pictures broadcast, and divers gentlemen of the press, eager to
+pit their wits against ten years of time and the ability of a once
+conspicuous man to hide from the law, packing their suitcases for
+Norada.
+
+No, he couldn't stop now. He would go on, like the others, and with this
+advantage, that he was morally certain he could lay his hands on Clark
+at any time. But he would have to prove his case, connect it. Who, for
+instance, was the other man in the cabin? He must have known who the boy
+was who lay in that rough bunk, delirious. Must have suspected anyhow.
+That made him, like the Donaldsons, accessory after the fact, and
+criminally liable. Small chance of him coming out with any confession.
+Yet he was the connecting link. Must be.
+
+On his third reading the reporter began to visualize the human elements
+of the fight to save the boy; he saw moving before him the whole pitiful
+struggle; the indomitable ranch manager, his heart-breaking struggle
+with the blizzard, the shooting of his horse, the careful disarming of
+suspicion, and later the intrepid woman, daring that night ride through
+snow that had sent the posse back to its firesides to the boy, locked in
+the cabin and raving.
+
+His mind was busy as he packed his suitcase. Already he had forgotten
+his compunctions of the early morning; he moved about methodically,
+calculating roughly what expense money he would need, and the line of
+attack, if any, required at the office. Between Norada and that old
+brick house at Haverly lay his story. Ten years of it. He was closing
+his bag when he remembered the little girl in the blue dress, at the
+theater. He straightened and scowled. After a moment he snapped the bag
+shut. Damn it all, if Clark had chosen to tie up with a girl, that was on
+Clark's conscience, not his.
+
+But he was vaguely uncomfortable.
+
+"It's a queer world, Joe," he observed to the waiter, who had come in
+for the breakfast dishes.
+
+
+"Yes, sir. It is that," said Joe.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+DURING all the long night Dick sat by David's bedside. Earlier in
+the evening there had been a consultation; David had suffered a light
+stroke, but there was no paralysis, and the prognosis was good. For this
+time, at least, David had escaped, but there must be no other time. He
+was to be kept quiet and free from worry, his diet was to be carefully
+regulated, and with care he still had long years before him.
+
+David slept, his breathing heavy and slow. In the morning there would
+be a nurse, but that night Dick, having sent Lucy to bed, himself
+kept watch. On the walnut bed lay Doctor David's portly figure, dimly
+outlined by the shaded lamp, and on a chair drawn close sat Dick.
+
+He was wide-awake and very anxious, but as time went on and no untoward
+symptoms appeared, as David's sleep seemed to grow easier and more
+natural, Dick's thoughts wandered. They went to Elizabeth first, and
+then on and on from that starting point, through the years ahead. He saw
+the old house with Elizabeth waiting in it for his return; he saw both
+their lives united and flowing on together, with children, with small
+cares, with the routine of daily living, and behind it all the two of
+them, hand in hand.
+
+Then his mind turned on himself. How often in the past ten years it had
+done that! He had sat off, with a sort of professional detachment,
+and studied his own case. With the entrance into his world of the new
+science of psycho-analysis he had made now and then small, not very
+sincere, attempts to penetrate the veil of his own unconscious devising.
+Not very sincere, for with the increase of his own knowledge of the mind
+he had learned that behind such conditions as his lay generally,
+deeply hidden, the desire to forget. And that behind that there lay,
+acknowledged or not, fear.
+
+"But to forget what?" he used to say to David, when the first text-books
+on the new science appeared, and he and David were learning the
+new terminology, Dick eagerly and David with contemptuous snorts of
+derision. "To forget what?"
+
+"You had plenty to forget," David would say, stolidly. "I think this
+man's a fool, but at that--you'd had your father's death, for one thing.
+And you'd gone pretty close to the edge of eternity yourself. You'd
+fought single-handed the worst storm of ten years, you came out of it
+with double pneumonia, and you lay alone in that cabin about fifty-six
+hours. Forget! You had plenty to forget."
+
+It had never occurred to Dick to doubt David's story. It did not, even
+now. He had accepted it unquestioningly from the first, supplemented the
+shadowy childish memories that remained to him with it, and gradually
+co-ordinating the two had built out of them his house of the past.
+
+Thus, the elderly man whom he dimly remembered was not only his father;
+he was David's brother. And he had died. It was the shock of that death,
+according to David, that had sent him into the mountains, where David
+had followed and nursed him back to health.
+
+It was quite simple, and even explicable by the new psychology. Not that
+he had worried about the new psychology in those early days. He had
+been profoundly lethargic, passive and incurious. It had been too much
+trouble even to think.
+
+True, he had brought over from those lost years certain instincts and a
+few mental pictures. He had had a certain impatience at first over the
+restrictions of comparative poverty; he had had to learn the value of
+money. And the pictures he retained had had a certain opulence which the
+facts appeared to contradict. Thus he remembered a large ranch house,
+and innumerable horses, grazing in meadows or milling in a corral. But
+David had warned him early that there was no estate; that his future
+depended entirely on his own efforts.
+
+Then the new life had caught and held him. For the first time he had
+mothering and love. Lucy was his mother, and David the pattern to which
+he meant to conform. He was happy and contented.
+
+Now and then, in the early days, he had been conscious of a desire to go
+back and try to reconstruct his past again. Later on he knew that if
+he were ever to fill up the gap in his life, it would be easier in that
+environment of once familiar things. But in the first days he had been
+totally dependent on David, and money was none too plentiful. Later on,
+as the new life took hold, as he went to medical college and worked at
+odd clerical jobs in vacations to help pay his way, there had been
+no chance. Then the war came, and on his return there had been the
+practice, and his knowledge that David's health was not what it should
+have been.
+
+But as time went on he was more and more aware that there was in him a
+peculiar shrinking from going back, an almost apprehension. He knew more
+of the mind than he had before, and he knew that not physical hardship,
+but mental stress, caused such lapses as his. But what mental stress had
+been great enough for such a smash? His father's death?
+
+Strain and fear, said the new psychology. Fear? He had never found
+himself lacking in courage. Certainly he would have fought a man who
+called him a coward. But there was cowardice behind all such conditions
+as his; a refusal of the mind to face reality. It was weak. Weak. He
+hated himself for that past failure of his to face reality.
+
+But that night, sitting by David's bed, he faced reality with a
+vengeance. He was in love, and he wanted the things that love should
+bring to a normal man. He felt normal. He felt, strengthened by love,
+that he could face whatever life had to bring, so long as also it
+brought Elizabeth.
+
+Painfully he went back over his talk with David the preceding Sunday
+night.
+
+"Don't be a fool," David had said. "Go ahead and take her, if she'll
+have you. And don't be too long about it. I'm not as young as I used to
+be."
+
+"What I feel," he had replied, "is this: I don't know, of course, if she
+cares." David had grunted. "I do know I'm going to try to make her care,
+if it--if it's humanly possible. But I'd like to go back to the ranch
+again, David, before things go any further."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I'd like to fill the gap. Attempt it anyhow."
+
+What he was thinking about, as he sat by David's bedside, was David's
+attitude toward that threatened return of his. For David had opposed it,
+offering a dozen trivial, almost puerile reasons. Had shown indeed, a
+dogged obstinacy and an irritability that were somehow oddly like fear.
+David afraid! David, whose life and heart were open books! David, whose
+eyes never wavered, nor his courage!
+
+"You let well enough alone, Dick," he had finished. "You've got
+everything you want. And a medical man can't afford to go gadding about.
+When people want him they want him."
+
+But he had noticed that David had been different, since. He had taken to
+following him with his faded old eyes, had even spoken once of retiring
+and turning all the work over to him. Was it possible that David did not
+want him to go back to Norada?
+
+He bent over and felt the sick man's pulse. It was stronger, not so
+rapid. The mechanical act took him back to his first memory of David.
+
+He had been lying in a rough bunk in the mountain cabin, and David,
+beside him on a wooden box, had been bending forward and feeling his
+pulse. He had felt weak and utterly inert, and he knew now that he
+had been very ill. The cabin had been a small and lonely one, with
+snow-peaks not far above it, and it had been very cold. During the day
+a woman kept up the fire. Her name was Maggie, and she moved about the
+cabin like a thin ghost. At night she slept in a lean-to shed and David
+kept the fire going. A man who seemed to know him well--John Donaldson,
+he learned, was his name--was Maggie's husband, and every so often he
+came, about dawn, and brought food and supplies.
+
+After a long time, as he grew stronger, Maggie had gone away, and David
+had fried the bacon and heated the canned tomatoes or the beans. Before
+she left she had written out a recipe for biscuits, and David would
+study over it painstakingly, and then produce a panfull of burned and
+blackened lumps, over which he would groan and agonize.
+
+He himself had been totally incurious. He had lived a sort of animal
+life of food and sleep, and later on of small tentative excursions
+around the room on legs that shook when he walked. The snows came and
+almost covered the cabin, and David had read a great deal, and talked at
+intervals. David had tried to fill up the gap in his mind. That was how
+he learned that David was his father's brother, and that his father had
+recently died.
+
+Going over it all now, it had certain elements that were not clear. They
+had, for instance, never gone back to the ranch at all. With the first
+clearing of the snow in the spring John Donaldson had appeared again,
+leading two saddled horses and driving a pack animal, and they had
+started off, leaving him standing in the clearing and gazing after them.
+But they had not followed Donaldson's trail. They had started West, over
+the mountains, and David did not know the country. Once they were lost
+for three days.
+
+He looked at the figure on the bed. Only ten years, and yet at that time
+David had been vigorous, seemed almost young. He had aged in that ten
+years. On the bed he was an old man, a tired old man at that. On that
+long ride he had been tireless. He had taken the burden of the nightly
+camps, and had hacked a trail with his hatchet across snow fields while
+Dick, still weak but furiously protesting, had been compelled to stand
+and watch.
+
+Now, with the perspective of time behind him, and with the clearly
+defined issue of David's protest against his return to the West, he went
+again over the details of that winter and spring. Why had they not taken
+Donaldson's trail? Or gone back to the ranch? Why, since Donaldson
+could make it, had not other visitors come? Another doctor, the night
+he almost died, and David sat under the lamp behind the close-screened
+windows, and read the very pocket prayer-book that now lay on the stand
+beside the bed? Why had they burned his clothes, and Donaldson brought
+a new outfit? Why did Donaldson, for all his requests, never bring a
+razor, so that when they struck the railroad, miles from anywhere, they
+were both full bearded?
+
+He brought himself up sharply. He had allowed his imagination to run
+away with him. He had been depicting a flight and no one who knew David
+could imagine him in flight.
+
+Nevertheless he was conscious of a new uneasiness and anxiety. When
+David recovered sufficiently he would go to Norada, as he had told
+Elizabeth, and there he would find the Donaldsons, and clear up the
+things that bothered him. After that--
+
+He thought of Elizabeth, of her sweetness and sanity. He remembered her
+at the theater the evening before, lost in its fictitious emotions, its
+counterfeit drama. He had felt moved to comfort her, when he found her
+on the verge of tears.
+
+"Just remember, they're only acting," he had said.
+
+"Yes. But life does do things like that to people."
+
+"Not often. The theater deals in the dramatic exceptions to life. You
+and I, plain bread and butter people, come to see these things because
+we get a sort of vicarious thrill out of them."
+
+"Doesn't anything ever happen to the plain bread and butter people?"
+
+"A little jam, sometimes. Or perhaps they drop it, butter side down, on
+the carpet."
+
+"But that is tragedy, isn't it?"
+
+He had had to acknowledge that it might be. But he had been quite
+emphatic over the fact that most people didn't drop it.
+
+After a long time he slept in his chair. The spring wind came in through
+the opened window, and fluttered the leaves of the old prayer-book on
+the stand.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+The week that followed was an anxious one. David's physical condition
+slowly improved. The slight thickness was gone from his speech, and he
+sipped resignedly at the broths Lucy or the nurse brought at regular
+intervals. Over the entire house there hung all day the odor of stewing
+chicken or of beef tea in the making, and above the doorbell was a white
+card which said: "Don't ring. Walk in."
+
+As it happened, no one in the old house had seen Maggie Donaldson's
+confession in the newspaper. Lucy was saved that anxiety, at least.
+Appearing, as it did, the morning after David's stroke, it came in with
+the morning milk, lay about unnoticed, and passed out again, to start
+a fire or line a pantry shelf. Harrison Miller, next door, read it over
+his coffee. Walter Wheeler in the eight-thirty train glanced at it and
+glanced away. Nina Ward read it in bed. And that was all.
+
+There came to the house a steady procession of inquirers and bearers
+of small tribute, flowers and jellies mostly, but other things also.
+A table in David's room held a steadily growing number of bedroom
+slippers, and Mrs. Morgan had been seen buying soles for still others.
+David, propped up in his bed, would cheer a little at these votive
+offerings, and then relapse again into the heavy troubled silence that
+worried Dick and frightened Lucy Crosby. Something had happened, she was
+sure. Something connected with Dick. She watched David when Dick was
+in the room, and she saw that his eyes followed the younger man with
+something very like terror.
+
+And for the first time since he had walked into the house that night so
+long ago, followed by the tall young man for whose coming a letter had
+prepared her, she felt that David had withdrawn himself from her. She
+went about her daily tasks a little hurt, and waited for him to choose
+his own time. But, as the days went on, she saw that whatever this new
+thing might be, he meant to fight it out alone, and that the fighting it
+out alone was bad for him. He improved very slowly.
+
+She wondered, sometimes, if it was after all because of Dick's growing
+interest in Elizabeth Wheeler. She knew that he was seeing her daily,
+although he was too busy now for more than a hasty call. She felt that
+she could even tell when he had seen her; he would come in, glowing and
+almost exalted, and, as if to make up for the moments stolen from David,
+would leap up the stairs two at a time and burst into the invalid's room
+like a cheerful cyclone. Wasn't it possible that David had begun to
+feel as she did, that the girl was entitled to a clean slate before
+she pledged herself to Dick? And the slate--poor Dick!--could never be
+cleaned.
+
+Then, one day, David astonished them both. He was propped up in his bed,
+and he had demanded a cigar, and been very gently but firmly refused.
+He had been rather sulky about it, and Dick had been attempting to rally
+him into better humor when he said suddenly:
+
+"I've had time to think things over, Dick. I haven't been fair to you.
+You're thrown away here. Besides--" he hesitated. Then: "We might as
+well face it. The day of the general practitioner has gone."
+
+"I don't believe it," Dick said stoutly. "Maybe we are only signposts
+to point the way to the other fellows, but the world will always need
+signposts."
+
+"What I've been thinking of," David pursued his own train of thought,
+"is this: I want you to go to Johns Hopkins and take up the special work
+you've been wanting to do. I'll be up soon and--"
+
+"Call the nurse, Aunt Lucy," said Dick. "He's raving."
+
+"Not at all," David retorted testily. "I've told you. This whole town
+only comes here now to be told what specialist to go to, and you know
+it."
+
+"I don't know anything of the sort."
+
+"If you don't, it's because you won't face the facts." Dick chuckled,
+and threw an arm over David's shoulder, "You old hypocrite!" he said.
+"You're trying to get rid of me, for some reason. Don't tell me you're
+going to get married!"
+
+But David did not smile. Lucy, watching him from her post by the window,
+saw his face and felt a spasm of fear. At the most, she had feared
+a mental conflict in David. Now she saw that it might be something
+infinitely worse, something impending and immediate. She could hardly
+reply when Dick appealed to her.
+
+"Are you going to let him get rid of me like this, Aunt Lucy?" he
+demanded. "Sentenced to Johns Hopkins, like Napoleon to St. Helena! Are
+you with me, or forninst me?"
+
+"I don't know, Dick," she said, with her eyes on David. "If it's for
+your good--"
+
+She went out after a time, leaving them at it hammer and tongs. David
+was vanquished in the end, but Dick, going down to the office later
+on, was puzzled. Somehow it was borne in on him that behind David's
+insistence was a reason, unspoken but urgent, and the only reason that
+occurred to him as possible was that David did not, after all, want him
+to marry Elizabeth Wheeler. He put the matter to the test that night,
+wandering in in dressing-gown and slippers, as was his custom before
+going to bed, for a brief chat. The nurse was downstairs, and Dick moved
+about the room restlessly. Then he stopped and stood by the bed, looking
+down.
+
+"A few nights ago, David, I asked you if you thought it would be right
+for me to marry; if my situation justified it, and if to your knowledge
+there was any other reason why I could not or should not. You said there
+was not."
+
+"There is no reason, of course. If she'll have you."
+
+"I don't know that. I know that whether she will or not is a pretty
+vital matter to me, David."
+
+David nodded, silently.
+
+"But now you want me to go away. To leave her. You're rather urgent
+about it. And I feel-well I begin to think you have a reason for it."
+
+David clenched his hands under the bed-clothing, but he returned Dick's
+gaze steadily.
+
+"She's a good girl," he said. "But she's entitled to more than you can
+give her, the way things are."
+
+"That is presupposing that she cares for me. I haven't an idea that
+she does. That she may, in time--Then, that's the reason for this Johns
+Hopkins thing, is it?"
+
+"That's the reason," David said stoutly. "She would wait for you. She's
+that sort. I've known her all her life. She's as steady as a rock. But
+she's been brought up to have a lot of things. Walter Wheeler is well
+off. You do as I want you to; pack your things and go to Baltimore.
+Bring Reynolds down here to look after the work until I'm around again."
+
+But Dick evaded the direct issue thus opened and followed another line
+of thought.
+
+"Of course you understand," he observed, after a renewal of his restless
+pacing, "that I've got to tell her my situation first. I don't need to
+tell you that I funk doing it, but it's got to be done."
+
+"Don't be a fool," David said querulously. "You'll set a lot of women
+cackling, and what they don't know they'll invent. I know 'em."
+
+"Only herself and her family."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because they have a right to know it."
+
+But when he saw David formulating a further protest he dropped the
+subject.
+
+"I'll not do it until we've gone into it together," he promised.
+"There's plenty of time. You settle down now and get ready for sleep."
+
+When the nurse came in at eleven o'clock she found Dick gone and David,
+very still, with his face to the wall.
+
+It was the end of May before David began to move about his upper room.
+The trees along the shaded streets had burst into full leaf by that
+time, and Mike was enjoying that gardener's interval of paradise when
+flowers grow faster than the weeds among them. Harrison Miller, having
+rolled his lawn through all of April, was heard abroad in the early
+mornings with the lawn mower or hoe in hand was to be seen behind his
+house in his vegetable patch.
+
+Cars rolled through the streets, the rear seats laden with blossoming
+loot from the country lanes, and the Wheeler dog was again burying bones
+in the soft warm ground under the hedge.
+
+Elizabeth Wheeler was very happy. Her look of expectant waiting, once
+vague, had crystallized now into definite form. She was waiting, timidly
+and shyly but with infinite content. In time, everything would come.
+And in the meantime there was to-day, and some time to-day a shabby car
+would stop at the door, and there would be five minutes, or ten. And
+then Dick would have to hurry to work, or back to David. After that, of
+course, to-day was over, but there would always be to-morrow.
+
+Now and then, at choir practice or at service, she saw Clare Rossiter.
+But Clare was very cool to her, and never on any account sought her,
+or spoke to her alone. She was rather unhappy about Clare, when she
+remembered her. Because it must be so terrible to care for a man who
+only said, when one spoke of Clare, "Oh, the tall blonde girl?"
+
+Once or twice, too, she had found Clare's eyes on her, and they were
+hostile eyes. It was almost as though they said: "I hate you because you
+know. But don't dare to pity me."
+
+Yet, somehow, Elizabeth found herself not entirely believing that
+Clare's passion was real. Because the real thing you hid with all
+your might, at least until you were sure it was wanted. After that,
+of course, you could be so proud of it that you might become utterly
+shameless. She was afraid sometimes that she was the sort to be utterly
+shameless. Yet, for all her halcyon hours, there were little things that
+worried her. Wallie Sayre, for instance, always having to be kept from
+saying things she didn't want to hear. And Nina. She wasn't sure that
+Nina was entirely happy. And, of course, there was Jim.
+
+Jim was difficult. Sometimes he was a man, and then again he was a boy,
+and one never knew just which he was going to be. He was too old for
+discipline and too young to manage himself. He was spending almost all
+his evenings away from home now, and her mother always drew an inaudible
+sigh when he was spoken of.
+
+Elizabeth had waited up for him one night, only a short time before, and
+beckoning him into her room, had talked to him severely.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed, Jim," she said. "You're simply worrying mother
+sick."
+
+"Well, why?" he demanded defiantly. "I'm old enough to take care of
+myself."
+
+"You ought to be taking care of her, too."
+
+He had looked rather crestfallen at that, and before he went out he
+offered a half-sheepish explanation.
+
+"I'd tell them where I go," he said, "but you'd think a pool room was on
+the direct road to hell. Take to-night, now. I can't tell them about it,
+but it was all right. I met Wallie Sayre and Leslie at the club before
+dinner, and we got a fourth and played bridge. Only half a cent a point.
+I swear we were going on playing, but somebody brought in a chap
+named Gregory for a cocktail. He turned out to be a brother of Beverly
+Carlysle, the actress, and he took us around to the theater and gave us
+a box. Not a thing wrong with it, was there?"
+
+"Where did you go from there?" she persisted inexorably. "It's half past
+one."
+
+"Went around and met her. She's wonderful, Elizabeth. But do you know
+what would happen if I told them? They'd have a fit."
+
+She felt rather helpless, because she knew he was right from his own
+standpoint.
+
+"I know. I'm surprised at Les, Jim."
+
+"Oh, Les! He just trailed along. He's all right."
+
+She kissed him and he went out, leaving her to lie awake for a long
+time. She would have had all her world happy those days, and all her
+world good. She didn't want anybody's bread and butter spilled on the
+carpet.
+
+So the days went on, and the web slowly wove itself into its complicated
+pattern: Bassett speeding West, and David in his quiet room; Jim
+and Leslie Ward seeking amusement, and finding it in the littered
+dressing-room of a woman star at a local theater; Clare Rossiter
+brooding, and the little question being whispered behind hands,
+figuratively, of course--the village was entirely well-bred; Gregory
+calling round to see Bassett, and turning away with the information that
+he had gone away for an indefinite time; and Maggie Donaldson, lying in
+the cemetery at the foot of the mountains outside Norada, having shriven
+her soul to the limit of her strength so that she might face her Maker.
+
+Out of all of them it was Clare Rossiter who made the first conscious
+move of the shuttle; Clare, affronted and not a little malicious, but
+perhaps still dramatizing herself, this time as the friend who
+feels forced to carry bad tidings. Behind even that, however, was
+an unconscious desire to see Dick again, and this time so to impress
+herself on him that never again could he pass her in the street
+unnoticed.
+
+On the day, then, that David first sat up in bed Clare went to the house
+and took her place in the waiting-room. She was dressed with extreme
+care, and she carried a parasol. With it, while she waited, she drilled
+small nervous indentations in the old office carpet, and formulated her
+line of action.
+
+Nevertheless she found it hard to begin.
+
+"I don't want to keep you, if you're busy," she said, avoiding his eyes.
+"If you are in a hurry--"
+
+"This is my business," he said patiently. And waited.
+
+"I wonder if you are going to understand me, when I do begin?"
+
+"You sound alarmingly ominous." He smiled at her, and she had a moment
+of panic. "You don't look like a young lady with anything eating at her
+damask cheek, or however it goes."
+
+"Doctor Livingstone," she said suddenly, "people are saying something
+about you that you ought to know."
+
+He stared at her, amazed and incredulous.
+
+"About me? What can they say? That's absurd."
+
+"I felt you ought to know. Of course I don't believe it. Not for a
+moment. But you know what this town is."
+
+"I know it's a very good town," he said steadily. "However, let's have
+it. I daresay it is not very serious."
+
+She was uneasy enough by that time, and rather frightened when she had
+finished. For he sat, quiet and rather pale, not looking at her at all,
+but gazing fixedly at an old daguerreotype of David that stood on his
+desk. One that Lucy had shown him one day and which he had preempted;
+David at the age of eight, in a small black velvet suit and with very
+thin legs.
+
+"I thought you ought to know," she justified herself, nervously.
+
+Dick got up.
+
+"Yes," he said. "I ought to know, of course. Thank you."
+
+When she had gone he went back and stood before the picture again. From
+Clare's first words he had had a stricken conviction that the thing was
+true; that, as Mrs. Cook Morgan's visitor from Wyoming had insisted,
+Henry Livingstone had never married, never had a son. He stood and gazed
+at the picture. His world had collapsed about him, but he was steady and
+very erect.
+
+"David, David!" he thought. "Why did you do it? And what am I? And who?"
+
+Characteristically his first thought after that was of David himself.
+Whatever David had done, his motive had been right. He would have to
+start with that. If David had built for him a false identity it was
+because there was a necessity for it. Something shameful, something he
+was to be taken away from. Wasn't it probable that David had heard the
+gossip, and had then collapsed? Wasn't the fear that he himself would
+hear it behind David's insistence that he go to Baltimore?
+
+His thoughts flew to Elizabeth. Everything was changed now, as to
+Elizabeth. He would have to be very certain of that past of his before
+he could tell her that he loved her, and he had a sense of immediate
+helplessness. He could not go to David, as things were. To Lucy?
+
+Probably he would have gone to Lucy at once, but the telephone rang.
+He answered it, got his hat and bag and went out to the car. Years with
+David had made automatic the subordination of self to the demands of the
+practice.
+
+At half past six Lucy heard him come in and go into his office. When he
+did not immediately reappear and take his flying run up the stairs to
+David's room, she stood outside the office door and listened. She had a
+premonition of something wrong, something of the truth, perhaps. Anyhow,
+she tapped at the door and opened it, to find him sitting very quietly
+at his desk with his head in his hands.
+
+"Dick!" she exclaimed. "Is anything wrong?"
+
+"I have a headache," he said. He looked at his watch and got up. "I'll
+take a look at David, and then we'll have dinner. I didn't know it was
+so late."
+
+But when she had gone out he did not immediately move. He had been going
+over again, painfully and carefully, the things that puzzled him, that
+he had accepted before without dispute. David and Lucy's reluctance to
+discuss his father; the long days in the cabin, with David helping him
+to reconstruct his past; the spring, and that slow progress which now he
+felt, somehow, had been an escape.
+
+He ate very little dinner, and Lucy's sense of dread increased. When,
+after the meal, she took refuge in her sitting-room on the lower floor
+and picked up her knitting, it was with a conviction that it was only a
+temporary reprieve. She did not know from what.
+
+She heard him, some time later, coming down from David's room. But he
+did not turn into his office. Instead, he came on to her door, stood for
+a moment like a man undecided, then came in. She did not look up, even
+when very gently he took her knitting from her and laid it on the table.
+
+"Aunt Lucy."
+
+"Yes, Dick."
+
+"Don't you think we'd better have a talk?"
+
+"What about?" she asked, with her heart hammering.
+
+"About me." He stood above her, and looked down, still with the
+tenderness with which he always regarded her, but with resolution in his
+very attitude. "First of all, I'll tell you something. Then I'll ask you
+to tell me all you can."
+
+She yearned over him as he told her, for all her terror. His voice, for
+all its steadiness, was strained.
+
+"I have felt for some time," he finished, "that you and David were
+keeping something from me. I think, now, that this is what it was. Of
+course, you realize that I shall have to know."
+
+"Dick! Dick!" was all she could say.
+
+"I was about," he went on, with his almost terrible steadiness, "to ask
+a girl to take my name. I want to know if I have a name to offer her. I
+have, you see, only two alternatives to believe about myself. Either
+I am Henry Livingstone's illegitimate son, and in that case I have no
+right to my name, or to offer it to any one, or I am--"
+
+He made a despairing gesture.
+
+"--or I am some one else, some one who was smuggled out of the mountains
+and given an identity that makes him a living lie."
+
+Always she had known that this might come some time, but always too she
+had seen David bearing the brunt of it. He should bear it. It was not
+of her doing or of her approving. For years the danger of discovery had
+hung over her like a cloud.
+
+"Do you know which?" he persisted.
+
+"Yes, Dick."
+
+"Would you have the unbelievable cruelty not to tell me?"
+
+She got up, a taut little figure with a dignity born of her fear and of
+her love for him.
+
+"I shall not betray David's confidence," she said. "Long ago I warned
+him that this time would come. I was never in favor of keeping you
+in ignorance. But it is David's problem, and I cannot take the
+responsibility of telling you."
+
+He knew her determination and her obstinate loyalty. But he was fairly
+desperate.
+
+"You know that if you don't tell me, I shall go to David?"
+
+"If you go now you will kill him."
+
+"It's as bad as that, is it?" he asked grimly. "Then there is something
+shameful behind it, is there?"
+
+"No, no, Dick. Not that. And I want you, always, to remember this. What
+David did was out of love for you. He has made many sacrifices for you.
+First he saved your life, and then he made you what you are. And he has
+had a great pride in it. Don't destroy his work of years."
+
+Her voice broke and she turned to go out, her chin quivering, but half
+way to the door he called to her.
+
+"Aunt Lucy--" he said gently.
+
+She heard him behind her, felt his strong arms as he turned her about.
+He drew her to him and stooping, kissed her cheek.
+
+"You're right," he said. "Always right. I'll not worry him with it. My
+word of honor. When the time comes he'll tell me, and until it comes,
+I'll wait. And I love you both. Don't ever forget that."
+
+He kissed her again and let her go.
+
+But long after David had put down his prayer-book that night, and
+after the nurse had rustled down the stairs to the night supper on the
+dining-room table, Lucy lay awake and listened to Dick's slow pacing of
+his bedroom floor.
+
+He was very gentle with David from that time on, and tried to return
+to his old light-hearted ways. On the day David was to have his first
+broiled sweetbread he caught the nurse outside, borrowed her cap and
+apron and carried in the tray himself.
+
+"I hope your food is to your taste, Doctor David," he said, in a high
+falsetto which set the nurse giggling in the hall. "I may not be much of
+a nurse, but I can cook."
+
+Even Lucy was deceived at times. He went his customary round, sent out
+the monthly bills, opened and answered David's mail, bore the double
+burden of David's work and his own ungrudgingly, but off guard he was
+grave and abstracted. He began to look very thin, too, and Lucy often
+heard him pacing the floor at night. She thought that he seldom or never
+went to the Wheelers'.
+
+And so passed the tenth day of David's illness, with the smile on
+Elizabeth's face growing a trifle fixed as three days went by without
+the shabby car rattling to the door; with "The Valley" playing its
+second and final week before going into New York; and with Leslie Ward
+unconsciously taking up the shuttle Clare had dropped, and carrying the
+pattern one degree further toward completion.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+JUST how Leslie Ward had drifted into his innocuous affair with the star
+of "The Valley" he was not certain himself. Innocuous it certainly was.
+Afterwards, looking back, he was to wonder sometimes if it had not been
+precisely for the purpose it served. But that was long months after.
+Not until the pattern was completed and he was able to recognize his own
+work in it.
+
+The truth was that he was not too happy at home. Nina's smart little
+house on the Ridgely Road had at first kept her busy. She had spent
+unlimited time with decorators, had studied and rejected innumerable
+water-color sketches of interiors, had haunted auction rooms and bid
+recklessly on things she felt at the moment she could not do without,
+later on to have to wheedle Leslie into straightening her bank balance.
+Thought, too, and considerable energy had gone into training and
+outfitting her servants, and still more into inducing them to wear the
+expensive uniforms and livery she provided.
+
+But what she made, so successfully, was a house rather than a home.
+There were times, indeed, when Leslie began to feel that it was not even
+a house, but a small hotel. They almost never dined alone, and when they
+did Nina would explain that everybody was tied up. Then, after dinner,
+restlessness would seize her, and she would want to run in to the
+theater, or to make a call. If he refused, she nursed a grievance all
+evening.
+
+And he did not like her friends. Things came to a point where, when
+he knew one of the gay evenings was on, he would stay in town, playing
+billiards at his club, or occasionally wandering into a theater, where
+he stood or sat at the back of the house and watched the play with
+cynical, discontented eyes.
+
+The casual meeting with Gregory and the introduction to his sister
+brought a new interest. Perhaps the very novelty was what first
+attracted him, the oddity of feeling that he was on terms of friendship,
+for it amounted to that with surprising quickness, with a famous
+woman, whose face smiled out at him from his morning paper or, huge and
+shockingly colored, from the sheets on the bill boards.
+
+He formed the habit of calling on her in the afternoons at her hotel,
+and he saw that she liked it. It was often lonely, she explained. He
+sent her flowers and cigarettes, and he found her poised and restful,
+and sometimes, when she was off guard, with the lines of old suffering
+in her face.
+
+She sat still. She didn't fidget, as Nina did. She listened, too.
+She was not as beautiful as she appeared on the stage, but she was
+attractive, and he stilled his conscience with the knowledge that she
+placed no undue emphasis on his visits. In her world men came and went,
+brought or sent small tribute, and she was pleased and grateful. No
+more. The next week, or the week after, and other men in other places
+would be doing the same things.
+
+But he wondered about her, sometimes. Did she ever think of Judson
+Clark, and the wreck he had made of her life? What of resentment
+and sorrow lay behind her quiet face, or the voice with its careful
+intonations which was so unlike Nina's?
+
+Now and then he saw her brother. He neither liked nor disliked Gregory,
+but he suspected him of rather bullying Beverly. On the rare occasions
+when he saw them together there was a sort of nervous tension in the
+air, and although Leslie was not subtle he sensed some hidden difference
+between them. A small incident one day almost brought this concealed
+dissension to a head. He said to Gregory:
+
+"By the way, I saw you in Haverly yesterday afternoon."
+
+"Must have seen somebody else. Haverly? Where's Haverly?"
+
+Leslie Ward had been rather annoyed. There had been no mistake about the
+recognition. But he passed it off with that curious sense of sex loyalty
+that will actuate a man even toward his enemies.
+
+"Funny," he said. "Chap looked like you. Maybe a little heavier."
+
+Nevertheless he had a conviction that he had said something better left
+unsaid, and that Beverly Carlysle's glance at her brother was almost
+hostile. He had that instantaneous picture of the two of them, the man
+defiant and somehow frightened, and the woman's eyes anxious and yet
+slightly contemptuous. Then, in a flash, it was gone.
+
+He had meant to go home that evening, would have, probably, for he was
+not ignorant of where he was drifting. But when he went back to the
+office Nina was on the wire, with the news that they were to go with a
+party to a country inn.
+
+"For chicken and waffles, Les," she said. "It will be oceans of fun. And
+I've promised the cocktails."
+
+"I'm tired," he replied, sulkily. "And why don't you let some of the
+other fellows come over with the drinks? It seems to me I'm always the
+goat."
+
+"Oh, if that's the way you feel!" Nina said, and hung up the receiver.
+
+He did not go home. He went to the theater and stood at the back, with
+his sense of guilt deadened by the knowledge that Nina was having what
+she would call a heavenly time. After all, it would soon be over. He
+counted the days. "The Valley" had only four more before it moved on.
+
+He had already played his small part in the drama that involved Dick
+Livingstone, but he was unaware of it. He went home that night, to
+find Nina settled in bed and very sulky, and he retired himself in no
+pleasant frame of mind. But he took a firmer hold of himself that night
+before he slept. He didn't want a smash, and yet they might be headed
+that way. He wouldn't see Beverly Carlysle again.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+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.
+
+And he had other advantages. The pack, as he cynically thought of them,
+would have started at the Clark ranch and the cabin. He would get to
+them, of course, but he meant to start on the outside of the circle and
+work in.
+
+"Been here long?" he asked the clerk at the desk, after a leisurely
+meal.
+
+The clerk grinned.
+
+"I came here two years ago. I never saw Jud Clark. To get to the Clark
+place take the road north out of the town and keep straight about eight
+miles. The road's good now. You fellows have worn it smooth."
+
+"Must have written that down and learned it off," Bassett said
+admiringly. "What the devil's the Clark place? And why should I go
+there? Unless," he added, "they serve a decent meal."
+
+"Sorry." The clerk looked at him sharply, was satisfied, and picked up a
+pen. "You'll hear the story if you stay around here any time. Anything I
+can do for you?"
+
+"Yes. Fire the cook," Bassett said, and moved away.
+
+He spent the evening in going over his notes and outlining a campaign,
+and the next day he stumbled on a bit of luck. His elderly chambermaid
+had lived in and around the town for years.
+
+"Ever hear of any Livingstones in these parts?" he asked.
+
+"Why, yes. There used to be a Livingstone ranch at Dry River," she said,
+pausing with her carpet sweeper, and looking at him. "It wasn't much of
+a place. Although you can't tell these days. I sold sixty acres eight
+years ago for two thousand dollars, and the folks that bought it are
+getting a thousand a day out of it."
+
+She sighed. She had touched the hem of fortune's garment and passed on;
+for some opportunity knocked but faintly, and for others it burst open
+the door and forced its way in.
+
+"I'd be a millionaire now if I'd held on," she said somberly. That day
+Bassett engaged a car by the day, he to drive it himself and return it
+in good condition, the garage to furnish tires.
+
+"I'd just like to say one thing," the owner said, as he tried the gears.
+"I don't know where you're going, and it's not exactly my business. Here
+in the oil country, where they're cutting each other's throats for new
+leases, we let a man alone. But if you've any idea of taking that car by
+the back road to the old fire station where Jud Clark's supposed to have
+spent the winter, I'll just say this: we've had two stuck up there for a
+week, and the only way I see to get them back is a cyclone."
+
+"I'm going to Dry River," Bassett said shortly.
+
+"Dry River's right, if you're looking for oil! Go easy on the brakes,
+old man. We need 'em in our business."
+
+Dry River was a small settlement away from the railroad. It consisted
+of two intersecting unpaved streets, a dozen or so houses, a closed and
+empty saloon and two general stores. He chose one at random and found
+that the old Livingstone place had been sold ten years ago, on the death
+of its owner, Henry Livingstone.
+
+"His brother from the East inherited it," said the storekeeper. "He came
+and sold out, lock, stock and barrel. Not that there was much. A few
+cattle and horses, and the stuff in the ranch house, which wasn't
+valuable. There were a lot of books, and the brother gave them for a
+library, but we haven't any building. The railroad isn't built this far
+yet, and unless we get oil here it won't be."
+
+"The brother inherited it, eh? Do you know the brother's name?"
+
+"David, I think. He was a doctor back East somewhere."
+
+"Then this Henry Livingstone wasn't married? Or at least had no
+children?"
+
+"He wasn't married. He was a sort of hermit. He'd been dead two days
+before any one knew it. My wife went out when they found him and got him
+ready for the funeral. He was buried before the brother got here." He
+glanced at Bassett shrewdly. "The place has been prospected for oil, and
+there's a dry hole on the next ranch. I tell my wife nature's like the
+railroad. It quit before it got this far."
+
+Bassett's last scruple had fled. The story was there, ready for the
+gathering. So ready, indeed, that he was almost suspicious of his luck.
+
+And that conviction, that things were coming too easy, persisted through
+his interview with the storekeeper's wife, in the small house behind the
+store. She was a talkative woman, eager to discuss the one drama in
+a drab life, and she showed no curiosity as to the reason for his
+question.
+
+"Henry Livingstone!" she said. "Well, I should say so. I went out right
+away when we got the word he was dead, and there I stayed until it was
+all over. I guess I know as much about him as any one around here does,
+for I had to go over his papers to find out who his people were."
+
+The papers, it seemed, had not been very interesting; canceled checks
+and receipted bills, and a large bundle of letters, all of them from a
+brother named David and a sister who signed herself Lucy. There had
+been a sealed one, too, addressed to David Livingstone, and to be opened
+after his death. She had had her husband wire to "David" and he had come
+out, too late for the funeral.
+
+"Do you remember when that was?"
+
+"Let me see. Henry Livingstone died about a month before the murder at
+the Clark ranch. We date most things around here from that time."
+
+"How long did 'David' stay?" Bassett had tried to keep his tone
+carefully conversational, but he saw that it was not necessary. She was
+glad of a chance to talk.
+
+"Well, I'd say about three or four weeks. He hadn't seen his brother for
+years, and I guess there was no love lost. He sold everything as quick
+as he could, and went back East." She glanced at the clock. "My husband
+will be in soon for dinner. I'd be glad to have you stay and take a meal
+with us."
+
+The reporter thanked her and declined.
+
+"It's an interesting story," he said. "I didn't tell your husband, for
+I wasn't sure I was on the right trail. But the David and Lucy business
+eliminates this man. There's a piece of property waiting in the East
+for a Henry Livingstone who came to this state in the 80's, or for his
+heirs. You can say positively that this man was not married?"
+
+"No. He didn't like women. Never had one on the place. Two ranch hands
+that are still at the Wassons' and himself, that was all. The Wassons
+are the folks who bought the ranch."
+
+No housekeeper then, and no son born out of wedlock, so far as any
+evidence went. All that glib lying in the doctor's office, all that
+apparent openness and frankness, gone by the board! The man in the
+cabin, reported by Maggie Donaldson, had been David Livingstone.
+Somehow, some way, he had got Judson Clark out of the country and
+spirited him East. Not that the how mattered just yet. The essential
+fact was there, that David Livingstone had been in this part of the
+country at the time Maggie Donaldson had been nursing Judson Clark in
+the mountains.
+
+Bassett sat back and chewed the end of his cigar thoughtfully. The
+sheer boldness of the scheme which had saved Judson Clark compelled his
+admiration, but the failure to cover the trail, the ease with which he
+had picked it up, made him suspicious.
+
+He rose and threw away his cigar.
+
+"You say this David went East, when he had sold out the place. Do you
+remember where he lived?"
+
+"Some town in eastern Pennsylvania. I've forgotten the name."
+
+"I've got to be sure I'm wrong, and then go ahead," he said, as he got
+his hat. "I'll see those men at the ranch, I guess, and then be on my
+way. How far is it?"
+
+It was about ten miles, along a bad road which kept him too much
+occupied for any connected thought. But his sense of exultation
+persisted. He had found Judson Clark.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+Dick's decision to cut himself off from Elizabeth was born of his
+certainty that he could not see her and keep his head. He was resolutely
+determined to keep his head, until he knew what he had to offer her. But
+he was very unhappy. He worked sturdily all day and slept at night out
+of sheer fatigue, only to rouse in the early morning to a conviction
+of something wrong before he was fully awake. Then would come the
+uncertainty and pain of full consciousness, and he would lie with his
+arms under his head, gazing unblinkingly at the ceiling and preparing to
+face another day.
+
+There was no prospect of early relief, although David had not again
+referred to his going away. David was very feeble. The look of him
+sometimes sent an almost physical pain through Dick's heart. But there
+were times when he roused to something like his old spirit, shouted for
+tobacco, frowned over his diet tray, and fought Harrison Miller when he
+came in to play cribbage in much his old tumultuous manner.
+
+Then, one afternoon late in May, when for four days Dick had not seen
+Elizabeth, suddenly he found the decision as to their relation taken out
+of his hands, and by Elizabeth herself.
+
+He opened the door one afternoon to find her sitting alone in the
+waiting-room, clearly very frightened and almost inarticulate. He could
+not speak at all at first, and when he did his voice, to his dismay, was
+distinctly husky.
+
+"Is anything wrong?" he asked, in a tone which was fairly sepulchral.
+
+"That's what I want to know, Dick."
+
+Suddenly he found himself violently angry. Not at her, of course. At
+everything.
+
+"Wrong?" he said, savagely. "Yes. Everything is wrong!"
+
+Then he was angry! She went rather pale.
+
+"What have I done, Dick?"
+
+As suddenly as he had been fierce he was abject and ashamed. Startled,
+too.
+
+"You?" he said. "What have you done? You're the only thing that's right
+in a wrong world. You--"
+
+He checked himself, put down his bag--he had just come in--and closed
+the door into the hall. Then he stood at a safe distance from her, and
+folded his arms in order to be able to keep his head-which shows how
+strange the English language is.
+
+"Elizabeth," he said gravely. "I've been a self-centered fool. I stayed
+away because I've been in trouble. I'm still in trouble, for that
+matter. But it hasn't anything to do with you. Not directly, anyhow."
+
+"Don't you think it's possible that I know what it is?"
+
+"You do know."
+
+He was too absorbed to notice the new maturity in her face, the brooding
+maternity born of a profound passion. To Elizabeth just then he was not
+a man, her man, daily deciding matters of life and death, but a worried
+boy, magnifying a trifle into importance.
+
+"There is always gossip," she said, "and the only thing one can do is to
+forget it at once. You ought to be too big for that sort of thing."
+
+"But--suppose it is true?"
+
+"What difference would it make?"
+
+He made a quick movement toward her.
+
+"There may be more than that. I don't know, Elizabeth," he said, his
+eyes on hers. "I have always thought--I can't go to David now."
+
+He was moved to go on. To tell her of his lost youth, of that strange
+trick by which his mind had shut off those hidden years. But he could
+not. He had a perfectly human fear of being abnormal in her eyes,
+precisely but greatly magnified the same instinct which had made him
+inspect his new tie in daylight for fear it was too brilliant. But
+greater than that was his new fear that something neither happy nor
+right lay behind him under lock and key in his memory.
+
+"I want you to know this, Dick," she said. "That nothing, no gossip or
+anything, can make any difference to me. And I've been terribly hurt.
+We've been such friends. You--I've been lying awake at night, worrying."
+
+That went to his heart first, and then to his head. This might be all,
+all he was ever to have. This hour, and this precious and tender child,
+so brave in her declaration, so simple and direct; all his world in that
+imitation mahogany chair.
+
+"You're all I've got," he said. "The one real thing in a world that's
+going to smash. I think I love you more than God."
+
+The same mood, of accepting what he had without question and of refusing
+to look ahead, actuated him for the next few days. He was incredibly
+happy.
+
+He went about his work with his customary care and thoroughness, for
+long practice had made it possible for him to go on as though nothing
+had happened, to listen to querulous complaints and long lists of
+symptoms, and to write without error those scrawled prescriptions which
+were, so hopefully, to cure. Not that Dick himself believed greatly in
+those empirical doses, but he considered that the expectation of relief
+was half the battle. But that was the mind of him, which went about
+clothed in flesh, of course, and did its daily and nightly work, and put
+up a very fair imitation of Doctor Richard Livingstone. But hidden away
+was a heart that behaved in a highly unprofessional manner, and sang
+and dreamed, and jumped at the sight of a certain small figure on the
+street, and generally played hob with systole and diastole, and the
+vagus and accelerator nerves. Which are all any doctor really knows
+about the heart, until he falls in love.
+
+He even began to wonder if he had read into the situation something
+that was not there, and in this his consciousness of David's essential
+rectitude helped him. David could not do a wrong thing, or an unworthy
+one. He wished he were more like David.
+
+The new humility extended to his love for Elizabeth. Sometimes, in his
+room or shaving before the bathroom mirror, he wondered what she could
+see in him to care about. He shaved twice a day now, and his face was so
+sore that he had to put cream on it at night, to his secret humiliation.
+When he was dressed in the morning he found himself once or twice
+taking a final survey of the ensemble, and at those times he wished very
+earnestly that he had some outstanding quality of appearance that she
+might admire.
+
+He refused to think. He was content for a time simply to feel, to be
+supremely happy, to live each day as it came and not to look ahead. And
+the old house seemed to brighten with him. Never had Lucy's window boxes
+been so bright, or Minnie's bread so light; the sun poured into David's
+sick room and turned the nurse so dazzling white in her uniform that
+David declared he was suffering from snow-blindness.
+
+And David himself was improving rapidly. With the passage of each day
+he felt more secure. The reporter from the Times-Republican--if he were
+really on the trail of Dick he would have come to see him, would have
+told him the story. No. That bridge was safely crossed. And Dick was
+happy. David, lying in his bed, would listen and smile faintly when Dick
+came whistling into the house or leaped up the stairs two at a time;
+when he sang in his shower, or tormented the nurse with high-spirited
+nonsense. The boy was very happy. He would marry Elizabeth Wheeler, and
+things would be as they should be; there would be the fullness of life,
+young voices in the house, toys on the lawn. He himself would pass on,
+in the fullness of time, but Dick--
+
+On Decoration Day they got him out of bed, making a great ceremony
+of it, and when he was settled by the window in his big chair with a
+blanket over his knees, Dick came in with a great box. Unwrapping it
+he disclosed a mass of paper and a small box, and within that still
+another.
+
+"What fol-de-rol is all this?" David demanded fiercely, with a childish
+look of expectation in his eyes. "Give me that box. Some more slippers,
+probably!"
+
+He worked eagerly, and at last he came to the small core of the mass. It
+was a cigar!
+
+It was somewhat later, when the peace of good tobacco had relaxed him
+into a sort of benignant drowsiness, and when Dick had started for his
+late afternoon calls, that Lucy came into the room.
+
+"Elizabeth Wheeler's downstairs," she said. "I told her you wanted to
+see her. She's brought some chicken jelly, too."
+
+She gathered up the tissue paper that surrounded him, and gave the room
+a critical survey. She often felt that the nurse was not as tidy as she
+might be. Then she went over to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
+
+"I don't want to worry you, David. Not now. But if he's going to marry
+her--"
+
+"Well, why shouldn't he?" he demanded truculently. "A good woman would
+be one more anchor to windward."
+
+She found that she could not go on. David was always incomprehensible to
+her when it came to Dick. Had been incomprehensible from the first.
+But she could not proceed without telling him that the village knew
+something, and what that something was; that already she felt a change
+in the local attitude toward Dick. He was, for one thing, not quite so
+busy as he had been.
+
+She went out of the room, and sent Elizabeth to David.
+
+In her love for Dick, Elizabeth now included everything that pertained
+to him, his shabby coats, his rattling car, and his people. She had
+an inarticulate desire for their endorsement, to be liked by them and
+wanted by them. Not that there could be any words, because both she and
+Dick were content just then with love, and were holding it very secret
+between them.
+
+"Well, well!" said David. "And here we are reversed and I'm the patient
+and you're the doctor! And good medicine you are, my dear."
+
+He looked her over with approval, and with speculation, too. She was a
+small and fragile vessel on which to embark all the hopes that, out of
+his own celibate and unfulfilled life, he had dreamed for Dick. She was
+even more than that. If Lucy was right, from now on she was a part
+of that experiment in a human soul which he had begun with only a
+professional interest, but which had ended by becoming a vital part of
+his own life.
+
+She was a little shy with him, he saw; rather fluttered and nervous, yet
+radiantly happy. The combination of these mixed emotions, plus her best
+sick-room manner, made her slightly prim at first. But soon she was
+telling him the small news of the village, although David rather
+suspected her of listening for Dick's car all the while. When she got up
+to go and held out her hand he kept it, between both of his.
+
+"I haven't been studying symptoms for all these years for nothing, my
+dear," he said. "And it seems to me somebody is very happy."
+
+"I am, Doctor David."
+
+He patted her hand.
+
+"Mind you," he said, "I don't know anything and I'm not asking any
+questions. But if the Board of Trade, or the Chief of Police, had come
+to me and said, 'Who is the best wife for--well, for a young man who
+is an important part of this community?' I'd have said in reply,
+'Gentlemen, there is a Miss Elizabeth Wheeler who--'"
+
+Suddenly she bent down and kissed him.
+
+"Oh, do you think so?" she asked, breathlessly. "I love him so much,
+Doctor David. And I feel so unworthy."
+
+"So you are," he said. "So's he. So are all of us, when it comes to a
+great love, child. That is, we are never quite what the other fellow
+thinks we are. It's when we don't allow for what the scientist folk call
+a margin of error that we come our croppers. I wonder"--he watched her
+closely--"if you young people ever allow for a margin of error?"
+
+"I only know this," she said steadily. "I can't imagine ever caring any
+less. I've never thought about myself very much, but I do know that. You
+see, I think I've cared for a long time."
+
+When she had gone he sat in his chair staring ahead of him and thinking.
+Yes. She would stick. She had loyalty, loyalty and patience and a rare
+humility. It was up to Dick then. And again he faced the possibility of
+an opening door into the past, of crowding memories, of confusion and
+despair and even actual danger. And out of that, what?
+
+Habit. That was all he had to depend on. The brain was a thing of
+habits, like the body; right could be a habit, and so could evil. As a
+man thought, so he was. For all of his childhood, and for the last ten
+years, Dick's mental habits had been right; his environment had been
+love, his teaching responsibility. Even if the door opened, then, there
+was only the evil thinking of two or three reckless years to combat,
+and the door might never open. Happiness, Lauler had said, would keep it
+closed, and Dick was happy.
+
+When at five o'clock the nurse came in with a thermometer he was asleep
+in his chair, his mouth slightly open, and snoring valiantly. Hearing
+Dick in the lower hall, she went to the head of the stairs, her finger
+to her lips.
+
+Dick nodded and went into the office. The afternoon mail was lying
+there, and he began mechanically to open it. His thoughts were
+elsewhere.
+
+Now that he had taken the step he had so firmly determined not to take,
+certain things, such as Clare Rossiter's story, David's uneasiness, his
+own doubts, no longer involved himself alone, nor even Elizabeth and
+himself. They had become of vital importance to her family.
+
+There was no evading the issue. What had once been only his own
+misfortune, mischance, whatever it was, had now become of vital
+importance to an entire group of hitherto disinterested people. He would
+have to put his situation clearly before them and let them judge. And he
+would have to clarify that situation for them and for himself.
+
+He had had a weak moment or two. He knew that some men, many men, went
+to marriage with certain reticences, meaning to wipe the slate clean and
+begin again. He had a man's understanding of such concealments. But he
+did not for a moment compare his situation with theirs, even when the
+temptation to seize his happiness was strongest. No mere misconduct,
+but something hidden and perhaps terrible lay behind David's strange
+new attitude. Lay, too, behind the break in his memory which he tried to
+analyze with professional detachment. The mind in such cases set up
+its defensive machinery of forgetfulness, not against the trivial but
+against the unbearable.
+
+For the last day or two he had faced the fact that, not only must he use
+every endeavor to revive his past, but that such revival threatened with
+cruelty and finality to separate him from the present.
+
+With an open and unread letter in his hand he stared about the office.
+This place was his; he had fought for it, worked for it. He had an
+almost physical sense of unseen hands reaching out to drag him away
+from it; from David and Lucy, and from Elizabeth. And of himself holding
+desperately to them all, and to the believed commonplaceness of his
+surroundings.
+
+He shook himself and began to read the letter.
+
+"Dear Doctor: I have tried to see you, but understand you are laid
+up. Burn this as soon as you've read it. Louis Bassett has started for
+Norada, and I advise your getting the person we discussed out of town as
+soon as possible. Bassett is up to mischief. I'm not signing this fully,
+for obvious reasons. G."
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+The Sayre house stood on the hill behind the town, a long, rather low
+white house on Italian lines. In summer, until the family exodus to the
+Maine Coast, the brilliant canopy which extended out over the
+terrace indicated, as Harrison Miller put it, that the family was "in
+residence." Originally designed as a summer home, Mrs. Sayre now used it
+the year round. There was nothing there, as there was in the town house,
+to remind her of the bitter days before her widowhood.
+
+She was a short, heavy woman, of fine taste in her house and of no taste
+whatever in her clothing.
+
+"I never know," said Harrison Miller, "when I look up at the Sayre
+place, whether I'm seeing Ann Sayre or an awning."
+
+She was not a shrewd woman, nor a clever one, but she was kindly in the
+main, tolerant and maternal. She liked young people, gave gay little
+parties to which she wore her outlandish clothes of all colors and all
+cuts, lavished gifts on the girls she liked, and was anxious to see
+Wallie married to a good steady girl and settled down. Between her son
+and herself was a quiet but undemonstrative affection. She viewed him
+through eyes that had lost their illusion about all men years ago, and
+she had no delusions about him. She had no idea that she knew all that
+he did with his time, and no desire to penetrate the veil of his private
+life.
+
+"He spends a great deal of money," she said one day to her lawyer. "I
+suppose in the usual ways. But he is not quite like his father. He has
+real affections, which his father hadn't. If he marries the right girl
+she can make him almost anything."
+
+She had her first inkling that he was interested in Elizabeth Wheeler
+one day when the head gardener reported that Mr. Wallace had ordered
+certain roses cut and sent to the Wheeler house. She was angry at first,
+for the roses were being saved for a dinner party. Then she considered.
+
+"Very well, Phelps," she said. "Do it. And I'll select a plant also, to
+go to Mrs. Wheeler."
+
+After all, why not the Wheeler girl? She had been carefully reared, if
+the Wheeler house was rather awful in spots, and she was a gentle little
+thing; very attractive, too, especially in church. And certainly Wallie
+had been seeing a great deal of her.
+
+She went to the greenhouses, and from there upstairs and into the rooms
+that she had planned for Wallie and his bride, when the time came. She
+was more content than she had been for a long time. She was a lonely
+woman, isolated by her very grandeur from the neighborliness she craved;
+when she wanted society she had to ask for it, by invitation. Standing
+inside the door of the boudoir, her thoughts already at work on
+draperies and furniture, she had a vague dream of new young life
+stirring in the big house, of no more lonely evenings, of the bustle and
+activity of a family again.
+
+She wanted Wallie to settle down. She was tired of paying his bills at
+his clubs and at various hotels, tired and weary of the days he lay in
+bed all morning while his valet concocted various things to enable him
+to pull himself together. He had been four years sowing his wild oats,
+and now at twenty-five she felt he should be through with them.
+
+The south room could be the nursery.
+
+On Decoration Day, as usual, she did her dutiful best by the community,
+sent flowers to the cemetery and even stood through a chilly hour there
+while services were read and taps sounded over the graves of those who
+had died in three wars. She felt very grateful that Wallie had come back
+safely, and that if only now he would marry and settle down all would be
+well.
+
+The service left her emotionally untouched. She was one of those women
+who saw in war, politics, even religion, only their reaction on
+herself and her affairs. She had taken the German deluge as a personal
+affliction. And she stood only stoically enduring while the village
+soprano sang "The Star Spangled Banner." By the end of the service she
+had decided that Elizabeth Wheeler was the answer to her problem.
+
+Rather under pressure, Wallie lunched with her at the country club, but
+she found him evasive and not particularly happy.
+
+"You're twenty-five, you know," she said, toward the end of a
+discussion. "By thirty you'll be too set in your habits, too hard to
+please."
+
+"I'm not going to marry for the sake of getting married, mother."
+
+"Of course not. But you have a good bit of money. You'll have much more
+when I'm gone. And money carries responsibility with it."
+
+He glanced at her, looked away, rapped a fork on the table cloth.
+
+"It takes two to make a marriage, mother."
+
+He closed up after that, but she had learned what she wanted.
+
+At three o'clock that afternoon the Sayre limousine stopped in front of
+Nina's house, and Mrs. Sayre, in brilliant pink and a purple hat, got
+out. Leslie, lounging in a window, made the announcement.
+
+"Here's the Queen of Sheba," he said. "I'll go upstairs and have a
+headache, if you don't mind."
+
+He kissed Nina and departed hastily. He was feeling extremely gentle
+toward Nina those days and rather smugly virtuous. He considered that
+his conscience had brought him back and not a very bad fright, which was
+the fact, and he fairly exuded righteousness.
+
+It was the great lady's first call, and Nina was considerably uplifted.
+It was for such moments as this one trained servants and put Irish lace
+on their aprons, and had decorators who stood off with their heads a
+little awry and devised backgrounds for one's personality.
+
+"What a delightful room!" said Mrs. Sayre. "And how do you keep a maid
+as trim as that?"
+
+"I must have service," Nina replied. "The butler's marching in a parade
+or something. How nice of you to come and see our little place. It's a
+band-box, of course."
+
+Mrs. Sayre sat down, a gross disharmony in the room, but a solid and not
+unkindly woman for all that.
+
+"My dear," she said, "I am not paying a call. Or not only that. I came
+to talk to you about something. About Wallace and your sister."
+
+Nina was gratified and not a little triumphant.
+
+"I see," she said. "Do you mean that they are fond of one another?"
+
+"Wallace is. Of course, this talk is between ourselves, but--I'm going
+to be frank, Nina. I want Wallie to marry, and I want him to marry soon.
+You and I know that the life of an unattached man about town is full of
+temptations. I want him to settle down. I'm lonely, too, but that's not
+so important."
+
+Nina hesitated.
+
+"I don't know about Elizabeth. She's fond of Wallie, as who isn't? But
+lately--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Well, for the last few days I have been wondering. She doesn't talk,
+you know. But she has been seeing something of Dick Livingstone."
+
+"Doctor Livingstone! She'd be throwing herself away!"
+
+"Yes, but she's like that. I mean, she isn't ambitious. We've always
+expected her to throw herself away; at least I have."
+
+A half hour later Leslie, upstairs, leaned over the railing to see if
+there were any indications of departure. The door was open, and Mrs.
+Sayre evidently about to take her leave. She was saying:
+
+"It's very close to my heart, Nina dear, and I know you will be tactful.
+I haven't stressed the material advantages, but you might point them out
+to her."
+
+A few moments later Leslie came downstairs. Nina was sitting alone,
+thinking, with a not entirely pleasant look of calculation on her face.
+
+"Well?" he said. "What were you two plotting?"
+
+"Plotting? Nothing, of course."
+
+He looked down at her. "Now see here, old girl," he said, "you keep your
+hands off Elizabeth's affairs. If I know anything she's making a damn
+good choice, and don't you forget it."
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+Dick stood with the letter in his hand, staring at it. Who was Bassett?
+Who was "G"? What had the departure of whoever Bassett might be for
+Norada to do with David? And who was the person who was to be got out of
+town?
+
+He did not go upstairs. He took the letter into his private office,
+closed the door, and sitting down at his desk turned his reading lamp on
+it, as though that physical act might bring some mental light.
+
+Reread, the cryptic sentences began to take on meaning. An unknown named
+Bassett, whoever he might be, was going to Norada bent on "mischief,"
+and another unknown who signed himself "G" was warning David of that
+fact. But the mischief was designed, not against David, but against a
+third unknown, some one who was to be got out of town.
+
+David had been trying to get him out of town.--The warning referred to
+himself.
+
+His first impulse was to go to David, and months later he was to wonder
+what would have happened had he done so. How far could Bassett have
+gone? What would have been his own decision when he learned the truth?
+
+For a little while, then, the shuttle was in Dick's own hand. He went up
+to David's room, and with his hand on the letter in his pocket, carried
+on behind his casual talk the debate that was so vital. But David had
+a headache and a slightly faster pulse, and that portion of the pattern
+was never woven.
+
+The association between anxiety and David's illness had always been
+apparent in Dick's mind, but now he began to surmise a concrete shock, a
+person, a telegram, or a telephone call. And after dinner that night he
+went back to the kitchen.
+
+"Minnie," he inquired, "do you remember the afternoon Doctor David was
+taken sick?"
+
+"I'll never forget it."
+
+"Did he receive a telegram that day?"
+
+"Not that I know of. He often answers the bell himself."
+
+"Do you know whether he had a visitor, just before you heard him fall?"
+
+"He had a patient, yes. A man."
+
+"Who was it?"
+
+"I don't know. He was a stranger to me."
+
+"Do you remember what he looked like?"
+
+Minnie reflected.
+
+"He was a smallish man, maybe thirty-five or so," she said. "I think he
+had gaiters over his shoes, or maybe light tops. He was a nice appearing
+person."
+
+"How soon after that did you hear Doctor David fall?"
+
+"Right away. First the door slammed, and then he dropped."
+
+Poor old David! Dick had not the slightest doubt now that David had
+received some unfortunate news, and that up there in his bedroom ever
+since, alone and helpless, he had been struggling with some secret dread
+he could not share with any one. Not even with Lucy, probably.
+
+Nevertheless, Dick made a try with Lucy that evening.
+
+"Aunt Lucy," he said, "do you know of anything that could have caused
+David's collapse?"
+
+"What sort of thing?" she asked guardedly.
+
+"A letter, we'll say, or a visitor?"
+
+When he saw that she was only puzzled and thinking back, he knew she
+could not help him.
+
+"Never mind," he said. "I was feeling about for some cause. That's all."
+
+He was satisfied that Lucy knew no more than he did of David's visitor,
+and that David had kept his own counsel ever since. But the sense of
+impending disaster that had come with the letter did not leave him. He
+went through his evening office hours almost mechanically, with a part
+of his mind busy on the puzzle. How did it affect the course of action
+he had marked out? Wasn't it even more necessary than ever now to go to
+Walter Wheeler and tell him how things stood? He hated mystery. He liked
+to walk in the middle of the road in the sunlight. But even stronger
+than that was a growing feeling that he needed a sane and normal
+judgment on his situation; a fresh viewpoint and some unprejudiced
+advice.
+
+He visited David before he left, and he was very gentle with him. In
+view of this new development he saw David from a different angle, facing
+and dreading something imminent, and it came to him with a shock that
+he might have to clear things up to save David. The burden, whatever it
+was, was breaking him.
+
+He had telephoned, and Mr. Wheeler was waiting for him. Walter Wheeler
+thought he knew what was coming, and he had well in mind what he was
+going to say. He had thought it over, pacing the floor alone, with the
+dog at his heels. He would say:
+
+"I like and respect you, Livingstone. If you're worrying about what
+these damned gossips say, let's call it a day and forget it. I know a
+man when I see one, and if it's all right with Elizabeth it's all right
+with me."
+
+Things, however, did not turn out just that way. Dick came in, grave and
+clearly preoccupied, and the first thing he said was:
+
+"I have a story to tell you, Mr. Wheeler. After you've heard it, and
+given me your opinion on it, I'll come to a matter that--well, that I
+can't talk about now."
+
+"If it's the silly talk that I daresay you've heard--"
+
+"No. I don't give a damn for talk. But there is something else.
+Something I haven't told Elizabeth, and that I'll have to tell you."
+
+Walter Wheeler drew himself up rather stiffly. Leslie's defection was
+still in his mind.
+
+"Don't tell me you're tangled up with another woman."
+
+"No. At least I think not. I don't know."
+
+It is doubtful if Walter Wheeler grasped many of the technicalities
+that followed. Dick talked and he listened, nodding now and then, and
+endeavoring very hard to get the gist of the matter. It seemed to him
+curious rather than serious. Certainly the mind was a strange thing. He
+must read up on it. Now and then he stopped Dick with a question, and
+Dick would break in on his narrative to reply. Thus, once:
+
+"You've said nothing to Elizabeth at all? About the walling off, as you
+call it?"
+
+"No. At first I was simply ashamed of it. I didn't want her to get the
+idea that I wasn't normal."
+
+"I see."
+
+"Now, as I tell you, I begin to think--I've told you that this walling
+off is an unconscious desire to forget something too painful to
+remember. It's practically always that. I can't go to her with just
+that, can I? I've got to know first what it is."
+
+"I'd begun to think there was an understanding between you."
+
+Dick faced him squarely.
+
+"There is. I didn't intend it. In fact, I was trying to keep away from
+her. I didn't mean to speak to her until I'd cleared things up. But it
+happened anyhow; I suppose the way those things always happen."
+
+It was Walter Wheeler's own decision, finally, that he go to Norada
+with Dick as soon as David could be safely left. It was the letter which
+influenced him. Up to that he had viewed the situation with a certain
+detachment; now he saw that it threatened the peace of two households.
+
+"It's a warning, all right."
+
+"Yes. Undoubtedly."
+
+"You don't recognize the name Bassett?"
+
+"No. I've tried, of course."
+
+The result of some indecision was finally that Elizabeth should not be
+told anything until they were ready to tell it all. And in the end a
+certain resentment that she had become involved in an unhappy situation
+died in Walter Wheeler before Dick's white face and sunken eyes.
+
+At ten o'clock the house-door opened and closed, and Walter Wheeler got
+up and went out into the hall.
+
+"Go on upstairs, Margaret," he said to his wife. "I've got a visitor."
+He did not look at Elizabeth. "You settle down and be comfortable," he
+added, "and I'll be up before long. Where's Jim?"
+
+"I don't know. He didn't go to Nina's."
+
+"He started with you, didn't he?"
+
+"Yes. But he left us at the corner."
+
+They exchanged glances. Jim had been worrying them lately. Strange how
+a man could go along for years, his only worries those of business, his
+track a single one through comfortable fields where he reaped only what
+he sowed. And then his family grew up, and involved him without warning
+in new perplexities and new troubles. Nina first, then Jim, and now this
+strange story which so inevitably involved Elizabeth.
+
+He put his arm around his wife and held her to him.
+
+"Don't worry about Jim, mother," he said. "He's all right fundamentally.
+He's going through the bad time between being a boy and being a man.
+He's a good boy."
+
+He watched her moving up the stairs, his eyes tender and solicitous. To
+him she was just "mother." He had never thought of another woman in all
+their twenty-four years together.
+
+Elizabeth waited near him, her eyes on his face.
+
+"Is it Dick?" she asked in a low tone.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You don't mind, daddy, do you?"
+
+"I only want you to be happy," he said rather hoarsely. "You know that,
+don't you?"
+
+She nodded, and turned up her face to be kissed. He knew that she had no
+doubt whatever that this interview was to seal her to Dick Livingstone
+for ever and ever. She fairly radiated happiness and confidence. He left
+her standing there going back to the living-room closed the door.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+Louis Bassett, when he started to the old Livingstone ranch, now
+the Wasson place, was carefully turning over in his mind David's
+participation in the escape of Judson Clark. Certain phases of it were
+quite clear, provided one accepted the fact that, following a heavy
+snowfall, an Easterner and a tenderfoot had gone into the mountains
+alone, under conditions which had caused the posse after Judson Clark to
+turn back and give him up for dead.
+
+Had Donaldson sent him there, knowing he was a medical man? If he had,
+would Maggie Donaldson not have said so? She had said "a man outside
+that she had at first thought was a member of the searching party."
+Evidently, then, Donaldson had not prepared her to expect medical
+assistance.
+
+Take the other angle. Say David Livingstone had not been sent for. Say
+he knew nothing of the cabin or its occupants until he stumbled on them.
+He had sold the ranch, distributed his brother's books, and apparently
+the townspeople at Dry River believed that he had gone back home.
+Then what had taken him, clearly alone and having certainly given the
+impression of a departure for the East, into the mountains? To hunt? To
+hunt what, that he went about it secretly and alone?
+
+Bassett was inclined to the Donaldson theory, finally. John Donaldson
+would have been wanting a doctor, and not wanting one from Norada. He
+might have heard of this Eastern medical man at Dry River, have gone to
+him with his story, even have taken him part of the way. The situation
+was one that would have a certain appeal. It was possible, anyhow:
+
+But instead of clarifying the situation Bassett's visit at the
+Wasson place brought forward new elements which fitted neither of the
+hypotheses in his mind.
+
+To Wasson himself, whom he met on horseback on the road into the ranch,
+he gave the same explanation he had given to the store-keeper's wife.
+Wasson was a tall man in chaps and a Stetson, and he was courteously
+interested.
+
+"Bill and Jake are still here," he said. "They're probably in for dinner
+now, and I'll see you get a chance to talk to them. I took them over
+with the ranch. Property, you say? Well, I hope it's better land than he
+had here."
+
+He turned his horse and rode beside the car to the house.
+
+"Comes a little late to do Henry Livingstone much good," he said. "He's
+been lying in the Dry River graveyard for about ten years. Not much
+mourned either. He was about as close-mouthed and uncompanionable as
+they make them."
+
+The description Wasson had applied to Henry Livingstone, Bassett himself
+applied to the two ranch hands later on, during their interview. It
+could hardly have been called an interview at all, indeed, and after a
+time Bassett realized that behind their taciturnity was suspicion. They
+were watching him, undoubtedly; he rather thought, when he looked away,
+that once or twice they exchanged glances. He was certain, too, that
+Wasson himself was puzzled.
+
+"Speak up, Jake," he said once, irritably. "This gentleman has come a
+long way. It's a matter of some property."
+
+"What sort of property?" Jake demanded. Jake was the spokesman of the
+two.
+
+"That's not important," Bassett observed, easily. "What we want to know
+is if Henry Livingstone had any family."
+
+"He had a brother."
+
+"No one else?"
+
+"Then it's up to me to trail the brother," Bassett observed. "Either of
+you remember where he lived?"
+
+"Somewhere in the East."
+
+Bassett laughed.
+
+"That's a trifle vague," he commented good-humoredly. "Didn't you boys
+ever mail any letters for him?"
+
+He was certain again that they exchanged glances, but they continued
+to present an unbroken front of ignorance. Wasson was divided between
+irritation and amusement.
+
+"What'd I tell you?" he asked. "Like master like man. I've been here ten
+years, and I've never got a word about the Livingstones out of either of
+them."
+
+"I'm a patient man." Bassett grinned. "I suppose you'll admit that one
+of you drove David Livingstone to the train, and that you had a fair
+idea then of where he was going?"
+
+He looked directly at Jake, but Jake's face was a solid mask. He made no
+reply whatever.
+
+From that moment on Bassett was certain that David had not been driven
+away from the ranch at all. What he did not know, and was in no way to
+find out, was whether the two ranch hands knew that he had gone into the
+mountains, or why. He surmised back of their taciturnity a small mystery
+of their own, and perhaps a fear. Possibly David's going was as much a
+puzzle to them as to him. Conceivably, during the hours together on the
+range, or during the winter snows, for ten years they had wrangled and
+argued over a disappearance as mysterious in its way as Judson Clark's.
+
+He gave up at last, having learned certain unimportant facts: that the
+recluse had led a lonely life; that he had never tried to make the place
+more than carry itself; that he was a student, and that he had no other
+peculiarities.
+
+"Did he ever say anything that would lead you to believe that he had any
+family, outside of his brother and sister? That is, any direct heir?"
+Bassett asked.
+
+"He never talked about himself," said Jake. "If that's all, Mr. Wasson,
+I've got a steer bogged down in the north pasture and I'll be going."
+
+On the Wassons' invitation he remained to lunch, and when the ranch
+owner excused himself and rode away after the meal he sat for some
+time on the verandah, with Mrs. Wasson sewing and his own eyes fixed
+speculatively on the mountain range, close, bleak and mysterious.
+
+"Strange thing," he commented. "Here's a man, a book-lover and student,
+who comes out here, not to make living and be a useful member of the
+community, but apparently to bury himself alive. I wonder, why."
+
+"A great many come out here to get away from something, Mr. Bassett."
+
+"Yes, to start again. But this man never started again. He apparently
+just quit."
+
+Mrs. Wasson put down her sewing and looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+"Did the boys tell you anything about the young man who visited Henry
+Livingstone now and then?"
+
+"No. They were not very communicative."
+
+"I suppose they wouldn't tell. Yet I don't see, unless--" She stopped,
+lost in some field of speculation where he could not follow her. "You
+know, we haven't much excitement here, and when this boy was first seen
+around the place--he was here mostly in the summer--we decided that he
+was a relative. I don't know why we considered him mysterious, unless
+it was because he was hardly ever seen. I don't even know that that was
+deliberate. For that matter Mr. Livingstone wasn't much more than a name
+to us."
+
+"You mean, a son?"
+
+"Nobody knew. He was here only now and then."
+
+Bassett moved in his chair and looked at her.
+
+"How old do you suppose this boy was?" he asked.
+
+"He was here at different times. When Mr. Livingstone died I suppose he
+was in his twenties. The thing that makes it seem odd to me is that the
+men didn't mention him to you."
+
+"I didn't ask about him, of course."
+
+She went on with her sewing, apparently intending to drop the matter;
+but the reporter felt that now and then she was subjecting him to a
+sharp scrutiny, and that, in some shrewd woman-fashion, she was trying
+to place him.
+
+"You said it was a matter of some property?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But it's rather late, isn't it? Ten years?"
+
+"That's what makes it difficult."
+
+There was another silence, during which she evidently made her decision.
+
+"I have never said this before, except to Mr. Wasson. But I believe he
+was here when Henry Livingstone died."
+
+Her tone was mysterious, and Bassett stared at her.
+
+"You don't think Livingstone was murdered!"
+
+"No. He died of heart failure. There was an autopsy. But he had a bad
+cut on his head. Of course, he may have fallen--Bill and Jake were away.
+They'd driven some cattle out on the range. It was two days before he
+was found, and it would have been longer if Mr. Wasson hadn't ridden out
+to talk to him about buying. He found him dead in his bed, but there was
+blood on the floor in the next room. I washed it up myself."
+
+"Of course," she added, when Bassett maintained a puzzled silence, "I
+may be all wrong. He might have fallen in the next room and dragged
+himself to bed. But he was very neatly covered up."
+
+"It's your idea, then, that this boy put him into the bed?"
+
+"I don't know. He wasn't seen about the place. He's never been here
+since. But the posse found a horse with the Livingstone brand, saddled,
+dead in Dry River Canyon when it was looking for Judson Clark. Of
+course, that was a month later. The men here, Bill and Jake, claimed it
+had wandered off, but I've often wondered."
+
+After a time Bassett got up and took his leave. He was confused and
+irritated. Here, whether creditably or not, was Dick Livingstone
+accounted for. There was a story there, probably, but not the story he
+was after. This unknown had been at the ranch when Henry Livingstone
+died, had perhaps been indirectly responsible for his death. He had,
+witness the horse, fled after the thing happened. Later on, then, David
+Livingstone had taken him into his family. That was all.
+
+Except for that identification of Gregory's, and for the photograph of
+Judson Clark.... For a moment he wondered if the two, Jud Clark and the
+unknown, could be the same. But Dry River would have known Clark. That
+couldn't be.
+
+He almost ditched the car on his way back to Norada, so deeply was he
+engrossed in thought.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+On the seventh of June David and Lucy went to the seashore, went by
+the order of various professional gentlemen who had differed violently
+during the course of David's illness, but who now suddenly agreed with
+an almost startling unanimity. Which unanimity was the result of careful
+coaching by Dick.
+
+He saw in David's absence his only possible chance to go back to Norada
+without worry to the sick man, and he felt, too, that a change, getting
+away from the surcharged atmosphere of the old house, would be good for
+both David and Lucy.
+
+For days before they started Lucy went about in a frenzy of nervous
+energy, writing out menus for Minnie for a month ahead, counting and
+recounting David's collars and handkerchiefs, cleaning and pressing his
+neckties. In the harness room in the stable Mike polished boots until
+his arms ached, and at the last moment with trunks already bulging,
+came three gift dressing-gowns for David, none of which he would leave
+behind.
+
+"I declare," Lucy protested to Dick, "I don't know what's come over him.
+Every present he's had since he was sick he's taking along. You'd think
+he was going to be shut up on a desert island."
+
+But Dick thought he understood. In David's life his friends had had to
+take the place of wife and children; he clung to them now, in his age
+and weakness, and Dick knew that he had a sense of deserting them, of
+abandoning them after many faithful years.
+
+So David carried with him the calendars and slippers, dressing-gowns and
+bed-socks which were at once the tangible evidence of their friendliness
+and Lucy's despair.
+
+Watching him, Dick was certain nothing further had come to threaten his
+recovery. Dick carefully inspected the mail, but no suspicious letter
+had arrived, and as the days went on David's peace seemed finally
+re-established. He made no more references to Johns Hopkins, slept like
+a child, and railed almost pettishly at his restricted diet.
+
+"When we get away from Dick, Lucy," he would say, "we'll have beef
+again, and roast pork and sausage."
+
+Lucy would smile absently and shake her head.
+
+"You'll stick to your diet, David," she would say. "David, it's the
+strangest thing about your winter underwear. I'm sure you had five
+suits, and now there are only three."
+
+Or it was socks she missed, or night-clothing. And David, inwardly
+chuckling, would wonder with her, knowing all the while that they had
+clothed some needy body.
+
+On the night before the departure David went out for his first short
+walk alone, and brought Elizabeth back with him.
+
+"I found a rose walking up the street, Lucy," he bellowed up the stairs,
+"and I brought it home for the dinner table."
+
+Lucy came down, flushed from her final effort over the trunks, but
+gently hospitable.
+
+"It's fish night, Elizabeth," she said. "You know Minnie's a Catholic,
+so we always have fish on Friday. I hope you eat it." She put her hand
+on Elizabeth's arm and gently patted it, and thus was Elizabeth taken
+into the old brick house as one of its own.
+
+Elizabeth was finding this period of her tacit engagement rather
+puzzling. Her people puzzled her. Even Dick did, at times. And nobody
+seemed anxious to make plans for the future, or even to discuss the
+wedding. She was a little hurt about that, remembering the excitement
+over Nina's.
+
+But what chiefly bewildered her was the seeming necessity for secrecy.
+Even Nina had not been told, nor Jim. She did not resent that, although
+it bewildered her. Her own inclination was to shout it from the
+house-tops. Her father had simply said: "I've told your mother, honey,
+and we'd better let it go at that, for a while. There's no hurry. And I
+don't want to lose you yet."
+
+But there were other things. Dick himself varied. He was always gentle
+and very tender, but there were times when he seemed to hold himself
+away from her, would seem aloof and remote, but all the time watching
+her almost fiercely. But after that, as though he had tried an
+experiment in separation and failed with it, he would catch her to him
+savagely and hold her there. She tried, very meekly, to meet his mood;
+was submissive to his passion and acquiescent to those intervals when
+he withdrew himself and sat or stood near her, not touching her but
+watching her intently.
+
+She thought men in love were very queer and quite incomprehensible.
+Because he varied in other ways, too. He was boyish and gay sometimes,
+and again silent and almost brooding. She thought at those times that
+perhaps he was tired, what with David's work and his own, and sometimes
+she wondered if he were still worrying about that silly story. But once
+or twice, after he had gone, she went upstairs and looked carefully into
+her mirror. Perhaps she had not looked her best that day. Girl-like, she
+set great value on looks in love. She wanted frightfully to be beautiful
+to him. She wished she could look like Beverly Carlysle, for instance.
+
+Two days before David and Lucy's departure he had brought her her
+engagement ring, a square-cut diamond set in platinum. He kissed it
+first and then her finger, and slipped it into place. It became a rite,
+done as he did it, and she had a sense of something done that could
+never be undone. When she looked up at him he was very pale.
+
+"Forsaking all others, so long as we both shall live," he said,
+unsteadily.
+
+"So long as we both shall live," she repeated.
+
+However she had to take it off later, for Mrs. Wheeler, it developed,
+had very pronounced ideas of engagement rings. They were put on the day
+the notices were sent to the newspapers, and not before. So Elizabeth
+wore her ring around her neck on a white ribbon, inside her camisole,
+until such time as her father would consent to announce that he was
+about to lose her.
+
+Thus Elizabeth found her engagement full of unexpected turns and twists,
+and nothing precisely as she had expected. But she accepted things
+as they came, being of the type around which the dramas of life are
+enacted, while remaining totally undramatic herself. She lived her quiet
+days, worried about Jim on occasion, hemmed table napkins for her linen
+chest, and slept at night with her ring on her finger and a sense of
+being wrapped in protecting love that was no longer limited to the white
+Wheeler house, but now extended two blocks away and around the corner to
+a shabby old brick building in a more or less shabby yard.
+
+They were very gay in the old brick house that night before the
+departure, very noisy over the fish and David's broiled lamb chop. Dick
+demanded a bottle of Lucy's home-made wine, and even David got a little
+of it. They toasted the seashore, and the departed nurse, and David
+quoted Robert Burns at some length and in a horrible Scotch accent.
+Then Dick had a trick by which one read the date on one of three pennies
+while he was not looking, and he could tell without failing which one
+it was. It was most mysterious. And after dinner Dick took her into his
+laboratory, and while she squinted one eye and looked into the finder of
+his microscope he kissed the white nape of her neck.
+
+When they left the laboratory there were patients in the waiting-room,
+but he held her in his arms in the office for a moment or two, very
+quietly, and because the door was thin they made a sort of game of it,
+and pretended she was a patient.
+
+"How did you sleep last night?" he said, in a highly professional and
+very distinct voice. Then he kissed her.
+
+"Very badly, doctor," she said, also very clearly, and whispered, "I lay
+awake and thought about you, dear."
+
+"I'd better give you this sleeping powder." Oh, frightfully
+professional, but the powder turned out to be another kiss. It was a
+wonderful game.
+
+When she slipped out into the hall she had to stop and smooth her hair,
+before she went to Lucy's tidy sitting-room.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+It was Jim Wheeler's turn to take up the shuttle. A girl met in
+some casual fashion; his own youth and the urge of it, perhaps the
+unconscious family indulgence of an only son--and Jim wove his bit and
+passed on.
+
+There had been mild contention in the Wheeler family during all the
+spring. Looking out from his quiet windows Walter Wheeler saw the young
+world going by a-wheel, and going fast. Much that legitimately belonged
+to it, and much that did not in the laxness of the new code, he laid to
+the automobile. And doggedly he refused to buy one.
+
+"We can always get a taxicab," was his imperturbable answer to Jim. "I
+pay pretty good-sized taxi bills without unpleasant discussion. I know
+you pretty well too, Jim. Better than you know yourself. And if you had
+a car, you'd try your best to break your neck in it."
+
+Now and then Jim got a car, however. Sometimes he rented one, sometimes
+he cajoled Nina into lending him hers.
+
+"A fellow looks a fool without one," he would say to her. "Girls expect
+to be taken out. It's part of the game."
+
+And Nina, always reached by that argument of how things looked, now and
+then reluctantly acquiesced. But a night or two after David and Lucy had
+started for the seashore Nina came in like a whirlwind, and routed the
+family peace immediately.
+
+"Father," she said, "you just must speak to Jim. He's taken our car
+twice at night without asking for it, and last night he broke a spring.
+Les is simply crazy."
+
+"Taken your car!" Mrs. Wheeler exclaimed.
+
+"Yes. I hate telling on him, but I spoke to him after the first time,
+and he did it anyhow."
+
+Mrs. Wheeler glanced at her husband uneasily. She often felt he was too
+severe with Jim.
+
+"Don't worry," he said grimly. "He'll not do it again."
+
+"If we only had a car of our own--" Mrs. Wheeler protested.
+
+"You know what I think about that, mother. I'm not going to have him
+joy-riding over the country, breaking his neck and getting into trouble.
+I've seen him driving Wallace Sayre's car, and he drives like a fool or
+a madman."
+
+It was an old dispute and a bitter one. Mr. Wheeler got up, whistled for
+the dog, and went out. His wife turned on Nina.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't bring these things to your father, Nina," she said.
+"He's been very nervous lately, and he isn't always fair to Jim."
+
+"Well, it's time Jim was fair to Leslie," Nina said, with family
+frankness. "I'll tell you something, mother. Jim has a girl somewhere,
+in town probably. He takes her driving. I found a glove in the car. And
+he must be crazy about her, or he'd never do what he's done."
+
+"Do you know who it is?"
+
+"No. Somebody's he's ashamed of, probably, or he wouldn't be so
+clandestine about it."
+
+"Nina!"
+
+"Well, it looks like it. Jim's a man, mother. He's not a little boy.
+He'll go through his shady period, like the rest."
+
+That night it was Mrs. Wheeler's turn to lie awake. Again and again she
+went over Nina's words, and her troubled mind found a basis in fact
+for them. Jim had been getting money from her, to supplement his small
+salary; he had been going out a great deal at night, and returning very
+late; once or twice, in the morning, he had looked ill and his eyes had
+been bloodshot, as though he had been drinking.
+
+Anxiety gripped her. There were so many temptations for young men, so
+many who waited to waylay them. A girl. Not a good girl, perhaps.
+
+She raised herself on her elbow and looked at her sleeping husband. Men
+were like that; they begot children and then forgot them. They never
+looked ahead or worried. They were taken up with business, and always
+they forgot that once they too had been young and liable to temptation.
+
+She got up, some time later, and tiptoed to the door of Jim's room.
+Inside she could hear his heavy, regular breathing. Her boy. Her only
+son.
+
+She went back and crawled carefully into the bed.
+
+There was an acrimonious argument between Jim and his father the next
+morning, and Jim slammed out of the house, leaving chaos behind him. It
+was then that Elizabeth learned that her father was going away. He said:
+
+"Maybe I'm wrong, mother. I don't know. Perhaps, when I come back,
+I'll look around for a car. I don't want him driven to doing underhand
+things."
+
+"Are you going away?" Elizabeth asked, surprised.
+
+It appeared that he was. More than that, that he was going West with
+Dick. It was all arranged and nobody had told her anything about it.
+
+She was hurt and a trifle offended, and she cried a little about it.
+Yet, as Dick explained to her later that day, it was simple enough. Her
+father needed a rest, and besides, it was right that he should know all
+about Dick's life before he came to Haverly.
+
+"He's going to make me a present of something highly valuable, you
+know."
+
+"But it looks as though he didn't trust you!"
+
+"He's being very polite about it; but, of course, in his eyes I'm a
+common thief, stealing--"
+
+She would not let him go on.
+
+A certain immaturity, the blind confidence of youth in those it
+loves, explains Elizabeth's docility at that time. But underneath her
+submission that day was a growing uneasiness, fiercely suppressed.
+Buried deep, the battle between absolute trust and fear was beginning, a
+battle which was so rapidly to mature her.
+
+Nina, shrewd and suspicious, sensed something of nervous strain in her
+when she came in, later that day, to borrow a hat.
+
+"Look here, Elizabeth," she began, "I want to talk to you. Are you going
+to live in this--this hole all your life?"
+
+"Hole nothing," Elizabeth said, hotly. "Really, Nina, I do think you
+might be more careful of what you say."
+
+"Oh, it's a dear old hole," Nina said negligently. "But hole it is,
+nevertheless. Why in the world mother don't manage her servants--but no
+matter about that now. Elizabeth, there's a lot of talk about you and
+Dick Livingstone, and it makes me furious. When I think that you can
+have Wallie Sayre by lifting your finger--"
+
+"And that I don't intend to lift my finger," Elizabeth interrupted.
+
+"Then you're a fool. And it is Dick Livingstone!"
+
+"It is, Nina."
+
+Nina's ambitious soul was harrowed.
+
+"That stodgy old house," she said, "and two old people! A general
+house-work girl, and you cooking on her Thursdays out! I wish you joy of
+it."
+
+"I wonder," Elizabeth said calmly, "whether it ever occurs to you that
+I may put love above houses and servants? Or that my life is my own, to
+live exactly as I please? Because that is what I intend to do."
+
+Nina rose angrily.
+
+"Thanks," she said. "I wish you joy of it." And went out, slamming the
+door behind her.
+
+Then, with only a day or so remaining before Dick's departure, and
+Jim's hand already reaching for the shuttle, Elizabeth found herself
+the object of certain unmistakable advances from Mrs. Sayre herself, and
+that at a rose luncheon at the house on the hill.
+
+The talk about Dick and Elizabeth had been slow in reaching the house
+on the hill. When it came, via a little group on the terrace after the
+luncheon, Mrs. Sayre was upset and angry and inclined to blame Wallie.
+Everything that he wanted had come to him, all his life, and he did not
+know how to go after things. He had sat by, and let this shabby-genteel
+doctor, years older than the girl, walk away with her.
+
+Not that she gave up entirely. She knew the town, and its tendency
+toward over-statement. And so she made a desperate attempt, that
+afternoon, to tempt Elizabeth. She took her through the greenhouses, and
+then through the upper floors of the house. She showed her pictures
+of their boat at Miami, and of the house at Marblehead. Elizabeth was
+politely interested and completely unresponsive.
+
+"When you think," Mrs. Sayre said at last, "that Wallie will have to
+assume a great many burdens one of these days, you can understand how
+anxious I am to have him marry the right sort of girl."
+
+She thought Elizabeth flushed slightly.
+
+"I am sure he will, Mrs. Sayre."
+
+Mrs. Sayre tried a new direction.
+
+"He will have all I have, my dear, and it is a great responsibility.
+Used properly, money can be an agent of great good. Wallie's wife can be
+a power, if she so chooses. She can look after the poor. I have a long
+list of pensioners, but I am too old to add personal service."
+
+"That would be wonderful," Elizabeth said gravely. For a moment she
+wished Dick were rich. There was so much to be done with money, and
+how well he would know how to do it. She was thoughtful on the way
+downstairs, and Mrs. Sayre felt some small satisfaction. Now if Wallie
+would only do his part--
+
+It was that night that Jim brought the tragedy on the Wheeler house that
+was to lie heavy on it for many a day.
+
+There had been a little dinner, one of those small informal affairs
+where Mrs. Wheeler, having found in the market the first of the broiling
+chickens and some fine green peas, bought them first and then sat down
+to the telephone to invite her friends. Mr. Oglethorpe, the clergyman,
+and his wife accepted cheerfully; Harrison Miller, resignedly. Then Mrs.
+Wheeler drew a long, resolute breath and invited Mrs. Sayre. When that
+lady accepted with alacrity Mrs. Wheeler hastily revised her menu,
+telephoned the florist for flowers, and spent a long half-hour with
+Annie over plates and finger bowls.
+
+Jim was not coming home, and Elizabeth was dining with Nina. Mrs.
+Wheeler bustled about the house contentedly. Everything was going well,
+after all. Before long there would be a car, and Jim would spend more
+time at home. Nina and Leslie were happy again. And Elizabeth--not a
+good match, perhaps, but a marriage for love, if ever there was one.
+
+She sat at the foot of her table that night, rather too watchful of
+Annie, but supremely content. She had herself scoured the loving cup
+to the last degree of brightness and it stood, full of flowers, in the
+center of the cloth.
+
+At Nina's was a smaller but similar group. All over the village at that
+time in the evening were similar groups, gathered around flowers and
+candles; neatly served, cheerful and undramatic groups, with the house
+doors closed and dogs waiting patiently outside in the long spring
+twilight.
+
+Elizabeth was watching Nina. Just so, she was deciding, would she some
+day preside at her own board. Perhaps before so very long, too. A little
+separation, letters to watch for and answer, and then--
+
+The telephone rang, and Leslie answered it. He did not come back;
+instead they heard the house door close, and soon after the rumble of
+the car as it left the garage. It stopped at the door, and Leslie came
+in.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said, "but I guess Elizabeth will have to go home. You'd
+better come along, Nina."
+
+"What is it? Is somebody sick?" Elizabeth gasped.
+
+"Jim's been in an automobile accident. Steady now, Elizabeth! He's hurt,
+but he's going to be all right."
+
+The Wheeler house, when they got there, was brightly lighted. Annie was
+crying in the hall, and in the living-room Mrs. Sayre stood alone, a
+strange figure in a gaudy dress, but with her face strong and calm.
+
+"They've gone to the hospital in my car," she said. "They'll be there
+now any minute, and Mr. Oglethorpe will telephone at once. You are to
+wait before starting in."
+
+They all knew what that meant. It might be too late to start in. Nina
+was crying hysterically, but Elizabeth could not cry. She stood dry-eyed
+by the telephone, listening to Mrs. Sayre and Leslie, but hardly hearing
+them. They had got Dick Livingstone and he had gone on in. Mrs. Sayre
+was afraid it had been one of Wallie's cars. She had begged Wallie to
+tell Jim to be careful in it. It had too much speed.
+
+The telephone rang and Leslie took the receiver and pushed Elizabeth
+gently aside. He listened for a moment.
+
+"Very well," he said. Then he hung up and stood still before he turned
+around:
+
+"It isn't very good news," he said. "I wish I could--Elizabeth!"
+
+Elizabeth had crumpled up in a small heap on the floor.
+
+All through the long night that followed, with the movement of feet
+through the halls, with her mother's door closing and the ghastly
+silence that followed it, with the dawn that came through the windows,
+the dawn that to Jim meant not a new day, but a new life beyond their
+living touch, all through the night Elizabeth was aware of two figures
+that came and went. One was Dick, quiet, tender and watchful. And one
+was of a heavy woman in a gaudy dress, her face old and weary in the
+morning light, who tended her with gentle hands.
+
+She fell asleep as the light was brightening in the East, with Dick
+holding her hands and kneeling on the floor beside her bed.
+
+It was not until the next day that they knew that Jim had not been
+alone. A girl who was with him had been pinned under the car and had
+died instantly.
+
+Jim had woven his bit in the pattern and passed on. The girl was
+negligible; she was, she had been. That was all. But Jim's death added
+the last element to the impending catastrophe. It sent Dick West alone.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+For several days after his visit to the Livingstone ranch Louis Bassett
+made no move to go to the cabin. He wandered around the town, made
+promiscuous acquaintances and led up, in careful conversations with such
+older residents as he could find, to the Clark and Livingstone families.
+Of the latter he learned nothing; of the former not much that he had not
+known before.
+
+One day he happened on a short, heavy-set man, the sheriff, who had lost
+his office on the strength of Jud Clark's escape, and had now recovered
+it. Bassett had brought some whisky with him, and on the promise of a
+drink lured Wilkins to his room. Over his glass the sheriff talked.
+
+"All this newspaper stuff lately about Jud Clark being alive is dead
+wrong," he declared, irritably. "Maggie Donaldson was crazy. You can
+ask the people here about her. They all know it. Those newspaper fellows
+descended on us here with a tooth-brush apiece and a suitcase full of
+liquor, and thought they'd get something. Seemed to think we'd hold out
+on them unless we got our skins full. But there isn't anything to hold
+out. Jud Clark's dead. That's all."
+
+"Sure he's dead," Bassett agreed, amiably. "You found his horse, didn't
+you?"
+
+"Yes. Dead. And when you find a man's horse dead in the mountains in a
+blizzard, you don't need any more evidence. It was five months before
+you could see a trail up the Goat that winter."
+
+Bassett nodded, rose and poured out another drink.
+
+"I suppose," he observed casually, "that even if Clark turned up now, it
+would be hard to convict him, wouldn't it?"
+
+The sheriff considered that, holding up his glass.
+
+"Well, yes and no," he said. "It was circumstantial evidence, mostly.
+Nobody saw it done. The worst thing against him was his running off."
+
+"How about witnesses?"
+
+"Nobody actually saw it done. John Donaldson came the nearest, and he's
+dead. Lucas's wife was still alive, the last I heard, and I reckon the
+valet is floating around somewhere."
+
+"I suppose if he did turn up you'd make a try for it." Bassett stared at
+the end of his cigar.
+
+"We'd make a try for it, all right," Wilkins said somberly. "There are
+some folks in this county still giving me the laugh over that case."
+
+The next day Bassett hired a quiet horse, rolled in his raincoat two
+days' supply of food, strapped it to the cantle of his saddle, and rode
+into the mountains. He had not ridden for years, and at the end of the
+first hour he began to realize that he was in for a bad time. By noon
+he was so sore that he could hardly get out of the saddle, and so stiff
+that once out, he could barely get back again. All morning the horse
+had climbed, twisting back and forth on a narrow canyon trail, grunting
+occasionally, as is the way of a horse on a steep grade. All morning
+they had followed a roaring mountain stream, descending in small
+cataracts from the ice fields far above. And all morning Bassett had
+been mentally following that trail as it had been ridden ten years
+ago by a boy maddened with fear and drink, who drove his horse forward
+through the night and the blizzard, with no objective and no hope.
+
+He found it practically impossible to connect this frenzied fugitive
+with the quiet man in his office chair at Haverly, the man who was or
+was not Judson Clark. He lay on a bank at noon and faced the situation
+squarely, while his horse, hobbled, grazed with grotesque little forward
+jumps in an upland meadow. Either Dick Livingstone was Clark, or he
+was the unknown occasional visitor at the Livingstone Ranch. If he
+were Clark, and if that could be proved, there were two courses open to
+Bassett. He could denounce him to the authorities and then spring
+the big story of his career. Or he could let things stand. From a
+professional standpoint the first course attracted him, as a man he
+began to hate it. The last few days had shed a new light on Judson
+Clark. He had been immensely popular; there were men in the town who
+told about trying to save him from himself. He had been extravagant, but
+he had also been generous. He had been "a good kid," until liberty and
+money got hold of him. There had been more than one man in the sheriff's
+posse who hadn't wanted to find him.
+
+He was tempted to turn back. The mountains surrounded him, somber and
+majestically still. They made him feel infinitely small and rather
+impertinent, as though he had come to penetrate the secrets they never
+yielded. He had almost to fight a conviction that they were hostile.
+
+After an hour or so he determined to go on. Let them throw him over a
+gorge if they so determined. He got up, grunting, and leading the horse
+beside a boulder, climbed painfully into the saddle. To relieve his
+depression he addressed the horse:
+
+"It would be easier on both of us if you were two feet narrower in the
+beam, old dear," he said.
+
+Nevertheless, he made good time. By six o'clock he knew that he must
+have made thirty odd miles, and that he must be near the cabin. Also
+that it was going to be bitterly cold that night, under the snow fields,
+and that he had brought no wood axe. The deep valley was purple with
+twilight by seven, and he could scarcely see the rough-drawn trail map
+he had been following. And the trail grew increasingly bad. For the last
+mile or two the horse took its own way.
+
+It wandered on, through fords and out of them, under the low-growing
+branches of scrub pine, brushing his bruised legs against rocks. He had
+definitely decided that he had missed the cabin when the horse turned
+off the trail, and he saw it.
+
+It was built of rough logs, the chinks once closed with mud which had
+fallen away. The door stood open, and his entrance into its darkness was
+followed by the scurrying of many little feet. Bassett unstrapped his
+raincoat from the saddle with fingers numb with cold, and flung it to
+the ground. He uncinched and removed the heavy saddle, hobbled his horse
+and removed the bridle, and turned him loose with a slap on the flank.
+
+"For the love of Mike, don't go far, old man," he besought him. And was
+startled by the sound of his own voice.
+
+By the light of his candle lantern the prospects were extremely poor.
+The fir branches in the double-berthed bunk were dry and useless, the
+floor was crumbling under his feet, and the roof of the lean-to had
+fallen in and crushed the rusty stove. In the cabin itself some one had
+recently placed a large flat stone in a corner for a fireplace, with two
+slabs to back it, and above it had broken out a corner of the roof as
+a chimney. Bassett thought he saw the handwork of some enterprising
+journalist, and smiled grimly.
+
+He set to work with the resource of a man who had learned to take what
+came, threw the dry bedding onto the slab and set a match to it, brought
+in portions of the lean-to roof for further supply for the fire, opened
+a can of tomatoes and set it on the edge of the hearth to heat, and
+sliced bacon into his diminutive frying-pan.
+
+It was too late for any examination that night. He ate his supper from
+the rough table, drawing up to it a broken chair, and afterwards brought
+in more wood for his fire. Then, with a lighted cigar, and with his
+boots steaming on the hearth, he sat in front of the blaze and fell into
+deep study.
+
+He was aching in every muscle when he finally stretched out on the bare
+boards of the lower bunk. While he slept small furry noses appeared in
+the openings in the broken floor, to be followed by little bodies that
+moved cautiously out into the open. He roused once and peered over the
+edge of the bunk. Several field mice were basking in front of the dying
+embers of the fire, and two were sitting on his boots. He grinned at
+them and lay back again, but he found himself fully awake and very
+uncomfortable. He lay there, contemplating his own folly, and demanding
+of himself almost fiercely what he had expected to get out of all this
+effort and misery. For ten years or so men had come here. Wilkins had
+come, for one, and there had been others. And had found nothing, and had
+gone away. And now he was there, the end of the procession, to look for
+God knows what.
+
+He pulled the raincoat up around his shoulders, and lay back stiffly.
+Then--he was not an imaginative man--he began to feel that eyes were
+staring at him, furtive, hidden eyes, intently watching him.
+
+Without moving he began to rake the cabin with his eyes, wall to wall,
+corner to corner. He turned, cautiously, and glanced at the door into
+the lean-to. It gaped, cavernous and empty. But the sense of being
+watched persisted, and when he looked at the floor the field mice had
+disappeared.
+
+He began gradually to see more clearly as his eyes grew accustomed to
+the semi-darkness, and he felt, too, that he could almost locate the
+direction of the menace. For as a menace he found himself considering
+it. It was the broken, windowless East wall, opposite the bunk.
+
+After a time the thing became intolerable. He reached for his revolver,
+and getting quickly out of the bunk, ran to the doorway and threw open
+the door, to find himself peering into a blackness like a wall, and to
+hear a hasty crunching of the underbrush that sounded like some animal
+in full flight.
+
+With the sounds, and his own movement, the terror died. The cold night
+air on his face, the feel of the pine needles under his stockinged
+feet, brought him back to sense and normality. Some creature of the
+wilderness, a deer or a bear, perhaps, had been moving stealthily
+outside the cabin, and it was sound he had heard, not a gaze he had
+felt. He was rather cynically amused at himself. He went back into the
+cabin, closed the door, and stooped to turn his boots over before the
+fire.
+
+It was while he was stooping that he heard a horse galloping off along
+the trail.
+
+He did not go to sleep again. Now and then he considered the possibility
+of its having been his own animal, somehow freed of the rope and
+frightened by the same thing that had frightened him. But when with the
+first light he went outside, his horse, securely hobbled, was grazing on
+the scant pasture not far away.
+
+Before he cooked his breakfast he made a minute examination of the
+ground beneath the East wall, but the earth was hard, and a broken
+branch or two might have been caused by his horse. He had no skill in
+woodcraft, and in the broad day his alarm seemed almost absurd. Some
+free horse on the range had probably wandered into the vicinity of the
+cabin, and had made off again on a trot. Nevertheless, he made up
+his mind not to remain over another night, but to look about after
+breakfast, and then to start down again.
+
+He worked on his boots, dry and hard after yesterday's wetting, fried
+his bacon and dropped some crackers into the sizzling fat, and ate
+quickly. After that he went out to the trail and inspected it. He had
+an idea that range horses were mostly unshod, and that perhaps the trail
+would reveal something. But it was unused and overgrown. Not until he
+had gone some distance did he find anything. Then in a small bare spot
+he found in the dust the imprints of a horse's shoes, turned down the
+trail up which he had come.
+
+Even then he was slow to read into the incident anything that related to
+himself or to his errand. He went over the various contingencies of the
+trail: a ranger, on his way to town; a forest fire somewhere; a belated
+hound from the newspaper pack. He was convinced now that human eyes had
+watched him for some time through the log wall the night before, but he
+could not connect them with the business in hand.
+
+He set resolutely about his business, which was to turn up, somehow,
+some way, a proof of the truth of Maggie Donaldson's dying statement. To
+begin with then he accepted that statement, to find where it would lead
+him, and it led him, eventually, to the broken-down stove under the
+fallen roof of the lean-to.
+
+He deliberately set himself to work, at first, to reconstruct the life
+in the cabin. Jud would have had the lower bunk, David the upper. The
+skeleton of a cot bed in the lean-to would have been Maggie's. But none
+of them yielded anything.
+
+Very well. Having accepted that they lived here, it was from here that
+the escape was made. They would have started the moment the snow was
+melted enough to let them get out, and they would have taken, not the
+trail toward the town, but some other and circuitous route toward the
+railroad. But there had been things to do before they left. They would
+have cleared the cabin of every trace of occupancy; the tin cans,
+Clark's clothing, such bedding as they could not carry. The cans must
+have been a problem; the clothes, of course, could have been burned.
+But there were things, like buttons, that did not burn easily. Clark's
+watch, if he wore one, his cuff links. Buried?
+
+It occurred to him that they might have disposed of some of the
+unburnable articles under the floor, and he lifted a rough board or two.
+But to pursue the search systematically he would have needed a pickaxe,
+and reluctantly he gave it up and turned his attention to the lean-to
+and the buried stove.
+
+The stove lay in a shallow pit, filled with ancient ashes and crumbled
+bits of wood from the roof. It lay on its side, its sheet-iron sides
+collapsed, its long chimney disintegrated. He was in a heavy sweat
+before he had uncovered it and was able to remove it from its bed of
+ashes and pine needles. This done, he brought his candle-lantern and
+settled himself cross-legged on the ground.
+
+His first casual inspection of the ashes revealed nothing. He set to
+work more carefully then, picking them up by handfuls, examining and
+discarding. Within ten minutes he had in a pile beside him some burned
+and blackened metal buttons, the eyelets and a piece of leather from a
+shoe, and the almost unrecognizable nib of a fountain pen.
+
+He sat with them in the palm of his hand. Taken alone, each one was
+insignificant, proved nothing whatever. Taken all together, they assumed
+vast proportions, became convincing, became evidence.
+
+Late that night he descended stiffly at the livery stable, and turned
+his weary horse over to a stableman.
+
+"Looks dead beat," said the stableman, eyeing the animal.
+
+"He's got nothing on me," Bassett responded cheerfully. "Better give him
+a hot bath and put him to bed. That's what I'm going to do."
+
+He walked back to the hotel, glad to stretch his aching muscles. The
+lobby was empty, and behind the desk the night clerk was waiting for the
+midnight train. Bassett was wide awake by that time, and he went back to
+the desk and lounged against it.
+
+"You look as though you'd struck oil," said the night clerk.
+
+"Oil! I'll tell you what I have struck. I've struck a livery stable
+saddle two million times in the last two days."
+
+The clerk grinned, and Bassett idly pulled the register toward him.
+
+"J. Smith, Minneapolis," he read. Then he stopped and stared. Richard
+Livingstone was registered on the next line above.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+Dick had found it hard to leave Elizabeth, for she clung to him in her
+grief with childish wistfulness. He found, too, that her family depended
+on him rather than on Leslie Ward for moral support. It was to him that
+Walter Wheeler looked for assurance that the father had had no indirect
+responsibility for the son's death; it was to him that Jim's mother,
+lying gray-faced and listless in her bed or on her couch, brought her
+anxious questionings. Had Jim suffered? Could they have avoided it? And
+an insistent demand to know who and what had been the girl who was with
+him.
+
+In spite of his own feeling that he would have to go to Norada quickly,
+before David became impatient over his exile, Dick took a few hours to
+find the answer to that question. But when he found it he could not
+tell them. The girl had been a dweller in the shady byways of life, had
+played her small unmoral part and gone on, perhaps to some place where
+men were kinder and less urgent. Dick did not judge her. He saw her, as
+her kind had been through all time, storm centers of the social world,
+passively and unconsciously blighting, at once the hunters and the prey.
+
+He secured her former address from the police, a three-story brick
+rooming-house in the local tenderloin, and waited rather uncomfortably
+for the mistress of the place to see him. She came at last, a big woman,
+vast and shapeless and with an amiable loose smile, and she came in with
+the light step of the overfleshed, only to pause in the doorway and to
+stare at him.
+
+"My God!" she said. "I thought you were dead!"
+
+"I'm afraid you're mistaking me for some one else, aren't you?"
+
+She looked at him carefully.
+
+"I'd have sworn--" she muttered, and turning to the button inside the
+door she switched on the light. Then she surveyed him again.
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Livingstone. Doctor Livingstone. I called--"
+
+"Is that for me, or for the police?"
+
+"Now see here," he said pleasantly. "I don't know who you are mistaking
+me for, and I'm not hiding from the police. Here's my card, and I
+have come from the family of a young man named Wheeler, who was killed
+recently in an automobile accident."
+
+She took the card and read it, and then resumed her intent scrutiny of
+him.
+
+"Well, you fooled me all right," she said at last. "I thought you
+were--well, never mind that. What about this Wheeler family? Are they
+going to settle with the undertaker? Because I tell you flat, I can't
+and won't. She owed me a month's rent, and her clothes won't bring over
+seventy-five or a hundred dollars."
+
+As he left he was aware that she stood in the doorway looking after
+him. He drove home slowly in the car, and on the way he made up a kindly
+story to tell the family. He could not let them know that Jim had been
+seeking love in the byways of life. And that night he mailed a check in
+payment of the undertaker's bill, carefully leaving the stub empty.
+
+On the third day after Jim's funeral he started for Norada. An interne
+from a local hospital, having newly finished his service there, had
+agreed to take over his work for a time. But Dick was faintly jealous
+when he installed Doctor Reynolds in his office, and turned him over to
+a mystified Minnie to look after.
+
+"Is he going to sleep in your bed?" she demanded belligerently.
+
+She was only partially mollified when she found Doctor Reynolds was to
+have the spare room. She did not like the way things were going, she
+confided to Mike. Why wasn't she to let on to Mrs. Crosby that Doctor
+Dick had gone away? Or to the old doctor? Both of them away, and that
+little upstart in the office ready to steal their patients and hang out
+his own sign the moment they got back!
+
+Unused to duplicity as he was, Dick found himself floundering along an
+extremely crooked path. He wrote a half dozen pleasant, non-committal
+letters to David and Lucy, spending an inordinate time on them, and
+gave them to Walter Wheeler to mail at stated intervals. But his chief
+difficulty was with Elizabeth. Perhaps he would have told her; there
+were times when he had to fight his desire to have her share his anxiety
+as well as know the truth about him. But she was already carrying the
+burden of Jim's tragedy, and her father, too, was insistent that she be
+kept in ignorance.
+
+"Until she can have the whole thing," he said, with the new heaviness
+which had crept into his voice.
+
+Beside that real trouble Dick's looked dim and nebulous. Other things
+could be set right; there was always a fighting chance. It was only
+death that was final.
+
+Elizabeth went to the station to see him off, a small slim thing in
+a black frock, with eyes that persistently sought his face, and a
+determined smile. He pulled her arm through his, so he might hold her
+hand, and when he found that she was wearing her ring he drew her even
+closer, with a wave of passionate possession.
+
+"You are mine. My little girl."
+
+"I am yours. For ever and ever."
+
+But they assumed a certain lightness after that, each to cheer the
+other. As when she asserted that she was sure she would always know the
+moment he stopped thinking about her, and he stopped, with any number of
+people about, and said:
+
+"That's simply terrible! Suppose, when we are married, my mind turns on
+such a mundane thing as beefsteak and onions? Will you simply walk out
+on me?"
+
+He stood on the lowest step of the train until her figure was lost in
+the darkness, and the porter expostulated. He was, that night, a little
+drunk with love, and he did not read the note she had thrust into his
+hand at the last moment until he was safely in his berth, his long
+figure stretched diagonally to find the length it needed.
+
+"Darling, darling Dick," she had written. "I wonder so often how you can
+care for me, or what I have done to deserve you. And I cannot write how
+I feel, just as I cannot say it. But, Dick dear, I have such a terrible
+fear of losing you, and you are my life now. You will be careful and not
+run any risks, won't you? And just remember this always. Wherever you
+are and wherever I am, I am thinking of you and waiting for you."
+
+He read it three times, until he knew it by heart, and he slept with it
+in the pocket of his pajama coat.
+
+Three days later he reached Norada, and registered at the Commercial
+Hotel. The town itself conveyed nothing to him. He found it totally
+unfamiliar, and for its part the town passed him by without a glance.
+A new field had come in, twenty miles from the old one, and had brought
+with it a fresh influx of prospectors, riggers, and lease buyers. The
+hotel was crowded.
+
+That was his first disappointment. He had been nursing the hope that
+surroundings which he must once have known well would assist him in
+finding himself. That was the theory, he knew. He stood at the window of
+his hotel room, with its angular furniture and the Gideon Bible, and for
+the first time he realized the difficulty of what he had set out to do.
+Had he been able to take David into his confidence he would have had the
+names of one or two men to go to, but as things were he had nothing.
+
+The almost morbid shrinking he felt from exposing his condition was
+increased, rather than diminished, in the new surroundings. He would,
+of course, go to the ranch at Dry River, and begin his inquiries from
+there, but not until now had he realized what that would mean; his
+recognition by people he could not remember, the questions he could not
+answer.
+
+He knew the letter to David from beginning to end, but he got it out and
+read it again. Who was this Bassett, and what mischief was he up to? Why
+should he himself be got out of town quickly and the warning burned? Who
+was "G"? And why wouldn't the simplest thing be to locate this Bassett
+himself?
+
+The more he considered that the more obvious it seemed as a solution,
+provided of course he could locate the man. Whether Bassett were
+friendly or inimical, he was convinced that he knew or was finding out
+something concerning himself which David was keeping from him.
+
+He was relieved when he went down to the desk to find that his man was
+registered there, although the clerk reported him out of town. But the
+very fact that only a few hours or days separated him from a solution of
+the mystery heartened him.
+
+He ate his dinner alone, unnoticed, and after dinner, in the writing
+room, with its mission furniture and its traveling men copying orders,
+he wrote a letter to Elizabeth. Into it he put some of the things that
+lay too deep for speech when he was with her, and because he had so much
+to say and therefore wrote extremely fast, a considerable portion of
+it was practically illegible. Then, as though he could hurry the trains
+East, he put a special delivery stamp on it.
+
+With that off his mind, and the need of exercise after the trip
+insistent, he took his hat and wandered out into the town. The main
+street was crowded; moving picture theaters were summoning their evening
+audiences with bright lights and colored posters, and automobiles lined
+the curb. But here and there an Indian with braids and a Stetson hat, or
+a cowpuncher from a ranch in boots and spurs reminded him that after all
+this was the West, the horse and cattle country. It was still twilight,
+and when he had left the main street behind him he began to have a
+sense of the familiar. Surely he had stood here before, had seen the
+court-house on its low hill, the row of frame houses in small gardens
+just across the street. It seemed infinitely long ago, but very real.
+He even remembered dimly an open place at the other side of the building
+where the ranchmen tied their horses. To test himself he walked around.
+Yes, it was there, but no horses stood there now, heads drooping, bridle
+reins thrown loosely over the rail. Only a muddy automobile, without
+lights, and a dog on guard beside it.
+
+He spoke to the dog, and it came and sniffed at him. Then it squatted in
+front of him, looking up into his face.
+
+"Lonely, old chap, aren't you?" he said. "Well, you've got nothing on
+me."
+
+He felt a little cheered as he turned back toward the hotel. A few
+encounters with the things of his youth, and perhaps the cloud would
+clear away. Already the court-house had stirred some memories. And on
+turning back down the hill he had another swift vision, photographically
+distinct but unrelated to anything that had preceded or followed it. It
+was like a few feet cut from a moving picture film.
+
+He was riding down that street at night on a small horse, and his father
+was beside him on a tall one. He looked up at his father, and he seemed
+very large. The largest man in the world. And the most important.
+
+It began and stopped there, and his endeavor to follow it further
+resulted in its ultimately leaving him. It faded, became less real,
+until he wondered if he had not himself conjured it. But that experience
+taught him something. Things out of the past would come or they would
+not come, but they could not be forced. One could not will to revive
+them.
+
+He stood at a window facing north that night, under the impression
+it was east, and sent his love and an inarticulate sort of prayer to
+Elizabeth, for her safety and happiness, in the general direction of the
+Arctic Circle.
+
+Bassett had not returned in the morning, and he found himself with a
+day on his hands. He decided to try the experiment of visiting the
+Livingstone ranch, or at least of viewing it from a safe distance, with
+the hope of a repetition of last night's experience. Of all his childish
+memories the ranch house, next to his father, was most distinct. When
+he had at various times tried to analyze what things he recalled he had
+found that what they lacked of normal memory was connection. They stood
+out, like the one the night before, each complete in itself, brief, and
+having no apparent relation to what had gone before or what came after.
+
+But the ranch house had been different. The pictures were mostly
+superimposed on it; it was their background. Himself standing on the
+mountain looking down at it, and his father pointing to it; the tutor
+who was afraid of horses, sitting at a big table in a great wood-ceiled
+and wood-paneled room; a long gallery or porch along one side of the
+building and rooms added on to the house so that one had to go along the
+gallery to reach them; a gun-room full of guns.
+
+When, much later, Dick was able calmly to review that day, he found his
+recollection of it confused by the events that followed, but one thing
+stood out as clearly as his later knowledge of the almost incredible
+fact that for one entire day and for the evening of another, he had
+openly appeared in Norada and had not been recognized. That fact was his
+discovery that the Livingstone ranch house had no place in his memory
+whatever.
+
+He had hired a car and a driver, a driver who asserted that this was
+the old Livingstone ranch house. And it bore no resemblance, not the
+faintest, to the building he remembered. It did not lie where it should
+have lain. The mountains were too far behind it. It was not the house.
+The fields were not the proper fields. It was wrong, all wrong.
+
+He went no closer than the highway, because it was not necessary. He
+ordered the car to turn and go back, and for the first and only time he
+was filled with bitter resentment against David. David had fooled him.
+He sat beside the driver, his face glowering and his eyes hot, and let
+his indignation burn in him like a flame.
+
+Hours afterwards he had, of course, found excuses for David. Accepted
+them, rather, as a part of the mystery which wrapped him about. But they
+had no effect on the decision he made during that miserable ride back to
+Norada, when he determined to see the man Bassett and get the truth out
+of him if he had to choke it out.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+Bassett was astounded when he saw Dick's signature on the hotel
+register. It destroyed, in one line, every theory he held. That Judson
+Clark should return to Norada after his flight was incredible. Ten years
+was only ten years after all. It was not a lifetime. There were men in
+the town who had known Clark well.
+
+Nevertheless for a time he held to his earlier conviction, even fought
+for it. He went so far as to wonder if Clark had come back for a tardy
+surrender. Men had done that before this, had carried a burden for
+years, had reached the breaking point, had broken. But he dismissed
+that. There had been no evidence of breaking in the young man in the
+office chair. He found himself thrown back, finally, on the story of the
+Wasson woman, and wondering if he would have to accept it after all.
+
+The reaction from his certainty in the cabin to uncertainty again made
+him fretful and sleepless. It was almost morning before he relaxed on
+his hard hotel bed enough to sleep.
+
+He wakened late, and telephoned down for breakfast. His confusion had
+not decreased with the night, and while he got painfully out of bed and
+prepared to shave and dress, his thoughts were busy. There was no doubt
+in his mind that, in spite of the growth of the town, the newcomer would
+be under arrest almost as soon as he made his appearance. A resemblance
+that could deceive Beverly Carlysle's brother could deceive others, and
+would. That he had escaped so long amazed him.
+
+By the time he had bathed he had developed a sort of philosophic
+acceptance of the new situation. There would be no exclusive story now,
+no scoop. The events of the next few hours were for every man to read.
+He shrugged his shoulders as, partially dressed, he carried his shaving
+materials into the better light of his bedroom.
+
+With his face partially lathered he heard a knock at the door, and sang
+out a not uncheerful "Come in." It happened, then, that it was in
+his mirror that he learned that his visitor was not the waiter, but
+Livingstone himself. He had an instant of stunned amazement before he
+turned.
+
+"I beg your pardon," Dick said. "I was afraid you'd get out before I
+saw you. My name's Livingstone, and I want to talk to you, if you don't
+mind. If you like I'll come back later."
+
+Bassett perceived two things simultaneously; that owing probably to the
+lather on his face he had not been recognized, and that the face of the
+man inside the door was haggard and strained.
+
+"That's all right. Come in and sit down. I'll get this stuff off my face
+and be with you in a jiffy."
+
+But he was very deliberate in the bathroom. His astonishment grew,
+rather than decreased. Clearly Livingstone had not known him. How, then,
+had he known that he was in Norada? And when he recognized him, as he
+would in a moment, what then? He put on his collar and tied his tie
+slowly. Gregory might be the key. Gregory might have found out that he
+had started for Norada and warned him. Then, if that were true, this man
+was Clark after all. But if he were Clark he wouldn't be there. It was
+like a kitten after its tail. It whirled in a circle and got nowhere.
+
+The waiter had laid his breakfast and gone when he emerged from the
+bathroom, and Dick was standing by the window looking out. He turned.
+
+"I'm here, Mr. Bassett, on rather a peculiar--" He stopped and looked at
+Bassett. "I see. You were in my office about a month ago, weren't you?"
+
+"For a headache, yes." Bassett was very wary and watchful, but there was
+no particular unfriendliness in his visitor's eyes.
+
+"It never occurred to me that you might be Bassett," Dick said gravely.
+"Never mind about that. Eat your breakfast. Do you mind if I talk while
+you do it?"
+
+"Will you have some coffee? I can get a glass from the bathroom. It
+takes a week to get a waiter here."
+
+"Thanks. Yes."
+
+The feeling of unreality grew in the reporter's mind. It increased still
+further when they sat opposite each other, the small table with its
+Bible on the lower shelf between them, while he made a pretense at
+breakfasting.
+
+"First of all," Dick said, at last, "I was not sure I had found the
+right man. You are the only Bassett in the place, however, and you're
+registered from my town. So I took a chance. I suppose that headache was
+not genuine."
+
+Bassett hesitated.
+
+"No" he said at last.
+
+"What you really wanted to do was to see me, then?"
+
+"In a way, yes."
+
+"I'll ask you one more question. It may clear the air. Does this mean
+anything to you? I'll tell you now that it doesn't, to me."
+
+From his pocketbook he took the note addressed to David, and passed it
+over the table. Bassett looked at him quickly and took it.
+
+"Before you read it, I'll explain something. It was not sent to me. It
+was sent to my--to Doctor David Livingstone. It happened to fall into my
+hands. I've come a long way to find out what it means."
+
+He paused, and looked the reporter straight in the eyes. "I am laying my
+cards on the table, Bassett. This 'G,' whoever he is, is clearly warning
+my uncle against you. I want to know what he is warning him about."
+
+Bassett read the note carefully, and looked up.
+
+"I suppose you know who 'G' is?"
+
+"I do not. Do you?"
+
+"I'll give you another name, and maybe you'll get it. A name that I
+think will mean something to you. Beverly Carlysle."
+
+"The actress?"
+
+Bassett had an extraordinary feeling of unreality, followed by one of
+doubt. Either the fellow was a very good actor, or--
+
+"Sorry," Dick said slowly. "I don't seem to get it. I don't know that
+'G' is as important as his warning. That note's a warning."
+
+"Yes. It's a warning. And I don't think you need me to tell you what
+about."
+
+"Concerning my uncle, or myself?"
+
+"Are you trying to put it over on me that you don't know?"
+
+"That's what I'm trying to do," Dick said, with a sort of grave
+patience.
+
+The reporter liked courage when he saw it, and he was compelled to a
+sort of reluctant admiration.
+
+"You've got your courage with you," he observed. "How long do you
+suppose it will be after you set foot on the streets of this town before
+you're arrested? How do you know I won't send for the police myself?"
+
+"I know damned well you won't," Dick said grimly. "Not before I'm
+through with you. You've chosen to interest yourself in me. I suppose
+you don't deny the imputation in that letter. You'll grant that I have
+a right to know who and what you are, and just what you are interested
+in."
+
+"Right-o," the reporter said cheerfully, glad to get to grips; and
+to stop a fencing that was getting nowhere. "I'm connected with the
+Times-Republican, in your own fair city. I was in the theater the night
+Gregory recognized you. Verbum sap."
+
+"This Gregory is the 'G'?"
+
+"Oh, quit it, Clark," Bassett said, suddenly impatient. "That letter's
+the last proof I needed. Gregory wrote it after he'd seen David
+Livingstone. He wouldn't have written it if he and the old man hadn't
+come to an understanding. I've been to the cabin. My God, man, I've even
+got the parts of your clothing that wouldn't burn! You can thank Maggie
+Donaldson for that."
+
+"Donaldson," Dick repeated. "That was it. I couldn't remember her name.
+The woman in the cabin. Maggie. And Jack. Jack Donaldson."
+
+He got up, and was apparently dizzy, for he caught at the table.
+
+"Look here," Bassett said, "let me give you a drink. You look all in."
+
+But Dick shook his head.
+
+"No, thanks just the same. I'll ask you to be plain with me, Bassett. I
+am--I have become engaged to a girl, and--well, I want the story. That's
+all."
+
+And, when Bassett only continued to stare at him:
+
+"I suppose I've begun wrong end first. I forgot about how it must seem
+to you. I dropped a block out of my life about ten years ago. Can't
+remember it. I'm not proud of it, but it's the fact. What I'm trying to
+do now is to fill in the gap. But I've got to, somehow. I owe it to the
+girl."
+
+When Bassett could apparently find nothing to say he went on:
+
+"You say I may be arrested if I go out on the street. And you rather
+more than intimate that a woman named Beverly Carlysle is mixed up in it
+somehow. I take it that I knew her."
+
+"Yes. You knew her," Bassett said slowly. At the intimation in his tone
+Dick surveyed him for a moment without speaking. His face, pale before,
+took on a grayish tinge.
+
+"I wasn't--married to her?"
+
+"No. You didn't marry her. See here, Clark, this is straight goods, is
+it? You're not trying to put something over on me? Because if you are,
+you needn't.  I'd about made up my mind to follow the story through for
+my own satisfaction, and then quit cold on it. When a man's pulled
+himself out of the mud as you have it's not my business to pull him
+down. But I don't want you to pull any bunk."
+
+Dick winced.
+
+"Out of the mud!" he said. "No. I'm telling you the truth, Bassett. I
+have some fragmentary memories, places and people, but no names, and
+all of them, I imagine from my childhood. I pick up at a cabin in the
+mountains, with snow around, and David Livingstone feeding me soup with
+a tin spoon." He tried to smile and failed. His face twitched. "I could
+stand it for myself," he said, "but I've tied another life to mine, like
+a cursed fool, and now you speak of a woman, and of arrest. Arrest! For
+what?"
+
+"Suppose," Bassett said after a moment, "suppose you let that go just
+now, and tell me more about this--this gap. You're a medical man. You've
+probably gone into your own case pretty thoroughly. I'm accepting your
+statement, you see. As a matter of fact it must be true, or you wouldn't
+be here. But I've got to know what I'm doing before I lay my cards
+on the table. Make it simple, if you can. I don't know your medical
+jargon."
+
+Dick did his best. The mind closed down now and then, mainly from a
+shock. No, there was no injury required. He didn't think he had had an
+injury. A mental shock would do it, if it were strong enough. And fear.
+It was generally fear. He had never considered himself braver than the
+other fellow, but no man liked to think that he had a cowardly mind.
+Even if things hadn't broken as they had, he'd have come back before
+he went to the length of marriage, to find out what it was he had been
+afraid of. He paused then, to give Bassett a chance to tell him, but the
+reporter only said: "Go on, you put your cards on the table, and then
+I'll lay mine out."
+
+Dick went on. He didn't blame Bassett. If there was something that was
+in his line of work, he understood. At the same time he wanted to save
+David anything unpleasant. (The word "unpleasant" startled Bassett, by
+its very inadequacy.) He knew now that David had built up for him an
+identity that probably did not exist, but he wanted Bassett to know that
+there could never be doubt of David's high purpose and his essential
+fineness.
+
+"Whatever I was before." he finished simply, "and I'll get that from you
+now, if I am any sort of a man at all it is his work."
+
+He stood up and braced himself. It had been clear to Bassett for ten
+minutes that Dick was talking against time, against the period of
+revelation. He would have it, but he was mentally bracing himself
+against it.
+
+"I think," he said, "I'll have that whisky now."
+
+Bassett poured him a small drink, and took a turn about the room while
+he drank it. He was perplexed and apprehensive. Strange as the story
+was, he was convinced that he had heard the truth. He had, now and then,
+run across men who came back after a brief disappearance, with a cock
+and bull story of forgetting who they were, and because nearly always
+these men vanished at the peak of some crisis they had always been open
+to suspicion. Perhaps, poor devils, they had been telling the truth
+after all. So the mind shut down, eh? Closed like a grave over the
+unbearable!
+
+His own part in the threatening catastrophe began to obsess him. Without
+the warning from Gregory there would have been no return to Norada, no
+arrest. It had all been dead and buried, until he himself had revived
+it. And a girl, too! The girl in the blue dress at the theater, of
+course.
+
+Dick put down the glass.
+
+"I'm ready, if you are."
+
+"Does the name of Clark recall anything to you?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Judson Clark? Jud Clark?"
+
+Dick passed his hand over his forehead wearily.
+
+"I'm not sure," he said. "It sounds familiar, and then it doesn't. It
+doesn't mean anything to me, if you get that. If it's a key, it doesn't
+unlock. That's all. Am I Judson Clark?"
+
+Oddly enough, Bassett found himself now seeking for hope of escape in
+the very situation that had previously irritated him, in the story he
+had heard at Wasson's. He considered, and said, almost violently:
+
+"Look here, I may have made a mistake. I came out here pretty well
+convinced I'd found the solution to an old mystery, and for that matter
+I think I have. But there's a twist in it that isn't clear, and until
+it is clear I'm not going to saddle you with an identity that may not
+belong to you. You are one of two men. One of them is Judson Clark, and
+I'll be honest with you; I'm pretty sure you're Clark. The other I don't
+know, but I have reason to believe that he spent part of his time with
+Henry Livingstone at Dry River."
+
+"I went to the Livingstone ranch yesterday. I remember my early home.
+That wasn't it. Which one of these two men will be arrested if he is
+recognized?"
+
+"Clark."
+
+"For what?"
+
+"I'm coming to that. I suppose you'll have to know. Another drink? No?
+All right. About ten years ago, or a little less, a young chap called
+Judson Clark got into trouble here, and headed into the mountains in a
+blizzard. He was supposed to have frozen to death. But recently a woman
+named Donaldson made a confession on her deathbed. She said that she had
+helped to nurse Clark in a mountain cabin, and that with the aid of some
+one unnamed he had got away."
+
+"Then I'm Clark. I remember her, and the cabin."
+
+There was a short silence following that admission. To Dick, it was
+filled with the thought of Elizabeth, and of her relation to what he was
+about to hear. Again he braced himself for what was coming.
+
+"I suppose," he said at last, "that if I ran away I was in pretty
+serious trouble. What was it?"
+
+"We've got no absolute proof that you are Clark, remember. You don't
+know, and Maggie Donaldson was considered not quite sane before she
+died. I've told you there's a chance you are the other man."
+
+"All right. What had Clark done?"
+
+"He had shot a man."
+
+The reporter was instantly alarmed. If Dick had been haggard before, he
+was ghastly now. He got up slowly and held to the back of his chair.
+
+"Not--murder?" he asked, with stiff lips.
+
+"No," Bassett said quickly. "Not at all. See here, you've had about all
+you can stand. Remember, we don't even know you are Clark. All I said
+was--"
+
+"I understand that. It was murder, wasn't it?"
+
+"Well, there had been a quarrel, I understand. The law allows for that,
+I think."
+
+Dick went slowly to the window, and stood with his back to Bassett. For
+a long time the room was quiet. In the street below long lines of cars
+in front of the hotel denoted the luncheon hour. An Indian woman with a
+child in the shawl on her back stopped in the street, looked up at Dick
+and extended a beaded belt. With it still extended she continued to
+stare at his white face.
+
+"The man died, of course?" he asked at last, without turning.
+
+"Yes. I knew him. He wasn't any great loss. It was at the Clark ranch.
+I don't believe a conviction would be possible, although they would try
+for one. It was circumstantial evidence."
+
+"And I ran away?"
+
+"Clark ran away," Bassett corrected him. "As I've told you, the
+authorities here believe he is dead."
+
+After an even longer silence Dick turned.
+
+"I told you there was a girl. I'd like to think out some way to keep
+the thing from her, before I surrender myself. If I can protect her, and
+David--"
+
+"I tell you, you don't even know you are Clark."
+
+"All right. If I'm not, they'll know. If I am--I tell you I'm not going
+through the rest of my life with a thing like that hanging over me.
+Maggie Donaldson was sane enough. Why, when I look back, I know our
+leaving the cabin was a flight. I'm not Henry Livingstone's son, because
+he never had a son. I can tell you what the Clark ranch house looks
+like." And after a pause: "Can you imagine the reverse of a dream when
+you've dreamed you are guilty of something and wake up to find you are
+innocent? Who was the man?"
+
+Bassett watched him narrowly.
+
+"His name was Lucas. Howard Lucas."
+
+"All right. Now we have that, where does Beverly Carlysle come in?"
+
+"Clark was infatuated with her. The man he shot was the man she had
+married."
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+Shortly after that Dick said he would go to his room. He was still pale,
+but his eyes looked bright and feverish, and Bassett went with him,
+uneasily conscious that something was not quite right. Dick spoke only
+once on the way.
+
+"My head aches like the mischief," he said, and his voice was dull and
+lifeless.
+
+He did not want Bassett to go with him, but Bassett went, nevertheless.
+Dick's statement, that he meant to surrender himself, had filled him
+with uneasiness. He determined, following him along the hall, to keep a
+close guard on him for the next few hours, but beyond that, just then,
+he did not try to go. If it were humanly possible he meant to smuggle
+him out of the town and take him East. But he had an uneasy conviction
+that Dick was going to be ill. The mind did strange things with the
+body.
+
+Dick sat down on the edge of the bed.
+
+"My head aches like the mischief," he repeated. "Look in that grip and
+find me some tablets, will you? I'm dizzy."
+
+He made an effort and stretched out on the bed. "Good Lord," he
+muttered, "I haven't had such a headache since--"
+
+His voice trailed off. Bassett, bending over the army kit bag in the
+corner, straightened and looked around. Dick was suddenly asleep and
+breathing heavily.
+
+For a long time the reporter sat by the side of the bed, watching him
+and trying to plan some course of action. He was overcome by his own
+responsibility, and by the prospect of tragedy that threatened. That
+Livingstone was Clark, and that he would insist on surrendering himself
+when he wakened, he could no longer doubt. His mind wandered back to
+that day when he had visited the old house as a patient, and from that
+along the strange road they had both come since then. He reflected, not
+exactly in those terms, that life, any man's life, was only one thread
+in a pattern woven of an infinite number of threads, and that to tangle
+the one thread was to interfere with all the others. David Livingstone,
+the girl in the blue dress, the man twitching uneasily on the bed,
+Wilkins the sheriff, himself, who could tell how many others, all
+threads.
+
+He swore in a whisper.
+
+The maid tapped at the door. He opened it an inch or so and sent her
+off. In view of his new determination even the maid had become a danger.
+She was the same elderly woman who looked after his own bedroom, and
+she might have known Clark. Just what Providence had kept him from
+recognition before this he did not know, but it could not go on
+indefinitely.
+
+After an hour or so Bassett locked the door behind him and went down to
+lunch. He was not hungry, but he wanted to get out of the room, to think
+without that quiet figure before him. Over the pretence of food he faced
+the situation. Lying ready to his hand was the biggest story of his
+career, but he could not carry it through. It was characteristic of
+him that, before abandoning it, he should follow through to the end the
+result of its publication. He did not believe, for instance, that
+either Dick's voluntary surrender or his own disclosure of the situation
+necessarily meant a conviction for murder. To convict a man of a crime
+he did not know he had committed would be difficult. But, with his
+customary thoroughness he followed that through also. Livingstone
+acquitted was once again Clark, would be known to the world as Clark.
+The new place he had so painfully made for himself would be gone. The
+story would follow him, never to be lived down. And in his particular
+profession confidence and respect were half the game. All that would be
+gone.
+
+Thus by gradual stages he got back to David, and he struggled for the
+motive which lay behind every decisive human act. A man who followed a
+course by which he had nothing to gain and everything to lose was either
+a fool or was actuated by some profound unselfishness. To save a life?
+But with all the resources Clark could have commanded, added to his
+personal popularity, a first degree sentence would have been unlikely.
+Not a life, then, but perhaps something greater than a life. A man's
+soul.
+
+It came to him, then, in a great light of comprehension, the thing David
+had tried to do; to take this waster and fugitive, the slate of his mind
+wiped clean by shock and illness, only his childish memories remaining,
+and on it to lead him to write a new record. To take the body he had
+found, and the always untouched soul, and from them to make a man.
+
+And with that comprehension came the conviction, too, that David had
+succeeded. He had indeed made a man.
+
+He ate absently, consulting his railroad schedule and formulating the
+arguments he meant to use against Dick's determination to give himself
+up. He foresaw a struggle there, but he himself held one or two strong
+cards--the ruthless undoing of David's work, the involving of David for
+conspiring against the law. And Dick's own obligation to the girl at
+home.
+
+He was more at ease in the practical arrangements. An express went
+through on the main line at midnight, and there was a local on the
+branch line at eight. But the local train, the railway station, too,
+were full of possible dangers. After some thought he decided to get a
+car, drive down to the main line with Dick, and then send the car back.
+
+He went out at once and made an arrangement for a car, and on returning
+notified the clerk that he was going to leave, and asked to have his
+bill made out. After some hesitation he said: "I'll pay three-twenty
+too, while I'm at it. Friend of mine there, going with me. Yes, up to
+to-night."
+
+As he turned away he saw the short, heavy figure of Wilkins coming in.
+He stood back and watched. The sheriff went to the desk, pulled the
+register toward him and ran over several pages of it. Then he shoved it
+away, turned and saw him.
+
+"Been away, haven't you?" he asked.
+
+"Yes. I took a little horseback trip into the mountains. My knees are
+still not on speaking terms."
+
+The sheriff chuckled. Then he sobered.
+
+"Come and sit down," he said. "I'm going to watch who goes in and out of
+here for a while."
+
+Bassett followed him unwillingly to two chairs that faced the desk and
+the lobby. He had the key of Dick's room in his pocket, but he knew that
+if he wakened he could easily telephone and have his door unlocked.
+But that was not his only anxiety. He had a sudden conviction that
+the sheriff's watch was connected with Dick himself. Wilkins, from a
+friendly and gregarious fellow-being, had suddenly grown to sinister
+proportions in his mind.
+
+And, as the minutes went by, with the sheriff sitting forward and
+watching the lobby and staircase with intent, unblinking eyes, Bassett's
+anxiety turned to fear. He found his heart leaping when the room
+bells rang, and the clerk, with a glance at the annunciator, sent boys
+hurrying off. His hands shook, and he felt them cold and moist. And all
+the time Wilkins was holding him with a flow of unimportant chatter.
+
+"Watching for any one in particular?" he managed, after five minutes or
+so.
+
+"Yes. I'll tell you about it as soon as--Bill! Is Alex outside?"
+
+Bill stopped in front of them, and nodded.
+
+"All right. Now get this--I want everything decent and in order. No
+excitement. I'll come out behind him, and you and Bill stand by. Outside
+I'll speak to him, and when we walk off, just fall in behind. But keep
+close."
+
+Bill wandered off, to take up a stand of extreme nonchalance inside the
+entrance. When Wilkins turned to him again Bassett had had a moment to
+adjust himself, and more or less to plan his own campaign.
+
+"Somebody's out of luck," he commented. "And speaking of being out of
+luck, I've got a sick man on my hands. Friend of mine from home. We've
+got to catch the midnight, too."
+
+"Too bad," Wilkins commented rather absently. Then, perhaps feeling that
+he had not shown proper interest, "Tell you what I'll do. I've got some
+business on hand now, but it'll be cleared up one way or another pretty
+soon. I'll bring my car around and take him to the station. These hacks
+are the limit to ride in."
+
+The disaster to his plans thus threatened steadied the reporter, and he
+managed to keep his face impassive.
+
+"Thanks," he said. "I'll let you know if he's able to travel. Is
+this--is this business you're on confidential?"
+
+"Well, it is and it isn't. I've talked some to you, and as you're
+leaving anyhow--it's the Jud Clark case again."
+
+"Sort of hysteria, I suppose. He'll be seen all over the country for the
+next six months."
+
+"Yes. But I never saw a hysterical Indian. Well, a little while ago an
+Indian woman named Lizzie Lazarus blew into my office. She's a smart
+woman. Her husband was a breed, dairy hand on the Clark ranch for years.
+Lizzie was the first Indian woman in these parts to go to school, and
+besides being smart, she's got Indian sight. You know these Indians.
+When they aren't blind with trachoma they can see further and better
+than a telescope."
+
+Bassett made an effort.
+
+"What's that got to do with Jud Clark?" he asked.
+
+"Well, she blew in. You know there was a reward out for him, and I guess
+it still stands. I'll have to look it up, for if Maggie Donaldson wasn't
+crazy some one will turn him up some day, probably. Well, Lizzie blew
+in, and she said she'd seen Jud Clark. Saw him standing at a second
+story window of this hotel. Can you beat that?"
+
+"Not for pure invention. Hardly."
+
+"That's what I said at first. But I don't know. In some ways it would
+be like him. He wouldn't mind coming back and giving us the laugh, if
+he thought he could get away with it. He didn't know fear. Only time he
+ever showed funk was when he beat it after the shooting, and then he was
+full of hootch, and on the edge of D.T.'s."
+
+"A man doesn't play jokes with the hangman's rope," Bassett commented,
+dryly. He looked at his watch and rose. "It's a good story, but I
+wouldn't wear out any trouser-seats sitting here watching for him. If
+he's living he's taken pretty good care for ten years not to put his
+head in the noose; and I'd remember this, too. Wherever he is, if he is
+anywhere, he's probably so changed his appearance that Telescope Lizzie
+wouldn't know him. Or you either."
+
+"Probably," the sheriff said, comfortably. "Still I'm not taking any
+chances. I'm up for reelection this fall, and that Donaldson woman's
+story nearly queered me. I've got a fellow at the railroad station, just
+for luck."
+
+Bassett went up the stairs and along the corridor, deep in dejected
+thought. The trap of his own making was closing, and his active mind was
+busy with schemes for getting Dick away before it shut entirely.
+
+It might be better, in one way, to keep Livingstone there in his room
+until the alarm blew over. On the other hand, Livingstone himself had
+to be dealt with, and that he would remain quiescent under the
+circumstances was unlikely. The motor to the main line seemed to be the
+best thing. True, he would have first to get Livingstone to agree to go.
+That done, and he did not underestimate its difficulty, there was the
+question of getting him out of the hotel, now that the alarm had been
+given.
+
+When he found Dick still sleeping he made a careful survey of the second
+floor. There was a second staircase, but investigation showed that it
+led into the kitchens. He decided finally on a fire-escape from a rear
+hall window, which led into a courtyard littered with the untidy rubbish
+of an overcrowded and undermanned hotel, and where now two or three
+saddled horses waited while their riders ate within.
+
+When he had made certain that he was not observed he unlocked and opened
+the window, and removed the wire screen. There was a red fire-exit lamp
+in the ceiling nearby, but he could not reach it, nor could he find any
+wall switch. Nevertheless he knew by that time that through the window
+lay Dick's only chance of escape. He cleared the grating of a broken box
+and an empty flower pot, stood the screen outside the wall, and then,
+still unobserved, made his way back to his own bedroom and packed his
+belongings.
+
+Dick was still sleeping, stretched on his bed, when he returned to
+three-twenty. And here Bassett's careful plans began to go awry, for
+Dick's body was twitching, and his face was pale and covered with a cold
+sweat. From wondering how they could get away, Bassett began to wonder
+whether they would get away at all. The sleep was more like a stupor
+than sleep. He sat down by the bed, closer to sheer fright than he had
+ever been before, and wretched with the miserable knowledge of his own
+responsibility.
+
+As the afternoon wore on, it became increasingly evident that somehow or
+other he must get a doctor. He turned the subject over in his mind, pro
+and con. If he could get a new man, one who did not remember Jud Clark,
+it might do. But he hesitated until, at seven, Dick opened his eyes and
+clearly did not know him. Then he knew that the matter was out of his
+hands, and that from now on whatever it was that controlled the affairs
+of men, David's God or his own vague Providence, was in charge.
+
+He got his hat and went out, and down the stairs again. Wilkins had
+disappeared, but Bill still stood by the entrance, watching the crowd
+that drifted in and out. In his state of tension he felt that the hotel
+clerk's eyes were suspicious as he retained the two rooms for another
+day, and that Bill watched him out with more than casual interest.
+Even the matter of cancelling the order for the car loomed large and
+suspicion-breeding before him, but he accomplished it, and then set out
+to find medical assistance.
+
+There, however, chance favored him. The first doctor's sign led him to a
+young man, new to the town, and obviously at leisure. Not that he found
+that out at once. He invented a condition for himself, as he had done
+once before, got a prescription and paid for it, learned what he wanted,
+and then mentioned Dick. He was careful to emphasize his name and
+profession, and his standing "back home."
+
+"I'll admit he's got me worried," he finished. "He saw me registered and
+came to my room this morning to see me, and got sick there. That is, he
+said he had a violent headache and was dizzy. I got him to his room and
+on the bed, and he's been sleeping ever since. He looks pretty sick to
+me."
+
+He was conscious of Bill's eyes on him as they went through the lobby
+again, but he realized now that they were unsuspicious. Bassett himself
+was in a hot sweat. He stopped outside the room and mopped his face.
+
+"Look kind of shot up yourself," the doctor commented. "Watch this sun
+out here. Because it's dry here you Eastern people don't notice the heat
+until it plays the deuce with you."
+
+He made a careful examination of the sleeping man, while Bassett watched
+his face.
+
+"Been a drinking man? Or do you know?"
+
+"No. But I think not. I gave him a small drink this morning, when he
+seemed to need it."
+
+"Been like this all day?"
+
+"Since noon. Yes."
+
+Once more the medical man stooped. When he straightened it was to
+deliver Bassett a body blow.
+
+"I don't like his condition, or that twitching. If these were the good
+old days in Wyoming I'd say he is on the verge of delirium tremens.
+But that's only snap judgment. He might be on the verge of a good many
+things. Anyhow, he'd better be moved to the hospital. This is no place
+for him."
+
+And against this common-sense suggestion Bassett had nothing to offer.
+If the doctor had been looking he would have seen him make a gesture of
+despair.
+
+"I suppose so," he said, dully. "Is it near? I'll go myself and get a
+room."
+
+"That's my advice. I'll look in later, and if the stupor continues I'll
+have in a consultant." He picked up his bag and stood looking down at
+the bed. "Big fine-looking chap, isn't he?" he commented. "Married?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, we'll get the ambulance, and later on we'll go over him properly.
+I'd call a maid to sit with him, if I were you." In the grip of a
+situation that was too much for him, Bassett rang the bell. It was
+answered by the elderly maid who took care of his own bedroom.
+
+Months later, puzzling over the situation, Bassett was to wonder, and
+not to know, whether chance or design brought the Thorwald woman to
+the door that night. At the time, and for weeks, he laid it to tragic
+chance, the same chance which had placed in Dick's hand the warning
+letter that had brought him West. But as months went on, the part played
+in the tragedy by that faded woman with her tired dispirited voice and
+her ash colored hair streaked with gray, assumed other proportions,
+loomed large and mysterious.
+
+There were times when he wished that some prescience of danger had
+made him throttle her then and there, so she could not have raised her
+shrill, alarming voice! But he had no warning. All he saw was a woman
+in a washed-out blue calico dress and a fresh white apron, raising
+incurious eyes to his.
+
+"I suppose it's all right if she sits in the hall?" Bassett inquired,
+still fighting his losing fight. "She can go in if he stirs."
+
+"Right-o," said the doctor, who had been to France and had brought home
+some British phrases.
+
+Bassett walked back from the hospital alone. The game was up and he knew
+it. Sooner or later--In a way he tried to defend himself to himself.
+He had done his best. Two or three days ago he would have been exultant
+over the developments. After all, mince things as one would, Clark was a
+murderer. Other men killed and paid the penalty. And the game was not up
+entirely, at that. The providence which had watched over him for so long
+might continue to. The hospital was new. (It was, ironically enough, the
+Clark Memorial hospital.) There was still a chance.
+
+He was conscious of something strange as he entered the lobby. The
+constable was gone, and there was no clerk behind the desk. At the foot
+of the stairs stood a group of guests and loungers, looking up, while a
+bell-boy barred the way.
+
+Even then Bassett's first thought was of fire. He elbowed his way to
+the foot of the stairs, and demanded to be allowed to go up, but he was
+refused.
+
+"In a few minutes," said the boy. "No need of excitement."
+
+"Is it a fire?"
+
+"I don't know myself. I've got my orders. That's all." Wilkins came
+hurrying in. The crowd, silent and respectful before the law, opened to
+let him through and closed behind him.
+
+Bassett stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+To Elizabeth the first days of Dick's absence were unbelievably dreary.
+She seemed to live only from one visit of the postman to the next. She
+felt sometimes that only part of her was at home in the Wheeler house,
+slept at night in her white bed, donned its black frocks and took them
+off, and made those sad daily pilgrimages to the cemetery above the
+town, where her mother tidied with tender hands the long narrow mound,
+so fearfully remindful of Jim's tall slim body.
+
+That part of her grieved sorely, and spent itself in small comforting
+actions and little caressing touches on bowed heads and grief-stooped
+shoulders. It put away Jim's clothing, and kept immaculate the room
+where now her mother spent most of her waking hours. It sent her on
+her knees at night to pray for Jim's happiness in some young-man heaven
+which would please him. But the other part of her was not there at all.
+It was off with Dick in some mysterious place of mountains and vast
+distance called Wyoming.
+
+And because of this division in herself, because she felt that her
+loyalty to her people had wavered, because she knew that already she had
+forsaken her father and her mother and would follow her love through the
+rest of her life, she was touchingly anxious to comfort and to please
+them.
+
+"She's taking Dick's absence very hard," Mrs. Wheeler said one night,
+when she had kissed them and gone upstairs to bed. "She worries me
+sometimes."
+
+Mr. Wheeler sighed. Why was it that a man could not tell his children
+what he had learned,--that nothing was so great as one expected; that
+love was worth living for, but not dying for. The impatience of youth
+for life! It had killed Jim. It was hurting Nina. It would all come,
+all come, in God's good time. The young did not live to-day, but always
+to-morrow. There seemed no time to live to-day, for any one. First one
+looked ahead and said, "I will be so happy." And before one knew it one
+was looking back and saying: "I was so happy."
+
+"She'll be all right," he said aloud.
+
+He got up and whistled for the dog.
+
+"I'll take him around the block before I lock up," he said heavily. He
+bent over and kissed his wife. She was a sad figure to him in her black
+dress. He did not say to her what he thought sometimes; that Jim had
+been saved a great deal. That to live on, and to lose the things one
+loved, one by one, was harder than to go quickly, from a joyous youth.
+
+He had not told her what he knew about Jim's companion that night. She
+would never have understood. In her simple and child-like faith she
+knew that her boy sat that day among the blessed company of heaven. He
+himself believed that Jim had gone forgiven into whatever lay behind the
+veil we call death, had gone shriven and clean before the Judge who knew
+the urge of youth and life. He did not fear for Jim. He only missed him.
+
+He walked around the block that night, a stooped commonplace figure, the
+dog at his heels. Now and then he spoke to him, for companionship.
+At the corner he stopped and looked along the side street toward the
+Livingstone house. And as he looked he sighed. Jim and Nina, and now
+Elizabeth. Jim and Nina were beyond his care now. He could do no more.
+But what could he do for Elizabeth? That, too, wasn't that beyond him?
+He stood still, facing the tragedy of his helplessness, beset by vague
+apprehensions. Then he went on doggedly, his hands clasped behind him,
+his head sunk on his breast.
+
+He lay awake for a long time that night, wondering whether he and Dick
+had been quite fair to Elizabeth. She should, he thought, have been
+told. Then, if Dick's apprehensions were justified, she would have had
+some preparation. As it was--Suppose something turned up out there,
+something that would break her heart?
+
+He had thought Margaret was sleeping, but after a time she moved and
+slipped her hand into his. It comforted him. That, too, was life. Very
+soon now they would be alone together again, as in the early days before
+the children came. All the years and the struggle, and then back where
+they started. But still, thank God, hand in hand.
+
+Ever since the night of Jim's death Mrs. Sayre had been a constant
+visitor to the house. She came in, solid, practical, and with an
+everyday manner neither forcedly cheerful nor too decorously mournful,
+which made her very welcome. After the three first days, when she
+had practically lived at the house, there was no necessity for small
+pretensions with her. She knew the china closet and the pantry, and the
+kitchen. She had even penetrated to Mr. Wheeler's shabby old den on
+the second floor, and had slept a part of the first night there on the
+leather couch with broken springs which he kept because it fitted his
+body.
+
+She was a kindly woman, and she had ached with pity. And, because of her
+usual detachment from the town and its affairs, the feeling that she
+was being of service gave her a little glow of content. She liked the
+family, too, and particularly she liked Elizabeth. But after she had
+seen Dick and Elizabeth together once or twice she felt that no plan she
+might make for Wallace could possibly succeed. Lying on the old leather
+couch that first night, between her frequent excursions among the waking
+family, she had thought that out and abandoned it.
+
+But, during the days that followed the funeral, she was increasingly
+anxious about Wallace. She knew that rumors of the engagement had
+reached him, for he was restless and irritable. He did not care to go
+out, but wandered about the house or until late at night sat smoking
+alone on the terrace, looking down at the town with sunken, unhappy
+eyes. Once or twice in the evening he had taken his car and started out,
+and lying awake in her French bed she would hear him coming hours later.
+In the mornings his eyes were suffused and his color bad, and she knew
+that he was drinking in order to get to sleep.
+
+On the third day after Dick's departure for the West she got up when
+she heard him coming in, and putting on her dressing gown and slippers,
+knocked at his door.
+
+"Come in," he called ungraciously.
+
+She found him with his coat off, standing half defiantly with a glass of
+whisky and soda in his hand. She went up to him and took it from him.
+
+"We've had enough of that in the family, Wallie," she said. "And it's a
+pretty poor resource in time of trouble."
+
+"I'll have that back, if you don't mind."
+
+"Nonsense," she said briskly, and flung it, glass and all, out of the
+window. She was rather impressive when she turned.
+
+"I've been a fairly indulgent mother," she said. "I've let you alone,
+because it's a Sayre trait to run away when they feel a pull on the bit.
+But there's a limit to my patience, and it is reached when my son drinks
+to forget a girl."
+
+He flushed and glowered at her in somber silence, but she moved about
+the room calmly, giving it a housekeeper's critical inspection, and
+apparently unconscious of his anger.
+
+"I don't believe you ever cared for any one in all your life," he said
+roughly. "If you had, you would know."
+
+She was straightening a picture over the mantel, and she completed her
+work before she turned.
+
+"I care for you."
+
+"That's different."
+
+"Very well, then. I cared for your father. I cared terribly. And he
+killed my love."
+
+She padded out of the room, her heavy square body in its blazing kimono
+a trifle rigid, but her face still and calm. He remained staring at
+the door when she had closed it, and for some time after. He knew what
+message for him had lain behind that emotionless speech of hers, not
+only understanding, but a warning. She had cared terribly, and his
+father had killed that love. He had drunk and played through his gay
+young life, and then he had died, and no one had greatly mourned him.
+
+She had left the decanter on its stand, and he made a movement toward
+it. Then, with a half smile, he picked it up and walked to the window
+with it. He was still smiling, half boyishly, as he put out his light
+and got into bed. It had occurred to him that the milkman's flivver,
+driving in at the break of dawn, would encounter considerable glass.
+
+By morning, after a bad night, he had made a sort of double-headed
+resolution, that he was through with booze, as he termed it, and that
+he would find out how he stood with Elizabeth. But for a day or two no
+opportunity presented itself. When he called there was always present
+some grave-faced sympathizing visitor, dark clad and low of voice, and
+over the drawing-room would hang the indescribable hush of a house
+in mourning. It seemed to touch Elizabeth, too, making her remote and
+beyond earthly things. He would go in, burning with impatience, hungry
+for the mere sight of her, fairly overcharged with emotion, only to face
+that strange new spirituality that made him ashamed of the fleshly urge
+in him.
+
+Once he found Clare Rossiter there, and was aware of something electric
+in the air. After a time he identified it. Behind the Rossiter girl's
+soft voice and sympathetic words, there was a veiled hostility. She
+was watching Elizabeth, was overconscious of her. And she was, for some
+reason, playing up to himself. He thought he saw a faint look of relief
+on Elizabeth's face when Clare at last rose to go.
+
+"I'm on my way to see the man Dick Livingstone left in his place,"
+Clare said, adjusting her veil at the mirror. "I've got a cold. Isn't it
+queer, the way the whole Livingstone connection is broken up?"
+
+"Hardly queer. And it's only temporary."
+
+"Possibly. But if you ask me, I don't believe Dick will come back. Mind,
+I don't defend the town, but it doesn't like to be fooled. And he's
+fooled it for years. I know a lot of people who'd quit going to him."
+She turned to Wallie.
+
+"He isn't David's nephew, you know. The question is, who is he? Of
+course I don't say it, but a good many are saying that when a man takes
+a false identity he has something to hide."
+
+She gave them no chance to reply, but sauntered out with her
+sex-conscious, half-sensuous walk. Outside the door her smile faded,
+and her face was hard and bitter. She might forget Dick Livingstone,
+but never would she forgive herself for her confession to Elizabeth, nor
+Elizabeth for having heard it.
+
+Wallie turned to Elizabeth when she had gone, slightly bewildered.
+
+"What's got into her?" he inquired. And then, seeing Elizabeth's white
+face, rather shrewdly: "That was one for him and two for you, was it?"
+
+"I don't know. Probably."
+
+"I wonder if you would look like that if any one attacked me!"
+
+"No one attacks you, Wallie."
+
+"That's not an answer. You wouldn't, would you? It's different, isn't
+it?"
+
+"Yes. A little."
+
+He straightened, and looked past her, unseeing, at the wall. "I guess
+I've known it for quite a while," he said at last. "I didn't want to
+believe it, so I wouldn't. Are you engaged to him?"
+
+"Yes. It's not to be known just yet, Wallie."
+
+"He's a good fellow," he said, after rather a long silence. "Not that
+that makes it easier," he added with a twisted smile. Then, boyishly and
+unexpectedly he said, "Oh, my God!"
+
+He sat down, and when the dog came and placed a head on his knee he
+patted it absently. He wanted to go, but he had a queer feeling that
+when he went he went for good.
+
+"I've cared for you for years," he said. "I've been a poor lot, but I'd
+have been a good bit worse, except for you."
+
+And again:
+
+"Only last night I made up my mind that if you'd have me, I'd make
+something out of myself. I suppose a man's pretty weak when he puts a
+responsibility like that on a girl."
+
+She yearned over him, rather. She made little tentative overtures of
+friendship and affection. But he scarcely seemed to hear them, wrapped
+as he was in the selfish absorption of his disappointment. When she
+heard the postman outside and went to the door for the mail, she thought
+he had not noticed her going. But when she returned he was watching her
+with jealous, almost tragic eyes.
+
+"I suppose you hear from him by every mail."
+
+"There has been nothing to-day."
+
+Something in her voice or her face made him look at her closely.
+
+"Has he written at all?"
+
+"The first day he got there. Not since."
+
+He went away soon, and not after all with the feeling of going for
+good. In his sceptical young mind, fed by Clare's malice, was growing a
+comforting doubt of Dick's good faith.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+When Wilkins had disappeared around the angle of the staircase
+Bassett went to a chair and sat down. He felt sick, and his knees were
+trembling. Something had happened, a search for Clark room by room
+perhaps, and the discovery had been made.
+
+He was totally unable to think or to plan. With Dick well they could
+perhaps have made a run for it. The fire-escape stood ready. But as
+things were--The murmuring among the crowd at the foot of the stairs
+ceased, and he looked up. Wilkins was on the staircase, searching
+the lobby with his eyes. When he saw Bassett he came quickly down and
+confronted him, his face angry and suspicious.
+
+"You're mixed up in this somehow," he said sharply. "You might as well
+come over with the story. We'll get him. He can't get out of this town."
+
+With the words, and the knowledge that in some incredible fashion Dick
+had made his escape, Bassett's mind reacted instantly.
+
+"What's eating you, Wilkins?" he demanded. "Who got away? I couldn't get
+that tongue-tied bell-hop to tell me. Thought it was a fire."
+
+"Don't stall, Bassett. You've had Jud Clark hidden upstairs in
+three-twenty all day."
+
+Bassett got up and towered angrily over the sheriff. The crowd had
+turned and was watching.
+
+"In three-twenty?" he said. "You're crazy. Jud Clark! Let me tell you
+something. I don't know what you've got in your head, but three-twenty
+is a Doctor Livingstone from near my home town. Well known and highly
+respected, too. What's more, he's a sick man, and if he's got away, as
+you say, it's because he is delirious. I had a doctor in to see him an
+hour ago. I've just arranged for a room at the hospital for him. Does
+that look as though I've been hiding him?"
+
+The positiveness of his identification and his indignation resulted in a
+change in Wilkins' manner.
+
+"I'll ask you to stay here until I come back." His tone was official,
+but less suspicious. "We'll have him in a half hour. It's Clark all
+right. I'm not saying you knew it was Clark, but I want to ask you some
+questions."
+
+He went out, and Bassett heard him shouting an order in the street. He
+went to the street door, and realized that a search was going on, both
+by the police and by unofficial volunteers. Men on horseback clattered
+by to guard the borders of the town, and in the vicinity of the hotel
+searchers were investigating yards and alleyways.
+
+Bassett himself was helpless. He stood by, watching the fire of his own
+igniting, conscious of the curious scrutiny of the few hotel loungers
+who remained, and expecting momentarily to hear of Dick's capture. It
+must come eventually, he felt sure. As to how Dick had been identified,
+or by what means he had escaped, he was in complete ignorance; and an
+endeavor to learn by establishing the former entente cordiale between
+the room clerk and himself was met by a suspicious glance and what
+amounted to a snub. He went back to his chair against the wall and sat
+there, waiting for the end.
+
+It was an hour before the sheriff returned, and he came in scowling.
+
+"I'll see you now," he said briefly, and led the way back to the hotel
+office behind the desk. Bassett's last hope died when he saw sitting
+there, pale but composed, the elderly maid. The sheriff lost no time.
+
+"Now I'll tell you what we know about your connection with this case,
+Bassett," he said. "You engaged a car to take you both to the main line
+to-night. You paid off Clark's room as well as your own this afternoon.
+When you found he was sick you canceled your going. That's true, isn't
+it?"
+
+"It is. I've told you I knew him at home, but not as Clark."
+
+"I'll let that go. You intended to take the midnight on the main line,
+but you ordered a car instead of using the branch road."
+
+"Livingstone was sick. I thought it would be easier. That's all." His
+voice sharpened. "You can't drag me into this, Sheriff. In the first
+place I don't believe it was Clark, or he wouldn't have come here, of
+all places on the earth. I didn't even know he was here, until he came
+into my room this morning."
+
+"Why did he come into your room?"
+
+"He had seen that I was registered. He said he felt sick. I took him
+back and put him to bed. To-night I got a doctor."
+
+The sheriff felt in his pocket and produced a piece of paper. Bassett's
+morale was almost destroyed when he saw that it was Gregory's letter to
+David.
+
+"I'll ask you to explain this. It was on Clark's bed."
+
+Bassett took it and read it slowly. He was thinking hard.
+
+"I see," he said. "Well, that explains why he came here. He was too sick
+to talk when I saw him. You see, this is not addressed to him, but to
+his uncle, David Livingstone. David Livingstone is a brother of Henry
+Livingstone, who died some years ago at Dry River. This refers to a
+personal matter connected with the Livingstone estate."
+
+The sheriff took the letter and reread it. He was puzzled.
+
+"You're a good talker," he acknowledged grudgingly. He turned to the
+maid.
+
+"All right, Hattie," he said. "We'll have that story again. But just
+a minute." He turned to the reporter. "Mrs. Thorwald here hasn't seen
+Lizzie Lazarus, the squaw. Lizzie has been sitting in my office ever
+since noon. Now, Hattie."
+
+Hattie moistened her dry lips.
+
+"It was Jud Clark, all right," she said. "I knew him all his life, off
+and on. But I wish I hadn't screamed. I don't believe he killed Lucas,
+and I never will. I hope he gets away."
+
+She eyed the sheriff vindictively, but he only smiled grimly.
+
+"What did I tell you?" he said to Bassett. "Hell with the women--that
+was Jud Clark. And we'll get him, Hattie. Don't worry. Go on."
+
+She looked at Bassett.
+
+"When you left me, I sat outside the door, as you said. Then I heard him
+moving, and I went in. The room was not very light, and I didn't know
+him at first. He sat up in bed and looked at me, and he said, 'Why,
+hello, Hattie Thorwald.' That's my name. I married a Swede. Then
+he looked again, and he said, 'Excuse me, I thought you were a Mrs.
+Thorwald, but I see now you're older.' I recognized him then, and I
+thought I was going to faint. I knew he'd be arrested the moment it was
+known he was here. I said, 'Lie down, Mr. Jud. You're not very well.'
+And I closed the door and locked it. I was scared."
+
+Her voice broke; she fumbled for a handkerchief. The sheriff glanced at
+Bassett.
+
+"Now where's your Livingstone story?" he demanded. "All right, Hattie.
+Let's have it."
+
+"I said, 'For God's sake, Mr. Jud, lie still, until I think what to
+do. The sheriff's likely downstairs this very minute.' And then he went
+queer and wild. He jumped off the bed and stood listening and staring,
+and shaking all over. 'I've got to get away,' he said, very loud. 'I
+won't let them take me. I'll kill myself first!' When I put my hand on
+his arm he threw it off, and he made for the door. I saw then that he
+was delirious with fever, and I stood in front of the door and begged
+him not to go out. But he threw me away so hard that that I fell, and I
+screamed."
+
+"And then what?"
+
+"That's all. If I hadn't been almost out of my mind I'd never have told
+that it was Jud Clark. That'll hang on me dying day."
+
+An hour or so later Bassett went back to his room in a state of mental
+and nervous exhaustion. He knew that from that time on he would be under
+suspicion and probably under espionage, and he proceeded methodically,
+his door locked, to go over his papers. His notebook and the cuttings
+from old files relative to the Clark case he burned in his wash basin
+and then carefully washed the basin. That done, his attendance on a sick
+man, and the letter found on the bed was all the positive evidence they
+had to connect him with the case. He had had some thought of slipping
+out by the fire-escape and making a search for Dick on his own account,
+but his lack of familiarity with his surroundings made that practically
+useless.
+
+At midnight he stretched out on his bed without undressing, and went
+over the situation carefully. He knew nothing of the various neuroses
+which affect the human mind, but he had a vague impression that
+memory when lost did eventually return, and Dick's recognition of the
+chambermaid pointed to such a return. He wondered what a man would
+feel under such conditions, what he would think. He could not do it. He
+abandoned the effort finally, and lay frowning at the ceiling while he
+considered his own part in the catastrophe. He saw himself, following
+his training and his instinct, leading the inevitable march toward this
+night's tragedy, planning, scheming, searching, and now that it had
+come, lying helpless on his bed while the procession of events went on
+past him and beyond his control.
+
+When an automobile engine back-fired in the street below he went sick
+with fear.
+
+He made the resolution then that was to be the guiding motive for his
+life for the next few months, to fight the thing of his own creating to
+a finish. But with the resolution newly made he saw the futility of
+it. He might fight, would fight, but nothing could restore to Dick
+Livingstone the place he had made for himself in the world. He might be
+saved from his past, but he could not be given a future.
+
+All at once he was aware that some one was working stealthily at
+the lock of the door which communicated with a room beyond. He slid
+cautiously off the bed and went to the light switch, standing with a
+hand on it, and waited. The wild thought that it might be Livingstone
+was uppermost in his mind, and when the door creaked open and closed
+again, that was the word he breathed into the darkness.
+
+"No," said a woman's voice in a whisper. "It's the maid, Hattie. Be
+careful. There's a guard at the top of the stairs."
+
+He heard her moving to his outer door, and he knew that she stood
+there, listening, her head against the panel. When she was satisfied she
+slipped, with the swiftness of familiarity with her surroundings, to the
+stand beside his bed, and turned on the lamp. In the shaded light he saw
+that she wore a dark cape, with its hood drawn over her head. In some
+strange fashion the maid, even the woman, was lost, and she stood,
+strange, mysterious, and dramatic in the little room.
+
+"If you found Jud Clark, what would you do with him?" she demanded. From
+beneath the hood her eyes searched his face. "Turn him over to Wilkins
+and his outfit?"
+
+"I think you know better than that."
+
+"Have you got any plan?"
+
+"Plan? No. They've got every outlet closed, haven't they? Do you know
+where he is?"
+
+"I know where he isn't, or they'd have him by now. And I know Jud Clark.
+He'd take to the mountains, same as he did before. He's got a good
+horse."
+
+"A horse!"
+
+"Listen. I haven't told this, and I don't mean to. They'll learn it in
+a couple of hours, anyhow. He got out by a back fire-escape--they know
+that. But they don't know he took Ed Rickett's black mare. They think
+he's on foot. I've been down there now, and she's gone. Ed's shut up in
+a room on the top floor, playing poker. They won't break up until about
+three o'clock and he'll miss his horse then. That's two hours yet."
+
+Bassett tried to see her face in the shadow of the hood. He was puzzled
+and suspicious at her change of front, more than half afraid of a trap.
+
+"How do I know you are not working with Wilkins?" he demanded. "You
+could have saved the situation to-night by saying you weren't sure."
+
+"I was upset. I've had time to think since."
+
+He was forced to trust her, eventually, although the sense of some
+hidden motive, some urge greater than compassion, persisted in him.
+
+"You've got some sort of plan for me, then? I can't follow him haphazard
+into the mountains at night, and expect to find him."
+
+"Yes. He was delirious when he left. That thing about the sheriff being
+after him--he wasn't after him then. Not until I gave the alarm. He's
+delirious, and he thinks he's back to the night he--you know. Wouldn't
+he do the same thing again, and make for the mountains and the cabin? He
+went to the cabin before."
+
+Bassett looked at his watch. It was half past twelve.
+
+"Even if I could get a horse I couldn't get out of the town."
+
+"You might, on foot. They'll be trailing Rickett's horse by dawn. And if
+you can get out of town I can get you a horse. I can get you out, too, I
+think. I know every foot of the place."
+
+A feeling of theatrical unreality was Bassett's chief emotion during the
+trying time that followed. The cloaked and shrouded figure of the woman
+ahead, the passage through two dark and empty rooms by pass key to an
+unguarded corridor in the rear, the descent of the fire-escape, where
+they stood flattened against the wall while a man, possibly one of the
+posse, rode in, tied his horse and stamped in high heeled boots into the
+building, and always just ahead the sure movement and silent tread of
+the woman, kept his nerves taut and increased his feeling of the unreal.
+
+At the foot of the fire-escape the woman slid out of sight noiselessly,
+but under Bassett's feet a tin can rolled and clattered. Then a horse
+snorted close to his shoulder, and he was frozen with fright. After
+that she gave him her hand, and led him through an empty outbuilding and
+another yard into a street.
+
+At two o'clock that morning Bassett, waiting in a lonely road near what
+he judged to be the camp of a drilling crew, heard a horse coming toward
+him and snorting nervously as it came and drew back into the shadows
+until he recognized the shrouded silhouette leading him.
+
+"It belongs to my son," she said. "I'll fix it with him to-morrow. But
+if you're caught you'll have to say you came out and took him, or you'll
+get us all in trouble."
+
+She gave him careful instructions as to how to find the trail, and urged
+him to haste.
+
+"If you get him," she advised, "better keep right on over the range."
+
+He paused, with his foot in the stirrup.
+
+"You seem pretty certain he's taken to the mountains."
+
+"It's your only chance. They'll get him anywhere else."
+
+He mounted and prepared to ride off. He would have shaken hands with
+her, but the horse was still terrified at her shrouded figure and
+veered and snorted when she approached. "However it turns out," he said,
+"you've done your best, and I'm grateful."
+
+The horse moved off and left her standing there, her cowl drawn forward
+and her hands crossed on her breast. She stood for a moment, facing
+toward the mountains, oddly monkish in outline and posture. Then she
+turned back toward the town.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+Dick had picked up life again where he had left it off so long before.
+Gone was David's house built on the sands of forgetfulness. Gone was
+David himself, and Lucy. Gone not even born into his consciousness
+was Elizabeth. The war, his work, his new place in the world, were all
+obliterated, drowned in the flood of memories revived by the shock of
+Bassett's revelations.
+
+Not that the breaking point had revealed itself as such at once. There
+was confusion first, then stupor and unconsciousness, and out of that,
+sharply and clearly, came memory. It was not ten years ago, but an hour
+ago, a minute ago, that he had stood staring at Howard Lucas on the
+floor of the billiard room, and had seen Beverly run in through the
+door.
+
+"Bev!" he was saying. "Bev! Don't look like that!"
+
+He moved and found he was in bed. It had been a dream. He drew a long
+breath, looked about the room, saw the woman and greeted her. But
+already he knew he had not been dreaming. Things were sharpening in his
+mind. He shuddered and looked at the floor, but nobody lay there. Only
+the horror in his mind, and the instinct to get away from it. He was not
+thinking at all, but rising in him was not only the need for flight, but
+the sense of pursuit. They were after him. They would get him. They must
+never get him alive.
+
+Instinct and will took the place of thought, and whatever closed chamber
+in his brain had opened, it clearly influenced his physical condition.
+He bore all the stigmata of prolonged and heavy drinking; his nerves
+were gone; he twitched and shook. When he got down the fire-escape his
+legs would scarcely hold him.
+
+The discovery of Ed Rickett's horse in the courtyard, saddled and ready,
+fitted in with the brain pattern of the past.
+
+Like one who enters a room for the first time, to find it already
+familiar, for a moment he felt that this thing that he was doing he
+had done before. Only for a moment. Then partial memory ceased, and he
+climbed into the saddle, rode out and turned toward the mountains and
+the cabin. By that strange quality of the brain which is called habit,
+although the habit be of only one emphatic precedent, he followed the
+route he had taken ten years before. How closely will never be known.
+Did he stop at this turn to look back, as he had once before? Did he let
+his horse breathe there? Not the latter, probably, for as, following the
+blind course that he had followed ten years before, he left the town and
+went up the canyon trail, he was riding as though all the devils of hell
+were behind him.
+
+One thing is certain. The reproduction of the conditions of the earlier
+flight, the familiar associations of the trail, must have helped rather
+than hindered his fixation in the past. Again he was Judson Clark, who
+had killed a man, and was flying from himself and from pursuit.
+
+Before long his horse was in acute distress, but he did not notice it.
+At the top of the long climb the animal stopped, but he kicked him on
+recklessly. He was as unaware of his own fatigue, or that he was swaying
+in the saddle, until galloping across a meadow the horse stumbled and
+threw him.
+
+He lay still for some time; not hurt but apparently lacking the
+initiative to get up again. He had at that period the alternating
+lucidity and mental torpor of the half drunken man. But struggling up
+through layers of blackness at last there came again the instinct for
+flight, and he got on the horse and set off.
+
+The torpor again overcame him and he slept in the saddle. When the
+horse stopped he roused and kicked it on. Once he came up through the
+blackness to the accompaniment of a great roaring, and found that the
+animal was saddle deep in a ford, and floundering badly among the rocks.
+He turned its head upstream, and got it out safely.
+
+Toward dawn some of the confusion was gone, but he firmly fixed in the
+past. The horse wandered on, head down, occasionally stopping to seize a
+leaf as it passed, and once to drink deeply at a spring. Dick was still
+not thinking--there was something that forbade him to think-but he was
+weak and emotional. He muttered:
+
+"Poor Bev! Poor old Bev!"
+
+A great wave of tenderness and memory swept over him. Poor Bev! He
+had made life hell for her, all right. He had an almost uncontrollable
+impulse to turn the horse around, go back and see her once more. He was
+gone anyhow. They would get him. And he wanted her to know that he would
+have died rather than do what he had done.
+
+The flight impulse died; he felt sick and very cold, and now and then he
+shook violently. He began to watch the trail behind him for the pursuit,
+but without fear. He seemed to have been wandering for a thousand black
+nights through deep gorges and over peaks as high as the stars, and now
+he wanted to rest, to stop somewhere and sleep, to be warm again. Let
+them come and take him, anywhere out of this nightmare.
+
+With the dawn still gray he heard a horse behind and below him on the
+trail up the cliff face. He stopped and sat waiting, twisted about
+in his saddle, his expression ugly and defiant, and yet touchingly
+helpless, the look of a boy in trouble and at bay. The horseman came
+into sight on the trail below, riding hard, a middle-aged man in a dark
+sack suit and a straw hat, an oddly incongruous figure and manifestly
+weary. He rode bent forward, and now and again he raised his eyes from
+the trail and searched the wall above with bloodshot, anxious eyes.
+
+On the turn below Dick, Bassett saw him for the first time, and spoke to
+him in a quiet voice.
+
+"Hello, old man," he said. "I began to think I was going to miss you
+after all."
+
+His scrutiny of Dick's face had rather reassured him. The delirium had
+passed, apparently. Dishevelled although he was, covered with dust and
+with sweat from the horse, Livingstone's eyes were steady enough. As
+he rode up to him, however, he was not so certain. He found himself
+surveyed with a sort of cool malignity that startled him.
+
+"Miss me!" Livingstone sneered bitterly. "With every damned hill covered
+by this time with your outfit! I'll tell you this. If I'd had a gun
+you'd never have got me alive."
+
+Bassett was puzzled and slightly ruffled.
+
+"My outfit! I'll tell you this, son, I've risked my neck half the night
+to get you out of this mess."
+
+"God Almighty couldn't get me out of this mess," Dick said somberly.
+
+It was then that Bassett saw something not quite normal in his face, and
+he rode closer.
+
+"See here, Livingstone," he said, in a soothing tone, "nobody's going to
+get you. I'm here to keep them from getting you. We've got a good start,
+but we'll have to keep moving."
+
+Dick sat obstinately still, his horse turned across the trail, and his
+eyes still suspicious and unfriendly.
+
+"I don't know you," he said doggedly. "And I've done all the running
+away I'm going to do. You go back and tell Wilkins I'm here and to come
+and get me. The sooner the better." The sneer faded, and he turned
+on Bassett with a depth of tragedy in his eyes that frightened the
+reporter. "My God," he said, "I killed a man last night! I can't go
+through life with that on me. I'm done, I tell you."
+
+"Last night!" Some faint comprehension began to dawn in Bassett's mind,
+a suspicion of the truth. But there was no time to verify it. He turned
+and carefully inspected the trail to where it came into sight at the
+opposite rim of the valley. When he was satisfied that the pursuit was
+still well behind them he spoke again.
+
+"Pull yourself together, Livingstone," he said, rather sharply. "Think
+a bit. You didn't kill anybody last night. Now listen," he added
+impressively. "You are Livingstone, Doctor Richard Livingstone. You
+stick to that, and think about it."
+
+But Dick was not listening, save to some bitter inner voice, for
+suddenly he turned his horse around on the trail. "Get out of the way,"
+he said, "I'm going back to give myself up."
+
+He would have done it, probably, would have crowded past Bassett on
+the narrow trail and headed back toward capture, but for his horse. It
+balked and whirled on the ledge, but it would not pass Bassett. Dick
+swore and kicked it, his face ugly and determined, but it refused
+sullenly. He slid out of the saddle then and tried to drag it on, but he
+was suddenly weak and sick. He staggered. Bassett was off his horse in
+a moment and caught him. He eased him onto a boulder, and he sat there,
+his shoulders sagging and his whole body twitching.
+
+"Been drinking my head off," he said at last. "If I had a drink now I'd
+straighten out." He tried to sit up. "That's what's the matter with me.
+I'm funking, of course, but that's not all. I'd give my soul for some
+whisky."'
+
+"I can get you a drink, if you'll come on about a mile," Bassett coaxed.
+"At the cabin you and I talked about yesterday."
+
+"Now you're talking." Dick made an effort and got to his feet, shaking
+off Bassett's assisting arm. "For God's sake keep your hands off me," he
+said irritably. "I've got a hangover, that's all."
+
+He got into his saddle without assistance and started off up the trail.
+Bassett once more searched the valley, but it was empty save for a deer
+drinking at the stream far below. He turned and followed.
+
+He was fairly hopeless by that time, what with Dick's unexpected
+resistance and the change in the man himself. He was dealing with
+something he did not understand, and the hypothesis of delirium did
+not hold. There was a sort of desperate sanity in Dick's eyes. That
+statement, now, about drinking his head off--he hadn't looked yesterday
+like a drinking man. But now he did. He was twitching, his hands shook.
+On the rock his face had been covered with a cold sweat. What was
+that the doctor yesterday had said about delirium tremens? Suppose he
+collapsed? That meant capture.
+
+He did not need to guide Dick to the cabin. He turned off the trail
+himself, and Bassett, following, saw him dismount and survey the ruin
+with a puzzled face. But he said nothing. Bassett waiting outside to tie
+the horses came in to find him sitting on one of the dilapidated chairs,
+staring around, but all he said was:
+
+"Get me that drink, won't you? I'm going to pieces." Bassett found his
+tin cup where he had left it on a shelf and poured out a small amount of
+whisky from his flask.
+
+"This is all we have," he explained. "We'll have to go slow with it."
+
+It had an almost immediate effect. The twitching grew less, and a faint
+color came into Dick's face. He stood up and stretched himself. "That's
+better," he said. "I was all in. I must have been riding that infernal
+horse for years."
+
+He wandered about while the reporter made a fire and set the coffee pot
+to boil. Bassett, glancing up once, saw him surveying the ruined lean-to
+from the doorway, with an expression he could not understand. But he did
+not say anything, nor did he speak again until Bassett called him to get
+some food. Even then he was laconic, and he seemed to be listening and
+waiting.
+
+Once something startled the horses outside, and he sat up and listened.
+
+"They're here!" he said.
+
+"I don't think so," Bassett replied, and went to the doorway. "No," he
+called back over his shoulder, "you go on and finish. I'll watch."
+
+"Come back and eat," Dick said surlily.
+
+He ate very little, but drank of the coffee. Bassett too ate almost
+nothing. He was pulling himself together for the struggle that was to
+come, marshaling his arguments for flight, and trying to fathom the
+extent of the change in the man across the small table.
+
+Dick put down his tin cup and got up. He was strong again, and the
+nightmare confusion of the night had passed away. Instead of it
+there was a desperate lucidity and a courage born of desperation. He
+remembered it all distinctly; he had killed Howard Lucas the night
+before. Before long Wilkins or some of his outfit would ride up to the
+door, and take him back to Norada. He was not afraid of that. They would
+always think he had run away because he was afraid of capture, but it
+was not that. He had run away from Bev's face. Only he had not got away
+from it. It had been with him all night, and it was with him now.
+
+But he would have to go back. He couldn't be caught like a rat in a
+trap. The Clarks didn't run away. They were fighters. Only the Clarks
+didn't kill. They fought, but they didn't murder.
+
+He picked up his hat and went to the door.
+
+"Well, you've been mighty kind, old man," he said. "But I've got to go
+back. I ran last night like a scared kid, but I'm through with that sort
+of foolishness."
+
+"I'd give a good bit," Bassett said, watching him, "to know what made
+you run last night. You were safe where you were."
+
+"I don't know what you are talking about," Dick said drearily. "I
+didn't run from them. I ran to get away from something." He turned away
+irritably. "You wouldn't understand. Say I was drunk. I was, for that
+matter. I'm not over it yet."
+
+Bassett watched him.
+
+"I see," he said quietly. "It was last night, was it, that this thing
+happened?"
+
+"You know it, don't you?"
+
+"And, after it happened, do you remember what followed?"
+
+"I've been riding all night. I didn't care what happened. I knew I'd run
+into a whale of a blizzard, but I--"
+
+He stopped and stared outside, to where the horses grazed in the upland
+meadow, knee deep in mountain flowers. Bassett, watching him, saw the
+incredulity in his eyes, and spoke very gently.
+
+"My dear fellow," he said, "you are right. Try to understand what I am
+saying, and take it easy. You rode into a blizzard, right enough. But
+that was not last night. It was ten years ago."
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+Had Bassett had some wider knowledge of Dick's condition he might have
+succeeded better during that bad hour that followed. Certainly, if he
+had hoped that the mere statement of fact and its proof would bring
+results, he failed. And the need for haste, the fear of the pursuit
+behind them, made him nervous and incoherent.
+
+He had first to accept the incredible, himself--that Dick Livingstone no
+longer existed, that he had died and was buried deep in some chamber of
+an unconscious mind. He made every effort to revive him, to restore him
+into the field of consciousness, but without result. And his struggle
+was increased in difficulty by the fact that he knew so little of Dick's
+life. David's name meant nothing, apparently, and it was the only name
+he knew. He described the Livingstone house; he described Elizabeth as
+he had seen her that night at the theater. Even Minnie. But Dick only
+shook his head. And until he had aroused some instinct, some desire to
+live, he could not combat Dick's intention to return and surrender.
+
+"I understand what you are saying," Dick would say. "I'm trying to get
+it. But it doesn't mean anything to me."
+
+He even tried the war.
+
+"War? What war?" Dick asked. And when he heard about it he groaned.
+
+"A war!" he said. "And I've missed it!"
+
+But soon after that he got up, and moved to the door.
+
+"I'm going back," he said.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"They're after me, aren't they?"
+
+"You're forgetting again. Why should they be after you now, after ten
+years?"
+
+"I see. I can't get it, you know. I keep listening for them."
+
+Bassett too was listening, but he kept his fears to himself.
+
+"Why did you do it?" he asked finally.
+
+"I was drunk, and I hated him. He married a girl I was crazy about."
+
+Bassett tried new tactics. He stressed the absurdity of surrendering for
+a crime committed ten years before and forgotten.
+
+"They won't convict you anyhow," he urged. "It was a quarrel, wasn't it?
+I mean, you didn't deliberately shoot him?"
+
+"I don't remember. We quarreled. Yes. I don't remember shooting him."
+
+"What do you remember?"
+
+Dick made an effort, although he was white to the lips.
+
+"I saw him on the floor," he said slowly, and staggered a little.
+
+"Then you don't even know you did it."
+
+"I hated him."
+
+But Bassett saw that his determination to surrender himself was
+weakening. Bassett fought it with every argument he could summon, and at
+last he brought forward the one he felt might be conclusive.
+
+"You see, you've not only made a man's place in the world, Clark, as
+I've told you. You've formed associations you can't get away from.
+You've got to think of the Livingstones, and you told me yesterday a
+shock would kill the old man. But it's more than that. There's a girl
+back in your town. I think you were engaged to her."
+
+But if he had hoped to pierce the veil with that statement he failed.
+Dick's face flushed, and he went to the door of the cabin, much as he
+had gone to the window the day before. He did not look around when he
+spoke.
+
+"Then I'm an unconscionable cad," he said. "I've only cared for one
+woman in my life. And I've shipwrecked her for good."
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"You know who I mean."
+
+Sometime later Bassett got on his horse and rode out to a ledge which
+commanded a long stretch of trail in the valley below. Far away horsemen
+were riding along it, one behind the other, small dots that moved on
+slowly but steadily. He turned and went back to the cabin.
+
+"We'd better be moving," he said, "and it's up to you to say where.
+You've got two choices. You can go back to Norada and run the chance of
+arrest. You know what that means. Without much chance of a conviction
+you will stand trial and bring wretchedness to the people who stood by
+you before and who care for you now. Or you can go on over the mountains
+with me and strike the railroad somewhere to the West. You'll have time
+to think things over, anyhow. They've waited ten years. They can wait
+longer."
+
+To his relief Dick acquiesced. He had become oddly passive; he seemed
+indeed not greatly interested. He did not even notice the haste with
+which Bassett removed the evidences of their meal, or extinguished the
+dying fire and scattered the ashes. Nor, when they were mounted, the
+care with which they avoided the trail. He gave, when asked, information
+as to the direction of the railroad at the foot of the western slope of
+the range, and at the same instigation found a trail for them some miles
+beyond their starting point. But mostly he merely followed, in a dead
+silence.
+
+They made slow progress. Both horses were weary and hungry, and the
+going was often rough and even dangerous. But for Dick's knowledge of
+the country they would have been hopelessly lost. Bassett, however,
+although tortured with muscular soreness, felt his spirits rising as the
+miles were covered, and there was no sign of the pursuit.
+
+By mid-afternoon they were obliged to rest their horses and let them
+graze, and the necessity of food for themselves became insistent. Dick
+stretched out and was immediately asleep, but the reporter could not
+rest. The magnitude of his undertaking obsessed him. They had covered
+perhaps twenty miles since leaving the cabin, and the railroad was still
+sixty miles away. With fresh horses they could have made it by dawn of
+the next morning, but he did not believe their jaded animals could go
+much farther. The country grew worse instead of better. A pass ahead,
+which they must cross, was full of snow.
+
+He was anxious, too, as to Dick's physical condition. The twitching was
+gone, but he was very pale and he slept like a man exhausted and at his
+physical limit. But the necessity of crossing the pass before nightfall
+or of waiting until dawn to do it drove Bassett back from an anxious
+reconnoitering of the trail at five o'clock, to rouse the sleeping man
+and start on again.
+
+Near the pass, however, Dick roused himself and took the lead.
+
+"Let me ahead, Bassett," he said peremptorily. "And give your horse his
+head. He'll take care of you if you give him a chance."
+
+Bassett was glad to fall back. He was exhausted and nervous. The trail
+frightened him. It clung to the side of a rocky wall, twisting and
+turning on itself; it ran under milky waterfalls of glacial water, and
+higher up it led over an ice field which was a glassy bridge over a
+rushing stream beneath. To add to their wretchedness mosquitoes hung
+about them in voracious clouds, and tiny black gnats which got into
+their eyes and their nostrils and set the horses frantic.
+
+Once across the ice field Dick's horse fell and for a time could not get
+up again. He lay, making ineffectual efforts to rise, his sides heaving,
+his eyes rolling in distress. They gave up then, and prepared to make
+such camp as they could.
+
+With the setting of the sun it had grown bitterly cold, and Bassett was
+forced to light a fire. He did it under the protection of the mountain
+wall, and Dick, after unsaddling his fallen horse, built a rough shelter
+of rocks against the wind. After a time the exhausted horse got up, but
+there was no forage, and the two animals stood disconsolate, or made
+small hopeless excursions, noses to the ground, among the moss and scrub
+pines.
+
+Before turning in Bassett divided the remaining contents of the flask
+between them, and his last cigarettes. Dick did not talk. He sat, his
+back to the shelter, facing the fire, his mind busy with what Bassett
+knew were bitter and conflicting thoughts. Once, however, as the
+reporter was dozing off, Dick spoke.
+
+"You said I told you there was a girl," he said. "Did I tell you her
+name?"
+
+"No."
+
+"All right. Go to sleep. I thought if I heard it it might help."
+
+Bassett lay back and watched him.
+
+"Better get some sleep, old man," he said.
+
+He dozed, to waken again cold and shivering. The fire had burned low,
+and Dick was sitting near it, unheeding, and in a deep study. He looked
+up, and Bassett was shocked at the quiet tragedy in his face.
+
+"Where is Beverly Carlysle now?" he asked. "Or do you know?"
+
+"Yes. I saw her not long ago."
+
+"Is she married again?"
+
+"No. She's revived 'The Valley,' and she's in New York with it."
+
+Dick slept for only an hour or so that night, but as he slept he
+dreamed. In his dream he was at peace and happy, and there was a girl
+in a black frock who seemed to be a part of that peace. When he roused,
+however, still with the warmth of his dream on him, he could not summon
+her. She had slipped away among the shadows of the night.
+
+He sat by the fire in the grip of a great despair. He had lost ten years
+out of his life, his best years. And he could not go back to where he
+had left off. There was nothing to go back to but shame and remorse.
+He looked at Bassett, lying by the fire, and tried to fit him into the
+situation. Who was he, and why was he here? Why had he ridden out at
+night alone, into unknown mountains, to find him?
+
+As though his intent gaze had roused the sleeper, Bassett opened his
+eyes, at first drowsily, then wide awake. He raised himself on his
+elbow and listened, as though for some far-off sound, and his face was
+strained and anxious. But the night was silent, and he relaxed and slept
+again.
+
+Something that had been forming itself in Dick's mind suddenly
+crystallized into conviction. He rose and walked to the edge of the
+mountain wall and stood there listening. When he went back to the
+fire he felt in his pockets, found a small pad and pencil, and bending
+forward to catch the light, commenced to write... At dawn Bassett
+wakened. He was stiff and wretched, and he grunted as he moved. He
+turned over and surveyed the small plateau. It was empty, except for his
+horse, making its continuous, hopeless search for grass.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+David was enjoying his holiday. He lay in bed most of the morning,
+making the most of his one after-breakfast cigar and surrounded by
+newspaper and magazines. He had made friends of the waiter who brought
+his breakfast, and of the little chambermaid who looked after his room,
+and such conversations as this would follow:
+
+"Well, Nellie," he would say, "and did you go to the dance on the pier
+last night?"
+
+"Oh, yes, doctor."
+
+"Your gentleman friend showed up all right, then?"
+
+"Oh, yes. He didn't telephone because he was on a job out of town."
+
+Here perhaps David would lower his voice, for Lucy was never far away.
+
+"Did you wear the flowers?"
+
+"Yes, violets. I put one away to remember you by. It was funny at first.
+I wouldn't tell him who gave them to me."
+
+David would chuckle delightedly.
+
+"That's right," he would say. "Keep him guessing, the young rascal. We
+men are kittle cattle, Nellie, kittle cattle!"
+
+Even the valet unbent to him, and inquired if the doctor needed a man at
+home to look after him and his clothes. David was enormously tickled.
+
+"Well," he said, with a twinkle in his eye. "I'll tell you how I manage
+now, and then you'll see. When I want my trousers pressed I send them
+downstairs and then I wait in my bathrobe until they come back. I'm a
+trifle better off for boots, but you'd have to knock Mike, my hired man,
+unconscious before he'd let you touch them."
+
+The valet grinned understandingly.
+
+"Of course, there's my nephew," David went on, a little note of pride in
+his voice. "He's become engaged recently, and I notice he's bought some
+clothes. But still I don't think even he will want anybody to hold his
+trousers while he gets into them."
+
+David chuckled over that for a long time after the valet had gone.
+
+He was quite happy and contented. He spent all afternoon in a roller
+chair, conversing affably with the man who pushed him, and now and
+then when Lucy was out of sight getting out and stretching his legs. He
+picked up lost children and lonely dogs, and tried his eye in a shooting
+gallery, and had hard work keeping off the roller coasters and out of
+the sea.
+
+Then, one day, when he had been gone some time, he was astonished on
+entering his hotel to find Harrison Miller sitting in the lobby. David
+beamed with surprise and pleasure.
+
+"You old humbug!" he said. "Off on a jaunt after all! And the contempt
+of you when I was shipped here!"
+
+Harrison Miller was constrained and uncomfortable. He had meant to see
+Lucy first. She was a sensible woman, and she would know just what David
+could stand, or could not. But David did not notice his constraint; took
+him to his room, made him admire the ocean view, gave him a cigar, and
+then sat down across from him, beaming and hospitable.
+
+"Suffering Crimus, Miller," he said. "I didn't know I was homesick until
+I saw you. Well, how's everything? Dick's letters haven't been much, and
+we haven't had any for several days."
+
+Harrison Miller cleared his throat. He knew that David had not been
+told of Jim Wheeler's death, but that Lucy knew. He knew too from Walter
+Wheeler that David did not know that Dick had gone west. Did Lucy know
+that, or not? Probably yes. But he considered the entire benevolent
+conspiracy an absurdity and a mistake. It was making him uncomfortable,
+and most of his life had been devoted to being comfortable.
+
+He decided to temporize.
+
+"Things are about the same," he said. "They're going to pave Chisholm
+Street. And your Mike knocked down the night watchman last week. I got
+him off with a fine."
+
+"I hope he hasn't been in my cellar. He's got a weakness, but
+then--How's Dick? Not overworking?"
+
+"No. He's all right."
+
+But David was no man's fool. He began to see something strange in
+Harrison's manner, and he bent forward in his chair.
+
+"Look here, Harrison," he said, "there's something the matter with you.
+You've got something on your mind."
+
+"Well, I have and I haven't. I'd like to see Lucy, David, if she's
+about."
+
+"Lucy's gadding. You can tell me if you can her. What is it? Is it about
+Dick?"
+
+"In a way, yes."
+
+"He's not sick?"
+
+"No. He's all right, as far as I know. I guess I'd better tell you,
+David. Walter Wheeler has got some sort of bee in his bonnet, and he
+got me to come on. Dick was pretty tired and--well, one or two things
+happened to worry him. One was that Jim Wheeler--you'll get this sooner
+or later--was in an automobile accident, and it did for him."
+
+David had lost some of his ruddy color. It was a moment before he spoke.
+
+"Poor Jim," he said hoarsely. "He was a good boy, only full of life. It
+will be hard on the family."
+
+"Yes," Harrison Miller said simply.
+
+But David was resentful, too. When his friends were in trouble he wanted
+to know about it. He was somewhat indignant and not a little hurt. But
+he soon reverted to Dick.
+
+"I'll go back and send him off for a rest," he said. "I'm as good as
+I'll ever be, and the boy's tired. What's the bee in Wheeler's bonnet?"
+
+"Look here, David, you know your own business best, and Wheeler didn't
+feel at liberty to tell me very much. But he seemed to think you were
+the only one who could tell us certain things. He'd have come himself,
+but it's not easy for him to leave the family just now. Dick went away
+just after Jim's funeral. He left a young chap named Reynolds in his
+place, and, I believe, in order not to worry you, some letters to be
+mailed at intervals."
+
+"Went where?" David asked, in a terrible voice.
+
+"To a town called Norada, in Wyoming. Near his old home somewhere. And
+the Wheelers haven't heard anything from him since the day he got there.
+That's three weeks ago. He wrote Elizabeth the night he got there, and
+wired her at the same time. There's been nothing since."
+
+David was gripping the arms of his chair with both hands, but he forced
+himself to calmness.
+
+"I'll go to Norada at once," he said. "Get a time-table, Harrison, and
+ring for the valet."
+
+"Not on your life you won't. I'm here to do that, when I've got
+something to go on. Wheeler thought you might have heard from him. If
+you hadn't, I was to get all the information I could and then start.
+Elizabeth's almost crazy. We wired the chief of police of Norada
+yesterday."
+
+"Yes!" David said thickly. "Trust your friends to make every damned
+mistake possible! You've set the whole pack on his trail." And then he
+fell back in his chair, and gasped, "Open the window!"
+
+When Lucy came in, a half hour later, she found David on his bed with
+the hotel doctor beside him, and Harrison Miller in the room. David was
+fighting for breath, but he was conscious and very calm. He looked up at
+her and spoke slowly and distinctly.
+
+"They've got Dick, Lucy," he said.
+
+He looked aged and pinched, and entirely hopeless. Even after his heart
+had quieted down and he lay still among his pillows, he gave no evidence
+of his old fighting spirit. He lay with his eyes shut, relaxed and
+passive. He had done his best, and he had failed. It was out of his
+hands now, and in the hands of God. Once, as he lay there, he prayed. He
+said that he had failed, and that now he was too old and weak to fight.
+That God would have to take it on, and do the best He could. But he
+added that if God did not save Dick and bring him back to happiness,
+that he, David, was through.
+
+Toward morning he wakened from a light sleep. The door into Lucy's room
+was open and a dim light was burning beyond it. David called her, and by
+her immediate response he knew she had not been sleeping.
+
+"Yes, David," she said, and came padding in in her bedroom slippers
+and wadded dressing-gown, a tragic figure of apprehension, determinedly
+smiling. "What do you want?"
+
+"Sit down, Lucy."
+
+When she had done so he put out his hand, fumbling for hers. She was
+touched and alarmed, for it was a long while since there had been any
+open demonstration of affection between them. David was silent for a
+time, absorbed in thought. Then:
+
+"I'm not in very good shape, Lucy. I suppose you know that. This old
+pump of mine has sprung a leak or something. I don't want you to worry
+if anything happens. I've come to the time when I've got a good many
+over there, and it will be like going home."
+
+Lucy nodded. Her chin quivered. She smoothed his hand, with its high
+twisted veins.
+
+"I know, David," she said. "Mother and father, and Henry, and a good
+many friends. But I need you, too. You're all I have, now that Dick--"
+
+"That's why I called you. If I can get out there, I'll go. And I'll put
+up a fight that will make them wish they'd never started anything. But
+if I can't, if I--" She felt his fingers tighten on her hand. "If Hattie
+Thorwald is still living, we'll put her on the stand. If I can't go,
+for any reason, I want you to see that she is called. And you know where
+Henry's statement is?"
+
+"In your box, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes. Have the statement read first, and then have her called to
+corroborate it. Tell the story I have told you--or no, I'll dictate it
+to you in the morning, and sign it before witnesses. Jake and Bill will
+testify too."
+
+He felt easier in his mind after that. He had marshalled his forces and
+begun his preparations for battle. He felt less apprehension now in case
+he fell asleep, to waken among those he had loved long since and lost
+awhile. After a few moments his eyes closed, and Lucy went back to her
+bed and crawled into it.
+
+It was, however, Harrison Miller who took the statement that morning.
+Lucy's cramped old hand wrote too slowly for David's impatience.
+Harrison Miller took it, on hotel stationery, covering the carefully
+numbered pages with his neat, copper-plate writing. He wrote with an
+impassive face, but with intense interest, for by that time he knew
+Dick's story.
+
+Never, in his orderly bachelor life, of daily papers and a flower garden
+and political economy at night, had he been so close to the passions of
+men to love and hate and the disorder they brought with them.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+"My brother, Henry Livingstone, was not a strong man," David dictated.
+"He had the same heart condition I have, but it developed earlier. After
+he left college he went to Arizona and bought a ranch, and there he
+met and chummed with Elihu Clark, who had bought an old mine and was
+reworking it. Henry loaned him a small amount of money at that time, and
+a number of years later in return for that, when Henry's health failed,
+Clark, who had grown wealthy, bought him a ranch in Wyoming at Dry
+River, not far from Clark's own property.
+
+"Henry had been teaching in an Eastern university, and then taken up
+tutoring. We saw little of him. He was a student, and he became almost a
+recluse. I saw less of him than ever after Clark gave him the ranch.
+
+"In the spring of 1910 Henry wrote me that he was not well, and I went
+out to see him. He seemed worried and was in bad shape physically. Elihu
+Clark had died five years before, and left him a fair sum of money,
+fifty thousand dollars, but he was living in a way which made me think
+he was not using it. The ranch buildings were dilapidated, and there was
+nothing but the barest necessities in the house.
+
+"I taxed Henry with miserliness, and he then told me that the money was
+not his, but left to him to be used for an illegitimate son of Clark's,
+born before his marriage, the child of a small rancher's daughter named
+Hattie Burgess. The Burgess girl had gone to Omaha for its birth, and
+the story was not known. In early years Clark had paid the child's board
+through his lawyer to an Omaha woman named Hines, and had later sent him
+to college. The Burgess girl married a Swede named Thorwald. The boy was
+eight years older than Judson, Clark's legitimate son.
+
+"After the death of his wife Elihu Clark began to think about the child,
+especially after Judson became a fair-sized boy. He had the older boy,
+who went by the name of Hines, sent to college, and in summer he stayed
+at Henry's tutoring school. Henry said the boy was like the Burgess
+family, blonde and excitable and rather commonplace. He did not get on
+well at college, and did not graduate. So far as he knew, Clark never
+saw him.
+
+"The boy himself believed that he was an orphan, and that the Hines
+woman had adopted him as a foundling. But on the death of the woman he
+found that she had no estate, and that a firm of New York attorneys had
+been paying his college bills.
+
+"He had spent considerable time with Henry, one way and another, and
+he began to think that Henry knew who he was. He thought at first that
+Henry was his father, and there was some trouble. In order to end it
+Henry finally acknowledged that he knew who the father was, and after
+that he had no peace. Clifton--his name was Clifton Hines--attacked
+Henry once, and if it had not been for the two men on the place he would
+have hurt him.
+
+"Henry began to give him money. Clark had left the fifty thousand for
+the boy with the idea that Henry should start him in business with it.
+But he only turned up wild-cat schemes that Henry would not listen to.
+He did not know how Henry got the money, or from where. He thought for a
+long time that Henry had saved it.
+
+"I'd better say here that Henry was fond of Clifton, although he didn't
+approve of him. He'd never married, and the boy was like a son to him
+for a good many years. He didn't have him at the ranch much, however,
+for he was a Burgess through and through and looked like them. And he
+was always afraid that somehow the story would get out.
+
+"Then Clifton learned, somehow or other, of Clark's legacy to Henry, and
+he put two and two together. There was a bad time, but Henry denied it
+and they went upstairs to bed. That night Clifton broke into Henry's
+desk and found some letters from Elihu Clark that told the story.
+
+"He almost went crazy. He took the papers up to Henry's and wakened him,
+standing over Henry with them in hand, and shaking all over. I think
+they had a struggle, too. All Henry told me was that he took them from
+him and threw them in the fire.
+
+"That was a year before Henry died, and at the time young Jud Clark's
+name was in all the newspapers. He had left college after a wild
+career there, and although Elihu had tied up the property until Jud was
+twenty-one, Jud had his mother's estate and a big allowance. Then, too,
+he borrowed on his prospects, and he lost a hundred thousand dollars at
+Monte Carlo within six weeks after he graduated.
+
+"One way and another he was always in the newspapers, and when he saw
+how Jud was throwing money away Clifton went wild.
+
+"As Henry had burned the letters he had no proofs. He didn't know who
+his mother was, but he set to work to find out. He ferreted into Elihu's
+past life, and he learned something about Hattie Burgess, or Thorwald.
+She was married by that time, and lived on a little ranch near Norada.
+He went to see her, and he accused her downright of being his mother. It
+must have been a bad time for her, for after all he was her son, and
+she had to disclaim him. She had a husband and a boy by that husband,
+however, by that time, and she was desperate. She threw him off the
+track somehow, lied and talked him down, and then went to bed in
+collapse. She sent for Henry later and told him.
+
+"The queer thing was that as soon as she saw him she wanted him. He
+was her son. She went to Henry one night, and said she had perjured her
+soul, and that she wanted him back. She wasn't in love with Thorwald.
+I think she'd always cared for Clark. She went away finally, however,
+after promising Henry she would keep Clark's secret. But I have a
+suspicion that later on she acknowledged the truth to the boy.
+
+"What he wanted, of course, was a share of the Clark estate. Of course
+he hadn't a chance in law, but he saw a chance to blackmail young Jud
+Clark and he tried it. Not personally, for he hadn't any real courage,
+but by mail. Clark's attorneys wrote back saying they would jail him if
+he tried it again, and he went back to Dry River and after Henry again.
+
+"That was in the spring of 1911. Henry was uneasy, for Clifton was not
+like himself. He had spells of brooding, and he took to making long
+trips on his horse into the mountains, and coming in with the animal run
+to death. Henry thought, too, that he was seeing the Thorwald woman,
+the mother. Thorwald had died, and she was living with the son on their
+ranch and trying to sell it. He thought Hines was trying to have her
+make a confession which would give him a hold on Jud Clark.
+
+"Henry was not well, and in the early fall he knew he hadn't long to
+live. He wrote out the story and left it in his desk for me to read
+after he had gone, and as he added to it from time to time, when I got
+it it was almost up to date.
+
+"Judson came back to the Clark ranch in September, bringing along an
+actress named Beverly Carlysle, and her husband, Howard Lucas. There was
+considerable talk, because it was known Jud had been infatuated with
+the woman. But no one saw much of the party, outside of the ranch. The
+Carlysle woman seemed to be a lady, but the story was that both men were
+drinking a good bit, especially Jud.
+
+"Henry wrote that Hines had been in the East for some months at that
+time, and that he had not heard from him. But he felt that it was only a
+truce, and that he would turn up again, hell bent for trouble. He made
+a will and left the money to me, with instructions to turn it over
+to Hines. It is still in the bank, and amounts to about thirty-five
+thousand dollars. It is not mine, and I will not touch it. But I have
+never located Clifton Hines.
+
+"In the last entry in his record I call attention to my brother's
+statement that he did not regard Clifton Hines as entirely sane on this
+one matter, and to his conviction that the hatred Hines then bore him,
+amounting to a delusion of persecution, might on his death turn against
+Judson Clark. He instructed me to go to Clark, tell him the story, and
+put him on his guard.
+
+"Clark and his party had been at the ranch only a day or two when one
+night Hines turned up at Dry River. He wanted the fifty thousand, or
+what was left of it, and when he failed to move Henry he attacked him.
+The two men on the place heard the noise and ran in, but Hines got away.
+Henry swore them to secrecy, and told them the story. He felt he might
+need help.
+
+"From what the two men at the ranch told me when I got there, I think
+Hines stayed somewhere in the mountains for the next day or two, and
+that he came down for food the night Henry died.
+
+"Just what he contributed to Henry's death I do not know. Henry fell in
+one room, and was found in bed in another when the hands had been taking
+the cattle to the winter range, and he'd been alone in the house.
+
+"When I got there the funeral was over. I read the letter he had left,
+and then I talked to the two hands, Bill Ardary and Jake Mazetti. They
+would not talk at first, but I showed them Henry's record and then
+they were free enough. The autopsy had shown that Henry died from heart
+disease, but he had a cut on his head also, and they believed that Hines
+had come back, had quarreled with him again, and had knocked him down.
+
+"As Henry had in a way handed over to me his responsibility for the boy,
+and as I wanted to transfer the money, I waited for three weeks at the
+ranch, hoping he would turn up again. I saw the Thorwald woman, but she
+protested that she did not know where he was. And I made two attempts
+to see and warn Jud Clark, but failed both times. Then one night the
+Thorwald woman came in, looking like a ghost, and admitted that Hines
+had been hiding in the mountains since Henry's death, that he insisted
+he had killed him, and that he blamed Jud Clark for that, and for all
+the rest of his troubles. She was afraid he would kill Clark. The three
+of us, the two men at the ranch and myself, prepared to go into the
+mountains and hunt for him, before he got snowed in.
+
+"Then came the shooting at the Clark place, and I rode over that night
+in a howling storm and helped the coroner and a Norada doctor in the
+examination. All the evidence was against Clark, especially his running
+away. But I happened on Hattie Thorwald outside on a verandah--she'd
+been working at the house--and I didn't need any conversation to tell me
+what she thought. All she said was:
+
+"He didn't do it, doctor. He's still in the mountains."
+
+"He's been here to-night, Hattie, and you know it. He shot the wrong
+man."
+
+"But she swore he hadn't been, and at the end I didn't know. I'll say
+right now that I don't know. But I'll say, too, that I believe that
+is what happened, and that Hines probably stayed hidden that night on
+Hattie Thorwald's place. I went there the next day, but she denied it
+all, and said he was still in the mountains. She carried on about the
+blizzard and his being frozen to death, until I began to think she was
+telling the truth.
+
+"The next day I did what only a tenderfoot would do, started into the
+mountains alone. Bill and Jake were out with a posse after Clark, and
+I packed up some food and started. I'll not go into the details of that
+trip. I went in from the Dry River Canyon, and I guess I faced death a
+dozen times the first day. I had a map, but I lost myself in six hours.
+I had food and blankets and an axe along, and I built a shelter and
+stayed there overnight. I had to cut up one of my blankets the next
+morning and tie up the horse's feet, so he wouldn't sink too deep in the
+snow. But it stayed cold and the snow hardened, and we got along better
+after that.
+
+"I'd have turned back more than once, but I thought I'd meet up with
+some of the sheriff's party. I didn't do that, but I stumbled on a
+trail on the third day, toward evening. It was the trail made by John
+Donaldson, as I learned later. I followed it, but I concluded after a
+while that whoever made it was lost, too. It seemed to be going in a
+circle. I was in bad shape and had frozen a part of my right hand, when
+I saw a cabin, and there was smoke coming out of the chimney."
+
+From that time on David's statement dealt with the situation in the
+cabin; with Jud Clark and the Donaldsons, and with the snow storm, which
+began again and lasted for days. He spoke at length of his discovery of
+Clark's identity, and of the fact that the boy had lost all memory of
+what had happened, and even of who he was. He went into that in detail;
+the peculiar effect of fear and mental shock on a high-strung nature,
+especially where the physical condition was lowered by excess and
+wrong-living; his early attempts, as the boy improved, to pierce the
+veil, and then his slow-growing conviction that it were an act of mercy
+not to do so. The Donaldsons' faithfulness, the cessation of the search
+under the conviction that Clark was dead, both were there, and also
+David's growing liking for Judson himself. But David's own psychology
+was interesting and clearly put.
+
+"First of all," he dictated, in his careful old voice, "it must be
+remembered that I was not certain that the boy had committed the crime.
+I believed, and I still believe, that Lucas was shot by Clifton Hines,
+probably through an open window. There were no powder marks on the body.
+I believed, too, and still believe, that Hines had fled after the crime,
+either to Hattie Thorwald's house or to the mountains. In one case he
+had escaped and could not be brought to justice, and in the other he was
+dead, and beyond conviction.
+
+"But there is another element which I urge, not in defense but in
+explanation. The boy Judson Clark was a new slate to write on. He had
+never had a chance. He had had too much money, too much liberty, too
+little responsibility. His errors had been wiped away by the loss of his
+memory, and he had, I felt, a chance for a new and useful life.
+
+"I did not come to my decision quickly. It was a long fight for his
+life, for he had contracted pneumonia, and he had the drinker's heart.
+But in the long days of his convalescence while Maggie worked in
+the lean-to, I had time to see what might be done. If in making an
+experiment with a man's soul I usurped the authority of my Lord and
+Master, I am sorry. But he knows that I did it for the best.
+
+"I deliberately built up for Judson Clark a new identity. He was my
+nephew, my brother Henry's son. He had the traditions of an honorable
+family to carry on, and those traditions were honor, integrity,
+clean living and work. I did not stress love, for that I felt must be
+experienced, not talked about. But love was to be the foundation on
+which I built. The boy had had no love in his life.
+
+"It has worked out. I may not live to see it at its fullest, but I defy
+the world to produce today a finer or more honorable gentleman, a more
+useful member of the community. And it will last. The time may come when
+Judson Clark will again be Judson Clark. I have expected it for many
+years. But he will never again be the Judson Clark of ten years ago.
+He may even will to return to the old reckless ways, but as I lie here,
+perhaps never to see him, I say this: he cannot go back. His character
+and habits of thought are established.
+
+"To convict Judson Clark of the murder of Howard Lucas is to convict
+a probably or at least possibly innocent man. To convict Richard
+Livingstone of that crime is to convict a different man, innocent of the
+crime, innocent of its memory, innocent of any single impulse to lift
+his hand against a law of God or the state."
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+For a month Haverly had buzzed with whispered conjectures. It knew
+nothing, and yet somehow it knew everything. Doctor David was ill at
+the seashore, and Dick was not with him. Harrison Miller, who was never
+known to depart farther from his comfortable hearth than the railway
+station in one direction and the Sayre house in the other, had made a
+trip East and was now in the far West. Doctor Reynolds, who might or
+might not know something, had joined the country club and sent for his
+golf bag.
+
+And Elizabeth Wheeler was going around with a drawn white face and a
+determined smile that faded the moment one looked away.
+
+The village was hurt and suspicious. It resented its lack of knowledge,
+and turned cynical where, had it been taken into confidence, it would
+have been solicitous. It believed that Elizabeth had been jilted, for
+it knew, via Annie and the Oglethorpe's laundress, that no letters came
+from Dick. And against Dick its indignation was directed, in a hot flame
+of mainly feminine anger.
+
+But it sensed a mystery, too, and if it hated a jilt it loved a mystery.
+
+Nina had taken to going about with her small pointed chin held high, and
+angrily she demanded that Elizabeth do the same.
+
+"You know what they are saying, and yet you go about looking crushed."
+
+"I can't act, Nina. I do go about."
+
+And Nina had a softened moment.
+
+"Don't think about him," she said. "He isn't sick, or he would have
+had some one wire or write, and he isn't dead, or they'd have found his
+papers and let us know."
+
+"Then he's in some sort of trouble. I want to go out there. I want to go
+out there!"
+
+That, indeed, had been her constant cry for the last two weeks. She
+would have done it probably, packed her bag and slipped away, but she
+had no money of her own, and even Leslie, to whom she appealed, had
+refused her when he knew her purpose.
+
+"We're following him up, little sister," he said. "Harrison Miller has
+gone out, and there's enough talk as it is."
+
+She thought, lying in her bed at night, that they were all too afraid
+of what people might say. It seemed so unimportant to her. And she could
+not understand the conspiracy of silence. Other men went away and were
+not heard from, and the police were notified and the papers told. It
+seemed to her, too, that every one, her father and Nina and Leslie and
+even Harrison Miller, knew more than she did.
+
+There had been that long conference behind closed doors, when Harrison
+Miller came back from seeing David, and before he went west. Leslie had
+been there, and even Doctor Reynolds, but they had shut her out. And her
+father had not been the same since.
+
+He seemed, sometimes, to be burning with a sort of inner anger. Not at
+her, however. He was very gentle with her.
+
+And here was a curious thing. She had always felt that she knew when
+Dick was thinking of her. All at once, and without any warning, there
+would come a glow of happiness and warmth, and a sort of surrounding
+and encircling sense of protection. Rather like what she had felt as a
+little girl when she had run home through the terrors of twilight, and
+closed the house door behind her. She was in the warm and lighted house,
+safe and cared for.
+
+That was completely gone. It was as though the warm and lighted house
+of her love had turned her out and locked the door, and she was alone
+outside, cold and frightened.
+
+She avoided the village, and from a sense of delicacy it left her alone.
+The small gaieties of the summer were on, dinners, dances and picnics,
+but her mourning made her absence inconspicuous. She could not, however,
+avoid Mrs. Sayre. She tried to, at first, but that lady's insistence and
+her own apathy made it easier to accept than to refuse. Then, after a
+time, she found the house rather a refuge. She seldom saw Wallie, and
+she found her hostess tactful, kindly and uninquisitive.
+
+"Take the scissors and a basket, child, and cut your mother some roses,"
+she would say. Or they would loot the green houses and, going in the car
+to the cemetery, make of Jim's grave a thing of beauty and remembrance.
+
+Now and then, of course, she saw Wallie, but he never reverted to the
+day she had told him of her engagement. Mother and son, she began to
+feel that only with them could she be herself. For the village, her chin
+high as Nina had said. At home, assumed cheerfulness. Only at the house
+on the hill could she drop her pose.
+
+She waited with a sort of desperate courage for word from Harrison
+Miller. What she wanted that word to be she did not know. There were,
+of course, times when she had to face the possibility that Dick had
+deliberately cut himself off from her. After all, there had never been
+any real reason why he should care for her. She was not clever and not
+beautiful. Perhaps he had been disappointed in her, and this was the
+thing they were concealing. Perhaps he had gone back to Wyoming and had
+there found some one more worthy of im, some one who understood when he
+talked about the things he did in his laboratory, and did not just sit
+and listen with loving, rather bewildered eyes.
+
+Then, one night at dinner, a telegram was brought in, and she knew it
+was the expected word. She felt her mother's eyes on her, and she sat
+very still with her hands clenched in her lap. But her father did not
+read it at the table; he got up and went out, and some time later he
+came to the door. The telegram was not in sight.
+
+"That was from Harrison Miller," he said. "He has traced Dick to a hotel
+at Norada, but he had left the hotel, and he hasn't got in touch with
+him yet."
+
+He went away then, and they heard the house door close.
+
+Then, some days later, she learned that Harrison Miller was coming home,
+and that David was being brought back. She saw that telegram from Mr.
+Miller, and read into it failure and discouragement, and something more
+ominous than either.
+
+"Reach home Tuesday night. Nothing definite. Think safe."
+
+"Think safe?" she asked, breathlessly. "Then he has been in danger? What
+are you keeping from me?" And when no one spoke: "Oh, don't you see how
+cruel it is? You are all trying to protect me, and you are killing me
+instead."
+
+"Not danger," her father said, slowly. "So far as we know, he is well.
+Is all right." And seeing her face: "It is nothing that affects his
+feeling for you, dear. He is thinking of you and loving you, wherever he
+is. Only, we don't know where he is."
+
+But when he came back on Tuesday, after seeing Harrison Miller, he was
+discouraged and sick at heart. He went directly upstairs to his wife,
+and shut the bedroom door.
+
+"Not a trace," he said, in reply to the question in her eyes. "The
+situation is as he outlined it in the letter. He elaborated, of course.
+The fact is, and David will have to see it, that that statement of his
+doesn't help at all, unless he can prove there is a Clifton Hines. And
+even then it's all supposition. There's a strong sentiment out there
+that Dick either killed himself or met with an accident and died in the
+mountains. The horse wandered into town last week. I'll have to tell
+her."
+
+Over this possibility they faced each other, a tragic middle-aged pair,
+helpless as is the way of middle-age before the attacks of life on their
+young.
+
+"It will kill her, Walter."
+
+"She's young," he said sturdily. "She'll get over it."
+
+But he did not think so, and she knew it.
+
+"There is a rather queer element in it," he observed, after a time.
+"Another man, named Bassett, disappeared the same night. His stuff is at
+the hotel, but no papers to identify him. He had looked after Dick that
+day when he was sick, and he simply vanished. He didn't take the train.
+He was under suspicion for being with Dick, and the station was being
+watched." But she was not interested in Bassett. The name meant nothing
+to her. She harked back to the question that had been in both their
+minds since they had read, in stupefied amazement, David's statement.
+
+"In a way, Walter, it would be better, if he..."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"My little girl, and--Judson Clark!"
+
+But he fought that sturdily. They had ten years of knowledge and respect
+to build on. The past was past. All he prayed for was Dick's return, an
+end to this long waiting. There would be no reservations in his welcome,
+if only--
+
+Some time later he went downstairs, to where Elizabeth sat waiting in
+the library. He went like a man to his execution, and his resolution
+nearly gave way when he saw her, small in her big chair and pathetically
+patient. He told her the story as guardedly as he could. He began with
+Dick's story to him, about his forgotten youth, and went on carefully
+to Dick's own feeling that he must clear up that past before he married.
+She followed him carefully, bewildered a little and very tense.
+
+"But why didn't he tell me?"
+
+"He saw it as a sort of weakness. He meant to when he came back."
+
+He fought Dick's fight for him valiantly, stressing certain points
+that were to prepare her for others to come. He plunged, indeed, rather
+recklessly into the psychology of the situation, and only got out of the
+unconscious mind with an effort. But behind it all was his overwhelming
+desire to save her pain.
+
+"You must remember," he said, "that Dick's life before this happened,
+and since, are two different things. Whatever he did then should not
+count against him now."
+
+"Of course not," she said. "Then he--had done something?"
+
+"Yes. Something that brought him into conflict with the authorities."
+
+She did not shrink from that, and he was encouraged to go on.
+
+"He was young then, remember. Only twenty-one or so. And there was a
+quarrel with another man. The other man was shot."
+
+"You mean Dick shot him?"
+
+"Yes. You understand, don't you," he added anxiously, "that he doesn't
+remember doing it?"
+
+In spite of his anxiety he was forced to marvel at the sublime faith
+with which she made her comment, through lips that had gone white.
+
+"Then it was either an accident, or he deserved shooting," she said. But
+she inquired, he thought with difficulty, "Did he die?"
+
+He could not lie to her. "Yes," he said.
+
+She closed her eyes, but a moment later she was fighting her valiant
+fight again for Dick.
+
+"But they let him go," she protested. "Men do shoot in the West, don't
+they? There must have been a reason for it. You know Dick as well as I
+do. He couldn't do a wrong thing."
+
+He let that pass. "Nothing was done about it at the time," he said.
+"And Dick came here and lived his useful life among us. He wouldn't have
+known the man's name if he heard it. But do you see, sweetheart, where
+this is taking us? He went back, and they tried to get him, for a thing
+he didn't remember doing."
+
+"Father!" she said, and went very white. "Is that where he is? In
+prison?"
+
+He tried to steady his voice.
+
+"No, dear. He escaped into the mountains. But you can understand his
+silence. You can understand, too, that he may feel he cannot come back
+to us, with this thing hanging over him. What we have to do now is to
+find him, and to tell him that it makes no difference. That he has his
+place in the world waiting for him, and that we are waiting too."
+
+When it was all over, her questions and his sometimes stumbling replies,
+he saw that out of it all the one thing that mattered vitally to her was
+that Dick was only a fugitive, and not dead. But she said, just before
+they went, arm in arm, up the stairs:
+
+"It is queer in one way, father. It isn't like him to run away."
+
+He told Margaret, later, and she listened carefully.
+
+"Then you didn't tell her about the woman in the case?"
+
+"Certainly not. Why should I?"
+
+Mrs. Wheeler looked at him, with the eternal surprise of woman at the
+lack of masculine understanding.
+
+"Because, whether you think it or not, she will resent and hate that as
+she hates nothing else. Murder will be nothing, to that. And she will
+have to know it some time."
+
+He pondered her flat statement unhappily, standing by the window and
+looking out into the shaded street, and a man who had been standing,
+cigar in mouth, on a pavement across withdrew into the shadow of a tree
+box.
+
+"It's all a puzzle to me," he said, at last. "God alone knows how it
+will turn out. Harrison Miller seems to think this Bassett, whoever he
+is, could tell us something. I don't know."
+
+He drew the shade and wound his watch. "I don't know," he repeated.
+
+Outside, on the street, the man with the cigar struck a match and looked
+at his watch. Then he walked briskly toward the railway station. A half
+hour later he walked into the offices of the Times-Republican and to the
+night editor's desk.
+
+"Hello, Bassett," said that gentleman. "We thought you were dead. Well,
+how about the sister in California? It was the Clark story, wasn't it?"
+
+"Yes," said Bassett, noncommittally.
+
+"And it blew up on you! Well, there were others who were fooled, too.
+You had a holiday, anyhow."
+
+"Yes, I had a holiday," said Bassett, and going over to his own desk
+began to sort his vast accumulation of mail. Sometime later he found the
+night editor at his elbow.
+
+"Did you get anything on the Clark business at all?" he asked. "Williams
+thinks there's a page in it for Sunday, anyhow. You've been on the
+ground, and there's a human interest element in it. The last man who
+talked to Clark; the ranch to-day. That sort of thing."
+
+Bassett went on doggedly sorting his mail.
+
+"You take it from me," he said, "the story's dead, and so is Clark. The
+Donaldson woman was crazy. That's all."
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+David was brought home the next day, a shrivelled and aged David, but
+with a fighting fire in his eyes and a careful smile at the station for
+the group of friends who met him.
+
+David had decided on a course and meant to follow it. That course was to
+protect Dick's name, and to keep the place he had made in the world open
+for him. Not even to Lucy had he yet breathed the terror that was with
+him day and night, that Dick had reached the breaking point and had gone
+back. But he knew it was possible. Lauler had warned him against shocks
+and trouble, and looking back David could see the gradually accumulating
+pressure against that mental wall of Dick's subconscious building;
+overwork and David's illness, his love affair and Jim Wheeler's tragedy,
+and coming on top of that, in some way he had not yet learned, the
+knowledge that he was Judson Clark and a fugitive from the law. The work
+of ten years perhaps undone.
+
+Both David and Lucy found the home-coming painful. Harrison Miller rode
+up with them from the station, and between him and Doctor Reynolds David
+walked into his house and was assisted up the stairs. At the door of
+Dick's room he stopped and looked in, and then went on, his face set and
+rigid. He would not go to bed, but sat in his chair while about him went
+on the bustle of the return, the bringing up of trunks and bags; but
+the careful smile was gone, and his throat, now so much too thin for his
+collar, worked convulsively.
+
+He had got Harrison Miller's narrative from him on the way from the
+station, and it had only confirmed his suspicions.
+
+"He had been in a stupor all day," Miller related, "and was being
+cared for by a man named Bassett. I daresay that's the man Gregory had
+referred to. He may have become suspicious of Bassett. I don't know. But
+a chambermaid recognized him as he was making his escape, and raised an
+alarm. He got a horse out of the courtyard of the hotel, and not a sign
+of him has been found since."
+
+"It wasn't Bassett who raised the alarm?"
+
+"No, apparently not. The odd thing is that this Bassett disappeared,
+too, the same night. I called up his paper yesterday, but he hasn't
+shown up."
+
+And with some small amplifications, that is all there was to it.
+
+Before Harrison Miller and Doctor Reynolds left him to rest, David
+called Lucy in, and put his plea to all of them.
+
+"It is my hope," he said, "to carry on exactly as though Dick might walk
+in to-morrow and take his place again. As I hold to my belief in God,
+so I hold to my conviction that he will come back, and that before
+I--before long. But our friends will be asking where he is and what he
+is doing, and we would better agree on that beforehand. What we'd better
+say is simply that Dick was called away on business connected with
+some property in the West. They may not believe it, but they'll hardly
+disprove it."
+
+So the benevolent conspiracy to protect Dick Livingstone's name was
+arranged, and from that time on the four of them who were a party to it
+turned to the outside world an unbroken front of loyalty and courage.
+Even to Minnie, anxious and red-eyed in her kitchen, Lucy gave the same
+explanation while she arranged David's tray.
+
+"He has been detained in the West on business," Lucy said.
+
+"He might have sent me a postcard. And he hasn't written Doctor Reynolds
+at all."
+
+"He has been very busy. Get the sugar bowl, Minnie. He'll be back soon,
+I'm sure."
+
+But Minnie did not immediately move.
+
+"He'd better come soon if he wants to see Doctor David," she said, with
+twitching lips. "And I'll just say this, Mrs. Crosby. The talk that's
+going on in this town is something awful."
+
+"I don't want to hear it," Lucy said firmly.
+
+She ate alone, painfully remembering that last gay little feast before
+they started away. But before she sat down she did a touching thing. She
+rang the bell and called Minnie.
+
+"After this, Minnie," she said, "we will always set Doctor Richard's
+place. Then, when he comes--"
+
+Her voice broke and Minnie, scenting a tragedy but ignorant of it, went
+back to her kitchen to cry into the roller towel. Her world was gone to
+pieces. By years of service to the one family she had no other world, no
+home, no ties. She was with the Livingstones, but not one of them. Alone
+in her kitchen she felt lonely and cut off. She thought that David, had
+he not been ill, would have told her.
+
+Lucy found David moving about upstairs some time later, and when she
+went up she found him sitting in Dick's room, on a stiff chair inside
+the door. She stood beside him and put her hand on his shoulder, but he
+did not say anything, and she went away.
+
+That night David had a caller. All evening the bell had been ringing,
+and the little card tray on the hatrack was filled with visiting cards.
+There were gifts, too, flowers and jellies and some squab from Mrs.
+Sayre. Lucy had seen no one, excusing herself on the ground of fatigue,
+but the man who came at nine o'clock was not inclined to be turned away.
+
+"You take this card up to Doctor Livingstone, anyhow," he said. "I'll
+wait."
+
+He wrote in pencil on the card, placing it against the door post to do
+so, and passed it to Minnie. She calmly read it, and rather defiantly
+carried it off. But she came down quickly, touched by some contagion of
+expectation from the room upstairs.
+
+"Hang your hat on the rack and go on up."
+
+So it was that David and the reporter met, for the first time, in
+David's old fashioned chamber, with its walnut bed and the dresser with
+the marble top, and Dick's picture in his uniform on the mantle.
+
+Bassett was shocked at the sight of David, shocked and alarmed. He was
+uncertain at first as to the wisdom of telling his startling story to an
+obviously sick man, but David's first words reassured him.
+
+"Come in," he said. "You are the Bassett who was with Doctor Livingstone
+at Norada?"
+
+"Yes. I see you know about it."
+
+"We know something, not everything." Suddenly David's pose deserted him.
+He got up and stood very straight, searching eyes on his visitor. "Is he
+living?" he asked, in a low voice.
+
+"I think so. I'm not certain."
+
+"Then you don't know where he is?"
+
+"No. He got away--but you know that. Sit down, doctor. I've got a long
+story to tell."
+
+"I'll get you to call my sister first," David said. "And tell her to
+get Harrison Miller. Mr. Miller is our neighbor, and he very kindly went
+west when my health did not permit me to go."
+
+While they waited David asked only one question.
+
+"The report we have had is that he was in a stupor in the hotel, and the
+doctor who saw him--you got him, I think--said he appeared to have been
+drinking heavily. Is that true? He was not a drinking man."
+
+"I am quite sure he had not."
+
+There was another question in David's mind, but he did not put it. He
+sat, with the patience of his age and his new infirmity, waiting for
+Lucy to bring Harrison Miller, and had it not been for the trembling of
+his hands Bassett would have thought him calm and even placid.
+
+During the recital that followed somewhat later David did not move. He
+sat silent, his eyes closed, his face set.
+
+"That's about all," Bassett finished. "He had been perfectly clear in
+his head all day, and it took headwork to get over the pass. But, as I
+say, he had simply dropped ten years, and was back to the Lucas trouble.
+I tried everything I knew, used your name and would have used the young
+lady's, because sometimes that sort of thing strikes pretty deep, but
+I didn't know it. He was convinced after a while, but he was dazed, of
+course. He knew it, that is, but he couldn't comprehend it.
+
+"I was done up, and I've cursed myself for it since, but I must have
+slept like the dead. I wakened once, early in the night, and he was
+still sitting by the fire, staring at it. I've forgotten to say that he
+had been determined all day to go back and give himself up, and the only
+way I prevented it was by telling him what a blow it would be to you and
+to the girl. I wakened once and said to him, 'Better get some sleep, old
+man.' He did not answer at once, and then he said, 'All right.' I was
+dozing off when he spoke again. He said, 'Where is Beverly Carlysle now?
+Has she married again?' 'She's revived "The Valley," and she's in New
+York with it,' I told him.
+
+"When I wakened in the morning he was gone, but he'd left a piece of
+paper in a cleft stick beside me, with directions for reaching the
+railroad, and--well, here it is."
+
+Bassett took from his pocket-book a note, and passed it over to David,
+who got out his spectacles with shaking hands and read it. It was on
+Dick's prescription paper, with his name at the top and the familiar Rx
+below it. David read it aloud, his voice husky.
+
+"Many thanks for everything, Bassett," he read. "I don't like to leave
+you, but you'll get out all right if you follow the map on the back
+of this. I've had all night to think things out, and I'm leaving you
+because you are safer without me. I realize now what you've known all
+day and kept from me. That woman at the hotel recognized me, and they
+are after me.
+
+"I can't make up my mind what to do. Ultimately I think I'll go back and
+give myself up. I am a dead man, anyhow, to all who might have cared,
+but I've got to do one or two things first, and I want to think things
+over. One thing you've got a right to know. I hated Lucas, but it never
+entered my head to kill him. How it happened God only knows. I don't."
+
+It was signed "J. C."
+
+Bassett broke the silence that followed the reading.
+
+"I made every effort to find him. I had to work alone, you understand,
+and from the west side of the range, not to arouse suspicion. They were
+after me, too, you know. His horse, I heard, worked its way back a few
+days ago. It's a forsaken country, and if he lost his horse he was in it
+on foot and without food. Of course there's a chance--"
+
+His voice trailed off. In the stillness David sat, touching with tender
+tremulous fingers what might be Dick's last message, and gazing at the
+picture of Dick in his uniform. He knew what they all thought, that Dick
+was dead and that he held his final words in his hands, but his militant
+old spirit refused to accept that silent verdict. Dick might be dead
+to them, but he was living. He looked around the room defiantly,
+resentfully. Of all of them he was the only one to have faith, and he
+was bound to a chair. He knew them. They would sit down supinely and
+grieve, while time passed and Dick fought his battle alone.
+
+No, by God, he would not be bound to a chair. He raised himself and
+stood, swaying on his shaking legs.
+
+"You've given up," he said scornfully. "You make a few days' search, and
+then you quit. It's easy to say he's dead, and so you say he's dead. I'm
+going out there myself, and I'll make a search--"
+
+He collapsed into the chair again, and looked at them with shamed,
+appealing eyes. Bassett was the first to break the silence, speaking in
+a carefully emotionless tone.
+
+"I haven't given up for a minute. I've given up the search, because he's
+beyond finding just now. Either he's got away, or he is--well, beyond
+help. We have to go on the hypothesis that he got away, and in that
+case sooner or later you'll hear from him. He's bound to remember you in
+time. The worst thing is this charge against him."
+
+"He never killed Howard Lucas," David said, in a tone of conviction.
+"Harrison, read Mr. Bassett my statement to you."
+
+Bassett took the statement home with him that night, and studied it
+carefully. It explained a great deal that had puzzled him before; Mrs.
+Wasson's story and David's arrival at the mountain cabin. But most of
+all it explained why the Thorwald woman had sent him after Dick. She
+knew then, in spite of her protests to David, that Jud Clark had not
+killed Lucas.
+
+He paced the floor for an hour or two, sunk in thought, and then
+unlocked a desk drawer and took out his bankbook. He had saved a little
+money. Not much, but it would carry him over if he couldn't get another
+leave of absence. He thought, as he put the book away and prepared for
+bed, that it was a small price to pay for finding Clifton Hines and
+saving his own soul.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+Dick had written his note, and placed it where Bassett would be certain
+to see it. Then he found his horse and led him for the first half mile
+or so of level ground before the trail began to descend. He mounted
+there, for he knew the animal could find its way in the darkness where
+he could not.
+
+He felt no weariness and no hunger, although he had neither slept nor
+eaten for thirty-odd hours, and as contrasted with the night before his
+head was clear. He was able to start a train of thought and to follow it
+through consecutively for the first time in hours. Thought, however, was
+easier than realization, and to add to his perplexity, he struggled
+to place Bassett and failed entirely. He remained a mysterious and
+incomprehensible figure, beginning and ending with the trail.
+
+Then he had an odd thought, that brought him up standing. He had only
+Bassett's word for the story. Perhaps Bassett was lying to him, or mad.
+He rode on after a moment, considering that, but there was something,
+not in Bassett's circumstantial narrative but in himself, that refused
+to accept that loophole of escape. He could not have told what it was.
+
+And, with his increasing clarity, he began to make out the case for
+Bassett and against himself; the unfamiliar clothing he wore, the pad
+with the name of Livingstone on it and the sign Rx, the other contents
+of his pockets.
+
+He tried to orient himself in Bassett's story. A doctor. The devil's
+irony of it! Some poor hack, losing sleep and bringing babies. Peddling
+pills. Leading what Bassett had called a life of usefulness! That was a
+career for you, a pill peddler. God!
+
+But underlying all his surface thinking was still the need of flight,
+and he was continually confusing it with the earlier one. One moment he
+was looking about for the snow of that earlier escape, and the next he
+would remember, and the sense of panic would leave him. After all he
+meant to surrender eventually. It did not matter if they caught him.
+
+But, like the sense of flight, there was something else in his mind,
+something that he fought down and would not face. When it came up
+he thrust it back fiercely. That something was the figure of Beverly
+Carlysle, stooping over her husband's body. He would have died to save
+her pain, and yet last night--no, it wasn't last night. It was years and
+years ago, and all this time she had hated him.
+
+It was unbearable that she had gone on hating him, all this time.
+
+He was very thirsty, and water did not satisfy him. He wanted a real
+drink. He wanted alcohol. Suddenly he wanted all the liquor in the
+world. The craving came on at dawn, and after that he kicked his weary
+horse on recklessly, so that it rocked and stumbled down the trail. He
+had only one thought after the frenzy seized him, and that was to get to
+civilization and whisky. It was as though he saw in drunkenness his only
+escape from the unbearable. In all probability he would have killed
+both his horse and himself in the grip of that sudden madness, but
+deliverance came in the shape of a casual rider, a stranger who for a
+moment took up the shuttle, wove his bit of the pattern and passed
+on, to use his blow-pipe, his spirit lamp and his chemicals in some
+prospector's paradise among the mountains.
+
+When Dick heard somewhere ahead the creaking of saddle leather and the
+rattle of harness he drew aside on the trail and waited. He had lost
+all caution in the grip of his craving, and all fear. A line of loaded
+burros rounded a point ahead and came toward him, picking their way
+delicately with small deliberate feet and walking on the outer edge of
+the trail, after the way of pack animals the world over. Behind them was
+a horseman, rifle in the scabbard on his saddle and spurs jingling. Dick
+watched him with thirsty, feverish eyes as he drew near. He could hardly
+wait to put his question.
+
+"Happen to have a drink about you, partner?" he called.
+
+The man stopped his horse and grinned.
+
+"Pretty early in the morning for a drink, isn't it?" he inquired. Then
+he saw Dick's eyes, and reached reluctantly into his saddle bag. "I've
+got a quart here," he said. "I've traveled forty miles and spent nine
+dollars to get it, but I guess you need some."
+
+"You wouldn't care to sell it, I suppose?"
+
+"The bottle? Not on your life."
+
+He untied a tin cup from his saddle and carefully poured a fair amount
+into it, steadying the horse the while.
+
+"Here," he said, and passed it over. "But you'd better cut it out after
+this. It's bad medicine. You've got two good drinks there. Be careful."
+
+Dick took the cup and looked at the liquor. The odor assailed him, and
+for a queer moment he felt a sudden distaste for it. He had a revulsion
+that almost shook him. But he drank it down and passed the cup back.
+
+"You've traveled a long way for it," he said, "and I needed it, I guess.
+If you'll let me pay for it--"
+
+"Forget it," said the man amiably, and started his horse. "But better
+cut it out, first chance you get. It's bad medicine."
+
+He rode on after his vanishing pack, and Dick took up the trail again.
+But before long he began to feel sick and dizzy. The aftertaste of the
+liquor in his mouth nauseated him. The craving had been mental habit,
+not physical need, and his body fought the poison rebelliously. After
+a time the sickness passed, and he slept in the saddle. He roused once,
+enough to know that the horse had left the trail and was grazing in a
+green meadow. Still overcome with his first real sleep he tumbled out
+of the saddle and stretched himself out on the ground. He slept all day,
+lying out in the burning sun, his face upturned to the sky.
+
+When he wakened it was twilight, and the horse had disappeared. His face
+burned from the sun, and his head ached violently. He was weak, too,
+from hunger, and the morning's dizziness persisted. Connected thought
+was impossible, beyond the fact that if he did not get out soon, he
+would be too weak to travel. Exhausted and on the verge of sunstroke, he
+set out on foot to find the trail.
+
+He traveled all night, and the dawn found him still moving, a mere
+automaton of a man, haggard and shambling, no longer willing his
+progress, but somehow incredibly advancing. He found water and drank it,
+fell, got up, and still, right foot, left foot, he went on. Some
+time during that advance he had found a trail, and he kept to it
+automatically. He felt no surprise and no relief when he saw a cabin in
+a clearing and a woman in the doorway, watching him with curious eyes.
+He pulled himself together and made a final effort, but without much
+interest in the result.
+
+"I wonder if you could give me some food?" he said. "I have lost my
+horse and I've been wandering all night."
+
+"I guess I can," she replied, not unamiably. "You look as though you
+need it, and a wash, too. There's a basin and a pail of water on that
+bench."
+
+But when she came out later to call him to breakfast she found him
+sitting on the bench and the pail overturned on the ground.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said, dully, "I tried to lift it, but I'm about all in."
+
+"You'd better come in. I've made some coffee."
+
+He could not rise. He could not even raise his hands.
+
+She called her husband from where he was chopping wood off in the trees,
+and together they got him into the house. It was days before he so much
+as spoke again.
+
+So it happened that the search went on. Wilkins from the east of the
+range, and Bassett from the west, hunted at first with furious energy,
+then spasmodically, then not at all, while Dick lay in a mountain cabin,
+on the bed made of young trees, and for the second time in his life
+watched a woman moving in a lean-to kitchen, and was fed by a woman's
+hand.
+
+He forced himself to think of this small panorama of life that moved
+before him, rather than of himself. The woman was young, and pretty in a
+slovenly way. The man was much older, and silent. He was of better class
+than the woman, and underlying his assumption of crudity there were
+occasional outcroppings of some cultural background. Not then, nor at
+any subsequent time, did he learn the story, if story there was. He
+began to see them, however, not so much pioneers as refugees. The cabin
+was, he thought, a haven to the man and a prison to the woman.
+
+But they were uniformly kind to him, and for weeks he stayed there,
+slowly readjusting. In his early convalescence he would sit paring
+potatoes or watching a cooking pot for her. As he gained in strength
+he cut a little firewood. Always he sought something to keep him from
+thinking.
+
+Two incidents always stood out afterwards in his memory of the cabin.
+One was the first time he saw himself in a mirror. He knew by that time
+that Bassett's story had been true, and that he was ten years older than
+he remembered himself to be. He thought he was in a measure prepared.
+But he saw in the glass a man whose face was lined and whose hair was
+streaked with gray. The fact that his beard had grown added to the
+terrible maturity of the reflection he saw, and he sent the mirror
+clattering to the ground.
+
+The other incident was later, and when he was fairly strong again. The
+man was caught under a tree he was felling, and badly hurt. During the
+hour or so that followed, getting the tree cut away, and moving the
+injured man to the cabin on a wood sledge, Dick had the feeling of
+helplessness of any layman in an accident. He was solicitous but clumsy.
+But when they had got the patient into his bed, quite automatically he
+found himself making an investigation and pronouncing a verdict.
+
+Later he was to realize that this was the first peak of submerged
+memory, rising above the flood. At the time all he felt was a great
+certainty. He must act quickly or the man would not live. And that
+night, with such instruments as he could extemporize, he operated. There
+was no time to send to a town.
+
+All night, after the operation, Dick watched by the bedside, the woman
+moving back and forth restlessly. He got his only knowledge of the
+story, such as it was, then when she said once:
+
+"I deserved this, but he didn't. I took him away from his wife."
+
+He had to stay on after that, for the woman could not be left alone. And
+he was glad of the respite, willing to drift until he got his bearings.
+Certain things had come back, more as pictures than realities. Thus
+he saw David clearly, Lucy dimly, Elizabeth not at all. But David came
+first; David in the buggy with the sagging springs, David's loud voice
+and portly figure, David, steady and upright and gentle as a woman. But
+there was something wrong about David. He puzzled over that, but he was
+learning not to try to force things, to let them come to the surface
+themselves.
+
+It was two or three days later that he remembered that David was ill,
+and was filled with a sickening remorse and anxiety. For the first time
+he made plans to get away, for whatever happened after that he knew he
+must see David again. But all his thought led him to an impasse at that
+time, and that impasse was the feeling that he was a criminal and a
+fugitive, and that he had no right to tie up innocent lives with his.
+Even a letter to David might incriminate him.
+
+Coupled with his determination to surrender, the idea of atonement was
+strong in him. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. That had been
+his father's belief, and well he remembered it. But during the drifting
+period he thrust it back, into that painful niche where he held Beverly,
+and the thing he would not face.
+
+That phase of his readjustment, then, when he reached it, was painful
+and confused. There was the necessity for atonement, which involved
+surrender, and there was the call of David, and the insistent desire to
+see Beverly again, which was the thing he would not face. Of the three,
+the last, mixed up as it was with the murder and its expiation, was the
+strongest. For by the very freshness of his released memories, it was
+the days before his flight from the ranch that seemed most recent, and
+his life with David that was long ago, and blurred in its details as by
+the passing of infinite time.
+
+When Elizabeth finally came back to him it was as something very gentle
+and remote, out of the long-forgotten past. Even his image of her
+was blurred and shadowy. He could not hear the tones of her voice, or
+remember anything she had said. He could never bring her at will, as
+he could David, for instance. She only came clearly at night, while he
+slept. Then the guard was down, and there crept into his dreams a small
+figure, infinitely loving and tender; but as he roused from sleep she
+changed gradually into Beverly. It was Beverly's arms he felt around his
+neck. Nevertheless he held to Elizabeth more completely than he knew,
+for the one thing that emerged from his misty recollection of her was
+that she cared for him. In a world of hate and bitterness she cared.
+
+But she was never real to him, as the other woman was real. And he knew
+that she was lost to him, as David was lost. He could never go back to
+either of them.
+
+As time went on he reached the point of making practical plans. He had
+lost his pocketbook somewhere, probably during his wanderings afoot,
+and he had no money. He knew that the obvious course was to go to the
+nearest settlement and surrender himself and he played with the thought,
+but even as he did so he knew that he would not do it. Surrender he
+would, eventually, but before he did that he would satisfy a craving
+that was in some ways like his desire for liquor that morning on the
+trail. A reckless, mad, and irresistible impulse to see Beverly Lucas
+again.
+
+In August he started for the railroad, going on foot and without money,
+his immediate destination the harvest fields of some distant ranch, his
+object to earn his train fare to New York.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+The summer passed slowly. To David and Elizabeth it was a long waiting,
+but with this difference, that David was kept alive by hope, and that
+Elizabeth felt sometimes that hope was killing her. To David each day
+was a new day, and might hold Dick. To Elizabeth, after a time, each day
+was but one more of separation.
+
+Doctor Reynolds had become a fixture in the old house, but he was not
+like Dick. He was a heavy, silent young man, shy of intruding into the
+family life and already engrossed in a budding affair with the Rossiter
+girl. David tolerated him, but with a sort of smouldering jealousy
+increased by the fact that he had introduced innovations David resented;
+had for instance moved Dick's desk nearer the window, and instead of
+doing his own laboratory work had what David considered a damnably lazy
+fashion of sending his little tubes, carefully closed with cotton, to a
+hospital in town.
+
+David found the days very long and infinitely sad. He wakened each
+morning to renewed hope, watched for the postman from his upper window,
+and for Lucy's step on the stairs with the mail. His first glimpse
+of her always told him the story. At the beginning he had insisted on
+talking about Dick, but he saw that it hurt her, and of late they had
+fallen into the habit of long silences.
+
+The determination to live on until that return which he never ceased
+to expect only carried him so far, however. He felt no incentive to
+activity. There were times when he tried Lucy sorely, when she felt
+that if he would only move about, go downstairs and attend to his office
+practice, get out into the sun and air, he would grow stronger. But
+there were times, too, when she felt that only the will to live was
+carrying him on.
+
+Nothing further had developed, so far as they knew. The search had been
+abandoned. Lucy was no longer so sure as she had been that the house was
+under surveillance, against Dick's possible return. Often she lay in
+her bed and faced the conviction that Dick was dead. She had never
+understood the talk that at first had gone on about her, when Bassett
+and Harrison Miller, and once or twice the psycho-analyst David had
+consulted in town, had got together in David's bedroom. The mind was the
+mind, and Dick was Dick. This thing about habit, over which David pored
+at night when he should have been sleeping, or brought her in to listen
+to, with an air of triumphant vindication, meant nothing to her.
+
+A man properly trained in right habits of thinking and of action could
+not think wrong and go wrong, David argued. He even went further. He
+said that love was a habit, and that love would bring Dick back to him.
+That he could not forget them.
+
+She believed that, of course, if he still lived. But hadn't Mr. Bassett,
+who seemed so curiously mixed in the affair, been out again to Norada
+without result? No, it was all over, and she felt that it would be a
+comfort to know where he lay, and to bring him back to some well-loved
+and tended grave.
+
+Elizabeth came often to see them. She looked much the same as ever,
+although she was very slender and her smile rather strained, and she
+and David would have long talks together. She always felt rather like an
+empty vessel when she went in, but David filled her with hope and sent
+her away cheered and visibly brighter to her long waiting. She rather
+avoided Lucy, for Lucy's fears lay in her face and were like a shadow
+over her spirit. She came across her one day putting Dick's clothing
+away in camphor, and the act took on an air of finality that almost
+crushed her.
+
+So far they had kept from her Dick's real identity, but certain things
+they had told her. She knew that he had gone back, in some strange way,
+to the years before he came to Haverly, and that he had temporarily
+forgotten everything since. But they had told her too, and seemed to
+believe themselves, that it was only temporary.
+
+At first the thought had been more than she could bear. But she had to
+live her life, and in such a way as to hide her fears. Perhaps it was
+good for her, the necessity of putting up a bold front, to join the
+conspiracy that was to hold Dick's place in the world against the hope
+of his return. And she still went to the Sayre house, sure that there
+at least there would be no curious glances, no too casual questions.
+She could not be sure of that even at home, for Nina was constantly
+conjecturing.
+
+"I sometimes wonder-" Nina began one day, and stopped.
+
+"Wonder what?"
+
+"Oh, well, I suppose I might as well go on. Do you ever think that if
+Dick had gone back, as they say he has, that there might be somebody
+else?"
+
+"Another girl, you mean?"
+
+"Yes. Some one he knew before."
+
+Nina was watching her. Sometimes she almost burst with the drama she
+was suppressing. She had been a small girl when Judson Clark had
+disappeared, but even at twelve she had known something of the story.
+She wanted frantically to go about the village and say to them: "Do you
+know who has been living here, whom you used to patronize? Judson Clark,
+one of the richest men in the world!" She built day dreams on that
+foundation. He would come back, for of course he would be found and
+acquitted, and buy the Sayre place perhaps, or build a much larger one,
+and they would all go to Europe in his yacht. But she knew now that the
+woman Leslie had sent his flowers to had loomed large in Dick's past,
+and she both hated and feared her. Not content with having given her,
+Nina, some bad hours, she saw the woman now possibly blocking her
+ambitions for Elizabeth.
+
+"What I'm getting at is this," she said, examining her polished nails
+critically. "If it does turn out that there was somebody, you'd have to
+remember that it was all years and years ago, and be sensible."
+
+"I only want him back," Elizabeth said. "I don't care how he comes, so
+he comes."
+
+Louis Bassett had become a familiar figure in the village life by that
+time. David depended on him with a sort of wistful confidence that
+set him to grinding his teeth occasionally in a fury at his own
+helplessness. And, as the extent of the disaster developed, as he saw
+David failing and Lucy ageing, and when in time he met Elizabeth, the
+feeling of his own guilt was intensified.
+
+He spent hours studying the case, and he was chiefly instrumental in
+sending Harrison Miller back to Norada in September. He had struck up a
+friendship with Miller over their common cause, and the night he was to
+depart that small inner group which was fighting David's battle for
+him formed a board of strategy in Harrison's tidy living-room; Walter
+Wheeler and Bassett, Miller and, tardily taken into their confidence,
+Doctor Reynolds.
+
+The same group met him on his return, sat around with expectant faces
+while he got out his tobacco and laid a sheaf of papers on the table,
+and waited while their envoy, laying Bassett's map on the table,
+proceeded carefully to draw in a continuation of the trail beyond the
+pass, some sketchy mountains, and a small square.
+
+"I've got something," he said at last. "Not much, but enough to work
+on. Here's where you lost him, Bassett." He pointed with his pencil.
+"He went on for a while on the horse. Then somehow he must have lost the
+horse, for he turned up on foot, date unknown, in a state of exhaustion
+at a cabin that lies here. I got lost myself, or I'd never have found
+the place. He was sick there for weeks, and he seems to have stayed on
+quite a while after he recovered, as though he couldn't decide what to
+do next."
+
+Walter Wheeler stirred and looked up.
+
+"What sort of condition was he in when he left?"
+
+"Very good, they said."
+
+"You're sure it was Livingstone?"
+
+"The man there had a tree fall on him. He operated. I guess that's the
+answer."
+
+He considered the situation.
+
+"It's the answer to more than that," Reynolds said slowly. "It shows he
+had come back to himself. If he hadn't he couldn't have done it."
+
+"And after that?" some one asked.
+
+"I lost him. He left to hike to the railroad, and he said nothing of his
+plans. If I'd been able to make open inquiries I might have turned
+up something, but I couldn't. It's a hard proposition. I had trouble
+finding Hattie Thorwald, too. She'd left the hotel, and is living with
+her son. She swears she doesn't know where Clifton Hines is, and hasn't
+seen him for years."
+
+Bassett had been listening intently, his head dropped forward.
+
+"I suppose the son doesn't know about Hines?"
+
+"No. She warned me. He was surly and suspicious. The sheriff had sent
+for him and questioned him about how you got his horse, and I gathered
+that he thought I was a detective. When I told him I was a friend of
+yours, he sent you a message. You may be able to make something out of
+it. I can't. He said: `You can tell him I didn't say anything about the
+other time.'"
+
+Bassett sat forward.
+
+"The other time?"
+
+"He is under the impression that his mother got the horse for you once
+before, about ten days before Clark escaped. At night, also."
+
+"Not for me," Bassett said decisively. "Ten days before that I was--" he
+got out his notebook and consulted it. "I was on my way to the cabin
+in the mountains, where the Donaldsons had hidden Jud Clark. I hired a
+horse at a livery stable."
+
+"Could the Thorwald woman have followed you?"
+
+"Why the devil should she do that?" he asked irritably. "She didn't know
+who I was. She hadn't a chance at my papers, for I kept them on me. If
+she did suspect I was on the case, a dozen fellows had preceded me, and
+half of them had gone to the cabin."
+
+"Nevertheless," he finished, "I believe she did. She or Hines himself.
+There was some one on a horse outside the cabin that night."
+
+There was silence in the room, Harrison Miller thoughtfully drawing at
+random on the map before him. Each man was seeing the situation from his
+own angle; to Reynolds, its medical interest, and the possibility of
+his permanency in the town; to Walter Wheeler, Elizabeth's spoiled young
+life; to Harrison Miller, David; and to the reporter a conviction that
+the clues he now held should lead him somewhere, and did not.
+
+Before the meeting broke up Miller took a folded manuscript from the
+table and passed it to Bassett.
+
+"Copy of the Coroner's inquiry, after the murder," he said. "Thought it
+might interest you..."
+
+Then, for a time, that was all. Bassett, poring at home over the inquest
+records, and finding them of engrossing interest, saw the futility of
+saving a man who could not be found. And even Nina's faith, that the
+fabulously rich could not die obscurely, began to fade as the summer
+waned. She restored some of her favor to Wallie Sayre, and even listened
+again to his alternating hopes and fears.
+
+And by the end of September he felt that he had gained real headway with
+Elizabeth. He had come to a point where she needed him more than she
+realized, where the call in her of youth for youth, even in trouble, was
+insistent. In return he felt his responsibility and responded to it. In
+the vernacular of the town he had "settled down," and the general trend
+of opinion, which had previously disapproved him, was now that Elizabeth
+might do worse.
+
+On a crisp night early in October he had brought her home from Nina's,
+and because the moon was full they sat for a time on the steps of the
+veranda, Wallie below her, stirring the dead leaves on the walk with his
+stick, and looking up at her with boyish adoring eyes when she spoke.
+He was never very articulate with her, and her trouble had given her a
+strange new aloofness that almost frightened him. But that night, when
+she shivered a little, he reached up and touched her hand.
+
+"You're cold," he said almost roughly. He was sometimes rather savage,
+for fear he might be tender.
+
+"I'm not cold. I think it's the dead leaves."
+
+"Dead leaves?" he repeated, puzzled. "You're a queer girl, Elizabeth.
+Why dead leaves?"
+
+"I hate the fall. It's the death of the year."
+
+"Nonsense. It's going to bed for a long winter's nap. That's all. I'll
+bring you a wrap."
+
+He went in, and came out in a moment with her father's overcoat.
+
+"Here," he said peremptorily, "put this on. I'm not going to be called
+on the carpet for giving you a sniffle."
+
+She stood up obediently and he put the big coat around her. Then,
+obeying an irresistible impulse, he caught her to him. He released her
+immediately, however, and stepped back.
+
+"I love you so," he stammered. "I'm sorry. I'll not do it again."
+
+She was startled, but not angry.
+
+"I don't like it," was all she said. And because she did not want him to
+think she was angry, she sat down again. But the boy was shaken. He got
+out a cigarette and lighted it, his hands trembling. He could not think
+of anything to say. It was as though by that one act he had cut a bridge
+behind him and on the other side lay all the platitudes, the small give
+and take of their hours together. What to her was a regrettable incident
+was to him a great dramatic climax. Boylike, he refused to recognize its
+unimportance to her. He wanted to talk about it.
+
+"When you said just now that you didn't like what I did just then, do
+you mean you didn't like me to do it? Or that you don't care for that
+sort of thing? Of course I know," he added hastily, "you're not that
+kind of girl. I--"
+
+He turned and looked at her.
+
+"You know I'm still in love with you, don't you, Elizabeth?"
+
+She returned his gaze frankly.
+
+"I don't see how you can be when you know what you do know."
+
+"I know how you feel now. But I know that people don't go on loving
+hopelessly all their lives. You're young. You've got"--he figured
+quickly--"you've got about fifty-odd years to live yet, and some of
+these days you'll be--not forgetting," he changed, when he saw her quick
+movement. "I know you'll not forget him. But remembering and loving are
+different."
+
+"I wonder," she said, her eyes on the moon, and full of young tragedy.
+"If they are, if one can remember without loving, then couldn't one love
+without remembering?"
+
+He stared at her.
+
+"You're too deep for me sometimes," he said. "I'm not subtle, Elizabeth.
+I daresay I'm stupid in lots of things. But I'm not stupid about this.
+I'm not trying to get a promise, you know. I only want you to know how
+things are. I don't want to know why he went away, or why he doesn't
+come back. I only want you to face the facts. I'd be good to you," he
+finished, in a low tone. "I'd spend my life thinking of ways to make you
+happy."
+
+She was touched. She reached down and put her hand on his shoulder.
+
+"You deserve the best, Wallie. And you're asking for a second best. Even
+that--I'm just not made that way, I suppose. Fifty years or a hundred,
+it would be all the same."
+
+"You'd always care for him, you mean?"
+
+"Yes. I'm afraid so."
+
+When he looked at her her eyes had again that faraway and yet flaming
+look which he had come to associate with her thoughts of Dick. She
+seemed infinitely removed from him, traveling her lonely road past
+loving outstretched hands and facing ahead toward--well, toward fifty
+years of spinsterhood. The sheer waste of it made him shudder.
+
+"You're cold, too, Wallie," she said gently. "You'd better go home."
+
+He was about to repudiate the idea scornfully, when he sneezed! She got
+up at once and held out her hand.
+
+"You are very dear to feel about me the way you do" she said, rather
+rapidly. "I appreciate your telling me. And if you're chilly when you
+get home, you'd better take some camphor."
+
+He saw her in, hat in hand, and then turned and stalked up the street.
+Camphor, indeed! But so stubborn was hope in his young heart that before
+he had climbed the hill he was finding comfort in her thought for him.
+
+Mrs. Sayre had been away for a week, visiting in Michigan, and he had
+not expected her for a day or so. To his surprise he found her on the
+terrace, wrapped in furs, and evidently waiting for him.
+
+"I wasn't enjoying it," she explained, when he had kissed her. "It's
+a summer place, not heated to amount to anything, and when it turned
+cold--where have you been to-night?"
+
+"Dined at the Wards', and then took Elizabeth home."
+
+"How is she?"
+
+"She's all right."
+
+"And there's no news?"
+
+He knew her very well, and he saw then that she was laboring under
+suppressed excitement.
+
+"What's the matter, mother? You're worried about something, aren't you?"
+
+"I have something to tell you. We'd better go inside." He followed her
+in, unexcited and half smiling. Her world was a small one, of minor
+domestic difficulties, of not unfriendly gossip, of occasional money
+problems, investments and what not. He had seen her hands tremble over a
+matter of a poorly served dinner. So he went into the house, closed the
+terrace window and followed her to the library. When she closed the door
+he recognized her old tactics when the servants were in question.
+
+"Well?" he inquired. "I suppose--" Then he saw her face. "Sorry, mother.
+What's the trouble?"
+
+"Wallie, I saw Dick Livingstone in Chicago."
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+During August Dick had labored in the alfalfa fields of Central
+Washington, a harvest hand or "working stiff" among other migratory
+agricultural workers. Among them, but not entirely of them. Recruited
+from the lowest levels as men grade, gathered in at a slave market on
+the coast, herded in bunk houses alive with vermin, fully but badly fed,
+overflowing with blasphemy and filled with sullen hate for those above
+them in the social scale, the "stiffs" regarded him with distrust from
+the start.
+
+In the beginning he accepted their sneers with a degree of philosophy.
+His physical condition was poor. At night he ached intolerably,
+collapsing into his wooden bunk to sleep the dreamless sleep of utter
+exhaustion. There were times when he felt that it would be better
+to return at once to Norada and surrender, for that he must do so
+eventually he never doubted. It was as well perhaps that he had no time
+for brooding, but he gained sleep at the cost of superhuman exertion all
+day.
+
+A feeling of unreality began to obsess him, so that at times he felt
+like a ghost walking among sweating men, like a resurrection into life,
+but without life. And more than once he tried to sink down to the level
+of the others, to unite himself again with the crowd, to feel again the
+touch of elbows, the sensation of fellowship. The primal instinct of the
+herd asserted itself, the need of human companionship of any sort.
+
+But he failed miserably, as Jud Clark could never have failed. He could
+not drink with them. He could not sink to their level of degradation.
+Their oaths and obscenity sickened and disgusted him, and their talk of
+women drove him into the fresh air.
+
+The fact that he could no longer drink himself into a stupor puzzled
+him. Bad whiskey circulated freely among the hay stacks and bunk houses
+where the harvest hands were quartered, and at ruinous prices. The men
+clubbed together to buy it, and he put in his share, only to find that
+it not only sickened him, but that he had a mental inhibition against
+it.
+
+They called him the "Dude," and put into it gradually all the class
+hatred of their wretched sullen lives. He had to fight them, more than
+once, and had they united against him he might have been killed. But
+they never united. Their own personal animosities and angers kept them
+apart, as their misery held them together. And as time went on and his
+muscles hardened he was able to give a better account of himself. The
+time came when they let him alone, and when one day a big shocker fell
+off a stack and broke his leg and Dick set it, he gained their respect.
+They asked no questions, for their law was that the past was the past.
+They did not like him, but in the queer twisted ethics of the camp they
+judged the secret behind him by the height from which he had fallen, and
+began slowly to accept him as of the brotherhood of derelicts.
+
+With his improvement in his physical condition there came, toward the
+end of the summer, a more rapid subsidence of the flood of the long
+past. He had slept out one night in the fields, where the uncut alfalfa
+was belled with purple flowers and yellow buttercups rose and nodded
+above him. With the first touch of dawn on the mountains he wakened to a
+clarity of mind like that of the morning. He felt almost an exaltation.
+He stood up and threw out his arms.
+
+It was all his again, never to lose, the old house, and David and Lucy;
+the little laboratory; the church on Sunday mornings. Mike, whistling
+in the stable. A wave of love warmed him, a great surging tenderness. He
+would go back to them. They were his and he was theirs. It was at first
+only a great emotion; a tingling joyousness, a vast relief, as of one
+who sees, from a far distance, the lights in the windows of home. Save
+for the gap between the drunken revel at the ranch and his awakening to
+David's face bending over him in the cabin, everything was clear. Still
+by an effort, but successfully, he could unite now the two portions of
+his life with only a scar between them.
+
+Not that he formulated it. It was rather a mood, an impulse of
+unreasoning happiness. The last cloud had gone, the last bit of mist
+from the valley. He saw Haverly, and the children who played in its
+shaded streets; Mike washing the old car, and the ice cream freezer on
+Sundays, wrapped in sacking on the kitchen porch. Jim Wheeler came back
+to him, the weight of his coffin dragging at his right hand as he helped
+to carry it; he was kneeling beside Elizabeth's bed, and putting his
+hand over her staring eyes so she would go to sleep.
+
+The glow died away, and he began to suffer intensely. They were all lost
+to him, along with the life they represented. And already he began to
+look back on his period of forgetfulness with regret. At least then he
+had not known what he had lost.
+
+He wondered again what they knew. What did they think? If they believed
+him dead, was that not kinder than the truth? Outside of David and Lucy,
+and of course Bassett, the sole foundation on which any search for him
+had rested had been the semi-hysterical recognition of Hattie Thorwald.
+But he wondered how far that search had gone.
+
+Had it extended far enough to involve David? Had the hue and cry died
+away, or were the police still searching for him? Could he even write
+to David, without involving him in his own trouble? For David, fine,
+wonderful old David--David had deliberately obstructed the course of
+justice, and was an accessory after the fact.
+
+Up to that time he had drifted, unable to set a course in the fog, but
+now he could see the way, and it led him back to Norada. He would not
+communicate with David. He would go out of the lives at the old house as
+he had gone in, under a lie. When he surrendered it would be as Judson
+Clark, with his lips shut tight on the years since his escape. Let them
+think, if they would, that the curtain that had closed down over his
+memory had not lifted, and that he had picked up life again where he
+had laid it down. The police would get nothing from him to incriminate
+David.
+
+But he had a moment, too, when surrender seemed to him not strength but
+weakness; where its sheer supineness, its easy solution to his problem
+revolted him, where he clenched his fist and looked at it, and longed
+for the right to fight his way out.
+
+When smoke began to issue from the cook-house chimney he stirred, rose
+and went back. He ate no breakfast, and the men, seeing his squared jaw
+and set face, let him alone. He worked with the strength of three men
+that day, but that night, when the foreman offered him a job as pacer,
+with double wages, he refused it.
+
+"Give it to somebody else, Joe," he said. "I'm quitting."
+
+"The hell you are! When?"
+
+"I'd like to check out to-night."
+
+His going was without comment. They had never fully accepted him, and
+comings and goings without notice in the camp were common. He rolled up
+his bedding, his change of under-garments inside it, and took the road
+that night.
+
+The railroad was ten miles away, and he made the distance easily. He
+walked between wire fences, behind which horses moved restlessly as he
+passed and cattle slept around a water hole, and as he walked he faced a
+situation which all day he had labored like three men to evade.
+
+He was going out of life. It did not much matter whether it was to be
+behind bars or to pay the ultimate price. The shadow that lay over him
+was that he was leaving forever David and all that he stood for, and a
+woman. And the woman was not Elizabeth.
+
+He cursed himself in the dark for a fool and a madman; he cursed the
+infatuation which rose like a demoniac possession from his early life.
+When that failed he tried to kill it by remembering the passage of time,
+the loathing she must have nursed all these years. He summoned the image
+of Elizabeth to his aid, to find it eclipsed by something infinitely
+more real and vital. Beverly in her dressing-room, grotesque and yet
+lovely in her make-up; Beverly on the mountain-trail, in her boyish
+riding clothes. Beverly.
+
+Probably at that stage of his recovery his mind had reacted more quickly
+than his emotions. And by that strange faculty by which an idea often
+becomes stronger in memory than in its original production he found
+himself in the grip of a passion infinitely more terrible than his
+earlier one for her. It wiped out the memory, even the thought, of
+Elizabeth, and left him a victim of its associated emotions. Bitter
+jealousy racked him, remorse and profound grief. The ten miles of road
+to the railroad became ten miles of torture, of increasing domination of
+the impulse to go to her, and of final surrender.
+
+In Spokane he outfitted himself, for his clothes were ragged, and with
+the remainder of his money bought a ticket to Chicago. Beyond Chicago he
+had no thought save one. Some way, somehow, he must get to New York.
+Yet all the time he was fighting. He tried again and again to break
+away from the emotional associations from which his memory of her was
+erected; when that failed he struggled to face reality; the lapse of
+time, the certainty of his disappointment, at the best the inevitable
+parting when he went back to Norada. But always in the end he found his
+face turned toward the East, and her.
+
+He had no fear of starving. If he had learned the cost of a dollar in
+blood and muscle, he had the blood and the muscle. There was a time, in
+Chicago, when the necessity of thinking about money irritated him, for
+the memory of his old opulent days was very clear. Times when his temper
+was uncertain, and he turned surly. Times when his helplessness brought
+to his lips the old familiar blasphemies of his youth, which sounded
+strange and revolting to his ears.
+
+He had no fear, then, but a great impatience, as though, having lost
+so much time, he must advance with every minute. And Chicago drove him
+frantic. There came a time there when he made a deliberate attempt
+to sink to the very depths, to seek forgetfulness by burying one
+wretchedness under another. He attempted to find work and failed, and he
+tried to let go and sink. The total result of the experiment was that
+he wakened one morning in his lodging-house ill and with his money gone,
+save for some small silver. He thought ironically, lying on his untidy
+bed, that even the resources of the depths were closed to him.
+
+He never tried that experiment again. He hated himself for it.
+
+For days he haunted the West Madison Street employment agencies. But the
+agencies and sidewalks were filled with men who wandered aimlessly
+with the objectless shuffle of the unemployed. Beds had gone up in the
+lodging-houses to thirty-five cents a night, and the food in the cheap
+restaurants was almost uneatable. There came a day when the free morning
+coffee at a Bible Rescue Home, and its soup and potatoes and carrots at
+night was all he ate.
+
+For the first time his courage began to fail him. He went to the
+lakeside that night and stood looking at the water. He meant to fight
+that impulse of cowardice at the source.
+
+Up to that time he had given no thought whatever to his estate, beyond
+the fact that he had been undoubtedly adjudged legally dead and his
+property divided. But that day as he turned away from the lake front, he
+began to wonder about it. After all, since he meant to surrender himself
+before long, why not telegraph collect to the old offices of the estate
+in New York and have them wire him money? But even granting that they
+were still in existence, he knew with what lengthy caution, following
+stunned surprise, they would go about investigating the message. And
+there were leaks in the telegraph. He would have a pack of newspaper
+hounds at his heels within a few hours. The police, too. No, it wouldn't
+do.
+
+The next day he got a job as a taxicab driver, and that night and every
+night thereafter he went back to West Madison Street and picked up one
+or more of the derelicts there and bought them food. He developed
+quite a system about it. He waited until he saw a man stop outside an
+eating-house look in and then pass on. But one night he got rather
+a shock. For the young fellow he accosted looked at him first with
+suspicion, which was not unusual, and later with amazement.
+
+"Captain Livingstone!" he said, and checked his hand as it was about to
+rise to the salute. His face broke into a smile, and he whipped off his
+cap. "You've forgotten me, sir," he said. "But I've got your visiting
+card on the top of my head all right. Can you see it?"
+
+He bent his head and waited, but on no immediate reply being
+forthcoming, for Dick was hastily determining on a course of action, he
+looked up. It was then that he saw Dick's cheap and shabby clothes, and
+his grin faded.
+
+"I say," he said. "You are Livingstone, aren't you? I'd have known--"
+
+"I think you've made a mistake, old man," Dick said, feeling for his
+words carefully. "That's not my name, anyhow. I thought, when I saw you
+staring in at that window--How about it?"
+
+The boy looked at him again, and then glanced away.
+
+"I was looking, all right," he said. "I've been having a run of hard
+luck."
+
+It had been Dick's custom to eat with his finds, and thus remove from
+the meal the quality of detached charity. Men who would not take money
+would join him in a meal. But he could not face the lights with this
+keen-eyed youngster. He offered him money instead.
+
+"Just a lift," he said, awkwardly, when the boy hesitated. "I've been
+there myself, lately."
+
+But when at last he had prevailed and turned away he was conscious that
+the doughboy was staring after him, puzzled and unconvinced.
+
+He had a bad night after that. The encounter had brought back his
+hard-working, care-free days in the army. It had brought back, too,
+the things he had put behind him, his profession and his joy in it, the
+struggles and the aspirations that constitute a man's life. With them
+there came, too, a more real Elizabeth, and a wave of tenderness for
+her, and of regret. He turned on his sagging bed, and deliberately put
+her away from him. Even if this other ghost were laid, he had no right
+to her.
+
+Then, one day, he met Mrs. Sayre, and saw that she knew him.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+Wallie stared at his mother. His mind was at once protesting the
+fact and accepting it, with its consequences to himself. There was
+a perceptible pause before he spoke. He stood, if anything, somewhat
+straighter, but that was all.
+
+"Are you sure it was Livingstone?"
+
+"Positive. I talked to him. I wasn't sure myself, at first. He looked
+shabby and thin, as though he'd been ill, and he had the audacity to
+pretend at first he didn't know me. He closed the door on me and--"
+
+"Wait a minute, mother. What door?"
+
+"He was driving a taxicab."
+
+He looked at her incredulously.
+
+"I don't believe it," he said slowly. "I think you've made a mistake,
+that's all."
+
+"Nonsense. I know him as well as I know you."
+
+"Did he acknowledge his identity?"
+
+"Not in so many words," she admitted. "He said I had made a mistake, and
+he stuck to it. Then he shut the door and drove me to the station. The
+only other chance I had was at the station, and there was a line of
+cabs behind us, so I had only a second. I saw he didn't intend to admit
+anything, so I said: 'I can see you don't mean to recognize me, Doctor
+Livingstone, but I must know whether I am to say at home that I've seen
+you.' He was making change for me at the time--I'd have known his hands,
+I think, if I hadn't seen anything else-and when he looked up his face
+was shocking. He said, 'Are they all right?' 'David is very ill,' I
+said. The cars behind were waiting and making a terrific din, and a
+traffic man ran up then and made him move on. He gave me the strangest
+look as he went. I stood and waited, thinking he would turn and come
+back again at the end of the line, but he didn't. I almost missed my
+train."
+
+Wallie's first reaction to the news was one of burning anger and
+condemnation.
+
+"The blackguard!" he said. "The insufferable cad! To have run away as
+he did, and then to let them believe him dead! For that's what they do
+believe. It is killing David Livingstone, and as for Elizabeth--She'll
+have to be told, mother. He's alive. He's well. And he has deliberately
+deserted them all. He ought to be shot."
+
+"You didn't see him, Wallie. I did. He's been through something, I don't
+know what. I didn't sleep last night for thinking of his face. It had
+despair in it."
+
+"All right," he said, angrily pausing before her. "What do you intend to
+do? Let them go on as they are, hoping and waiting; lauding him to the
+skies as a sort of superman? The thing to do is to tell the truth."
+
+"But we don't know the truth, Wallie. There's something behind it all."
+
+"Nothing very creditable, be sure of that," he pronounced. "Do you think
+it is fair to Elizabeth to let her waste her life on the memory of a man
+who's deserted her?"
+
+"It would be cruel to tell her."
+
+"You've got to be cruel to be kind, sometimes," he said oracularly.
+"Why, the man may be married. May be anything. A taxi driver! Doesn't
+that in itself show that he's hiding from something?"
+
+She sat, a small obese figure made larger by her furs, and stared at him
+with troubled eyes.
+
+"I don't know, Wallie," she said helplessly. "In a way, it might be
+better to tell her. She could put him out of her mind, then. But I hate
+to do it. It's like stabbing a baby."
+
+He understood her, and nodded. When, after taking a turn or two about
+the room he again stopped in front of her his angry flush had subsided.
+
+"It's the devil of a mess," he commented. "I suppose the square thing
+to do is to tell Doctor David, and let him decide. I've got too much at
+stake to be a judge of what to do."
+
+He went upstairs soon after that, leaving her still in her chair,
+swathed in furs, her round anxious face bent forward in thought. He
+had rarely seen her so troubled, so uncertain of her next move, and he
+surmised, knowing her, that her emotions were a complex of anxiety for
+himself with Elizabeth, of pity for David, and of the memory of Dick
+Livingstone's haggard face.
+
+She sat alone for some time and then went reluctantly up the stairs to
+her bedroom. She felt, like Wallie, that she had too much at stake to
+decide easily what to do.
+
+In the end she decided to ask Doctor Reynolds' advice, and in the
+morning she proceeded to do it. Reynolds was interested, even a little
+excited, she thought, but he thought it better not to tell David. He
+would himself go to Harrison Miller with it.
+
+"You say he knew you?" he inquired, watching her. "I suppose there is no
+doubt of that?"
+
+"Certainly not. He's known me for years. And he asked about David."
+
+"I see." He fell into profound thought, while she sat in her chair a
+trifle annoyed with him. He was wondering how all this would affect him
+and his prospects, and through them his right to marry. He had walked
+into a good thing, and into a very considerable content.
+
+"I see," he repeated, and got up. "I'll tell Miller, and we'll get to
+work. We are all very grateful to you, Mrs. Sayre--"
+
+As a result of that visit Harrison Miller and Bassett went that night to
+Chicago. They left it to Doctor Reynolds' medical judgment whether David
+should be told or not, and Reynolds himself did not know. In the end he
+passed the shuttle the next evening to Clare Rossiter.
+
+"Something's troubling you," she said. "You're not a bit like yourself,
+old dear."
+
+He looked at her. To him she was all that was fine and good and sane of
+judgment.
+
+"I've got something to settle," he said. "I was wondering while you were
+singing, dear, whether you could help me out."
+
+"When I sing you're supposed to listen. Well? What is it?" She perched
+herself on the arm of his chair, and ran her fingers over his hair.
+She was very fond of him, and she meant to be a good wife. If she
+ever thought of Dick Livingstone now it was in connection with her own
+reckless confession to Elizabeth. She had hated Elizabeth ever since.
+
+"I'll take a hypothetical case. If you guess, you needn't say. Of course
+it's a great secret."
+
+She listened, nodding now and then. He used no names, and he said
+nothing of any crime.
+
+"The point is this," he finished. "Is it better to believe the man is
+dead, or to know that he is alive, but has cut himself off?"
+
+"There's no mistake about the recognition?"
+
+"Somebody from the village saw him in Chicago within day or two, and
+talked to him."
+
+She had the whole picture in a moment. She knew that Mrs. Sayre had been
+in Chicago, that she had seen Dick there and talked to him. She turned
+the matter over in her mind, shrewdly calculating, planning her small
+revenge on Elizabeth even as she talked.
+
+"I'd wait," she advised him. "He may come back with them, and in that
+case David will know soon enough. Or he may refuse to, and that would
+kill him. He'd rather think him dead than that."
+
+She slept quietly that night, and spent rather more time than usual in
+dressing that morning. Then she took her way to the Wheeler house. She
+saw in what she was doing no particularly culpable thing. She had no
+great revenge in mind; all that she intended was an evening of the score
+between them. "He preferred you to me, when you knew I cared. But he has
+deserted you." And perhaps, too, a small present jealousy, for she was
+to live in the old brick Livingstone house, or in one like it, while all
+the village expected ultimately to see Elizabeth installed in the house
+on the hill.
+
+She kept her message to the end of her visit, and delivered her blow
+standing.
+
+"I have something I ought to tell you, Elizabeth. But I don't know how
+you'll take it."
+
+"Maybe it's something I won't want to hear."
+
+"I'll tell you, if you won't say where you heard it."
+
+But Elizabeth made a small, impatient gesture. "I don't like secrets,
+Clare. I can't keep them, for one thing. You'd better not tell me."
+
+Clare was nearly balked of her revenge, but not entirely.
+
+"All right," she said, and prepared to depart. "I won't. But you might
+just find out from your friend Mrs. Sayre who it was she saw in Chicago
+this week."
+
+It was in this manner, bit by bit and each bit trivial, that the case
+against Dick was built up for Elizabeth. Mrs. Sayre, helpless before her
+quiet questioning, had to acknowledge one damning thing after another.
+He had known her; he had not asked for Elizabeth, but only for David;
+he looked tired and thin, but well. She stood at the window watching
+Elizabeth go down the hill, with a feeling that she had just seen
+something die before her.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+On the night Bassett and Harrison Miller were to return from Chicago
+Lucy sat downstairs in her sitting-room waiting for news.
+
+At ten o'clock, according to her custom, she went up to see that David
+was comfortable for the night, and to read him that prayer for the
+absent with which he always closed his day of waiting. But before she
+went she stopped before the old mirror in the hall, to see if she wore
+any visible sign of tension.
+
+The door into Dick's office was open, and on his once neat desk there
+lay a litter of papers and letters. She sighed and went up the stairs.
+
+David lay propped up in his walnut bed. An incredibly wasted and old
+David; the hands on the log-cabin quilt which their mother had made were
+old hands, and tired. Sometimes Lucy, with a frightened gasp, would fear
+that David's waiting now was not all for Dick. That he was waiting for
+peace.
+
+There had been something new in David lately. She thought it was fear.
+Always he had been so sure of himself; he had made his experiment in
+a man's soul, and whatever the result he had been ready to face his
+Creator with it. But he had lost courage. He had tampered with the
+things that were to be and not he, but Dick, was paying for that awful
+audacity.
+
+Once, picking up his prayer-book to read evening prayer as was her
+custom now, it had opened at a verse marked with an uneven line:
+
+"I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him, Father, I
+have sinned against Heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be
+called Thy son."
+
+That had frightened her
+
+David's eyes followed her about the room.
+
+"I've got an idea you're keeping something from me, Lucy."
+
+"I? Why should I do that?"
+
+"Then where's Harrison?" he demanded, querulously.
+
+She told him one of the few white lies of her life when she said: "He
+hasn't been well. He'll be over to-morrow." She sat down and picked
+up the prayer-book, only to find him lifting himself in the bed and
+listening.
+
+"Somebody closed the hall door, Lucy. If it's Reynolds, I want to see
+him."
+
+She got up and went to the head of the stairs. The light was low in the
+hall beneath, and she saw a man standing there. But she still wore her
+reading glasses, and she saw at first hardly more than a figure.
+
+"Is that you, Doctor Reynolds?" she asked, in her high old voice.
+
+Then she put her hand to her throat and stood rigid, staring down. For
+the man had whipped off his cap and stood with his arms wide, looking
+up.
+
+Holding to the stair-rail, her knees trembling under her, Lucy went
+down, and not until Dick's arms were around her was she sure that it was
+Dick, and not his shabby, weary ghost. She clung to him, tears streaming
+down her face, still in that cautious silence which governed them both;
+she held him off and looked at him, and then strained herself to him
+again, as though the sense of unreality were too strong, and only the
+contact of his rough clothing made him real to her.
+
+It was not until they were in her sitting-room with the door closed that
+either of them dared to speak. Or perhaps, could speak. Even then she
+kept hold of him.
+
+"Dick!" she said. "Dick!"
+
+And that, over and over.
+
+"How is he?" he was able to ask finally.
+
+"He has been very ill. I began to think--Dick, I'm afraid to tell him.
+I'm afraid he'll die of joy."
+
+He winced at that. There could not be much joy in the farewell that was
+coming. Winced, and almost staggered. He had walked all the way from the
+city, and he had had no food that day.
+
+"We'll have to break it to him very gently," he said. "And he mustn't
+see me like this. If you can find some of my clothes and Reynolds'
+razor, I'll--" He caught suddenly to the back of a chair and held on to
+it. "I haven't taken time to eat much to-day," he said, smiling at her.
+"I guess I need food, Aunt Lucy."
+
+For the first time then she saw his clothes, his shabbiness and
+his pallor, and perhaps she guessed the truth. She got up, her face
+twitching, and pushed him into a chair.
+
+"You sit here," she said, "and leave the door closed. The nurse is out
+for a walk, and she'll be in soon. I'll bring some milk and cookies now,
+and start the fire. I've got some chops in the house."
+
+When she came back almost immediately, with the familiar tray and the
+familiar food, he was sitting where she had left him. He had spent the
+entire time, had she known it, in impressing on his mind the familiar
+details of the room, to carry away with him.
+
+She stood beside him, a hand on his shoulder, to see that he drank the
+milk slowly.
+
+"I've got the fire going," she said. "And I'll run up now and get your
+clothes. I--had put them away." Her voice broke a little. "You see,
+we--You can change in your laboratory. Richard, can't you? If you go
+upstairs he'll hear you."
+
+He reached up and caught her hand. That touch, too, of the nearest to
+a mother's hand that he had known, he meant to carry away with him. He
+could not speak.
+
+She bustled away, into her bright kitchen first, and then with happy
+stealth to the store-room. Her very heart was singing within her. She
+neither thought nor reasoned. Dick was back, and all would be well.
+If she had any subconscious anxieties they were quieted, also
+subconsciously, by confidence in the men who were fighting his battle
+for him, by Walter Wheeler and Bassett and Harrison Miller. That Dick
+himself would present any difficulty lay beyond her worst fears.
+
+She had been out of the room only twenty minutes when she returned to
+David and prepared to break her great news. At first she thought he was
+asleep. He was lying back with his eyes closed and his hands crossed on
+the prayer-book. But he looked up at her, and was instantly roused to
+full attention by her face.
+
+"You've had some news," he said.
+
+"Yes, David. There's a little news. Don't count too much on it. Don't
+sit up. David, I have heard something that makes me think he is alive.
+Alive and well."
+
+He made a desperate effort and controlled himself.
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+She sat down beside him and took his hand between hers.
+
+"David," she said slowly, "God has been very good to us. I want to tell
+you something, and I want you to prepare yourself. We have heard
+from Dick. He is all right. He loves us, as he always did. And--he is
+downstairs, David."
+
+He lay very still and without speaking. She was frightened at first,
+afraid to go on with her further news. But suddenly David sat up in bed
+and in a full, firm voice began the Te Deum Laudamus. "We praise thee,
+O God: we acknowledge thee to be the Lord. All the earth doth worship
+thee, the Father everlasting."
+
+He repeated it in its entirety. At the end, however, his voice broke.
+
+"O Lord, in thee have I trusted--I doubted Him, Lucy," he said.
+
+Dick, waiting at the foot of the stairs, heard that triumphant paean of
+thanksgiving and praise and closed his eyes.
+
+It was a few minutes later that Lucy came down the stairs again.
+
+"You heard him?" she asked. "Oh, Dick, he had frightened me. It was more
+than a question of himself and you. He was making it one of himself and
+God."
+
+She let him go up alone and waited below, straining her ears, but she
+heard nothing beyond David's first hoarse cry, and after a little she
+went into her sitting-room and shut the door.
+
+Whatever lay underneath, there was no surface drama in the meeting. The
+determination to ignore any tragedy in the situation was strong in
+them both, and if David's eyes were blurred and his hands trembling, if
+Dick's first words were rather choked, they hid their emotion carefully.
+
+"Well, here I am, like a bad penny!" said Dick huskily from the doorway.
+
+"And a long time you've been about it," grumbled David. "You young
+rascal!"
+
+He held out his hand, and Dick crushed it between both of his. He was
+startled at the change in David. For a moment he could only stand there,
+holding his hand, and trying to keep his apprehension out of his face.
+
+"Sit down," David said awkwardly, and blew his nose with a terrific
+blast. "I've been laid up for a while, but I'm all right now. I'll fool
+them all yet," he boasted, out of his happiness and content. "Business
+has been going to the dogs, Dick. Reynolds is a fool."
+
+"Of course you'll fool them." There was still a band around Dick's
+throat. It hurt him to look at David, so thin and feeble, so sunken from
+his former portliness. And David saw his eyes, and knew.
+
+"I've dropped a little flesh, eh, Dick?" he inquired. "Old bulge is
+gone, you see. The nurse makes up the bed when I'm in it, flat as when
+I'm out."
+
+Suddenly his composure broke. He was a feeble and apprehensive old man,
+shaken with the tearless sobbing of weakness and age. Dick put an arm
+across his shoulders, and they sat without speech until David was quiet
+again.
+
+"I'm a crying old woman, Dick," David said at last. "That's what comes
+of never feeling a pair of pants on your legs and being coddled like
+a baby." He sat up and stared around him ferociously. "They sprinkle
+violet water on my pillows, Dick! Can you beat that?"
+
+Warned by Lucy, the nurse went to her room and did not disturb them.
+But she sat for a time in her rocking-chair, before she changed into the
+nightgown and kimono in which she slept on the couch in David's room.
+She knew the story, and her kindly heart ached within her. What good
+would it do after all, this home-coming? Dick could not stay. It was
+even dangerous. Reynolds had confided to her that he suspected a watch
+on the house by the police, and that the mail was being opened. What
+good was it?
+
+Across the hall she could hear Lucy moving briskly about in Dick's
+room, changing the bedding, throwing up the windows, opening and closing
+bureau drawers. After a time Lucy tapped at her door and she opened it.
+
+"I put a cake of scented soap among your handkerchiefs," she said,
+rather breathlessly. "Will you let me have it for Doctor Dick's room?"
+
+She got the soap and gave it to her.
+
+"He is going to stay, then?"
+
+"Certainly he is going to stay," Lucy said, surprised. "This is his
+home. Where else should he go?"
+
+But David knew. He lay, listening with avid interest to Dick's story,
+asking a question now and then, nodding over Dick's halting attempt to
+reconstruct the period of his confusion, but all the time one part of
+him, a keen and relentless inner voice, was saying: "Look at him well.
+Hold him close. Listen to his voice. Because this hour is yours, and
+perhaps only this hour."
+
+"Then the Sayre woman doesn't know about your coming?" he asked, when
+Dick had finished.
+
+"Still, she mustn't talk about having seen you. I'll send Reynolds up in
+the morning."
+
+He was eager to hear of what had occurred in the long interval between
+them, and good, bad and indifferent Dick told him. But he limited
+himself to events, and did not touch on his mental battles, and David
+saw and noted it. The real story, he knew, lay there, but it was not
+time for it. After a while he raised himself in his bed.
+
+"Call Lucy, Dick."
+
+When she had come, a strangely younger Lucy, her withered cheeks flushed
+with exercise and excitement, he said:
+
+"Bring me the copy of the statement I made to Harrison Miller, Lucy."
+
+She brought it, patted Dick's shoulder, and went away. David held out
+the paper.
+
+"Read it slowly, boy," he said. "It is my justification, and God
+willing, it may help you. The letter is from my brother, Henry. Read
+that, too."
+
+Lucy, having got Dick's room in readiness, sat down in it to await his
+coming. Downstairs, in the warming oven, was his supper. His bed, with
+the best blankets, was turned down and ready. His dressing-gown and
+slippers were in their old accustomed place. She drew a long breath.
+
+Below, Doctor Reynolds came in quietly and stood listening. The house
+was very still, and he decided that his news, which was after all
+no news, could wait. He went into the office and got out a sheet of
+note-paper, with his name at the top, and began his nightly letter to
+Clare Rossiter.
+
+"My darling," it commenced.
+
+Above, David lay in his bed and Dick read the papers in his hand. And as
+he read them David watched him. Not once, since Dick's entrance, had
+he mentioned Elizabeth. David lay still and pondered that. There was
+something wrong about it. This was Dick, their own Dick; no shadowy
+ghost of the past, but Dick himself. True, an older Dick, strangely
+haggard and with gray running in the brown of his hair, but still
+Dick; the Dick whose eyes had lighted at the sight of a girl, who had
+shamelessly persisted in holding her hand at that last dinner, who had
+almost idolatrously loved her.
+
+And he had not mentioned her name.
+
+When he had finished the reading Dick sat for a moment with the papers
+in his hand, thinking.
+
+"I see," he said finally. "Of course, it's possible. Good God, if I
+could only think it."
+
+"It's the answer," David said stubbornly. "He was prowling around, and
+fired through the window. Donaldson made the statement at the inquest
+that some one had been seen on the place, and that he notified you that
+night after dinner. He'd put guards around the place."
+
+"It gives me a fighting chance, anyhow." Dick got up and threw back his
+shoulders. "That's all I want. A chance to fight. I know this. I hated
+Lucas--he was a poor thing and you know what he did to me. But I never
+thought of killing him. That wouldn't have helped matters. It was too
+late."
+
+"What about--that?" David asked, not looking at him. When Dick did not
+immediately reply David glanced at him, to find his face set and pained.
+
+"Perhaps we'd better not go into that now," David said hastily. "It's
+natural that the readjustments will take time."
+
+"We'll have to go into it. It's the hardest thing I have to face."
+
+"It's not dead, then?"
+
+"No," Dick said slowly. "It's not dead, David. And I'd better bring it
+into the open. I've fought it to the limit by myself. It's the one thing
+that seems to have survived the shipwreck. I can't argue it down or
+think it down."
+
+"Maybe, if you see Elizabeth--"
+
+"I'd break her heart, that's all."
+
+He tried to make David understand. He told in its sordid details his
+failure to kill it, his attempts to sink memory and conscience in
+Chicago and their failure, the continued remoteness of Elizabeth and
+what seemed to him the flesh and blood reality of the other woman. That
+she was yesterday, and Elizabeth was long ago.
+
+"I can't argue it down," he finished. "I've tried to, desperately. It's
+a--I think it's a wicked thing, in a way. And God knows all she ever got
+out of it was suffering. She must loathe the thought of me."
+
+David was compelled to let it rest there. He found that Dick was
+doggedly determined to see Beverly Carlysle. After that, he didn't know.
+No man wanted to surrender himself for trial, unless he was sure
+himself of whether he was innocent or guilty. If there was a reasonable
+doubt--but what did it matter one way or the other? His place was gone,
+as he'd made it, gone if he was cleared, gone if he was convicted.
+
+"I can't come back, David. They wouldn't have me."
+
+After a silence he asked:
+
+"How much is known here? What does Elizabeth know?"
+
+"The town knows nothing. She knows a part of it. She cares a great deal,
+Dick. It's a tragedy for her."
+
+"Shall you tell her I have been here?"
+
+"Not unless you intend to see her."
+
+But Dick shook his head.
+
+"Even if other things were the same I haven't a right to see her, until
+I've got a clean slate."
+
+"That's sheer evasion," David said, almost with irritation.
+
+"Yes," Dick acknowledged gravely. "It is sheer evasion."
+
+"What about the police?" he inquired after a silence. "I was registered
+at Norada. I suppose they traced me?"
+
+"Yes. The house was watched for a while; I understand they've given it
+up now."
+
+In response to questions about his own condition David was almost
+querulous. He was all right. He would get well if they'd let him, and
+stop coddling him. He would get up now, in spite of them. He was good
+for one more fight before he died, and he intended to make it, in a
+court if necessary.
+
+"They can't prove it, Dick," he said triumphantly. "I've been over it
+every day for months. There is no case. There never was a case, for that
+matter. They're a lot of pin-headed fools, and we'll show them up, boy.
+We'll show them up."
+
+But for all his excitement fatigue was telling on him. Lucy tapped at
+the door and came in.
+
+"You'd better have your supper before it spoils," she said. "And David
+needs a rest. Doctor Reynolds is in the office. I haven't told him yet."
+
+The two men exchanged glances.
+
+"Time for that later," David said. "I can't keep him out of my office,
+but I can out of my family affairs for an hour or so."
+
+
+So it happened that Dick followed Lucy down the back stairs and ate his
+meal stealthily in the kitchen.
+
+"I don't like you to eat here," she protested.
+
+"I've eaten in worse places," he said, smiling at her. "And sometimes
+not at all." He was immediately sorry for that, for the tears came to
+her eyes.
+
+He broke as gently as he could the news that he could not stay, but it
+was a great blow to her. Her sagging chin quivered piteously, and it
+took all the cheerfulness he could summon and all the promises of return
+he could make to soften the shock.
+
+"You haven't even seen Elizabeth," she said at last.
+
+"That will have to wait until things are cleared up, Aunt Lucy."
+
+"Won't you write her something then, Richard? She looks like a ghost
+these days."
+
+Her eyes were on him, puzzled and wistful. He met them gravely.
+
+"I haven't the right to see her, or to write to her."
+
+And the finality in his tone closed the discussion, that and something
+very close to despair in his face.
+
+For all his earlier hunger he ate very little, and soon after he tiptoed
+up the stairs again to David's room. When he came down to the kitchen
+later on he found her still there, at the table where he had left her,
+her arms across it and her face buried in them. On a chair was the
+suitcase she had hastily packed for him, and a roll of bills lay on the
+table.
+
+"You must take it," she insisted. "It breaks my heart to think--Dick, I
+have the feeling that I am seeing you for the last time." Then for fear
+she had hurt him she forced a determined smile. "Don't pay any attention
+to me. David will tell you that I have said, over and over, that I'd
+never see you again. And here you are!"
+
+He was going. He had said good-bye to David and was going at once. She
+accepted it with a stoicism born of many years of hail and farewell,
+kissed him tenderly, let her hand linger for a moment on the rough
+sleeve of his coat, and then let him out by the kitchen door into the
+yard. But long after he had gone she stood in the doorway, staring
+out...
+
+In the office Doctor Reynolds was finishing a long and carefully written
+letter.
+
+"I am not good at putting myself on paper, as you know, dear heart. But
+this I do know. I do not believe that real love dies. We may bury it,
+so deep that it seems to be entirely dead, but some day it sends up
+a shoot, and it either lives, or the business of killing it has to be
+begun all over again. So when we quarrel, I always know--"
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+The evening had shaken Dick profoundly. David's appearance and Lucy's
+grief and premonition, most of all the talk of Elizabeth, had depressed
+and unnerved him. Even the possibility of his own innocence was
+subordinated to an overwhelming yearning for the old house and the old
+life.
+
+Through a side window as he went toward the street he could see Reynolds
+at his desk in the office, and he was possessed by a fierce jealousy and
+resentment at his presence there. The laboratory window was dark, and
+he stood outside and looked at it. He would have given his hope of
+immortality just then to have been inside it once more, working over his
+tubes and his cultures, his slides and microscope. Even the memory of
+certain dearly-bought extravagances in apparatus revived in him,
+and sent the blood to his head in a wave of unreasoning anger and
+bitterness.
+
+He had a wild desire to go in at the front door, confront Reynolds in
+his smug complacency and drive him out; to demand his place in the world
+and take it. He could hardly tear himself away.
+
+Under a street lamp he looked at his watch. It was eleven o'clock, and
+he had a half hour to spare before train-time. Following an impulse he
+did not analyze he turned toward the Wheeler house. Just so months ago
+had he turned in that direction, but with this difference, that then he
+went with a sort of hurried expectancy, and that now he loitered on the
+way. Yet that it somehow drew him he knew. Not with the yearning he had
+felt toward the old brick house, but with the poignancy of a long past
+happiness. He did not love, but he remembered.
+
+Yet, for a man who did not love, he was oddly angry at the sight of two
+young figures on the doorstep. Their clear voices came to him across
+the quiet street, vibrant and full of youth. It was the Sayre boy and
+Elizabeth.
+
+He half stopped, and looked across. They were quite oblivious of him,
+intent and self-absorbed. As he had viewed Reynolds' unconscious figure
+with jealous dislike, so he viewed Wallace Sayre. Here, everywhere, his
+place was filled. He was angry with an unreasoning, inexplicable anger,
+angry at Elizabeth, angry at the boy, and at himself.
+
+He had but to cross the street and take his place there. He could
+drive that beardless youngster away with a word. The furious possessive
+jealousy of the male animal, which had nothing to do with love, made him
+stop and draw himself up as he stared across.
+
+Then he smiled wryly and went on. He could do it, but he did not want
+to. He would never do it. Let them live their lives, and let him live
+his. But he knew that there, across the street, so near that he might
+have raised his voice and summoned her, he was leaving the best thing
+that had come into his life; the one fine and good thing, outside of
+David and Lucy. That against its loss he had nothing but an infatuation
+that had ruined three lives already, and was not yet finished.
+
+He stopped and, turning, looked back. He saw the girl bend down and
+put a hand on Wallie Sayre's shoulder, and the boy's face upturned and
+looking into hers. He shook himself and went on. After all, that was
+best. He felt no anger now. She deserved better than to be used to help
+a man work out his salvation. She deserved youth, and joyousness, and
+the forgetfulness that comes with time. She was already forgetting.
+
+He smiled again as he went on up the street, but his hands as he
+buttoned his overcoat were shaking.
+
+It was shortly after that that he met the rector, Mr. Oglethorpe. He
+passed him quickly, but he was conscious that the clergyman had stopped
+and was staring after him. Half an hour later, sitting in the empty
+smoker of the train, he wondered if he had not missed something there.
+Perhaps the church could have helped him, a good man's simple belief in
+right and wrong. He was wandering in a gray no-man's land, without faith
+or compass.
+
+David had given him the location of Bassett's apartment house, and he
+found it quickly. He was in a state of nervous irritability by that
+time, for the sense of being a fugitive was constantly stressed in the
+familiar streets by the danger of recognition. It was in vain that
+he argued with himself that only the police were interested in his
+movements, and the casual roundsman not at all. He found himself shying
+away from them like a nervous horse.
+
+But if he expected any surprise from Bassett he was disappointed. He
+greeted him as if he had seen him yesterday, and explained his lack of
+amazement in his first words.
+
+"Doctor Livingstone telephoned me. Sit down, man, and let me look at
+you. You've given me more trouble than any human being on earth."
+
+"Sorry," Dick said awkwardly, "I seem to have a faculty of involving
+other people in my difficulties."
+
+"Want a drink?"
+
+"No, thanks. I'll smoke, if you have any tobacco. I've been afraid to
+risk a shop."
+
+Bassett talked cheerfully as he found cigarettes and matches. "The old
+boy had a different ring to his voice to-night. He was going down pretty
+fast, Livingstone; was giving up the fight. But I fancy you've given
+him a new grip on the earth." When they were seated, however, a sort of
+awkwardness developed. To Dick, Bassett had been a more or less shadowy
+memory, clouded over with the details and miseries of the flight. And
+Bassett found Dick greatly altered. He was older than he remembered him.
+The sort of boyishness which had come with the resurrection of his early
+identity had gone, and the man who sat before him was grave, weary, and
+much older. But his gaze was clear and direct.
+
+"Well, a good bit of water has gone over the dam since we met," Bassett
+said. "I nearly broke a leg going down that infernal mountain again.
+And I don't mind telling you that I came within an ace of landing in the
+Norada jail. They knew I'd helped you get away. But they couldn't prove
+it."
+
+"I got out, because I didn't see any need of dragging you down with
+me. I was a good bit of a mess just then, but I could reason that out,
+anyhow. It wasn't entirely unselfish, either. I had a better chance
+without you. Or thought I did."
+
+Bassett was watching him intently.
+
+"Has it all come back?" he inquired.
+
+"Practically all. Not much between the thing that happened at the ranch
+and David Livingstone's picking me up at the cabin."
+
+"Did it ever occur to you to wonder just how I got in on your secret?"
+
+"I suppose you read Maggie Donaldson's confession."
+
+"I came to see you before that came out."
+
+"Then I don't know, I'm afraid."
+
+"I suppose you would stake your life on the fact that Beverly Carlysle
+knows nothing of what happened that night at the ranch?"
+
+Dick's face twitched, but he returned Bassett's gaze steadily.
+
+"She has no criminal knowledge, if that is what you mean."
+
+"I am not so sure of it."
+
+"I think you'd better explain that."
+
+At the cold anger in Dick's voice Bassett stared at him. So that was
+how the wind lay. Poor devil! And out of the smug complacence of his
+bachelor peace Bassett thanked his stars for no women in his life.
+
+"I'm afraid you misunderstand me, Livingstone," he said easily. "I don't
+think that she shot Lucas. But I don't think she has ever told all she
+knows. I've got the coroner's inquest here, and we'll go over it
+later. I'll tell you how I got onto your trail. Do you remember taking
+Elizabeth Wheeler to see 'The Valley?'"
+
+"I had forgotten it. I remember now."
+
+"Well, Gregory, the brother, saw you and recognized you. I was with him.
+He tried to deny you later, but I was on. Of course he told her, and
+I think she sent him to warn David Livingstone. They knew I was on the
+trail of a big story. Then I think Gregory stayed here to watch me when
+the company made its next jump. He knew I'd started, for he sent David
+Livingstone the letter you got. By the way, that letter nearly got me
+jailed in Norada."
+
+"I'm not hiding behind her skirts," Dick said shortly. "And there's
+nothing incriminating in what you say. She saw me as a fugitive, and she
+sent me a warning. That's all."
+
+"Easy, easy, old man. I'm not pinning anything on her. But I want, if
+you don't mind, to carry this through. I have every reason to believe
+that, some time before you got to Norada, the Thorwald woman was on my
+trail. I know that I was followed to the cabin the night I stayed there,
+and that she got a saddle horse from her son that night, her son by
+Thorwald, either for herself or some one else."
+
+"All right. I accept that, tentatively."
+
+"That means that she knew I was coming to Norada. Think a minute; I'd
+kept my movements quiet, but Beverly Carlysle knew, and her brother.
+When they warned David they warned her."
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+"If you had killed Lucas," Bassett asserted positively, "the Thorwald
+woman would have let the sheriff get you, and be damned to you. She had
+no reason to love you. You'd kept her son out of what she felt was his
+birthright."
+
+He got up and opened a table drawer.
+
+"I've got a copy of the coroner's inquest here. It will bear going over.
+And it may help you to remember, too. We needn't read it all. There's a
+lot that isn't pertinent."
+
+He got out a long envelope, and took from it a number of typed pages,
+backed with a base of heavy paper.
+
+"'Inquest in the Coroner's office on the body of Howard Lucas,'" he
+read. "'October 10th, 1911.' That was the second day after. 'Examination
+of witnesses by Coroner Samuel J. Burkhardt. Mrs. Lucas called and
+sworn.'" He glanced at Dick and hesitated. "I don't know about this
+to-night, Livingstone. You look pretty well shot to pieces."
+
+"I didn't sleep last night. I'm all right. Go on."
+
+During the reading that followed he sat back in his deep chair, his
+eyes closed. Except that once or twice he clenched his hands he made no
+movement whatever.
+
+Q. "What is your name?"
+
+A. "Anne Elizabeth Lucas. My stage name is Beverly Carlysle."
+
+Q. "Where do you live, Mrs. Lucas?"
+
+A. "At 26 East 56th Street, New York City."
+
+Q. "I shall have to ask you some questions that are necessarily  painful
+at this time.  I shall be as brief as possible. Perhaps it will be
+easier for you to tell so much as you know of what happened the night
+before last at the Clark ranch."
+
+A. "I cannot tell very much. I am confused, too. I was given  a sleeping
+powder last night.  I can only say that I heard a shot, and thought at
+first that it was fired from outside. I ran down the stairs, and back to
+the billiard room.  As I entered the room Mr. Donaldson came in through
+a window.  My husband was lying on the floor.  That is all."
+
+Q. "Where was Judson Clark?"
+
+A. "He was leaning on the roulette table, staring at the--at  my husband."
+
+Q. "Did you see him leave the room?"
+
+A. "No. I was on my knees beside Mr. Lucas. I think when I got  up he
+was gone.  I didn't notice."
+
+Q. "Did you see a revolver?"
+
+A. "No. I didn't look for one."
+
+Q. "Now I shall ask you one more question, and that is all. Had  there
+been any quarrel between Mr. Lucas and Mr. Clark that evening in your
+presence?"
+
+A. "No. But I had quarreled with them both. They were drinking  too
+much.  I had gone to my room to pack and go home.  I was packing when I
+heard the shot."
+
+
+Witness excused and Mr. John Donaldson called.
+
+Q. "What is your name?"
+
+A. "John Donaldson."
+
+Q. "Where do you live?"
+
+A. "At the Clark ranch."
+
+Q. "What is your business?"
+
+A. "You know all about me. I'm foreman of the ranch."
+
+Q. "I want you to tell what you know, Jack, about last night.  Begin
+with where you were when you heard the shot."
+
+A. "I was on the side porch. The billiard room opens on to it.  I'd been
+told by the corral boss earlier in the  evening that he'd seen a man
+skulking around the house.  There'd been a report like that once or
+twice before, and I set a watch.  I put Ben Haggerty at the kitchen wing
+with a gun, and I took up a stand on the porch.  Before I did that I
+told Judson, but I don't think he took it in.  He'd been lit up like a
+house afire all evening.  I asked for his gun, but he said he didn't
+know where it was, and I went back to my house and got my own.  Along
+about eight o'clock I thought I saw some one in the shrubbery, and I
+went out as quietly as I could. But it was a woman, Hattie Thorwald, who
+was working at the ranch.
+
+"When I left the men were playing roulette.  I looked in as I went back,
+and Judson had a gun in his hand.  He said; 'I found it, Jack.' I saw he
+was very drunk, and I told him to put it up, I'd got mine.  It had
+occurred to me that I'd better warn Haggerty to be careful, and I
+started along the verandah to tell him not to shoot except to scare.  I
+had only gone a few steps when I heard a shot, and ran back.  Mr. Lucas
+was on the floor dead, and Judson was as the lady said. He must have
+gone out while I was bending over the body."
+
+Q. "Did you see the revolver in his hand?"
+
+A. "No."
+
+Q. "How long between your warning Mr. Clark and the shot?"
+
+A. "I suppose I'd gone a dozen yards."
+
+Q. "Were you present when the revolver was found?"
+
+A. "No, sir."
+
+Q. "Did you see Judson Clark again?"
+
+A. "No, sir. From what I gather he went straight to the corral  and got
+his horse."
+
+Q. "You entered the room as Mrs. Lucas came in the door?"
+
+A. "Well, she's wrong about that. She was there a little ahead  of me.
+She'd reached the body before I got in.  She was stooping over it."
+
+Bassett looked up from his reading.
+
+"I want you to get this, Livingstone," he said. "How did she reach the
+billiard room? Where was it in the house?"
+
+"Off the end of the living-room."
+
+"A large living-room?"
+
+"Forty or forty-five feet, about."
+
+"Will you draw it for me, roughly?"
+
+He passed over a pad and pencil, and Dick made a hasty outline. Bassett
+watched with growing satisfaction.
+
+"Here's the point," he said, when Dick had finished. "She was there
+before Donaldson, or at the same time," as Dick made an impatient
+movement. "But he had only a dozen yards to go. She was in her room,
+upstairs. To get down in that time she had to leave her room, descend
+a staircase, cross a hall and run the length of the living-room,
+forty-five feet. If the case had ever gone to trial she'd have had to do
+some explaining."
+
+"She or Donaldson," Dick said obstinately.
+
+Bassett read on:
+
+Jean Melis called and sworn.
+
+Q. "Your name?"
+
+A. "Jean Melis."
+
+Q. "Have you an American residence, Mr. Melis?"
+
+A. "Only where I am employed. I am now living at the Clark  ranch."
+
+Q. "What is your business?"
+
+A. "I am Mr. Clark's valet."
+
+Q. "It was you who found Mr. Clark's revolver?"
+
+A. "Yes."
+
+Q. "Tell about how and where you found it."
+
+A. "I made a search early in the evening. I will not hide from you that
+I meant to conceal it if I discovered it. A man who is drunk is not
+guilty of what he does. I did not find it. I went back that night, when
+the people had gone, and found it beneath the carved woodbox, by the
+fireplace. I did not know that the sheriff had placed a man outside the
+window."
+
+"Get that, too," Bassett said, putting down the paper. "The Frenchman
+was fond of you, and he was doing his blundering best. But the sheriff
+expected you back and had had the place watched, so they caught him. But
+that's not the point. A billiard room is a hard place to hide things in.
+I take it yours was like the average."
+
+Dick nodded.
+
+"All right. This poor boob of a valet made a search and didn't find it.
+Later he found it. Why did he search? Wasn't it the likely thing that
+you'd carried it away with you? Do you suppose for a moment that with
+Donaldson and the woman in the room you hid it there, and then went back
+and stood behind the roulette table, leaning on it with both hands, and
+staring? Not at all. Listen to this:
+
+Q. "You recognize this revolver as the one you found?"
+
+A. "Yes."
+
+Q. "You are familiar with it?"
+
+A. "Yes. It is Mr. Clark's."
+
+Q. "You made the second search because you had not examined the  woodbox
+earlier?"
+
+A. "No. I had examined the woodbox. I had a theory that--"
+
+Q. "The Jury cannot listen to any theories. This is an inquiry  into
+facts."
+
+"I'm going to find Melis," the reporter said thoughtfully, as he folded
+up the papers. "The fact is, I mailed an advertisement to the New York
+papers to-day. I want to get that theory of his. It's the servants in
+the house who know what is going on. I've got an idea that he'd stumbled
+onto something. He'd searched for the revolver, and it wasn't there.
+He went back and it was. All that conflicting evidence, and against it,
+what? That you'd run away!"
+
+But he saw that Dick was very tired, and even a little indifferent.
+He would be glad to know that his hands were clean, but against the
+intimation that Beverly Carlysle had known more than she had disclosed
+he presented a dogged front of opposition. After a time Bassett put the
+papers away and essayed more general conversation, and there he found
+himself met half way and more. He began to get Dick as a man, for the
+first time, and as a strong man. He watched his quiet, lined face, and
+surmised behind it depths of tenderness and gentleness. No wonder the
+little Wheeler girl had worshipped him.
+
+It was settled that Dick was to spend the night there, and such plans
+as he had Bassett left until morning. But while he was unfolding the
+bed-lounge on which Dick was to sleep, Dick opened a line of discussion
+that cost the reporter an hour or two's sleep before he could suppress
+his irritation.
+
+"I must have caused you considerable outlay, one way and another," he
+said. "I want to defray that, Bassett, as soon as I've figured out some
+way to get at my bank account."
+
+Bassett jerked out a pillow and thumped it.
+
+"Forget it." Then he grinned. "You can fix that when you get your
+estate, old man. Buy a newspaper and let me run it!"
+
+He bent over the davenport and put the pillow in place. "All you'll have
+to do is to establish your identity. The institutions that got it had to
+give bond. I hope you're not too long for this bed."
+
+But he looked up at Dick's silence, to see him looking at him with a
+faint air of amusement over his pipe.
+
+"They're going to keep the money, Bassett."
+
+Bassett straightened and stared at him.
+
+"Don't be a damned fool," he protested. "It's your money. Don't tell me
+you're going to give it to suffering humanity. That sort of drivel makes
+me sick. Take it, give it away if you like, but for God's sake don't
+shirk your job."
+
+Dick got up and took a turn or two around the room. Then, after an old
+habit, he went to the window and stood looking out, but seeing nothing.
+
+"It's not that, Bassett. I'm afraid of the accursed thing. I might talk
+a lot of rot about wanting to work with my hands. I wouldn't if I didn't
+have to, any more than the next fellow. I might fool myself, too, with
+thinking I could work better without any money worries. But I've got to
+remember this. It took work to make a man of me before, and it will take
+work to keep me going the way I intend to go, if I get my freedom."
+
+Sometime during the night Bassett saw that the light was still burning
+by the davenport, and went in. Dick was asleep with a volume of Whitman
+open on his chest, and Bassett saw what he had been reading.
+
+"You broken resolutions, you racking angers, you short-lived ennuis; Ah,
+think not you shall finally triumph, my real self has yet to come forth.
+It shall march forth over-mastering, till all lie beneath me, It shall
+stand up, the soldier of unquestioned victory."
+
+Bassett took the book away and stood rereading the paragraph. For the
+first time he sensed the struggle going on at that time behind Dick's
+quiet face, and he wondered. Unquestioned victory, eh? That was a pretty
+large order.
+
+
+
+
+XL
+
+Leslie Ward had found the autumn extremely tedious. His old passion for
+Nina now and then flamed up in him, but her occasional coquetries no
+longer deceived him. They had their source only in her vanity. She
+exacted his embraces only as tribute to her own charm, her youth, her
+fresh young body.
+
+And Nina out of her setting of gaiety, of a thumping piano, of
+chattering, giggling crowds, of dancing and bridge and theater boxes,
+was a queen dethroned. She did not read or think. She spent the leisure
+of her mourning period in long hours before her mirror fussing with her
+hair, in trimming and retrimming hats, or in the fastidious care of her
+hands and body.
+
+He was ashamed sometimes of his pitilessly clear analysis of her. She
+was not discontented, save at the enforced somberness of their lives.
+She had found in marriage what she wanted; a good house, daintily
+served; a man to respond to her attractions as a woman, and to provide
+for her needs as a wife; dignity and an established place in the world;
+liberty and privilege.
+
+But she was restless. She chafed at the quiet evenings they spent at
+home, and resented the reading in which he took refuge from her uneasy
+fidgeting.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Nina, sit down and read or sew, or do something.
+You've been at that window a dozen times."
+
+"I'm not bothering you. Go on and read."
+
+When nobody dropped in she would go upstairs and spend the hour or so
+before bedtime in the rites of cold cream, massage, and in placing the
+little combs of what Leslie had learned was called a water-wave.
+
+But her judgment was as clear as his, and even more pitiless; the
+difference between them lay in the fact that while he rebelled, she
+accepted the situation. She was cleverer than he was; her mind worked
+more quickly, and she had the adaptability he lacked. If there were
+times when she wearied him, there were others when he sickened her.
+Across from her at the table he ate slowly and enormously. He splashed
+her dainty bathroom with his loud, gasping cold baths. He flung his
+soiled clothing anywhere. He drank whisky at night and crawled into the
+lavender-scented sheets redolent of it, to drop into a heavy sleep and
+snore until she wanted to scream. But she played the game to the limit
+of her ability.
+
+Then, seeing that they might go on the rocks, he made a valiant effort,
+and since she recognized it as an effort, she tried to meet him half
+way. They played two-handed card games. He read aloud to her, poetry
+which she loathed, and she to him, short stories he hated. He suggested
+country walks and she agreed, to limp back after a half mile or so in
+her high-heeled pumps.
+
+He concealed his boredom from her, but there were nights when he lay
+awake long after she was asleep and looked ahead into a future of
+unnumbered blank evenings. He had formerly taken an occasional evening
+at his club, but on his suggesting it now Nina's eyes would fill
+with suspicion, and he knew that although she never mentioned Beverly
+Carlysle, she would neither forget nor entirely trust him again. And in
+his inner secret soul he knew that she was right.
+
+He had thought that he had buried that brief madness, but there
+were times when he knew he lied to himself. One fiction, however, he
+persisted in; he had not been infatuated with Beverly. It was only that
+she gave him during those few days something he had not found at home,
+companionship and quiet intelligent talk. She had been restful. Nina was
+never restful.
+
+He bought a New York paper daily, and read it in the train. "The Valley"
+had opened to success in New York, and had settled for a long run. The
+reviews of her work had been extraordinary, and when now and then she
+gave an interview he studied the photographs accompanying it. But he
+never carried the paper home.
+
+He began, however, to play with the thought of going to New York. He
+would not go to see her at her house, but he would like to see her
+before a metropolitan audience, to add his mite to her triumph. There
+were times when he fully determined to go, when he sat at his desk
+with his hand on the telephone, prepared to lay the foundations of
+the excursion by some manipulation of business interests. For months,
+however, he never went further than the preliminary movement.
+
+But by October he began to delude himself with a real excuse for going,
+and this was the knowledge that by a strange chain of circumstance
+this woman who so dominated his secret thoughts was connected with
+Elizabeth's life through Judson Clark. The discovery, communicated to
+him by Walter Wheeler, that Dick was Clark had roused in him a totally
+different feeling from Nina's. He saw no glamour of great wealth. On the
+contrary, he saw in Clark the author of a great unhappiness to a woman
+who had not deserved it. And Nina, judging him with deadly accuracy,
+surmised even that.
+
+That he was jealous of Judson Clark, and of his part in the past,
+he denied to himself absolutely. But his resentment took the form of
+violent protest to the family, against even allowing Elizabeth to have
+anything to do with Dick if he turned up.
+
+"He'll buy his freedom, if he isn't dead," he said to Nina, "and he'll
+come snivelling back here, with that lost memory bunk, and they're just
+fool enough to fall for it."
+
+"I've fallen for it, and I'm at least as intelligent as you are."
+
+Before her appraising eyes his own fell.
+
+"Suppose I did something I shouldn't and turned up here with such a
+story, would you believe it?"
+
+"No. When you want to do something you shouldn't you don't appear to
+need any excuse."
+
+But, on the whole, they managed to live together comfortably enough.
+They each had their reservations, but especially after Jim's death they
+tacitly agreed to stop bickering and to make their mutual concessions.
+What Nina never suspected was that he corresponded with Beverly
+Carlysle. Not that the correspondence amounted to much. He had sent her
+flowers the night of the New York opening, with the name of his club on
+his card, and she wrote there in acknowledgment. Then, later, twice
+he sent her books, one a biography, which was a compromise with his
+conscience, and later a volume of exotic love verse, which was not. As
+he replied to her notes of thanks a desultory correspondence had sprung
+up, letters which the world might have read, and yet which had to him
+the savor and interest of the clandestine.
+
+He did not know that that, and not infatuation, was behind his desire to
+see Beverly again; never reasoned that he was demonstrating to himself
+that his adventurous love life was not necessarily ended; never
+acknowledged that the instinct of the hunter was as alive in him as
+in the days before his marriage. Partly, then, a desire for adventure,
+partly a hope that romance was not over but might still be waiting
+around the next corner, was behind his desire to see her again.
+
+Probably Nina knew that, as she knew so many things; why he had taken to
+reading poetry, for instance. Certain it is that when he began, early in
+October, to throw out small tentative remarks about the necessity of a
+business trip before long to New York, she narrowed her eyes. She
+was determined to go with him, if he went at all, and he was equally
+determined that she should not.
+
+It became, in a way, a sort of watchful waiting on both sides. Then
+there came a time when some slight excuse offered, and Leslie took up
+the shuttle for forty-eight hours, and wove his bit in the pattern. It
+happened to be on the same evening as Dick's return to the old house.
+
+He was a little too confident, a trifle too easy to Nina.
+
+"Has the handle of my suitcase been repaired yet?" he asked. He was
+lighting a cigarette at the time.
+
+"Yes. Why?"
+
+"I'll have to run over to New York to-morrow. I wanted Joe to go alone,
+but he thinks he needs me." Joe was his partner. "Oh. So Joe's going?"
+
+"That's what I said."
+
+She was silent. Joe's going was clever of him. It gave authenticity to
+his business, and it kept her at home.
+
+"How long shall you be gone?"
+
+"Only a day or two." He could not entirely keep the relief out of his
+voice. It had been easy, incredibly easy. He might have done it a month
+ago. And he had told the truth; Joe was going.
+
+"I'll pack to-night, and take my suitcase in with me in the morning."
+
+"If you'll get your things out I'll pack them." She was still thinking,
+but her tone was indifferent. "You won't want your dress clothes, of
+course."
+
+"I'd better have a dinner suit."
+
+She looked at him then, with a half contemptuous smile. "Yes," she said
+slowly. "I suppose you will. You'll be going to the theater."
+
+He glanced away.
+
+"Possibly. But we'll be rushing to get through. There's a lot to do.
+Amazing how business piles up when you find you're going anywhere. There
+won't be much time to play."
+
+She sat before the mirror in her small dressing-room that night,
+ostensibly preparing for bed but actually taking stock of her situation.
+She had done all she could, had been faithful and loyal, had made
+his home attractive, had catered to his tastes and tried to like his
+friends, had met his needs and responded to them. And now, this. She was
+bewildered and frightened. How did women hold their husbands?
+
+She found him in bed and unmistakably asleep when she went into the
+bedroom. Man-like, having got his way, he was not troubled by doubts or
+introspection. It was done.
+
+He was lying on his back, with his mouth open. She felt a sudden and
+violent repugnance to getting into the bed beside him. Sometime in the
+night he would turn over and throwing his arm about her, hold her close
+in his sleep; and it would be purely automatic, the mechanical result of
+habit.
+
+She lay on the edge of the bed and thought things over.
+
+He had his good qualities. He was kind and affectionate to her family.
+He had been wonderful when Jim died, and he loved Elizabeth dearly. He
+was generous and open-handed. He was handsome, too, in a big, heavy way.
+
+She began to find excuses for him. Men were always a child-like prey
+to some women. They were vain, and especially they were sex-vain; good
+looking men were a target for every sort of advance. She transferred her
+loathing of him to the woman she suspected of luring him away from her,
+and lay for hours hating her.
+
+She saw Leslie off in the morning with a perfunctory good-bye while cold
+anger and suspicion seethed in her. And later she put on her hat and
+went home to lay the situation before her mother. Mrs. Wheeler was out,
+however, and she found only Elizabeth sewing by her window.
+
+Nina threw her hat on the bed and sat down dispiritedly.
+
+"I suppose there's no news?" she asked.
+
+Nina watched her. She was out of patience with Elizabeth, exasperated
+with the world.
+
+"Are you going to go on like this all your life?" she demanded. "Sitting
+by a window, waiting? For a man who ran away from you?"
+
+"That's not true, and you know it."
+
+"They're all alike," Nina declared recklessly. "They go along well
+enough, and they are all for virtue and for the home and fireside stuff,
+until some woman comes their way. I ought to know."
+
+Elizabeth looked up quickly.
+
+"Why, Nina!" she said. "You don't mean--"
+
+"He went to New York this morning. He pretended to be going on business,
+but he's actually gone to see that actress. He's been mad about her for
+months."
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+"Oh, wake up," Nina said impatiently. "The world isn't made up of
+good, kind, virtuous people. It's rotten. And men are all alike. Dick
+Livingstone and Les and all the rest--tarred with the same stick. As
+long as there are women like this Carlysle creature they'll fall for
+them. And you and I can sit at home and chew our nails and plan to keep
+them by us. And we can't do it."
+
+In spite of herself a little question of doubt crept that day into
+Elizabeth's mind. She had always known that they had not told her all
+the truth; that the benevolent conspiracy to protect Dick extended even
+to her. But she had never thought that it might include a woman. Once
+there, the very humility of her love for Dick was an element in favor of
+the idea. She had never been good enough, or wise or clever enough, for
+him. She was too small and unimportant to be really vital.
+
+Dismissing the thought did no good. It came back. But because she was
+a healthy-minded and practical person she took the one course she could
+think of, and put the question that night to her father, when he came
+back from seeing David.
+
+David had sent for him early in the evening. All day he had thought
+over the situation between Dick and Elizabeth, with growing pain and
+uneasiness. He had not spoken of it to Lucy, or to Harrison Miller; he
+knew that they would not understand, and that Lucy would suffer. She was
+bewildered enough by Dick's departure.
+
+At noon he had insisted on getting up and being helped into his
+trousers. So clad he felt more of a man and better able to cope with
+things, although his satisfaction in them was somewhat modified by the
+knowledge of two safety-pins at the sides, to take up their superfluous
+girth at the waistband.
+
+But even the sense of being clothed as a man again did not make it
+easier to say to Walter Wheeler what must be said.
+
+Walter took the news of Dick's return with a visible brightening. It was
+as though, out of the wreckage of his middle years, he saw that there
+was now some salvage, but he was grave and inarticulate over it, wrung
+David's hand and only said:
+
+"Thank God for it, David." And after a pause: "Was he all right? He
+remembered everything?"
+
+But something strange in the situation began to obtrude itself into his
+mind. Dick had come back twenty-four hours ago. Last night. And all this
+time--
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"He's not here, Walter."
+
+"He has gone away again, without seeing Elizabeth?"
+
+David cleared his throat.
+
+"He is still a fugitive. He doesn't himself know he isn't guilty. I
+think he feels that he ought not to see her until--"
+
+"Come, come," Walter Wheeler said impatiently. "Don't try to find
+excuses for him. Let's have the truth, David. I guess I can stand it."
+
+Poor David, divided between his love for Dick and his native honesty,
+threw out his hands.
+
+"I don't understand it, Wheeler," he said. "You and I wouldn't, I
+suppose. We are not the sort to lose the world for a woman. The plain
+truth is that there is not a trace of Judson Clark in him to-day, save
+one. That's the woman."
+
+When Wheeler said nothing, but sat twisting his hat in his hands, David
+went on. It might be only a phase. As its impression on Dick's youth
+had been deeper than others, so its effect was more lasting. It might
+gradually disappear. He was confident, indeed, that it would. He had
+been reading on the subject all day.
+
+Walter Wheeler hardly heard him. He was facing the incredible fact, and
+struggling with his own problem. After a time he got up, shook hands
+with David and went home, the dog at his heels.
+
+During the evening that followed he made his resolution, not to tell
+her, never to let her suspect the truth. But he began to wonder if she
+had heard something, for he found her eyes on him more than once, and
+when Margaret had gone up to bed she came over and sat on the arm of his
+chair. She said an odd thing then, and one that made it impossible to
+lie to her later.
+
+"I come to you, a good bit as I would go to God, if he were a person,"
+she said. "I have got to know something, and you can tell me."
+
+He put his arm around her and held her close.
+
+"Go ahead, honey."
+
+"Daddy, do you realize that I am a woman now?"
+
+"I try to. But it seems about six months since I was feeding you hot
+water for colic."
+
+She sat still for a moment, stroking his hair and being very careful not
+to spoil his neat parting.
+
+"You have never told me all about Dick, daddy. You have always kept
+something back. That's true, isn't it?"
+
+"There were details," he said uncomfortably. "It wasn't necessary--"
+
+"Here's what I want to know. If he has gone back to the time--you know,
+wouldn't he go back to caring for the people he loved then?" Then,
+suddenly, her childish appeal ceased, and she slid from the chair and
+stood before him. "I must know, father. I can bear it. The thing you
+have been keeping from me was another woman, wasn't it?"
+
+"It was so long ago," he temporized. "Think of it, Elizabeth. A boy of
+twenty-one or so."
+
+"Then there was?"
+
+"I believe so, at one time. But I know positively that he hadn't seen or
+heard from her in ten years."
+
+"What sort of woman?"
+
+"I wouldn't think about it, honey. It's all so long ago."
+
+"Did she live in Wyoming?"
+
+"She was an actress," he said, hard driven by her persistence.
+
+"Do you know her name?"
+
+"Only her stage name, honey."
+
+"But you know she was an actress!"
+
+He sighed.
+
+"All right, dear," he said. "I'll tell you all I know. She was an
+actress, and she married another man. That's all there is to it. She's
+not young now. She must be thirty now--if she's living," he added, as an
+afterthought.
+
+It was some time before she spoke again.
+
+"I suppose she was beautiful," she said slowly.
+
+"I don't know. Most of them aren't, off the stage. Anyhow, what does it
+matter now?"
+
+"Only that I know he has gone back to her. And you know it too."
+
+He heard her going quietly out of the room.
+
+Long after, he closed the house and went cautiously upstairs. She was
+waiting for him in the doorway of her room, in her nightgown.
+
+"I know it all now," she said steadily. "It was because of her he shot
+the other man, wasn't it?"
+
+She saw her answer in his startled face, and closed her door quickly. He
+stood outside, and then he tapped lightly.
+
+"Let me in, honey," he said. "I want to finish it. You've got a wrong
+idea about it."
+
+When she did not answer he tried the door, but it was locked. He turned
+and went downstairs again...
+
+When he came home the next afternoon Margaret met him in the hall.
+
+"She knows it, Walter."
+
+"Knows what?"
+
+"Knows he was back here and didn't see her. Annie blurted it out; she'd
+got it from the Oglethorpe's laundress. Mr. Oglethorpe saw him on the
+street."
+
+It took him some time to drag a coherent story from her. Annie had
+told Elizabeth in her room, and then had told Margaret. She had gone to
+Elizabeth at once, to see what she could do, but Elizabeth had been in
+her closet, digging among her clothes. She had got out her best frock
+and put it on, while her mother sat on the bed not even daring to broach
+the matter in her mind, and had gone out. There was a sort of cold
+determination in her that frightened Margaret. She had laughed a good
+bit, for one thing.
+
+"She's terribly proud," she finished. "She'll do something reckless,
+I'm sure. It wouldn't surprise me to see her come back engaged to Wallie
+Sayre. I think that's where she went."
+
+But apparently she had not, or if she had she said nothing about it.
+From that time on they saw a change in her; she was as loving as ever,
+but she affected a sort of painful brightness that was a little hard. As
+though she had clad herself in armor against further suffering.
+
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+For months Beverly Carlysle had remained a remote and semi-mysterious
+figure. She had been in some hearts and in many minds, but to most of
+them she was a name only. She had been the motive behind events she
+never heard of, the quiet center in a tornado of emotions that circled
+about without touching her.
+
+On the whole she found her life, with the settling down of the piece to
+a successful, run, one of prosperous monotony. She had re-opened and was
+living in the 56th Street house, keeping a simple establishment of
+cook, butler and maid, and in the early fall she added a town car and a
+driver. After that she drove out every afternoon except on matinee days,
+almost always alone, but sometimes with a young girl from the company.
+
+She was very lonely. The kaleidoscope that is theatrical New York
+had altered since she left it. Only one or two of her former friends
+remained, and she found them uninteresting and narrow with the
+narrowness of their own absorbing world. She had forgotten that the
+theater was like an island, cut off from the rest of the world, having
+its own politics, its own society divided by caste, almost its own
+religion. Out of its insularity it made occasional excursions to dinners
+and week-ends; even into marriage, now and then with an outlander. But
+almost always it went back, eager for its home of dressing-room and
+footlights, of stage entrances up dirty alleys, of door-keepers and
+managers and parts and costumes.
+
+Occasionally she had callers, men she had met or who were brought to
+see her. She saw them over a tea-table, judged them remorselessly, and
+eliminated gradually all but one or two. She watched her dignity and her
+reputation with the care of an ambitious woman trying to live down the
+past, and she succeeded measurably well. Now and then a critic spoke of
+her as a second Maude Adams, and those notices she kept and treasured.
+
+But she was always uneasy. Never since the night he had seen Judson
+Clark in the theater had they rung up without her brother having
+carefully combed the house with his eyes. She knew her limitations; they
+would have to ring down if she ever saw him over the footlights. And
+the season had brought its incidents, to connect her with the past. One
+night Gregory had come back and told her Jean Melis was in the balcony.
+
+The valet was older and heavier, but he had recognized him.
+
+"Did he see you?" was her first question.
+
+"Yes. What about it? He never saw me but once, and that was at night and
+out of doors."
+
+"Sometimes I think I can't stand it, Fred. The eternal suspense, the
+waiting for something to happen."
+
+"If anything was going to happen it would have happened months ago.
+Bassett has given it up. And Jud's dead. Even Wilkins knows that."
+
+She turned on him angrily.
+
+"You haven't a heart, have you? You're glad he's dead."
+
+"Not at all. As long as he kept under cover he was all right. But if he
+is, I don't see why you should fool yourself into thinking you're sorry.
+It's the best solution to a number of things."
+
+"What do you suppose brought Jean Melis here?"
+
+"What? To see the best play in New York. Besides, why not allow the man
+a healthy curiosity? He was pretty closely connected with a hectic part
+of your life, my dear. Now buck up, and for the Lord's sake forget the
+Frenchman. He's got nothing."
+
+"He saw me that night, on the stairs. He never took his eyes off me at
+the inquest."
+
+She gave, however, an excellent performance that night, and nothing more
+was heard of the valet.
+
+There were other alarms, all of them without foundation. She went on her
+way, rejected an offer or two of marriage, spent her mornings in bed and
+her afternoons driving or in the hands of her hair-dresser and manicure,
+cared for the flowers that came in long casket-like boxes, and began
+to feel a sense of security again. She did not intend to marry, or to
+become interested in any one man.
+
+She had hardly given a thought to Leslie Ward. He had come and gone,
+one of that steady procession of men, mostly married, who battered their
+heads now and then like night beetles outside a window, against the hard
+glass of her ambition. Because her business was to charm, she had been
+charming to him. And could not always remember his name!
+
+As the months went by she began to accept Fred's verdict that nothing
+was going to happen. Bassett was back and at work. Either dead or a
+fugitive somewhere was Judson Clark, but that thought she had to keep
+out of her mind. Sometimes, as the play went on, and she was able to
+make her solid investments out of it, she wondered if her ten years of
+retirement had been all the price she was to pay for his ruin; but
+she put that thought away too, although she never minimized her
+responsibility when she faced it.
+
+But her price had been heavy at that. She was childless and alone,
+lavishing her aborted maternity on a brother who was living his
+prosperous, cheerful and not too moral life at her expense. Fred was,
+she knew, slightly drunk with success; he attended to his minimum of
+labor with the least possible effort, had an expensive apartment on the
+Drive, and neglected her except, when he needed money. She began to see,
+as other women had seen before her, that her success had, by taking away
+the necessity for initiative, been extremely bad for him.
+
+That was the situation when, one night late in October, the trap of
+Bassett's devising began to close in. It had been raining, but in spite
+of that they had sold standing room to the fire limit. Having got the
+treasurer's report on the night's business and sent it to Beverly's
+dressing-room, Gregory wandered into his small, low-ceiled office
+under the balcony staircase, and closing the door sat down. It was the
+interval after the second act, and above the hum of voices outside the
+sound of the orchestra penetrated faintly.
+
+He was entirely serene. He had a supper engagement after the show,
+he had a neat car waiting outside to take him to it, and the night's
+business had been extraordinary. He consulted his watch and then picked
+up an evening paper. A few moments later he found himself reading over
+and over a small notice inserted among the personals.
+
+"Personal: Jean Melis, who was in Norada, Wyoming, during the early fall
+of 1911 please communicate with L 22, this office."
+
+The orchestra was still playing outside; the silly, giggling crowds were
+moving back to their seats, and somewhere Jean Melis, or the friends of
+Jean Melis, who would tell him of it, were reading that message.
+
+He got his hat and went out, forgetful of the neat car at the curb, of
+the supper engagement, of the night's business, and wandered down the
+street through the rain. But his first uneasiness passed quickly. He
+saw Bassett in the affair, and probably Clark himself, still living
+and tardily determined to clear his name. But if the worst came to the
+worst, what could they do? They could go only so far, and then they
+would have to quit.
+
+It would be better, however, if they did not see Melis. Much better;
+there was no use involving a simple situation. And Bev could be kept out
+of it altogether, until it was over. Ashamed of his panic he went back
+to the theater, got a railway schedule and looked up trains. He should
+have done it long before, he recognized, have gone to Bassett in the
+spring. But how could he have known then that Bassett was going to make
+a life-work of the case?
+
+He had only one uncertainty. Suppose that Bassett had learned about
+Clifton Hines?
+
+By the time the curtain rang down on the last act he was his dapper,
+debonair self again, made his supper engagement, danced half the night,
+and even dozed a little on the way home. But he slept badly and was up
+early, struggling with the necessity for keeping Jean Melis out of the
+way.
+
+He wondered through what formalities L 22, for instance, would have
+to go in order to secure a letter addressed to him? Whether he had to
+present a card or whether he walked in demanded his mail and went away.
+That thought brought another with it. Wasn't it probable that Bassett
+was in New York, and would call for his mail himself?
+
+He determined finally to take the chance, claim to be L 22, and if Melis
+had seen the advertisement and replied, get the letter. It would be easy
+to square it with the valet, by saying that he had recognized him in the
+theater and that Miss Carlysle wished to send him a box.
+
+He had small hope of a letter at his first call, unless the Frenchman
+had himself seen the notice, but his anxiety drove him early to the
+office. There was nothing there, but he learned one thing. He had to
+go through with no formalities. The clerk merely looked in a box, said
+"Nothing here," and went on about his business. At eleven o'clock he
+went back again, and after a careful scrutiny of the crowd presented
+himself once more.
+
+"L 22? Here you are."
+
+He had the letter in his hand. He had glanced at it and had thrust it
+deep in his pocket, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He wheeled and
+faced Bassett.
+
+"I thought I recognized that back," said the reporter, cheerfully. "Come
+over here, old man. I want to talk to you."
+
+But he held to Gregory's shoulder. In a corner Bassett dropped the
+friendliness he had assumed for the clerk's benefit, and faced him with
+cold anger.
+
+"I'll have that letter now, Gregory," he said. "And I've got a damned
+good notion to lodge an information against you."
+
+"I don't know what you're talking about."
+
+"Forget it. I was behind you when you asked for that letter. Give it
+here. I want to show you something."
+
+Suddenly, with the letter in his hand, Bassett laughed and then tore it
+open. There was only a sheet of blank paper inside.
+
+"I wasn't sure you'd see it, and I didn't think you'd fall for it if
+you did," he observed. "But I was pretty sure you didn't want me to see
+Melis. Now I know it."
+
+"Well, I didn't," Gregory said sullenly.
+
+"Just the same, I expect to see him. The day's early yet, and that's
+not a common name. But I'll take darned good care you don't get any more
+letters from here."
+
+"What do you think Melis can tell you, that you don't know?"
+
+"I'll explain that to you some day," Bassett said cheerfully. "Some day
+when you are in a more receptive mood than you are now. The point at
+this moment seems to me to be, what does Melis know that you don't want
+me to know? I suppose you don't intend to tell me."
+
+"Not here. You may believe it or not, Bassett, but I was going to your
+town to-night to see you."
+
+"Well," Bassett said sceptically, "I've got your word for it. And I've
+got nothing to do all day but to listen to you."
+
+To his proposition that they go to his hotel Gregory assented sullenly,
+and they moved out to find a taxicab. On the pavement, however, he held
+back.
+
+"I've got a right to know something," he said, "considering what he's
+done to me and mine. Clark's alive, I suppose?"
+
+"He's alive all right."
+
+"Then I'll trade you, Bassett. I'll come over with what I know, if
+you'll tell me one thing. What sent him into hiding for ten years, and
+makes him turn up now, yelling for help?"
+
+Bassett reflected. The offer of a statement from Gregory was valuable,
+but, on the other hand, he was anxious not to influence his narrative.
+And Gregory saw his uncertainty. He planted himself firmly on the
+pavement.
+
+"How about it?" he demanded.
+
+"I'll tell you this much, Gregory. He never meant to bring the thing up
+again. In a way, it's me you're up against. Not Clark. And you can be
+pretty sure I know what I'm doing. I've got Clark, and I've got the
+report of the coroner's inquest, and I'll get Melis. I'm going to get to
+the bottom of this if I have to dig a hole that buries me."
+
+In a taxicab Gregory sat tense and erect, gnawing at his blond mustache.
+After a time he said:
+
+"What are you after, in all this? The story, I suppose. And the money. I
+daresay you're not doing it for love."
+
+Bassett surveyed him appraisingly.
+
+"You wouldn't understand my motives if I told you. As a matter of fact,
+he doesn't want the money."
+
+Gregory sneered.
+
+"Don't kid yourself," he said. "However, as a matter of fact I don't
+think he'll take it. It might cost too much. Where is he? Shooting pills
+again?"
+
+"You'll see him in about five minutes."
+
+If the news was a surprise Gregory gave no evidence of it, except to
+comment:
+
+"You're a capable person, aren't you? I'll bet you could tune a piano if
+you were put to it."
+
+He carried the situation well, the reporter had to admit; the only
+evidence he gave of strain was that the hands with which he lighted a
+cigarette were unsteady. He surveyed the obscure hotel at which the cab
+stopped with a sneering smile, and settled his collar as he looked it
+over.
+
+"Not advertising to the world that you're in town, I see."
+
+"We'll do that, just as soon as we're ready. Don't worry."
+
+The laugh he gave at that struck unpleasantly on Bassett's ears. But
+inside the building he lost some of his jauntiness. "Queer place to find
+Judson Clark," he said once.
+
+And again:
+
+"You'd better watch him when I go in. He may bite me."
+
+To which Bassett grimly returned: "He's probably rather particular what
+he bites."
+
+He was uneasily conscious that Gregory, while nervous and tense, was
+carrying the situation with a certain assurance. If he was acting it was
+very good acting. And that opinion was strengthened when he threw open
+the door and Gregory advanced into the room.
+
+"Well, Clark," he said, coolly. "I guess you didn't expect to see me,
+did you?"
+
+He made no offer to shake hands as Dick turned from the window, nor
+did Dick make any overtures. But there was no enmity at first in either
+face; Gregory was easy and assured, Dick grave, and, Bassett thought,
+slightly impatient. From that night in his apartment the reporter had
+realized that he was constantly fighting a sort of passive resistance in
+Dick, a determination not at any cost to involve Beverly. Behind that,
+too, he felt that still another battle was going on, one at which he
+could only guess, but which made Dick somber at times and grimly quiet
+always.
+
+"I meant to look you up," was his reply to Gregory's nonchalant
+greeting.
+
+"Well, your friend here did that for you," Gregory said, and smiled
+across at Bassett. "He has his own methods, and I'll say they're
+effectual."
+
+He took off his overcoat and flung it on the bed, and threw a swift,
+appraising glance at Dick. It was on Dick that he was banking, not on
+Bassett. He hated and feared Bassett. He hated Dick, but he was not
+afraid of him. He lighted a cigarette and faced Dick with a malicious
+smile.
+
+"So here we are, again, Jud!" he said. "But with this change, that
+now it's you who are the respectable member of the community, and I'm
+the--well, we'll call it the butterfly."
+
+There was unmistakable insult in his tone, and Dick caught it.
+
+"Then I take it you're still living off your sister?"
+
+The contempt in Dick's voice whipped the color to Gregory's face and
+clenched his fist. But he relaxed in a moment and laughed.
+
+"Don't worry, Bassett," he said, his eyes on Dick. "We haven't any
+reason to like each other, but he's bigger than I am. I won't hit him."
+Then he hardened his voice. "But I'll remind you, Clark, that personally
+I don't give a God-damn whether you swing or not. Also that I can keep
+my mouth shut, walk out of here, and have you in quod in the next hour,
+if I decide to."
+
+"But you won't," Bassett said smoothly. "You won't, any more than you
+did it last spring, when you sent that little letter of yours to David
+Livingstone."
+
+"No. You're right. I won't. But if I tell you what I came here to say,
+Bassett, get this straight. It's not because I'm afraid of you, or of
+him. Donaldson's dead. What value would Melis's testimony have after ten
+years, if you put him on the stand? It's not that. It's because you'll
+put your blundering foot into it and ruin Bev's career, unless I tell
+you the truth."
+
+It was to Bassett then that he told his story, he and Bassett sitting,
+Dick standing with his elbow on the mantelpiece, tall and weary and
+almost detached.
+
+"I've got to make my own position plain in this," he said. "I didn't
+like Clark, and I kept her from marrying him. There was one time, before
+she met Lucas, when she almost did it. I was away when she decided on
+that fool trip to the Clark ranch. We couldn't get a New York theater
+until November, and she had some time, so they went. I've got her story
+of what happened there. You can check it up with what you know."
+
+He turned to Dick for a moment.
+
+"You were drinking pretty hard that night, but you may remember this:
+She had quarreled with Lucas at dinner that night and with you. That's
+true, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She went to her room and began to pack her things. Then she thought
+it over, and she decided to try to persuade Lucas to go too. Things had
+begun all right, but they were getting strained and unpleasant. She went
+down the stairs, and Melis saw her, the valet. The living-room was dark,
+but there was a light coming through the billiard room door, and against
+it she saw the figure of a man in the doorway. He had his back to her,
+and he had a revolver in his hand. She ran across the room when he
+heard her and when he turned she saw it was Lucas. Do you remember, Jud,
+having a revolver and Lucas taking it from you?"
+
+"No. Donaldson testified I'd had a revolver."
+
+"Well, that's how we figure he'd got the gun. She thought at once that
+Lucas and you had quarreled, and that he was going to shoot. She tried
+to take it from him, but he was drunk and stubborn. It went off and
+killed him."
+
+Bassett leaned forward.
+
+"That's straight, is it?"
+
+"I'm telling you."
+
+"Then why in God's name didn't she say that at the inquest?"
+
+"She was afraid it wouldn't be believed. Look at the facts. She'd
+quarreled with Lucas. There had been a notorious situation with regard
+to Clark. And remember this. She had done it. I know her well enough,
+however, to say that she would have confessed, eventually, but Clark
+had beaten it. It was reasonably sure that he was lost in the blizzard.
+You've got to allow for that."
+
+Bassett said nothing. After a silence Dick spoke:
+
+"What about the revolver?"
+
+"She had it in her hand. She dropped it and stood still, too stunned to
+scream. Lucas, she says, took a step or two forward, and fell through
+the doorway. Donaldson came running in, and you know the rest."
+
+Bassett was the first to break the silence.
+
+"She will be willing to testify to that now, of course?"
+
+"And stand trial?"
+
+"Not necessarily. Clark would be on trial. He's been indicted. He has to
+be tried."
+
+"Why does he have to be tried? He's free now. He's been free for ten
+years. And I tell you as an honest opinion that the thing would kill
+her. Accident and all, she did it. And there would be some who'd never
+believe she hadn't tired of Lucas, and wanted the Clark money."
+
+"That's a chance she'll have to take," Bassett said doggedly. "The only
+living witness who could be called would be the valet. And remember
+this: for ten years he has believed that she did it. He'll have built up
+a story by this time, perhaps unconsciously, that might damn her."
+
+Dick moved.
+
+"There's only one thing to do. You're right, Gregory. I'll never expose
+her to that."
+
+"You're crazy," Bassett said angrily.
+
+"Not at all. I told you I wouldn't hide behind a woman. As a matter of
+fact, I've learned what I wanted. Lucas wasn't murdered. I didn't shoot
+him. That's what really matters. I'm no worse off than I was before;
+considerably better, in fact. And I don't see what's to be gained by
+going any further."
+
+In spite of his protests, Bassett was compelled finally to agree. He was
+sulky and dispirited. He saw the profound anticlimax to all his effort
+of Dick wandering out again, legally dead and legally guilty, and he
+swore roundly under his breath.
+
+"All right," he grunted at last. "I guess that's the last word, Gregory.
+But you tell her from me that if she doesn't reopen the matter of her
+own accord, she'll have a man's life on her conscience."
+
+"I'll not tell her anything about it. I'm not only her brother; I'm her
+manager now. And I'm not kicking any hole in the boat that floats me."
+
+He was self-confident and slightly insolent; the hands with which he
+lighted a fresh cigarette no longer trembled, and the glance he threw at
+Dick was triumphant and hostile.
+
+"As a man sows, Clark!" he said. "You sowed hell for a number of people
+once."
+
+Bassett had to restrain an impulse to kick him out of the door. When he
+had gone Bassett turned to Dick with assumed lightness.
+
+"Well," he said, "here we are, all dressed up and nowhere to go!"
+
+He wandered around the room, restless and disappointed. He knew, and
+Dick knew, that they had come to the end of the road, and that nothing
+lay beyond. In his own unpleasant way Fred Gregory had made a case for
+his sister that tied their hands, and the crux of the matter had lain
+in his final gibe: "As a man sows, Clark, so shall he reap." The moral
+issue was there.
+
+
+"I suppose the Hines story goes by the board, eh?" he commented after a
+pause.
+
+"Yes. Except that I wish I'd known about him when I could have done
+something. He's my half-brother, any way you look at it, and he had a
+rotten deal. Sometimes a man sows," he added, with a wry smile, "and the
+other fellow reaps."
+
+Bassett went out after that, going to the office on the chance of a
+letter from Melis, but there was none. When he came back he found Dick
+standing over a partially packed suitcase, and knew that they had come
+to the end of the road indeed.
+
+"What's the next step?" he asked bluntly.
+
+"I'll have to leave here. It's too expensive."
+
+"And after that, what?"
+
+"I'll get a job. I suppose a man is as well hidden here as anywhere. I
+can grow a beard-that's the usual thing, isn't it?"
+
+Bassett made an impatient gesture, and fell to pacing the floor. "It's
+incredible," he said. "It's monstrous. It's a joke. Here you are,
+without a thing against you, and hung like Mahomet's coffin between
+heaven and earth. It makes me sick."
+
+He went home that night, leaving word to have any letters for L 22
+forwarded, but without much hope. His last clutch of Dick's hand had a
+sort of desperate finality in it, and he carried with him most of the
+way home the tall, worn and rather shabby figure that saw him off with a
+smile.
+
+By the next afternoon's mail he received a note from New York, with a
+few words of comment penciled on it in Dick's writing. "This came this
+evening. I sent back the money. D." The note was from Gregory and
+had evidently enclosed a one-hundred dollar bill. It began without
+superscription: "Enclosed find a hundred dollars, as I imagine funds may
+be short. If I were you I'd get out of here. There has been considerable
+excitement, and you know too many people in this burg."
+
+Bassett sat back in his chair and studied the note.
+
+"Now why the devil did he do that?" he reflected. He sat for some time,
+thinking deeply, and he came to one important conclusion. The story
+Gregory had told was the one which was absolutely calculated to shut
+off all further inquiry. They had had ten years; ten years to plan,
+eliminate and construct; ten years to prepare their defense, in case
+Clark turned up. Wasn't that why Gregory had been so assured? But he had
+not been content to let well enough alone; he had perhaps overreached
+himself.
+
+Then what was the answer? She had killed Lucas, but was it an accident?
+And there must have been a witness, or they would have had nothing to
+fear. He wrote out on a bit of paper three names, and sat looking at
+them:
+
+Hattie Thorwald Jean Melis Clifton Hines.
+
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+Elizabeth had quite definitely put Dick out of her heart. On the evening
+of the day she learned he had come back and had not seen her, she
+deliberately killed her love and decently interred it. She burned her
+notes and his one letter and put away her ring, performing the rites not
+as rites but as a shameful business to be done with quickly. She tore
+his photograph into bits and threw them into her waste basket, and
+having thus housecleaned her room set to work to houseclean her heart.
+
+She found very little to do. She was numb and totally without feeling.
+The little painful constriction in her chest which had so often come
+lately with her thoughts of him was gone. She felt extraordinarily
+empty, but not light, and her feet dragged about the room.
+
+She felt no sense of Dick's unworthiness, but simply that she was up
+against something she could not fight, and no longer wanted to fight.
+She was beaten, but the strange thing was that she did not care. Only,
+she would not be pitied. As the days went on she resented the pity that
+had kept her in ignorance for so long, and had let her wear her heart on
+her sleeve; and she even wondered sometimes whether the story of Dick's
+loss of memory had not been false, evolved out of that pity and the
+desire to save her pain.
+
+David sent for her, but she wrote him a little note, formal and
+restrained. She would come in a day or two, but now she must get her
+bearings. He was, to know that she was not angry, and felt it all for
+the best, and she was very lovingly his, Elizabeth.
+
+She knew now that she would eventually marry Wallie Sayre if only to get
+away from pity. He would have to know the truth about her, that she did
+not love any one; not even her father and her mother. She pretended to
+care for fear of hurting them, but she was actually frozen quite hard.
+She did not believe in love. It was a terrible thing, to be avoided
+by any one who wanted to get along, and this avoiding was really quite
+simple. One simply stopped feeling.
+
+On the Sunday after she had come to this comfortable knowledge she sat
+in the church as usual, in the choir stalls, and suddenly she hated the
+church. She hated the way the larynx of Henry Wallace, the tenor, stuck
+out like a crabapple over his low collar. She hated the fat double chin
+of the bass. She hated the talk about love and the certain rewards of
+virtue, and the faces of the congregation, smug and sure of salvation.
+
+She went to the choir master after the service to hand in her
+resignation. And did not, because it had occurred to her that it might
+look, to use Nina's word, as though she were crushed. Crushed! That was
+funny.
+
+Wallie Sayre was waiting for her outside, and she went up with him to
+lunch, and afterwards they played golf. They had rather an amusing game,
+and once she had to sit down on a bunker and laugh until she was weak,
+while he fought his way out of a pit. Crushed, indeed!
+
+So the weaving went on, almost completed now. With Wallie Sayre biding
+his time, but fairly sure of the result. With Jean Melis happening on
+a two-days' old paper, and reading over and over a notice addressed to
+him. With Leslie Ward, neither better nor worse than his kind, seeking
+adventure in a bypath, which was East 56th Street. And with Dick
+wandering the streets of New York after twilight, and standing once with
+his coat collar turned up against the rain outside of the Metropolitan
+Club, where the great painting of his father hung over a mantelpiece.
+
+Now that he was near Beverly, Dick hesitated to see her. He felt no
+resentment at her long silence, nor at his exile which had resulted
+from it. He made excuses for her, recognized his own contribution to
+the catastrophe, knew, too, that nothing was to be gained by seeing her
+again. But he determined finally to see her once more, and then to go
+away, leaving her to peace and to success.
+
+She would know now that she had nothing to fear from him. All he wanted
+was to satisfy the hunger that was in him by seeing her, and then to go
+away.
+
+Curiously, that hunger to see her had been in abeyance while Bassett
+was with him. It was only when he was alone again that it came up; and
+although he knew that, he was unconscious of another fact, that every
+word, every picture of her on the great boardings which walled in every
+empty lot, everything, indeed, which brought her into the reality of the
+present, loosened by so much her hold on him out of the past.
+
+When he finally went to the 56th Street house it was on impulse. He had
+meant to pass it, but he found himself stopping, and half angrily made
+his determination. He would follow the cursed thing through now and get
+it over. Perhaps he had discounted it too much in advance, waited too
+long, hoped too much. Perhaps it was simply that that last phase was
+already passing. But he felt no thrill, no expectancy, as he rang the
+bell and was admitted to the familiar hall.
+
+It was peopled with ghosts, for him. Upstairs, in the drawing-room
+that extended across the front of the house, she had told him of her
+engagement to Howard Lucas. Later on, coming back from Europe, he had
+gone back there to find Lucas installed in the house, his cigars on
+the table, his photographs on the piano, his books scattered about.
+And Lucas himself, smiling, handsome and triumphant on the hearth rug,
+dressed for dinner except for a brocaded dressing-gown, putting his hand
+familiarly on Beverly's shoulder, and calling her "old girl."
+
+He wandered into the small room to the right of the hall, where in other
+days he had waited to be taken upstairs, and stood looking out of the
+window. He heard some one, a caller, come down, get into his overcoat
+in the hall and go out, but he was not interested. He did not know
+that Leslie Ward had stood outside the door for a minute, had seen and
+recognized him, and had then slammed out.
+
+He was quite steady as the butler preceded him up the stairs. He even
+noticed certain changes in the house, the door at the landing converted
+into an arch, leaded glass in the dining-room windows beyond it. But
+he caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror, and saw himself a shabby
+contrast to the former days.
+
+He faced her, still with that unexpected composure, and he saw her very
+little changed. Even the movement with which she came toward him with
+both hands out was familiar.
+
+"Jud!" she said. "Oh, my dear!"
+
+He saw that she was profoundly moved, and suddenly he was sorry for her.
+Sorry for the years behind them both, for the burden she had carried,
+for the tears in her eyes.
+
+"Dear old Bev!" he said.
+
+She put her head against his shoulder, and cried unrestrainedly; and
+he held her there, saying small, gentle, soothing things, smoothing her
+hair. But all the time he knew that life had been playing him another
+trick; he felt a great tenderness for her and profound pity, but he
+did not love her, or want her. He saw that after all the suffering
+and waiting, the death and exile, he was left at the end with nothing.
+Nothing at all.
+
+When she was restored to a sort of tense composure he found to his
+discomfort that woman-like she intended to abase herself thoroughly and
+completely. She implored his forgiveness for his long exile, gazing at
+him humbly, and when he said in a matter-of-fact tone that he had been
+happy, giving him a look which showed that she thought he was lying to
+save her unhappiness.
+
+"You are trying to make it easier for me. But I know, Jud."
+
+"I'm telling you the truth," he said, patiently. "There's one point I
+didn't think necessary to tell your brother. For a good while I didn't
+remember anything about it. If it hadn't been for that-well, I don't
+know. Anyhow, don't look at me as though I willfully saved you. I
+didn't."
+
+She sat still, pondering that, and twisting a ring on her finger.
+
+"What do you mean to do?" she asked, after a pause.
+
+"I don't know. I'll find something."
+
+"You won't go back to your work?"
+
+"I don't see how I can. I'm in hiding, in a sort of casual fashion."
+
+To his intense discomfiture she began to cry again. She couldn't go
+through with it. She would go back to Norada and tell the whole thing.
+She had let Fred influence her, but she saw now she couldn't do it. But
+for the first time he felt that in this one thing she was not sincere.
+Her grief and abasement had been real enough, but now he felt she was
+acting.
+
+"Suppose we don't go into that now," he said gently. "You've had about
+all you can stand." He got up awkwardly. "I suppose you are playing
+to-night?"
+
+She nodded, looking up at him dumbly.
+
+"Better lie down, then, and--forget me." He smiled down at her.
+
+"I've never forgotten you, Jud. And now, seeing you again--I--"
+
+Her face worked. She continued to look up at him, piteously. The
+appalling truth came to him then, and that part of him which had
+remained detached and aloof, watching, almost smiled at the irony. She
+cared for him. Out of her memories she had built up something to care
+for, something no more himself than she was the woman of his dreams; but
+with this difference, that she was clinging, woman-fashion, to the thing
+she had built, and he had watched it crumble before his eyes.
+
+"Will you promise to go and rest?"
+
+"Yes. If you say so."
+
+She was acquiescent and humble. Her eyes were soft, faithful, childlike.
+
+"I've suffered so, Jud."
+
+"I know."
+
+"You don't hate me, do you?"
+
+"Why should I? Just remember this: while you were carrying this burden,
+I was happier than I'd ever been. I'll tell you about it some time."
+
+She got up, and he perceived that she expected him again to take her in
+his arms. He felt ridiculous and resentful, and rather as though he was
+expected to kiss the hand that had beaten him, but when she came close
+to him he put an arm around her shoulders.
+
+"Poor Bev!" he said. "We've made pretty much a mess of it, haven't we?"
+
+He patted her and let her go, and her eyes followed him as he left the
+room. The elder brotherliness of that embrace had told her the truth as
+he could never have hurt her in words. She went back to the chair where
+he had sat, and leaned her cheek against it.
+
+After a time she went slowly upstairs and into her room. When her maid
+came in she found her before the mirror of her dressing-table, staring
+at her reflection with hard, appraising eyes.
+
+Leslie's partner, wandering into the hotel at six o'clock, found from
+the disordered condition of the room that Leslie had been back, had
+apparently bathed, shaved and made a careful toilet, and gone out again.
+Joe found himself unexpectedly at a loose end. Filled, with suppressed
+indignation he commenced to dress, getting out a shirt, hunting his
+evening studs, and lining up what he meant to say to Leslie over his
+defection.
+
+Then, at a quarter to seven, Leslie came in, top-hatted and
+morning-coated, with a yellowing gardenia in his buttonhole and his
+shoes covered with dust.
+
+"Hello, Les," Joe said, glancing up from a laborious struggle with a
+stud. "Been to a wedding?"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You look like it."
+
+"I made a call, and since then I've been walking."
+
+"Some walk, I'd say," Joe observed, looking at him shrewdly. "What's
+wrong, Les? Fair one turn you down?"
+
+"Go to hell," Leslie said irritably.
+
+He flung off his coat and jerked at his tie. Then, with it hanging
+loose, he turned to Joe.
+
+"I'm going to tell you something. I know it's safe with you, and I need
+some advice. I called on a woman this afternoon. You know who she is.
+Beverly Carlysle."
+
+Joe whistled softly.
+
+"That's not the point," Leslie declaimed, in a truculent voice. "I'm not
+defending myself. She's a friend; I've got a right to call there if I
+want to."
+
+"Sure you have," soothed Joe.
+
+"Well, you know the situation at home, and who Livingstone actually is.
+The point is that, while that poor kid at home is sitting around killing
+herself with grief, Clark's gone back to her. To Beverly Carlysle."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Know? I saw him this afternoon, at her house."
+
+He sat still, moodily reviewing the situation. His thoughts were a
+chaotic and unpleasant mixture of jealousy, fear of Nina, anxiety over
+Elizabeth, and the sense of a lost romantic adventure. After a while he
+got up.
+
+"She's a nice kid," he said. "I'm fond of her. And I don't know what to
+do."
+
+Suddenly Joe grinned.
+
+"I see," he said. "And you can't tell her, or the family, where you saw
+him!"
+
+"Not without raising the deuce of a row."
+
+He began, automatically, to dress for dinner. Joe moved around the room,
+rang for a waiter, ordered orange juice and ice, and produced a bottle
+of gin from his bag. Leslie did not hear him, nor the later preparation
+of the cocktails. He was reflecting bitterly on the fact that a man who
+married built himself a wall against romance, a wall, compounded of his
+own new sense of responsibility, of family ties, and fear.
+
+Joe brought him a cocktail.
+
+"Drink it, old dear," he said. "And when it's down I'll tell you a few
+little things about playing around with ladies who have a past. Here's
+to forgetting 'em."
+
+Leslie took the glass.
+
+"Right-o," he said.
+
+He went home the following day, leaving Joe to finish the business in
+New York. His going rather resembled a flight. Tossing sleepless the
+night before, he had found what many a man had discovered before him,
+that his love of clandestine adventure was not as strong as his caution.
+He had had a shock. True, his affair with Beverly had been a formless
+thing, a matter of imagination and a desire to assure himself that
+romance, for him, was not yet dead. True, too, that he had nothing to
+fear from Dick Livingstone. But the encounter had brought home to him
+the danger of this old-new game he was playing. He was running like a
+frightened child.
+
+He thought of various plans. One of them was to tell Nina the truth,
+take his medicine of tears and coldness, and then go to Mr. Wheeler.
+One was to go to Mr. Wheeler, without Nina, and make his humiliating
+admission. But Walter Wheeler had his own rigid ideas, was
+uncompromising in rectitude, and would understand as only a man could
+that while so far he had been only mentally unfaithful, he had been
+actuated by at least subconscious desire.
+
+His own awareness of that fact made him more cautious than he need have
+been, perhaps more self-conscious. And he genuinely cared for Elizabeth.
+It was, on the whole, a generous and kindly impulse that lay behind his
+ultimate resolution to tell her that her desertion was both wilful and
+cruel.
+
+Yet, when the time came, he found it hard to tell her. He took her for
+a drive one evening soon after his return, forcibly driving off Wallie
+Sayre to do so, and eying surreptitiously now and then her pale, rather
+set face. He found a quiet lane and stopped the car there, and then
+turned and faced her.
+
+"How've you been, little sister, while I've been wandering the gay white
+way?" he asked.
+
+"I've been all right, Leslie."
+
+"Not quite all right, I think. Have you ever thought, Elizabeth, that no
+man on earth is worth what you've been going through?"
+
+"I'm all right, I tell you," she said impatiently. "I'm not grieving any
+more. That's the truth, Les. I know now that he doesn't intend to come
+back, and I don't care. I never even think about him, now."
+
+"I see," he said. "Well, that's that."
+
+But he had not counted on her intuition, and was startled to hear her
+say:
+
+"Well? Go on."
+
+"What do you mean, go on?"
+
+"You brought me out here to tell me something."
+
+"Not at all. I simply--"
+
+"Where is he? You've seen him."
+
+He tried to meet her eyes, failed, cursed himself for a fool. "He's
+alive and well, Elizabeth. I saw him in New York." It was a full minute
+before she spoke again, and then her lips were stiff and her voice
+strained.
+
+"Has he gone back to her? To the actress he used to care for?"
+
+He hesitated, but he knew he would have to go on.
+
+"I'm going to tell you something, Elizabeth. It's not very creditable
+to me, but I'll have to trust you. I don't want to see you wasting your
+life. You've got plenty of courage and a lot of spirit. And you've got
+to forget him."
+
+He told her, and then he took her home. He was a little frightened, for
+there was something not like her in the way she had taken it, a sort of
+immobility that might, he thought, cover heartbreak. But she smiled when
+she thanked him, and went very calmly into the house.
+
+That night she accepted Wallie Sayre.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+Bassett was having a visitor. He sat in his chair while that visitor
+ranged excitedly up and down the room, a short stout man, well dressed
+and with a mixture of servility and importance. The valet's first words,
+as he stood inside the door, had been significant.
+
+"I should like to know, first, if I am talking to the police."
+
+"No--and yes," Bassett said genially. "Come and sit down, man. What I
+mean is this. I am a friend of Judson Clark's, and this may or may not
+be a police matter. I don't know yet."
+
+"You are a friend of Mr. Clark's? Then the report was correct. He is
+still alive, sir?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The valet got out a handkerchief and wiped his face. He was clearly
+moved.
+
+"I am glad of that. Very glad. I saw some months ago, in a
+newspaper--where is he?"
+
+"In New York. Now Melis, I've an idea that you know something about the
+crime Judson Clark was accused of. You intimated that at the inquest."
+
+"Mrs. Lucas killed him."
+
+"So she says," Bassett said easily.
+
+The valet jumped and stared.
+
+"She admits it, as the result of an accident. She also admits hiding the
+revolver where you found it."
+
+"Then you do not need me."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that."
+
+The valet was puzzled.
+
+"I want you to think back, Melis. You saw her go down the stairs,
+sometime before the shot. Later you were confident she had hidden the
+revolver, and you made a second search for it. Why? You hadn't heard her
+testimony at the inquest then. Clark had run away. Why didn't you think
+Clark had done it?"
+
+"Because I thought she was having an affair with another man. I have
+always thought she did it."
+
+Bassett nodded.
+
+"I thought so. What made you think that?"
+
+"I'll tell you. She went West without a maid, and Mr. Clark got a
+Swedish woman from a ranch near to look after her, a woman named
+Thorwald. She lived at her own place and came over every day. One night,
+after Mrs. Thorwald had started home, I came across her down the road
+near the irrigator's house, and there was a man with her. They didn't
+hear me behind them, and he was giving her a note for some one in the
+house."
+
+"Why not for one of the servants?"
+
+"That's what I thought then, sir. It wasn't my business. But I saw the
+same man later on, hanging about the place at night, and once I saw
+her with him--Mrs. Lucas, I mean. That was in the early evening. The
+gentlemen were out riding, and I'd gone with one of the maids to a hill
+to watch the moon rise. They were on some rocks, below in the canyon."
+
+"Did you see him?"
+
+"I think it was the same man, if that's what you mean. I knew something
+queer was going on, after that, and I watched her. She went out at night
+more than once. Then I told Donaldson there was somebody hanging round
+the place, and he set a watch."
+
+"Fine. Now we'll go to the night Lucas was shot. Was the Thorwald woman
+there?"
+
+"She had started home."
+
+"Leaving Mrs. Lucas packing alone?"
+
+"Yes. I hadn't thought of that. The Thorwald woman heard the shot and
+came back. I remember that, because she fainted upstairs and I had to
+carry her to a bed."
+
+"I see. Now about the revolver."
+
+"I located it the first time I looked for it. Donaldson and the others
+had searched the billiard room. So I tried the big room. It was under
+a chair. I left it there, and concealed myself in the room. She, Mrs.
+Lucas, came down late that night and hunted for it. Then she hid it
+where I got it later."
+
+"I wish I knew, Melis, why you didn't bring those facts out at the
+inquest."
+
+"You must remember this, sir. I had been with Mr. Clark for a long time.
+I knew the situation. And I thought that he had gone away that night
+to throw suspicion from her to himself. I was not certain what to do. I
+would have told it all in court, but it never came to trial."
+
+Bassett was satisfied and fairly content. After the Frenchman's
+departure he sat for some time, making careful notes and studying them.
+Supposing the man Melis had seen to be Clifton Hines, a good many things
+would be cleared up. Some new element he had to have, if Gregory's
+story were to be disproved, some new and different motive. Suppose, for
+instance...
+
+He got up and paced the floor back and forward, forward and back. There
+was just one possibility, and just one way of verifying it. He sat down
+and wrote out a long telegram and then got his hat and carried it to the
+telegraph office himself. He had made his last throw.
+
+He received a reply the following day, and in a state of exhilaration
+bordering on madness packed his bag, and as he packed it addressed it,
+after the fashion of lonely men the world over.
+
+"Just one more trip, friend cowhide," he said, "and then you and I
+are going to settle down again to work. But it's some trip, old
+arm-breaker."
+
+He put in his pajamas and handkerchiefs, his clean socks and collars,
+and then he got his revolver from a drawer and added it. Just
+twenty-four hours later he knocked at Dick's door in a boarding-house on
+West Ninth Street, found it unlocked, and went in. Dick was asleep,
+and Bassett stood looking down at him with an odd sort of paternal
+affection. Finally he bent down and touched his shoulder.
+
+"Wake up, old top," he said. "Wake up. I have some news for you."
+
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+To Dick the last day or two had been nightmares of loneliness. He threw
+caution to the winds and walked hour after hour, only to find that
+the street crowds, people who had left a home or were going to one,
+depressed him and emphasized his isolation. He had deliberately put
+away from him the anchor that had been Elizabeth and had followed a
+treacherous memory, and now he was adrift. He told himself that he did
+not want much. Only peace, work and a place. But he had not one of them.
+
+He was homesick for David, for Lucy, and, with a tightening of the
+heart he admitted it, for Elizabeth. And he had no home. He thought of
+Reynolds, bent over the desk in his office; he saw the quiet tree-shaded
+streets of the town, and Reynolds, passing from house to house in the
+little town, doing his work, usurping his place in the confidence and
+friendship of the people; he saw the very children named for him asking:
+"Who was I named for, mother?" He saw David and Lucy gone, and the
+old house abandoned, or perhaps echoing to the laughter of Reynolds'
+children.
+
+He had moments when he wondered what would happen if he took Beverly at
+her word. Suppose she made her confession, re-opened the thing, to fill
+the papers with great headlines, "Judson Clark Not Guilty. A Strange
+Story."
+
+He saw himself going back to the curious glances of the town, never to
+be to them the same as before. To face them and look them down, to hear
+whispers behind his back, to feel himself watched and judged, on that
+far past of his. Suppose even that it could be kept out of the papers;
+Wilkins amiable and acquiescent, Beverly's confession hidden in the ruck
+of legal documents; and he stealing back, to go on as best he could,
+covering his absence with lies, and taking up his work again. But even
+that uneasy road was closed to him. He saw David and Lucy stooping to
+new and strange hypocrisies, watching with anxious old eyes the faces of
+their neighbors, growing defiant and hard as time went on and suspicion
+still followed him.
+
+And there was Elizabeth.
+
+He tried not to think of her, save as of some fine and tender thing he
+had once brushed as he passed by. Even if she still cared for him, he
+could, even less than David and Lucy, ask her to walk the uneasy road
+with him. She was young. She would forget him and marry Wallace Sayre.
+She would have luxury and gaiety, and the things that belong to youth.
+
+He was not particularly bitter about that. He knew now that he had given
+her real love, something very different from that early madness of his,
+but he knew it too late...
+
+He looked up at Bassett and then sat up.
+
+"What sort of news?" he asked, his voice still thick with sleep.
+
+"Get up and put some cold water on your head. I want you to get this."
+
+He obeyed, but without enthusiasm. Some new clue, some hope revived only
+to die again, what did it matter? But he stopped by Bassett and put a
+hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Why do you do it?" he asked. "Why don't you let me go to the devil in
+my own way?"
+
+"I started this, and by Heaven I've finished it," was Bassett's exultant
+reply.
+
+He sat down and produced a bundle of papers. "I'm going to read you
+something," he said. "And when I'm through you're going to put your
+clothes on and we'll go to the Biltmore. The Biltmore. Do you get it?"
+
+Then he began to read.
+
+"I, the undersigned, being of sound mind, do hereby make the following
+statement. I make the statement of my own free will, and swear before
+Almighty God that it is the truth. I am an illegitimate son of Elihu
+Clark. My mother, Harriet Burgess, has since married and is now known as
+Hattie Thorwald. She will confirm the statements herein contained.
+
+"I was adopted by a woman named Hines, of the city of Omaha, whose name
+I took. Some years later this woman married and had a daughter, of whom
+I shall speak later.
+
+"I attended preparatory school in the East, and was sent during
+vacations to a tutoring school, owned by Mr. Henry Livingstone. When I
+went to college Mr. Livingstone bought a ranch at Dry River, Wyoming,
+and I spent some time there now and then.
+
+"I learned that I was being supported and sent to college from funds
+furnished by a firm of New York lawyers, and that aroused my suspicion.
+I knew that Mrs. Hines was not my mother. I finally learned that I was
+the son of Elihu Clark and Harriet Burgess.
+
+"I felt that I should have some part of the estate, and I developed a
+hatred of Judson Clark, whom I knew. I made one attempt to get money
+from him by mail, threatening to expose his father's story, but I did
+not succeed.
+
+"I visited my mother, Hattie Thorwald, and threatened to kill Clark. I
+also threatened Henry Livingstone, and his death came during a dispute
+over the matter, but I did not kill him. He fell down and hit his head.
+He had a weak heart.
+
+"My foster-sister had gone on the stage, and Clark was infatuated with
+her. I saw him a number of times, but he did not connect me with the
+letter I had sent. My foster-sister's stage name is Beverly Carlysle.
+
+"She married Howard Lucas and they visited the Clark ranch at Norada,
+Wyoming, in the fall of 1911. I saw my sister there several times,
+and as she knew the way I felt she was frightened. My mother, Hattie
+Thorwald, was a sort of maid to her, and together they tried to get me
+to go away."
+
+Bassett looked up.
+
+"Up to that point," he said, "I wrote it myself before I saw him." There
+was a note of triumph in his voice. "The rest is his."
+
+"On the night Lucas was killed I was to go away. Bev had agreed to give
+me some money, for the piece had quit in June and I was hard up. She
+was going to borrow it from Jud Clark, and that set me crazy. I felt it
+ought to be mine, or a part of it anyhow.
+
+"I was to meet my mother in the grounds, but I missed her, and I went to
+the house. I wasn't responsible for what I did. I was crazy, I guess.
+I saw Donaldson on the side porch, and beyond him were Lucas and Clark,
+playing roulette. It made me wild. I couldn't have played roulette that
+night for pennies.
+
+"I went around the house and in the front door. What I meant to do was
+to walk into that room and tell Clark who I was. He knew me, and all I
+meant to do was to call Bev down, and mother, and make him sit up and
+take notice. I hadn't a gun on me.
+
+"I swear I wasn't thinking of killing him then. I hated him like poison,
+but that was all. But I went into the living-room, and I heard Clark
+say he'd lost a thousand dollars. Maybe you don't get that. A thousand
+dollars thrown around like that, and me living on what Bev could borrow
+from him.
+
+"That sent me wild. Lucas took a gun from him, just after that, and said
+he was going to put it in the other room. He did it, too. He put it on a
+table and started back. I got it and pointed it at Clark. I'd have shot
+him, too, but Bev came into the room.
+
+"I want to exonerate Bev. She has been better than most sisters to me,
+and she has lied to try to save me. She came up behind me and grabbed my
+arm. Lucas had heard her, and he turned. I must have closed my hand on
+the trigger, for it went off and hit him.
+
+"I was in the living-room when Donaldson ran in. I hid there until they
+were all gathered around Lucas and had quit running in, and then I
+got away. I saw my mother in the grounds later. I told her where the
+revolver was and that they'd better put it in the billiard room. I was
+afraid they'd suspect Bev.
+
+"I have read the above statement and it is correct. I was legally
+adopted by Mrs. Alice Ford Hines, of Omaha, and use that signature. I
+generally use the name of Frederick Gregory, which I took when I was on
+the stage for a short time.
+
+"(Signed) Clifton HINES."
+
+
+Bassett folded up the papers and put them in the envelope. "I got
+that," he said, "at the point of a gun, my friend. And our friend Hines
+departed for the Mexican border on the evening train. I don't mind
+saying that I saw him off. He held out for a get-away, and I guess it's
+just as well."
+
+He glanced at Dick, lying still and rigid on the bed.
+
+"And now," he said. "I think a little drink won't do us any harm."
+
+Dick refused to drink. He was endeavoring to comprehend the situation;
+to realize that Gregory, who had faced him with such sneering hate a day
+or so before, was his half-brother.
+
+"Poor devil!" he said at last. "I wish to God I'd known. He was right,
+you know. No wonder--"
+
+Sometime later he roused from deep study and looked at Bassett.
+
+"How did you get the connection?"
+
+"I saw Melis, and learned that Hines was in it somehow. He was the
+connecting link between Beverly Carlysle and the Thorwald woman. But I
+couldn't connect him with Beverly herself, except by a chance. I wired
+a man I knew in Omaha, and he turned up the second marriage, and a
+daughter known on the stage as Beverly Carlysle."
+
+Bassett was in high spirits. He moved about the room immensely pleased
+with himself, slightly boastful.
+
+"Some little stroke, Dick!" he said. "What price Mr. Judson Clark
+to-night, eh? It will be worth a million dollars to see Wilkins' face
+when he reads that thing."
+
+"There's no mention of me as Livingstone in it, is there?"
+
+"It wasn't necessary to go into that. I didn't know--Look here," he
+exploded, "you're not going to be a damned fool, are you?"
+
+"I'm not going to revive Judson Clark, Bassett. I don't owe him
+anything. Let him die a decent death and stay dead."
+
+"Oh, piffle!" Bassett groaned. "Don't start that all over again. Don't
+pull any Enoch Arden stuff on me, looking in at a lighted window and
+wandering off to drive a taxicab."
+
+Suddenly Dick laughed. Bassett watched him, puzzled and angry, with a
+sort of savage tenderness.
+
+"You're crazy," he said morosely. "Darned if I understand you. Here I've
+got everything fixed as slick as a whistle, and it took work, believe
+me. And now you say you're going to chuck the whole thing."
+
+"Not at all," Dick replied, with a new ring in his voice. "You're right.
+I've been ten sorts of a fool, but I know now what I'm going to do. Take
+your paper, old friend, and for my sake go out and clear Jud Clark. Put
+up a headstone to him, if you like, a good one. I'll buy it."
+
+"And what will you be doing in the meantime?"
+
+Dick stretched and threw out his arms.
+
+"Me?" he said. "What should I be doing, old man? I'm going home."
+
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+One thing Dick knew must be done and got over with. He would have to see
+Elizabeth and tell her the story. He knew it would do no good, but she
+had a right to the fullest explanation he could give her. She did not
+love him, but it was intolerable that she should hate him.
+
+He meant, however, to make no case for himself. He would have to stand
+on the facts. This thing had happened to him; the storm had come,
+wrought its havoc and passed; he was back, to start again as nearly as
+he could where he had left off. That was all.
+
+He went to the Wheeler house the next night, passing the door twice
+before he turned in and rang the bell, in order that his voice might be
+calm and his demeanor unshaken. But the fact that Micky, waiting on the
+porch, knew him and broke into yelps of happiness and ecstatic wriggling
+almost lost him his self-control.
+
+Walter Wheeler opened the door and admitted him.
+
+"I thought you might come," he said. "Come in."
+
+There was no particular warmth in his voice, but no unfriendliness. He
+stood by gravely while Dick took off his overcoat, and then led the way
+into the library.
+
+"I'd better tell you at once," he said, "that I have advised Elizabeth
+to see you, but that she refuses. I'd much prefer--" He busied himself
+at the fire for a moment. "I'd much prefer to have her see you,
+Livingstone. But--I'll tell you frankly--I don't think it would do much
+good."
+
+He sat down and stared at the fire. Dick remained standing. "She doesn't
+intend to see me at all?" he asked, unsteadily.
+
+"That's rather out of the question, if you intend to remain here. Do
+you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+An unexpected feeling of sympathy for the tall young man on the hearth
+rug stirred in Walter Wheeler's breast.
+
+"I'm sorry, Dick. She apparently reached the breaking point a week or
+two ago. She knew you had been here and hadn't seen her, for one thing."
+He hesitated. "You've heard of her engagement?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I didn't want it," her father said drearily. "I suppose she knows her
+own business, but the thing's done. She sent you a message," he added
+after a pause. "She's glad it's cleared up and I believe you are not to
+allow her to drive you away. She thinks David needs you."
+
+"Thank you. I'll have to stay, as she says."
+
+There was another uncomfortable silence. Then Walter Wheeler burst out:
+
+"Confound it, Dick, I'm sorry. I've fought your battles for months,
+not here, but everywhere. But here's a battle I can't fight. She isn't
+angry. You'll have to get her angle of it. I think it's something like
+this. She had built you up into a sort of superman. And she's--well, I
+suppose purity is the word. She's the essence of purity. Then, Leslie
+told me this to-night, she learned from him that you were back with the
+woman in the case, in New York."
+
+And, as Dick made a gesture:
+
+"There's no use going to him. He was off the beaten track, and he knows
+it. He took a chance, to tell her for her own good. He's fond of her. I
+suppose that was the last straw."
+
+He sat still, a troubled figure, middle-aged and unhandsome, and very
+weary.
+
+"It's a bad business, Dick," he said.
+
+After a time Dick stirred.
+
+"When I first began to remember," he said, "I wanted whisky. I would
+have stolen it, if I couldn't have got it any other way. Then, when I
+got it, I didn't want it. It sickened me. This other was the same sort
+of thing. It's done with."
+
+Wheeler nodded.
+
+"I understand. But she wouldn't, Dick."
+
+"No. I don't suppose she would."
+
+He went away soon after that, back to the quiet house and to David.
+Automatically he turned in at his office, but Reynolds was writing
+there. He went slowly up the stairs.
+
+Ann Sayre was frankly puzzled during the next few days. She had had a
+week or so of serenity and anticipation, and although things were not
+quite as she would have had them, Elizabeth too impassive and even
+Wallie rather restrained in his happiness, she was satisfied. But Dick
+Livingstone's return had somehow changed everything.
+
+It had changed Wallie, too. He was suddenly a man, and not, she
+suspected, a very happy man. He came back one day, for instance, to say
+that he had taken a partnership in a brokerage office, and gave as his
+reason that he was sick of "playing round." She rather thought it was to
+take his mind off something.
+
+A few days after the funeral she sent for Doctor Reynolds. "I caught
+cold at the cemetery," she said, when he had arrived and was seated
+opposite her in her boudoir. "I really did," she protested, as she
+caught his eye. "I suppose everybody is sending for you, to have a
+chance to talk."
+
+"Just about."
+
+"You can't blame us. Particularly, you can't blame me. I've got to know
+something, doctor. Is he going to stay?"
+
+"I think so. Yes."
+
+"Isn't he going to explain anything? He can't expect just to walk back
+into his practise after all these months, and the talk that's been going
+on, and do nothing about it."
+
+"I don't see what his going away has to do with it. He's a good doctor,
+and a hard worker. When I'm gone--"
+
+"You're going, are you?"
+
+"Yes. I may live here, and have an office in the city. I don't care for
+general practise; there's no future in it. I may take a special course
+in nose and throat."
+
+But she was not interested in his plans.
+
+"I want to know something, and only you can tell me. I'm not curious
+like the rest; I think I have a right to know. Has he seen Elizabeth
+Wheeler yet? Talked to her, I mean?"
+
+"I don't know. I'm inclined to think not," he added cautiously.
+
+"You mean that he hasn't?"
+
+"Look here, Mrs. Sayre. You've confided in me, and I know it's important
+to you. I don't know a thing. I'm to stay on until the end of the week,
+and then he intends to take hold. I'm in and out, see him at meals, and
+we've had a little desultory talk. There is no trouble between the two
+families. Mr. Wheeler comes and goes. If you ask me, I think Livingstone
+has simply accepted the situation as he found it."
+
+"He isn't going to explain anything? He'll have to, I think, if he
+expects to practise here. There have been all sorts of stories."
+
+"I don't know, Mrs. Sayre."
+
+"How is Doctor David?" she asked, after a pause.
+
+"Better. It wouldn't surprise me now to see him mend rapidly."
+
+He met Elizabeth on his way down the hill, a strange, bright-eyed
+Elizabeth, carrying her head high and a bit too jauntily, and with a
+sort of hot defiance in her eyes. He drove on, thoughtfully. All this
+turmoil and trouble, anxiety and fear, and all that was left a crushed
+and tragic figure of a girl, and two men in an old house, preparing to
+fight that one of them might regain the place he had lost.
+
+It would be a fight. Reynolds saw the village already divided into two
+camps, a small militant minority, aligned with Dick and David, and a
+waiting, not particularly hostile but intensely curious majority,
+who would demand certain things before Dick's reinstatement in their
+confidence.
+
+Elizabeth Wheeler was an unconscious party to the division. It was, in
+a way, her battle they were fighting. And Elizabeth had gone over to the
+enemy.
+
+Late that afternoon Ann Sayre had her first real talk with Wallie since
+Dick's return. She led him out onto the terrace, her shoulders militant
+and her head high, and faced him there.
+
+"I can see you are not going to talk to me," she said. "So I'll talk to
+you. Has Dick Livingstone's return made any change between Elizabeth and
+you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"She's just the same to you? You must tell me, Wallace. I've been
+building so much."
+
+She realized the change in him then more fully than ever for he faced
+her squarely and without evasion.
+
+"There's no change in her, mother, but I think you and I will both have
+to get used to this: she's not in love with me. She doesn't pretend to
+be."
+
+"Don't tell me it's still that man!"
+
+"I don't know." He took a turn or two about the terrace. "I don't think
+it is, mother. I don't think she cares for anybody, that way, certainly
+not for me. And that's the trouble." He faced her again. "If marrying
+me isn't going to make her happy, I won't hold her to it. You'll have to
+support me in that, mother. I'm a pretty weak sister sometimes."
+
+That appeal touched her as nothing had done for a long time. "I'll help
+all I can, if the need comes," she said, and turned and went heavily
+into the house.
+
+
+
+
+XLVII
+
+David was satisfied. The great love of his life had been given to Dick,
+and now Dick was his again. He grieved for Lucy, but he knew that the
+parting was not for long, and that from whatever high place she looked
+down she would know that. He was satisfied. He looked on his work and
+found it good. There was no trace of weakness nor of vacillation in the
+man who sat across from him at the table, or slammed in and out of the
+house after his old fashion.
+
+But he was not content. At first it was enough to have Dick there, to
+stop in the doorway of his room and see him within, occupied with the
+prosaic business of getting into his clothes or out of them, now
+and then to put a hand on his shoulder, to hear him fussing in the
+laboratory again, and to be called to examine divers and sundry smears
+to which Dick attached impressive importance and more impressive names.
+But behind Dick's surface cheerfulness he knew that he was eating his
+heart out.
+
+And there was nothing to be done. Nothing. Secretly David watched the
+papers for the announcement of Elizabeth's engagement, and each day drew
+a breath of relief when it did not come. And he had done another thing
+secretly, too; he did not tell Dick when her ring came back. Annie had
+brought the box, without a letter, and the incredible cruelty of the
+thing made David furious. He stamped into his office and locked it in a
+drawer, with the definite intention of saving Dick that one additional
+pang at a time when he already had enough to hear.
+
+For things were going very badly. The fight was on.
+
+It was a battle without action. Each side was dug in and entrenched, and
+waiting. It was an engagement where the principals met occasionally the
+neutral ground of the streets, bowed to each other and passed on.
+
+The town was sorry for David and still fond of him, but it resented his
+stiff-necked attitude. It said, in effect, that when he ceased to make
+Dick's enemies his it was willing to be friends. But it said also, to
+each other and behind its hands, that Dick's absence was discreditable
+or it would be explained, and that he had behaved abominably to
+Elizabeth. It would be hanged if it would be friends with him.
+
+It looked away, but it watched. Dick knew that when he passed by on the
+streets it peered at him from behind its curtains, and whispered behind
+his back. Now and then he saw, on his evening walks, that line of cars
+drawn up before houses he had known and frequented which indicated a
+party, but he was never asked. He never told David.
+
+It was only when the taboo touched David that Dick was resentful, and
+then he was inclined to question the wisdom of his return. It hurt
+him, for instance, to see David give up his church, and reading morning
+prayer alone at home on Sunday mornings, and to see his grim silence
+when some of his old friends were mentioned.
+
+Yet on the surface things were much as they had been. David rose early,
+and as he improved in health, read his morning paper in his office
+while he waited for breakfast. Doctor Reynolds had gone, and the desk in
+Dick's office was back where it belonged. In the mornings Mike oiled
+the car in the stable and washed it, his old pipe clutched in his teeth,
+while from the kitchen came the sounds of pans and dishes, and the odor
+of frying sausages. And Dick splashed in the shower, and shaved by the
+mirror with the cracked glass in the bathroom. But he did not sing.
+
+The house was very quiet. Now and then the front door opened, and a
+patient came in, but there was no longer the crowded waiting-room,
+the incessant jangle of the telephone, the odor of pungent drugs and
+antiseptics.
+
+When, shortly before Christmas, Dick looked at the books containing the
+last quarter's accounts, he began to wonder how long they could fight
+their losing battle. He did not mind for himself, but it was unthinkable
+that David should do without, one by one, the small luxuries of his old
+age, his cigars, his long and now errandless rambles behind Nettie.
+
+He began then to think of his property, his for the claiming, and to
+question whether he had not bought his peace at too great a cost to
+David. He knew by that time that it was not fear, but pride, which had
+sent him back empty-handed, the pride of making his own way. And now and
+then, too, he felt a perfectly human desire to let Bassett publish the
+story as his vindication and then snatch David away from them all,
+to some luxurious haven where--that was the point at which he always
+stopped--where David could pine away in homesickness for them!
+
+There was an irony in it that made him laugh hopelessly.
+
+He occupied himself then with ways and means, and sold the car.
+Reynolds, about to be married and busily furnishing a city office,
+bought it, had it repainted a bright blue, and signified to the world at
+large that he was at the Rossiter house every night by leaving it at
+the curb. Sometimes, on long country tramps, Dick saw it outside a
+farmhouse, and knew that the boycott was not limited to the town.
+
+By Christmas, however, he realized that the question of meeting their
+expenses necessitated further economies, and reluctantly at last they
+decided to let Mike go. Dick went out to the stable with a distinct
+sinking of the heart, while David sat in the house, unhappily waiting
+for the thing to be done. But Mike refused to be discharged.
+
+"And is it discharging me you are?" he asked, putting down one of
+David's boots in his angry astonishment. "Well, then, I'm telling you
+you're not."
+
+"We can't pay you any longer, Mike. And now that the car's gone--"
+
+"I'm not thinking about pay. I'm not going, and that's flat. Who'd be
+after doing his boots and all?"
+
+David called him in that night and dismissed him again, this time very
+firmly. Mike said nothing and went out, but the next morning he was
+scrubbing the sidewalk as usual, and after that they gave it up.
+
+Now and then Dick and Elizabeth met on the street, and she bowed to him
+and went on. At those times it seemed incredible that once he had held
+her in his arms, and that she had looked up at him with loving, faithful
+eyes. He suffered so from those occasional meetings that he took to
+watching for her, so as to avoid her. Sometimes he wished she would
+marry Wallace quickly, so he would be obliged to accept what now he knew
+he had not accepted at all.
+
+He had occasional spells of violent anger at her, and of resentment, but
+they died when he checked up, one after the other, the inevitable series
+of events that had led to the catastrophe. But it was all nonsense
+to say that love never died. She had loved him, and there was never
+anything so dead as that love of hers.
+
+He had been saved one thing, however; he had never seen her with Wallie
+Sayre. Then, one day in the country while he trudged afoot to make one
+of his rare professional visits, they went past together in Wallie's
+bright roadster. The sheer shock of it sent him against a fence, staring
+after them with an anger that shook him.
+
+Late in November Elizabeth went away for a visit, and it gave him
+a breathing spell. But the strain was telling on him, and Bassett,
+stopping on his way to dinner at the Wheelers', told him so bluntly.
+
+"You look pretty rotten," he said. "It's no time to go to pieces now,
+when you've put up your fight and won it."
+
+"I'm all right. I haven't been sleeping. That's all."
+
+"How about the business? People coming to their senses?"
+
+"Not very fast," Dick admitted. "Of course it's a little soon."
+
+After dinner at the Wheelers', when Walter Wheeler had gone to a vestry
+meeting, Bassett delivered himself to Margaret of a highly indignant
+harangue on the situation in general.
+
+"That's how I see it," he finished. "He's done a fine thing. A finer
+thing by a damned sight than I'd do, or any of this town. He's given up
+money enough to pay the national debt--or nearly. If he'd come back
+with it, as Judson Clark, they wouldn't have cared a hang for the past.
+They'd have licked his boots. It makes me sick."
+
+He turned on her.
+
+"You too, I think, Mrs. Wheeler. I'm not attacking you on that score;
+it's human nature. But it's the truth."
+
+"Perhaps. I don't know."
+
+"They'll drive him to doing it yet. He came back to make a place for
+himself again, like a man. Not what he had, but what he was. But they'll
+drive him away, mark my words."
+
+Later on, but more gently, he introduced the subject of Elizabeth.
+
+"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--"
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII
+
+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."
+
+"Want you!" he said. "More than anything on this earth."
+
+Bassett was at his desk in the office. It was late, and the night
+editor, seeing him reading the early edition, his feet on his desk,
+carried over his coffee and doughnuts and joined him.
+
+"Sometime," he said, "I'm going to get that Clark story out of you. If
+it wasn't you who turned up the confession, I'll eat it."
+
+Bassett yawned.
+
+"Have it your own way," he said indifferently. "You were shielding
+somebody, weren't you? No? What's the answer?"
+
+Bassett made no reply. He picked up the paper and pointed to an item
+with the end of his pencil.
+
+"Seen this?"
+
+The night editor read it with bewilderment. He glanced up.
+
+"What's that got to do with the Clark case?"
+
+"Nothing. Nice people, though. Know them both."
+
+When the night editor walked away, rather affronted, Bassett took up the
+paper and reread the paragraph.
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. Walter Wheeler, of Haverly, announce the engagement of
+their daughter, Elizabeth, to Doctor Richard Livingstone."
+
+He sat for a long time staring at it.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Breaking Point, by Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
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