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.