The Breaking Point - Page 255/275

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."