The Breaking Point - Page 263/275

"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.