The Breaking Point - Page 266/275

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.