Part 108

“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.”