Part 86

He was eager to hear of what had occurred in the long interval between them, and good, bad and indifferent Dick told him. But he limited himself to events, and did not touch on his mental battles, and David saw and noted it. The real story, he knew, lay there, but it was not time for it. After a while he raised himself in his bed.

“Call Lucy, Dick.”

When she had come, a strangely younger Lucy, her withered cheeks flushed with exercise and excitement, he said:

“Bring me the copy of the statement I made to Harrison Miller, Lucy.”

She brought it, patted Dick's shoulder, and went away. David held out the paper.

“Read it slowly, boy,” he said. “It is my justification, and God willing, it may help you. The letter is from my brother, Henry. Read that, too.”

Lucy, having got Dick's room in readiness, sat down in it to await his coming. Downstairs, in the warming oven, was his supper. His bed, with the best blankets, was turned down and ready. His dressing-gown and slippers were in their old accustomed place. She drew a long breath.

Below, Doctor Reynolds came in quietly and stood listening. The house was very still, and he decided that his news, which was after all no news, could wait. He went into the office and got out a sheet of note-paper, with his name at the top, and began his nightly letter to Clare Rossiter.

“My darling,” it commenced.

Above, David lay in his bed and Dick read the papers in his hand. And as he read them David watched him. Not once, since Dick's entrance, had he mentioned Elizabeth. David lay still and pondered that. There was something wrong about it. This was Dick, their own Dick; no shadowy ghost of the past, but Dick himself. True, an older Dick, strangely haggard and with gray running in the brown of his hair, but still Dick; the Dick whose eyes had lighted at the sight of a girl, who had shamelessly persisted in holding her hand at that last dinner, who had almost idolatrously loved her.

And he had not mentioned her name.

When he had finished the reading Dick sat for a moment with the papers in his hand, thinking.

“I see,” he said finally. “Of course, it's possible. Good God, if I could only think it.”

“It's the answer,” David said stubbornly. “He was prowling around, and fired through the window. Donaldson made the statement at the inquest that some one had been seen on the place, and that he notified you that night after dinner. He'd put guards around the place.”

“It gives me a fighting chance, anyhow.” Dick got up and threw back his shoulders. “That's all I want. A chance to fight. I know this. I hated Lucas--he was a poor thing and you know what he did to me. But I never thought of killing him. That wouldn't have helped matters. It was too late.”

“What about--that?” David asked, not looking at him. When Dick did not immediately reply David glanced at him, to find his face set and pained.

“Perhaps we'd better not go into that now,” David said hastily. “It's natural that the readjustments will take time.”

“We'll have to go into it. It's the hardest thing I have to face.”

“It's not dead, then?”

“No,” Dick said slowly. “It's not dead, David. And I'd better bring it into the open. I've fought it to the limit by myself. It's the one thing that seems to have survived the shipwreck. I can't argue it down or think it down.”

“Maybe, if you see Elizabeth--”

“I'd break her heart, that's all.”

He tried to make David understand. He told in its sordid details his failure to kill it, his attempts to sink memory and conscience in Chicago and their failure, the continued remoteness of Elizabeth and what seemed to him the flesh and blood reality of the other woman. That she was yesterday, and Elizabeth was long ago.

“I can't argue it down,” he finished. “I've tried to, desperately. It's a--I think it's a wicked thing, in a way. And God knows all she ever got out of it was suffering. She must loathe the thought of me.”

David was compelled to let it rest there. He found that Dick was doggedly determined to see Beverly Carlysle. After that, he didn't know. No man wanted to surrender himself for trial, unless he was sure himself of whether he was innocent or guilty. If there was a reasonable doubt--but what did it matter one way or the other? His place was gone, as he'd made it, gone if he was cleared, gone if he was convicted.

“I can't come back, David. They wouldn't have me.”

After a silence he asked:

“How much is known here? What does Elizabeth know?”