Part 94

He glanced away.

“Possibly. But we'll be rushing to get through. There's a lot to do. Amazing how business piles up when you find you're going anywhere. There won't be much time to play.”

She sat before the mirror in her small dressing-room that night, ostensibly preparing for bed but actually taking stock of her situation. She had done all she could, had been faithful and loyal, had made his home attractive, had catered to his tastes and tried to like his friends, had met his needs and responded to them. And now, this. She was bewildered and frightened. How did women hold their husbands?

She found him in bed and unmistakably asleep when she went into the bedroom. Man-like, having got his way, he was not troubled by doubts or introspection. It was done.

He was lying on his back, with his mouth open. She felt a sudden and violent repugnance to getting into the bed beside him. Sometime in the night he would turn over and throwing his arm about her, hold her close in his sleep; and it would be purely automatic, the mechanical result of habit.

She lay on the edge of the bed and thought things over.

He had his good qualities. He was kind and affectionate to her family. He had been wonderful when Jim died, and he loved Elizabeth dearly. He was generous and open-handed. He was handsome, too, in a big, heavy way.

She began to find excuses for him. Men were always a child-like prey to some women. They were vain, and especially they were sex-vain; good looking men were a target for every sort of advance. She transferred her loathing of him to the woman she suspected of luring him away from her, and lay for hours hating her.

She saw Leslie off in the morning with a perfunctory good-bye while cold anger and suspicion seethed in her. And later she put on her hat and went home to lay the situation before her mother. Mrs. Wheeler was out, however, and she found only Elizabeth sewing by her window.

Nina threw her hat on the bed and sat down dispiritedly.

“I suppose there's no news?” she asked.

Nina watched her. She was out of patience with Elizabeth, exasperated with the world.

“Are you going to go on like this all your life?” she demanded. “Sitting by a window, waiting? For a man who ran away from you?”

“That's not true, and you know it.”

“They're all alike,” Nina declared recklessly. “They go along well enough, and they are all for virtue and for the home and fireside stuff, until some woman comes their way. I ought to know.”

Elizabeth looked up quickly.

“Why, Nina!” she said. “You don't mean--”

“He went to New York this morning. He pretended to be going on business, but he's actually gone to see that actress. He's been mad about her for months.”

“I don't believe it.”

“Oh, wake up,” Nina said impatiently. “The world isn't made up of good, kind, virtuous people. It's rotten. And men are all alike. Dick Livingstone and Les and all the rest--tarred with the same stick. As long as there are women like this Carlysle creature they'll fall for them. And you and I can sit at home and chew our nails and plan to keep them by us. And we can't do it.”

In spite of herself a little question of doubt crept that day into Elizabeth's mind. She had always known that they had not told her all the truth; that the benevolent conspiracy to protect Dick extended even to her. But she had never thought that it might include a woman. Once there, the very humility of her love for Dick was an element in favor of the idea. She had never been good enough, or wise or clever enough, for him. She was too small and unimportant to be really vital.

Dismissing the thought did no good. It came back. But because she was a healthy-minded and practical person she took the one course she could think of, and put the question that night to her father, when he came back from seeing David.

David had sent for him early in the evening. All day he had thought over the situation between Dick and Elizabeth, with growing pain and uneasiness. He had not spoken of it to Lucy, or to Harrison Miller; he knew that they would not understand, and that Lucy would suffer. She was bewildered enough by Dick's departure.

At noon he had insisted on getting up and being helped into his trousers. So clad he felt more of a man and better able to cope with things, although his satisfaction in them was somewhat modified by the knowledge of two safety-pins at the sides, to take up their superfluous girth at the waistband.

But even the sense of being clothed as a man again did not make it easier to say to Walter Wheeler what must be said.

Walter took the news of Dick's return with a visible brightening. It was as though, out of the wreckage of his middle years, he saw that there was now some salvage, but he was grave and inarticulate over it, wrung David's hand and only said:

“Thank God for it, David.” And after a pause: “Was he all right? He remembered everything?”

But something strange in the situation began to obtrude itself into his mind. Dick had come back twenty-four hours ago. Last night. And all this time--