The Breaking Point (18 page)

"How did you sleep last night?" he said, in a highly professional and
very distinct voice. Then he kissed her.

"Very badly, doctor," she said, also very clearly, and whispered, "I lay
awake and thought about you, dear."

"I'd better give you this sleeping powder." Oh, frightfully
professional, but the powder turned out to be another kiss. It was a
wonderful game.

When she slipped out into the hall she had to stop and smooth her hair,
before she went to Lucy's tidy sitting-room.

It was Jim Wheeler's turn to take up the shuttle. A girl met in
some casual fashion; his own youth and the urge of it, perhaps the
unconscious family indulgence of an only son—and Jim wove his bit and
passed on.

There had been mild contention in the Wheeler family during all the
spring. Looking out from his quiet windows Walter Wheeler saw the young
world going by a-wheel, and going fast. Much that legitimately belonged
to it, and much that did not in the laxness of the new code, he laid to
the automobile. And doggedly he refused to buy one.

"We can always get a taxicab," was his imperturbable answer to Jim. "I
pay pretty good-sized taxi bills without unpleasant discussion. I know
you pretty well too, Jim. Better than you know yourself. And if you had
a car, you'd try your best to break your neck in it."

Now and then Jim got a car, however. Sometimes he rented one, sometimes
he cajoled Nina into lending him hers.

"A fellow looks a fool without one," he would say to her. "Girls expect
to be taken out. It's part of the game."

And Nina, always reached by that argument of how things looked, now and
then reluctantly acquiesced. But a night or two after David and Lucy had
started for the seashore Nina came in like a whirlwind, and routed the
family peace immediately.

"Father," she said, "you just must speak to Jim. He's taken our car
twice at night without asking for it, and last night he broke a spring.
Les is simply crazy."

"Taken your car!" Mrs. Wheeler exclaimed.

"Yes. I hate telling on him, but I spoke to him after the first time,
and he did it anyhow."

Mrs. Wheeler glanced at her husband uneasily. She often felt he was too
severe with Jim.

"Don't worry," he said grimly. "He'll not do it again."

"If we only had a car of our own—" Mrs. Wheeler protested.

"You know what I think about that, mother. I'm not going to have him
joy-riding over the country, breaking his neck and getting into trouble.
I've seen him driving Wallace Sayre's car, and he drives like a fool or
a madman."

It was an old dispute and a bitter one. Mr. Wheeler got up, whistled for
the dog, and went out. His wife turned on Nina.

"I wish you wouldn't bring these things to your father, Nina," she said.
"He's been very nervous lately, and he isn't always fair to Jim."

"Well, it's time Jim was fair to Leslie," Nina said, with family
frankness. "I'll tell you something, mother. Jim has a girl somewhere,
in town probably. He takes her driving. I found a glove in the car. And
he must be crazy about her, or he'd never do what he's done."

"Do you know who it is?"

"No. Somebody's he's ashamed of, probably, or he wouldn't be so
clandestine about it."

"Nina!"

"Well, it looks like it. Jim's a man, mother. He's not a little boy.
He'll go through his shady period, like the rest."

That night it was Mrs. Wheeler's turn to lie awake. Again and again she
went over Nina's words, and her troubled mind found a basis in fact
for them. Jim had been getting money from her, to supplement his small
salary; he had been going out a great deal at night, and returning very
late; once or twice, in the morning, he had looked ill and his eyes had
been bloodshot, as though he had been drinking.

Anxiety gripped her. There were so many temptations for young men, so
many who waited to waylay them. A girl. Not a good girl, perhaps.

She raised herself on her elbow and looked at her sleeping husband. Men
were like that; they begot children and then forgot them. They never
looked ahead or worried. They were taken up with business, and always
they forgot that once they too had been young and liable to temptation.

She got up, some time later, and tiptoed to the door of Jim's room.
Inside she could hear his heavy, regular breathing. Her boy. Her only
son.

She went back and crawled carefully into the bed.

There was an acrimonious argument between Jim and his father the next
morning, and Jim slammed out of the house, leaving chaos behind him. It
was then that Elizabeth learned that her father was going away. He said:

"Maybe I'm wrong, mother. I don't know. Perhaps, when I come back,
I'll look around for a car. I don't want him driven to doing underhand
things."

"Are you going away?" Elizabeth asked, surprised.

It appeared that he was. More than that, that he was going West with
Dick. It was all arranged and nobody had told her anything about it.

She was hurt and a trifle offended, and she cried a little about it.
Yet, as Dick explained to her later that day, it was simple enough. Her
father needed a rest, and besides, it was right that he should know all
about Dick's life before he came to Haverly.

"He's going to make me a present of something highly valuable, you
know."

"But it looks as though he didn't trust you!"

"He's being very polite about it; but, of course, in his eyes I'm a
common thief, stealing—"

She would not let him go on.

A certain immaturity, the blind confidence of youth in those it
loves, explains Elizabeth's docility at that time. But underneath her
submission that day was a growing uneasiness, fiercely suppressed.
Buried deep, the battle between absolute trust and fear was beginning, a
battle which was so rapidly to mature her.

Nina, shrewd and suspicious, sensed something of nervous strain in her
when she came in, later that day, to borrow a hat.

"Look here, Elizabeth," she began, "I want to talk to you. Are you going
to live in this—this hole all your life?"

"Hole nothing," Elizabeth said, hotly. "Really, Nina, I do think you
might be more careful of what you say."

"Oh, it's a dear old hole," Nina said negligently. "But hole it is,
nevertheless. Why in the world mother don't manage her servants—but no
matter about that now. Elizabeth, there's a lot of talk about you and
Dick Livingstone, and it makes me furious. When I think that you can
have Wallie Sayre by lifting your finger—"

"And that I don't intend to lift my finger," Elizabeth interrupted.

"Then you're a fool. And it is Dick Livingstone!"

"It is, Nina."

Nina's ambitious soul was harrowed.

"That stodgy old house," she said, "and two old people! A general
house-work girl, and you cooking on her Thursdays out! I wish you joy of
it."

"I wonder," Elizabeth said calmly, "whether it ever occurs to you that
I may put love above houses and servants? Or that my life is my own, to
live exactly as I please? Because that is what I intend to do."

Nina rose angrily.

"Thanks," she said. "I wish you joy of it." And went out, slamming the
door behind her.

Then, with only a day or so remaining before Dick's departure, and
Jim's hand already reaching for the shuttle, Elizabeth found herself
the object of certain unmistakable advances from Mrs. Sayre herself, and
that at a rose luncheon at the house on the hill.

The talk about Dick and Elizabeth had been slow in reaching the house
on the hill. When it came, via a little group on the terrace after the
luncheon, Mrs. Sayre was upset and angry and inclined to blame Wallie.
Everything that he wanted had come to him, all his life, and he did not
know how to go after things. He had sat by, and let this shabby-genteel
doctor, years older than the girl, walk away with her.

Not that she gave up entirely. She knew the town, and its tendency
toward over-statement. And so she made a desperate attempt, that
afternoon, to tempt Elizabeth. She took her through the greenhouses, and
then through the upper floors of the house. She showed her pictures
of their boat at Miami, and of the house at Marblehead. Elizabeth was
politely interested and completely unresponsive.

"When you think," Mrs. Sayre said at last, "that Wallie will have to
assume a great many burdens one of these days, you can understand how
anxious I am to have him marry the right sort of girl."

She thought Elizabeth flushed slightly.

"I am sure he will, Mrs. Sayre."

Mrs. Sayre tried a new direction.

"He will have all I have, my dear, and it is a great responsibility.
Used properly, money can be an agent of great good. Wallie's wife can be
a power, if she so chooses. She can look after the poor. I have a long
list of pensioners, but I am too old to add personal service."

"That would be wonderful," Elizabeth said gravely. For a moment she
wished Dick were rich. There was so much to be done with money, and
how well he would know how to do it. She was thoughtful on the way
downstairs, and Mrs. Sayre felt some small satisfaction. Now if Wallie
would only do his part—

It was that night that Jim brought the tragedy on the Wheeler house that
was to lie heavy on it for many a day.

There had been a little dinner, one of those small informal affairs
where Mrs. Wheeler, having found in the market the first of the broiling
chickens and some fine green peas, bought them first and then sat down
to the telephone to invite her friends. Mr. Oglethorpe, the clergyman,
and his wife accepted cheerfully; Harrison Miller, resignedly. Then Mrs.
Wheeler drew a long, resolute breath and invited Mrs. Sayre. When that
lady accepted with alacrity Mrs. Wheeler hastily revised her menu,
telephoned the florist for flowers, and spent a long half-hour with
Annie over plates and finger bowls.

Jim was not coming home, and Elizabeth was dining with Nina. Mrs.
Wheeler bustled about the house contentedly. Everything was going well,
after all. Before long there would be a car, and Jim would spend more
time at home. Nina and Leslie were happy again. And Elizabeth—not a
good match, perhaps, but a marriage for love, if ever there was one.

She sat at the foot of her table that night, rather too watchful of
Annie, but supremely content. She had herself scoured the loving cup
to the last degree of brightness and it stood, full of flowers, in the
center of the cloth.

At Nina's was a smaller but similar group. All over the village at that
time in the evening were similar groups, gathered around flowers and
candles; neatly served, cheerful and undramatic groups, with the house
doors closed and dogs waiting patiently outside in the long spring
twilight.

Elizabeth was watching Nina. Just so, she was deciding, would she some
day preside at her own board. Perhaps before so very long, too. A little
separation, letters to watch for and answer, and then—

The telephone rang, and Leslie answered it. He did not come back;
instead they heard the house door close, and soon after the rumble of
the car as it left the garage. It stopped at the door, and Leslie came
in.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but I guess Elizabeth will have to go home. You'd
better come along, Nina."

"What is it? Is somebody sick?" Elizabeth gasped.

"Jim's been in an automobile accident. Steady now, Elizabeth! He's hurt,
but he's going to be all right."

The Wheeler house, when they got there, was brightly lighted. Annie was
crying in the hall, and in the living-room Mrs. Sayre stood alone, a
strange figure in a gaudy dress, but with her face strong and calm.

"They've gone to the hospital in my car," she said. "They'll be there
now any minute, and Mr. Oglethorpe will telephone at once. You are to
wait before starting in."

They all knew what that meant. It might be too late to start in. Nina
was crying hysterically, but Elizabeth could not cry. She stood dry-eyed
by the telephone, listening to Mrs. Sayre and Leslie, but hardly hearing
them. They had got Dick Livingstone and he had gone on in. Mrs. Sayre
was afraid it had been one of Wallie's cars. She had begged Wallie to
tell Jim to be careful in it. It had too much speed.

The telephone rang and Leslie took the receiver and pushed Elizabeth
gently aside. He listened for a moment.

"Very well," he said. Then he hung up and stood still before he turned
around:

"It isn't very good news," he said. "I wish I could—Elizabeth!"

Elizabeth had crumpled up in a small heap on the floor.

All through the long night that followed, with the movement of feet
through the halls, with her mother's door closing and the ghastly
silence that followed it, with the dawn that came through the windows,
the dawn that to Jim meant not a new day, but a new life beyond their
living touch, all through the night Elizabeth was aware of two figures
that came and went. One was Dick, quiet, tender and watchful. And one
was of a heavy woman in a gaudy dress, her face old and weary in the
morning light, who tended her with gentle hands.

She fell asleep as the light was brightening in the East, with Dick
holding her hands and kneeling on the floor beside her bed.

It was not until the next day that they knew that Jim had not been
alone. A girl who was with him had been pinned under the car and had
died instantly.

Jim had woven his bit in the pattern and passed on. The girl was
negligible; she was, she had been. That was all. But Jim's death added
the last element to the impending catastrophe. It sent Dick West alone.

For several days after his visit to the Livingstone ranch Louis Bassett
made no move to go to the cabin. He wandered around the town, made
promiscuous acquaintances and led up, in careful conversations with such
older residents as he could find, to the Clark and Livingstone families.
Of the latter he learned nothing; of the former not much that he had not
known before.