The week that followed was an anxious one. David's physical condition slowly improved. The slight thickness was gone from his speech, and he sipped resignedly at the broths Lucy or the nurse brought at regular intervals. Over the entire house there hung all day the odor of stewing chicken or of beef tea in the making, and above the doorbell was a white card which said: “Don't ring. Walk in.”
As it happened, no one in the old house had seen Maggie Donaldson's confession in the newspaper. Lucy was saved that anxiety, at least. Appearing, as it did, the morning after David's stroke, it came in with the morning milk, lay about unnoticed, and passed out again, to start a fire or line a pantry shelf. Harrison Miller, next door, read it over his coffee. Walter Wheeler in the eight-thirty train glanced at it and glanced away. Nina Ward read it in bed. And that was all.
There came to the house a steady procession of inquirers and bearers of small tribute, flowers and jellies mostly, but other things also. A table in David's room held a steadily growing number of bedroom slippers, and Mrs. Morgan had been seen buying soles for still others. David, propped up in his bed, would cheer a little at these votive offerings, and then relapse again into the heavy troubled silence that worried Dick and frightened Lucy Crosby. Something had happened, she was sure. Something connected with Dick. She watched David when Dick was in the room, and she saw that his eyes followed the younger man with something very like terror.
And for the first time since he had walked into the house that night so long ago, followed by the tall young man for whose coming a letter had prepared her, she felt that David had withdrawn himself from her. She went about her daily tasks a little hurt, and waited for him to choose his own time. But, as the days went on, she saw that whatever this new thing might be, he meant to fight it out alone, and that the fighting it out alone was bad for him. He improved very slowly.
She wondered, sometimes, if it was after all because of Dick's growing interest in Elizabeth Wheeler. She knew that he was seeing her daily, although he was too busy now for more than a hasty call. She felt that she could even tell when he had seen her; he would come in, glowing and almost exalted, and, as if to make up for the moments stolen from David, would leap up the stairs two at a time and burst into the invalid's room like a cheerful cyclone. Wasn't it possible that David had begun to feel as she did, that the girl was entitled to a clean slate before she pledged herself to Dick? And the slate—poor Dick!—could never be cleaned.
Then, one day, David astonished them both. He was propped up in his bed, and he had demanded a cigar, and been very gently but firmly refused. He had been rather sulky about it, and Dick had been attempting to rally him into better humor when he said suddenly:
“I've had time to think things over, Dick. I haven't been fair to you. You're thrown away here. Besides—” he hesitated. Then: “We might as well face it. The day of the general practitioner has gone.”
“I don't believe it,” Dick said stoutly. “Maybe we are only signposts to point the way to the other fellows, but the world will always need signposts.”
“What I've been thinking of,” David pursued his own train of thought, “is this: I want you to go to Johns Hopkins and take up the special work you've been wanting to do. I'll be up soon and—”
“Call the nurse, Aunt Lucy,” said Dick. “He's raving.”
“Not at all,” David retorted testily. “I've told you. This whole town only comes here now to be told what specialist to go to, and you know it.”
“I don't know anything of the sort.”
“If you don't, it's because you won't face the facts.” Dick chuckled, and threw an arm over David's shoulder, “You old hypocrite!” he said. “You're trying to get rid of me, for some reason. Don't tell me you're going to get married!”
But David did not smile. Lucy, watching him from her post by the window, saw his face and felt a spasm of fear. At the most, she had feared a mental conflict in David. Now she saw that it might be something infinitely worse, something impending and immediate. She could hardly reply when Dick appealed to her.
“Are you going to let him get rid of me like this, Aunt Lucy?” he demanded. “Sentenced to Johns Hopkins, like Napoleon to St. Helena! Are you with me, or forninst me?”
“I don't know, Dick,” she said, with her eyes on David. “If it's for your good—”
She went out after a time, leaving them at it hammer and tongs. David was vanquished in the end, but Dick, going down to the office later on, was puzzled. Somehow it was borne in on him that behind David's insistence was a reason, unspoken but urgent, and the only reason that occurred to him as possible was that David did not, after all, want him to marry Elizabeth Wheeler. He put the matter to the test that night, wandering in in dressing-gown and slippers, as was his custom before going to bed, for a brief chat. The nurse was downstairs, and Dick moved about the room restlessly. Then he stopped and stood by the bed, looking down.
“A few nights ago, David, I asked you if you thought it would be right for me to marry; if my situation justified it, and if to your knowledge there was any other reason why I could not or should not. You said there was not.”
“There is no reason, of course. If she'll have you.”
“I don't know that. I know that whether she will or not is a pretty vital matter to me, David.”
David nodded, silently.
“But now you want me to go away. To leave her. You're rather urgent about it. And I feel—well I begin to think you have a reason for it.”
David clenched his hands under the bed-clothing, but he returned Dick's gaze steadily.
“She's a good girl,” he said. “But she's entitled to more than you can give her, the way things are.”
“That is presupposing that she cares for me. I haven't an idea that she does. That she may, in time—Then, that's the reason for this Johns Hopkins thing, is it?”
“That's the reason,” David said stoutly. “She would wait for you. She's that sort. I've known her all her life. She's as steady as a rock. But she's been brought up to have a lot of things. Walter Wheeler is well off. You do as I want you to; pack your things and go to Baltimore. Bring Reynolds down here to look after the work until I'm around again.”
But Dick evaded the direct issue thus opened and followed another line of thought.
“Of course you understand,” he observed, after a renewal of his restless pacing, “that I've got to tell her my situation first. I don't need to tell you that I funk doing it, but it's got to be done.”
“Don't be a fool,” David said querulously. “You'll set a lot of women cackling, and what they don't know they'll invent. I know 'em.”
“Only herself and her family.”
“Why?”
“Because they have a right to know it.”
But when he saw David formulating a further protest he dropped the subject.
“I'll not do it until we've gone into it together,” he promised. “There's plenty of time. You settle down now and get ready for sleep.”
When the nurse came in at eleven o'clock she found Dick gone and David, very still, with his face to the wall.
It was the end of May before David began to move about his upper room. The trees along the shaded streets had burst into full leaf by that time, and Mike was enjoying that gardener's interval of paradise when flowers grow faster than the weeds among them. Harrison Miller, having rolled his lawn through all of April, was heard abroad in the early mornings with the lawn mower or hoe in hand was to be seen behind his house in his vegetable patch.
Cars rolled through the streets, the rear seats laden with blossoming loot from the country lanes, and the Wheeler dog was again burying bones in the soft warm ground under the hedge.
Elizabeth Wheeler was very happy. Her look of expectant waiting, once vague, had crystallized now into definite form. She was waiting, timidly and shyly but with infinite content. In time, everything would come. And in the meantime there was to-day, and some time to-day a shabby car would stop at the door, and there would be five minutes, or ten. And then Dick would have to hurry to work, or back to David. After that, of course, to-day was over, but there would always be to-morrow.
Now and then, at choir practice or at service, she saw Clare Rossiter. But Clare was very cool to her, and never on any account sought her, or spoke to her alone. She was rather unhappy about Clare, when she remembered her. Because it must be so terrible to care for a man who only said, when one spoke of Clare, “Oh, the tall blonde girl?”
Once or twice, too, she had found Clare's eyes on her, and they were hostile eyes. It was almost as though they said: “I hate you because you know. But don't dare to pity me.”
Yet, somehow, Elizabeth found herself not entirely believing that Clare's passion was real. Because the real thing you hid with all your might, at least until you were sure it was wanted. After that, of course, you could be so proud of it that you might become utterly shameless. She was afraid sometimes that she was the sort to be utterly shameless. Yet, for all her halcyon hours, there were little things that worried her. Wallie Sayre, for instance, always having to be kept from saying things she didn't want to hear. And Nina. She wasn't sure that Nina was entirely happy. And, of course, there was Jim.
Jim was difficult. Sometimes he was a man, and then again he was a boy, and one never knew just which he was going to be. He was too old for discipline and too young to manage himself. He was spending almost all his evenings away from home now, and her mother always drew an inaudible sigh when he was spoken of.
Elizabeth had waited up for him one night, only a short time before, and beckoning him into her room, had talked to him severely.
“You ought to be ashamed, Jim,” she said. “You're simply worrying mother sick.”
“Well, why?” he demanded defiantly. “I'm old enough to take care of myself.”
“You ought to be taking care of her, too.”
He had looked rather crestfallen at that, and before he went out he offered a half-sheepish explanation.
“I'd tell them where I go,” he said, “but you'd think a pool room was on the direct road to hell. Take to-night, now. I can't tell them about it, but it was all right. I met Wallie Sayre and Leslie at the club before dinner, and we got a fourth and played bridge. Only half a cent a point. I swear we were going on playing, but somebody brought in a chap named Gregory for a cocktail. He turned out to be a brother of Beverly Carlysle, the actress, and he took us around to the theater and gave us a box. Not a thing wrong with it, was there?”
“Where did you go from there?” she persisted inexorably. “It's half past one.”
“Went around and met her. She's wonderful, Elizabeth. But do you know what would happen if I told them? They'd have a fit.”
She felt rather helpless, because she knew he was right from his own standpoint.
“I know. I'm surprised at Les, Jim.”
“Oh, Les! He just trailed along. He's all right.”
She kissed him and he went out, leaving her to lie awake for a long time. She would have had all her world happy those days, and all her world good. She didn't want anybody's bread and butter spilled on the carpet.
So the days went on, and the web slowly wove itself into its complicated pattern: Bassett speeding West, and David in his quiet room; Jim and Leslie Ward seeking amusement, and finding it in the littered dressing-room of a woman star at a local theater; Clare Rossiter brooding, and the little question being whispered behind hands, figuratively, of course—the village was entirely well-bred; Gregory calling round to see Bassett, and turning away with the information that he had gone away for an indefinite time; and Maggie Donaldson, lying in the cemetery at the foot of the mountains outside Norada, having shriven her soul to the limit of her strength so that she might face her Maker.
Out of all of them it was Clare Rossiter who made the first conscious move of the shuttle; Clare, affronted and not a little malicious, but perhaps still dramatizing herself, this time as the friend who feels forced to carry bad tidings. Behind even that, however, was an unconscious desire to see Dick again, and this time so to impress herself on him that never again could he pass her in the street unnoticed.
On the day, then, that David first sat up in bed Clare went to the house and took her place in the waiting-room. She was dressed with extreme care, and she carried a parasol. With it, while she waited, she drilled small nervous indentations in the old office carpet, and formulated her line of action.
Nevertheless she found it hard to begin.
“I don't want to keep you, if you're busy,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “If you are in a hurry—”
“This is my business,” he said patiently. And waited.
“I wonder if you are going to understand me, when I do begin?”
“You sound alarmingly ominous.” He smiled at her, and she had a moment of panic. “You don't look like a young lady with anything eating at her damask cheek, or however it goes.”
“Doctor Livingstone,” she said suddenly, “people are saying something about you that you ought to know.”
He stared at her, amazed and incredulous.
“About me? What can they say? That's absurd.”
“I felt you ought to know. Of course I don't believe it. Not for a moment. But you know what this town is.”
“I know it's a very good town,” he said steadily. “However, let's have it. I daresay it is not very serious.”
She was uneasy enough by that time, and rather frightened when she had finished. For he sat, quiet and rather pale, not looking at her at all, but gazing fixedly at an old daguerreotype of David that stood on his desk. One that Lucy had shown him one day and which he had preempted; David at the age of eight, in a small black velvet suit and with very thin legs.
“I thought you ought to know,” she justified herself, nervously.
Dick got up.
“Yes,” he said. “I ought to know, of course. Thank you.”
When she had gone he went back and stood before the picture again. From Clare's first words he had had a stricken conviction that the thing was true; that, as Mrs. Cook Morgan's visitor from Wyoming had insisted, Henry Livingstone had never married, never had a son. He stood and gazed at the picture. His world had collapsed about him, but he was steady and very erect.
“David, David!” he thought. “Why did you do it? And what am I? And who?”
Characteristically his first thought after that was of David himself. Whatever David had done, his motive had been right. He would have to start with that. If David had built for him a false identity it was because there was a necessity for it. Something shameful, something he was to be taken away from. Wasn't it probable that David had heard the gossip, and had then collapsed? Wasn't the fear that he himself would hear it behind David's insistence that he go to Baltimore?
His thoughts flew to Elizabeth. Everything was changed now, as to Elizabeth. He would have to be very certain of that past of his before he could tell her that he loved her, and he had a sense of immediate helplessness. He could not go to David, as things were. To Lucy?
Probably he would have gone to Lucy at once, but the telephone rang. He answered it, got his hat and bag and went out to the car. Years with David had made automatic the subordination of self to the demands of the practice.
At half past six Lucy heard him come in and go into his office. When he did not immediately reappear and take his flying run up the stairs to David's room, she stood outside the office door and listened. She had a premonition of something wrong, something of the truth, perhaps. Anyhow, she tapped at the door and opened it, to find him sitting very quietly at his desk with his head in his hands.
“Dick!” she exclaimed. “Is anything wrong?”
“I have a headache,” he said. He looked at his watch and got up. “I'll take a look at David, and then we'll have dinner. I didn't know it was so late.”
But when she had gone out he did not immediately move. He had been going over again, painfully and carefully, the things that puzzled him, that he had accepted before without dispute. David and Lucy's reluctance to discuss his father; the long days in the cabin, with David helping him to reconstruct his past; the spring, and that slow progress which now he felt, somehow, had been an escape.
He ate very little dinner, and Lucy's sense of dread increased. When, after the meal, she took refuge in her sitting-room on the lower floor and picked up her knitting, it was with a conviction that it was only a temporary reprieve. She did not know from what.
She heard him, some time later, coming down from David's room. But he did not turn into his office. Instead, he came on to her door, stood for a moment like a man undecided, then came in. She did not look up, even when very gently he took her knitting from her and laid it on the table.
“Aunt Lucy.”
“Yes, Dick.”
“Don't you think we'd better have a talk?”
“What about?” she asked, with her heart hammering.
“About me.” He stood above her, and looked down, still with the tenderness with which he always regarded her, but with resolution in his very attitude. “First of all, I'll tell you something. Then I'll ask you to tell me all you can.”
She yearned over him as he told her, for all her terror. His voice, for all its steadiness, was strained.
“I have felt for some time,” he finished, “that you and David were keeping something from me. I think, now, that this is what it was. Of course, you realize that I shall have to know.”
“Dick! Dick!” was all she could say.
“I was about,” he went on, with his almost terrible steadiness, “to ask a girl to take my name. I want to know if I have a name to offer her. I have, you see, only two alternatives to believe about myself. Either I am Henry Livingstone's illegitimate son, and in that case I have no right to my name, or to offer it to any one, or I am—”
He made a despairing gesture.
“—or I am some one else, some one who was smuggled out of the mountains and given an identity that makes him a living lie.”
Always she had known that this might come some time, but always too she had seen David bearing the brunt of it. He should bear it. It was not of her doing or of her approving. For years the danger of discovery had hung over her like a cloud.
“Do you know which?” he persisted.
“Yes, Dick.”
“Would you have the unbelievable cruelty not to tell me?”
She got up, a taut little figure with a dignity born of her fear and of her love for him.
“I shall not betray David's confidence,” she said. “Long ago I warned him that this time would come. I was never in favor of keeping you in ignorance. But it is David's problem, and I cannot take the responsibility of telling you.”
He knew her determination and her obstinate loyalty. But he was fairly desperate.
“You know that if you don't tell me, I shall go to David?”
“If you go now you will kill him.”
“It's as bad as that, is it?” he asked grimly. “Then there is something shameful behind it, is there?”
“No, no, Dick. Not that. And I want you, always, to remember this. What David did was out of love for you. He has made many sacrifices for you. First he saved your life, and then he made you what you are. And he has had a great pride in it. Don't destroy his work of years.”
Her voice broke and she turned to go out, her chin quivering, but half way to the door he called to her.
“Aunt Lucy—” he said gently.
She heard him behind her, felt his strong arms as he turned her about. He drew her to him and stooping, kissed her cheek.
“You're right,” he said. “Always right. I'll not worry him with it. My word of honor. When the time comes he'll tell me, and until it comes, I'll wait. And I love you both. Don't ever forget that.”
He kissed her again and let her go.
But long after David had put down his prayer-book that night, and after the nurse had rustled down the stairs to the night supper on the dining-room table, Lucy lay awake and listened to Dick's slow pacing of his bedroom floor.
He was very gentle with David from that time on, and tried to return to his old light-hearted ways. On the day David was to have his first broiled sweetbread he caught the nurse outside, borrowed her cap and apron and carried in the tray himself.
“I hope your food is to your taste, Doctor David,” he said, in a high falsetto which set the nurse giggling in the hall. “I may not be much of a nurse, but I can cook.”
Even Lucy was deceived at times. He went his customary round, sent out the monthly bills, opened and answered David's mail, bore the double burden of David's work and his own ungrudgingly, but off guard he was grave and abstracted. He began to look very thin, too, and Lucy often heard him pacing the floor at night. She thought that he seldom or never went to the Wheelers'.
And so passed the tenth day of David's illness, with the smile on Elizabeth's face growing a trifle fixed as three days went by without the shabby car rattling to the door; with “The Valley” playing its second and final week before going into New York; and with Leslie Ward unconsciously taking up the shuttle Clare had dropped, and carrying the pattern one degree further toward completion.
JUST how Leslie Ward had drifted into his innocuous affair with the star of “The Valley” he was not certain himself. Innocuous it certainly was. Afterwards, looking back, he was to wonder sometimes if it had not been precisely for the purpose it served. But that was long months after. Not until the pattern was completed and he was able to recognize his own work in it.
The truth was that he was not too happy at home. Nina's smart little house on the Ridgely Road had at first kept her busy. She had spent unlimited time with decorators, had studied and rejected innumerable water-color sketches of interiors, had haunted auction rooms and bid recklessly on things she felt at the moment she could not do without, later on to have to wheedle Leslie into straightening her bank balance. Thought, too, and considerable energy had gone into training and outfitting her servants, and still more into inducing them to wear the expensive uniforms and livery she provided.
But what she made, so successfully, was a house rather than a home. There were times, indeed, when Leslie began to feel that it was not even a house, but a small hotel. They almost never dined alone, and when they did Nina would explain that everybody was tied up. Then, after dinner, restlessness would seize her, and she would want to run in to the theater, or to make a call. If he refused, she nursed a grievance all evening.
And he did not like her friends. Things came to a point where, when he knew one of the gay evenings was on, he would stay in town, playing billiards at his club, or occasionally wandering into a theater, where he stood or sat at the back of the house and watched the play with cynical, discontented eyes.
The casual meeting with Gregory and the introduction to his sister brought a new interest. Perhaps the very novelty was what first attracted him, the oddity of feeling that he was on terms of friendship, for it amounted to that with surprising quickness, with a famous woman, whose face smiled out at him from his morning paper or, huge and shockingly colored, from the sheets on the bill boards.
He formed the habit of calling on her in the afternoons at her hotel, and he saw that she liked it. It was often lonely, she explained. He sent her flowers and cigarettes, and he found her poised and restful, and sometimes, when she was off guard, with the lines of old suffering in her face.
She sat still. She didn't fidget, as Nina did. She listened, too. She was not as beautiful as she appeared on the stage, but she was attractive, and he stilled his conscience with the knowledge that she placed no undue emphasis on his visits. In her world men came and went, brought or sent small tribute, and she was pleased and grateful. No more. The next week, or the week after, and other men in other places would be doing the same things.
But he wondered about her, sometimes. Did she ever think of Judson Clark, and the wreck he had made of her life? What of resentment and sorrow lay behind her quiet face, or the voice with its careful intonations which was so unlike Nina's?
Now and then he saw her brother. He neither liked nor disliked Gregory, but he suspected him of rather bullying Beverly. On the rare occasions when he saw them together there was a sort of nervous tension in the air, and although Leslie was not subtle he sensed some hidden difference between them. A small incident one day almost brought this concealed dissension to a head. He said to Gregory:
“By the way, I saw you in Haverly yesterday afternoon.”
“Must have seen somebody else. Haverly? Where's Haverly?”
Leslie Ward had been rather annoyed. There had been no mistake about the recognition. But he passed it off with that curious sense of sex loyalty that will actuate a man even toward his enemies.
“Funny,” he said. “Chap looked like you. Maybe a little heavier.”
Nevertheless he had a conviction that he had said something better left unsaid, and that Beverly Carlysle's glance at her brother was almost hostile. He had that instantaneous picture of the two of them, the man defiant and somehow frightened, and the woman's eyes anxious and yet slightly contemptuous. Then, in a flash, it was gone.
He had meant to go home that evening, would have, probably, for he was not ignorant of where he was drifting. But when he went back to the office Nina was on the wire, with the news that they were to go with a party to a country inn.
“For chicken and waffles, Les,” she said. “It will be oceans of fun. And I've promised the cocktails.”
“I'm tired,” he replied, sulkily. “And why don't you let some of the other fellows come over with the drinks? It seems to me I'm always the goat.”
“Oh, if that's the way you feel!” Nina said, and hung up the receiver.
He did not go home. He went to the theater and stood at the back, with his sense of guilt deadened by the knowledge that Nina was having what she would call a heavenly time. After all, it would soon be over. He counted the days. “The Valley” had only four more before it moved on.
He had already played his small part in the drama that involved Dick Livingstone, but he was unaware of it. He went home that night, to find Nina settled in bed and very sulky, and he retired himself in no pleasant frame of mind. But he took a firmer hold of himself that night before he slept. He didn't want a smash, and yet they might be headed that way. He wouldn't see Beverly Carlysle again.
He lived up to his resolve the next day, bought his flowers as usual, but this time for Nina and took them with him. And went home with the orchids which were really an offering to his own conscience.
But Nina was not at home. The butler reported that she was dining at the Wheelers', and he thought the man eyed him with restrained commiseration.
“Did she say I am expected there?” he asked.
“She ordered dinner for you here, sir.”
Even for Nina that sounded odd. He took his coat and went out again to the car; after a moment's hesitation he went back and got the orchids.
Dick Livingstone's machine was at the curb before the Wheeler house, and in the living-room he found Walter Wheeler, pacing the floor. Mr. Wheeler glanced at him and looked away.
“Anybody sick?” Leslie asked, his feeling of apprehension growing.
“Nina is having hysterics upstairs,” Mr. Wheeler said, and continued his pacing.
“Nina! Hysterics?”
“That's what I said,” replied Mr. Wheeler, suddenly savage. “You've made a nice mess of things, haven't you?”
Leslie placed the box of orchids on the table and drew off his gloves. His mind was running over many possibilities.
“You'd better tell me about it, hadn't you?”
“Oh, I will. Don't worry. I've seen this coming for months. I'm not taking her part. God knows I know her, and she has as much idea of making a home as—as”—he looked about—“as that poker has. But that's the worst you can say of her. As to you—”
“Well?”
Mr. Wheeler's anxiety was greater than his anger. He lowered his voice.
“She got a bill to-day for two or three boxes of flowers, sent to some actress.” And when Leslie said nothing, “I'm not condoning it, mind you. You'd no business to do it. But,” he added fretfully, “why the devil, if you've got to act the fool, don't you have your bills sent to your office?”
“I suppose I don't need to tell you that's all there was to it? Flowers, I mean.”
“I'm taking that for granted. But she says she won't go back.”
Leslie was aghast and frightened. Not at the threat; she would go back, of course. But she would always hold it against him. She cherished small grudges faithfully. And he knew she would never understand, never see her own contribution to his mild defection, nor comprehend the actual innocence of those afternoons of tea and talk.
There was no sound from upstairs. Mr. Wheeler got his hat and went out, calling to the dog. Jim came in whistling, looked in and said: “Hello, Les,” and disappeared. He sat in the growing twilight and cursed himself for a fool. After all, where had he been heading? A man couldn't eat his cake and have it. But he was resentful, too; he stressed rather hard his own innocence, and chose to ignore the less innocent impulse that lay behind it.
After a half hour or so he heard some one descending and Dick Livingstone appeared in the hall. He called to him, and Dick entered the room. Before he sat down he lighted a cigarette and in the flare of the match Leslie got an impression of fatigue and of something new, of trouble. But his own anxieties obsessed him.
“She's told you about it, I suppose?”
“I was a fool, of course. But it was only a matter of a few flowers and some afternoon calls. She's a fine woman, Livingstone, and she is lonely. The women have given her a pretty cold deal since the Clark story. They copy her clothes and her walk, but they don't ask her into their homes.”
“Isn't the trouble more fundamental than that, Ward? I was thinking about it upstairs. Nina was pretty frank. She says you've had your good time and want to settle down, and that she is young and now is her only chance. Later on there may be children, you know. She blames herself, too, but she has a fairly clear idea of how it happened.”
“Do you think she'll go back home?”
“She promised she would.”
They sat smoking in silence. In the dining-room Annie was laying the table for dinner, and a most untragic odor of new garden peas began to steal along the hall. Dick suddenly stirred and threw away his cigarette.
“I was going to talk to you about something else,” he said, “but this is hardly the time. I'll get on home.” He rose. “She'll be all right. Only I'd advise very tactful handling and—the fullest explanation you can make.”
“What is it? I'd be glad to have something to keep my mind occupied. It's eating itself up just now.”
“It's a personal matter.”
Ward glanced up at him quickly.
“Yes?”
“Have you happened to hear a story that I believe is going round? One that concerns me?”
“Well, I have,” Leslie admitted. “I didn't pay much attention. Nobody is taking it very seriously.”
“That's not the point,” Dick persisted. “I don't mind idle gossip. I don't give a damn about it. It's the statement itself.”
“I should say that you are the only person who knows anything about it.”
Dick made a restless, impatient gesture.
“I want to know one thing more,” he said. “Nina told you, I suppose. Does—I suppose Elizabeth knows it, too?”
“I rather think she does.”
Dick turned abruptly and went out of the room, and a moment later Leslie heard the front door slam. Elizabeth, standing at the head of the stairs, heard it also, and turned away, with a new droop to her usually valiant shoulders. Her world, too, had gone awry, that safe world of protection and cheer and kindliness. First had come Nina, white-lipped and shaken, and Elizabeth had had to face the fact that there were such things as treachery and the queer hidden things that men did, and that came to light and brought horrible suffering.
And that afternoon she had had to acknowledge that there was something wrong with Dick. No. Between Dick and herself. There was a formality in his speech to her, an aloofness that seemed to ignore utterly their new intimacy. He was there, but he was miles away from her. She tried hard to feel indignant, but she was only hurt.
Peace seemed definitely to have abandoned the Wheeler house. Then late in the evening a measure of it was restored when Nina and Leslie effected a reconciliation. It followed several bad hours when Nina had locked her door against them all, but at ten o'clock she sent for Leslie and faced him with desperate calmness.
To Elizabeth, putting cold cloths on her mother's head as she lay on the bed, there came a growing conviction that the relation between men and women was a complicated and baffling thing, and that love and hate were sometimes close together.
Love, and habit perhaps, triumphed in Nina's case, however, for at eleven o'clock they heard Leslie going down the stairs and later on moving about the kitchen and pantry while whistling softly. The servants had gone, and the air was filled with the odor of burning bread. Some time later Mrs. Wheeler, waiting uneasily in the upper hall, beheld her son-in-law coming up and carrying proudly a tray on which was toast of an incredible blackness, and a pot which smelled feebly of tea.
“The next time you're out of a cook just send for me,” he said cheerfully.
Mrs. Wheeler, full and overflowing with indignation and the piece of her mind she had meant to deliver, retired vanquished to her bedroom.
Late that night when Nina had finally forgiven him and had settled down for sleep, Leslie went downstairs for a cigar, to find Elizabeth sitting there alone, a book on her knee, face down, and her eyes wistful and with a question in them.
“Sitting and thinking, or just sitting?” he inquired.
“I was thinking.”
“Air-castles, eh? Well, be sure you put the right man into them!” He felt more or less a fool for having said that, for it was extremely likely that Nina's family was feeling some doubt about Nina's choice.
“What I mean is,” he added hastily, “don't be a fool and take Wallie Sayre. Take a man, while you're about it.”
“I would, if I could do the taking.”
“That's piffle, Elizabeth.” He sat down on the arm of a chair and looked at her. “Look here, what about this story the Rossiter girl and a few others are handing around about Dick Livingstone? You're not worrying about it, are you?”
“I don't believe it's true, and it wouldn't matter to me, anyhow.”
“Good for you,” he said heartily, and got up. “You'd better go to bed, young lady. It's almost midnight.”
But although she rose she made no further move to go.
“What I am worrying about is this, Leslie. He may hear it.”
“He has heard it, honey.”
He had expected her to look alarmed, but instead she showed relief.
“I'll tell you the truth, Les,” she said. “I was worrying. I'm terribly fond of him. It just came all at once, and I couldn't help it. And I thought he liked me, too, that way.” She stopped and looked up at him to see if he understood, and he nodded gravely. “Then to-day, when he came to see Nina, he avoided me. He—I was waiting in the hall upstairs, and he just said a word or two and went on down.”
“Poor devil!” Leslie said. “You see, he's in an unpleasant position, to say the least. But here's a thought to go to sleep on. If you ask me, he's keeping out of your way, not because he cares too little, but because he cares too much.”
Long after a repentant and chastened Leslie had gone to sleep, his arm over Nina's unconscious shoulder, Elizabeth stood wide-eyed on the tiny balcony outside her room. From it in daylight she could see the Livingstone house. Now it was invisible, but an upper window was outlined in the light. Very shyly she kissed her finger tips to it.
“Good-night, dear,” she whispered.
Louis Bassett had left for Norada the day after David's sudden illness, but ten days later found him only as far as Chicago, and laid up in his hotel with a sprained knee. It was not until the day Nina went back to the little house in the Ridgely Road, having learned the first lesson of married life, that men must not only be captured but also held, that he was able to resume his journey.
He had chafed wretchedly under the delay. It was true that nothing in the way of a story had broken yet. The Tribune had carried a photograph of the cabin where Clark had according to the Donaldson woman spent the winter following the murder, and there were the usual reports that he had been seen recently in spots as diverse as Seattle and New Orleans. But when the following Sunday brought nothing further he surmised that the pack, having lost the scent, had been called off.
He confirmed this before starting West by visiting some of the offices of the leading papers and looking up old friends. The Clark story was dead for the time. They had run a lot of pictures of him, however, and some one might turn him up eventually, but a scent was pretty cold in ten years. The place had changed, too. Oil had been discovered five years ago, and the old settlers had, a good many of them, cashed in and moved away. The town had grown like all oil towns.
Bassett was fairly content. He took the night train out of Chicago and spent the next day crossing Nebraska, fertile, rich and interesting. On the afternoon of the second day he left the train and took a branch line toward the mountains and Norada, and from that time on he became an urbane, interested and generally cigar-smoking interrogation point.
“Railroad been here long?” he asked the conductor.
“Four years.”
“Norada must have been pretty isolated before that.”
“Thirty miles in a coach or a Ford car.”
“I was reading the other day,” said Bassett, “about the Judson Clark case. Have a cigar? Got time to sit down?”
“You a newspaper man?”
“Oil well supplies,” said Bassett easily. “Well, in this article it seemed some woman or other had made a confession. It sounded fishy to me.”
“Well, I'll tell you about that.” The conductor sat down and bit off the end of his cigar. “I knew the Donaldsons well, and Maggie Donaldson was an honest woman. But I'll tell you how I explain the thing. Donaldson died, and that left her pretty much alone. The executors of the Clark estate kept her on the ranch, but when the estate was settled three years ago she had to move. That broke her all up. She's always said he wasn't dead. She kept the house just as it was, and my wife says she had his clothes all ready and everything.”
“That rather sounds as though the story is true, doesn't it?”
“Not necessarily. It's my idea she got from hoping to moping, so to speak. She went in to town regular for letters for ten years, and the postmaster says she never got any. She was hurt in front of the post office. The talk around here is that she's been off her head for the last year or two.”
“But they found the cabin.”
“Sure they did,” said the conductor equably. “The cabin was no secret. It was an old fire station before they put the new one on Goat Mountain. I spent a month in it myself, once, with a dude who wanted to take pictures of bear. We found a bear, but it charged the camera and I'd be running yet if I hadn't come to civilization.”
When he had gone Bassett fell into deep thought. So Maggie Donaldson had gone to the post office for ten years. He tried to visualize those faithful, wearisome journeys, through spring mud and winter snow, always futile and always hopeful. He did not for a moment believe that she had “gone off her head.” She had been faithful to the end, as some women were, and in the end, too, as had happened before, her faith had killed her.
And again he wondered at the curious ability of some men to secure loyalty. They might go through life, tearing down ideals and destroying illusions to the last, but always there was some faithful hand to rebuild, some faithful soul to worship.
He was somewhat daunted at the size and bustling activity of Norada. Its streets were paved and well-lighted, there were a park and a public library, and the clerk at the Commercial Hotel asked him if he wished a private bath! But the development was helpful in one way. In the old Norada a newcomer might have been subjected to a friendly but inquisitive interest. In this grown-up and self-centered community a man might come and go unnoticed.
And he had other advantages. The pack, as he cynically thought of them, would have started at the Clark ranch and the cabin. He would get to them, of course, but he meant to start on the outside of the circle and work in.
“Been here long?” he asked the clerk at the desk, after a leisurely meal.
The clerk grinned.
“I came here two years ago. I never saw Jud Clark. To get to the Clark place take the road north out of the town and keep straight about eight miles. The road's good now. You fellows have worn it smooth.”
“Must have written that down and learned it off,” Bassett said admiringly. “What the devil's the Clark place? And why should I go there? Unless,” he added, “they serve a decent meal.”
“Sorry.” The clerk looked at him sharply, was satisfied, and picked up a pen. “You'll hear the story if you stay around here any time. Anything I can do for you?”
“Yes. Fire the cook,” Bassett said, and moved away.
He spent the evening in going over his notes and outlining a campaign, and the next day he stumbled on a bit of luck. His elderly chambermaid had lived in and around the town for years.
“Ever hear of any Livingstones in these parts?” he asked.
“Why, yes. There used to be a Livingstone ranch at Dry River,” she said, pausing with her carpet sweeper, and looking at him. “It wasn't much of a place. Although you can't tell these days. I sold sixty acres eight years ago for two thousand dollars, and the folks that bought it are getting a thousand a day out of it.”
She sighed. She had touched the hem of fortune's garment and passed on; for some opportunity knocked but faintly, and for others it burst open the door and forced its way in.
“I'd be a millionaire now if I'd held on,” she said somberly. That day Bassett engaged a car by the day, he to drive it himself and return it in good condition, the garage to furnish tires.
“I'd just like to say one thing,” the owner said, as he tried the gears. “I don't know where you're going, and it's not exactly my business. Here in the oil country, where they're cutting each other's throats for new leases, we let a man alone. But if you've any idea of taking that car by the back road to the old fire station where Jud Clark's supposed to have spent the winter, I'll just say this: we've had two stuck up there for a week, and the only way I see to get them back is a cyclone.”
“I'm going to Dry River,” Bassett said shortly.
“Dry River's right, if you're looking for oil! Go easy on the brakes, old man. We need 'em in our business.”
Dry River was a small settlement away from the railroad. It consisted of two intersecting unpaved streets, a dozen or so houses, a closed and empty saloon and two general stores. He chose one at random and found that the old Livingstone place had been sold ten years ago, on the death of its owner, Henry Livingstone.
“His brother from the East inherited it,” said the storekeeper. “He came and sold out, lock, stock and barrel. Not that there was much. A few cattle and horses, and the stuff in the ranch house, which wasn't valuable. There were a lot of books, and the brother gave them for a library, but we haven't any building. The railroad isn't built this far yet, and unless we get oil here it won't be.”
“The brother inherited it, eh? Do you know the brother's name?”
“David, I think. He was a doctor back East somewhere.”
“Then this Henry Livingstone wasn't married? Or at least had no children?”
“He wasn't married. He was a sort of hermit. He'd been dead two days before any one knew it. My wife went out when they found him and got him ready for the funeral. He was buried before the brother got here.” He glanced at Bassett shrewdly. “The place has been prospected for oil, and there's a dry hole on the next ranch. I tell my wife nature's like the railroad. It quit before it got this far.”
Bassett's last scruple had fled. The story was there, ready for the gathering. So ready, indeed, that he was almost suspicious of his luck.
And that conviction, that things were coming too easy, persisted through his interview with the storekeeper's wife, in the small house behind the store. She was a talkative woman, eager to discuss the one drama in a drab life, and she showed no curiosity as to the reason for his question.
“Henry Livingstone!” she said. “Well, I should say so. I went out right away when we got the word he was dead, and there I stayed until it was all over. I guess I know as much about him as any one around here does, for I had to go over his papers to find out who his people were.”
The papers, it seemed, had not been very interesting; canceled checks and receipted bills, and a large bundle of letters, all of them from a brother named David and a sister who signed herself Lucy. There had been a sealed one, too, addressed to David Livingstone, and to be opened after his death. She had had her husband wire to “David” and he had come out, too late for the funeral.
“Do you remember when that was?”
“Let me see. Henry Livingstone died about a month before the murder at the Clark ranch. We date most things around here from that time.”
“How long did 'David' stay?” Bassett had tried to keep his tone carefully conversational, but he saw that it was not necessary. She was glad of a chance to talk.
“Well, I'd say about three or four weeks. He hadn't seen his brother for years, and I guess there was no love lost. He sold everything as quick as he could, and went back East.” She glanced at the clock. “My husband will be in soon for dinner. I'd be glad to have you stay and take a meal with us.”
The reporter thanked her and declined.
“It's an interesting story,” he said. “I didn't tell your husband, for I wasn't sure I was on the right trail. But the David and Lucy business eliminates this man. There's a piece of property waiting in the East for a Henry Livingstone who came to this state in the 80's, or for his heirs. You can say positively that this man was not married?”
“No. He didn't like women. Never had one on the place. Two ranch hands that are still at the Wassons' and himself, that was all. The Wassons are the folks who bought the ranch.”
No housekeeper then, and no son born out of wedlock, so far as any evidence went. All that glib lying in the doctor's office, all that apparent openness and frankness, gone by the board! The man in the cabin, reported by Maggie Donaldson, had been David Livingstone. Somehow, some way, he had got Judson Clark out of the country and spirited him East. Not that the how mattered just yet. The essential fact was there, that David Livingstone had been in this part of the country at the time Maggie Donaldson had been nursing Judson Clark in the mountains.
Bassett sat back and chewed the end of his cigar thoughtfully. The sheer boldness of the scheme which had saved Judson Clark compelled his admiration, but the failure to cover the trail, the ease with which he had picked it up, made him suspicious.
He rose and threw away his cigar.
“You say this David went East, when he had sold out the place. Do you remember where he lived?”
“Some town in eastern Pennsylvania. I've forgotten the name.”
“I've got to be sure I'm wrong, and then go ahead,” he said, as he got his hat. “I'll see those men at the ranch, I guess, and then be on my way. How far is it?”
It was about ten miles, along a bad road which kept him too much occupied for any connected thought. But his sense of exultation persisted. He had found Judson Clark.