The Breaking Point

XX

On the seventh of June David and Lucy went to the seashore, went by the order of various professional gentlemen who had differed violently during the course of David's illness, but who now suddenly agreed with an almost startling unanimity. Which unanimity was the result of careful coaching by Dick.

He saw in David's absence his only possible chance to go back to Norada without worry to the sick man, and he felt, too, that a change, getting away from the surcharged atmosphere of the old house, would be good for both David and Lucy.

For days before they started Lucy went about in a frenzy of nervous energy, writing out menus for Minnie for a month ahead, counting and recounting David's collars and handkerchiefs, cleaning and pressing his neckties. In the harness room in the stable Mike polished boots until his arms ached, and at the last moment with trunks already bulging, came three gift dressing-gowns for David, none of which he would leave behind.

“I declare,” Lucy protested to Dick, “I don't know what's come over him. Every present he's had since he was sick he's taking along. You'd think he was going to be shut up on a desert island.”

But Dick thought he understood. In David's life his friends had had to take the place of wife and children; he clung to them now, in his age and weakness, and Dick knew that he had a sense of deserting them, of abandoning them after many faithful years.

So David carried with him the calendars and slippers, dressing-gowns and bed-socks which were at once the tangible evidence of their friendliness and Lucy's despair.

Watching him, Dick was certain nothing further had come to threaten his recovery. Dick carefully inspected the mail, but no suspicious letter had arrived, and as the days went on David's peace seemed finally re-established. He made no more references to Johns Hopkins, slept like a child, and railed almost pettishly at his restricted diet.

“When we get away from Dick, Lucy,” he would say, “we'll have beef again, and roast pork and sausage.”

Lucy would smile absently and shake her head.

“You'll stick to your diet, David,” she would say. “David, it's the strangest thing about your winter underwear. I'm sure you had five suits, and now there are only three.”

Or it was socks she missed, or night-clothing. And David, inwardly chuckling, would wonder with her, knowing all the while that they had clothed some needy body.

On the night before the departure David went out for his first short walk alone, and brought Elizabeth back with him.

“I found a rose walking up the street, Lucy,” he bellowed up the stairs, “and I brought it home for the dinner table.”

Lucy came down, flushed from her final effort over the trunks, but gently hospitable.

“It's fish night, Elizabeth,” she said. “You know Minnie's a Catholic, so we always have fish on Friday. I hope you eat it.” She put her hand on Elizabeth's arm and gently patted it, and thus was Elizabeth taken into the old brick house as one of its own.

Elizabeth was finding this period of her tacit engagement rather puzzling. Her people puzzled her. Even Dick did, at times. And nobody seemed anxious to make plans for the future, or even to discuss the wedding. She was a little hurt about that, remembering the excitement over Nina's.

But what chiefly bewildered her was the seeming necessity for secrecy. Even Nina had not been told, nor Jim. She did not resent that, although it bewildered her. Her own inclination was to shout it from the house-tops. Her father had simply said: “I've told your mother, honey, and we'd better let it go at that, for a while. There's no hurry. And I don't want to lose you yet.”

But there were other things. Dick himself varied. He was always gentle and very tender, but there were times when he seemed to hold himself away from her, would seem aloof and remote, but all the time watching her almost fiercely. But after that, as though he had tried an experiment in separation and failed with it, he would catch her to him savagely and hold her there. She tried, very meekly, to meet his mood; was submissive to his passion and acquiescent to those intervals when he withdrew himself and sat or stood near her, not touching her but watching her intently.

She thought men in love were very queer and quite incomprehensible. Because he varied in other ways, too. He was boyish and gay sometimes, and again silent and almost brooding. She thought at those times that perhaps he was tired, what with David's work and his own, and sometimes she wondered if he were still worrying about that silly story. But once or twice, after he had gone, she went upstairs and looked carefully into her mirror. Perhaps she had not looked her best that day. Girl-like, she set great value on looks in love. She wanted frightfully to be beautiful to him. She wished she could look like Beverly Carlysle, for instance.

Two days before David and Lucy's departure he had brought her her engagement ring, a square-cut diamond set in platinum. He kissed it first and then her finger, and slipped it into place. It became a rite, done as he did it, and she had a sense of something done that could never be undone. When she looked up at him he was very pale.

“Forsaking all others, so long as we both shall live,” he said, unsteadily.

“So long as we both shall live,” she repeated.

However she had to take it off later, for Mrs. Wheeler, it developed, had very pronounced ideas of engagement rings. They were put on the day the notices were sent to the newspapers, and not before. So Elizabeth wore her ring around her neck on a white ribbon, inside her camisole, until such time as her father would consent to announce that he was about to lose her.

Thus Elizabeth found her engagement full of unexpected turns and twists, and nothing precisely as she had expected. But she accepted things as they came, being of the type around which the dramas of life are enacted, while remaining totally undramatic herself. She lived her quiet days, worried about Jim on occasion, hemmed table napkins for her linen chest, and slept at night with her ring on her finger and a sense of being wrapped in protecting love that was no longer limited to the white Wheeler house, but now extended two blocks away and around the corner to a shabby old brick building in a more or less shabby yard.

They were very gay in the old brick house that night before the departure, very noisy over the fish and David's broiled lamb chop. Dick demanded a bottle of Lucy's home-made wine, and even David got a little of it. They toasted the seashore, and the departed nurse, and David quoted Robert Burns at some length and in a horrible Scotch accent. Then Dick had a trick by which one read the date on one of three pennies while he was not looking, and he could tell without failing which one it was. It was most mysterious. And after dinner Dick took her into his laboratory, and while she squinted one eye and looked into the finder of his microscope he kissed the white nape of her neck.

When they left the laboratory there were patients in the waiting-room, but he held her in his arms in the office for a moment or two, very quietly, and because the door was thin they made a sort of game of it, and pretended she was a patient.

“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.