The Breaking Point Read online

  IV

  David did not sleep well that night. He had not had his golf afterall, for the Homer baby had sent out his advance notice early in theafternoon, and had himself arrived on Sunday evening, at the hour whenMinnie was winding her clock and preparing to retire early for theMonday washing, and the Sayre butler was announcing dinner. Dick hadcome in at ten o'clock weary and triumphant, to announce that RichardLivingstone Homer, sex male, color white, weight nine pounds, had beensafely delivered into this vale of tears.

  David lay in the great walnut bed which had been his mother's, and readhis prayer book by the light of his evening lamp. He read the EveningPrayer and the Litany, and then at last he resorted to the thirty-ninearticles, which usually had a soporific effect on him. But it was nogood.

  He got up and took to pacing his room, a portly, solid old figure instriped pajamas and the pair of knitted bedroom slippers which werealways Mrs. Morgan's Christmas offering. "To Doctor David, with love anda merry Xmas, from Angeline Morgan."

  At last he got his keys from his trousers pocket and padded softly downthe stairs and into his office, where he drew the shade and turned onthe lights. Around him was the accumulated professional impedimenta ofmany years; the old-fashioned surgical chair; the corner closet whichhad been designed for china, and which held his instruments; thebookcase; his framed diplomas on the wall, their signatures faded, theirseals a little dingy; his desk, from which Dick had removed the oldledger which had held those erratic records from which, when he neededmoney, he had been wont--and reluctant--to make out his bills.

  Through an open door was Dick's office, a neat place of shining linoleumand small glass stands, highly modern and business-like. Beyond theoffice and opening from it was his laboratory, which had been the fruitcloset once, and into which Dick on occasion retired to fuss with slidesand tubes and stains and a microscope.

  Sometimes he called David in, and talked at length and with enthusiasmabout such human interest things as the Staphylococcus pyogenes aureus,and the Friedlander bacillus. The older man would listen, but his eyeswere oftener on Dick than on the microscope or the slide.

  David went to the bookcase and got down a large book, much worn, andcarried it to his desk.

  An hour or so later he heard footsteps in the hall and closed the bookhastily. It was Lucy, a wadded dressing gown over her nightdress and aglass of hot milk in her hand.

  "You drink this and come to bed, David," she said peremptorily. "I'vebeen lying upstairs waiting for you to come up, and I need some sleep."

  He had no sort of hope that she would not notice the book.

  "I just got to thinking things over, Lucy," he explained, his toneapologetic. "There's no use pretending I'm not worried. I am."

  "Well, it's in God's hands," she said, quite simply. "Take this up anddrink it slowly. If you gulp it down it makes a lump in your stomach."

  She stood by while he replaced the book in the bookcase and put out thelights. Then in the darkness she preceded him up the stairs.

  "You'd better take the milk yourself, Lucy," he said. "You're notsleeping either."

  "I've had some. Good-night."

  He went in and sitting on the side of his bed sipped at his milk. Lucywas right. It was not in their hands. He had the feeling all at once ofhaving relinquished a great burden. He crawled into bed and was almostinstantly asleep.

  So sometime after midnight found David sleeping, and Lucy on her knees.It found Elizabeth dreamlessly unconscious in her white bed, and DickLivingstone asleep also, but in his clothing, and in a chair by thewindow. In the light from a street lamp his face showed lines of fatigueand nervous stress, lines only revealed when during sleep a man castsoff the mask with which he protects his soul against even friendly eyes.

  But midnight found others awake. It found Nina, for instance, in herdraped French bed, consulting her jeweled watch and listening forLeslie's return from the country club. An angry and rather heart-sickNina. And it found the night editor of one of the morning papersdrinking a cup of coffee that a boy had brought in, and running througha mass of copy on his desk. He picked up several sheets of paper, witha photograph clamped to them, and ran through them quickly. A man in asoft hat, sitting on the desk, watched him idly.

  "Beverly Carlysle," commented the night editor. "Back with bells on!" Hetook up the photograph. "Doesn't look much older, does she? It's a queerworld."

  Louis Bassett, star reporter and feature writer of the Times-Republican,smiled reminiscently.

  "She was a wonder," he said. "I interviewed her once, and I was crazyabout her. She had the stage set for me, all right. The papers had beenfull of the incident of Jud Clark and the night he lined up fifteenJohnnies in the lobby, each with a bouquet as big as a tub, all of themin top hats and Inverness coats, and standing in a row. So she played upthe heavy domestic for me; knitting or sewing, I forget."

  "Fell for her, did you?"

  "Did I? That was ten years ago, and I'm not sure I'm over it yet."

  "Probably that's the reason," said the city editor, drily. "Go and seeher, and get over it. Get her views on the flapper and bobbed hair, fornext Sunday. Smith would be crazy about it."

  He finished his coffee.

  "You might ask, too, what she thinks has become of Judson Clark," headded. "I have an idea she knows, if any one does." Bassett stared athim.

  "You're joking, aren't you?"

  "Yes. But it would make a darned good story."