The Breaking Point

  XLII

  Elizabeth had quite definitely put Dick out of her heart. On the eveningof the day she learned he had come back and had not seen her, shedeliberately killed her love and decently interred it. She burned hernotes and his one letter and put away her ring, performing the rites notas rites but as a shameful business to be done with quickly. She torehis photograph into bits and threw them into her waste basket, andhaving thus housecleaned her room set to work to houseclean her heart.

  She found very little to do. She was numb and totally without feeling.The little painful constriction in her chest which had so often comelately with her thoughts of him was gone. She felt extraordinarilyempty, but not light, and her feet dragged about the room.

  She felt no sense of Dick's unworthiness, but simply that she was upagainst something she could not fight, and no longer wanted to fight.She was beaten, but the strange thing was that she did not care. Only,she would not be pitied. As the days went on she resented the pity thathad kept her in ignorance for so long, and had let her wear her heart onher sleeve; and she even wondered sometimes whether the story of Dick'sloss of memory had not been false, evolved out of that pity and thedesire to save her pain.

  David sent for her, but she wrote him a little note, formal andrestrained. She would come in a day or two, but now she must get herbearings. He was, to know that she was not angry, and felt it all forthe best, and she was very lovingly his, Elizabeth.

  She knew now that she would eventually marry Wallie Sayre if only to getaway from pity. He would have to know the truth about her, that she didnot love any one; not even her father and her mother. She pretended tocare for fear of hurting them, but she was actually frozen quite hard.She did not believe in love. It was a terrible thing, to be avoidedby any one who wanted to get along, and this avoiding was really quitesimple. One simply stopped feeling.

  On the Sunday after she had come to this comfortable knowledge she satin the church as usual, in the choir stalls, and suddenly she hated thechurch. She hated the way the larynx of Henry Wallace, the tenor, stuckout like a crabapple over his low collar. She hated the fat double chinof the bass. She hated the talk about love and the certain rewards ofvirtue, and the faces of the congregation, smug and sure of salvation.

  She went to the choir master after the service to hand in herresignation. And did not, because it had occurred to her that it mightlook, to use Nina's word, as though she were crushed. Crushed! That wasfunny.

  Wallie Sayre was waiting for her outside, and she went up with him tolunch, and afterwards they played golf. They had rather an amusing game,and once she had to sit down on a bunker and laugh until she was weak,while he fought his way out of a pit. Crushed, indeed!

  So the weaving went on, almost completed now. With Wallie Sayre bidinghis time, but fairly sure of the result. With Jean Melis happening ona two-days' old paper, and reading over and over a notice addressed tohim. With Leslie Ward, neither better nor worse than his kind, seekingadventure in a bypath, which was East 56th Street. And with Dickwandering the streets of New York after twilight, and standing once withhis coat collar turned up against the rain outside of the MetropolitanClub, where the great painting of his father hung over a mantelpiece.

  Now that he was near Beverly, Dick hesitated to see her. He felt noresentment at her long silence, nor at his exile which had resultedfrom it. He made excuses for her, recognized his own contribution tothe catastrophe, knew, too, that nothing was to be gained by seeing heragain. But he determined finally to see her once more, and then to goaway, leaving her to peace and to success.

  She would know now that she had nothing to fear from him. All he wantedwas to satisfy the hunger that was in him by seeing her, and then to goaway.

  Curiously, that hunger to see her had been in abeyance while Bassettwas with him. It was only when he was alone again that it came up; andalthough he knew that, he was unconscious of another fact, that everyword, every picture of her on the great boardings which walled in everyempty lot, everything, indeed, which brought her into the reality of thepresent, loosened by so much her hold on him out of the past.

  When he finally went to the 56th Street house it was on impulse. He hadmeant to pass it, but he found himself stopping, and half angrily madehis determination. He would follow the cursed thing through now and getit over. Perhaps he had discounted it too much in advance, waited toolong, hoped too much. Perhaps it was simply that that last phase wasalready passing. But he felt no thrill, no expectancy, as he rang thebell and was admitted to the familiar hall.

  It was peopled with ghosts, for him. Upstairs, in the drawing-roomthat extended across the front of the house, she had told him of herengagement to Howard Lucas. Later on, coming back from Europe, he hadgone back there to find Lucas installed in the house, his cigars onthe table, his photographs on the piano, his books scattered about.And Lucas himself, smiling, handsome and triumphant on the hearth rug,dressed for dinner except for a brocaded dressing-gown, putting his handfamiliarly on Beverly's shoulder, and calling her "old girl."

  He wandered into the small room to the right of the hall, where in otherdays he had waited to be taken upstairs, and stood looking out of thewindow. He heard some one, a caller, come down, get into his overcoatin the hall and go out, but he was not interested. He did not knowthat Leslie Ward had stood outside the door for a minute, had seen andrecognized him, and had then slammed out.

  He was quite steady as the butler preceded him up the stairs. He evennoticed certain changes in the house, the door at the landing convertedinto an arch, leaded glass in the dining-room windows beyond it. Buthe caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror, and saw himself a shabbycontrast to the former days.

  He faced her, still with that unexpected composure, and he saw her verylittle changed. Even the movement with which she came toward him withboth hands out was familiar.

  "Jud!" she said. "Oh, my dear!"

  He saw that she was profoundly moved, and suddenly he was sorry for her.Sorry for the years behind them both, for the burden she had carried,for the tears in her eyes.

  "Dear old Bev!" he said.

  She put her head against his shoulder, and cried unrestrainedly; andhe held her there, saying small, gentle, soothing things, smoothing herhair. But all the time he knew that life had been playing him anothertrick; he felt a great tenderness for her and profound pity, but hedid not love her, or want her. He saw that after all the sufferingand waiting, the death and exile, he was left at the end with nothing.Nothing at all.

  When she was restored to a sort of tense composure he found to hisdiscomfort that woman-like she intended to abase herself thoroughly andcompletely. She implored his forgiveness for his long exile, gazing athim humbly, and when he said in a matter-of-fact tone that he had beenhappy, giving him a look which showed that she thought he was lying tosave her unhappiness.

  "You are trying to make it easier for me. But I know, Jud."

  "I'm telling you the truth," he said, patiently. "There's one point Ididn't think necessary to tell your brother. For a good while I didn'tremember anything about it. If it hadn't been for that-well, I don'tknow. Anyhow, don't look at me as though I willfully saved you. Ididn't."

  She sat still, pondering that, and twisting a ring on her finger.

  "What do you mean to do?" she asked, after a pause.

  "I don't know. I'll find something."

  "You won't go back to your work?"

  "I don't see how I can. I'm in hiding, in a sort of casual fashion."

  To his intense discomfiture she began to cry again. She couldn't gothrough with it. She would go back to Norada and tell the whole thing.She had let Fred influence her, but she saw now she couldn't do it. Butfor the first time he felt that in this one thing she was not sincere.Her grief and abasement had been real enough, but now he felt she wasacting.

  "Suppose we don't go into that now," he said gently. "You've had aboutall you can stand." He got up awkwardly. "I suppose you are playingto-night?"

  She nodded, l
ooking up at him dumbly.

  "Better lie down, then, and--forget me." He smiled down at her.

  "I've never forgotten you, Jud. And now, seeing you again--I--"

  Her face worked. She continued to look up at him, piteously. Theappalling truth came to him then, and that part of him which hadremained detached and aloof, watching, almost smiled at the irony. Shecared for him. Out of her memories she had built up something to carefor, something no more himself than she was the woman of his dreams; butwith this difference, that she was clinging, woman-fashion, to the thingshe had built, and he had watched it crumble before his eyes.

  "Will you promise to go and rest?"

  "Yes. If you say so."

  She was acquiescent and humble. Her eyes were soft, faithful, childlike.

  "I've suffered so, Jud."

  "I know."

  "You don't hate me, do you?"

  "Why should I? Just remember this: while you were carrying this burden,I was happier than I'd ever been. I'll tell you about it some time."

  She got up, and he perceived that she expected him again to take her inhis arms. He felt ridiculous and resentful, and rather as though he wasexpected to kiss the hand that had beaten him, but when she came closeto him he put an arm around her shoulders.

  "Poor Bev!" he said. "We've made pretty much a mess of it, haven't we?"

  He patted her and let her go, and her eyes followed him as he left theroom. The elder brotherliness of that embrace had told her the truth ashe could never have hurt her in words. She went back to the chair wherehe had sat, and leaned her cheek against it.

  After a time she went slowly upstairs and into her room. When her maidcame in she found her before the mirror of her dressing-table, staringat her reflection with hard, appraising eyes.

  Leslie's partner, wandering into the hotel at six o'clock, found fromthe disordered condition of the room that Leslie had been back, hadapparently bathed, shaved and made a careful toilet, and gone out again.Joe found himself unexpectedly at a loose end. Filled, with suppressedindignation he commenced to dress, getting out a shirt, hunting hisevening studs, and lining up what he meant to say to Leslie over hisdefection.

  Then, at a quarter to seven, Leslie came in, top-hatted andmorning-coated, with a yellowing gardenia in his buttonhole and hisshoes covered with dust.

  "Hello, Les," Joe said, glancing up from a laborious struggle with astud. "Been to a wedding?"

  "Why?"

  "You look like it."

  "I made a call, and since then I've been walking."

  "Some walk, I'd say," Joe observed, looking at him shrewdly. "What'swrong, Les? Fair one turn you down?"

  "Go to hell," Leslie said irritably.

  He flung off his coat and jerked at his tie. Then, with it hangingloose, he turned to Joe.

  "I'm going to tell you something. I know it's safe with you, and I needsome advice. I called on a woman this afternoon. You know who she is.Beverly Carlysle."

  Joe whistled softly.

  "That's not the point," Leslie declaimed, in a truculent voice. "I'm notdefending myself. She's a friend; I've got a right to call there if Iwant to."

  "Sure you have," soothed Joe.

  "Well, you know the situation at home, and who Livingstone actually is.The point is that, while that poor kid at home is sitting around killingherself with grief, Clark's gone back to her. To Beverly Carlysle."

  "How do you know?"

  "Know? I saw him this afternoon, at her house."

  He sat still, moodily reviewing the situation. His thoughts were achaotic and unpleasant mixture of jealousy, fear of Nina, anxiety overElizabeth, and the sense of a lost romantic adventure. After a while hegot up.

  "She's a nice kid," he said. "I'm fond of her. And I don't know what todo."

  Suddenly Joe grinned.

  "I see," he said. "And you can't tell her, or the family, where you sawhim!"

  "Not without raising the deuce of a row."

  He began, automatically, to dress for dinner. Joe moved around the room,rang for a waiter, ordered orange juice and ice, and produced a bottleof gin from his bag. Leslie did not hear him, nor the later preparationof the cocktails. He was reflecting bitterly on the fact that a man whomarried built himself a wall against romance, a wall, compounded of hisown new sense of responsibility, of family ties, and fear.

  Joe brought him a cocktail.

  "Drink it, old dear," he said. "And when it's down I'll tell you a fewlittle things about playing around with ladies who have a past. Here'sto forgetting 'em."

  Leslie took the glass.

  "Right-o," he said.

  He went home the following day, leaving Joe to finish the business inNew York. His going rather resembled a flight. Tossing sleepless thenight before, he had found what many a man had discovered before him,that his love of clandestine adventure was not as strong as his caution.He had had a shock. True, his affair with Beverly had been a formlessthing, a matter of imagination and a desire to assure himself thatromance, for him, was not yet dead. True, too, that he had nothing tofear from Dick Livingstone. But the encounter had brought home to himthe danger of this old-new game he was playing. He was running like afrightened child.

  He thought of various plans. One of them was to tell Nina the truth,take his medicine of tears and coldness, and then go to Mr. Wheeler.One was to go to Mr. Wheeler, without Nina, and make his humiliatingadmission. But Walter Wheeler had his own rigid ideas, wasuncompromising in rectitude, and would understand as only a man couldthat while so far he had been only mentally unfaithful, he had beenactuated by at least subconscious desire.

  His own awareness of that fact made him more cautious than he need havebeen, perhaps more self-conscious. And he genuinely cared for Elizabeth.It was, on the whole, a generous and kindly impulse that lay behind hisultimate resolution to tell her that her desertion was both wilful andcruel.

  Yet, when the time came, he found it hard to tell her. He took her fora drive one evening soon after his return, forcibly driving off WallieSayre to do so, and eying surreptitiously now and then her pale, ratherset face. He found a quiet lane and stopped the car there, and thenturned and faced her.

  "How've you been, little sister, while I've been wandering the gay whiteway?" he asked.

  "I've been all right, Leslie."

  "Not quite all right, I think. Have you ever thought, Elizabeth, that noman on earth is worth what you've been going through?"

  "I'm all right, I tell you," she said impatiently. "I'm not grieving anymore. That's the truth, Les. I know now that he doesn't intend to comeback, and I don't care. I never even think about him, now."

  "I see," he said. "Well, that's that."

  But he had not counted on her intuition, and was startled to hear hersay:

  "Well? Go on."

  "What do you mean, go on?"

  "You brought me out here to tell me something."

  "Not at all. I simply--"

  "Where is he? You've seen him."

  He tried to meet her eyes, failed, cursed himself for a fool. "He'salive and well, Elizabeth. I saw him in New York." It was a full minutebefore she spoke again, and then her lips were stiff and her voicestrained.

  "Has he gone back to her? To the actress he used to care for?"

  He hesitated, but he knew he would have to go on.

  "I'm going to tell you something, Elizabeth. It's not very creditableto me, but I'll have to trust you. I don't want to see you wasting yourlife. You've got plenty of courage and a lot of spirit. And you've gotto forget him."

  He told her, and then he took her home. He was a little frightened, forthere was something not like her in the way she had taken it, a sort ofimmobility that might, he thought, cover heartbreak. But she smiled whenshe thanked him, and went very calmly into the house.

  That night she accepted Wallie Sayre.