The Breaking Point (38 page)

He was lying on his back, with his mouth open. She felt a sudden and
violent repugnance to getting into the bed beside him. Sometime in the
night he would turn over and throwing his arm about her, hold her close
in his sleep; and it would be purely automatic, the mechanical result of
habit.

She lay on the edge of the bed and thought things over.

He had his good qualities. He was kind and affectionate to her family.
He had been wonderful when Jim died, and he loved Elizabeth dearly. He
was generous and open-handed. He was handsome, too, in a big, heavy way.

She began to find excuses for him. Men were always a child-like prey
to some women. They were vain, and especially they were sex-vain; good
looking men were a target for every sort of advance. She transferred her
loathing of him to the woman she suspected of luring him away from her,
and lay for hours hating her.

She saw Leslie off in the morning with a perfunctory good-bye while cold
anger and suspicion seethed in her. And later she put on her hat and
went home to lay the situation before her mother. Mrs. Wheeler was out,
however, and she found only Elizabeth sewing by her window.

Nina threw her hat on the bed and sat down dispiritedly.

"I suppose there's no news?" she asked.

Nina watched her. She was out of patience with Elizabeth, exasperated
with the world.

"Are you going to go on like this all your life?" she demanded. "Sitting
by a window, waiting? For a man who ran away from you?"

"That's not true, and you know it."

"They're all alike," Nina declared recklessly. "They go along well
enough, and they are all for virtue and for the home and fireside stuff,
until some woman comes their way. I ought to know."

Elizabeth looked up quickly.

"Why, Nina!" she said. "You don't mean—"

"He went to New York this morning. He pretended to be going on business,
but he's actually gone to see that actress. He's been mad about her for
months."

"I don't believe it."

"Oh, wake up," Nina said impatiently. "The world isn't made up of
good, kind, virtuous people. It's rotten. And men are all alike. Dick
Livingstone and Les and all the rest—tarred with the same stick. As
long as there are women like this Carlysle creature they'll fall for
them. And you and I can sit at home and chew our nails and plan to keep
them by us. And we can't do it."

In spite of herself a little question of doubt crept that day into
Elizabeth's mind. She had always known that they had not told her all
the truth; that the benevolent conspiracy to protect Dick extended even
to her. But she had never thought that it might include a woman. Once
there, the very humility of her love for Dick was an element in favor of
the idea. She had never been good enough, or wise or clever enough, for
him. She was too small and unimportant to be really vital.

Dismissing the thought did no good. It came back. But because she was
a healthy-minded and practical person she took the one course she could
think of, and put the question that night to her father, when he came
back from seeing David.

David had sent for him early in the evening. All day he had thought
over the situation between Dick and Elizabeth, with growing pain and
uneasiness. He had not spoken of it to Lucy, or to Harrison Miller; he
knew that they would not understand, and that Lucy would suffer. She was
bewildered enough by Dick's departure.

At noon he had insisted on getting up and being helped into his
trousers. So clad he felt more of a man and better able to cope with
things, although his satisfaction in them was somewhat modified by the
knowledge of two safety-pins at the sides, to take up their superfluous
girth at the waistband.

But even the sense of being clothed as a man again did not make it
easier to say to Walter Wheeler what must be said.

Walter took the news of Dick's return with a visible brightening. It was
as though, out of the wreckage of his middle years, he saw that there
was now some salvage, but he was grave and inarticulate over it, wrung
David's hand and only said:

"Thank God for it, David." And after a pause: "Was he all right? He
remembered everything?"

But something strange in the situation began to obtrude itself into his
mind. Dick had come back twenty-four hours ago. Last night. And all this
time—

"Where is he now?"

"He's not here, Walter."

"He has gone away again, without seeing Elizabeth?"

David cleared his throat.

"He is still a fugitive. He doesn't himself know he isn't guilty. I
think he feels that he ought not to see her until—"

"Come, come," Walter Wheeler said impatiently. "Don't try to find
excuses for him. Let's have the truth, David. I guess I can stand it."

Poor David, divided between his love for Dick and his native honesty,
threw out his hands.

"I don't understand it, Wheeler," he said. "You and I wouldn't, I
suppose. We are not the sort to lose the world for a woman. The plain
truth is that there is not a trace of Judson Clark in him to-day, save
one. That's the woman."

When Wheeler said nothing, but sat twisting his hat in his hands, David
went on. It might be only a phase. As its impression on Dick's youth
had been deeper than others, so its effect was more lasting. It might
gradually disappear. He was confident, indeed, that it would. He had
been reading on the subject all day.

Walter Wheeler hardly heard him. He was facing the incredible fact, and
struggling with his own problem. After a time he got up, shook hands
with David and went home, the dog at his heels.

During the evening that followed he made his resolution, not to tell
her, never to let her suspect the truth. But he began to wonder if she
had heard something, for he found her eyes on him more than once, and
when Margaret had gone up to bed she came over and sat on the arm of his
chair. She said an odd thing then, and one that made it impossible to
lie to her later.

"I come to you, a good bit as I would go to God, if he were a person,"
she said. "I have got to know something, and you can tell me."

He put his arm around her and held her close.

"Go ahead, honey."

"Daddy, do you realize that I am a woman now?"

"I try to. But it seems about six months since I was feeding you hot
water for colic."

She sat still for a moment, stroking his hair and being very careful not
to spoil his neat parting.

"You have never told me all about Dick, daddy. You have always kept
something back. That's true, isn't it?"

"There were details," he said uncomfortably. "It wasn't necessary—"

"Here's what I want to know. If he has gone back to the time—you know,
wouldn't he go back to caring for the people he loved then?" Then,
suddenly, her childish appeal ceased, and she slid from the chair and
stood before him. "I must know, father. I can bear it. The thing you
have been keeping from me was another woman, wasn't it?"

"It was so long ago," he temporized. "Think of it, Elizabeth. A boy of
twenty-one or so."

"Then there was?"

"I believe so, at one time. But I know positively that he hadn't seen or
heard from her in ten years."

"What sort of woman?"

"I wouldn't think about it, honey. It's all so long ago."

"Did she live in Wyoming?"

"She was an actress," he said, hard driven by her persistence.

"Do you know her name?"

"Only her stage name, honey."

"But you know she was an actress!"

He sighed.

"All right, dear," he said. "I'll tell you all I know. She was an
actress, and she married another man. That's all there is to it. She's
not young now. She must be thirty now—if she's living," he added, as an
afterthought.

It was some time before she spoke again.

"I suppose she was beautiful," she said slowly.

"I don't know. Most of them aren't, off the stage. Anyhow, what does it
matter now?"

"Only that I know he has gone back to her. And you know it too."

He heard her going quietly out of the room.

Long after, he closed the house and went cautiously upstairs. She was
waiting for him in the doorway of her room, in her nightgown.

"I know it all now," she said steadily. "It was because of her he shot
the other man, wasn't it?"

She saw her answer in his startled face, and closed her door quickly. He
stood outside, and then he tapped lightly.

"Let me in, honey," he said. "I want to finish it. You've got a wrong
idea about it."

When she did not answer he tried the door, but it was locked. He turned
and went downstairs again...

When he came home the next afternoon Margaret met him in the hall.

"She knows it, Walter."

"Knows what?"

"Knows he was back here and didn't see her. Annie blurted it out; she'd
got it from the Oglethorpe's laundress. Mr. Oglethorpe saw him on the
street."

It took him some time to drag a coherent story from her. Annie had
told Elizabeth in her room, and then had told Margaret. She had gone to
Elizabeth at once, to see what she could do, but Elizabeth had been in
her closet, digging among her clothes. She had got out her best frock
and put it on, while her mother sat on the bed not even daring to broach
the matter in her mind, and had gone out. There was a sort of cold
determination in her that frightened Margaret. She had laughed a good
bit, for one thing.

"She's terribly proud," she finished. "She'll do something reckless,
I'm sure. It wouldn't surprise me to see her come back engaged to Wallie
Sayre. I think that's where she went."

But apparently she had not, or if she had she said nothing about it.
From that time on they saw a change in her; she was as loving as ever,
but she affected a sort of painful brightness that was a little hard. As
though she had clad herself in armor against further suffering.

For months Beverly Carlysle had remained a remote and semi-mysterious
figure. She had been in some hearts and in many minds, but to most of
them she was a name only. She had been the motive behind events she
never heard of, the quiet center in a tornado of emotions that circled
about without touching her.

On the whole she found her life, with the settling down of the piece to
a successful, run, one of prosperous monotony. She had re-opened and was
living in the 56th Street house, keeping a simple establishment of
cook, butler and maid, and in the early fall she added a town car and a
driver. After that she drove out every afternoon except on matinee days,
almost always alone, but sometimes with a young girl from the company.

She was very lonely. The kaleidoscope that is theatrical New York
had altered since she left it. Only one or two of her former friends
remained, and she found them uninteresting and narrow with the
narrowness of their own absorbing world. She had forgotten that the
theater was like an island, cut off from the rest of the world, having
its own politics, its own society divided by caste, almost its own
religion. Out of its insularity it made occasional excursions to dinners
and week-ends; even into marriage, now and then with an outlander. But
almost always it went back, eager for its home of dressing-room and
footlights, of stage entrances up dirty alleys, of door-keepers and
managers and parts and costumes.

Occasionally she had callers, men she had met or who were brought to
see her. She saw them over a tea-table, judged them remorselessly, and
eliminated gradually all but one or two. She watched her dignity and her
reputation with the care of an ambitious woman trying to live down the
past, and she succeeded measurably well. Now and then a critic spoke of
her as a second Maude Adams, and those notices she kept and treasured.

But she was always uneasy. Never since the night he had seen Judson
Clark in the theater had they rung up without her brother having
carefully combed the house with his eyes. She knew her limitations; they
would have to ring down if she ever saw him over the footlights. And
the season had brought its incidents, to connect her with the past. One
night Gregory had come back and told her Jean Melis was in the balcony.

The valet was older and heavier, but he had recognized him.

"Did he see you?" was her first question.

"Yes. What about it? He never saw me but once, and that was at night and
out of doors."

"Sometimes I think I can't stand it, Fred. The eternal suspense, the
waiting for something to happen."

"If anything was going to happen it would have happened months ago.
Bassett has given it up. And Jud's dead. Even Wilkins knows that."

She turned on him angrily.

"You haven't a heart, have you? You're glad he's dead."

"Not at all. As long as he kept under cover he was all right. But if he
is, I don't see why you should fool yourself into thinking you're sorry.
It's the best solution to a number of things."

"What do you suppose brought Jean Melis here?"

"What? To see the best play in New York. Besides, why not allow the man
a healthy curiosity? He was pretty closely connected with a hectic part
of your life, my dear. Now buck up, and for the Lord's sake forget the
Frenchman. He's got nothing."

"He saw me that night, on the stairs. He never took his eyes off me at
the inquest."

She gave, however, an excellent performance that night, and nothing more
was heard of the valet.

There were other alarms, all of them without foundation. She went on her
way, rejected an offer or two of marriage, spent her mornings in bed and
her afternoons driving or in the hands of her hair-dresser and manicure,
cared for the flowers that came in long casket-like boxes, and began
to feel a sense of security again. She did not intend to marry, or to
become interested in any one man.

She had hardly given a thought to Leslie Ward. He had come and gone,
one of that steady procession of men, mostly married, who battered their
heads now and then like night beetles outside a window, against the hard
glass of her ambition. Because her business was to charm, she had been
charming to him. And could not always remember his name!