The Breaking Point (4 page)

She hoped he did not think she was only a child.

She heard Nina coming up the stairs. At the click of her high heels on
the hard wood she placed the dress on the bed again, and went to the
window. Her father was on the path below, clearly headed for a walk. She
knew then that Nina had been asking for something.

Nina came in and closed the door. She was smaller than Elizabeth and
very pretty. Her eyebrows had been drawn to a tidy line, and from the
top of her shining head to her brown suede pumps she was exquisite with
the hours of careful tending and careful dressing she gave her young
body. Exquisitely pretty, too.

She sat down on Elizabeth's bed with a sigh.

"I really don't know what to do with father," she said. "He flies off
at a tangent over the smallest things. Elizabeth dear, can you lend me
twenty dollars? I'll get my allowance on Tuesday."

"I can give you ten."

"Well, ask mother for the rest, won't you? You needn't say it's for me.
I'll give it to you Tuesday."

"I'm not going to mother, Nina. She has had a lot of expenses this
month."

"Then I'll borrow it from Wallie Sayre," Nina said, accepting her defeat
cheerfully. "If it was an ordinary bill it could wait, but I lost it at
bridge last night and it's got to be paid."

"You oughtn't to play bridge for money," Elizabeth said, a bit primly.
"And if Leslie knew you borrowed from Wallace Sayre—"

"I forgot! Wallie's downstairs, Elizabeth. Really, if he wasn't so
funny, he'd be tragic."

"Why tragic? He has everything in the world."

"If you use a little bit of sense, you can have it too."

"I don't want

"Pooh! That's what you think now. Wallie's a nice person. Lots of girls
are mad about him. And he has about all the money there is." Getting
no response from Elizabeth, she went on: "I was thinking it over last
night. You'll have to marry sometime, and it isn't as though Wallie was
dissipated, or anything like that. I suppose he knows his way about, but
then they all do."

She got up.

"Be nice to him, anyhow," she said. "He's crazy about you, and when I
think of you in that house! It's a wonderful house, Elizabeth. She's got
a suite waiting for Wallie to be married before she furnishes it."

Elizabeth looked around her virginal little room, with its painted
dressing table, its chintz, and its white bed with the blue dress on it.

"I'm very well satisfied as I am," she said.

While she smoothed her hair before the mirror Nina surveyed the room and
her eyes lighted on the frock.

"Are you still wearing that shabby old thing?" she demanded. "I do wish
you'd get some proper clothes. Are you going somewhere?"

"I'm going to the theater on Wednesday night."

"Who with?" Nina in her family was highly colloquial.

"With Doctor Livingstone."

"Are you joking?" Nina demanded.

"Joking? Of course not."

Nina sat down again on the bed, her eyes on her sister, curious and not
a little apprehensive.

"It's the first time it's ever happened, to my knowledge," she declared.
"I know he's avoided me like poison. I thought he hated women. You know
Clare Rossiter is—"

Elizabeth turned suddenly.

"Clare is ridiculous," she said. "She hasn't any reserve, or dignity,
or anything else. And I don't see what my going to the theater with Dick
Livingstone has to do with her anyhow."

Nina raised her carefully plucked eyebrows.

"Really!" she said. "You needn't jump down my throat, you know." She
considered, her eyes on her sister. "Don't go and throw yourself away on
Dick Livingstone, Sis. You're too good-looking, and he hasn't a cent. A
suburban practice, out all night, that tumble-down old house and two
old people hung around your necks, for Doctor David is letting go pretty
fast. It just won't do. Besides, there's a story going the rounds about
him, that—"

"I don't want to hear it, if you don't mind."

She went to the door and opened it.

"I've hardly spoken a dozen words to him in my life. But just remember
this. When I do find the man I want to marry, I shall make up my own
mind. As you did," she added as a parting shot.

She was rather sorry as she went down the stairs. She had begun to
suspect what the family had never guessed, that Nina was not very happy.
More and more she saw in Nina's passion for clothes and gaiety, for
small possessions, an attempt to substitute them for real things. She
even suspected that sometimes Nina was a little lonely.

Wallie Sayre rose from a deep chair as she entered the living-room.

"Hello," he said, "I was on the point of asking Central to give me this
number so I could get you on the upstairs telephone."

"Nina and I were talking. I'm sorry."

Wallie, in spite of Walter Wheeler's opinion of him, was an engaging
youth with a wide smile, an air of careless well-being, and an obstinate
jaw. What he wanted he went after and generally secured, and Elizabeth,
enlightened by Nina, began to have a small anxious feeling that
afternoon that what he wanted just now happened to be herself.

"Nina coming down?" he asked.

"I suppose so. Why?"

"You couldn't pass the word along that you are going to be engaged for
the next half hour?"

"I might, but I certainly don't intend to."

"You are as hard to isolate as a—as a germ," he complained. "I gave
up a perfectly good golf game to see you, and as your father generally
calls the dog the moment I appear and goes for a walk, I thought I might
see you alone."

"You're seeing me alone now, you know."

Suddenly he leaned over and catching up her hand, kissed it.

"You're so cool and sweet," he said. "I—I wish you liked me a little."
He smiled up at her, rather wistfully. "I never knew any one quite like
you."

She drew her hand away. Something Nina had said, that he knew his way
about, came into her mind, and made her uncomfortable. Back of him,
suddenly, was that strange and mysterious region where men of his sort
lived their furtive man-life, where they knew their way about. She had
no curiosity and no interest, but the mere fact of its existence as
revealed by Nina repelled her.

"There are plenty like me," she said. "Don't be silly, Wallie. I hate
having my hand kissed."

"I wonder," he observed shrewdly, "whether that's really true, or
whether you just hate having me do it?"

When Nina came in he was drawing a rough sketch of his new power boat,
being built in Florida.

Nina's delay was explained by the appearance, a few minutes later, of
a rather sullen Annie with a tea tray. Afternoon tea was not a Wheeler
institution, but was notoriously a Sayre one. And Nina believed in
putting one's best foot foremost, even when that resulted in a state of
unstable domestic equilibrium.

"Put in a word for me, Nina," Wallie begged. "I intend to ask Elizabeth
to go to the theater this week, and I think she is going to refuse."

"What's the play?" Nina inquired negligently. She was privately
determining that her mother needed a tea cart and a new tea service.
There were some in old Georgian silver—

"'The Valley.' Not that the play matters. It's Beverly Carlysle."

"I thought she was dead, or something."

"Or something is right. She retired years ago, at the top of her
success. She was a howling beauty, I'm told. I never saw her. There was
some queer story. I've forgotten it. I was a kid then. How about it,
Elizabeth?"

"I'm sorry. I'm going Wednesday night."

He looked downcast over that, and he was curious, too. But he made no
comment save:

"Well, better luck next time."

"Just imagine," said Nina. "She's going with Dick Livingstone. Can you
imagine it?"

But Wallace Sayre could and did. He had rather a stricken moment, too.
Of course, there might be nothing to it; but on the other hand, there
very well might. And Livingstone was the sort to attract the feminine
woman; he had gravity and responsibility. He was older too, and that
flattered a girl.

"He's not a bit attractive," Nina was saying. "Quiet, and—well, I don't
suppose he knows what he's got on."

Wallie was watching Elizabeth.

"Oh, I don't know," he said, with masculine fairness. "He's a good sort,
and he's pretty much of a man."

He was quite sure that the look Elizabeth gave him was grateful.

He went soon after that, keeping up an appearance of gaiety to the end,
and very careful to hope that Elizabeth would enjoy the play.

"She's a wonder, they say," he said from the doorway. "Take two hankies
along, for it's got more tears than 'East Lynne' and 'The Old Homestead'
put together."

He went out, holding himself very erect and looking very cheerful until
he reached the corner. There however he slumped, and it was a rather
despondent young man who stood sometime later, on the center of the
deserted bridge over the small river, and surveyed the water with moody
eyes.

In the dusky living-room Nina was speaking her mind.

"You treat him like a dog," she said. "Oh, I know you're civil to him,
but if any man looked at me the way Wallie looks at you—I don't know,
though," she added, thoughtfully. "It may be that that is why he is so
keen. It may be good tactics. Most girls fall for him with a crash."

But when she glanced at Elizabeth she saw that she had not heard. Her
eyes were fixed on something on the street beyond the window. Nina
looked out. With a considerable rattle of loose joints and four
extraordinarily worn tires the Livingstone car was going by.

David did not sleep well that night. He had not had his golf after
all, for the Homer baby had sent out his advance notice early in the
afternoon, and had himself arrived on Sunday evening, at the hour when
Minnie was winding her clock and preparing to retire early for the
Monday washing, and the Sayre butler was announcing dinner. Dick had
come in at ten o'clock weary and triumphant, to announce that Richard
Livingstone Homer, sex male, color white, weight nine pounds, had been
safely delivered into this vale of tears.

David lay in the great walnut bed which had been his mother's, and read
his prayer book by the light of his evening lamp. He read the Evening
Prayer and the Litany, and then at last he resorted to the thirty-nine
articles, which usually had a soporific effect on him. But it was no
good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You drink this and come to bed, David," she said peremptorily. "I've
been 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 tone
apologetic. "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 and
drink 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 the
lights. Then in the darkness she preceded him up the stairs.

"You'd better take the milk yourself, Lucy," he said. "You're not
sleeping either."

"I've had some. Good-night."

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

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

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