The Breaking Point (5 page)

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

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 crazy
about her. She had the stage set for me, all right. The papers had been
full of the incident of Jud Clark and the night he lined up fifteen
Johnnies in the lobby, each with a bouquet as big as a tub, all of them
in top hats and Inverness coats, and standing in a row. So she played up
the 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 see
her, and get over it. Get her views on the flapper and bobbed hair, for
next Sunday. Smith would be crazy about it."

He finished his coffee.

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

"You're joking, aren't you?"

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

When he finished medical college Dick Livingstone had found, like other
men, that the two paths of ambition and duty were parallel and did not
meet. Along one lay his desire to focus all his energy in one direction,
to follow disease into the laboratory instead of the sick room, and
there to fight its unsung battles. And win. He felt that he would win.

Along the other lay David.

It was not until he had completed his course and had come home that he
had realized that David was growing old. Even then he might have felt
that, by the time David was compelled to relinquish his hold on his
practice, he himself would be sufficiently established in his specialty
to take over the support of the household. But here there was interposed
a new element, one he had not counted on. David was fiercely jealous of
his practice; the thought that it might pass into new and alien hands
was bitter to him. To hand it down to his adopted son was one thing; to
pass it over to "some young whipper-snapper" was another.

Nor were David's motives selfish or unworthy. His patients were his
friends. He had a sense of responsibility to them, and very little
faith in the new modern methods. He thought there was a great deal of
tomfoolery about them, and he viewed the gradual loss of faith in drugs
with alarm. When Dick wore rubber gloves during their first obstetric
case together he snorted.

"I've delivered about half the population of this town," he said, "and
slapped 'em to make 'em breathe with my own bare hands. And I'm still
here and so are they."

For by that time Dick had made his decision. He could not abandon
David. For him then and hereafter the routine of a general practice in a
suburban town, the long hours, the varied responsibilities, the feeling
he had sometimes that by doing many things passably he was doing none of
them well. But for compensation he had old David's content and greater
leisure, and Lucy Crosby's gratitude and love.

Now and then he chafed a little when he read some article in a medical
journal by one of his fellow enthusiasts, or when, in France, he saw
men younger than himself obtaining an experience in their several
specialties that would enable them to reach wide fields at home. But
mostly he was content, or at least resigned. He was building up the
Livingstone practice, and his one anxiety was lest the time should come
when more patients asked for Doctor Dick than for Doctor David. He did
not want David hurt.

After ten years the strangeness of his situation had ceased to be
strange. Always he meant some time to go back to Norada, and there to
clear up certain things, but it was a long journey, and he had very
little time. And, as the years went on, the past seemed unimportant
compared with the present. He gave little thought to the future.

Then, suddenly, his entire attention became focused on the future.

Just when he had fallen in love with Elizabeth Wheeler he did not know.
He had gone away to the war, leaving her a little girl, apparently, and
he had come back to find her, a woman. He did not even know he was in
love, at first. It was when, one day, he found himself driving past the
Wheeler house without occasion that he began to grow uneasy.

The future at once became extraordinarily important and so also, but
somewhat less vitally, the past. Had he the right to marry, if he could
make her care for him?

He sat in his chair by the window the night after the Homer baby's
arrival, and faced his situation. Marriage meant many things. It meant
love and companionship, but it also meant, should mean, children. Had he
the right to go ahead and live his life fully and happily? Was there
any chance that, out of the years behind him, there would come some
forgotten thing, some taint or incident, to spoil the carefully woven
fabric of his life?

Not his life. Hers.

On the Monday night after he had asked Elizabeth to go to the theater
he went into David's office and closed the door. Lucy, alive to every
movement in the old house, heard him go in and, rocking in her chair
overhead, her hands idle in her lap, waited in tense anxiety for the
interview to end. She thought she knew what Dick would ask, and what
David would answer. And, in a way, David would be right. Dick, fine,
lovable, upstanding Dick, had a right to the things other men had, to
love and a home of his own, to children, to his own full life.

But suppose Dick insisted on clearing everything up before he married?
For to Lucy it was unthinkable that any girl in her senses would refuse
him. Suppose he went back to Norada? He had not changed greatly in ten
years. He had been well known there, a conspicuous figure.

Her mind began to turn on the possibility of keeping him away from
Norada.

Some time later she heard the office door open and then close with
Dick's characteristic slam. He came up the stairs, two at a time as
was his custom, and knocked at her door. When he came in she saw what
David's answer had been, and she closed her eyes for an instant.

"Put on your things," he said gayly, "and we'll take a ride on the
hill-tops. I've arranged for a moon."

And when she hesitated:

"It makes you sleep, you know. I'm going, if I have to ride alone and
talk to an imaginary lady beside me."

She rather imagined that that had been his first idea, modified by his
thought of her. She went over and put a wrinkled hand on his arm.

"You look happy, Dick," she said wistfully.

"I am happy, Aunt Lucy," he replied, and bending over, kissed her.

On Wednesday he was in a state of alternating high spirits and periods
of silence. Even Minnie noticed it.

"Mr. Dick's that queer I hardly know how to take him." she said to
Lucy. "He came back and asked for noodle soup, and he put about all the
hardware in the kitchen on him and said he was a knight in armor. And
when I took the soup in he didn't eat it."

It was when he was ready to go out that Lucy's fears were realized. He
came in, as always when anything unusual was afoot, to let her look him
over. He knew that she waited for him, to give his tie a final pat, to
inspect the laundering of his shirt bosom, to pick imaginary threads off
his dinner coat.

"Well?" he said, standing before her, "how's this? Art can do no more,
Mrs. Crosby."

"I'll brush your back," she said, and brought the brush. He stooped to
her, according to the little ceremony she had established, and she made
little dabs at his speckless back. "There, that's better."

He straightened.

"How do you think Uncle David is?" he asked, unexpectedly.

"Better than he has been in years. Why?"

"Because I'm thinking of taking a little trip. Only ten days," he added,
seeing her face. "You could house-clean my office while I'm away. You
know you've been wanting to."

She dropped the brush, and he stooped to pick it up. That gave her a
moment.

"'Where?" she managed.

"To Dry River, by way of Norada."

"Why should you go back there?" she asked, in a carefully suppressed
voice. "Why don't you go East? You've wanted to go back to Johns Hopkins
for months?"

"On the other hand, why shouldn't I go back to Norada?" he asked, with
an affectation of lightness. Then he put his hand on her shoulders. "Why
shouldn't I go back and clear things up in my own mind? Why shouldn't I
find out, for instance, that I am a free man?"

"You are free."

"I've got to know," he said, almost doggedly. "I can't take a chance. I
believe I am. I believe David, of course. But anyhow I'd like to see the
ranch. I want to see Maggie Donaldson."

"She's not at the ranch. Her husband died, you know."

"I have an idea I can find her," he said. "I'll make a good try,
anyhow."

When he had gone she got her salts bottle and lay down on her bed. Her
heart was hammering wildly.

Elizabeth was waiting for him in the living-room, in the midst of
her family. She looked absurdly young and very pretty, and he had a
momentary misgiving that he was old to her, and that—Heaven save the
mark!—that she looked up to him. He considered the blue dress the
height of fashion and the mold of form, and having taken off his
overcoat in the hall, tried to put on Mr. Wheeler's instead in his
excitement. Also, becoming very dignified after the overcoat incident,
and making an exit which should conceal his wild exultation and show
only polite pleasure, he stumbled over Micky, so that they finally
departed to a series of staccato yelps.

He felt very hot and slightly ridiculous as he tucked Elizabeth into
the little car, being very particular about her feet, and starting
with extreme care, so as not to jar her. He had the feeling of being
entrusted temporarily with something infinitely precious, and very, very
dear. Something that must never suffer or be hurt.

On Wednesday morning David was in an office in the city. He sat
forward on the edge of his chair, and from time to time he took out
his handkerchief and wiped his face or polished his glasses, quite
unconscious of either action. He was in his best suit, with the tie Lucy
had given him for Christmas.

Across from him, barricaded behind a great mahogany desk, sat a small
man with keen eyes and a neat brown beard. On the desk were a spotless
blotter, an inkstand of silver and a pen. Nothing else. The terrible
order of the place had at first rather oppressed David.

The small man was answering a question.

"Rather on the contrary, I should say. The stronger the character the
greater the smash."

David pondered this.

"I've read all you've written on the subject," he said finally.
"Especially since the war."

The psycho-analyst put his finger tips together, judicially. "Yes. The
war bore me out," he observed with a certain complacence. "It added a
great deal to our literature, too, although some of the positions are
not well taken. Van Alston, for instance—"

"You have said, I think, that every man has a breaking point."

"Absolutely. All of us. We can go just so far. Where the mind is strong
and very sound we can go further than when it is not. Some men, for
instance, lead lives that would break you or me. Was there—was there
such a history in this case?"

"Yes." Doctor David's voice was reluctant.

"The mind is a strange thing," went on the little man, musingly. "It
has its censors, that go off duty during sleep. Our sternest and often
unconscious repressions pass them then, and emerge in the form of
dreams. But of course you know all that. Dream symbolism. Does
the person in this case dream? That would be interesting, perhaps
important."

"I don't know," David said unhappily.

"The walling off, you say, followed a shock?"

"Shock and serious illness."

"Was there fear with the shock?"

David hesitated. "Yes," he said finally. "Very great fear, I believe."

Doctor Lauler glanced quickly at David and then looked away.

"I see," he nodded. "Of course the walling off of a part of the
past—you said a part—?"

"Practically all of it. I'll tell you about that later. What about the
walling off?"

"It is generally the result of what we call the protective mechanism of
fear. Back of most of these cases lies fear. Not cowardice, but perhaps
we might say the limit of endurance. Fear is a complex, of course.
Dislike, in a small way, has the same reaction. We are apt to forget
the names of persons we dislike. But if you have been reading on the
subject—"

"I've been studying it for ten years."

"Ten years! Do you mean that this condition has persisted for ten
years?"

David moistened his dry lips. "Yes," he admitted. "It might not have
done so, but the—the person who made this experiment used suggestion.
The patient was very ill, and weak. It was desirable that he should
not identify himself with his past. The loss of memory of the period
immediately preceding was complete, but of course, gradually, the cloud
began to lift over the earlier periods. It was there that suggestion
was used, so that such memories as came back were,—well, the patient
adapted them to fit what he was told."

Again Doctor Lauler shot a swift glance at David, and looked away.

"An interesting experiment," he commented. "It must have taken courage."

"A justifiable experiment," David affirmed stoutly. "And it took
courage. Yes."

David got up and reached for his hat. Then he braced himself for the
real purpose of his visit.

"What I have been wondering about," he said, very carefully, "is this:
this mechanism of fear, this wall—how strong is it?"