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<h2> XXVI </h2>
<p>To Elizabeth the first days of Dick's absence were unbelievably dreary.
She seemed to live only from one visit of the postman to the next. She
felt sometimes that only part of her was at home in the Wheeler house,
slept at night in her white bed, donned its black frocks and took them
off, and made those sad daily pilgrimages to the cemetery above the town,
where her mother tidied with tender hands the long narrow mound, so
fearfully remindful of Jim's tall slim body.</p>
<p>That part of her grieved sorely, and spent itself in small comforting
actions and little caressing touches on bowed heads and grief-stooped
shoulders. It put away Jim's clothing, and kept immaculate the room where
now her mother spent most of her waking hours. It sent her on her knees at
night to pray for Jim's happiness in some young-man heaven which would
please him. But the other part of her was not there at all. It was off
with Dick in some mysterious place of mountains and vast distance called
Wyoming.</p>
<p>And because of this division in herself, because she felt that her loyalty
to her people had wavered, because she knew that already she had forsaken
her father and her mother and would follow her love through the rest of
her life, she was touchingly anxious to comfort and to please them.</p>
<p>"She's taking Dick's absence very hard," Mrs. Wheeler said one night, when
she had kissed them and gone upstairs to bed. "She worries me sometimes."</p>
<p>Mr. Wheeler sighed. Why was it that a man could not tell his children what
he had learned,—that nothing was so great as one expected; that love
was worth living for, but not dying for. The impatience of youth for life!
It had killed Jim. It was hurting Nina. It would all come, all come, in
God's good time. The young did not live to-day, but always to-morrow.
There seemed no time to live to-day, for any one. First one looked ahead
and said, "I will be so happy." And before one knew it one was looking
back and saying: "I was so happy."</p>
<p>"She'll be all right," he said aloud.</p>
<p>He got up and whistled for the dog.</p>
<p>"I'll take him around the block before I lock up," he said heavily. He
bent over and kissed his wife. She was a sad figure to him in her black
dress. He did not say to her what he thought sometimes; that Jim had been
saved a great deal. That to live on, and to lose the things one loved, one
by one, was harder than to go quickly, from a joyous youth.</p>
<p>He had not told her what he knew about Jim's companion that night. She
would never have understood. In her simple and child-like faith she knew
that her boy sat that day among the blessed company of heaven. He himself
believed that Jim had gone forgiven into whatever lay behind the veil we
call death, had gone shriven and clean before the Judge who knew the urge
of youth and life. He did not fear for Jim. He only missed him.</p>
<p>He walked around the block that night, a stooped commonplace figure, the
dog at his heels. Now and then he spoke to him, for companionship. At the
corner he stopped and looked along the side street toward the Livingstone
house. And as he looked he sighed. Jim and Nina, and now Elizabeth. Jim
and Nina were beyond his care now. He could do no more. But what could he
do for Elizabeth? That, too, wasn't that beyond him? He stood still,
facing the tragedy of his helplessness, beset by vague apprehensions. Then
he went on doggedly, his hands clasped behind him, his head sunk on his
breast.</p>
<p>He lay awake for a long time that night, wondering whether he and Dick had
been quite fair to Elizabeth. She should, he thought, have been told.
Then, if Dick's apprehensions were justified, she would have had some
preparation. As it was—Suppose something turned up out there,
something that would break her heart?</p>
<p>He had thought Margaret was sleeping, but after a time she moved and
slipped her hand into his. It comforted him. That, too, was life. Very
soon now they would be alone together again, as in the early days before
the children came. All the years and the struggle, and then back where
they started. But still, thank God, hand in hand.</p>
<p>Ever since the night of Jim's death Mrs. Sayre had been a constant visitor
to the house. She came in, solid, practical, and with an everyday manner
neither forcedly cheerful nor too decorously mournful, which made her very
welcome. After the three first days, when she had practically lived at the
house, there was no necessity for small pretensions with her. She knew the
china closet and the pantry, and the kitchen. She had even penetrated to
Mr. Wheeler's shabby old den on the second floor, and had slept a part of
the first night there on the leather couch with broken springs which he
kept because it fitted his body.</p>
<p>She was a kindly woman, and she had ached with pity. And, because of her
usual detachment from the town and its affairs, the feeling that she was
being of service gave her a little glow of content. She liked the family,
too, and particularly she liked Elizabeth. But after she had seen Dick and
Elizabeth together once or twice she felt that no plan she might make for
Wallace could possibly succeed. Lying on the old leather couch that first
night, between her frequent excursions among the waking family, she had
thought that out and abandoned it.</p>
<p>But, during the days that followed the funeral, she was increasingly
anxious about Wallace. She knew that rumors of the engagement had reached
him, for he was restless and irritable. He did not care to go out, but
wandered about the house or until late at night sat smoking alone on the
terrace, looking down at the town with sunken, unhappy eyes. Once or twice
in the evening he had taken his car and started out, and lying awake in
her French bed she would hear him coming hours later. In the mornings his
eyes were suffused and his color bad, and she knew that he was drinking in
order to get to sleep.</p>
<p>On the third day after Dick's departure for the West she got up when she
heard him coming in, and putting on her dressing gown and slippers,
knocked at his door.</p>
<p>"Come in," he called ungraciously.</p>
<p>She found him with his coat off, standing half defiantly with a glass of
whisky and soda in his hand. She went up to him and took it from him.</p>
<p>"We've had enough of that in the family, Wallie," she said. "And it's a
pretty poor resource in time of trouble."</p>
<p>"I'll have that back, if you don't mind."</p>
<p>"Nonsense," she said briskly, and flung it, glass and all, out of the
window. She was rather impressive when she turned.</p>
<p>"I've been a fairly indulgent mother," she said. "I've let you alone,
because it's a Sayre trait to run away when they feel a pull on the bit.
But there's a limit to my patience, and it is reached when my son drinks
to forget a girl."</p>
<p>He flushed and glowered at her in somber silence, but she moved about the
room calmly, giving it a housekeeper's critical inspection, and apparently
unconscious of his anger.</p>
<p>"I don't believe you ever cared for any one in all your life," he said
roughly. "If you had, you would know."</p>
<p>She was straightening a picture over the mantel, and she completed her
work before she turned.</p>
<p>"I care for you."</p>
<p>"That's different."</p>
<p>"Very well, then. I cared for your father. I cared terribly. And he killed
my love."</p>
<p>She padded out of the room, her heavy square body in its blazing kimono a
trifle rigid, but her face still and calm. He remained staring at the door
when she had closed it, and for some time after. He knew what message for
him had lain behind that emotionless speech of hers, not only
understanding, but a warning. She had cared terribly, and his father had
killed that love. He had drunk and played through his gay young life, and
then he had died, and no one had greatly mourned him.</p>
<p>She had left the decanter on its stand, and he made a movement toward it.
Then, with a half smile, he picked it up and walked to the window with it.
He was still smiling, half boyishly, as he put out his light and got into
bed. It had occurred to him that the milkman's flivver, driving in at the
break of dawn, would encounter considerable glass.</p>
<p>By morning, after a bad night, he had made a sort of double-headed
resolution, that he was through with booze, as he termed it, and that he
would find out how he stood with Elizabeth. But for a day or two no
opportunity presented itself. When he called there was always present some
grave-faced sympathizing visitor, dark clad and low of voice, and over the
drawing-room would hang the indescribable hush of a house in mourning. It
seemed to touch Elizabeth, too, making her remote and beyond earthly
things. He would go in, burning with impatience, hungry for the mere sight
of her, fairly overcharged with emotion, only to face that strange new
spirituality that made him ashamed of the fleshly urge in him.</p>
<p>Once he found Clare Rossiter there, and was aware of something electric in
the air. After a time he identified it. Behind the Rossiter girl's soft
voice and sympathetic words, there was a veiled hostility. She was
watching Elizabeth, was overconscious of her. And she was, for some
reason, playing up to himself. He thought he saw a faint look of relief on
Elizabeth's face when Clare at last rose to go.</p>
<p>"I'm on my way to see the man Dick Livingstone left in his place," Clare
said, adjusting her veil at the mirror. "I've got a cold. Isn't it queer,
the way the whole Livingstone connection is broken up?"</p>
<p>"Hardly queer. And it's only temporary."</p>
<p>"Possibly. But if you ask me, I don't believe Dick will come back. Mind, I
don't defend the town, but it doesn't like to be fooled. And he's fooled
it for years. I know a lot of people who'd quit going to him." She turned
to Wallie.</p>
<p>"He isn't David's nephew, you know. The question is, who is he? Of course
I don't say it, but a good many are saying that when a man takes a false
identity he has something to hide."</p>
<p>She gave them no chance to reply, but sauntered out with her
sex-conscious, half-sensuous walk. Outside the door her smile faded, and
her face was hard and bitter. She might forget Dick Livingstone, but never
would she forgive herself for her confession to Elizabeth, nor Elizabeth
for having heard it.</p>
<p>Wallie turned to Elizabeth when she had gone, slightly bewildered.</p>
<p>"What's got into her?" he inquired. And then, seeing Elizabeth's white
face, rather shrewdly: "That was one for him and two for you, was it?"</p>
<p>"I don't know. Probably."</p>
<p>"I wonder if you would look like that if any one attacked me!"</p>
<p>"No one attacks you, Wallie."</p>
<p>"That's not an answer. You wouldn't, would you? It's different, isn't it?"</p>
<p>"Yes. A little."</p>
<p>He straightened, and looked past her, unseeing, at the wall. "I guess I've
known it for quite a while," he said at last. "I didn't want to believe
it, so I wouldn't. Are you engaged to him?"</p>
<p>"Yes. It's not to be known just yet, Wallie."</p>
<p>"He's a good fellow," he said, after rather a long silence. "Not that that
makes it easier," he added with a twisted smile. Then, boyishly and
unexpectedly he said, "Oh, my God!"</p>
<p>He sat down, and when the dog came and placed a head on his knee he patted
it absently. He wanted to go, but he had a queer feeling that when he went
he went for good.</p>
<p>"I've cared for you for years," he said. "I've been a poor lot, but I'd
have been a good bit worse, except for you."</p>
<p>And again:</p>
<p>"Only last night I made up my mind that if you'd have me, I'd make
something out of myself. I suppose a man's pretty weak when he puts a
responsibility like that on a girl."</p>
<p>She yearned over him, rather. She made little tentative overtures of
friendship and affection. But he scarcely seemed to hear them, wrapped as
he was in the selfish absorption of his disappointment. When she heard the
postman outside and went to the door for the mail, she thought he had not
noticed her going. But when she returned he was watching her with jealous,
almost tragic eyes.</p>
<p>"I suppose you hear from him by every mail."</p>
<p>"There has been nothing to-day."</p>
<p>Something in her voice or her face made him look at her closely.</p>
<p>"Has he written at all?"</p>
<p>"The first day he got there. Not since."</p>
<p>He went away soon, and not after all with the feeling of going for good.
In his sceptical young mind, fed by Clare's malice, was growing a
comforting doubt of Dick's good faith.</p>
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