The Breaking Point | Page 7

don't like to hear you speak so of the patients who come to the house, Minnie."
"Well, I don't like their asking me questions about the family either," said Minnie, truculently. "She wanted to know who was Doctor Dick's mother. Said she had had a woman here from Wyoming, and she thought she'd known his people."
Mrs. Crosby stood very still.
"I think she should bring her questions to the family," she said, after a silence. "Thank you, Minnie."
Bonnet in hand, she moved toward the stairs, climbed them and went into her room. Recently life had been growing increasingly calm and less beset with doubts. For the first time, with Dick's coming to live with them ten years before, a boy of twenty-two, she had found a vicarious maternity and gloried in it. Recently she had been very happy. The war was over and he was safely back; again she could sew on his buttons and darn his socks, and turn down his bed at night. He filled the old house with cheer and with vitality. And, as David gave up more and more of the work, he took it on his broad shoulders, efficient, tireless, and increasingly popular.
She put her bonnet away in its box, and suddenly there rose in her frail old body a fierce and unexpected resentment against David. He had chosen a course and abided by it. He had even now no doubt or falterings. Just as in the first anxious days there had been no doubt in him as to the essential rightness of what he was doing. And now--This was what came of taking a life and moulding it in accordance with a predetermined plan. That was for God to do, not man.
She sat down near her window and rocked slowly, to calm herself. Outside the Sunday movement of the little suburban town went by: the older Wheeler girl, Nina, who had recently married Leslie Ward, in her smart little car; Harrison Miller, the cynical bachelor who lived next door, on his way to the station news stand for the New York papers; young couples taking small babies for the air in a perambulator; younger couples, their eyes on each other and on the future.
That, too, she reflected bitterly! Dick was in love. She had not watched him for that very thing for so long without being fairly sure now. She had caught, as simple David with his celibate heart could never have caught, the tone in Dick's voice when he mentioned the Wheelers. She had watched him for the past few months in church on Sunday mornings, and she knew that as she watched him, so he looked at Elizabeth.
And David was so sure! So sure.
The office door closed and Mrs. Morgan went out, a knitted scarf wrapping her ears against the wind, and following her exit came the slow ascent of David as he climbed the stairs to wash for dinner.
She stopped rocking.
"David!" she called sharply.
He opened the door and came in, a bulky figure, still faintly aromatic of drugs, cheerful and serene.
"D'you call me?" he inquired.
"Yes. Shut the door and come in. I want to talk to you." He closed the door and went to the hearth-rug. There was a photograph of Dick on the mantel, taken in his uniform, and he looked at it for a moment. Then he turned. "All right, my dear. Let's have it."
"Did Mrs. Morgan have anything to say?" He stared at her.
"She usually has," he said. "I never knew you considered it worth repeating. No. Nothing in particular."
The very fact that Mrs. Morgan had limited her inquiry to Minnie confirmed her suspicions. But somehow, face to face with David, she could not see his contentment turned to anxiety.
"I want to talk to you about Dick."
"Yes?"
"I think he's in love, David."
David's heavy body straightened, but his face remained serene.
"We had to expect that, Lucy. Is it Elizabeth Wheeler, do you think?"
"Yes."
For a moment there was silence. The canary in its cage hopped about, a beady inquisitive eye now on one, now on the other of them.
"She's a good girl, Lucy."
"That's not the point, is it?"
"Do you think she cares for him?"
"I don't know. There's some talk of Wallie Sayre. He's there a good bit."
"Wallie Sayre!" snorted David. "He's never done a day's work in his life and never will." He reflected on that with growing indignation. "He doesn't hold a candle to Dick. Of course, if the girl's a fool--"
Hands thrust deep into his pockets David took a turn about the room. Lucy watched him. At last:
"You're evading the real issue, David, aren't you?"
"Perhaps I am," he admitted. "I'd better talk to him. I think he's got an idea he shouldn't marry. That's nonsense."
"I don't mean that, exactly," Lucy persisted. "I mean, won't he want a good many things