The Breaking Point Part 69

She did not tell the family that night. They were full of their own concerns, Nina's coming maternity, the wrapping of packages behind closed doors, the final tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of the tree in the library. Leslie had started the phonograph, and it was playing "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht."

Still night, holy night, and only in her was there a stillness that was not holy.

They hung up their stockings valiantly as usual, making a little ceremony of it, and being careful not to think about Jim's missing one.

Indeed, they made rather a function of it, and Leslie demanded one of Nina's baby socks and pinned it up.

"I'm starting a bank account for the little beggar," he said, and dropped a gold piece into the toe. "Next year, old girl."

He put his arm around Nina. It seemed to him that life was doing considerably better than he deserved by him, and he felt very humble and contrite. He felt in his pocket for the square jeweler's box that lay there.

After that they left Walter Wheeler there, to play his usual part at such times, and went upstairs. He filled the stockings bravely, an orange in each toe, a box of candy, a toy for old time's sake, and then the little knickknacks he had been gathering for days and hiding in his desk. After all, there were no fewer stockings this year than last.

Instead of Jim's there was the tiny one for Nina's baby. That was the way things went. He took away, but also He gave.

He sat back in his deep chair, and looked up at the stockings, ludicrously bulging. After all, if he believed that He gave and took away, then he must believe that Jim was where he had tried to think him, filling a joyous, active place in some boyish heaven.

After a while he got up and went to his desk, and getting pen and paper wrote carefully.

"Dearest: You will find this in your stocking in the morning, when you get up for the early service. And I want you to think over it in the church. It is filled with tenderness and with anxiety. Life is not so very long, little daughter, and it has no time to waste in anger or in bitterness. A little work, a little sleep, a little love, and it is all over.

"Will you think of this to-day?"

He locked up the house, and went slowly up to bed. Elizabeth found the letter the next morning. She stood in the bleak room, with the ashes of last night's fire still smoking, and the stockings overhead not festive in the gray light, but looking forlorn and abandoned. Suddenly her eyes, dry and fiercely burning for so long, were wet with tears. It was true.

It was true. A little work, a little sleep, a little love. Not the great love, perhaps, not the only love of a man's life. Not the love of yesterday, but of to-day and to-morrow.

All the fierce repression of the last weeks was gone. She began to suffer. She saw d.i.c.k coming home, perhaps high with hope that whatever she knew she would understand and forgive. And she saw herself failing him, cold and shut away, not big enough nor woman enough to meet him half way. She saw him fighting his losing battle alone, protecting David but never himself; carrying Lucy to her quiet grave; sitting alone in his office, while the village walked by and stared at the windows; she saw him, gaining harbor after storm, and finding no anchorage there.

She turned and went, half blindly, into the empty street.

She thought he was at the early service. She did not see him, but she had once again the thing that had seemed lost forever, the warm sense of his thought of her.

He was there, in the shadowy back pew, with the grill behind it through which once insistent hands had reached to summon him. He was there, with Lucy's prayer-book in his hand, and none of the peace of the day in his heart. He knelt and rose with the others.

"O G.o.d, who makest us glad with the yearly remembrance of the birth of Thy Son--"

XLVIII

David was beaten; most tragic defeat of all, beaten by those he had loved and faithfully served.

He did not rise on Christmas morning, and d.i.c.k, visiting him after an almost untasted breakfast, found him still in his bed and questioned him anxiously.

"I'm all right," he a.s.serted. "I'm tired, d.i.c.k, that's all. Tired of fighting. You're young. You can carry it on, and win. But I'll never see it. They're stronger than we are."

Later he elaborated on that. He had kept the faith. He had run with courage the race that was set before him. He had stayed up at night and fought for them. But he couldn't fight against them.

d.i.c.k went downstairs again and shutting himself in his office fell to pacing the floor. David was right, the thing was breaking him. Very seriously now he contemplated abandoning the town, taking David with him, and claiming his estate. They could travel then; he could get consultants in Europe; there were baths there, and treatments--

The doorbell rang. He heard Minnie's voice in the hail, not too friendly, and her tap at the door.

"Some one in the waiting-room," she called.

When he opened the connecting door he found Elizabeth beyond it, a pale and frightened Elizabeth, breathless and very still. It was a perceptible moment before he could control his voice to speak. Then:

"I suppose you want to see David. I'm sorry, but he isn't well to-day.

He is still in bed."

"I didn't come to see David, d.i.c.k."

"I cannot think you want to see me, Elizabeth."

"I do, if you don't mind."

He stood aside then and let her pa.s.s him into the rear office.

But he was not fooled at all. Not he. He had been enough. He knew why she had come, in the kindness of heart. (She was so little. Good heavens, a man could crush her to nothing!) She had come because she was sorry for him, and she had brought forgiveness. It was like her. It was fine. It was d.a.m.nable.

His voice hardened, for fear it might be soft.

"Is this a professional visit, or a Christmas call, Elizabeth? Or perhaps I shouldn't call you that."

"A Christmas call?"

"You know what I mean. The day of peace. The day--what do you think I'm made of, Elizabeth? To have you here, gentle and good and kind--"

He got up and stood over her, tall and almost threatening.

"You've been to church, and you've been thinking things over, I know. I was there. I heard it all, peace on earth, goodwill to men. Bosh. Peace, when there is no peace. Good will! I don't want your peace and good will."

She looked up at him timidly.

"You don't want to be friends, then?"

"No. A thousand times, no," he said violently. Then, more gently: "I'm making a fool of myself. I want your peace and good will, Elizabeth. G.o.d knows I need them."

"You frighten me, d.i.c.k," she said, slowly. "I didn't come to bring forgiveness, if that is what you mean. I came--"

"Don't tell me you came to ask it. That would be more than I can bear."

"Will you listen to me for a moment, d.i.c.k? I am not good at explaining things, and I'm nervous. I suppose you can see that." She tried to smile at him. "A--a little work, a sleep, a little love, that's life, isn't it?"

He was watching her intently.

"Work and trouble, and a long sleep at the end for which let us be duly thankful--that's life, too. Love? Not every one gets love."

Hopelessness and despair overwhelmed her. He was making it hard for her.

Impossible. She could not go on.