“Not at all,” Dick replied, with a new
ring in his voice. “You’re right.
I’ve been ten sorts of a fool, but I know now
what I’m going to do. Take your paper,
old friend, and for my sake go out and clear Jud Clark.
Put up a headstone to him, if you like, a good one.
I’ll buy it.”
“And what will you be doing in the meantime?”
Dick stretched and threw out his arms.
“Me?” he said. “What should
I be doing, old man? I’m going home.”
Lucy Crosby was dead. One moment she was of
the quick, moving about the house, glancing in at
David, having Minnie in the kitchen pin and unpin
her veil; and the next she was still and infinitely
mysterious, on her white bed. She had fallen
outside the door of David’s room, and lay there,
her arms still full of fresh bath towels, and a fixed
and intense look in her eyes, as though, outside the
door, she had come face to face with a messenger who
bore surprising news. Doctor Reynolds, running
up the stairs, found her there dead, and closed the
door into David’s room.
But David knew before they told him. He waited
until they had placed her on her bed, had closed her
eyes and drawn a white coverlet over her, and then
he went in alone, and sat down beside her, and put
a hand over her chilling one.
“If you are still here, Lucy,” he said,
“and have not yet gone on, I want you to carry
this with you. We are all right, here.
Everybody is all right. You are not to worry.”
After a time he went back to his room and got his
prayer-book. He could hear Harrison Miller’s
voice soothing Minnie in the lower hall, and Reynolds
at the telephone. He went back into the quiet
chamber, and opening the prayer-book, began to read
aloud.
“Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become
the first fruits of them that slept—”
His voice tightened. He put his head down on
the side of the bed.
He was very docile that day. He moved obediently
from his room for the awful aftermath of a death,
for the sweeping and dusting and clean curtains, and
sat in Dick’s room, not reading, not even praying,
a lonely yet indomitable old figure. When his
friends came, elderly men who creaked in and tried
to reduce their robust voices to a decorous whisper,
he shook hands with them and made brief, courteous
replies. Then he lapsed into silence. They
felt shut off and uncomfortable, and creaked out again.
Only once did he seem shaken. That was when
Elizabeth came swiftly in and put her arms around
him as he sat. He held her close to him, saying
nothing for a long time. Then he drew a deep
breath.
“I was feeling mighty lonely, my dear,”
he said.
He was the better for her visit. He insisted
on dressing that evening, and on being helped down
the stairs. The town, which had seemed inimical
for so long, appeared to him suddenly to be holding
out friendly hands. More than friendly hands.
Loving, tender hands, offering service and affection
and old-time friendship. It moved about sedately,
in dark clothes, and came down the stairs red-eyed
and using pocket-hand-kerchiefs, and it surrounded
him with love and loving kindness.
