David was satisfied. The great love of his life
had been given to Dick, and now Dick was his again.
He grieved for Lucy, but he knew that the parting
was not for long, and that from whatever high place
she looked down she would know that. He was satisfied.
He looked on his work and found it good. There
was no trace of weakness nor of vacillation in the
man who sat across from him at the table, or slammed
in and out of the house after his old fashion.
But he was not content. At first it was enough
to have Dick there, to stop in the doorway of his
room and see him within, occupied with the prosaic
business of getting into his clothes or out of them,
now and then to put a hand on his shoulder, to hear
him fussing in the laboratory again, and to be called
to examine divers and sundry smears to which Dick
attached impressive importance and more impressive
names. But behind Dick’s surface cheerfulness
he knew that he was eating his heart out.
And there was nothing to be done. Nothing.
Secretly David watched the papers for the announcement
of Elizabeth’s engagement, and each day drew
a breath of relief when it did not come. And
he had done another thing secretly, too; he did not
tell Dick when her ring came back. Annie had
brought the box, without a letter, and the incredible
cruelty of the thing made David furious. He stamped
into his office and locked it in a drawer, with the
definite intention of saving Dick that one additional
pang at a time when he already had enough to hear.
For things were going very badly. The fight
was on.
It was a battle without action. Each side was
dug in and entrenched, and waiting. It was an
engagement where the principals met occasionally the
neutral ground of the streets, bowed to each other
and passed on.
The town was sorry for David and still fond of him,
but it resented his stiff-necked attitude. It
said, in effect, that when he ceased to make Dick’s
enemies his it was willing to be friends. But
it said also, to each other and behind its hands,
that Dick’s absence was discreditable or it
would be explained, and that he had behaved abominably
to Elizabeth. It would be hanged if it would
be friends with him.
It looked away, but it watched. Dick knew that
when he passed by on the streets it peered at him
from behind its curtains, and whispered behind his
back. Now and then he saw, on his evening walks,
that line of cars drawn up before houses he had known
and frequented which indicated a party, but he was
never asked. He never told David.
It was only when the taboo touched David that Dick
was resentful, and then he was inclined to question
the wisdom of his return. It hurt him, for instance,
to see David give up his church, and reading morning
prayer alone at home on Sunday mornings, and to see
his grim silence when some of his old friends were
mentioned.
