The Breaking Point

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

Two incidents always stood out afterwards in his memory of the cabin. One was the first time he saw himself in a mirror. He knew by that time that Bassett's story had been true, and that he was ten years older than he remembered himself to be. He thought he was in a measure prepared. But he saw in the glass a man whose face was lined and whose hair was streaked with gray. The fact that his beard had grown added to the terrible maturity of the reflection he saw, and he sent the mirror clattering to the ground.

The other incident was later, and when he was fairly strong again. The man was caught under a tree he was felling, and badly hurt. During the hour or so that followed, getting the tree cut away, and moving the injured man to the cabin on a wood sledge, Dick had the feeling of helplessness of any layman in an accident. He was solicitous but clumsy. But when they had got the patient into his bed, quite automatically he found himself making an investigation and pronouncing a verdict.

Later he was to realize that this was the first peak of submerged memory, rising above the flood. At the time all he felt was a great certainty. He must act quickly or the man would not live. And that night, with such instruments as he could extemporize, he operated. There was no time to send to a town.

All night, after the operation, Dick watched by the bedside, the woman moving back and forth restlessly. He got his only knowledge of the story, such as it was, then when she said once:

“I deserved this, but he didn't. I took him away from his wife.”

He had to stay on after that, for the woman could not be left alone. And he was glad of the respite, willing to drift until he got his bearings. Certain things had come back, more as pictures than realities. Thus he saw David clearly, Lucy dimly, Elizabeth not at all. But David came first; David in the buggy with the sagging springs, David's loud voice and portly figure, David, steady and upright and gentle as a woman. But there was something wrong about David. He puzzled over that, but he was learning not to try to force things, to let them come to the surface themselves.

It was two or three days later that he remembered that David was ill, and was filled with a sickening remorse and anxiety. For the first time he made plans to get away, for whatever happened after that he knew he must see David again. But all his thought led him to an impasse at that time, and that impasse was the feeling that he was a criminal and a fugitive, and that he had no right to tie up innocent lives with his. Even a letter to David might incriminate him.

Coupled with his determination to surrender, the idea of atonement was strong in him. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. That had been his father's belief, and well he remembered it. But during the drifting period he thrust it back, into that painful niche where he held Beverly, and the thing he would not face.

That phase of his readjustment, then, when he reached it, was painful and confused. There was the necessity for atonement, which involved surrender, and there was the call of David, and the insistent desire to see Beverly again, which was the thing he would not face. Of the three, the last, mixed up as it was with the murder and its expiation, was the strongest. For by the very freshness of his released memories, it was the days before his flight from the ranch that seemed most recent, and his life with David that was long ago, and blurred in its details as by the passing of infinite time.

When Elizabeth finally came back to him it was as something very gentle and remote, out of the long-forgotten past. Even his image of her was blurred and shadowy. He could not hear the tones of her voice, or remember anything she had said. He could never bring her at will, as he could David, for instance. She only came clearly at night, while he slept. Then the guard was down, and there crept into his dreams a small figure, infinitely loving and tender; but as he roused from sleep she changed gradually into Beverly. It was Beverly's arms he felt around his neck. Nevertheless he held to Elizabeth more completely than he knew, for the one thing that emerged from his misty recollection of her was that she cared for him. In a world of hate and bitterness she cared.