The Breaking Point

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

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.

Yet on the surface things were much as they had been. David rose early, and as he improved in health, read his morning paper in his office while he waited for breakfast. Doctor Reynolds had gone, and the desk in Dick's office was back where it belonged. In the mornings Mike oiled the car in the stable and washed it, his old pipe clutched in his teeth, while from the kitchen came the sounds of pans and dishes, and the odor of frying sausages. And Dick splashed in the shower, and shaved by the mirror with the cracked glass in the bathroom. But he did not sing.

The house was very quiet. Now and then the front door opened, and a patient came in, but there was no longer the crowded waiting-room, the incessant jangle of the telephone, the odor of pungent drugs and antiseptics.

When, shortly before Christmas, Dick looked at the books containing the last quarter's accounts, he began to wonder how long they could fight their losing battle. He did not mind for himself, but it was unthinkable that David should do without, one by one, the small luxuries of his old age, his cigars, his long and now errandless rambles behind Nettie.