Part 51 (1/2)

”We'll have to break it to him very gently,” he said. ”And he mustn't see me like this. If you can find some of my clothes and Reynolds'

razor, I'll--” He caught suddenly to the back of a chair and held on to it. ”I haven't taken time to eat much to-day,” he said, smiling at her.

”I guess I need food, Aunt Lucy.”

For the first time then she saw his clothes, his shabbiness and his pallor, and perhaps she guessed the truth. She got up, her face twitching, and pushed him into a chair.

”You sit here,” she said, ”and leave the door closed. The nurse is out for a walk, and she'll be in soon. I'll bring some milk and cookies now, and start the fire. I've got some chops in the house.”

When she came back almost immediately, with the familiar tray and the familiar food, he was sitting where she had left him. He had spent the entire time, had she known it, in impressing on his mind the familiar details of the room, to carry away with him.

She stood beside him, a hand on his shoulder, to see that he drank the milk slowly.

”I've got the fire going,” she said. ”And I'll run up now and get your clothes. I--had put them away.” Her voice broke a little. ”You see, we--You can change in your laboratory. Richard, can't you? If you go upstairs he'll hear you.”

He reached up and caught her hand. That touch, too, of the nearest to a mother's hand that he had known, he meant to carry away with him. He could not speak.

She bustled away, into her bright kitchen first, and then with happy stealth to the store-room. Her very heart was singing within her. She neither thought nor reasoned. d.i.c.k was back, and all would be well.

If she had any subconscious anxieties they were quieted, also subconsciously, by confidence in the men who were fighting his battle for him, by Walter Wheeler and Ba.s.sett and Harrison Miller. That d.i.c.k himself would present any difficulty lay beyond her worst fears.

She had been out of the room only twenty minutes when she returned to David and prepared to break her great news. At first she thought he was asleep. He was lying back with his eyes closed and his hands crossed on the prayer-book. But he looked up at her, and was instantly roused to full attention by her face.

”You've had some news,” he said.

”Yes, David. There's a little news. Don't count too much on it. Don't sit up. David, I have heard something that makes me think he is alive.

Alive and well.”

He made a desperate effort and controlled himself.

”Where is he?”

She sat down beside him and took his hand between hers.

”David,” she said slowly, ”G.o.d has been very good to us. I want to tell you something, and I want you to prepare yourself. We have heard from d.i.c.k. He is all right. He loves us, as he always did. And--he is downstairs, David.”

He lay very still and without speaking. She was frightened at first, afraid to go on with her further news. But suddenly David sat up in bed and in a full, firm voice began the Te Deum Laudamus. ”We praise thee, O G.o.d: we acknowledge thee to be the Lord. All the earth doth wors.h.i.+p thee, the Father everlasting.”

He repeated it in its entirety. At the end, however, his voice broke.

”O Lord, in thee have I trusted--I doubted Him, Lucy,” he said.

d.i.c.k, waiting at the foot of the stairs, heard that triumphant paean of thanksgiving and praise and closed his eyes.

It was a few minutes later that Lucy came down the stairs again.

”You heard him?” she asked. ”Oh, d.i.c.k, he had frightened me. It was more than a question of himself and you. He was making it one of himself and G.o.d.”

She let him go up alone and waited below, straining her ears, but she heard nothing beyond David's first hoa.r.s.e cry, and after a little she went into her sitting-room and shut the door.

Whatever lay underneath, there was no surface drama in the meeting. The determination to ignore any tragedy in the situation was strong in them both, and if David's eyes were blurred and his hands trembling, if d.i.c.k's first words were rather choked, they hid their emotion carefully.

”Well, here I am, like a bad penny!” said d.i.c.k huskily from the doorway.