Part 68 (1/2)

There was an irony in it that made him laugh hopelessly.

He occupied himself then with ways and means, and sold the car.

Reynolds, about to be married and busily furnis.h.i.+ng a city office, bought it, had it repainted a bright blue, and signified to the world at large that he was at the Rossiter house every night by leaving it at the curb. Sometimes, on long country tramps, d.i.c.k saw it outside a farmhouse, and knew that the boycott was not limited to the town.

By Christmas, however, he realized that the question of meeting their expenses necessitated further economies, and reluctantly at last they decided to let Mike go. d.i.c.k went out to the stable with a distinct sinking of the heart, while David sat in the house, unhappily waiting for the thing to be done. But Mike refused to be discharged.

”And is it discharging me you are?” he asked, putting down one of David's boots in his angry astonishment. ”Well, then, I'm telling you you're not.”

”We can't pay you any longer, Mike. And now that the car's gone--”

”I'm not thinking about pay. I'm not going, and that's flat. Who'd be after doing his boots and all?”

David called him in that night and dismissed him again, this time very firmly. Mike said nothing and went out, but the next morning he was scrubbing the sidewalk as usual, and after that they gave it up.

Now and then d.i.c.k and Elizabeth met on the street, and she bowed to him and went on. At those times it seemed incredible that once he had held her in his arms, and that she had looked up at him with loving, faithful eyes. He suffered so from those occasional meetings that he took to watching for her, so as to avoid her. Sometimes he wished she would marry Wallace quickly, so he would be obliged to accept what now he knew he had not accepted at all.

He had occasional spells of violent anger at her, and of resentment, but they died when he checked up, one after the other, the inevitable series of events that had led to the catastrophe. But it was all nonsense to say that love never died. She had loved him, and there was never anything so dead as that love of hers.

He had been saved one thing, however; he had never seen her with Wallie Sayre. Then, one day in the country while he trudged afoot to make one of his rare professional visits, they went past together in Wallie's bright roadster. The sheer shock of it sent him against a fence, staring after them with an anger that shook him.

Late in November Elizabeth went away for a visit, and it gave him a breathing spell. But the strain was telling on him, and Ba.s.sett, stopping on his way to dinner at the Wheelers', told him so bluntly.

”You look pretty rotten,” he said. ”It's no time to go to pieces now, when you've put up your fight and won it.”

”I'm all right. I haven't been sleeping. That's all.”

”How about the business? People coming to their senses?”

”Not very fast,” d.i.c.k admitted. ”Of course it's a little soon.”

After dinner at the Wheelers', when Walter Wheeler had gone to a vestry meeting, Ba.s.sett delivered himself to Margaret of a highly indignant harangue on the situation in general.

”That's how I see it,” he finished. ”He's done a fine thing. A finer thing by a d.a.m.ned sight than I'd do, or any of this town. He's given up money enough to pay the national debt--or nearly. If he'd come back with it, as Judson Clark, they wouldn't have cared a hang for the past.

They'd have licked his boots. It makes me sick.”

He turned on her.

”You too, I think, Mrs. Wheeler. I'm not attacking you on that score; it's human nature. But it's the truth.”

”Perhaps. I don't know.”

”They'll drive him to doing it yet. He came back to make a place for himself again, like a man. Not what he had, but what he was. But they'll drive him away, mark my words.”

Later on, but more gently, he introduced the subject of Elizabeth.

”You can't get away from this, Mrs. Wheeler. So long as she stands off, and you behind her, the town is going to take her side. She doesn't know it, but that's how it stands. It all hangs on her. If he wasn't the man he is, I'd say his salvation hangs on her. I don't mean she ought to take him back; it's too late for that, if she's engaged. But a little friendliness and kindness wouldn't do any harm. You too. Do you ever have him here?”

”How can I, as things are?”

”Well, be friendly, anyhow,” he argued. ”That's not asking much. I suppose he'd cut my throat if he knew, but I'm a straight-to-the-mark sort of person, and I know this: what this house does the town will do.”