Page 255

When they had all gone Harrison Miller helped him up the stairs to where
his tidy bed stood ready, and the nurse had placed his hot milk on a
stand. But Harrison did not go at once.
"What about word to Dick, David?" he inquired awkwardly, "I've called
up Bassett, but he's away. And I don't know that Dick ought to come back
anyhow. If the police are on the job at all they'll be on the lookout
now. They'll know he may try to come."
David looked away. Just how much he wanted Dick, to tide him over these
bad hours, only David knew. But he could not have him. He stared at the
glass of hot milk.
"I guess I can fight this out alone, Harrison," he said. "And Lucy will
understand."
He did not sleep much that night. Once or twice he got up and tip-toed
across the hall into Lucy's room and looked at her. She was as white
as her pillow, and quite serene. Her hands, always a little rough and
twisted with service, were smooth and rested.
"You know why he can't come, Lucy," he said once. "It doesn't mean that
he doesn't care. You have to remember that." His sublime faith that she
heard and understood, not the Lucy on the bed but the Lucy who had not
yet gone on to the blessed company of heaven, carried him back to his
bed, comforted and reassured.
He was up and about his room early. The odor of baking muffins and
frying ham came up the stair-well, and the sound of Mike vigorously
polishing the floor in the hall. Mixed with the odor of cooking and of
floor wax was the scent of flowers from Lucy's room, and Mrs. Sayre's
machine stopped at the door while the chauffeur delivered a great mass
of roses.
David went carefully down the stairs and into his office, and there, at
his long deserted desk, commenced a letter to Dick.
He was sitting there when Dick came up the street...
The thought that he was going home had upheld Dick through the days that
followed Bassett's departure for the West. He knew that it would be a
fight, that not easily does a man step out of life and into it again,
but after his days of inaction he stood ready to fight. For David, for
Lucy, and, if it was not too late, for Elizabeth. When Bassett's wire
came from Norada, "All clear," he set out for Haverly, more nearly happy
than for months. The very rhythm of the train sang: "Going home; going
home."