Page 265

David was satisfied. The great love of his life had been given to Dick,
and now Dick was his again. He grieved for Lucy, but he knew that the
parting was not for long, and that from whatever high place she looked
down she would know that. He was satisfied. He looked on his work and
found it good. There was no trace of weakness nor of vacillation in the
man who sat across from him at the table, or slammed in and out of the
house after his old fashion.
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.