Page 266

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.
He began then to think of his property, his for the claiming, and to
question whether he had not bought his peace at too great a cost to
David. He knew by that time that it was not fear, but pride, which had
sent him back empty-handed, the pride of making his own way. And now and
then, too, he felt a perfectly human desire to let Bassett publish the
story as his vindication and then snatch David away from them all,
to some luxurious haven where--that was the point at which he always
stopped--where David could pine away in homesickness for them!
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 furnishing 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, Dick saw it outside a
farmhouse, and knew that the boycott was not limited to the town.