N the night Bassett and Harrison Miller were to return from Chicago Lucy sat downstairs in her sitting-room waiting for news.
At ten o'clock, according to her custom, she went up to see that David was comfortable for the night, and to read him that prayer for the absent with which he always closed his day of waiting. But before she went she stopped before the old mirror in the hall, to see if she wore any visible sign of tension.
The door into Dick's office was open, and on his once neat desk there lay a litter of papers and letters. She sighed and went up the stairs.
David lay propped up in his walnut bed. An incredibly wasted and old David; the hands on the log-cabin quilt which their mother had made were old hands, and tired. Sometimes Lucy, with a frightened gasp, would fear that David's waiting now was not all for Dick. That he was waiting for peace.
There had been something new in David lately. She thought it was fear. Always he had been so sure of himself; he had made his experiment in a man's soul, and whatever the result he had been ready to face his Creator with it. But he had lost courage. He had tampered with the things that were to be and not he, but Dick, was paying for that awful audacity.
Once, picking up his prayer-book to read evening prayer as was her custom now, it had opened at a verse marked with an uneven line:
“I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son.”
That had frightened her.......
David's eyes followed her about the room.
“I've got an idea you're keeping something from me, Lucy.”
“I? Why should I do that?”
“Then where's Harrison?” he demanded, querulously.
She told him one of the few white lies of her life when she said: “He hasn't been well. He'll be over to-morrow.” She sat down and picked up the prayer-book, only to find him lifting himself in the bed and listening.
“Somebody closed the hall door, Lucy. If it's Reynolds, I want to see him.”
She got up and went to the head of the stairs. The light was low in the hall beneath, and she saw a man standing there. But she still wore her reading glasses, and she saw at first hardly more than a figure.
“Is that you, Doctor Reynolds?” she asked, in her high old voice.
Then she put her hand to her throat and stood rigid, staring down. For the man had whipped off his cap and stood with his arms wide, looking up.
Holding to the stair-rail, her knees trembling under her, Lucy went down, and not until Dick's arms were around her was she sure that it was Dick, and not his shabby, weary ghost. She clung to him, tears streaming down her face, still in that cautious silence which governed them both; she held him off and looked at him, and then strained herself to him again, as though the sense of unreality were too strong, and only the contact of his rough clothing made him real to her.
It was not until they were in her sitting-room with the door closed that either of them dared to speak. Or perhaps, could speak. Even then she kept hold of him.
“Dick!” she said. “Dick!”
And that, over and over.
“How is he?” he was able to ask finally.
“He has been very ill. I began to think—Dick, I'm afraid to tell him. I'm afraid he'll die of joy.”
He winced at that. There could not be much joy in the farewell that was coming. Winced, and almost staggered. He had walked all the way from the city, and he had had no food that day.
“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.