XLVII

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.

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.