It was a few minutes later that Lucy came down the stairs again.
"You heard him?" she asked. "Oh, Dick, he had frightened me. It was more
than a question of himself and you. He was making it one of himself and
God."
She let him go up alone and waited below, straining her ears, but she
heard nothing beyond David's first hoarse cry, and after a little she
went into her sitting-room and shut the door.
Whatever lay underneath, there was no surface drama in the meeting. The
determination to ignore any tragedy in the situation was strong in
them both, and if David's eyes were blurred and his hands trembling, if
Dick's first words were rather choked, they hid their emotion carefully.
"Well, here I am, like a bad penny!" said Dick huskily from the doorway.
"And a long time you've been about it," grumbled David. "You young
rascal!"
He held out his hand, and Dick crushed it between both of his. He was
startled at the change in David. For a moment he could only stand there,
holding his hand, and trying to keep his apprehension out of his face.
"Sit down," David said awkwardly, and blew his nose with a terrific
blast. "I've been laid up for a while, but I'm all right now. I'll fool
them all yet," he boasted, out of his happiness and content. "Business
has been going to the dogs, Dick. Reynolds is a fool."
"Of course you'll fool them." There was still a band around Dick's
throat. It hurt him to look at David, so thin and feeble, so sunken from
his former portliness. And David saw his eyes, and knew.
"I've dropped a little flesh, eh, Dick?" he inquired. "Old bulge is
gone, you see. The nurse makes up the bed when I'm in it, flat as when
I'm out."
Suddenly his composure broke. He was a feeble and apprehensive old man,
shaken with the tearless sobbing of weakness and age. Dick put an arm
across his shoulders, and they sat without speech until David was quiet
again.
"I'm a crying old woman, Dick," David said at last. "That's what comes
of never feeling a pair of pants on your legs and being coddled like
a baby." He sat up and stared around him ferociously. "They sprinkle
violet water on my pillows, Dick! Can you beat that?"
Warned by Lucy, the nurse went to her room and did not disturb them.
But she sat for a time in her rocking-chair, before she changed into the
nightgown and kimono in which she slept on the couch in David's room.
She knew the story, and her kindly heart ached within her. What good
would it do after all, this home-coming? Dick could not stay. It was
even dangerous. Reynolds had confided to her that he suspected a watch
on the house by the police, and that the mail was being opened. What
good was it?