When the Sayre pew was empty, the town knew, if it happened to be winter, that the Florida or Santa Barbara season was on; or in summer the Maine coast.
The other pew was at the back of the church. Always it had one occupant; sometimes it had three. But the behavior of this pew was very erratic. Sometimes an elderly and portly gentleman with white hair and fierce eyebrows would come in when the sermon was almost over. Again, a hand would reach through the grill behind it, and a tall young man who had had his eyes fixed in the proper direction, but not always on the rector, would reach for his hat, get up and slip out. On these occasions, however, he would first identify the owner of the hand and then bend over the one permanent occupant of the pew, a little old lady. His speech was as Yea, yea, or Nay, nay, for he either said, “I'll be back for dinner,” or “Don't look for me until you see me.”
And Mrs. Crosby, without taking her eyes from the sermon, would nod.
Of late years, Doctor David Livingstone had been taking less and less of the “Don't-look-for-me-until-you-see-me” cases, and Doctor Dick had acquired a car, which would not freeze when left outside all night like a forgotten dog, and a sense of philosophy about sleep. That is, that eleven o'clock P.M. was bed-time to some people, but was just eleven o'clock for him.
When he went to church he listened to the sermon, but rather often he looked at Elizabeth Wheeler. When his eyes wandered, as the most faithful eyes will now and then, they were apt to rest on the flag that had hung, ever since the war, beside the altar. He had fought for his country in a sea of mud, never nearer than two hundred miles to the battle line, fought with a surgical kit instead of a gun, but he was content. Not to all the high adventure.
Had he been asked, suddenly, the name of the tall blonde girl who sang among the sopranos, he could not have told it.
The Sunday morning following Clare Rossiter's sentimental confession, Elizabeth tried very hard to banish all worldly thoughts, as usual, and to see the kneeling, rising and sitting congregation as there for worship. But for the first time she wondered. Some of the faces were blank, as though behind the steady gaze the mind had wandered far afield, or slept. Some were intent, some even devout. But for the first time she began to feel that people in the mass might be cruel, too. How many of them, for instance, would sometime during the day pass on, behind their hands, the gossip Clare had mentioned?
She changed her position, and glanced quickly over the church. The Livingstone pew was fully occupied, and well up toward the front, Wallie Sayre was steadfastly regarding her. She looked away quickly.
Came the end of the service. Came down the aisle the Courtney boy, clean and shining and carrying high his glowing symbol. Came the choir, two by two, the women first, sopranos, altos and Elizabeth. Came the men, bass and tenor, neatly shaved for Sunday morning. Came the rector, Mr. Oglethorpe, a trifle wistful, because always he fell so far below the mark he had set. Came the benediction. Came the slow rising from its knees of the congregation and its cheerful bustle of dispersal.
Doctor Dick Livingstone stood up and helped Doctor David into his new spring overcoat. He was very content. It was May, and the sun was shining. It was Sunday, and he would have an hour or two of leisure. And he had made a resolution about a matter that had been in his mind for some time. He was very content.
He looked around the church with what was almost a possessive eye. These people were his friends. He knew them all, and they knew him. They had, against his protest, put his name on the bronze tablet set in the wall on the roll of honor. Small as it was, this was his world.
Half smiling, he glanced about. He did not realize that behind their bows and greetings there was something new that day, something not so much unkind as questioning.
Outside in the street he tucked his aunt, Mrs. Crosby, against the spring wind, and waited at the wheel of the car while David entered with the deliberation of a man accustomed to the sagging of his old side-bar buggy under his weight. Long ago Dick had dropped the titular “uncle,” and as David he now addressed him.
“You're going to play some golf this afternoon, David,” he said firmly. “Mike had me out this morning to look at your buggy springs.”
David chuckled. He still stuck to his old horse, and to the ancient vehicle which had been the signal of distress before so many doors for forty years. “I can trust old Nettie,” he would say. “She doesn't freeze her radiator on cold nights, she doesn't skid, and if I drop asleep she'll take me home and into my own barn, which is more than any automobile would do.”
“I'm going to sleep,” he said comfortably. “Get Wallie Sayre—I see he's back from some place again—or ask a nice girl. Ask Elizabeth Wheeler. I don't think Lucy here expects to be the only woman in your life.”
Dick stared into the windshield.
“I've been wondering about that, David,” he said, “just how much right—”
“Balderdash!” David snorted. “Don't get any fool notion in your head.”
Followed a short silence with Dick driving automatically and thinking. Finally he drew a long breath.
“All right,” he said, “how about that golf—you need exercise. You're putting on weight, and you know it. And you smoke too much. It's either less tobacco or more walking, and you ought to know it.”
David grunted, but he turned to Lucy Crosby, in the rear seat:
“Lucy, d'you know where my clubs are?”
“You loaned them to Jim Wheeler last fall. If you get three of them back you're lucky.” Mrs. Crosby's voice was faintly tart. Long ago she had learned that her brother's belongings were his only by right of purchase, and were by way of being community property. When, early in her widowhood and her return to his home, she had found that her protests resulted only in a sort of clandestine giving or lending, she had exacted a promise from him. “I ask only one thing, David,” she had said. “Tell me where the things go. There wasn't a blanket for the guest-room bed at the time of the Diocesan Convention.”
“I'll run around to the Wheelers' and get them,” Dick observed, in a carefully casual voice. “I'll see the Carter baby, too, David, and that clears the afternoon. Any message?”
Lucy glanced at him, but David moved toward the house.
“Give Elizabeth a kiss for me,” he called over his shoulder, and went chuckling up the path.
II
Mrs. Crosby stood on the pavement, gazing after the car as it moved off. She had not her brother's simplicity nor his optimism. Her married years had taken her away from the environment which had enabled him to live his busy, uncomplicated life; where, the only medical man in a growing community, he had learned to form his own sturdy decisions and then to abide by them.
Black and white, right and wrong, the proper course and the improper course—he lived in a sort of two-dimensional ethical world. But to Lucy Crosby, between black and white there was a gray no-man's land of doubt and indecision; a half-way house of compromise, and sometimes David frightened her. He was so sure.
She passed the open door into the waiting-room, where sat two or three patient and silent figures, and went back to the kitchen. Minnie, the elderly servant, sat by the table reading, amid the odor of roasting chicken; outside the door on the kitchen porch was the freezer containing the dinner ice-cream. An orderly Sunday peace was in the air, a gesture of homely comfort, order and security.
Minnie got up.
“I'll unpin your veil for you,” she offered, obligingly. “You've got time to lie down about ten minutes. Mrs. Morgan said she's got to have her ears treated.”
“I hope she doesn't sit and talk