The front doorbell rang.

“There it is. That’s what I was listening for. Let it ring. I’m not going to be led around by feelings. Let it ring.”

But it did not ring again.

A black weariness fell on Lee, a hopelessness that pressed his shoulders down. He laughed at himself. “I can go and find it’s an advertisement under the door or I can sit here and let my silly old mind tell me death is on the doorstep. Well, I want the advertisement.”

Lee sat in the living room and looked at the envelope in his lap. And suddenly he spat at it. “All right,” he said. “I’m coming—goddam you,” and he ripped it open and in a moment laid it on the table and turned it over with the message down.

He stared between his knees at the floor. “No,” he said, “that’s not my right. Nobody has the right to remove any single experience from another. Life and death are promised. We have a right to pain.”

His stomach contracted. “I haven’t got the courage. I’m a cowardly yellow belly. I couldn’t stand it.”

He went into the bathroom and measured three teaspoons of elixir of bromide into a glass and added water until the red medicine was pink. He carried the glass to the living room and put it on the table. He folded the telegram and shoved it in his pocket. He said aloud, “I hate a coward! God, how I hate a coward!” His hands were shaking and a cold perspiration dampened his forehead.

At four o’clock he heard Adam fumbling at the doorknob. Lee licked his lips. He stood up and walked slowly to the hall. He carried the glass of pink fluid and his hand was steady.

Chapter 55

[1]

ALL OF THE LIGHTS WERE ON in the Trask house. The door stood partly open, and the house was cold. In the sitting room Lee was shriveled up like a leaf in the chair beside the lamp. Adam’s door was open and the sound of voices came from his room.

When Cal came in he asked, “What’s going on?”

Lee looked at him and swung his head toward the table where the open telegram lay. “Your brother is dead,” he said. “Your father has had a stroke.”

Cal started down the hall.

Lee said, “Come back. Dr. Edwards and Dr. Murphy are in there. Let them alone.”

Cal stood in front of him. “How bad? How bad, Lee, how bad?”

“I don’t know.” He spoke as though recalling an ancient thing. “He came home tired. But I had to read him the telegram. That was his right. For about five minutes he said it over and over to himself out loud. And then it seemed to get through into his brain and to explode there.”

“Is he conscious?”

Lee said wearily, “Sit down and wait, Cal. Sit down and wait. Get used to it. I’m trying to.”

Cal picked up the telegram and read its bleak and dignified announcement.