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CHAPTER XVI

Young Howe had been firmly resolved to give up all his bachelor habits with his wedding day. In his indolent, rather selfish way, he was much in love with his wife.

But with the inevitable misunderstandings of the first months of marriage had come a desire to be appreciated once again at his face value. Grace had taken him, not for what he was, but for what he seemed to be. With Christine the veil was rent. She knew him now—all his small indolences, his affectations, his weaknesses. Later on, like other women since the world began, she would learn to dissemble, to affect to believe him what he was not.

Grace had learned this lesson long ago. It was the ABC of her knowledge. And so, back to Grace six weeks after his wedding day came Palmer Howe, not with a suggestion to renew the old relationship, but for comradeship.

Christine sulked—he wanted good cheer; Christine was intolerant—he wanted tolerance; she disapproved of him and showed her disapproval—he wanted approval. He wanted life to be comfortable and cheerful, without recriminations, a little work and much play, a drink when one was thirsty. Distorted though it was, and founded on a wrong basis, perhaps, deep in his heart Palmer's only longing was for happiness; but this happiness must be of an active sort—not content, which is passive, but enjoyment.

“Come on out,” he said. “I've got a car now. No taxi working its head off for us. Just a little run over the country roads, eh?”

It was the afternoon of the day before Christine's night visit to Sidney. The office had been closed, owing to a death, and Palmer was in possession of a holiday.

“Come on,” he coaxed. “We'll go out to the Climbing Rose and have supper.”

“I don't want to go.”

“That's not true, Grace, and you know it.”

“You and I are through.”

“It's your doing, not mine. The roads are frozen hard; an hour's run into the country will bring your color back.”

“Much you care about that. Go and ride with your wife,” said the girl, and flung away from him.

The last few weeks had filled out her thin figure, but she still bore traces of her illness. Her short hair was curled over her head. She looked curiously boyish, almost sexless.

Because she saw him wince when she mentioned Christine, her ill temper increased. She showed her teeth.

“You get out of here,” she said suddenly. “I didn't ask you to come back. I don't want you.”

“Good Heavens, Grace! You always knew I would have to marry some day.”

“I was sick; I nearly died. I didn't hear any reports of you hanging around the hospital to learn how I was getting along.”

He laughed rather sheepishly.

“I had to be careful. You know that as well as I do. I know half the staff there. Besides, one of—” He hesitated over his wife's name. “A girl I know very well was in the training-school. There would have been the devil to pay if I'd as much as called up.”

“You never told me you were going to get married.”

Cornered, he slipped an arm around her. But she shook him off.

“I meant to tell you, honey; but you got sick. Anyhow, I—I hated to tell you, honey.”

He had furnished the flat for her. There was a comfortable feeling of coming home about going there again. And, now that the worst minute of their meeting was over, he was visibly happier. But Grace continued to stand eyeing him somberly.

“I've got something to tell you,” she said. “Don't have a fit, and don't laugh. If you do, I'll—I'll jump out of the window. I've got a place in a store. I'm going to be straight, Palmer.”

“Good for you!”

He meant it. She was a nice girl and he was fond of her. The other was a dog's life. And he was not unselfish about it. She could not belong to him. He did not want her to belong to any one else.

“One of the nurses in the hospital, a Miss Page, has got me something to do at Lipton and Homburg's. I am going on for the January white sale. If I make good they will keep me.”

He had put her aside without a qualm; and now he met her announcement with approval. He meant to let her alone. They would have a holiday together, and then they would say good-bye. And she had not fooled him. She still cared. He was getting off well, all things considered. She might have raised a row.

“Good work!” he said. “You'll be a lot happier. But that isn't any reason why we shouldn't be friends, is it? Just friends; I mean that. I would like to feel that I can stop in now and then and say how do you do.”

“I promised Miss Page.”

“Never mind Miss Page.”

The mention of Sidney's name brought up in his mind Christine as he had left her that morning. He scowled. Things were not going well at home. There was something wrong with Christine. She used to be a good sport, but she had never been the same since the day of the wedding. He thought her attitude toward him was one of suspicion. It made him uncomfortable. But any attempt on his part to fathom it only met with cold silence. That had been her attitude that morning.

“I'll tell you what we'll do,” he said. “We won't go to any of the old places. I've found a new roadhouse in the country that's respectable enough to suit anybody. We'll go out to Schwitter's and get some dinner. I'll promise to get you back early. How's that?”

In the end she gave in. And on the way out he lived up to the letter of their agreement. The situation exhilarated him: Grace with her new air of virtue, her new aloofness; his comfortable car; Johnny Rosenfeld's discreet back and alert ears.

The adventure had all the thrill of a new conquest in it. He treated the girl with deference, did not insist when she refused a cigarette, felt glowingly virtuous and exultant at the same time.

When the car drew up before the Schwitter place, he slipped a five-dollar bill into Johnny Rosenfeld's not over-clean hand.

“I don't mind the ears,” he said. “Just watch your tongue, lad.” And Johnny stalled his engine in sheer surprise.

“There's just enough of the Jew in me,” said Johnny, “to know how to talk a lot and say nothing, Mr. Howe.”

He crawled stiffly out of the car and prepared to crank it.

“I'll just give her the 'once over' now and then,” he said. “She'll freeze solid if I let her stand.”

Grace had gone up the narrow path to the house. She had the gift of looking well in her clothes, and her small hat with its long quill and her motor-coat were chic and becoming. She never overdressed, as Christine was inclined to do.

Fortunately for Palmer, Tillie did not see him. A heavy German maid waited at the table in the dining-room, while Tillie baked waffles in the kitchen.

Johnny Rosenfeld, going around the side path to the kitchen door with visions of hot coffee and a country supper for his frozen stomach, saw her through the window bending flushed over the stove, and hesitated. Then, without a word, he tiptoed back to the car again, and, crawling into the tonneau, covered himself with rugs. In his untutored mind were certain great qualities, and loyalty to his employer was one. The five dollars in his pocket had nothing whatever to do with it.

At eighteen he had developed a philosophy of four words. It took the place of the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, and the Catechism. It was: “Mind your own business.”

The discovery of Tillie's hiding-place interested but did not thrill him. Tillie was his cousin. If she wanted to do the sort of thing she was doing, that was her affair. Tillie and her middle-aged lover, Palmer Howe and Grace—the alley was not unfamiliar with such relationships. It viewed them with tolerance until they were found out, when it raised its hands.

True to his promise, Palmer wakened the sleeping boy before nine o'clock. Grace had eaten little and drunk nothing; but Howe was slightly stimulated.

“Give her the 'once over,'” he told Johnny, “and then go back and crawl into the rugs again. I'll drive in.”

Grace sat beside him. Their progress was slow and rough over the country roads, but when they reached the State road Howe threw open the throttle. He drove well. The liquor was in his blood. He took chances and got away with them, laughing at the girl's gasps of dismay.

“Wait until I get beyond Simkinsville,” he said, “and I'll let her out. You're going to travel tonight, honey.”

The girl sat beside him with her eyes fixed ahead. He had been drinking, and the warmth of the liquor was in his voice. She was determined on one thing. She was going to make him live up to the letter of his promise to go away at the house door; and more and more she realized that it would be difficult. His mood was reckless, masterful. Instead of laughing when she drew back from a proffered caress, he turned surly. Obstinate lines that she remembered appeared from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth. She was uneasy.

Finally she hit on a plan to make him stop somewhere in her neighborhood and let her get out of the car. She would not come back after that.

There was another car going toward the city. Now it passed them, and as often they passed it. It became a contest of wits. Palmer's car lost on the hills, but gained on the long level stretches, which gleamed with a coating of thin ice.

“I wish you'd let them get ahead, Palmer. It's silly and it's reckless.”

“I told you we'd travel to-night.”

He turned a little glance at her. What the deuce was the matter with women, anyhow? Were none of them cheerful any more? Here was Grace as sober as Christine. He felt outraged, defrauded.

His light car skidded and struck the big car heavily. On a smooth road perhaps nothing more serious than broken mudguards would have been the result. But on the ice the small car slewed around and slid over the edge of the bank. At the bottom of the declivity it turned over.

Grace was flung clear of the wreckage. Howe freed himself and stood erect, with one arm hanging at his side. There was no sound at all from the boy under the tonneau.

The big car had stopped. Down the bank plunged a heavy, gorilla-like figure, long arms pushing aside the frozen branches of trees. When he reached the car, O'Hara found Grace sitting unhurt on the ground. In the wreck of the car the lamps had not been extinguished, and by their light he made out Howe, swaying dizzily.

“Anybody underneath?”

“The chauffeur. He's dead, I think. He doesn't answer.”

The other members of O'Hara's party had crawled down the bank by that time. With the aid of a jack, they got the car up. Johnny Rosenfeld lay doubled on his face underneath. When he came to and opened his eyes, Grace almost shrieked with relief.

“I'm all right,” said Johnny Rosenfeld. And, when they offered him whiskey: “Away with the fire-water. I am no drinker. I—I—” A spasm of pain twisted his face. “I guess I'll get up.” With his arms he lifted himself to a sitting position, and fell back again.

“God!” he said. “I can't move my legs.”