K

CHAPTER XX

Winter relaxed its clutch slowly that year. March was bitterly cold; even April found the roads still frozen and the hedgerows clustered with ice. But at mid-day there was spring in the air. In the courtyard of the hospital, convalescents sat on the benches and watched for robins. The fountain, which had frozen out, was being repaired. Here and there on ward window-sills tulips opened their gaudy petals to the sun.

Harriet had gone abroad for a flying trip in March and came back laden with new ideas, model gowns, and fresh enthusiasm. She carried out and planted flowers on her sister's grave, and went back to her work with a feeling of duty done. A combination of crocuses and snow on the ground had given her an inspiration for a gown. She drew it in pencil on an envelope on her way back in the street car.

Grace Irving, having made good during the white sales, had been sent to the spring cottons. She began to walk with her head higher. The day she sold Sidney material for a simple white gown, she was very happy. Once a customer brought her a bunch of primroses. All day she kept them under the counter in a glass of water, and at evening she took them to Johnny Rosenfeld, still lying prone in the hospital.

On Sidney, on K., and on Christine the winter had left its mark heavily. Christine, readjusting her life to new conditions, was graver, more thoughtful. She was alone most of the time now. Under K.'s guidance, she had given up the “Duchess” and was reading real books. She was thinking real thoughts, too, for the first time in her life.

Sidney, as tender as ever, had lost a little of the radiance from her eyes; her voice had deepened. Where she had been a pretty girl, she was now lovely. She was back in the hospital again, this time in the children's ward. K., going in one day to take Johnny Rosenfeld a basket of fruit, saw her there with a child in her arms, and a light in her eyes that he had never seen before. It hurt him, rather—things being as they were with him. When he came out he looked straight ahead.

With the opening of spring the little house at Hillfoot took on fresh activities. Tillie was house-cleaning with great thoroughness. She scrubbed carpets, took down the clean curtains, and put them up again freshly starched. It was as if she found in sheer activity and fatigue a remedy for her uneasiness.

Business had not been very good. The impeccable character of the little house had been against it. True, Mr. Schwitter had a little bar and served the best liquors he could buy; but he discouraged rowdiness—had been known to refuse to sell to boys under twenty-one and to men who had already overindulged. The word went about that Schwitter's was no place for a good time. Even Tillie's chicken and waffles failed against this handicap.

By the middle of April the house-cleaning was done. One or two motor parties had come out, dined sedately and wined moderately, and had gone back to the city again. The next two weeks saw the weather clear. The roads dried up, robins filled the trees with their noisy spring songs, and still business continued dull.

By the first day of May, Tillie's uneasiness had become certainty. On that morning Mr. Schwitter, coming in from the early milking, found her sitting in the kitchen, her face buried in her apron. He put down the milk-pails and, going over to her, put a hand on her head.

“I guess there's no mistake, then?”

“There's no mistake,” said poor Tillie into her apron.

He bent down and kissed the back of her neck. Then, when she failed to brighten, he tiptoed around the kitchen, poured the milk into pans, and rinsed the buckets, working methodically in his heavy way. The tea-kettle had boiled dry. He filled that, too. Then:—

“Do you want to see a doctor?”

“I'd better see somebody,” she said, without looking up. “And—don't think I'm blaming you. I guess I don't really blame anybody. As far as that goes, I've wanted a child right along. It isn't the trouble I am thinking of either.”

He nodded. Words were unnecessary between them. He made some tea clumsily and browned her a piece of toast. When he had put them on one end of the kitchen table, he went over to her again.

“I guess I'd ought to have thought of this before, but all I thought of was trying to get a little happiness out of life. And,”—he stroked her arm,—“as far as I am concerned, it's been worth while, Tillie. No matter what I've had to do, I've always looked forward to coming back here to you in the evening. Maybe I don't say it enough, but I guess you know I feel it all right.”

Without looking up, she placed her hand over his.

“I guess we started wrong,” he went on. “You can't build happiness on what isn't right. You and I can manage well enough; but now that there's going to be another, it looks different, somehow.”

After that morning Tillie took up her burden stoically. The hope of motherhood alternated with black fits of depression. She sang at her work, to burst out into sudden tears.

Other things were not going well. Schwitter had given up his nursery business; but the motorists who came to Hillfoot did not come back. When, at last, he took the horse and buggy and drove about the country for orders, he was too late. Other nurserymen had been before him; shrubberies and orchards were already being set out. The second payment on his mortgage would be due in July. By the middle of May they were frankly up against it. Schwitter at last dared to put the situation into words.

“We're not making good, Til,” he said. “And I guess you know the reason. We are too decent; that's what's the matter with us.” There was no irony in his words.

With all her sophistication, Tillie was vastly ignorant of life. He had to explain.

“We'll have to keep a sort of hotel,” he said lamely. “Sell to everybody that comes along, and—if parties want to stay over-night—”

Tillie's white face turned crimson.

He attempted a compromise. “If it's bad weather, and they're married—”

“How are we to know if they are married or not?”

He admired her very much for it. He had always respected her. But the situation was not less acute. There were two or three unfurnished rooms on the second floor. He began to make tentative suggestions as to their furnishing. Once he got a catalogue from an installment house, and tried to hide it from her. Tillie's eyes blazed. She burned it in the kitchen stove.

Schwitter himself was ashamed; but the idea obsessed him. Other people fattened on the frailties of human nature. Two miles away, on the other road, was a public house that had netted the owner ten thousand dollars profit the year before. They bought their beer from the same concern. He was not as young as he had been; there was the expense of keeping his wife—he had never allowed her to go into the charity ward at the asylum. Now that there was going to be a child, there would be three people dependent upon him. He was past fifty, and not robust.

One night, after Tillie was asleep, he slipped noiselessly into his clothes and out to the barn, where he hitched up the horse with nervous fingers.

Tillie never learned of that midnight excursion to the “Climbing Rose,” two miles away. Lights blazed in every window; a dozen automobiles were parked before the barn. Somebody was playing a piano. From the bar came the jingle of glasses and loud, cheerful conversation.

When Schwitter turned the horse's head back toward Hillfoot, his mind was made up. He would furnish the upper rooms; he would bring a barkeeper from town—these people wanted mixed drinks; he could get a second-hand piano somewhere.

Tillie's rebellion was instant and complete. When she found him determined, she made the compromise that her condition necessitated. She could not leave him, but she would not stay in the rehabilitated little house. When, a week after Schwitter's visit to the “Climbing Rose,” an installment van arrived from town with the new furniture, Tillie moved out to what had been the harness-room of the old barn and there established herself.

“I am not leaving you,” she told him. “I don't even know that I am blaming you. But I am not going to have anything to do with it, and that's flat.”

So it happened that K., making a spring pilgrimage to see Tillie, stopped astounded in the road. The weather was warm, and he carried his Norfolk coat over his arm. The little house was bustling; a dozen automobiles were parked in the barnyard. The bar was crowded, and a barkeeper in a white coat was mixing drinks with the casual indifference of his kind. There were tables under the trees on the lawn, and a new sign on the gate.

Even Schwitter bore a new look of prosperity. Over his schooner of beer K. gathered something of the story.

“I'm not proud of it, Mr. Le Moyne. I've come to do a good many things the last year or so that I never thought I would do. But one thing leads to another. First I took Tillie away from her good position, and after that nothing went right. Then there were things coming on”—he looked at K. anxiously—“that meant more expense. I would be glad if you wouldn't say anything about it at Mrs. McKee's.”

“I'll not speak of it, of course.”

It was then, when K. asked for Tillie, that Mr. Schwitter's unhappiness became more apparent.

“She wouldn't stand for it,” he said. “She moved out the day I furnished the rooms upstairs and got the piano.”

“Do you mean she has gone?”

“As far as the barn. She wouldn't stay in the house. I—I'll take you out there, if you would like to see her.”

K. shrewdly surmised that Tillie would prefer to see him alone, under the circumstances.

“I guess I can find her,” he said, and rose from the little table.

“If you—if you can say anything to help me out, sir, I'd appreciate it. Of course, she understands how I am driven. But—especially if you would tell her that the Street doesn't know—”

“I'll do all I can,” K. promised, and followed the path to the barn.

Tillie received him with a certain dignity. The little harness-room was very comfortable. A white iron bed in a corner, a flat table with a mirror above it, a rocking-chair, and a sewing-machine furnished the room.

“I wouldn't stand for it,” she said simply; “so here I am. Come in, Mr. Le Moyne.”

There being but one chair, she sat on the bed. The room was littered with small garments in the making. She made no attempt to conceal them; rather, she pointed to them with pride.

“I am making them myself. I have a lot of time these days. He's got a hired girl at the house. It was hard enough to sew at first, with me making two right sleeves almost every time.” Then, seeing his kindly eye on her: “Well, it's happened, Mr. Le Moyne. What am I going to do? What am I going to be?”

“You're going to be a very good mother, Tillie.”

She was manifestly in need of cheering. K., who also needed cheering that spring day, found his consolation in seeing her brighten under the small gossip of the Street. The deaf-and-dumb book agent had taken on life insurance as a side issue, and was doing well; the grocery store at the corner was going to be torn down, and over the new store there were to be apartments; Reginald had been miraculously returned, and was building a new nest under his bureau; Harriet Kennedy had been to Paris, and had brought home six French words and a new figure.

Outside the open door the big barn loomed cool and shadowy, full of empty spaces where later the hay would be stored; anxious mother hens led their broods about; underneath in the horse stable the restless horses pawed in their stalls. From where he sat, Le Moyne could see only the round breasts of the two hills, the fresh green of the orchard the cows in a meadow beyond.

Tillie followed his eyes.

“I like it here,” she confessed. “I've had more time to think since I moved out than I ever had in my life before. Them hills help. When the noise is worst down at the house, I look at the hills there and—”

There were great thoughts in her mind—that the hills meant God, and that in His good time perhaps it would all come right. But she was inarticulate. “The hills help a lot,” she repeated.

K. rose. Tillie's work-basket lay near him. He picked up one of the little garments. In his big hands it looked small, absurd.

“I—I want to tell you something, Tillie. Don't count on it too much; but Mrs. Schwitter has been failing rapidly for the last month or two.”

Tillie caught his arm.

“You've seen her?”

“I was interested. I wanted to see things work out right for you.”

All the color had faded from Tillie's face.

“You're very good to me, Mr. Le Moyne,” she said. “I don't wish the poor soul any harm, but—oh, my God! if she's going, let it be before the next four months are over.”

K. had fallen into the habit, after his long walks, of dropping into Christine's little parlor for a chat before he went upstairs. Those early spring days found Harriet Kennedy busy late in the evenings, and, save for Christine and K., the house was practically deserted.

The breach between Palmer and Christine was steadily widening. She was too proud to ask him to spend more of his evenings with her. On those occasions when he voluntarily stayed at home with her, he was so discontented that he drove her almost to distraction. Although she was convinced that he was seeing nothing of the girl who had been with him the night of the accident, she did not trust him. Not that girl, perhaps, but there were others. There would always be others.

Into Christine's little parlor, then, K. turned, the evening after he had seen Tillie. She was reading by the lamp, and the door into the hall stood open.

“Come in,” she said, as he hesitated in the doorway.

“I am frightfully dusty.”

“There's a brush in the drawer of the hat-rack—although I don't really mind how you look.”

The little room always cheered K. Its warmth and light appealed to his aesthetic sense; after the bareness of his bedroom, it spelled luxury. And perhaps, to be entirely frank, there was more than physical comfort and satisfaction in the evenings he spent in Christine's firelit parlor. He was entirely masculine, and her evident pleasure in his society gratified him. He had fallen into a way of thinking of himself as a sort of older brother to all the world because he was a sort of older brother to Sidney. The evenings with her did something to reinstate him in his own self-esteem. It was subtle, psychological, but also it was very human.

“Come and sit down,” said Christine. “Here's a chair, and here are cigarettes and there are matches. Now!”

But, for once, K. declined the chair. He stood in front of the fireplace and looked down at her, his head bent slightly to one side.

“I wonder if you would like to do a very kind thing,” he said unexpectedly.

“Make you coffee?”

“Something much more trouble and not so pleasant.”

Christine glanced up at him. When she was with him, when his steady eyes looked down at her, small affectations fell away. She was more genuine with K. than with anyone else, even herself.

“Tell me what it is, or shall I promise first?”

“I want you to promise just one thing: to keep a secret.”

“Yours?”

Christine was not over-intelligent, perhaps, but she was shrewd. That Le Moyne's past held a secret she had felt from the beginning. She sat up with eager curiosity.

“No, not mine. Is it a promise?”

“Of course.”

“I've found Tillie, Christine. I want you to go out to see her.”

Christine's red lips parted. The Street did not go out to see women in Tillie's situation.

“But, K.!” she protested.

“She needs another woman just now. She's going to have a child, Christine; and she has had no one to talk to but her hus—but Mr. Schwitter and myself. She is depressed and not very well.”

“But what shall I say to her? I'd really rather not go, K. Not,” she hastened to set herself right in his eyes—“not that I feel any unwillingness to see her. I know you understand that. But—what in the world shall I say to her?”

“Say what your own kind heart prompts.”

It had been rather a long time since Christine had been accused of having a kind heart. Not that she was unkind, but in all her self-centered young life there had been little call on her sympathies. Her eyes clouded.

“I wish I were as good as you think I am.”

There was a little silence between them. Then Le Moyne spoke briskly:—

“I'll tell you how to get there; perhaps I would better write it.”

He moved over to Christine's small writing-table and, seating himself, proceeded to write out the directions for reaching Hillfoot.

Behind him, Christine had taken his place on the hearth-rug and stood watching his head in the light of the desk-lamp. “What a strong, quiet face it is,” she thought. Why did she get the impression of such a tremendous reserve power in this man who was a clerk, and a clerk only? Behind him she made a quick, unconscious gesture of appeal, both hands out for an instant. She dropped them guiltily as K. rose with the paper in his hand.

“I've drawn a sort of map of the roads,” he began. “You see, this—”

Christine was looking, not at the paper, but up at him.

“I wonder if you know, K.,” she said, “what a lucky woman the woman will be who marries you?”

He laughed good-humoredly.

“I wonder how long I could hypnotize her into thinking that.”

He was still holding out the paper.

“I've had time to do a little thinking lately,” she said, without bitterness. “Palmer is away so much now. I've been looking back, wondering if I ever thought that about him. I don't believe I ever did. I wonder—”

She checked herself abruptly and took the paper from his hand.

“I'll go to see Tillie, of course,” she consented. “It is like you to have found her.”

She sat down. Although she picked up the book that she had been reading with the evident intention of discussing it, her thoughts were still on Tillie, on Palmer, on herself. After a moment:—

“Has it ever occurred to you how terribly mixed up things are? Take this Street, for instance. Can you think of anybody on it that—that things have gone entirely right with?”

“It's a little world of its own, of course,” said K., “and it has plenty of contact points with life. But wherever one finds people, many or few, one finds all the elements that make up life—joy and sorrow, birth and death, and even tragedy. That's rather trite, isn't it?”

Christine was still pursuing her thoughts.

“Men are different,” she said. “To a certain extent they make their own fates. But when you think of the women on the Street,—Tillie, Harriet Kennedy, Sidney Page, myself, even Mrs. Rosenfeld back in the alley,—somebody else moulds things for us, and all we can do is to sit back and suffer. I am beginning to think the world is a terrible place, K. Why do people so often marry the wrong people? Why can't a man care for one woman and only one all his life? Why—why is it all so complicated?”

“There are men who care for only one woman all their lives.”

“You're that sort, aren't you?”

“I don't want to put myself on any pinnacle. If I cared enough for a woman to marry her, I'd hope to—But we are being very tragic, Christine.”

“I feel tragic. There's going to be another mistake, K., unless you stop it.”

He tried to leaven the conversation with a little fun.

“If you're going to ask me to interfere between Mrs. McKee and the deaf-and-dumb book and insurance agent, I shall do nothing of the sort. She can both speak and hear enough for both of them.”

“I mean Sidney and Max Wilson. He's mad about her, K.; and, because she's the sort she is, he'll probably be mad about her all his life, even if he marries her. But he'll not be true to her; I know the type now.”

K. leaned back with a flicker of pain in his eyes.

“What can I do about it?”

Astute as he was, he did not suspect that Christine was using this method to fathom his feeling for Sidney. Perhaps she hardly knew it herself.

“You might marry her yourself, K.”

But he had himself in hand by this time, and she learned nothing from either his voice or his eyes.

“On twenty dollars a week? And without so much as asking her consent?” He dropped his light tone. “I'm not in a position to marry anybody. Even if Sidney cared for me, which she doesn't, of course—”

“Then you don't intend to interfere? You're going to let the Street see another failure?”

“I think you can understand,” said K. rather wearily, “that if I cared less, Christine, it would be easier to interfere.”

After all, Christine had known this, or surmised it, for weeks. But it hurt like a fresh stab in an old wound. It was K. who spoke again after a pause:—

“The deadly hard thing, of course, is to sit by and see things happening that one—that one would naturally try to prevent.”

“I don't believe that you have always been of those who only stand and wait,” said Christine. “Sometime, K., when you know me better and like me better, I want you to tell me about it, will you?”

“There's very little to tell. I held a trust. When I discovered that I was unfit to hold that trust any longer, I quit. That's all.”

His tone of finality closed the discussion. But Christine's eyes were on him often that evening, puzzled, rather sad.

They talked of books, of music—Christine played well in a dashing way. K. had brought her soft, tender little things, and had stood over her until her noisy touch became gentle. She played for him a little, while he sat back in the big chair with his hand screening his eyes.

When, at last, he rose and picked up his cap; it was nine o'clock.

“I've taken your whole evening,” he said remorsefully. “Why don't you tell me I am a nuisance and send me off?”

Christine was still at the piano, her hands on the keys. She spoke without looking at him:—

“You're never a nuisance, K., and—”

“You'll go out to see Tillie, won't you?”

“Yes. But I'll not go under false pretenses. I am going quite frankly because you want me to.”

Something in her tone caught his attention.

“I forgot to tell you,” she went on. “Father has given Palmer five thousand dollars. He's going to buy a share in a business.”

“That's fine.”

“Possibly. I don't believe much in Palmer's business ventures.”

Her flat tone still held him. Underneath it he divined strain and repression.

“I hate to go and leave you alone,” he said at last from the door. “Have you any idea when Palmer will be back?”

“Not the slightest. K., will you come here a moment? Stand behind me; I don't want to see you, and I want to tell you something.”

He did as she bade him, rather puzzled.

“Here I am.”

“I think I am a fool for saying this. Perhaps I am spoiling the only chance I have to get any happiness out of life. But I have got to say it. It's stronger than I am. I was terribly unhappy, K., and then you came into my life, and I—now I listen for your step in the hall. I can't be a hypocrite any longer, K.”

When he stood behind her, silent and not moving, she turned slowly about and faced him. He towered there in the little room, grave eyes on hers.

“It's a long time since I have had a woman friend, Christine,” he said soberly. “Your friendship has meant a good deal. In a good many ways, I'd not care to look ahead if it were not for you. I value our friendship so much that I—”

“That you don't want me to spoil it,” she finished for him. “I know you don't care for me, K., not the way I—But I wanted you to know. It doesn't hurt a good man to know such a thing. And it—isn't going to stop your coming here, is it?”

“Of course not,” said K. heartily. “But to-morrow, when we are both clear-headed, we will talk this over. You are mistaken about this thing, Christine; I am sure of that. Things have not been going well, and just because I am always around, and all that sort of thing, you think things that aren't really so. I'm only a reaction, Christine.”

He tried to make her smile up at him. But just then she could not smile.

If she had cried, things might have been different for every one; for perhaps K. would have taken her in his arms. He was heart-hungry enough, those days, for anything. And perhaps, too, being intuitive, Christine felt this. But she had no mind to force him into a situation against his will.

“It is because you are good,” she said, and held out her hand. “Good-night.”

Le Moyne took it and bent over and kissed it lightly. There was in the kiss all that he could not say of respect, of affection and understanding.

“Good-night, Christine,” he said, and went into the hall and upstairs.

The lamp was not lighted in his room, but the street light glowed through the windows. Once again the waving fronds of the ailanthus tree flung ghostly shadows on the walls. There was a faint sweet odor of blossoms, so soon to become rank and heavy.

Over the floor in a wild zigzag darted a strip of white paper which disappeared under the bureau. Reginald was building another nest.