K

CHAPTER XXII

“My God, Sidney, I'm asking you to marry me!”

“I—I know that. I am asking you something else, Max.”

“I have never been in love with her.”

His voice was sulky. He had drawn the car close to a bank, and they were sitting in the shade, on the grass. It was the Sunday afternoon after Sidney's experience in the operating-room.

“You took her out, Max, didn't you?”

“A few times, yes. She seemed to have no friends. I was sorry for her.”

“That was all?”

“Absolutely. Good Heavens, you've put me through a catechism in the last ten minutes!”

“If my father were living, or even mother, I—one of them would have done this for me, Max. I'm sorry I had to. I've been very wretched for several days.”

It was the first encouragement she had given him. There was no coquetry about her aloofness. It was only that her faith in him had had a shock and was slow of reviving.

“You are very, very lovely, Sidney. I wonder if you have any idea what you mean to me?”

“You meant a great deal to me, too,” she said frankly, “until a few days ago. I thought you were the greatest man I had ever known, and the best. And then—I think I'd better tell you what I overheard. I didn't try to hear. It just happened that way.”

He listened doggedly to her account of the hospital gossip, doggedly and with a sinking sense of fear, not of the talk, but of Carlotta herself. Usually one might count on the woman's silence, her instinct for self-protection. But Carlotta was different. Damn the girl, anyhow! She had known from the start that the affair was a temporary one; he had never pretended anything else.

There was silence for a moment after Sidney finished. Then:

“You are not a child any longer, Sidney. You have learned a great deal in this last year. One of the things you know is that almost every man has small affairs, many of them sometimes, before he finds the woman he wants to marry. When he finds her, the others are all off—there's nothing to them. It's the real thing then, instead of the sham.”

“Palmer was very much in love with Christine, and yet—”

“Palmer is a cad.”

“I don't want you to think I'm making terms. I'm not. But if this thing went on, and I found out afterward that you—that there was anyone else, it would kill me.”

“Then you care, after all!”

There was something boyish in his triumph, in the very gesture with which he held out his arms, like a child who has escaped a whipping. He stood up and, catching her hands, drew her to her feet. “You love me, dear.”

“I'm afraid I do, Max.”

“Then I'm yours, and only yours, if you want me,” he said, and took her in his arms.

He was riotously happy, must hold her off for the joy of drawing her to him again, must pull off her gloves and kiss her soft bare palms.

“I love you, love you!” he cried, and bent down to bury his face in the warm hollow of her neck.

Sidney glowed under his caresses—was rather startled at his passion, a little ashamed.

“Tell me you love me a little bit. Say it.”

“I love you,” said Sidney, and flushed scarlet.

But even in his arms, with the warm sunlight on his radiant face, with his lips to her ear, whispering the divine absurdities of passion, in the back of her obstinate little head was the thought that, while she had given him her first embrace, he had held other women in his arms. It made her passive, prevented her complete surrender.

And after a time he resented it. “You are only letting me love you,” he complained. “I don't believe you care, after all.”

He freed her, took a step back from her.

“I am afraid I am jealous,” she said simply. “I keep thinking of—of Carlotta.”

“Will it help any if I swear that that is off absolutely?”

“Don't be absurd. It is enough to have you say so.”

But he insisted on swearing, standing with one hand upraised, his eyes on her. The Sunday landscape was very still, save for the hum of busy insect life. A mile or so away, at the foot of two hills, lay a white farmhouse with its barn and outbuildings. In a small room in the barn a woman sat; and because it was Sunday, and she could not sew, she read her Bible.

“—and that after this there will be only one woman for me,” finished Max, and dropped his hand. He bent over and kissed Sidney on the lips.

At the white farmhouse, a little man stood in the doorway and surveyed the road with eyes shaded by a shirt-sleeved arm. Behind him, in a darkened room, a barkeeper was wiping the bar with a clean cloth.

“I guess I'll go and get my coat on, Bill,” said the little man heavily. “They're starting to come now. I see a machine about a mile down the road.”

Sidney broke the news of her engagement to K. herself, the evening of the same day. The little house was quiet when she got out of the car at the door. Harriet was asleep on the couch at the foot of her bed, and Christine's rooms were empty. She found Katie on the back porch, mountains of Sunday newspapers piled around her.

“I'd about give you up,” said Katie. “I was thinking, rather than see your ice-cream that's left from dinner melt and go to waste, I'd take it around to the Rosenfelds.”

“Please take it to them. I'd really rather they had it.”

She stood in front of Katie, drawing off her gloves.

“Aunt Harriet's asleep. Is—is Mr. Le Moyne around?”

“You're gettin' prettier every day, Miss Sidney. Is that the blue suit Miss Harriet said she made for you? It's right stylish. I'd like to see the back.”

Sidney obediently turned, and Katie admired.

“When I think how things have turned out!” she reflected. “You in a hospital, doing God knows what for all sorts of people, and Miss Harriet making a suit like that and asking a hundred dollars for it, and that tony that a person doesn't dare to speak to her when she's in the dining-room. And your poor ma...well, it's all in a lifetime! No; Mr. K.'s not here. He and Mrs. Howe are gallivanting around together.”

“Katie!”

“Well, that's what I call it. I'm not blind. Don't I hear her dressing up about four o'clock every afternoon, and, when she's all ready, sittin' in the parlor with the door open, and a book on her knee, as if she'd been reading all afternoon? If he doesn't stop, she's at the foot of the stairs, calling up to him. 'K.,' she says, 'K., I'm waiting to ask you something!' or, 'K., wouldn't you like a cup of tea?' She's always feedin' him tea and cake, so that when he comes to table he won't eat honest victuals.”

Sidney had paused with one glove half off. Katie's tone carried conviction. Was life making another of its queer errors, and were Christine and K. in love with each other? K. had always been HER friend, HER confidant. To give him up to Christine—she shook herself impatiently. What had come over her? Why not be glad that he had some sort of companionship?

She went upstairs to the room that had been her mother's, and took off her hat. She wanted to be alone, to realize what had happened to her. She did not belong to herself any more. It gave her an odd, lost feeling. She was going to be married—not very soon, but ultimately. A year ago her half promise to Joe had gratified her sense of romance. She was loved, and she had thrilled to it.

But this was different. Marriage, that had been but a vision then, loomed large, almost menacing. She had learned the law of compensation: that for every joy one pays in suffering. Women who married went down into the valley of death for their children. One must love and be loved very tenderly to pay for that. The scale must balance.

And there were other things. Women grew old, and age was not always lovely. This very maternity—was it not fatal to beauty? Visions of child-bearing women in the hospitals, with sagging breasts and relaxed bodies, came to her. That was a part of the price.

Harriet was stirring, across the hall. Sidney could hear her moving about with flat, inelastic steps.

That was the alternative. One married, happily or not as the case might be, and took the risk. Or one stayed single, like Harriet, growing a little hard, exchanging slimness for leanness and austerity of figure, flat-chested, thin-voiced. One blossomed and withered, then, or one shriveled up without having flowered. All at once it seemed very terrible to her. She felt as if she had been caught in an inexorable hand that had closed about her.

Harriet found her a little later, face down on her mother's bed, crying as if her heart would break. She scolded her roundly.

“You've been overworking,” she said. “You've been getting thinner. Your measurements for that suit showed it. I have never approved of this hospital training, and after last January—”

She could hardly credit her senses when Sidney, still swollen with weeping, told her of her engagement.

“But I don't understand. If you care for him and he has asked you to marry him, why on earth are you crying your eyes out?”

“I do care. I don't know why I cried. It just came over me, all at once, that I—It was just foolishness. I am very happy, Aunt Harriet.”

Harriet thought she understood. The girl needed her mother, and she, Harriet, was a hard, middle-aged woman and a poor substitute. She patted Sidney's moist hand.

“I guess I understand,” she said. “I'll attend to your wedding things, Sidney. We'll show this street that even Christine Lorenz can be outdone.” And, as an afterthought: “I hope Max Wilson will settle down now. He's been none too steady.”

K. had taken Christine to see Tillie that Sunday afternoon. Palmer had the car out—had, indeed, not been home since the morning of the previous day. He played golf every Saturday afternoon and Sunday at the Country Club, and invariably spent the night there. So K. and Christine walked from the end of the trolley line, saying little, but under K.'s keen direction finding bright birds in the hedgerows, hidden field flowers, a dozen wonders of the country that Christine had never dreamed of.

The interview with Tillie had been a disappointment to K. Christine, with the best and kindliest intentions, struck a wrong note. In her endeavor to cover the fact that everything in Tillie's world was wrong, she fell into the error of pretending that everything was right.

Tillie, grotesque of figure and tragic-eyed, listened to her patiently, while K. stood, uneasy and uncomfortable, in the wide door of the hay-barn and watched automobiles turning in from the road. When Christine rose to leave, she confessed her failure frankly.

“I've meant well, Tillie,” she said. “I'm afraid I've said exactly what I shouldn't. I can only think that, no matter what is wrong, two wonderful pieces of luck have come to you. Your husband—that is, Mr. Schwitter—cares for you,—you admit that,—and you are going to have a child.”

Tillie's pale eyes filled.

“I used to be a good woman, Mrs. Howe,” she said simply. “Now I'm not. When I look in that glass at myself, and call myself what I am, I'd give a good bit to be back on the Street again.”

She found opportunity for a word with K. while Christine went ahead of him out of the barn.

“I've been wanting to speak to you, Mr. Le Moyne.” She lowered her voice. “Joe Drummond's been coming out here pretty regular. Schwitter says he's drinking a little. He don't like him loafing around here: he sent him home last Sunday. What's come over the boy?”

“I'll talk to him.”

“The barkeeper says he carries a revolver around, and talks wild. I thought maybe Sidney Page could do something with him.”

“I think he'd not like her to know. I'll do what I can.”

K.'s face was thoughtful as he followed Christine to the road.

Christine was very silent, on the way back to the city. More than once K. found her eyes fixed on him, and it puzzled him. Poor Christine was only trying to fit him into the world she knew—a world whose men were strong but seldom tender, who gave up their Sundays to golf, not to visiting unhappy outcasts in the country. How masculine he was, and yet how gentle! It gave her a choking feeling in her throat. She took advantage of a steep bit of road to stop and stand a moment, her fingers on his shabby gray sleeve.

It was late when they got home. Sidney was sitting on the low step, waiting for them.

Wilson had come across at seven, impatient because he must see a case that evening, and promising an early return. In the little hall he had drawn her to him and kissed her, this time not on the lips, but on the forehead and on each of her white eyelids.

“Little wife-to-be!” he had said, and was rather ashamed of his own emotion. From across the Street, as he got into his car, he had waved his hand to her.

Christine went to her room, and, with a long breath of content, K. folded up his long length on the step below Sidney.

“Well, dear ministering angel,” he said, “how goes the world?”

“Things have been happening, K.”

He sat erect and looked at her. Perhaps because she had a woman's instinct for making the most of a piece of news, perhaps—more likely, indeed—because she divined that the announcement would not be entirely agreeable, she delayed it, played with it.

“I have gone into the operating-room.”

“Fine!”

“The costume is ugly. I look hideous in it.”

“Doubtless.”

He smiled up at her. There was relief in his eyes, and still a question.

“Is that all the news?”

“There is something else, K.”

It was a moment before he spoke. He sat looking ahead, his face set. Apparently he did not wish to hear her say it; for when, after a moment, he spoke, it was to forestall her, after all.

“I think I know what it is, Sidney.”

“You expected it, didn't you?”

“I—it's not an entire surprise.”

“Aren't you going to wish me happiness?”

“If my wishing could bring anything good to you, you would have everything in the world.”

His voice was not entirely steady, but his eyes smiled into hers.

“Am I—are we going to lose you soon?”

“I shall finish my training. I made that a condition.”

Then, in a burst of confidence:—

“I know so little, K., and he knows so much! I am going to read and study, so that he can talk to me about his work. That's what marriage ought to be, a sort of partnership. Don't you think so?”

K. nodded. His mind refused to go forward to the unthinkable future. Instead, he was looking back—back to those days when he had hoped sometime to have a wife to talk to about his work, that beloved work that was no longer his. And, finding it agonizing, as indeed all thought was that summer night, he dwelt for a moment on that evening, a year before, when in the same June moonlight, he had come up the Street and had seen Sidney where she was now, with the tree shadows playing over her.

Even that first evening he had been jealous.

It had been Joe then. Now it was another and older man, daring, intelligent, unscrupulous. And this time he had lost her absolutely, lost her without a struggle to keep her. His only struggle had been with himself, to remember that he had nothing to offer but failure.

“Do you know,” said Sidney suddenly, “that it is almost a year since that night you came up the Street, and I was here on the steps?”

“That's a fact, isn't it!” He managed to get some surprise into his voice.

“How Joe objected to your coming! Poor Joe!”

“Do you ever see him?”

“Hardly ever now. I think he hates me.”

“Why?”

“Because—well, you know, K. Why do men always hate a woman who just happens not to love them?”

“I don't believe they do. It would be much better for them if they could. As a matter of fact, there are poor devils who go through life trying to do that very thing, and failing.”

Sidney's eyes were on the tall house across. It was Dr. Ed's evening office hour, and through the open window she could see a line of people waiting their turn. They sat immobile, inert, doggedly patient, until the opening of the back office door promoted them all one chair toward the consulting-room.

“I shall be just across the Street,” she said at last. “Nearer than I am at the hospital.”

“You will be much farther away. You will be married.”

“But we will still be friends, K.?”

Her voice was anxious, a little puzzled. She was often puzzled with him.

“Of course.”

But, after another silence, he astounded her. She had fallen into the way of thinking of him as always belonging to the house, even, in a sense, belonging to her. And now—

“Shall you mind very much if I tell you that I am thinking of going away?”

“K.!”

“My dear child, you do not need a roomer here any more. I have always received infinitely more than I have paid for, even in the small services I have been able to render. Your Aunt Harriet is prosperous. You are away, and some day you are going to be married. Don't you see—I am not needed?”

“That does not mean you are not wanted.”

“I shall not go far. I'll always be near enough, so that I can see you”—he changed this hastily—“so that we can still meet and talk things over. Old friends ought to be like that, not too near, but to be turned on when needed, like a tap.”

“Where will you go?”

“The Rosenfelds are rather in straits. I thought of helping them to get a small house somewhere and of taking a room with them. It's largely a matter of furniture. If they could furnish it even plainly, it could be done. I—haven't saved anything.”

“Do you ever think of yourself?” she cried. “Have you always gone through life helping people, K.? Save anything! I should think not! You spend it all on others.” She bent over and put her hand on his shoulder. “It will not be home without you, K.”

To save him, he could not have spoken just then. A riot of rebellion surged up in him, that he must let this best thing in his life go out of it. To go empty of heart through the rest of his days, while his very arms ached to hold her! And she was so near—just above, with her hand on his shoulder, her wistful face so close that, without moving, he could have brushed her hair.

“You have not wished me happiness, K. Do you remember, when I was going to the hospital and you gave me the little watch—do you remember what you said?”

“Yes”—huskily.

“Will you say it again?”

“But that was good-bye.”

“Isn't this, in a way? You are going to leave us, and I—say it, K.”

“Good-bye, dear, and—God bless you.”