K

CHAPTER XXIV

Carlotta dressed herself with unusual care—not in black this time, but in white. She coiled her yellow hair in a soft knot at the back of her head, and she resorted to the faintest shading of rouge. She intended to be gay, cheerful. The ride was to be a bright spot in Wilson's memory. He expected recriminations; she meant to make him happy. That was the secret of the charm some women had for men. They went to such women to forget their troubles. She set the hour of their meeting at nine, when the late dusk of summer had fallen; and she met him then, smiling, a faintly perfumed white figure, slim and young, with a thrill in her voice that was only half assumed.

“It's very late,” he complained. “Surely you are not going to be back at ten.”

“I have special permission to be out late.”

“Good!” And then, recollecting their new situation: “We have a lot to talk over. It will take time.”

At the White Springs Hotel they stopped to fill the gasolene tank of the car. Joe Drummond saw Wilson there, in the sheet-iron garage alongside of the road. The Wilson car was in the shadow. It did not occur to Joe that the white figure in the car was not Sidney. He went rather white, and stepped out of the zone of light. The influence of Le Moyne was still on him, however, and he went on quietly with what he was doing. But his hands shook as he filled the radiator.

When Wilson's car had gone on, he went automatically about his preparations for the return trip—lifted a seat cushion to investigate his own store of gasolene, replacing carefully the revolver he always carried under the seat and packed in waste to prevent its accidental discharge, lighted his lamps, examined a loose brake-band.

His coolness gratified him. He had been an ass: Le Moyne was right. He'd get away—to Cuba if he could—and start over again. He would forget the Street and let it forget him.

The men in the garage were talking.

“To Schwitter's, of course,” one of them grumbled. “We might as well go out of business.”

“There's no money in running a straight place. Schwitter and half a dozen others are getting rich.”

“That was Wilson, the surgeon in town. He cut off my brother-in-law's leg—charged him as much as if he had grown a new one for him. He used to come here. Now he goes to Schwitter's, like the rest. Pretty girl he had with him. You can bet on Wilson.”

So Max Wilson was taking Sidney to Schwitter's, making her the butt of garage talk! The smiles of the men were evil. Joe's hands grew cold, his head hot. A red mist spread between him and the line of electric lights. He knew Schwitter's, and he knew Wilson.

He flung himself into his car and threw the throttle open. The car jerked, stalled.

“You can't start like that, son,” one of the men remonstrated. “You let 'er in too fast.”

“You go to hell!” Joe snarled, and made a second ineffectual effort.

Thus adjured, the men offered neither further advice nor assistance. The minutes went by in useless cranking—fifteen. The red mist grew heavier. Every lamp was a danger signal. But when K., growing uneasy, came out into the yard, the engine had started at last. He was in time to see Joe run his car into the road and turn it viciously toward Schwitter's.

Carlotta's nearness was having its calculated effect on Max Wilson. His spirits rose as the engine, marking perfect time, carried them along the quiet roads.

Partly it was reaction—relief that she should be so reasonable, so complaisant—and a sort of holiday spirit after the day's hard work. Oddly enough, and not so irrational as may appear, Sidney formed a part of the evening's happiness—that she loved him; that, back in the lecture-room, eyes and even mind on the lecturer, her heart was with him.

So, with Sidney the basis of his happiness, he made the most of his evening's freedom. He sang a little in his clear tenor—even, once when they had slowed down at a crossing, bent over audaciously and kissed Carlotta's hand in the full glare of a passing train.

“How reckless of you!”

“I like to be reckless,” he replied.

His boyishness annoyed Carlotta. She did not want the situation to get out of hand. Moreover, what was so real for her was only too plainly a lark for him. She began to doubt her power.

The hopelessness of her situation was dawning on her. Even when the touch of her beside him and the solitude of the country roads got in his blood, and he bent toward her, she found no encouragement in his words:—“I am mad about you to-night.”

She took her courage in her hands:—“Then why give me up for some one else?”

“That's—different.”

“Why is it different? I am a woman. I—I love you, Max. No one else will ever care as I do.”

“You are in love with the Lamb!”

“That was a trick. I'm sorry, Max. I don't care for anyone else in the world. If you let me go I'll want to die.”

Then, as he was silent:—

“If you'll marry me, I'll be true to you all my life. I swear it. There will be nobody else, ever.”

The sense, if not the words, of what he had sworn to Sidney that Sunday afternoon under the trees, on this very road! Swift shame overtook him, that he should be here, that he had allowed Carlotta to remain in ignorance of how things really stood between them.

“I'm sorry, Carlotta. It's impossible. I'm engaged to marry some one else.”

“Sidney Page?”—almost a whisper.

“Yes.”

He was ashamed at the way she took the news. If she had stormed or wept, he would have known what to do. But she sat still, not speaking.

“You must have expected it, sooner or later.”

Still she made no reply. He thought she might faint, and looked at her anxiously. Her profile, indistinct beside him, looked white and drawn. But Carlotta was not fainting. She was making a desperate plan. If their escapade became known, it would end things between Sidney and him. She was sure of that. She needed time to think it out. It must become known without any apparent move on her part. If, for instance, she became ill, and was away from the hospital all night, that might answer. The thing would be investigated, and who knew—

The car turned in at Schwitter's road and drew up before the house. The narrow porch was filled with small tables, above which hung rows of electric lights enclosed in Japanese paper lanterns. Midweek, which had found the White Springs Hotel almost deserted, saw Schwitter's crowded tables set out under the trees. Seeing the crowd, Wilson drove directly to the yard and parked his machine.

“No need of running any risk,” he explained to the still figure beside him. “We can walk back and take a table under the trees, away from those infernal lanterns.”

She reeled a little as he helped her out.

“Not sick, are you?”

“I'm dizzy. I'm all right.”

She looked white. He felt a stab of pity for her. She leaned rather heavily on him as they walked toward the house. The faint perfume that had almost intoxicated him, earlier, vaguely irritated him now.

At the rear of the house she shook off his arm and preceded him around the building. She chose the end of the porch as the place in which to drop, and went down like a stone, falling back.

There was a moderate excitement. The visitors at Schwitter's were too much engrossed with themselves to be much interested. She opened her eyes almost as soon as she fell—to forestall any tests; she was shrewd enough to know that Wilson would detect her malingering very quickly—and begged to be taken into the house. “I feel very ill,” she said, and her white face bore her out.

Schwitter and Bill carried her in and up the stairs to one of the newly furnished rooms. The little man was twittering with anxiety. He had a horror of knockout drops and the police. They laid her on the bed, her hat beside her; and Wilson, stripping down the long sleeve of her glove, felt her pulse.

“There's a doctor in the next town,” said Schwitter. “I was going to send for him, anyhow—my wife's not very well.”

“I'm a doctor.”

“Is it anything serious?”

“Nothing serious.”

He closed the door behind the relieved figure of the landlord, and, going back to Carlotta, stood looking down at her.

“What did you mean by doing that?”

“Doing what?”

“You were no more faint than I am.”

She closed her eyes.

“I don't remember. Everything went black. The lanterns—”

He crossed the room deliberately and went out, closing the door behind him. He saw at once where he stood—in what danger. If she insisted that she was ill and unable to go back, there would be a fuss. The story would come out. Everything would be gone. Schwitter's, of all places!

At the foot of the stairs, Schwitter pulled himself together. After all, the girl was only ill. There was nothing for the police. He looked at his watch. The doctor ought to be here by this time. It was sooner than they had expected. Even the nurse had not come. Tillie was alone, out in the harness-room. He looked through the crowded rooms, at the overflowing porch with its travesty of pleasure, and he hated the whole thing with a desperate hatred.

Another car. Would they never stop coming! But perhaps it was the doctor. A young man edged his way into the hall and confronted him.

“Two people just arrived here. A man and a woman—in white. Where are they?”

It was trouble then, after all!

“Upstairs—first bedroom to the right.” His teeth chattered. Surely, as a man sowed he reaped.

Joe went up the staircase. At the top, on the landing, he confronted Wilson. He fired at him without a word—saw him fling up his arms and fall back, striking first the wall, then the floor.

The buzz of conversation on the porch suddenly ceased. Joe put his revolver in his pocket and went quietly down the stairs. The crowd parted to let him through.

Carlotta, crouched in her room, listening, not daring to open the door, heard the sound of a car as it swung out into the road.