He had told Schwitter he would be at the hospital, and the message found him there. Wilson was holding his own, conscious now and making a hard fight. The message from Schwitter was very brief:--
"Something has happened, and Tillie wants you. I don't like to trouble you again, but she--wants you."
K. was rather gray of face by that time, having had no sleep and little food since the day before. But he got into the rented machine again--its rental was running up; he tried to forget it--and turned it toward Hillfoot. But first of all he drove back to the Street, and walked without ringing into Mrs. McKee's.
Neither a year's time nor Mrs. McKee's approaching change of state had altered the "mealing" house. The ticket-punch still lay on the hat-rack in the hall. Through the rusty screen of the back parlor window one viewed the spiraea, still in need of spraying. Mrs. McKee herself was in the pantry, placing one slice of tomato and three small lettuce leaves on each of an interminable succession of plates.
K., who was privileged, walked back.
"I've got a car at the door," he announced, "and there's nothing so extravagant as an empty seat in an automobile. Will you take a ride?"
Mrs. McKee agreed. Being of the class who believe a boudoir cap the ideal headdress for a motor-car, she apologized for having none.
"If I'd known you were coming I would have borrowed a cap," she said. "Miss Tripp, third floor front, has a nice one. If you'll take me in my toque--"
K. said he'd take her in her toque, and waited with some anxiety, having not the faintest idea what a toque was. He was not without other anxieties. What if the sight of Tillie's baby did not do all that he expected? Good women could be most cruel. And Schwitter had been very vague. But here K. was more sure of himself: the little man's voice had expressed as exactly as words the sense of a bereavement that was not a grief.
He was counting on Mrs. McKee's old fondness for the girl to bring them together. But, as they neared the house with its lanterns and tables, its whitewashed stones outlining the drive, its small upper window behind which Joe was waiting for night, his heart failed him, rather. He had a masculine dislike for meddling, and yet--Mrs. McKee had suddenly seen the name in the wooden arch over the gate: "Schwitter's."
"I'm not going in there, Mr. Le Moyne."
"Tillie's not in the house. She's back in the barn."
"In the barn!"
"She didn't approve of all that went on there, so she moved out. It's very comfortable and clean; it smells of hay. You'd be surprised how nice it is."
"The like of her!" snorted Mrs. McKee. "She's late with her conscience, I'm thinking."
"Last night," K. remarked, hands on the wheel, but car stopped, "she had a child there. It--it's rather like very old times, isn't it? A man-child, Mrs. McKee, not in a manger, of course."
"What do you want me to do?" Mrs. McKee's tone, which had been fierce at the beginning, ended feebly.
"I want you to go in and visit her, as you would any woman who'd had a new baby and needed a friend. Lie a little--" Mrs. McKee gasped. "Tell her the baby's pretty. Tell her you've been wanting to see her." His tone was suddenly stern. "Lie a little, for your soul's sake."
She wavered, and while she wavered he drove her in under the arch with the shameful name, and back to the barn. But there he had the tact to remain in the car, and Mrs. McKee's peace with Tillie was made alone. When, five minutes later, she beckoned him from the door of the barn, her eyes were red.
"Come in, Mr. K.," she said. "The wife's dead, poor thing. They're going to be married right away."
The clergyman was coming along the path with Schwitter at his heels. K. entered the barn. At the door to Tillie's room he uncovered his head. The child was asleep at her breast.
The five thousand dollar check from Mr. Lorenz had saved Palmer Howe's credit. On the strength of the deposit, he borrowed a thousand at the bank with which he meant to pay his bills, arrears at the University and Country Clubs, a hundred dollars lost throwing aces with poker dice, and various small obligations of Christine's.
The immediate result of the money was good. He drank nothing for a week, went into the details of the new venture with Christine's father, sat at home with Christine on her balcony in the evenings. With the knowledge that he could pay his debts, he postponed the day. He liked the feeling of a bank account in four figures.
The first evening or two Christine's pleasure in having him there gratified him. He felt kind, magnanimous, almost virtuous. On the third evening he was restless. It occurred to him that his wife was beginning to take his presence as a matter of course. He wanted cold bottled beer. When he found that the ice was out and the beer warm and flat, he was furious.
Christine had been making a fight, although her heart was only half in it. She was resolutely good-humored, ignored the past, dressed for Palmer in the things he liked. They still took their dinners at the Lorenz house up the street. When she saw that the haphazard table service there irritated him, she coaxed her mother into getting a butler.
The Street sniffed at the butler behind his stately back. Secretly and in its heart, it was proud of him. With a half-dozen automobiles, and Christine Howe putting on low neck in the evenings, and now a butler, not to mention Harriet Kennedy's Mimi, it ceased to pride itself on its commonplaceness, ignorant of the fact that in its very lack of affectation had lain its charm.
On the night that Joe shot Max Wilson, Palmer was noticeably restless. He had seen Grace Irving that day for the first time but once since the motor accident. To do him justice, his dissipation of the past few months had not included women.
The girl had a strange fascination for him. Perhaps she typified the care-free days before his marriage; perhaps the attraction was deeper, fundamental. He met her in the street the day before Max Wilson was shot. The sight of her walking sedately along in her shop-girl's black dress had been enough to set his pulses racing. When he saw that she meant to pass him, he fell into step beside her.
"I believe you were going to cut me!"
"I was in a hurry."
"Still in the store?"
"Yes." And, after a second's hesitation: "I'm keeping straight, too."
"How are you getting along?"
"Pretty well. I've had my salary raised."
"Do you have to walk as fast as this?"
"I said I was in a hurry. Once a week I get off a little early. I--"
He eyed her suspiciously.
"Early! What for?"
"I go to the hospital. The Rosenfeld boy is still there, you know."
"Oh!"
But a moment later he burst out irritably:--
"That was an accident, Grace. The boy took the chance when he engaged to drive the car. I'm sorry, of course. I dream of the little devil sometimes, lying there. I'll tell you what I'll do," he added magnanimously. "I'll stop in and talk to Wilson. He ought to have done something before this."
"The boy's not strong enough yet. I don't think you can do anything for him, unless--"
The monstrous injustice of the thing overcame her. Palmer and she walking about, and the boy lying on his hot bed! She choked.
"Well?"
"He worries about his mother. If you could give her some money, it would help."
"Money! Good Heavens--I owe everybody."
"You owe him too, don't you? He'll never walk again."
"I can't give them ten dollars. I don't see that I'm under any obligation, anyhow. I paid his board for two months in the hospital."
When she did not acknowledge this generosity,--amounting to forty-eight dollars,--his irritation grew. Her silence was an accusation. Her manner galled him, into the bargain. She was too calm in his presence, too cold. Where she had once palpitated visibly under his warm gaze, she was now self-possessed and quiet. Where it had pleased his pride to think that he had given her up, he found that the shoe was on the other foot.
At the entrance to a side street she stopped.
"I turn off here."
&n
bsp; "May I come and see you sometime?"
"No, please."
"That's flat, is it?"
"It is, Palmer."
He swung around savagely and left her.
The next day he drew the thousand dollars from the bank. A good many of his debts he wanted to pay in cash; there was no use putting checks through, with incriminating indorsements. Also, he liked the idea of carrying a roll of money around. The big fellows at the clubs always had a wad and peeled off bills like skin off an onion. He took a couple of drinks to celebrate his approaching immunity from debt.
He played auction bridge that afternoon in a private room at one of the hotels with the three men he had lunched with. Luck seemed to be with him. He won eighty dollars, and thrust it loose in his trousers pocket. Money seemed to bring money! If he could carry the thousand around for a day or so, something pretty good might come of it.
He had been drinking a little all afternoon. When the game was over, he bought drinks to celebrate his victory. The losers treated, too, to show they were no pikers. Palmer was in high spirits. He offered to put up the eighty and throw for it. The losers mentioned dinner and various engagements.
Palmer did not want to go home. Christine would greet him with raised eyebrows. They would eat a stuffy Lorenz dinner, and in the evening Christine would sit in the lamplight and drive him mad with soft music. He wanted lights, noise, the smiles of women. Luck was with him, and he wanted to be happy.
At nine o'clock that night he found Grace. She had moved to a cheap apartment which she shared with two other girls from the store. The others were out. It was his lucky day, surely.
His drunkenness was of the mind, mostly. His muscles were well controlled. The lines from his nose to the corners of his mouth were slightly accentuated, his eyes open a trifle wider than usual. That and a slight paleness of the nostrils were the only evidences of his condition. But Grace knew the signs.
"You can't come in."
"Of course I'm coming in."
She retreated before him, her eyes watchful. Men in his condition were apt to be as quick with a blow as with a caress. But, having gained his point, he was amiable.
"Get your things on and come out. We can take in a roof-garden."
"I've told you I'm not doing that sort of thing."
He was ugly in a flash.
"You've got somebody else on the string."
"Honestly, no. There--there has never been anybody else, Palmer."
He caught her suddenly and jerked her toward him.
"You let me hear of anybody else, and I'll cut the guts out of him!"
He held her for a second, his face black and fierce. Then, slowly and inevitably, he drew her into his arms. He was drunk, and she knew it. But, in the queer loyalty of her class, he was the only man she had cared for. She cared now. She took him for that moment, felt his hot kisses on her mouth, her throat, submitted while his rather brutal hands bruised her arms in fierce caresses. Then she put him from her resolutely.
"Now you're going."
"The hell I'm going!"
But he was less steady than he had been. The heat of the little flat brought more blood to his head. He wavered as he stood just inside the door.
"You must go back to your wife."
"She doesn't want me. She's in love with a fellow at the house."
"Palmer, hush!"
"Lemme come in and sit down, won't you?"
She let him pass her into the sitting-room. He dropped into a chair.
"You've turned me down, and now Christine--she thinks I don't know. I'm no fool; I see a lot of things. I'm no good. I know that I've made her miserable. But I made a merry little hell for you too, and you don't kick about it."
"You know that."
She was watching him gravely. She had never seen him just like this. Nothing else, perhaps, could have shown her so well what a broken reed he was.
"I got you in wrong. You were a good girl before I knew you. You're a good girl now. I'm not going to do you any harm, I swear it. I only wanted to take you out for a good time. I've got money. Look here!" He drew out the roll of bills and showed it to her. Her eyes opened wide. She had never known him to have much money.
"Lots more where that comes from."
A new look flashed into her eyes, not cupidity, but purpose.
She was instantly cunning.
"Aren't you going to give me some of that?"
"What for?"
"I--I want some clothes."
The very drunk have the intuition sometimes of savages or brute beasts.
"You lie."
"I want it for Johnny Rosenfeld."
He thrust it back into his pocket, but his hand retained its grasp of it.
"That's it," he complained. "Don't lemme be happy for a minute! Throw it all up to me!"
"You give me that for the Rosenfeld boy, and I'll go out with you."
"If I give you all that, I won't have any money to go out with!"
But his eyes were wavering. She could see victory.
"Take off enough for the evening."
But he drew himself up.
"I'm no piker," he said largely. "Whole hog or nothing. Take it."
He held it out to her, and from another pocket produced the eighty dollars, in crushed and wrinkled notes.
"It's my lucky day," he said thickly. "Plenty more where this came from. Do anything for you. Give it to the little devil. I--" He yawned. "God, this place is hot!"
His head dropped back on his chair; he propped his sagging legs on a stool. She knew him--knew that he would sleep almost all night. She would have to make up something to tell the other girls; but no matter--she could attend to that later.
She had never had a thousand dollars in her hands before. It seemed smaller than that amount. Perhaps he had lied to her. She paused, in pinning on her hat, to count the bills. It was all there.
CHAPTER XXVII
K. spent all of the evening of that day with Wilson. He was not to go for Joe until eleven o'clock. The injured man's vitality was standing him in good stead. He had asked for Sidney and she was at his bedside. Dr. Ed had gone.
"I'm going, Max. The office is full, they tell me," he said, bending over the bed. "I'll come in later, and if they'll make me a shakedown, I'll stay with you to-night."
The answer was faint, broken but distinct. "Get some sleep...I've been a poor stick...try to do better--" His roving eyes fell on the dog collar on the stand. He smiled, "Good old Bob!" he said, and put his hand over Dr. Ed's, as it lay on the bed.
K. found Sidney in the room, not sitting, but standing by the window. The sick man was dozing. One shaded light burned in a far corner. She turned slowly and met his eyes. It seemed to K. that she looked at him as if she had never really seen him before, and he was right. Readjustments are always difficult.
Sidney was trying to reconcile the K. she had known so well with this new K., no longer obscure, although still shabby, whose height had suddenly become presence, whose quiet was the quiet of infinite power.
She was suddenly shy of him, as he stood looking down at her. He saw the gleam of her engagement ring on her finger. It seemed almost defiant. As though she had meant by wearing it to emphasize her belief in her lover.
They did not speak beyond their greeting, until he had gone over the record. Then:--
"We can't talk here. I want to talk to you, K."
He led the way into the corridor. It was very dim. Far away was the night nurse's desk, with its lamp, its annunciator, its pile of records. The passage floor reflected the light on glistening boards.
"I have been thinking until I am almost crazy, K. And now I know how it happened. It was Joe."
"The principal thing is, not how it happened, but that he is going to get well, Sidney."
She stood looking down, twisting her ring around her finger.
"Is Joe in any danger?"
"We are going to get him away to-night. He wants to go to Cuba. He'll get off safely, I
think."
"WE are going to get him away! YOU are, you mean. You shoulder all our troubles, K., as if they were your own."
"I?" He was genuinely surprised. "Oh, I see. You mean--but my part in getting Joe off is practically nothing. As a matter of fact, Schwitter has put up the money. My total capital in the world, after paying the taxicab to-day, is seven dollars."
"The taxicab?"
"By Jove, I was forgetting! Best news you ever heard of! Tillie married and has a baby--all in twenty-four hours! Boy--they named it Le Moyne. Squalled like a maniac when the water went on its head. I--I took Mrs. McKee out in a hired machine. That's what happened to my capital." He grinned sheepishly. "She said she would have to go in her toque. I had awful qualms. I thought it was a wrapper."
"You, of course," she said. "You find Max and save him--don't look like that! You did, didn't you? And you get Joe away, borrowing money to send him. And as if that isn't enough, when you ought to have been getting some sleep, you are out taking a friend to Tillie, and being godfather to the baby."
He looked uncomfortable, almost guilty.
"I had a day off. I--"
"When I look back and remember how all these months I've been talking about service, and you said nothing at all, and all the time you were living what I preached--I'm so ashamed, K."
He would not allow that. It distressed him. She saw that, and tried to smile.
"When does Joe go?"
"To-night. I'm to take him across the country to the railroad. I was wondering--"
"Yes?"
"I'd better explain first what happened, and why it happened. Then if you are willing to send him a line, I think it would help. He saw a girl in white in the car and followed in his own machine. He thought it was you, of course. He didn't like the idea of your going to Schwitter's. Carlotta was taken ill. And Schwitter and--and Wilson took her upstairs to a room."
"Do you believe that, K.?"
"I do. He saw Max coming out and misunderstood. He fired at him then."
"He did it for me. I feel very guilty, K., as if it all comes back to me. I'll write to him, of course. Poor Joe!"
The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart Page 147
