K

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER XII

  Tillie was gone.

  Oddly enough, the last person to see her before she left was HarrietKennedy. On the third day after Mr. Schwitter's visit, Harriet's coloredmaid had announced a visitor.

  Harriet's business instinct had been good. She had taken expensive roomsin a good location, and furnished them with the assistance of a decorstore. Then she arranged with a New York house to sell her models oncommission.

  Her short excursion to New York had marked for Harriet the beginning ofa new heaven and a new earth. Here, at last, she found people speakingher own language. She ventured a suggestion to a manufacturer, and foundit greeted, not, after the manner of the Street, with scorn, but withapproval and some surprise.

  "About once in ten years," said Mr. Arthurs, "we have a woman from outof town bring us a suggestion that is both novel and practical. When wefind people like that, we watch them. They climb, madame,--climb."

  Harriet's climbing was not so rapid as to make her dizzy; but businesswas coming. The first time she made a price of seventy-five dollarsfor an evening gown, she went out immediately after and took a drink ofwater. Her throat was parched.

  She began to learn little quips of the feminine mind: that a woman whocan pay seventy-five will pay double that sum; that it is not consideredgood form to show surprise at a dressmaker's prices, no matter how highthey may be; that long mirrors and artificial light help sales--no womanover thirty but was grateful for her pink-and-gray room with its softlights. And Harriet herself conformed to the picture. She took a lessonfrom the New York modistes, and wore trailing black gowns. She strappedher thin figure into the best corset she could get, and had her blackhair marcelled and dressed high. And, because she was a lady by birthand instinct, the result was not incongruous, but refined and ratherimpressive.

  She took her business home with her at night, lay awake scheming, andwakened at dawn to find fresh color combinations in the early sky. Shewakened early because she kept her head tied up in a towel, so that herhair need be done only three times a week. That and the corset were thepenalties she paid. Her high-heeled shoes were a torment, too; but inthe work-room she kicked them off.

  To this new Harriet, then, came Tillie in her distress. Tillie wasrather overwhelmed at first. The Street had always considered Harriet"proud." But Tillie's urgency was great, her methods direct.

  "Why, Tillie!" said Harriet.

  "Yes'm."

  "Will you sit down?"

  Tillie sat. She was not daunted now. While she worked at the fingers ofher silk gloves, what Harriet took for nervousness was pure abstraction.

  "It's very nice of you to come to see me. Do you like my rooms?"

  Tillie surveyed the rooms, and Harriet caught her first full view of herface.

  "Is there anything wrong? Have you left Mrs. McKee?"

  "I think so. I came to talk to you about it."

  It was Harriet's turn to be overwhelmed.

  "She's very fond of you. If you have had any words--"

  "It's not that. I'm just leaving. I'd like to talk to you, if you don'tmind."

  "Certainly."

  Tillie hitched her chair closer.

  "I'm up against something, and I can't seem to make up my mind. Lastnight I said to myself, 'I've got to talk to some woman who's notmarried, like me, and not as young as she used to be. There's no usegoing to Mrs. McKee: she's a widow, and wouldn't understand.'"

  Harriet's voice was a trifle sharp as she replied. She never lied abouther age, but she preferred to forget it.

  "I wish you'd tell me what you're getting at."

  "It ain't the sort of thing to come to too sudden. But it's like this.You and I can pretend all we like, Miss Harriet; but we're not gettingall out of life that the Lord meant us to have. You've got them waxfigures instead of children, and I have mealers."

  A little spot of color came into Harriet's cheek. But she wasinterested. Regardless of the corset, she bent forward.

  "Maybe that's true. Go on."

  "I'm almost forty. Ten years more at the most, and I'm through. I'mslowing up. Can't get around the tables as I used to. Why, yesterday Iput sugar into Mr. Le Moyne's coffee--well, never mind about that. NowI've got a chance to get a home, with a good man to look after me--Ilike him pretty well, and he thinks a lot of me."

  "Mercy sake, Tillie! You are going to get married?"

  "No'm," said Tillie; "that's it." And sat silent for a moment.

  The gray curtains with their pink cording swung gently in the openwindows. From the work-room came the distant hum of a sewing-machine andthe sound of voices. Harriet sat with her hands in her lap and listenedwhile Tillie poured out her story. The gates were down now. She told itall, consistently and with unconscious pathos: her little room under theroof at Mrs. McKee's, and the house in the country; her loneliness,and the loneliness of the man; even the faint stirrings of potentialmotherhood, her empty arms, her advancing age--all this she knit intothe fabric of her story and laid at Harriet's feet, as the ancients puttheir questions to their gods.

  Harriet was deeply moved. Too much that Tillie poured out to her foundan echo in her own breast. What was this thing she was striving for buta substitute for the real things of life--love and tenderness, children,a home of her own? Quite suddenly she loathed the gray carpet on thefloor, the pink chairs, the shaded lamps. Tillie was no longer thewaitress at a cheap boarding-house. She loomed large, potential,courageous, a woman who held life in her hands.

  "Why don't you go to Mrs. Rosenfeld? She's your aunt, isn't she?"

  "She thinks any woman's a fool to take up with a man."

  "You're giving me a terrible responsibility, Tillie, if you're asking myadvice."

  "No'm. I'm asking what you'd do if it happened to you. Suppose you hadno people that cared anything about you, nobody to disgrace, and allyour life nobody had really cared anything about you. And then a chancelike this came along. What would you do?"

  "I don't know," said poor Harriet. "It seems to me--I'm afraid I'd betempted. It does seem as if a woman had the right to be happy, evenif--"

  Her own words frightened her. It was as if some hidden self, and notshe, had spoken. She hastened to point out the other side of the matter,the insecurity of it, the disgrace. Like K., she insisted that no rightcan be built out of a wrong. Tillie sat and smoothed her gloves. Atlast, when Harriet paused in sheer panic, the girl rose.

  "I know how you feel, and I don't want you to take the responsibility ofadvising me," she said quietly. "I guess my mind was made up anyhow. Butbefore I did it I just wanted to be sure that a decent woman would thinkthe way I do about it."

  And so, for a time, Tillie went out of the life of the Street as shewent out of Harriet's handsome rooms, quietly, unobtrusively, with calmpurpose in her eyes.

  There were other changes in the Street. The Lorenz house was beingpainted for Christine's wedding. Johnny Rosenfeld, not perhaps of theStreet itself, but certainly pertaining to it, was learning to drivePalmer Howe's new car, in mingled agony and bliss. He walked along theStreet, not "right foot, left foot," but "brake foot, clutch foot," andtook to calling off the vintage of passing cars. "So-and-So 1910,"he would say, with contempt in his voice. He spent more than he couldafford on a large streamer, meant to be fastened across the rear of theautomobile, which said, "Excuse our dust," and was inconsolable whenPalmer refused to let him use it.

  K. had yielded to Anna's insistence, and was boarding as well asrooming at the Page house. The Street, rather snobbish to its occasionalfloating population, was accepting and liking him. It found him tender,infinitely human. And in return he found that this seemingly empty eddyinto which he had drifted was teeming with life. He busied himself withsmall things, and found his outlook gradually less tinged with despair.When he found himself inclined to rail, he organized a baseballclub, and sent down to everlasting defeat the Linburgs, consisting ofcash-boys from Linden and Hofburg's department store.

  The Rosenfelds adored him, with the si
ngle exception of the head ofthe family. The elder Rosenfeld having been "sent up," it was K. whodiscovered that by having him consigned to the workhouse his familywould receive from the county some sixty-five cents a day for his labor.As this was exactly sixty-five cents a day more than he was worth tothem free, Mrs. Rosenfeld voiced the pious hope that he be kept thereforever.

  K. made no further attempt to avoid Max Wilson. Some day they would meetface to face. He hoped, when it happened, they two might be alone; thatwas all. Even had he not been bound by his promise to Sidney, flightwould have been foolish. The world was a small place, and, one way andanother, he had known many people. Wherever he went, there would be thesame chance.

  And he did not deceive himself. Other things being equal,--the eddyand all that it meant--, he would not willingly take himself out of hissmall share of Sidney's life.

  She was never to know what she meant to him, of course. He had scourgedhis heart until it no longer shone in his eyes when he looked at her.But he was very human--not at all meek. There were plenty of days whenhis philosophy lay in the dust and savage dogs of jealousy tore at it;more than one evening when he threw himself face downward on the bedand lay without moving for hours. And of these periods of despair he wasalways heartily ashamed the next day.

  The meeting with Max Wilson took place early in September, and underbetter circumstances than he could have hoped for.

  Sidney had come home for her weekly visit, and her mother's conditionhad alarmed her for the first time. When Le Moyne came home at sixo'clock, he found her waiting for him in the hall.

  "I am just a little frightened, K.," she said. "Do you think mother islooking quite well?"

  "She has felt the heat, of course. The summer--I often think--"

  "Her lips are blue!"

  "It's probably nothing serious."

  "She says you've had Dr. Ed over to see her."

  She put her hands on his arm and looked up at him with appeal andsomething of terror in her face.

  Thus cornered, he had to acknowledge that Anna had been out of sorts.

  "I shall come home, of course. It's tragic and absurd that I should becaring for other people, when my own mother--"

  She dropped her head on his arm, and he saw that she was crying. If hemade a gesture to draw her to him, she never knew it. After a moment shelooked up.

  "I'm much braver than this in the hospital. But when it's one's own!"

  K. was sorely tempted to tell her the truth and bring her back to thelittle house: to their old evenings together, to seeing the youngerWilson, not as the white god of the operating-room and the hospital, butas the dandy of the Street and the neighbor of her childhood--back evento Joe.

  But, with Anna's precarious health and Harriet's increasing engrossmentin her business, he felt it more and more necessary that Sidney go onwith her training. A profession was a safeguard. And there was anotherpoint: it had been decided that Anna was not to know her condition. Ifshe was not worried she might live for years. There was no surer way tomake her suspect it than by bringing Sidney home.

  Sidney sent Katie to ask Dr. Ed to come over after dinner. With thesunset Anna seemed better. She insisted on coming downstairs, andeven sat with them on the balcony until the stars came out, talkingof Christine's trousseau, and, rather fretfully, of what she would dowithout the parlors.

  "You shall have your own boudoir upstairs," said Sidney valiantly."Katie can carry your tray up there. We are going to make thesewing-room into your private sitting-room, and I shall nail themachine-top down."

  This pleased her. When K. insisted on carrying her upstairs, she went ina flutter.

  "He is so strong, Sidney!" she said, when he had placed her on her bed."How can a clerk, bending over a ledger, be so muscular? When I havecallers, will it be all right for Katie to show them upstairs?"

  She dropped asleep before the doctor came; and when, at something aftereight, the door of the Wilson house slammed and a figure crossed thestreet, it was not Ed at all, but the surgeon.

  Sidney had been talking rather more frankly than usual. Lately therehad been a reserve about her. K., listening intently that night, readbetween words a story of small persecutions and jealousies. But the girlminimized them, after her way.

  "It's always hard for probationers," she said. "I often think MissHarrison is trying my mettle."

  "Harrison!"

  "Carlotta Harrison. And now that Miss Gregg has said she will acceptme, it's really all over. The other nurses are wonderful--so kind and sohelpful. I hope I shall look well in my cap."

  Carlotta Harrison was in Sidney's hospital! A thousand contingenciesflashed through his mind. Sidney might grow to like her and bring her tothe house. Sidney might insist on the thing she always spoke of--that hevisit the hospital; and he would meet her, face to face. He could havedepended on a man to keep his secret. This girl with her somber eyes andher threat to pay him out for what had happened to her--she meant dangerof a sort that no man could fight.

  "Soon," said Sidney, through the warm darkness, "I shall have a cap,and be always forgetting it and putting my hat on over it--the new onesalways do. One of the girls slept in hers the other night! They aretulle, you know, and quite stiff, and it was the most erratic-lookingthing the next day!"

  It was then that the door across the street closed. Sidney did nothear it, but K. bent forward. There was a part of his brain alwaysautomatically on watch.

  "I shall get my operating-room training, too," she went on. "That isthe real romance of the hospital. A--a surgeon is a sort of hero ina hospital. You wouldn't think that, would you? There was a lot ofexcitement to-day. Even the probationers' table was talking about it.Dr. Max Wilson did the Edwardes operation."

  The figure across the Street was lighting a cigarette. Perhaps, afterall--

  "Something tremendously difficult--I don't know what. It's going intothe medical journals. A Dr. Edwardes invented it, or whatever theycall it. They took a picture of the operating-room for the article.The photographer had to put on operating clothes and wrap the camera insterilized towels. It was the most thrilling thing, they say--"

  Her voice died away as her eyes followed K.'s. Max, cigarette inhand, was coming across, under the ailanthus tree. He hesitated on thepavement, his eyes searching the shadowy balcony.

  "Sidney?"

  "Here! Right back here!"

  There was vibrant gladness in her tone. He came slowly toward them.

  "My brother is not at home, so I came over. How select you are, withyour balcony!"

  "Can you see the step?"

  "Coming, with bells on."

  K. had risen and pushed back his chair. His mind was working quickly.Here in the darkness he could hold the situation for a moment. If hecould get Sidney into the house, the rest would not matter. Luckily, thebalcony was very dark.

  "Is any one ill?"

  "Mother is not well. This is Mr. Le Moyne, and he knows who you are verywell, indeed."

  The two men shook hands.

  "I've heard a lot of Mr. Le Moyne. Didn't the Street beat the Linburgsthe other day? And I believe the Rosenfelds are in receipt of sixty-fivecents a day and considerable peace and quiet through you, Mr. Le Moyne.You're the most popular man on the Street."

  "I've always heard that about YOU. Sidney, if Dr. Wilson is here to seeyour mother--"

  "Going," said Sidney. "And Dr. Wilson is a very great person, K., so bepolite to him."

  Max had roused at the sound of Le Moyne's voice, not to suspicion,of course, but to memory. Without any apparent reason, he was back inBerlin, tramping the country roads, and beside him--

  "Wonderful night!"

  "Great," he replied. "The mind's a curious thing, isn't it. In theinstant since Miss Page went through that window I've been to Berlin andback! Will you have a cigarette?"

  "Thanks; I have my pipe here."

  K. struck a match with his steady hands. Now that the thing had come, hewas glad to face it. In the flare, his quiet profile glowed agai
nst thenight. Then he flung the match over the rail.

  "Perhaps my voice took you back to Berlin."

  Max stared; then he rose. Blackness had descended on them again, exceptfor the dull glow of K.'s old pipe.

  "For God's sake!"

  "Sh! The neighbors next door have a bad habit of sitting just inside thecurtains."

  "But--you!"

  "Sit down. Sidney will be back in a moment. I'll talk to you, if you'llsit still. Can you hear me plainly?"

  After a moment--"Yes."

  "I've been here--in the city, I mean--for a year. Name's Le Moyne. Don'tforget it--Le Moyne. I've got a position in the gas office, clerical. Iget fifteen dollars a week. I have reason to think I'm going to be movedup. That will be twenty, maybe twenty-two."

  Wilson stirred, but he found no adequate words. Only a part of what K.said got to him. For a moment he was back in a famous clinic, and thisman across from him--it was not believable!

  "It's not hard work, and it's safe. If I make a mistake there's no lifehanging on it. Once I made a blunder, a month or two ago. It was a bigone. It cost me three dollars out of my own pocket. But--that's all itcost."

  Wilson's voice showed that he was more than incredulous; he wasprofoundly moved.

  "We thought you were dead. There were all sorts of stories. When a yearwent by--the Titanic had gone down, and nobody knew but what you were onit--we gave up. I--in June we put up a tablet for you at the college. Iwent down for the--for the services."

  "Let it stay," said K. quietly. "I'm dead as far as the college goes,anyhow. I'll never go back. I'm Le Moyne now. And, for Heaven's sake,don't be sorry for me. I'm more contented than I've been for a longtime."

  The wonder in Wilson's voice was giving way to irritation.

  "But--when you had everything! Why, good Heavens, man, I did youroperation to-day, and I've been blowing about it ever since."

  "I had everything for a while. Then I lost the essential. When thathappened I gave up. All a man in our profession has is a certain method,knowledge--call it what you like,--and faith in himself. I lost myself-confidence; that's all. Certain things happened; kept on happening.So I gave it up. That's all. It's not dramatic. For about a year I wasdamned sorry for myself. I've stopped whining now."

  "If every surgeon gave up because he lost cases--I've just told you Idid your operation to-day. There was just a chance for the man, and Itook my courage in my hands and tried it. The poor devil's dead."

  K. rose rather wearily and emptied his pipe over the balcony rail.

  "That's not the same. That's the chance he and you took. What happenedto me was--different."

  Pipe in hand, he stood staring out at the ailanthus tree with its crownof stars. Instead of the Street with its quiet houses, he saw the menhe had known and worked with and taught, his friends who spoke hislanguage, who had loved him, many of them, gathered about a bronzetablet set in a wall of the old college; he saw their earnest faces andgrave eyes. He heard--

  He heard the soft rustle of Sidney's dress as she came into the littleroom behind them.