K

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER XIV

  The supper at the White Springs Hotel had not been the last supperCarlotta Harrison and Max Wilson had taken together. Carlotta hadselected for her vacation a small town within easy motoring distance ofthe city, and two or three times during her two weeks off duty Wilsonhad gone out to see her. He liked being with her. She stimulated him.For once that he could see Sidney, he saw Carlotta twice.

  She had kept the affair well in hand. She was playing for high stakes.She knew quite well the kind of man with whom she was dealing--that hewould pay as little as possible. But she knew, too, that, let him want athing enough, he would pay any price for it, even marriage.

  She was very skillful. The very ardor in her face was in her favor.Behind her hot eyes lurked cold calculation. She would put the thingthrough, and show those puling nurses, with their pious eyes and eveningprayers, a thing or two.

  During that entire vacation he never saw her in anything more elaboratethan the simplest of white dresses modestly open at the throat, sleevesrolled up to show her satiny arms. There were no other boarders at thelittle farmhouse. She sat for hours in the summer evenings in the squareyard filled with apple trees that bordered the highway, carefullyposed over a book, but with her keen eyes always on the road. She readBrowning, Emerson, Swinburne. Once he found her with a book that shehastily concealed. He insisted on seeing it, and secured it. It was abook on brain surgery. Confronted with it, she blushed and dropped hereyes.

  His delighted vanity found in it the most insidious of compliments, asshe had intended.

  "I feel such an idiot when I am with you," she said. "I wanted to know alittle more about the things you do."

  That put their relationship on a new and advanced basis. Thereafterhe occasionally talked surgery instead of sentiment. He found herresponsive, intelligent. His work, a sealed book to his women before,lay open to her.

  Now and then their professional discussions ended in somethingdifferent. The two lines of their interest converged.

  "Gad!" he said one day. "I look forward to these evenings. I can talkshop with you without either shocking or nauseating you. You are themost intelligent woman I know--and one of the prettiest."

  He had stopped the machine on the crest of a hill for the ostensiblepurpose of admiring the view.

  "As long as you talk shop," she said, "I feel that there is nothingwrong in our being together; but when you say the other thing--"

  "Is it wrong to tell a pretty woman you admire her?"

  "Under our circumstances, yes."

  He twisted himself around in the seat and sat looking at her.

  "The loveliest mouth in the world!" he said, and kissed her suddenly.

  She had expected it for at least a week, but her surprise was well done.Well done also was her silence during the homeward ride.

  No, she was not angry, she said. It was only that he had set herthinking. When she got out of the car, she bade him good-night andgood-bye. He only laughed.

  "Don't you trust me?" he said, leaning out to her.

  She raised her dark eyes.

  "It is not that. I do not trust myself."

  After that nothing could have kept him away, and she knew it.

  "Man demands both danger and play; therefore he selects woman as themost dangerous of toys." A spice of danger had entered into theirrelationship. It had become infinitely piquant.

  He motored out to the farm the next day, to be told that Miss Harrisonhad gone for a long walk and had not said when she would be back. Thatpleased him. Evidently she was frightened. Every man likes to think thathe is a bit of a devil. Dr. Max settled his tie, and, leaving hiscar outside the whitewashed fence, departed blithely on foot in thedirection Carlotta had taken.

  She knew her man, of course. He found her, face down, under a tree,looking pale and worn and bearing all the evidence of a severe mentalstruggle. She rose in confusion when she heard his step, and retreated afoot or two, with her hands out before her.

  "How dare you?" she cried. "How dare you follow me! I--I have got tohave a little time alone. I have got to think things out."

  He knew it was play-acting, but rather liked it; and, because he wasquite as skillful as she was, he struck a match on the trunk of the treeand lighted a cigarette before he answered.

  "I was afraid of this," he said, playing up. "You take it entirely toohard. I am not really a villain, Carlotta."

  It was the first time he had used her name.

  "Sit down and let us talk things over."

  She sat down at a safe distance, and looked across the little clearingto him with the somber eyes that were her great asset.

  "You can afford to be very calm," she said, "because this is only playto you; I know it. I've known it all along. I'm a good listener andnot--unattractive. But what is play for you is not necessarily play forme. I am going away from here."

  For the first time, he found himself believing in her sincerity. Why,the girl was white. He didn't want to hurt her. If she cried--he was atthe mercy of any woman who cried.

  "Give up your training?"

  "What else can I do? This sort of thing cannot go on, Dr. Max."

  She did cry then--real tears; and he went over beside her and took herin his arms.

  "Don't do that," he said. "Please don't do that. You make me feel likea scoundrel, and I've only been taking a little bit of happiness. That'sall. I swear it."

  She lifted her head from his shoulder.

  "You mean you are happy with me?"

  "Very, very happy," said Dr. Max, and kissed her again on the lips.

  The one element Carlotta had left out of her calculations was herself.She had known the man, had taken the situation at its proper value. Butshe had left out this important factor in the equation,--that factorwhich in every relationship between man and woman determines theequation,--the woman.

  Into her calculating ambition had come a new and destroying element. Shewho, like K. in his little room on the Street, had put aside love andthe things thereof, found that it would not be put aside. By the end ofher short vacation Carlotta Harrison was wildly in love with the youngerWilson.

  They continued to meet, not as often as before, but once a week,perhaps. The meetings were full of danger now; and if for the girl theylost by this quality, they gained attraction for the man. She was shrewdenough to realize her own situation. The thing had gone wrong. Shecared, and he did not. It was all a game now, not hers.

  All women are intuitive; women in love are dangerously so. As well asshe knew that his passion for her was not the real thing, so also sherealized that there was growing up in his heart something akin to thereal thing for Sidney Page. Suspicion became certainty after a talkthey had over the supper table at a country road-house the day afterChristine's wedding.

  "How was the wedding--tiresome?" she asked.

  "Thrilling! There's always something thrilling to me in a man tyinghimself up for life to one woman. It's--it's so reckless."

  Her eyes narrowed. "That's not exactly the Law and the Prophets, is it?"

  "It's the truth. To think of selecting out of all the world one woman,and electing to spend the rest of one's days with her! Although--"

  His eyes looked past Carlotta into distance.

  "Sidney Page was one of the bridesmaids," he said irrelevantly. "She waslovelier than the bride."

  "Pretty, but stupid," said Carlotta. "I like her. I've really tried toteach her things, but--you know--" She shrugged her shoulders.

  Dr. Max was learning wisdom. If there was a twinkle in his eye, heveiled it discreetly. But, once again in the machine, he bent over andput his cheek against hers.

  "You little cat! You're jealous," he said exultantly.

  Nevertheless, although he might smile, the image of Sidney lay veryclose to his heart those autumn days. And Carlotta knew it.

  Sidney came off night duty the middle of November. The night duty hadbeen a time of comparative peace to Carlotta. There were no eveningswhen Dr. Max could brin
g Sidney back to the hospital in his car.

  Sidney's half-days at home were occasions for agonies of jealousy onCarlotta's part. On such an occasion, a month after the wedding, shecould not contain herself. She pleaded her old excuse of headache, andtook the trolley to a point near the end of the Street. After twilightfell, she slowly walked the length of the Street. Christine and Palmerhad not returned from their wedding journey. The November evening wasnot cold, and on the little balcony sat Sidney and Dr. Max. K. wasthere, too, had she only known it, sitting back in the shadow and sayinglittle, his steady eyes on Sidney's profile.

  But this Carlotta did not know. She went on down the Street in a frenzyof jealous anger.

  After that two ideas ran concurrent in Carlotta's mind: one was to getSidney out of the way, the other was to make Wilson propose to her. Inher heart she knew that on the first depended the second.

  A week later she made the same frantic excursion, but with a differentresult. Sidney was not in sight, or Wilson. But standing on the woodendoorstep of the little house was Le Moyne. The ailanthus trees werebare at that time, throwing gaunt arms upward to the November sky. Thestreet-lamp, which in the summer left the doorstep in the shadow, nowshone through the branches and threw into strong relief Le Moyne's tallfigure and set face. Carlotta saw him too late to retreat. But hedid not see her. She went on, startled, her busy brain scheming anew.Another element had entered into her plotting. It was the first timeshe had known that K. lived in the Page house. It gave her a sense ofuncertainty and deadly fear.

  She made her first friendly overture of many days to Sidney thefollowing day. They met in the locker-room in the basement where thestreet clothing for the ward patients was kept. Here, rolled in bundlesand ticketed, side by side lay the heterogeneous garments in whichthe patients had met accident or illness. Rags and tidiness, filth andcleanliness, lay almost touching.

  Far away on the other side of the white-washed basement, men wereunloading gleaming cans of milk. Floods of sunlight came down thecellar-way, touching their white coats and turning the cans to silver.Everywhere was the religion of the hospital, which is order.

  Sidney, harking back from recent slights to the staircase conversationof her night duty, smiled at Carlotta cheerfully.

  "A miracle is happening," she said. "Grace Irving is going out to-day.When one remembers how ill she was and how we thought she could notlive, it's rather a triumph, isn't it?"

  "Are those her clothes?"

  Sidney examined with some dismay the elaborate negligee garments in herhand.

  "She can't go out in those; I shall have to lend her something." Alittle of the light died out of her face. "She's had a hard fight, andshe has won," she said. "But when I think of what she's probably goingback to--"

  Carlotta shrugged her shoulders.

  "It's all in the day's work," she observed indifferently. "You can takethem up into the kitchen and give them steady work paring potatoes, orput them in the laundry ironing. In the end it's the same thing. Theyall go back."

  She drew a package from the locker and looked at it ruefully.

  "Well, what do you know about this? Here's a woman who came in in anightgown and pair of slippers. And now she wants to go out in half anhour!"

  She turned, on her way out of the locker-room, and shot a quick glanceat Sidney.

  "I happened to be on your street the other night," she said. "You liveacross the street from Wilsons', don't you?"

  "Yes."

  "I thought so; I had heard you speak of the house. Your--your brotherwas standing on the steps."

  Sidney laughed.

  "I have no brother. That's a roomer, a Mr. Le Moyne. It isn't reallyright to call him a roomer; he's one of the family now."

  "Le Moyne!"

  He had even taken another name. It had hit him hard, for sure.

  K.'s name had struck an always responsive chord in Sidney. The two girlswent toward the elevator together. With a very little encouragement,Sidney talked of K. She was pleased at Miss Harrison's friendly tone,glad that things were all right between them again. At her floor, sheput a timid hand on the girl's arm.

  "I was afraid I had offended you or displeased you," she said. "I'm soglad it isn't so."

  Carlotta shivered under her hand.

  Things were not going any too well with K. True, he had received hispromotion at the office, and with this present affluence of twenty-twodollars a week he was able to do several things. Mrs. Rosenfeld nowwashed and ironed one day a week at the little house, so that Katiemight have more time to look after Anna. He had increased also theamount of money that he periodically sent East.

  So far, well enough. The thing that rankled and filled him with a senseof failure was Max Wilson's attitude. It was not unfriendly; it was,indeed, consistently respectful, almost reverential. But he clearlyconsidered Le Moyne's position absurd.

  There was no true comradeship between the two men; but there wasbeginning to be constant association, and lately a certain amount offriction. They thought differently about almost everything.

  Wilson began to bring all his problems to Le Moyne. There were longconsultations in that small upper room. Perhaps more than one man orwoman who did not know of K.'s existence owed his life to him that fall.

  Under K.'s direction, Max did marvels. Cases began to come in to himfrom the surrounding towns. To his own daring was added a new andremarkable technique. But Le Moyne, who had found resignation if notcontent, was once again in touch with the work he loved. There weretimes when, having thrashed a case out together and outlined the nextday's work for Max, he would walk for hours into the night out over thehills, fighting his battle. The longing was on him to be in the thickof things again. The thought of the gas office and its deadly roundsickened him.

  It was on one of his long walks that K. found Tillie.

  It was December then, gray and raw, with a wet snow that changed torain as it fell. The country roads were ankle-deep with mud, the waysidepaths thick with sodden leaves. The dreariness of the countryside thatSaturday afternoon suited his mood. He had ridden to the end of thestreet-car line, and started his walk from there. As was his custom, hewore no overcoat, but a short sweater under his coat. Somewhere alongthe road he had picked up a mongrel dog, and, as if in sheer desire forhuman society, it trotted companionably at his heels.

  Seven miles from the end of the car line he found a road-house, andstopped in for a glass of Scotch. He was chilled through. The dogwent in with him, and stood looking up into his face. It was as if hesubmitted, but wondered why this indoors, with the scents of the roadahead and the trails of rabbits over the fields.

  The house was set in a valley at the foot of two hills. Through the mistof the December afternoon, it had loomed pleasantly before him. The doorwas ajar, and he stepped into a little hall covered with ingrain carpet.To the right was the dining-room, the table covered with a white cloth,and in its exact center an uncompromising bunch of dried flowers. To theleft, the typical parlor of such places. It might have been the parlorof the White Springs Hotel in duplicate, plush self-rocker and all. Overeverything was silence and a pervading smell of fresh varnish. The housewas aggressive with new paint--the sagging old floors shone with it, thedoors gleamed.

  "Hello!" called K.

  There were slow footsteps upstairs, the closing of a bureau drawer,the rustle of a woman's dress coming down the stairs. K., standinguncertainly on a carpet oasis that was the center of the parlor varnish,stripped off his sweater.

  "Not very busy here this afternoon!" he said to the unseen female on thestaircase. Then he saw her. It was Tillie. She put a hand against thedoorframe to steady herself. Tillie surely, but a new Tillie! With herhair loosened around her face, a fresh blue chintz dress open at thethroat, a black velvet bow on her breast, here was a Tillie fuller,infinitely more attractive, than he had remembered her. But she did notsmile at him. There was something about her eyes not unlike the dog'sexpression, submissive, but questioning.

  "Well, you
've found me, Mr. Le Moyne." And, when he held out his hand,smiling: "I just had to do it, Mr. K."

  "And how's everything going? You look mighty fine and--happy, Tillie."

  "I'm all right. Mr. Schwitter's gone to the postoffice. He'll be back atfive. Will you have a cup of tea, or will you have something else?"

  The instinct of the Street was still strong in Tillie. The Street didnot approve of "something else."

  "Scotch-and-soda," said Le Moyne. "And shall I buy a ticket for you topunch?"

  But she only smiled faintly. He was sorry he had made the blunder.Evidently the Street and all that pertained was a sore subject.

  So this was Tillie's new home! It was for this that she had exchangedthe virginal integrity of her life at Mrs. McKee's--for this wind-sweptlittle house, tidily ugly, infinitely lonely. There were two crayonenlargements over the mantel. One was Schwitter, evidently. Theother was the paper-doll wife. K. wondered what curious instinct ofself-abnegation had caused Tillie to leave the wife there undisturbed.Back of its position of honor he saw the girl's realization of her ownsituation. On a wooden shelf, exactly between the two pictures, wasanother vase of dried flowers.

  Tillie brought the Scotch, already mixed, in a tall glass. K. wouldhave preferred to mix it himself, but the Scotch was good. He felt a newrespect for Mr. Schwitter.

  "You gave me a turn at first," said Tillie. "But I am right glad to seeyou, Mr. Le Moyne. Now that the roads are bad, nobody comes very much.It's lonely."

  Until now, K. and Tillie, when they met, had met conversationally on thecommon ground of food. They no longer had that, and between them bothlay like a barrier their last conversation.

  "Are you happy, Tillie?" said K. suddenly.

  "I expected you'd ask me that. I've been thinking what to say."

  Her reply set him watching her face. More attractive it certainly was,but happy? There was a wistfulness about Tillie's mouth that set himwondering.

  "Is he good to you?"

  "He's about the best man on earth. He's never said a cross word tome--even at first, when I was panicky and scared at every sound."

  Le Moyne nodded understandingly.

  "I burned a lot of victuals when I first came, running off and hidingwhen I heard people around the place. It used to seem to me that whatI'd done was written on my face. But he never said a word."

  "That's over now?"

  "I don't run. I am still frightened."

  "Then it has been worth while?"

  Tillie glanced up at the two pictures over the mantel.

  "Sometimes it is--when he comes in tired, and I've a chicken ready orsome fried ham and eggs for his supper, and I see him begin to lookrested. He lights his pipe, and many an evening he helps me with thedishes. He's happy; he's getting fat."

  "But you?" Le Moyne persisted.

  "I wouldn't go back to where I was, but I am not happy, Mr. Le Moyne.There's no use pretending. I want a baby. All along I've wanted a baby.He wants one. This place is his, and he'd like a boy to come into itwhen he's gone. But, my God! if I did have one; what would it be?"

  K.'s eyes followed hers to the picture and the everlastings underneath.

  "And she--there isn't any prospect of her--?"

  "No."

  There was no solution to Tillie's problem. Le Moyne, standing on thehearth and looking down at her, realized that, after all, Tillie mustwork out her own salvation. He could offer her no comfort.

  They talked far into the growing twilight of the afternoon. Tillie washungry for news of the Street: must know of Christine's wedding, ofHarriet, of Sidney in her hospital. And when he had told her all, shesat silent, rolling her handkerchief in her fingers. Then:--

  "Take the four of us," she said suddenly,--"Christine Lorenz and SidneyPage and Miss Harriet and me,--and which one would you have picked togo wrong like this? I guess, from the looks of things, most folks wouldhave thought it would be the Lorenz girl. They'd have picked HarrietKennedy for the hospital, and me for the dressmaking, and it would havebeen Sidney Page that got married and had an automobile. Well, that'slife."

  She looked up at K. shrewdly.

  "There were some people out here lately. They didn't know me, and Iheard them talking. They said Sidney Page was going to marry Dr. MaxWilson."

  "Possibly. I believe there is no engagement yet."

  He had finished with his glass. Tillie rose to take it away. As shestood before him she looked up into his face.

  "If you like her as well as I think you do, Mr. Le Moyne, you won't lethim get her."

  "I am afraid that's not up to me, is it? What would I do with a wife,Tillie?"

  "You'd be faithful to her. That's more than he would be. I guess, in thelong run, that would count more than money."

  That was what K. took home with him after his encounter with Tillie. Hepondered it on his way back to the street-car, as he struggled againstthe wind. The weather had changed. Wagon-tracks along the road werefilled with water and had begun to freeze. The rain had turned to adriving sleet that cut his face. Halfway to the trolley line, the dogturned off into a by-road. K. did not miss him. The dog stared afterhim, one foot raised. Once again his eyes were like Tillie's, as she hadwaved good-bye from the porch.

  His head sunk on his breast, K. covered miles of road with his long,swinging pace, and fought his battle. Was Tillie right, after all, andhad he been wrong? Why should he efface himself, if it meant Sidney'sunhappiness? Why not accept Wilson's offer and start over again? Thenif things went well--the temptation was strong that stormy afternoon. Heput it from him at last, because of the conviction that whatever he didwould make no change in Sidney's ultimate decision. If she cared enoughfor Wilson, she would marry him. He felt that she cared enough.