K Part 42

He nodded. Words were unnecessary between them. He made some tea clumsily and browned her a piece of toast. When he had put them on one end of the kitchen table, he went over to her again.

"I guess I'd ought to have thought of this before, but all I thought of was trying to get a little happiness out of life. And,"--he stroked her arm,--"as far as I am concerned, it's been worth while, Tillie. No matter what I've had to do, I've always looked forward to coming back here to you in the evening. Maybe I don't say it enough, but I guess you know I feel it all right."

Without looking up, she placed her hand over his.

"I guess we started wrong," he went on. "You can't build happiness on what isn't right. You and I can manage well enough; but now that there's going to be another, it looks different, somehow."

After that morning Tillie took up her burden stoically. The hope of motherhood alternated with black fits of depression. She sang at her work, to burst out into sudden tears.

Other things were not going well. Schwitter had given up his nursery business; but the motorists who came to Hillfoot did not come back.

When, at last, he took the horse and buggy and drove about the country for orders, he was too late. Other nurserymen had been before him; shrubberies and orchards were already being set out. The second payment on his mortgage would be due in July. By the middle of May they were frankly up against it. Schwitter at last dared to put the situation into words.

"We're not making good, Til," he said. "And I guess you know the reason.

We are too decent; that's what's the matter with us." There was no irony in his words.

With all her sophistication, Tillie was vastly ignorant of life. He had to explain.

"We'll have to keep a sort of hotel," he said lamely. "Sell to everybody that comes along, and--if parties want to stay over-night--"

Tillie's white face turned crimson.

He attempted a compromise. "If it's bad weather, and they're married--"

"How are we to know if they are married or not?"

He admired her very much for it. He had always respected her. But the situation was not less acute. There were two or three unfurnished rooms on the second floor. He began to make tentative suggestions as to their furnis.h.i.+ng. Once he got a catalogue from an installment house, and tried to hide it from her. Tillie's eyes blazed. She burned it in the kitchen stove.

Schwitter himself was ashamed; but the idea obsessed him. Other people fattened on the frailties of human nature. Two miles away, on the other road, was a public house that had netted the owner ten thousand dollars profit the year before. They bought their beer from the same concern.

He was not as young as he had been; there was the expense of keeping his wife--he had never allowed her to go into the charity ward at the asylum. Now that there was going to be a child, there would be three people dependent upon him. He was past fifty, and not robust.

One night, after Tillie was asleep, he slipped noiselessly into his clothes and out to the barn, where he hitched up the horse with nervous fingers.

Tillie never learned of that midnight excursion to the "Climbing Rose,"

two miles away. Lights blazed in every window; a dozen automobiles were parked before the barn. Somebody was playing a piano. From the bar came the jingle of gla.s.ses and loud, cheerful conversation.

When Schwitter turned the horse's head back toward Hillfoot, his mind was made up. He would furnish the upper rooms; he would bring a barkeeper from town--these people wanted mixed drinks; he could get a second-hand piano somewhere.

Tillie's rebellion was instant and complete. When she found him determined, she made the compromise that her condition necessitated. She could not leave him, but she would not stay in the rehabilitated little house. When, a week after Schwitter's visit to the "Climbing Rose," an installment van arrived from town with the new furniture, Tillie moved out to what had been the harness-room of the old barn and there established herself.

"I am not leaving you," she told him. "I don't even know that I am blaming you. But I am not going to have anything to do with it, and that's flat."

So it happened that K., making a spring pilgrimage to see Tillie, stopped astounded in the road. The weather was warm, and he carried his Norfolk coat over his arm. The little house was bustling; a dozen automobiles were parked in the barnyard. The bar was crowded, and a barkeeper in a white coat was mixing drinks with the casual indifference of his kind. There were tables under the trees on the lawn, and a new sign on the gate.

Even Schwitter bore a new look of prosperity. Over his schooner of beer K. gathered something of the story.

"I'm not proud of it, Mr. Le Moyne. I've come to do a good many things the last year or so that I never thought I would do. But one thing leads to another. First I took Tillie away from her good position, and after that nothing went right. Then there were things coming on"--he looked at K. anxiously--"that meant more expense. I would be glad if you wouldn't say anything about it at Mrs. McKee's."

"I'll not speak of it, of course."

It was then, when K. asked for Tillie, that Mr. Schwitter's unhappiness became more apparent.

"She wouldn't stand for it," he said. "She moved out the day I furnished the rooms upstairs and got the piano."

"Do you mean she has gone?"

"As far as the barn. She wouldn't stay in the house. I--I'll take you out there, if you would like to see her."

K. shrewdly surmised that Tillie would prefer to see him alone, under the circ.u.mstances.

"I guess I can find her," he said, and rose from the little table.

"If you--if you can say anything to help me out, sir, I'd appreciate it.

Of course, she understands how I am driven. But--especially if you would tell her that the Street doesn't know--"

"I'll do all I can," K. promised, and followed the path to the barn.

Tillie received him with a certain dignity. The little harness-room was very comfortable. A white iron bed in a corner, a flat table with a mirror above it, a rocking-chair, and a sewing-machine furnished the room.

"I wouldn't stand for it," she said simply; "so here I am. Come in, Mr.

Le Moyne."

There being but one chair, she sat on the bed. The room was littered with small garments in the making. She made no attempt to conceal them; rather, she pointed to them with pride.

"I am making them myself. I have a lot of time these days. He's got a hired girl at the house. It was hard enough to sew at first, with me making two right sleeves almost every time." Then, seeing his kindly eye on her: "Well, it's happened, Mr. Le Moyne. What am I going to do? What am I going to be?"

"You're going to be a very good mother, Tillie."

She was manifestly in need of cheering. K., who also needed cheering that spring day, found his consolation in seeing her brighten under the small gossip of the Street. The deaf-and-dumb book agent had taken on life insurance as a side issue, and was doing well; the grocery store at the corner was going to be torn down, and over the new store there were to be apartments; Reginald had been miraculously returned, and was building a new nest under his bureau; Harriet Kennedy had been to Paris, and had brought home six French words and a new figure.

Outside the open door the big barn loomed cool and shadowy, full of empty s.p.a.ces where later the hay would be stored; anxious mother hens led their broods about; underneath in the horse stable the restless horses pawed in their stalls. From where he sat, Le Moyne could see only the round b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the two hills, the fresh green of the orchard the cows in a meadow beyond.

Tillie followed his eyes.

"I like it here," she confessed. "I've had more time to think since I moved out than I ever had in my life before. Them hills help. When the noise is worst down at the house, I look at the hills there and--"

There were great thoughts in her mind--that the hills meant G.o.d, and that in His good time perhaps it would all come right. But she was inarticulate. "The hills help a lot," she repeated.

K. rose. Tillie's work-basket lay near him. He picked up one of the little garments. In his big hands it looked small, absurd.

"I--I want to tell you something, Tillie. Don't count on it too much; but Mrs. Schwitter has been failing rapidly for the last month or two."

Tillie caught his arm.

"You've seen her?"

"I was interested. I wanted to see things work out right for you."

All the color had faded from Tillie's face.