K Part 59

"I want her, G.o.d knows!" said K. "But not that way, boy."

Schwitter had taken in five hundred dollars the previous day.

"Five hundred gross," the little man hastened to explain. "But you're right, Mr. Le Moyne. And I guess it would please HER. It's going hard with her, just now, that she hasn't any women friends about. It's in the safe, in cash; I haven't had time to take it to the bank." He seemed to apologize to himself for the unbusinesslike proceeding of lending an entire day's gross receipts on no security. "It's better to get him away, of course. It's good business. I have tried to have an orderly place. If they arrest him here--"

His voice trailed off. He had come a far way from the day he had walked down the Street, and eyed Its poplars with appraising eyes--a far way.

Now he had a son, and the child's mother looked at him with tragic eyes.

It was arranged that K. should go back to town, returning late that night to pick up Joe at a lonely point on the road, and to drive him to a railroad station. But, as it happened, he went back that afternoon.

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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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:--