Sidney, harking back from recent slights to the staircase conversation of 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 not live, it’s rather a triumph, isn’t it?”
“Are those her clothes?”
Sidney examined with some dismay the elaborate negligee garments in her hand.
“She can’t go out in those; I shall have to lend her something.” A little of the light died out of her face. “She’s had a hard fight, and she has won,” she said. “But when I think of what she’s probably going back to—”
Carlotta shrugged her shoulders.
“It’s all in the day’s work,” she observed indifferently. “You can take them up into the kitchen and give them steady work paring potatoes, or put them in the laundry ironing. In the end it’s the same thing. They all 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 a nightgown and pair of slippers. And now she wants to go out in half an hour!”
She turned, on her way out of the locker-room, and shot a quick glance at Sidney.
“I happened to be on your street the other night,” she said. “You live across the street from Wilsons’, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so; I had heard you speak of the house. Your—your brother was standing on the steps.”
Sidney laughed.
“I have no brother. That’s a roomer, a Mr. Le Moyne. It isn’t really right 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 girls went 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, she put a timid hand on the girl’s arm.
“I was afraid I had offended you or displeased you,” she said. “I’m so glad it isn’t so.”
Carlotta shivered under her hand.
Things were not going any too well with K. True, he had received his promotion at the office, and with this present affluence of twenty-two dollars a week he was able to do several things. Mrs. Rosenfeld now washed and ironed one day a week at the little house, so that Katie might have more time to look after Anna. He had increased also the amount of money that he periodically sent East.
So far, well enough. The thing that rankled and filled him with a sense of failure was Max Wilson’s attitude. It was not unfriendly; it was, indeed, consistently respectful, almost reverential. But he clearly considered Le Moyne’s position absurd.
There was no true comradeship between the two men; but there was beginning to be constant association, and lately a certain amount of friction. They thought differently about almost everything.
Wilson began to bring all his problems to Le Moyne. There were long consultations in that small upper room. Perhaps more than one man or woman 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 him from the surrounding towns. To his own daring was added a new and remarkable technique. But Le Moyne, who had found resignation if not content, was once again in touch with the work he loved. There were times when, having thrashed a case out together and outlined the next day’s work for Max, he would walk for hours into the night out over the hills, fighting his battle. The longing was on him to be in the thick of things again. The thought of the gas office and its deadly round sickened 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 to rain as it fell. The country roads were ankle-deep with mud, the wayside paths thick with sodden leaves. The dreariness of the countryside that Saturday afternoon suited his mood. He had ridden to the end of the street-car line, and started his walk from there. As was his custom, he wore no overcoat, but a short sweater under his coat. Somewhere along the road he had picked up a mongrel dog, and, as if in sheer desire for human society, it trotted companionably at his heels.
Seven miles from the end of the car line he found a roadhouse, and stopped in for a glass of Scotch. He was chilled through. The dog went in with him, and stood looking up into his face. It was as if he submitted, but wondered why this indoors, with the scents of the road ahead and the trails of rabbits over the fields.
The house was set in a valley at the foot of two hills. Through the mist of the December afternoon, it had loomed pleasantly before him. The door was 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 the left, the typical parlor of such places. It might have been the parlor of the White Springs Hotel in duplicate, plush self-rocker and all. Over everything was silence and a pervading smell of fresh varnish. The house was aggressive with new paint—the sagging old floors shone with it, the doors 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., standing uncertainly 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 the staircase. Then he saw her. It was Tillie. She put a hand against the doorframe to steady herself. Tillie surely, but a new Tillie! With her hair loosened around her face, a fresh blue chintz dress open at the throat, a black velvet bow on her breast, here was a Tillie fuller, infinitely more attractive, than he had remembered her. But she did not smile at him. There was something about her eyes not unlike the dog’s expression, 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 at five. 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 did not approve of “something else.”
“Scotch-and-soda,” said Le Moyne. “And shall I buy a ticket for you to punch?”
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 exchanged the virginal integrity of her life at Mrs. McKee’s—for this wind-swept little house, tidily ugly, infinitely lonely. There were two crayon enlargements over the mantel. One was Schwitter, evidently. The other was the paper-doll wife. K. wondered what curious instinct of self-abnegation had caused Tillie to leave the wife there undisturbed. Back of its position of honor he saw the girl’s realization of her own situation. On a wooden shelf, exactly between the two pictures, was another vase of dried flowers.
Tillie brought the Scotch, already mixed, in a tall glass. K. would have preferred to mix it himself, but the Scotch was good. He felt a new respect for Mr. Schwitter.
“You gave me a turn at first,” said Tillie. “But I am right glad to see you, 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 the common ground of food. They no longer had that, and between them both lay 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.”