“A big chair for a big man!” she said. “And see, here’s a footstool.”
“I am ridiculously fond of being babied,” said K., and quite basked in his new atmosphere of well-being. This was better than his empty room upstairs, than tramping along country roads, than his own thoughts.
“And now, how is everything?” asked Christine from across the fire. “Do tell me all the scandal of the Street.”
“There has been no scandal since you went away,” said K. And, because each was glad not to be left to his own thoughts, they laughed at this bit of unconscious humor.
“Seriously,” said Le Moyne, “we have been very quiet. I have had my salary raised and am now rejoicing in twenty-two dollars a week. I am still not accustomed to it. Just when I had all my ideas fixed for fifteen, I get twenty-two and have to reassemble them. I am disgustingly rich.”
“It is very disagreeable when one’s income becomes a burden,” said Christine gravely.
She was finding in Le Moyne something that she needed just then—a solidity, a sort of dependability, that had nothing to do with heaviness. She felt that here was a man she could trust, almost confide in. She liked his long hands, his shabby but well-cut clothes, his fine profile with its strong chin. She left off her little affectations,—a tribute to his own lack of them,—and sat back in her chair, watching the fire.
When K. chose, he could talk well. The Howes had been to Bermuda on their wedding trip. He knew Bermuda; that gave them a common ground. Christine relaxed under his steady voice. As for K., he frankly enjoyed the little visit—drew himself at last with regret out of his chair.
“You’ve been very nice to ask me in, Mrs. Howe,” he said. “I hope you will allow me to come again. But, of course, you are going to be very gay.”
It seemed to Christine she would never be gay again. She did not want him to go away. The sound of his deep voice gave her a sense of security. She liked the clasp of the hand he held out to her, when at last he made a move toward the door.
“Tell Mr. Howe I am sorry he missed our little party,” said Le Moyne. “And—thank you.”
“Will you come again?” asked Christine rather wistfully.
“Just as often as you ask me.”
As he closed the door behind him, there was a new light in Christine’s eyes. Things were not right, but, after all, they were not hopeless. One might still have friends, big and strong, steady of eye and voice. When Palmer came home, the smile she gave him was not forced.
The day’s exertion had been bad for Anna. Le Moyne found her on the couch in the transformed sewing-room, and gave her a quick glance of apprehension. She was propped up high with pillows, with a bottle of aromatic ammonia beside her.
“Just—short of breath,” she panted. “I—I must get down. Sidney—is coming home—to supper; and—the others—Palmer and—”
That was as far as she got. K., watch in hand, found her pulse thin, stringy, irregular. He had been prepared for some such emergency, and he hurried into his room for amyl-nitrate. When he came back she was almost unconscious. There was no time even to call Katie. He broke the capsule in a towel, and held it over her face. After a time the spasm relaxed, but her condition remained alarming.
Harriet, who had come home by that time, sat by the couch and held her sister’s hand. Only once in the next hour or so did she speak. They had sent for Dr. Ed, but he had not come yet. Harriet was too wretched to notice the professional manner in which K. set to work over Anna.
“I’ve been a very hard sister to her,” she said. “If you can pull her through, I’ll try to make up for it.”
Christine sat on the stairs outside, frightened and helpless. They had sent for Sidney; but the little house had no telephone, and the message was slow in getting off.
At six o’clock Dr. Ed came panting up the stairs and into the room. K. stood back.
“Well, this is sad, Harriet,” said Dr. Ed. “Why in the name of Heaven, when I wasn’t around, didn’t you get another doctor. If she had had some amyl-nitrate—”
“I gave her some nitrate of amyl,” said K. quietly. “There was really no time to send for anybody. She almost went under at half-past five.”
Max had kept his word, and even Dr. Ed did not suspect K.‘s secret. He gave a quick glance at this tall young man who spoke so quietly of what he had done for the sick woman, and went on with his work.
Sidney arrived a little after six, and from that moment the confusion in the sick-room was at an end. She moved Christine from the stairs, where Katie on her numerous errands must crawl over her; set Harriet to warming her mother’s bed and getting it ready; opened windows, brought order and quiet. And then, with death in her eyes, she took up her position beside her mother. This was no time for weeping; that would come later. Once she turned to K., standing watchfully beside her.
“I think you have known this for a long time,” she said. And, when he did not answer: “Why did you let me stay away from her? It would have been such a little time!”
“We were trying to do our best for both of you,” he replied.
Anna was unconscious and sinking fast. One thought obsessed Sidney. She repeated it over and over. It came as a cry from the depths of the girl’s new experience.
“She has had so little of life,” she said, over and over. “So little! Just this Street. She never knew anything else.”
And finally K. took it up.
“After all, Sidney,” he said, “the Street IS life: the world is only many streets. She had a great deal. She had love and content, and she had you.”
Anna died a little after midnight, a quiet passing, so that only Sidney and the two men knew when she went away. It was Harriet who collapsed. During all that long evening she had sat looking back over years of small unkindnesses. The thorn of Anna’s inefficiency had always rankled in her flesh. She had been hard, uncompromising, thwarted. And now it was forever too late.
K. had watched Sidney carefully. Once he thought she was fainting, and went to her. But she shook her head.
“I am all right. Do you think you could get them all out of the room and let me have her alone for just a few minutes?”
He cleared the room, and took up his vigil outside the door. And, as he stood there, he thought of what he had said to Sidney about the Street. It was a world of its own. Here in this very house were death and separation; Harriet’s starved life; Christine and Palmer beginning a long and doubtful future together; himself, a failure, and an impostor.
When he opened the door again, Sidney was standing by her mother’s bed. He went to her, and she turned and put her head against his shoulder like a tired child.
“Take me away, K.,” she said pitifully.
And, with his arm around her, he led her out of the room.
Outside of her small immediate circle Anna’s death was hardly felt. The little house went on much as before. Harriet carried back to her business a heaviness of spirit that made it difficult to bear with the small irritations of her day. Perhaps Anna’s incapacity, which had always annoyed her, had been physical. She must have had her trouble a longtime. She remembered other women of the Street who had crept through inefficient days, and had at last laid down their burdens and closed their mild eyes, to the lasting astonishment of their families. What did they think about, these women, as they pottered about? Did they resent the impatience that met their lagging movements, the indifference that would not see how they were failing? Hot tears fell on Harriet’s fashion-book as it lay on her knee. Not only for Anna—for Anna’s prototypes everywhere.
On Sidney—and in less measure, of course, on K.—fell the real brunt of the disaster. Sidney kept up well until after the funeral, but went down the next day with a low fever.