“Say what your own kind heart prompts.”
It had been rather a long time since Christine had been accused of having a kind heart. Not that she was unkind, but in all her self-centered young life there had been little call on her sympathies. Her eyes clouded.
“I wish I were as good as you think I am.”
There was a little silence between them. Then Le Moyne spoke briskly:—
“I’ll tell you how to get there; perhaps I would better write it.”
He moved over to Christine’s small writing-table and, seating himself, proceeded to write out the directions for reaching Hillfoot.
Behind him, Christine had taken his place on the hearth-rug and stood watching his head in the light of the desk-lamp. “What a strong, quiet face it is,” she thought. Why did she get the impression of such a tremendous reserve power in this man who was a clerk, and a clerk only? Behind him she made a quick, unconscious gesture of appeal, both hands out for an instant. She dropped them guiltily as K. rose with the paper in his hand.
“I’ve drawn a sort of map of the roads,” he began. “You see, this—”
Christine was looking, not at the paper, but up at him.
“I wonder if you know, K.,” she said, “what a lucky woman the woman will be who marries you?”
He laughed good-humoredly.
“I wonder how long I could hypnotize her into thinking that.”
He was still holding out the paper.
“I’ve had time to do a little thinking lately,” she said, without bitterness. “Palmer is away so much now. I’ve been looking back, wondering if I ever thought that about him. I don’t believe I ever did. I wonder—”
She checked herself abruptly and took the paper from his hand.
“I’ll go to see Tillie, of course,” she consented. “It is like you to have found her.”
She sat down. Although she picked up the book that she had been reading with the evident intention of discussing it, her thoughts were still on Tillie, on Palmer, on herself. After a moment:—
“Has it ever occurred to you how terribly mixed up things are? Take this Street, for instance. Can you think of anybody on it that—that things have gone entirely right with?”
“It’s a little world of its own, of course,” said K., “and it has plenty of contact points with life. But wherever one finds people, many or few, one finds all the elements that make up life—joy and sorrow, birth and death, and even tragedy. That’s rather trite, isn’t it?”
Christine was still pursuing her thoughts.
“Men are different,” she said. “To a certain extent they make their own fates. But when you think of the women on the Street,—Tillie, Harriet Kennedy, Sidney Page, myself, even Mrs. Rosenfeld back in the alley,—somebody else moulds things for us, and all we can do is to sit back and suffer. I am beginning to think the world is a terrible place, K. Why do people so often marry the wrong people? Why can’t a man care for one woman and only one all his life? Why—why is it all so complicated?”
“There are men who care for only one woman all their lives.”
“You’re that sort, aren’t you?”
“I don’t want to put myself on any pinnacle. If I cared enough for a woman to marry her, I’d hope to—But we are being very tragic, Christine.”
“I feel tragic. There’s going to be another mistake, K., unless you stop it.”
He tried to leaven the conversation with a little fun.
“If you’re going to ask me to interfere between Mrs. McKee and the deaf-and-dumb book and insurance agent, I shall do nothing of the sort. She can both speak and hear enough for both of them.”
“I mean Sidney and Max Wilson. He’s mad about her, K.; and, because she’s the sort she is, he’ll probably be mad about her all his life, even if he marries her. But he’ll not be true to her; I know the type now.”
K. leaned back with a flicker of pain in his eyes.
“What can I do about it?”
Astute as he was, he did not suspect that Christine was using this method to fathom his feeling for Sidney. Perhaps she hardly knew it herself.
“You might marry her yourself, K.”
But he had himself in hand by this time, and she learned nothing from either his voice or his eyes.
“On twenty dollars a week? And without so much as asking her consent?” He dropped his light tone. “I’m not in a position to marry anybody. Even if Sidney cared for me, which she doesn’t, of course—”
“Then you don’t intend to interfere? You’re going to let the Street see another failure?”
“I think you can understand,” said K. rather wearily, “that if I cared less, Christine, it would be easier to interfere.”
After all, Christine had known this, or surmised it, for weeks. But it hurt like a fresh stab in an old wound. It was K. who spoke again after a pause:—
“The deadly hard thing, of course, is to sit by and see things happening that one—that one would naturally try to prevent.”
“I don’t believe that you have always been of those who only stand and wait,” said Christine. “Sometime, K., when you know me better and like me better, I want you to tell me about it, will you?”
“There’s very little to tell. I held a trust. When I discovered that I was unfit to hold that trust any longer, I quit. That’s all.”
His tone of finality closed the discussion. But Christine’s eyes were on him often that evening, puzzled, rather sad.
They talked of books, of music—Christine played well in a dashing way. K. had brought her soft, tender little things, and had stood over her until her noisy touch became gentle. She played for him a little, while he sat back in the big chair with his hand screening his eyes.
When, at last, he rose and picked up his cap; it was nine o’clock.
“I’ve taken your whole evening,” he said remorsefully. “Why don’t you tell me I am a nuisance and send me off?”
Christine was still at the piano, her hands on the keys. She spoke without looking at him:—
“You’re never a nuisance, K., and—”
“You’ll go out to see Tillie, won’t you?”
“Yes. But I’ll not go under false pretenses. I am going quite frankly because you want me to.”
Something in her tone caught his attention.
“I forgot to tell you,” she went on. “Father has given Palmer five thousand dollars. He’s going to buy a share in a business.”
“That’s fine.”
“Possibly. I don’t believe much in Palmer’s business ventures.”
Her flat tone still held him. Underneath it he divined strain and repression.
“I hate to go and leave you alone,” he said at last from the door. “Have you any idea when Palmer will be back?”
“Not the slightest. K., will you come here a moment? Stand behind me; I don’t want to see you, and I want to tell you something.”
He did as she bade him, rather puzzled.
“Here I am.”
“I think I am a fool for saying this. Perhaps I am spoiling the only chance I have to get any happiness out of life. But I have got to say it. It’s stronger than I am. I was terribly unhappy, K., and then you came into my life, and I—now I listen for your step in the hall. I can’t be a hypocrite any longer, K.”
When he stood behind her, silent and not moving, she turned slowly about and faced him. He towered there in the little room, grave eyes on hers.
“It’s a long time since I have had a woman friend, Christine,” he said soberly. “Your friendship has meant a good deal. In a good many ways, I’d not care to look ahead if it were not for you. I value our friendship so much that I—”
“That you don’t want me to spoil it,” she finished for him. “I know you don’t care for me, K., not the way I—But I wanted you to know. It doesn’t hurt a good man to know such a thing. And it—isn’t going to stop your coming here, is it?”
“Of course not,” said K. heartily. “But tomorrow, when we are both clearheaded, we will talk this over. You are mistaken about this thing, Christine; I am sure of that. Things have not been going well, and just because I am always around, and all that sort of thing, you think things that aren’t really so. I’m only a reaction, Christine.”