“Do you think I don’t understand?”
“Perhaps you do. I—I don’t really care a lot about him, Max. But I’ve been down-hearted. He cheers me up.”
Her attraction for him was almost gone—not quite. He felt rather sorry for her.
“I’m sorry. Then you are not angry with me?”
“Angry? No.” She lifted her eyes to his, and for once she was not acting. “I knew it would end, of course. I have lost a—a lover. I expected that. But I wanted to keep a friend.”
It was the right note. Why, after all, should he not be her friend? He had treated her cruelly, hideously. If she still desired his friendship, there was no disloyalty to Sidney in giving it. And Carlotta was very careful. Not once again did she allow him to see what lay in her eyes. She told him of her worries. Her training was almost over. She had a chance to take up institutional work. She abhorred the thought of private duty. What would he advise?
The Lamb was hovering near, hot eyes on them both. It was no place to talk.
“Come to the office and we’ll talk it over.”
“I don’t like to go there; Miss Simpson is suspicious.”
The institution she spoke of was in another city. It occurred to Wilson that if she took it the affair would have reached a graceful and legitimate end.
Also, the thought of another stolen evening alone with her was not unpleasant. It would be the last, he promised himself. After all, it was owing to her. He had treated her badly.
Sidney would be at a lecture that night. The evening loomed temptingly free.
“Suppose you meet me at the old corner,” he said carelessly, eyes on the Lamb, who was forgetting that he was only a junior interne and was glaring ferociously. “We’ll run out into the country and talk things over.”
She demurred, with her heart beating triumphantly.
“What’s the use of going back to that? It’s over, isn’t it?”
Her objection made him determined. When at last she had yielded, and he made his way down to the smoking-room, it was with the feeling that he had won a victory.
K. had been uneasy all that day; his ledgers irritated him. He had been sleeping badly since Sidney’s announcement of her engagement. At five o’clock, when he left the office, he found Joe Drummond waiting outside on the pavement.
“Mother said you’d been up to see me a couple of times. I thought I’d come around.”
K. looked at his watch.
“What do you say to a walk?”
“Not out in the country. I’m not as muscular as you are. I’ll go about town for a half-hour or so.”
Thus forestalled, K. found his subject hard to lead up to. But here again Joe met him more than halfway.
“Well, go on,” he said, when they found themselves in the park; “I don’t suppose you were paying a call.”
“No.”
“I guess I know what you are going to say.”
“I’m not going to preach, if you’re expecting that. Ordinarily, if a man insists on making a fool of himself, I let him alone.”
“Why make an exception of me?”
“One reason is that I happen to like you. The other reason is that, whether you admit it or not, you are acting like a young idiot, and are putting the responsibility on the shoulders of some one else.”
“She is responsible, isn’t she?”
“Not in the least. How old are you, Joe?”
“Twenty-three, almost.”
“Exactly. You are a man, and you are acting like a bad boy. It’s a disappointment to me. It’s more than that to Sidney.”
“Much she cares! She’s going to marry Wilson, isn’t she?”
“There is no announcement of any engagement.”
“She is, and you know it. Well, she’ll be happy—not! If I’d go to her tonight and tell her what I know, she’d never see him again.” The idea, thus born in his overwrought brain, obsessed him. He returned to it again and again. Le Moyne was uneasy. He was not certain that the boy’s statement had any basis in fact. His single determination was to save Sidney from any pain.
When Joe suddenly announced his inclination to go out into the country after all, he suspected a ruse to get rid of him, and insisted on going along. Joe consented grudgingly.
“Car’s at Bailey’s garage,” he said sullenly. “I don’t know when I’ll get back.”
“That won’t matter.” K.‘s tone was cheerful. “I’m not sleeping, anyhow.”
That passed unnoticed until they were on the highroad, with the car running smoothly between yellowing fields of wheat. Then:—
“So you’ve got it too!” he said. “We’re a fine pair of fools. We’d both be better off if I sent the car over a bank.”
He gave the wheel a reckless twist, and Le Moyne called him to time sternly.
They had supper at the White Springs Hotel—not on the terrace, but in the little room where Carlotta and Wilson had taken their first meal together. K. ordered beer for them both, and Joe submitted with bad grace.
But the meal cheered and steadied him. K. found him more amenable to reason, and, gaining his confidence, learned of his desire to leave the city.
“I’m stuck here,” he said. “I’m the only one, and mother yells blue murder when I talk about it. I want to go to Cuba. My uncle owns a farm down there.”
“Perhaps I can talk your mother over. I’ve been there.”
Joe was all interest. His dilated pupils became more normal, his restless hands grew quiet. K.‘s even voice, the picture he drew of life on the island, the stillness of the little hotel in its mid-week dullness, seemed to quiet the boy’s tortured nerves. He was nearer to peace than he had been for many days. But he smoked incessantly, lighting one cigarette from another.
At ten o’clock he left K. and went for the car. He paused for a moment, rather sheepishly, by K.‘s chair.
“I’m feeling a lot better,” he said. “I haven’t got the band around my head. You talk to mother.”
That was the last K. saw of Joe Drummond until the next day.
CHAPTER XXIV
Carlotta dressed herself with unusual care—not in black this time, but in white. She coiled her yellow hair in a soft knot at the back of her head, and she resorted to the faintest shading of rouge. She intended to be gay, cheerful. The ride was to be a bright spot in Wilson’s memory. He expected recriminations; she meant to make him happy. That was the secret of the charm some women had for men. They went to such women to forget their troubles. She set the hour of their meeting at nine, when the late dusk of summer had fallen; and she met him then, smiling, a faintly perfumed white figure, slim and young, with a thrill in her voice that was only half assumed.
“It’s very late,” he complained. “Surely you are not going to be back at ten.”
“I have special permission to be out late.”
“Good!” And then, recollecting their new situation: “We have a lot to talk over. It will take time.”
At the White Springs Hotel they stopped to fill the gasolene tank of the car. Joe Drummond saw Wilson there, in the sheet-iron garage alongside of the road. The Wilson car was in the shadow. It did not occur to Joe that the white figure in the car was not Sidney. He went rather white, and stepped out of the zone of light. The influence of Le Moyne was still on him, however, and he went on quietly with what he was doing. But his hands shook as he filled the radiator.
When Wilson’s car had gone on, he went automatically about his preparations for the return trip—lifted a seat cushion to investigate his own store of gasolene, replacing carefully the revolver he always carried under the seat and packed in waste to prevent its accidental discharge, lighted his lamps, examined a loose brake-band.
His coolness gratified him. He had been an ass: Le Moyne was right. He’d get away—to Cuba if he could—and start over again. He would forget the Street and let it forget him.
The men in the garage were talking.
“To Schwitter’s, of course,” one of them grumbled. “We might as well go out of business.”