He put the boy down. There was a certain tenderness in his hands, as in his voice, when he dealt with children. All his severity did not conceal it. “Get along with you, Bill. Last bell’s rung.”
As the boy ran off, K.‘s eye fell on what he had written on the cement. At a certain part of his career, the child of such a neighborhood as the Street “cancels” names. It is a part of his birthright. He does it as he whittles his school desk or tries to smoke the long dried fruit of the Indian cigar tree. So K. read in chalk an the smooth street:—
Max Wilson Marriage. Sidney Page Love.
[Note: the a, l, s, and n of “Max Wilson” are crossed through, as are the S, d, n, and a of “Sidney Page”]
The childish scrawl stared up at him impudently, a sacred thing profaned by the day. K. stood and looked at it. The barytone was still singing; but now it was “I’m twenty-one, and she’s eighteen.” It was a cheerful air, as should be the air that had accompanied Johnny Rosenfeld to his long sleep. The light was gone from K.‘s face again. After all, the Street meant for him not so much home as it meant Sidney. And now, before very long, that book of his life, like others, would have to be closed.
He turned and went heavily into the little house.
Christine called to him from her little balcony:—
“I thought I heard your step outside. Have you time to come out?”
K. went through the parlor and stood in the long window. His steady eyes looked down at her.
“I see very little of you now,” she complained. And, when he did not reply immediately: “Have you made any definite plans, K.?”
“I shall do Max’s work until he is able to take hold again. After that—”
“You will go away?”
“I think so. I am getting a good many letters, one way and another. I suppose, now I’m back in harness, I’ll stay. My old place is closed. I’d go back there—they want me. But it seems so futile, Christine, to leave as I did, because I felt that I had no right to go on as things were; and now to crawl back on the strength of having had my hand forced, and to take up things again, not knowing that I’ve a bit more right to do it than when I left!”
“I went to see Max yesterday. You know what he thinks about all that.”
He took an uneasy turn up and down the balcony.
“But who?” he demanded. “Who would do such a thing? I tell you, Christine, it isn’t possible.”
She did not pursue the subject. Her thoughts had flown ahead to the little house without K., to days without his steps on the stairs or the heavy creak of his big chair overhead as he dropped into it.
But perhaps it would be better if he went. She had her own life to live. She had no expectation of happiness, but, somehow or other, she must build on the shaky foundation of her marriage a house of life, with resignation serving for content, perhaps with fear lurking always. That she knew. But with no active misery. Misery implied affection, and her love for Palmer was quite dead.
“Sidney will be here this afternoon.”
“Good.” His tone was non-committal.
“Has it occurred to you, K., that Sidney is not very happy?”
He stopped in front of her.
“She’s had a great anxiety.”
“She has no anxiety now. Max is doing well.”
“Then what is it?”
“I’m not quite sure, but I think I know. She’s lost faith in Max, and she’s not like me. I—I knew about Palmer before I married him. I got a letter. It’s all rather hideous—I needn’t go into it. I was afraid to back out; it was just before my wedding. But Sidney has more character than I have. Max isn’t what she thought he was, and I doubt whether she’ll marry him.”
K. glanced toward the street where Sidney’s name and Max’s lay open to the sun and to the smiles of the Street. Christine might be right, but that did not alter things for him.
Christine’s thoughts went back inevitably to herself; to Palmer, who was doing better just now; to K., who was going away—went back with an ache to the night K. had taken her in his arms and then put her away. How wrong things were! What a mess life was!
“When you go away,” she said at last, “I want you to remember this. I’m going to do my best, K. You have taught me all I know. All my life I’ll have to overlook things; I know that. But, in his way, Palmer cares for me. He will always come back, and perhaps sometime—”
Her voice trailed off. Far ahead of her she saw the years stretching out, marked, not by days and months, but by Palmer’s wanderings away, his remorseful returns.
“Do a little more than forgetting,” K. said. “Try to care for him, Christine. You did once. And that’s your strongest weapon. It’s always a woman’s strongest weapon. And it wins in the end.”
“I shall try, K.,” she answered obediently.
But he turned away from the look in her eyes.
Harriet was abroad. She had sent cards from Paris to her “trade.” It was an innovation. The two or three people on the Street who received her engraved announcement that she was there, “buying new chic models for the autumn and winter—afternoon frocks, evening gowns, reception dresses, and wraps, from Poiret, Martial et Armand, and others,” left the envelopes casually on the parlor table, as if communications from Paris were quite to be expected.
So K. lunched alone, and ate little. After luncheon he fixed a broken ironing-stand for Katie, and in return she pressed a pair of trousers for him. He had it in mind to ask Sidney to go out with him in Max’s car, and his most presentable suit was very shabby.
“I’m thinking,” said Katie, when she brought the pressed garments up over her arm and passed them in through a discreet crack in the door, “that these pants will stand more walking than sitting, Mr. K. They’re getting mighty thin.”
“I’ll take a duster along in case of accident,” he promised her; “and tomorrow I’ll order a suit, Katie.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Katie from the stairs. “Some fool of a woman from the alley will come in tonight and tell you she can’t pay her rent, and she’ll take your suit away in her pocket-book—as like as not to pay an installment on a piano. There’s two new pianos in the alley since you came here.”
“I promise it, Katie.”
“Show it to me,” said Katie laconically. “And don’t go to picking up anything you drop!”
Sidney came home at half-past two—came delicately flushed, as if she had hurried, and with a tremulous smile that caught Katie’s eye at once.
“Bless the child!” she said. “There’s no need to ask how he is to-day. You’re all one smile.”
The smile set just a trifle.
“Katie, some one has written my name out on the street, in chalk. It’s with Dr. Wilson’s, and it looks so silly. Please go out and sweep it off.”
“I’m about crazy with their old chalk. I’ll do it after a while.”
“Please do it now. I don’t want anyone to see it. Is—is Mr. K. upstairs?”
But when she learned that K. was upstairs, oddly enough, she did not go up at once. She stood in the lower hall and listened. Yes, he was there. She could hear him moving about. Her lips parted slightly as she listened.
Christine, looking in from her balcony, saw her there, and, seeing something in her face that she had never suspected, put her hand to her throat.
“Sidney!”
“Oh—hello, Chris.”
“Won’t you come and sit with me?”
“I haven’t much time—that is, I want to speak to K.”
“You can see him when he comes down.”
Sidney came slowly through the parlor. It occurred to her, all at once, that Christine must see a lot of K., especially now. No doubt he was in and out of the house often. And how pretty Christine was! She was unhappy, too. All that seemed to be necessary to win K.‘s attention was to be unhappy enough. Well, surely, in that case—
“How is Max?”
“Still better.”
Sidney sat down on the edge of the railing; but she was careful, Christine saw, to face the staircase. There was silence on the balcony. Christine sewed; Sidney sat and swung her feet idly.