CHAPTER III
K. Le Moyne had wakened early that first morning in his new quarters.When he sat up and yawned, it was to see his worn cravat disappearingwith vigorous tugs under the bureau. He rescued it, gently but firmly.
"You and I, Reginald," he apostrophized the bureau, "will have to cometo an understanding. What I leave on the floor you may have, but whatblows down is not to be touched."
Because he was young and very strong, he wakened to a certain lightnessof spirit. The morning sun had always called him to a new day, and thesun was shining. But he grew depressed as he prepared for the office.He told himself savagely, as he put on his shabby clothing, that, havingsought for peace and now found it, he was an ass for resenting it. Thetrouble was, of course, that he came of fighting stock: soldiers andexplorers, even a gentleman adventurer or two, had been his forefather.He loathed peace with a deadly loathing.
Having given up everything else, K. Le Moyne had also given up thelove of woman. That, of course, is figurative. He had been too busy forwomen; and now he was too idle. A small part of his brain added figuresin the office of a gas company daily, for the sum of two dollars andfifty cents per eight-hour working day. But the real K. Le Moynethat had dreamed dreams, had nothing to do with the figures, but satsomewhere in his head and mocked him as he worked at his task.
"Time's going by, and here you are!" mocked the real person--who was, ofcourse, not K. Le Moyne at all. "You're the hell of a lot of use, aren'tyou? Two and two are four and three are seven--take off the discount.That's right. It's a man's work, isn't it?"
"Somebody's got to do this sort of thing," protested the small part ofhis brain that earned the two-fifty per working day. "And it's a greatanaesthetic. He can't think when he's doing it. There's somethingpractical about figures, and--rational."
He dressed quickly, ascertaining that he had enough money to buy afive-dollar ticket at Mrs. McKee's; and, having given up the love ofwoman with other things, he was careful not to look about for Sidney onhis way.
He breakfasted at Mrs. McKee's, and was initiated into the mystery ofthe ticket punch. The food was rather good, certainly plentiful;and even his squeamish morning appetite could find no fault with theself-respecting tidiness of the place. Tillie proved to be neat andaustere. He fancied it would not be pleasant to be very late for one'smeals--in fact, Sidney had hinted as much. Some of the "mealers"--theStreet's name for them--ventured on various small familiarities ofspeech with Tillie. K. Le Moyne himself was scrupulously polite, butreserved. He was determined not to let the Street encroach on hiswretchedness. Because he had come to live there was no reason why itshould adopt him. But he was very polite. When the deaf-and-dumb bookagent wrote something on a pencil pad and pushed it toward him, hereplied in kind.
"We are very glad to welcome you to the McKee family," was what waswritten on the pad.
"Very happy, indeed, to be with you," wrote back Le Moyne--and realizedwith a sort of shock that he meant it.
The kindly greeting had touched him. The greeting and the breakfastcheered him; also, he had evidently made some headway with Tillie.
"Don't you want a toothpick?" she asked, as he went out.
In K.'s previous walk of life there had been no toothpicks; or, if therewere any, they were kept, along with the family scandals, in a closet.But nearly a year of buffeting about had taught him many things. He tookone, and placed it nonchalantly in his waistcoat pocket, as he had seenthe others do.
Tillie, her rush hour over, wandered back into the kitchen and pouredherself a cup of coffee. Mrs. McKee was reweighing the meat order.
"Kind of a nice fellow," Tillie said, cup to lips--"the new man."
"Week or meal?"
"Week. He'd be handsome if he wasn't so grouchy-looking. Lit up somewhen Mr. Wagner sent him one of his love letters. Rooms over at thePages'."
Mrs. McKee drew a long breath and entered the lam stew in a book.
"When I think of Anna Page taking a roomer, it just about knocks meover, Tillie. And where they'll put him, in that little house--helooked thin, what I saw of him. Seven pounds and a quarter." This lastreferred, not to K. Le Moyne, of course, but to the lamb stew.
"Thin as a fiddle-string."
"Just keep an eye on him, that he gets enough." Then, rather ashamed ofher unbusinesslike methods: "A thin mealer's a poor advertisement. Doyou suppose this is the dog meat or the soup scraps?"
Tillie was a niece of Mrs. Rosenfeld. In such manner was most of theStreet and its environs connected; in such wise did its small gossipstart at one end and pursue its course down one side and up the other.
"Sidney Page is engaged to Joe Drummond," announced Tillie. "He sent hera lot of pink roses yesterday."
There was no malice in her flat statement, no envy. Sidney and she,living in the world of the Street, occupied different spheres. But thevery lifelessness in her voice told how remotely such things touchedher, and thus was tragic. "Mealers" came and went--small clerks, pettytradesmen, husbands living alone in darkened houses during the summerhegira of wives. Various and catholic was Tillie's male acquaintance,but compounded of good fellowship only. Once, years before, romance hadparaded itself before her in the garb of a traveling nurseryman--hadwalked by and not come back.
"And Miss Harriet's going into business for herself. She's taken roomsdowntown; she's going to be Madame Something or other."
Now, at last, was Mrs. McKee's attention caught riveted.
"For the love of mercy! At her age! It's downright selfish. If sheraises her prices she can't make my new foulard."
Tillie sat at the table, her faded blue eyes fixed on the back yard,where her aunt, Mrs. Rosenfeld, was hanging out the week's wash of tablelinen.
"I don't know as it's so selfish," she reflected. "We've only got onelife. I guess a body's got the right to live it."
Mrs. McKee eyed her suspiciously, but Tillie's face showed no emotion.
"You don't ever hear of Schwitter, do you?"
"No; I guess she's still living."
Schwitter, the nurseryman, had proved to have a wife in an insaneasylum. That was why Tillie's romance had only paraded itself before herand had gone by.
"You got out of that lucky."
Tillie rose and tied a gingham apron over her white one.
"I guess so. Only sometimes--"
"I don't know as it would have been so wrong. He ain't young, and Iain't. And we're not getting any younger. He had nice manners; he'd havebeen good to me."
Mrs. McKee's voice failed her. For a moment she gasped like a fish.Then:
"And him a married man!"
"Well, I'm not going to do it," Tillie soothed her. "I get to thinkingabout it sometimes; that's all. This new fellow made me think of him.He's got the same nice way about him."
Aye, the new man had made her think of him, and June, and the loverswho lounged along the Street in the moonlit avenues toward the park andlove; even Sidney's pink roses. Change was in the very air of the Streetthat June morning. It was in Tillie, making a last clutch at youth, andfinding, in this pale flare of dying passion, courage to remember whatshe had schooled herself to forget; in Harriet asserting her right tolive her life; in Sidney, planning with eager eyes a life of servicewhich did not include Joe; in K. Le Moyne, who had built up a wallbetween himself and the world, and was seeing it demolished by adeaf-and-dumb book agent whose weapon was a pencil pad!
And yet, for a week nothing happened: Joe came in the evenings and saton the steps with Sidney, his honest heart, in his eyes. She could notbring herself at first to tell him about the hospital. She put it offfrom day to day. Anna, no longer sulky, accepted wit the childlike faithSidney's statement that "they'd get along; she had a splendid scheme,"and took to helping Harriet in her preparations for leaving. Tillie,afraid of her rebellious spirit, went to prayer meeting. And K. LeMoyne, finding his little room hot in the evenings and not wishing tointrude on the two on the doorstep, took to reading his paper in thepark, and after twilight to long,
rapid walks out into the country. Thewalks satisfied the craving of his active body for exercise, and tiredhim so he could sleep. On one such occasion he met Mr. Wagner, and theycarried on an animated conversation until it was too dark to see thepad. Even then, it developed that Wagner could write in the dark; andhe secured the last word in a long argument by doing this and striking amatch for K. to read by.
When K. was sure that the boy had gone, he would turn back toward theStreet. Some of the heaviness of his spirit always left him at sight ofthe little house. Its kindly atmosphere seemed to reach out and envelophim. Within was order and quiet, the fresh-down bed, the tidiness ofhis ordered garments. There was even affection--Reginald, waiting onthe fender for his supper, and regarding him with wary and bright-eyedfriendliness.
Life, that had seemed so simple, had grown very complicated for Sidney.There was her mother to break the news to, and Joe. Harriet wouldapprove, she felt; but these others! To assure Anna that she mustmanage alone for three years, in order to be happy and comfortableafterward--that was hard enough to tell Joe she was planning a futurewithout him, to destroy the light in his blue eyes--that hurt.
After all, Sidney told K. first. One Friday evening, coming home late,as usual, he found her on the doorstep, and Joe gone. She moved overhospitably. The moon had waxed and waned, and the Street was dark. Eventhe ailanthus blossoms had ceased their snow-like dropping. The coloredman who drove Dr. Ed in the old buggy on his daily rounds had broughtout the hose and sprinkled the street. Within this zone of freshness, ofwet asphalt and dripping gutters, Sidney sat, cool and silent.
"Please sit down. It is cool now. My idea of luxury is to have theStreet sprinkled on a hot night."
K. disposed of his long legs on the steps. He was trying to fit his ownideas of luxury to a garden hose and a city street.
"I'm afraid you're working too hard."
"I? I do a minimum of labor for a minimum of wage.
"But you work at night, don't you?"
K. was natively honest. He hesitated. Then:
"No, Miss Page."
"But You go out every evening!" Suddenly the truth burst on her.
"Oh, dear!" she said. "I do believe--why, how silly of you!"
K. was most uncomfortable.
"Really, I like it," he protested. "I hang over a desk all day, and inthe evening I want to walk. I ramble around the park and see lovers onbenches--it's rather thrilling. They sit on the same benches eveningafter evening. I know a lot of them by sight, and if they're not thereI wonder if they have quarreled, or if they have finally got married andended the romance. You can see how exciting it is."
Quite suddenly Sidney laughed.
"How very nice you are!" she said--"and how absurd! Why should theirgetting married end the romance? And don't you know that, if you insiston walking the streets and parks at night because Joe Drummond is here,I shall have to tell him not to come?"
This did not follow, to K.'s mind. They had rather a heated argumentover it, and became much better acquainted.
"If I were engaged to him," Sidney ended, her cheeks very pink, "I--Imight understand. But, as I am not--"
"Ah!" said K., a trifle unsteadily. "So you are not?"
Only a week--and love was one of the things she had had to give up, withothers. Not, of course, that he was in love with Sidney then. But he hadbeen desperately lonely, and, for all her practical clearheadedness,she was softly and appealingly feminine. By way of keeping his head, hetalked suddenly and earnestly of Mrs. McKee, and food, and Tillie, andof Mr. Wagner and the pencil pad.
"It's like a game," he said. "We disagree on everything, especiallyMexico. If you ever tried to spell those Mexican names--"
"Why did you think I was engaged?" she insisted.
Now, in K.'s walk of life--that walk of life where there are notoothpicks, and no one would have believed that twenty-one meals couldhave been secured for five dollars with a ticket punch thrown in--younggirls did not receive the attention of one young man to the exclusion ofothers unless they were engaged. But he could hardly say that.
"Oh, I don't know. Those things get in the air. I am quite certain, forinstance, that Reginald suspects it."
"It's Johnny Rosenfeld," said Sidney, with decision. "It's horrible, theway things get about. Because Joe sent me a box of roses--As a matterof fact, I'm not engaged, or going to be, Mr. Le Moyne. I'm going into ahospital to be a nurse."
Le Moyne said nothing. For just a moment he closed his eyes. A man is ina rather a bad way when, every time he closes his eyes, he sees thesame thing, especially if it is rather terrible. When it gets to a pointwhere he lies awake at night and reads, for fear of closing them--
"You're too young, aren't you?"
"Dr. Ed--one of the Wilsons across the Street--is going to help me aboutthat. His brother Max is a big surgeon there. I expect you've heard ofhim. We're very proud of him in the Street."
Lucky for K. Le Moyne that the moon no longer shone on the low graydoorstep, that Sidney's mind had traveled far away to shining floorsand rows of white beds. "Life--in the raw," Dr. Ed had said that otherafternoon. Closer to her than the hospital was life in the raw thatnight.
So, even here, on this quiet street in this distant city, there wasto be no peace. Max Wilson just across the way! It--it was ironic. Wasthere no place where a man could lose himself? He would have to move onagain, of course.
But that, it seemed, was just what he could not do. For:
"I want to ask you to do something, and I hope you'll be quite frank,"said Sidney.
"Anything that I can do--"
"It's this. If you are comfortable, and--and like the room and all that,I wish you'd stay." She hurried on: "If I could feel that mother had adependable person like you in the house, it would all be easier."
Dependable! That stung.
"But--forgive my asking; I'm really interested--can your mother manage?You'll get practically no money during your training."
"I've thought of that. A friend of mine, Christine Lorenz, is going tobe married. Her people are wealthy, but she'll have nothing but whatPalmer makes. She'd like to have the parlor and the sitting roombehind. They wouldn't interfere with you at all," she added hastily."Christine's father would build a little balcony at the side for them, asort of porch, and they'd sit there in the evenings."
Behind Sidney's carefully practical tone the man read appeal. Neverbefore had he realized how narrow the girl's world had been. The Street,with but one dimension, bounded it! In her perplexity, she was appealingto him who was practically a stranger.
And he knew then that he must do the thing she asked. He, who had fledso long, could roam no more. Here on the Street, with its menace justacross, he must live, that she might work. In his world, men had workedthat women might live in certain places, certain ways. This girl wasgoing out to earn her living, and he would stay to make it possible. Butno hint of all this was in his voice.
"I shall stay, of course," he said gravely. "I--this is the nearestthing to home that I've known for a long time. I want you to know that."
So they moved their puppets about, Anna and Harriet, Christine andher husband-to-be, Dr. Ed, even Tillie and the Rosenfelds; shifted andplaced them, and, planning, obeyed inevitable law.
"Christine shall come, then," said Sidney forsooth, "and we will throwout a balcony."
So they planned, calmly ignorant that poor Christine's story andTillie's and Johnny Rosenfeld's and all the others' were already writtenamong the things that are, and the things that shall be hereafter.
"You are very good to me," said Sidney.
When she rose, K. Le Moyne sprang to his feet.
Anna had noticed that he always rose when she entered his room,--withfresh towels on Katie's day out, for instance,--and she liked him forit. Years ago, the men she had known had shown this courtesy to theirwomen; but the Street regarded such things as affectation.
"I wonder if you would do me another favor? I'm afraid you'll take toavoiding me, if I
keep on."
"I don't think you need fear that."
"This stupid story about Joe Drummond--I'm not saying I'll never marryhim, but I'm certainly not engaged. Now and then, when you are takingyour evening walks, if you would ask me to walk with you--"
K. looked rather dazed.
"I can't imagine anything pleasanter; but I wish you'd explain justhow--"
Sidney smiled at him. As he stood on the lowest step, their eyes werealmost level.
"If I walk with you, they'll know I'm not engaged to Joe," she said,with engaging directness.
The house was quiet. He waited in the lower hall until she had reachedthe top of the staircase. For some curious reason, in the time to come,that was the way Sidney always remembered K. Le Moyne--standing in thelittle hall, one hand upstretched to shut off the gas overhead, and hiseyes on hers above.
"Good-night," said K. Le Moyne. And all the things he had put out of hislife were in his voice.