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 disappearing
with vigorous tugs under the bureau. He rescued it, gently but firmly.
“You and I, Reginald,” he apostrophized the bureau, “will have to come
to an understanding. What I leave on the floor you may have, but what
blows down is not to be touched.”
Because he was young and very strong, he wakened to a certain lightness
of spirit. The morning sun had always called him to a new day, and the
sun was shining. But he grew depressed as he prepared for the office.
He told himself savagely, as he put on his shabby clothing, that, having
sought for peace and now found it, he was an ass for resenting it. The
trouble was, of course, that he came of fighting stock: soldiers and
explorers, 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 the
love of woman. That, of course, is figurative. He had been too busy for
women; and now he was too idle. A small part of his brain added figures
in the office of a gas company daily, for the sum of two dollars and
fifty cents per eight-hour working day. But the real K. Le Moyne
that had dreamed dreams, had nothing to do with the figures, but sat
somewhere 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, of
course, not K. Le Moyne at all. “You're the hell of a lot of use, aren't
you? 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 of
his brain that earned the two-fifty per working day. “And it's a great
anaesthetic. He can't think when he's doing it. There's something
practical about figures, and--rational.”
He dressed quickly, ascertaining that he had enough money to buy a
five-dollar ticket at Mrs. McKee's; and, having given up the love of
woman with other things, he was careful not to look about for Sidney on
his way.
He breakfasted at Mrs. McKee's, and was initiated into the mystery of
the ticket punch. The food was rather good, certainly plentiful;
and even his squeamish morning appetite could find no fault with the
self-respecting tidiness of the place. Tillie proved to be neat and
austere. He fancied it would not be pleasant to be very late for one's
meals--in fact, Sidney had hinted as much. Some of the “mealers”--the
Street's name for them--ventured on various small familiarities of
speech with Tillie. K. Le Moyne himself was scrupulously polite, but
reserved. He was determined not to let the Street encroach on his
wretchedness. Because he had come to live there was no reason why it
should adopt him. But he was very polite. When the deaf-and-dumb book
agent wrote something on a pencil pad and pushed it toward him, he
replied in kind.
“We are very glad to welcome you to the McKee family,” was what was
written on the pad.
“Very happy, indeed, to be with you,” wrote back Le Moyne--and realized
with a sort of shock that he meant it.
The kindly greeting had touched him. The greeting and the breakfast
cheered 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 there
were 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 took
one, and placed it nonchalantly in his waistcoat pocket, as he had seen
the others do.
Tillie, her rush hour over, wandered back into the kitchen and poured
herself 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 some
when Mr. Wagner sent him one of his love letters. Rooms over at the
Pages'.”
Mrs. McKee drew a long breath and entered the lamb stew in a book.
“When I think of Anna Page taking a roomer, it just about knocks me
over, Tillie. And where they'll put him, in that little house--he
looked thin, what I saw of him. Seven pounds and a quarter.” This last
referred, 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 of
her unbusinesslike methods: “A thin mealer's a poor advertisement. Do
you suppose this is the dog meat or the soup scraps?”
Tillie was a niece of Mrs. Rosenfeld. In such manner was most of the
Street and its environs connected; in such wise did its small gossip
start 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 her
a 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 the
very lifelessness in her voice told how remotely such things touched
her, and thus was tragic. “Mealers” came and went--small clerks, petty
tradesmen, husbands living alone in darkened houses during the summer
hegira of wives. Various and catholic was Tillie's male acquaintance,
but compounded of good fellowship only. Once, years before, romance had
paraded itself before her in the garb of a traveling nurseryman--had
walked by and not come back.
“And Miss Harriet's going into business for herself. She's taken rooms
downtown; 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 she
raises 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 table
linen.
“I don't know as it's so selfish,” she reflected. “We've only got one
life. 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 insane
asylum. That was why Tillie's romance had only paraded itself before her
and 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 I
ain't. And we're not getting any younger. He had nice manners; he'd have
been 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 thinking
about 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 lovers
who lounged along the Street in the moonlit avenues toward the park and
love; even Sidney's pink roses. Change was in the very air of the Street
that June morning. It was in Tillie, making a last clutch at youth, and
finding, in this pale flare of dying passion, courage to remember what
she had schooled herself to forget; in Harriet asserting her right to
live her life; in Sidney, planning with eager eyes a life of service
which did not include Joe; in K. Le Moyne, who had built up a wall
between himself and the world, and was seeing it demolished by a
deaf-and-dumb book agent whose weapon was a pencil pad!
And yet, for a week nothing happened: Joe came in the evenings and sat
on the steps with Sidney, his honest heart, in his eyes. She could not
bring herself at first to tell him about the hospital. She put it off
from day to day. Anna, no longer sulky, accepted with the childlike faith
Sidney'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. Le
Moyne, finding his little room hot in the evenings and not wishing to
intrude on the two on the doorstep, took to reading his paper in the
park, and after twilight to long, rapid walks out into the country. The
walks satisfied the craving of his active body for exercise, and tired
him so he could sleep. On one such occasion he met Mr. Wagner, and they
carried on an animated conversation until it was too dark to see the
pad. Even then, it developed that Wagner could write in the dark; and
he secured the last word in a long argument by doing this and striking a
match for K. to read by.
When K. was sure that the boy had gone, he would turn back toward the
Street. Some of the heaviness of his spirit always left him at sight of
the little house. Its kindly atmosphere seemed to reach out and envelop
him. Within was order and quiet, the fresh-down bed, the tidiness of
his ordered garments. There was even affection--Reginald, waiting on
the fender for his supper, and regarding him with wary and bright-eyed
friendliness.
Life, that had seemed so simple, had grown very complicated for Sidney.
There was her mother to break the news to, and Joe. Harriet would
approve, she felt; but these others! To assure Anna that she must
manage alone for three years, in order to be happy and comfortable
afterward--that was hard enough to tell Joe she was planning a future
without 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 over
hospitably. The moon had waxed and waned, and the Street was dark. Even
the ailanthus blossoms had ceased their snow-like dropping. The colored
man who drove Dr. Ed in the old buggy on his daily rounds had brought
out the hose and sprinkled the street. Within this zone of freshness, of
wet asphalt and dripping gutters, Sidney sat, cool and silent.
“Please sit down. It is cool now. My idea of luxury is to have the
Street sprinkled on a hot night.”
K. disposed of his long legs on the steps. He was trying to fit his own
ideas 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 in
the evening I want to walk. I ramble around the park and see lovers on
benches--it's rather thrilling. They sit on the same benches evening
after evening. I know a lot of them by sight, and if they're not there
I wonder if they have quarreled, or if they have finally got married and
ended 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 their
getting married end the romance? And don't you know that, if you insist
on 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 argument
over it, and became much better acquainted.
“If I were engaged to him,” Sidney ended, her cheeks very pink, “I--I
might 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, with
others. Not, of course, that he was in love with Sidney then. But he had
been desperately lonely, and, for all her practical clearheadedness,
she was softly and appealingly feminine. By way of keeping his head, he
talked suddenly and earnestly of Mrs. McKee, and food, and Tillie, and
of Mr. Wagner and the pencil pad.
“It's like a game,” he said. “We disagree on everything, especially
Mexico. 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 no
toothpicks, and no one would have believed that twenty-one meals could
have been secured for five dollars with a ticket punch thrown in--young
girls did not receive the attention of one young man to the exclusion of
others 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, for
instance, that Reginald suspects it.”
“It's Johnny Rosenfeld,” said Sidney, with decision. “It's horrible, the
way things get about. Because Joe sent me a box of roses--As a matter
of fact, I'm not engaged, or going to be, Mr. Le Moyne. I'm going into a
hospital to be a nurse.”
Le Moyne said nothing. For just a moment he closed his eyes. A man is in
a rather a bad way when, every time he closes his eyes, he sees the
same thing, especially if it is rather terrible. When it gets to a point
where 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 about
that. His brother Max is a big surgeon there. I expect you've heard of
him. We're very proud of him in the Street.”
Lucky for K. Le Moyne that the moon no longer shone on the low gray
doorstep, that Sidney's mind had traveled far away to shining floors
and rows of white beds. “Life--in the raw,” Dr. Ed had said that other
afternoon. Closer to her than the hospital was life in the raw that
night.
So, even here, on this quiet street in this distant city, there was
to be no peace. Max Wilson just across the way! It--it was ironic. Was
there no place where a man could lose himself? He would have to move on
again, 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 a
dependable 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 to
be married. Her people are wealthy, but she'll have nothing but what
Palmer makes. She'd like to have the parlor and the sitting room
behind. They wouldn't interfere with you at all,” she added hastily.
“Christine's father would build a little balcony at the side for them, a
sort of porch, and they'd sit there in the evenings.”
Behind Sidney's carefully practical tone the man read appeal. Never
before had he realized how narrow the girl's world had been. The Street,
with but one dimension, bounded it! In her perplexity, she was appealing
to him who was practically a stranger.
And he knew then that he must do the thing she asked. He, who had fled
so long, could roam no more. Here on the Street, with its menace just
across, he must live, that she might work. In his world, men had worked
that women might live in certain places, certain ways. This girl was
going out to earn her living, and he would stay to make it possible. But
no hint of all this was in his voice.
“I shall stay, of course,” he said gravely. “I--this is the nearest
thing 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 and
her husband-to-be, Dr. Ed, even Tillie and the Rosenfelds; shifted and
placed them, and, planning, obeyed inevitable law.
“Christine shall come, then,” said Sidney forsooth, “and we will throw
out a balcony.”
So they planned, calmly ignorant that poor Christine's story and
Tillie's and Johnny Rosenfeld's and all the others' were already written
among 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,--with
fresh towels on Katie's day out, for instance,--and she liked him for
it. Years ago, the men she had known had shown this courtesy to their
women; but the Street regarded such things as affectation.
“I wonder if you would do me another favor? I'm afraid you'll take to
avoiding 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 marry
him, but I'm certainly not engaged. Now and then, when you are taking
your 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 just
how--”
Sidney smiled at him. As he stood on the lowest step, their eyes were
almost 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 reached
the 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 the
little hall, one hand upstretched to shut off the gas overhead, and his
eyes on hers above.
“Good-night,” said K. Le Moyne. And all the things he had put out of his
life were in his voice.