Late September had come, with the Street, after its summer indolence
taking up the burden of the year. At eight-thirty and at one the school
bell called the children. Little girls in pig-tails, carrying freshly
sharpened pencils, went primly toward the school, gathering, comet
fashion, a tail of unwilling brothers as they went.
An occasional football hurtled through the air. Le Moyne had promised
the baseball club a football outfit, rumor said, but would not coach
them himself this year. A story was going about that Mr. Le Moyne
intended to go away.
The Street had been furiously busy for a month. The cobblestones had
gone, and from curb to curb stretched smooth asphalt. The fascination
of writing on it with chalk still obsessed the children. Every few yards
was a hop-scotch diagram. Generally speaking, too, the Street had put up
new curtains, and even, here and there, had added a coat of paint.
To this general excitement the strange case of Mr. Le Moyne had added
its quota. One day he was in the gas office, making out statements that
were absolutely ridiculous. (What with no baking all last month, and
every Sunday spent in the country, nobody could have used that amount of
gas. They could come and take their old meter out!) And the next there
was the news that Mr. Le Moyne had been only taking a holiday in the
gas office,--paying off old scores, the barytone at Mrs. McKee's
hazarded!--and that he was really a very great surgeon and had saved Dr.
Max Wilson.
The Street, which was busy at the time deciding whether to leave the old
sidewalks or to put down cement ones, had one evening of mad excitement
over the matter,--of K., not the sidewalks,--and then had accepted the
new situation.
But over the news of K.'s approaching departure it mourned. What was
the matter with things, anyhow? Here was Christine's marriage, which had
promised so well,--awnings and palms and everything,--turning out badly.
True, Palmer Howe was doing better, but he would break out again. And
Johnny Rosenfeld was dead, so that his mother came on washing-days,
and brought no cheery gossip; but bent over her tubs dry-eyed and
silent--even the approaching move to a larger house failed to thrill
her. There was Tillie, too. But one did not speak of her. She was
married now, of course; but the Street did not tolerate such a reversal
of the usual processes as Tillie had indulged in. It censured Mrs. McKee
severely for having been, so to speak, and accessory after the fact.
The Street made a resolve to keep K., if possible. If he had shown
any “high and mightiness,” as they called it, since the change in his
estate, it would have let him go without protest. But when a man is the
real thing,--so that the newspapers give a column to his having been
in the city almost two years,--and still goes about in the same shabby
clothes, with the same friendly greeting for every one, it demonstrates
clearly, as the barytone put it, that “he's got no swelled head on him;
that's sure.”
“Anybody can see by the way he drives that machine of Wilson's that he's
been used to a car--likely a foreign one. All the swells have foreign
cars.” Still the barytone, who was almost as fond of conversation as
of what he termed “vocal.” “And another thing. Do you notice the way
he takes Dr. Ed around? Has him at every consultation. The old boy's
tickled to death.”
A little later, K., coming up the Street as he had that first day, heard
the barytone singing:--
“Home is the hunter, home from the hill,
And the sailor, home from sea.”
Home! Why, this WAS home. The Street seemed to stretch out its arms to
him. The ailanthus tree waved in the sunlight before the little house.
Tree and house were old; September had touched them. Christine sat
sewing on the balcony. A boy with a piece of chalk was writing something
on the new cement under the tree. He stood back, head on one side, when
he had finished, and inspected his work. K. caught him up from behind,
and, swinging him around--
“Hey!” he said severely. “Don't you know better than to write all over
the street? What'll I do to you? Give you to a policeman?”
“Aw, lemme down, Mr. K.”
“You tell the boys that if I find this street scrawled over any more,
the picnic's off.”
“Aw, Mr. K.!”
“I mean it. Go and spend some of that chalk energy of yours in school.”
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
to-morrow 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 to-night 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.
“Dr. Ed says Max wants you to give up your training and marry him now.”
“I'm not going to marry him at all, Chris.”
Upstairs, K.'s door slammed. It was one of his failings that he always
slammed doors. Harriet used to be quite disagreeable about it.
Sidney slid from the railing.
“There he is now.”
Perhaps, in all her frivolous, selfish life, Christine had never had a
bigger moment than the one that followed. She could have said nothing,
and, in the queer way that life goes, K. might have gone away from the
Street as empty of heart as he had come to it.
“Be very good to him, Sidney,” she said unsteadily. “He cares so much.”