“I don’t run. I am still frightened.”
“Then it has been worth while?”
Tillie glanced up at the two pictures over the mantel.
“Sometimes it is—when he comes in tired, and I’ve a chicken ready or some fried ham and eggs for his supper, and I see him begin to look rested. He lights his pipe, and many an evening he helps me with the dishes. He’s happy; he’s getting fat.”
“But you?” Le Moyne persisted.
“I wouldn’t go back to where I was, but I am not happy, Mr. Le Moyne. There’s no use pretending. I want a baby. All along I’ve wanted a baby. He wants one. This place is his, and he’d like a boy to come into it when he’s gone. But, my God! if I did have one; what would it be?”
K.‘s eyes followed hers to the picture and the everlastings underneath.
“And she—there isn’t any prospect of her—?”
“No.”
There was no solution to Tillie’s problem. Le Moyne, standing on the hearth and looking down at her, realized that, after all, Tillie must work out her own salvation. He could offer her no comfort.
They talked far into the growing twilight of the afternoon. Tillie was hungry for news of the Street: must know of Christine’s wedding, of Harriet, of Sidney in her hospital. And when he had told her all, she sat silent, rolling her handkerchief in her fingers. Then:—
“Take the four of us,” she said suddenly,—“Christine Lorenz and Sidney Page and Miss Harriet and me,—and which one would you have picked to go wrong like this? I guess, from the looks of things, most folks would have thought it would be the Lorenz girl. They’d have picked Harriet Kennedy for the hospital, and me for the dressmaking, and it would have been Sidney Page that got married and had an automobile. Well, that’s life.”
She looked up at K. shrewdly.
“There were some people out here lately. They didn’t know me, and I heard them talking. They said Sidney Page was going to marry Dr. Max Wilson.”
“Possibly. I believe there is no engagement yet.”
He had finished with his glass. Tillie rose to take it away. As she stood before him she looked up into his face.
“If you like her as well as I think you do, Mr. Le Moyne, you won’t let him get her.”
“I am afraid that’s not up to me, is it? What would I do with a wife, Tillie?”
“You’d be faithful to her. That’s more than he would be. I guess, in the long run, that would count more than money.”
That was what K. took home with him after his encounter with Tillie. He pondered it on his way back to the street-car, as he struggled against the wind. The weather had changed. Wagon-tracks along the road were filled with water and had begun to freeze. The rain had turned to a driving sleet that cut his face. Halfway to the trolley line, the dog turned off into a by-road. K. did not miss him. The dog stared after him, one foot raised. Once again his eyes were like Tillie’s, as she had waved good-bye from the porch.
His head sunk on his breast, K. covered miles of road with his long, swinging pace, and fought his battle. Was Tillie right, after all, and had he been wrong? Why should he efface himself, if it meant Sidney’s unhappiness? Why not accept Wilson’s offer and start over again? Then if things went well—the temptation was strong that stormy afternoon. He put it from him at last, because of the conviction that whatever he did would make no change in Sidney’s ultimate decision. If she cared enough for Wilson, she would marry him. He felt that she cared enough.
CHAPTER XV
Palmer and Christine returned from their wedding trip the day K. discovered Tillie. Anna Page made much of the arrival, insisted on dinner for them that night at the little house, must help Christine unpack her trunks and arrange her wedding gifts about the apartment. She was brighter than she had been for days, more interested. The wonders of the trousseau filled her with admiration and a sort of jealous envy for Sidney, who could have none of these things. In a pathetic sort of way, she mothered Christine in lieu of her own daughter.
And it was her quick eye that discerned something wrong. Christine was not quite happy. Under her excitement was an undercurrent of reserve. Anna, rich in maternity if in nothing else, felt it, and in reply to some speech of Christine’s that struck her as hard, not quite fitting, she gave her a gentle admonishing.
“Married life takes a little adjusting, my dear,” she said. “After we have lived to ourselves for a number of years, it is not easy to live for some one else.”
Christine straightened from the tea-table she was arranging.
“That’s true, of course. But why should the woman do all the adjusting?”
“Men are more set,” said poor Anna, who had never been set in anything in her life. “It is harder for them to give in. And, of course, Palmer is older, and his habits—”
“The less said about Palmer’s habits the better,” flashed Christine. “I appear to have married a bunch of habits.”
She gave over her unpacking, and sat down listlessly by the fire, while Anna moved about, busy with the small activities that delighted her.
Six weeks of Palmer’s society in unlimited amounts had bored Christine to distraction. She sat with folded hands and looked into a future that seemed to include nothing but Palmer: Palmer asleep with his mouth open; Palmer shaving before breakfast, and irritable until he had had his coffee; Palmer yawning over the newspaper.
And there was a darker side to the picture than that. There was a vision of Palmer slipping quietly into his room and falling into the heavy sleep, not of drunkenness perhaps, but of drink. That had happened twice. She knew now that it would happen again and again, as long as he lived. Drinking leads to other things. The letter she had
