K. shrewdly surmised that Tillie would prefer to see him alone, under the circumstances.
“I guess I can find her,” he said, and rose from the little table.
“If you—if you can say anything to help me out, sir, I’d appreciate it. Of course, she understands how I am driven. But—especially if you would tell her that the Street doesn’t know—”
“I’ll do all I can,” K. promised, and followed the path to the barn.
Tillie received him with a certain dignity. The little harness-room was very comfortable. A white iron bed in a corner, a flat table with a mirror above it, a rocking-chair, and a sewing-machine furnished the room.
“I wouldn’t stand for it,” she said simply; “so here I am. Come in, Mr. Le Moyne.”
There being but one chair, she sat on the bed. The room was littered with small garments in the making. She made no attempt to conceal them; rather, she pointed to them with pride.
“I am making them myself. I have a lot of time these days. He’s got a hired girl at the house. It was hard enough to sew at first, with me making two right sleeves almost every time.” Then, seeing his kindly eye on her: “Well, it’s happened, Mr. Le Moyne. What am I going to do? What am I going to be?”
“You’re going to be a very good mother, Tillie.”
She was manifestly in need of cheering. K., who also needed cheering that spring day, found his consolation in seeing her brighten under the small gossip of the Street. The deaf-and-dumb book agent had taken on life insurance as a side issue, and was doing well; the grocery store at the corner was going to be torn down, and over the new store there were to be apartments; Reginald had been miraculously returned, and was building a new nest under his bureau; Harriet Kennedy had been to Paris, and had brought home six French words and a new figure.
Outside the open door the big barn loomed cool and shadowy, full of empty spaces where later the hay would be stored; anxious mother hens led their broods about; underneath in the horse stable the restless horses pawed in their stalls. From where he sat, Le Moyne could see only the round breasts of the two hills, the fresh green of the orchard the cows in a meadow beyond.
Tillie followed his eyes.
“I like it here,” she confessed. “I’ve had more time to think since I moved out than I ever had in my life before. Them hills help. When the noise is worst down at the house, I look at the hills there and—”
There were great thoughts in her mind—that the hills meant God, and that in His good time perhaps it would all come right. But she was inarticulate. “The hills help a lot,” she repeated.
K. rose. Tillie’s work-basket lay near him. He picked up one of the little garments. In his big hands it looked small, absurd.
“I—I want to tell you something, Tillie. Don’t count on it too much; but Mrs. Schwitter has been failing rapidly for the last month or two.”
Tillie caught his arm.
“You’ve seen her?”
“I was interested. I wanted to see things work out right for you.”
All the color had faded from Tillie’s face.
“You’re very good to me, Mr. Le Moyne,” she said. “I don’t wish the poor soul any harm, but—oh, my God! if she’s going, let it be before the next four months are over.”
K. had fallen into the habit, after his long walks, of dropping into Christine’s little parlor for a chat before he went upstairs. Those early spring days found Harriet Kennedy busy late in the evenings, and, save for Christine and K., the house was practically deserted.
The breach between Palmer and Christine was steadily widening. She was too proud to ask him to spend more of his evenings with her. On those occasions when he voluntarily stayed at home with her, he was so discontented that he drove her almost to distraction. Although she was convinced that he was seeing nothing of the girl who had been with him the night of the accident, she did not trust him. Not that girl, perhaps, but there were others. There would always be others.
Into Christine’s little parlor, then, K. turned, the evening after he had seen Tillie. She was reading by the lamp, and the door into the hall stood open.
“Come in,” she said, as he hesitated in the doorway.
“I am frightfully dusty.”
“There’s a brush in the drawer of the hat-rack—although I don’t really mind how you look.”
The little room always cheered K. Its warmth and light appealed to his aesthetic sense; after the bareness of his bedroom, it spelled luxury. And perhaps, to be entirely frank, there was more than physical comfort and satisfaction in the evenings he spent in Christine’s firelit parlor. He was entirely masculine, and her evident pleasure in his society gratified him. He had fallen into a way of thinking of himself as a sort of older brother to all the world because he was a sort of older brother to Sidney. The evenings with her did something to reinstate him in his own self-esteem. It was subtle, psychological, but also it was very human.
“Come and sit down,” said Christine. “Here’s a chair, and here are cigarettes and there are matches. Now!”
But, for once, K. declined the chair. He stood in front of the fireplace and looked down at her, his head bent slightly to one side.
“I wonder if you would like to do a very kind thing,” he said unexpectedly.
“Make you coffee?”
“Something much more trouble and not so pleasant.”
Christine glanced up at him. When she was with him, when his steady eyes looked down at her, small
