To the little widow, her sister, she had been no less bitter, and more explicit.
"It looks to me, Anna," she said, "as if by borrowing everything I had George had bought me, body and soul, for the rest of my natural life. I'll stay now until Sidney is able to take hold. Then I'm going to live my own life. It will be a little late, but the Kennedys live a long time."
The day of Harriet's leaving had seemed far away to Anna Page. Sidney was still her baby, a pretty, rather leggy girl, in her first year at the High School, prone to saunter home with three or four knickerbockered boys in her train, reading "The Duchess" stealthily, and begging for longer dresses. She had given up her dolls, but she still made clothes for them out of scraps from Harriet's sewing-room. In the parlance of the Street, Harriet "sewed"--and sewed well.
She had taken Anna into business with her, but the burden of the partnership had always been on Harriet. To give her credit, she had not complained. She was past forty by that time, and her youth had slipped by in that back room with its dingy wallpaper covered with paper patterns.
On the day after the arrival of the roomer, Harriet Kennedy came down to breakfast a little late. Katie, the general housework girl, had tied a small white apron over her generous gingham one, and was serving breakfast. From the kitchen came the dump of an iron, and cheerful singing. Sidney was ironing napkins. Mrs. Page, who had taken advantage of Harriet's tardiness to read the obituary column in the morning paper, dropped it.
But Harriet did not sit down. It was her custom to jerk her chair out and drop into it, as if she grudged every hour spent on food. Sidney, not hearing the jerk, paused with her iron in air.
"Sidney."
"Yes, Aunt Harriet."
"Will you come in, please?"
Katie took the iron from her.
"You go. She's all dressed up, and she doesn't want any coffee."
So Sidney went in. It was to her that Harriet made her speech:--
"Sidney, when your father died, I promised to look after both you and your mother until you were able to take care of yourself. That was five years ago. Of course, even before that I had helped to support you."
"If you would only have your coffee, Harriet!"
Mrs. Page sat with her hand on the handle of the old silver-plated coffee-pot. Harriet ignored her.
"You are a young woman now. You have health and energy, and you have youth, which I haven't. I'm past forty. In the next twenty years, at the outside, I've got not only to support myself, but to save something to keep me after that, if I live. I'll probably live to be ninety. I don't want to live forever, but I've always played in hard luck."
Sidney returned her gaze steadily.
"I see. Well, Aunt Harriet, you're quite right. You've been a saint to us, but if you want to go away--"
"Harriet!" wailed Mrs. Page, "you're not thinking--"
"Please, mother."
Harriet's eyes softened as she looked at the girl
"We can manage," said Sidney quietly. "We'll miss you, but it's time we learned to depend on ourselves."
After that, in a torrent, came Harriet's declaration of independence. And, mixed in with its pathetic jumble of recriminations, hostility to her sister's dead husband, and resentment for her lost years, came poor Harriet's hopes and ambitions, the tragic plea of a woman who must substitute for the optimism and energy of youth the grim determination of middle age.
"I can do good work," she finished. "I'm full of ideas, if I could get a chance to work them out. But there's no chance here. There isn't a woman on the Street who knows real clothes when she sees them. They don't even know how to wear their corsets. They send me bundles of hideous stuff, with needles and shields and imitation silk for lining, and when I turn out something worth while out of the mess they think the dress is queer!"
Mrs. Page could not get back of Harriet's revolt to its cause. To her, Harriet was not an artist pleading for her art; she was a sister and a bread-winner deserting her trust.
"I'm sure," she said stiffly, "we paid you back every cent we borrowed. If you stayed here after George died, it was because you offered to."
Her chin worked. She fumbled for the handkerchief at her belt. But Sidney went around the table and flung a young arm over her aunt's shoulders.
"Why didn't you say all that a year ago? We've been selfish, but we're not as bad as you think. And if any one in this world is entitled to success you are. Of course we'll manage."
Harriet's iron repression almost gave way. She covered her emotion with details:--
"Mrs. Lorenz is going to let me make Christine some things, and if they're all right I may make her trousseau."
"Trousseau--for Christine!"
"She's not engaged, but her mother says it's only a matter of a short time. I'm going to take two rooms in the business part of town, and put a couch in the backroom to sleep on."
Sidney's mind flew to Christine and her bright future, to a trousseau bought with the Lorenz money, to Christine settled down, a married woman, with Palmer Howe. She came back with an effort. Harriet had two triangular red spots in her sallow cheeks.
"I can get a few good models--that's the only way to start. And if you care to do hand work for me, Anna, I'll send it to you, and pay you the regular rates. There isn't the call for it there used to be, but just a touch gives dash."
All of Mrs. Page's grievances had worked their way to the surface. Sidney and Harriet had made her world, such as it was, and her world was in revolt. She flung out her hands.
"I suppose I must do something. With you leaving, and Sidney renting her room and sleeping on a folding-bed in the sewing-room, everything seems upside down. I never thought I should live to see strange men running in and out of this house and carrying latch-keys."
This in reference to Le Moyne, whose tall figure had made a hurried exit some time before.
Nothing could have symbolized Harriet's revolt more thoroughly than her going upstairs after a hurried breakfast, and putting on her hat and coat. She had heard of rooms, she said, and there was nothing urgent in the work-room. Her eyes were brighter already as she went out. Sidney, kissing her in the hall and wishing her luck, realized suddenly what a burden she and her mother must have been for the last few years. She threw her head up proudly. They would never be a burden again--never, as long as she had strength and health!
By evening Mrs. Page had worked herself into a state bordering on hysteria. Harriet was out most of the day. She came in at three o'clock, and Katie gave her a cup of tea. At the news of her sister's condition, she merely shrugged her shoulders.
"She'll not die, Katie," she said calmly. "But see that Miss Sidney eats something, and if she is worried tell her I said to get Dr. Ed."
Very significant of Harriet's altered outlook was this casual summoning of the Street's family doctor. She was already dealing in larger figures. A sort of recklessness had come over her since the morning. Already she was learning that peace of mind is essential to successful endeavor. Somewhere Harriet had read a quotation from a Persian poet; she could not remember it, but its sense had stayed with her: "What though we spill a few grains of corn, or drops of oil from the cruse? These be the price of peace."
So Harriet, having spilled oil from her cruse in the shape of Dr. Ed, departed blithely. The recklessness of pure adventure was in her blood. She had taken rooms at a rental that she determinedly put out of her mind, and she was on her way to buy furniture. No pirate, fitting out a ship for the highways of the sea, ever experienced more guilty and delightful excitement.
The afternoon dragged away. Dr. Ed was out "on a case" and might not be in until evening. Sidney sat in the darkened room and waved a fan over her mother's rigid form.
At half after five, Johnny Rosenfeld from the alley, who worked for a florist after school, brought a box of roses to Sidney, and departed grinning impishly. He knew Joe, had seen him in the store. Soon the alley knew that Sidney had received a dozen Killarney roses at three dollars and
a half, and was probably engaged to Joe Drummond.
"Dr. Ed," said Sidney, as he followed her down the stairs, "can you spare the time to talk to me a little while?"
Perhaps the elder Wilson had a quick vision of the crowded office waiting across the Street; but his reply was prompt:
"Any amount of time."
Sidney led the way into the small parlor, where Joe's roses, refused by the petulant invalid upstairs, bloomed alone.
"First of all," said Sidney, "did you mean what you said upstairs?"
Dr. Ed thought quickly.
"Of course; but what?"
"You said I was a born nurse."
The Street was very fond of Dr. Ed. It did not always approve of him. It said--which was perfectly true--that he had sacrificed himself to his brother's career: that, for the sake of that brilliant young surgeon, Dr. Ed had done without wife and children; that to send him abroad he had saved and skimped; that he still went shabby and drove the old buggy, while Max drove about in an automobile coupe. Sidney, not at all of the stuff martyrs are made of, sat in the scented parlor and, remembering all this, was ashamed of her rebellion.
"I'm going into a hospital," said Sidney.
Dr. Ed waited. He liked to have all the symptoms before he made a diagnosis or ventured an opinion. So Sidney, trying to be cheerful, and quite unconscious of the anxiety in her voice, told her story.
"It's fearfully hard work, of course," he commented, when she had finished.
"So is anything worth while. Look at the way you work!"
Dr. Ed rose and wandered around the room.
"You're too young."
"I'll get older."
"I don't think I like the idea," he said at last. "It's splendid work for an older woman. But it's life, child--life in the raw. As we get along in years we lose our illusions--some of them, not all, thank God. But for you, at your age, to be brought face to face with things as they are, and not as we want them to be--it seems such an unnecessary sacrifice."
"Don't you think," said Sidney bravely, "that you are a poor person to talk of sacrifice? Haven't you always, all your life--"
Dr. Ed colored to the roots of his straw-colored hair.
"Certainly not," he said almost irritably. "Max had genius; I had--ability. That's different. One real success is better than two halves. Not"--he smiled down at her--"not that I minimize my usefulness. Somebody has to do the hack-work, and, if I do say it myself, I'm a pretty good hack."
"Very well," said Sidney. "Then I shall be a hack, too. Of course, I had thought of other things,--my father wanted me to go to college,--but I'm strong and willing. And one thing I must make up my mind to, Dr. Ed; I shall have to support my mother."
Harriet passed the door on her way in to a belated supper. The man in the parlor had a momentary glimpse of her slender, sagging shoulders, her thin face, her undisguised middle age.
"Yes," he said, when she was out of hearing. "It's hard, but I dare say it's right enough, too. Your aunt ought to have her chance. Only--I wish it didn't have to be."
Sidney, left alone, stood in the little parlor beside the roses. She touched them tenderly, absently. Life, which the day before had called her with the beckoning finger of dreams, now reached out grim insistent hands. Life--in the raw.
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 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 lam 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," announc
ed 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!
The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart Page 125