The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  But here abruptly Sidney found the great injustice of the world--that because of this vice the good suffer more than the wicked. Her young spirit rose in hot rebellion.

  "It isn't fair!" she cried. "It makes me hate all the men in the world. Palmer cares for you, and yet he can do a thing like this!"

  Christine was pacing nervously up and down the room. Mere companionship had soothed her. She was now, on the surface at least, less excited than Sidney.

  "They are not all like Palmer, thank Heaven," she said. "There are decent men. My father is one, and your K., here in the house, is another."

  At four o'clock in the morning Palmer Howe came home. Christine met him in the lower hall. He was rather pale, but entirely sober. She confronted him in her straight white gown and waited for him to speak.

  "I am sorry to be so late, Chris," he said. "The fact is, I am all in. I was driving the car out Seven Mile Run. We blew out a tire and the thing turned over."

  Christine noticed then that his right arm was hanging inert by his side.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Young Howe had been firmly resolved to give up all his bachelor habits with his wedding day. In his indolent, rather selfish way, he was much in love with his wife.

  But with the inevitable misunderstandings of the first months of marriage had come a desire to be appreciated once again at his face value. Grace had taken him, not for what he was, but for what he seemed to be. With Christine the veil was rent. She knew him now--all his small indolences, his affectations, his weaknesses. Later on, like other women since the world began, she would learn to dissemble, to affect to believe him what he was not.

  Grace had learned this lesson long ago. It was the ABC of her knowledge. And so, back to Grace six weeks after his wedding day came Palmer Howe, not with a suggestion to renew the old relationship, but for comradeship.

  Christine sulked--he wanted good cheer; Christine was intolerant--he wanted tolerance; she disapproved of him and showed her disapproval--he wanted approval. He wanted life to be comfortable and cheerful, without recriminations, a little work and much play, a drink when one was thirsty. Distorted though it was, and founded on a wrong basis, perhaps, deep in his heart Palmer's only longing was for happiness; but this happiness must be of an active sort--not content, which is passive, but enjoyment.

  "Come on out," he said. "I've got a car now. No taxi working its head off for us. Just a little run over the country roads, eh?"

  It was the afternoon of the day before Christine's night visit to Sidney. The office had been closed, owing to a death, and Palmer was in possession of a holiday.

  "Come on," he coaxed. "We'll go out to the Climbing Rose and have supper."

  "I don't want to go."

  "That's not true, Grace, and you know it."

  "You and I are through."

  "It's your doing, not mine. The roads are frozen hard; an hour's run into the country will bring your color back."

  "Much you care about that. Go and ride with your wife," said the girl, and flung away from him.

  The last few weeks had filled out her thin figure, but she still bore traces of her illness. Her short hair was curled over her head. She looked curiously boyish, almost sexless.

  Because she saw him wince when she mentioned Christine, her ill temper increased. She showed her teeth.

  "You get out of here," she said suddenly. "I didn't ask you to come back. I don't want you."

  "Good Heavens, Grace! You always knew I would have to marry some day."

  "I was sick; I nearly died. I didn't hear any reports of you hanging around the hospital to learn how I was getting along."

  He laughed rather sheepishly.

  "I had to be careful. You know that as well as I do. I know half the staff there. Besides, one of--" He hesitated over his wife's name. "A girl I know very well was in the training-school. There would have been the devil to pay if I'd as much as called up."

  "You never told me you were going to get married."

  Cornered, he slipped an arm around her. But she shook him off.

  "I meant to tell you, honey; but you got sick. Anyhow, I--I hated to tell you, honey."

  He had furnished the flat for her. There was a comfortable feeling of coming home about going there again. And, now that the worst minute of their meeting was over, he was visibly happier. But Grace continued to stand eyeing him somberly.

  "I've got something to tell you," she said. "Don't have a fit, and don't laugh. If you do, I'll--I'll jump out of the window. I've got a place in a store. I'm going to be straight, Palmer."

  "Good for you!"

  He meant it. She was a nice girl and he was fond of her. The other was a dog's life. And he was not unselfish about it. She could not belong to him. He did not want her to belong to any one else.

  "One of the nurses in the hospital, a Miss Page, has got me something to do at Lipton and Homburg's. I am going on for the January white sale. If I make good they will keep me."

  He had put her aside without a qualm; and now he met her announcement with approval. He meant to let her alone. They would have a holiday together, and then they would say good-bye. And she had not fooled him. She still cared. He was getting off well, all things considered. She might have raised a row.

  "Good work!" he said. "You'll be a lot happier. But that isn't any reason why we shouldn't be friends, is it? Just friends; I mean that. I would like to feel that I can stop in now and then and say how do you do."

  "I promised Miss Page."

  "Never mind Miss Page."

  The mention of Sidney's name brought up in his mind Christine as he had left her that morning. He scowled. Things were not going well at home. There was something wrong with Christine. She used to be a good sport, but she had never been the same since the day of the wedding. He thought her attitude toward him was one of suspicion. It made him uncomfortable. But any attempt on his part to fathom it only met with cold silence. That had been her attitude that morning.

  "I'll tell you what we'll do," he said. "We won't go to any of the old places. I've found a new roadhouse in the country that's respectable enough to suit anybody. We'll go out to Schwitter's and get some dinner. I'll promise to get you back early. How's that?"

  In the end she gave in. And on the way out he lived up to the letter of their agreement. The situation exhilarated him: Grace with her new air of virtue, her new aloofness; his comfortable car; Johnny Rosenfeld's discreet back and alert ears.

  The adventure had all the thrill of a new conquest in it. He treated the girl with deference, did not insist when she refused a cigarette, felt glowingly virtuous and exultant at the same time.

  When the car drew up before the Schwitter place, he slipped a five-dollar bill into Johnny Rosenfeld's not over-clean hand.

  "I don't mind the ears," he said. "Just watch your tongue, lad." And Johnny stalled his engine in sheer surprise.

  "There's just enough of the Jew in me," said Johnny, "to know how to talk a lot and say nothing, Mr. Howe."

  He crawled stiffly out of the car and prepared to crank it.

  "I'll just give her the 'once over' now and then," he said. "She'll freeze solid if I let her stand."

  Grace had gone up the narrow path to the house. She had the gift of looking well in her clothes, and her small hat with its long quill and her motor-coat were chic and becoming. She never overdressed, as Christine was inclined to do.

  Fortunately for Palmer, Tillie did not see him. A heavy German maid waited at the table in the dining-room, while Tillie baked waffles in the kitchen.

  Johnny Rosenfeld, going around the side path to the kitchen door with visions of hot coffee and a country supper for his frozen stomach, saw her through the window bending flushed over the stove, and hesitated. Then, without a word, he tiptoed back to the car again, and, crawling into the tonneau, covered himself with rugs. In his untutored mind were certain great qualities, and loyalty to his employer was one. The five dollars in his pocket had nothing whatever to do wi
th it.

  At eighteen he had developed a philosophy of four words. It took the place of the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, and the Catechism. It was: "Mind your own business."

  The discovery of Tillie's hiding-place interested but did not thrill him. Tillie was his cousin. If she wanted to do the sort of thing she was doing, that was her affair. Tillie and her middle-aged lover, Palmer Howe and Grace--the alley was not unfamiliar with such relationships. It viewed them with tolerance until they were found out, when it raised its hands.

  True to his promise, Palmer wakened the sleeping boy before nine o'clock. Grace had eaten little and drunk nothing; but Howe was slightly stimulated.

  "Give her the 'once over,'" he told Johnny, "and then go back and crawl into the rugs again. I'll drive in."

  Grace sat beside him. Their progress was slow and rough over the country roads, but when they reached the State road Howe threw open the throttle. He drove well. The liquor was in his blood. He took chances and got away with them, laughing at the girl's gasps of dismay.

  "Wait until I get beyond Simkinsville," he said, "and I'll let her out. You're going to travel tonight, honey."

  The girl sat beside him with her eyes fixed ahead. He had been drinking, and the warmth of the liquor was in his voice. She was determined on one thing. She was going to make him live up to the letter of his promise to go away at the house door; and more and more she realized that it would be difficult. His mood was reckless, masterful. Instead of laughing when she drew back from a proffered caress, he turned surly. Obstinate lines that she remembered appeared from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth. She was uneasy.

  Finally she hit on a plan to make him stop somewhere in her neighborhood and let her get out of the car. She would not come back after that.

  There was another car going toward the city. Now it passed them, and as often they passed it. It became a contest of wits. Palmer's car lost on the hills, but gained on the long level stretches, which gleamed with a coating of thin ice.

  "I wish you'd let them get ahead, Palmer. It's silly and it's reckless."

  "I told you we'd travel to-night."

  He turned a little glance at her. What the deuce was the matter with women, anyhow? Were none of them cheerful any more? Here was Grace as sober as Christine. He felt outraged, defrauded.

  His light car skidded and struck the big car heavily. On a smooth road perhaps nothing more serious than broken mudguards would have been the result. But on the ice the small car slewed around and slid over the edge of the bank. At the bottom of the declivity it turned over.

  Grace was flung clear of the wreckage. Howe freed himself and stood erect, with one arm hanging at his side. There was no sound at all from the boy under the tonneau.

  The big car had stopped. Down the bank plunged a heavy, gorilla-like figure, long arms pushing aside the frozen branches of trees. When he reached the car, O'Hara found Grace sitting unhurt on the ground. In the wreck of the car the lamps had not been extinguished, and by their light he made out Howe, swaying dizzily.

  "Anybody underneath?"

  "The chauffeur. He's dead, I think. He doesn't answer."

  The other members of O'Hara's party had crawled down the bank by that time. With the aid of a jack, they got the car up. Johnny Rosenfeld lay doubled on his face underneath. When he came to and opened his eyes, Grace almost shrieked with relief.

  "I'm all right," said Johnny Rosenfeld. And, when they offered him whiskey: "Away with the fire-water. I am no drinker. I--I--" A spasm of pain twisted his face. "I guess I'll get up." With his arms he lifted himself to a sitting position, and fell back again.

  "God!" he said. "I can't move my legs."

  CHAPTER XVII

  By Christmas Day Sidney was back in the hospital, a little wan, but valiantly determined to keep her life to its mark of service. She had a talk with K. the night before she left.

  Katie was out, and Sidney had put the dining-room in order. K. sat by the table and watched her as she moved about the room.

  The past few weeks had been very wonderful to him: to help her up and down the stairs, to read to her in the evenings as she lay on the couch in the sewing-room; later, as she improved, to bring small dainties home for her tray, and, having stood over Katie while she cooked them, to bear them in triumph to that upper room--he had not been so happy in years.

  And now it was over. He drew a long breath.

  "I hope you don't feel as if you must stay on," she said anxiously. "Not that we don't want you--you know better than that."

  "There is no place else in the whole world that I want to go to," he said simply.

  "I seem to be always relying on somebody's kindness to--to keep things together. First, for years and years, it was Aunt Harriet; now it is you."

  "Don't you realize that, instead of your being grateful to me, it is I who am undeniably grateful to you? This is home now. I have lived around--in different places and in different ways. I would rather be here than anywhere else in the world."

  But he did not look at her. There was so much that was hopeless in his eyes that he did not want her to see. She would be quite capable, he told himself savagely, of marrying him out of sheer pity if she ever guessed. And he was afraid--afraid, since he wanted her so much--that he would be fool and weakling enough to take her even on those terms. So he looked away.

  Everything was ready for her return to the hospital. She had been out that day to put flowers on the quiet grave where Anna lay with folded hands; she had made her round of little visits on the Street; and now her suit-case, packed, was in the hall.

  "In one way, it will be a little better for you than if Christine and Palmer were not in the house. You like Christine, don't you?"

  "Very much."

  "She likes you, K. She depends on you, too, especially since that night when you took care of Palmer's arm before we got Dr. Max. I often think, K., what a good doctor you would have been. You knew so well what to do for mother."

  She broke off. She still could not trust her voice about her mother.

  "Palmer's arm is going to be quite straight. Dr. Ed is so proud of Max over it. It was a bad fracture."

  He had been waiting for that. Once at least, whenever they were together, she brought Max into the conversation. She was quite unconscious of it.

  "You and Max are great friends. I knew you would like him. He is interesting, don't you think?"

  "Very," said K.

  To save his life, he could not put any warmth into his voice. He would be fair. It was not in human nature to expect more of him.

  "Those long talks you have, shut in your room--what in the world do you talk about? Politics?"

  "Occasionally."

  She was a little jealous of those evenings, when she sat alone, or when Harriet, sitting with her, made sketches under the lamp to the accompaniment of a steady hum of masculine voices from across the hall. Not that she was ignored, of course. Max came in always, before he went, and, leaning over the back of a chair, would inform her of the absolute blankness of life in the hospital without her.

  "I go every day because I must," he would assure her gayly; "but, I tell you, the snap is gone out of it. When there was a chance that every cap was YOUR cap, the mere progress along a corridor became thrilling." He had a foreign trick of throwing out his hands, with a little shrug of the shoulders. "Cui bono?" he said--which, being translated, means: "What the devil's the use!"

  And K. would stand in the doorway, quietly smoking, or go back to his room and lock away in his trunk the great German books on surgery with which he and Max had been working out a case.

  So K. sat by the dining-room table and listened to her talk of Max that last evening together.

  "I told Mrs. Rosenfeld to-day not to be too much discouraged about Johnny. I had seen Dr. Max do such wonderful things. Now that you are such friends,"--she eyed him wistfully,--"perhaps some day you will come to one of his operations. Even if you didn't understand exactly, I know it
would thrill you. And--I'd like you to see me in my uniform, K. You never have."

  She grew a little sad as the evening went on. She was going to miss K. very much. While she was ill she had watched the clock for the time to listen for him. She knew the way he slammed the front door. Palmer never slammed the door. She knew too that, just after a bang that threatened the very glass in the transom, K. would come to the foot of the stairs and call:--

  "Ahoy, there!"

  "Aye, aye," she would answer--which was, he assured her, the proper response.

  Whether he came up the stairs at once or took his way back to Katie had depended on whether his tribute for the day was fruit or sweetbreads.

  Now that was all over. They were such good friends. He would miss her, too; but he would have Harriet and Christine and--Max. Back in a circle to Max, of course.

  She insisted, that last evening, on sitting up with him until midnight ushered in Christmas Day. Christine and Palmer were out; Harriet, having presented Sidney with a blouse that had been left over in the shop from the autumn's business, had yawned herself to bed.

  When the bells announced midnight, Sidney roused with a start. She realized that neither of them had spoken, and that K.'s eyes were fixed on her. The little clock on the shelf took up the burden of the churches, and struck the hour in quick staccato notes.

  Sidney rose and went over to K., her black dress in soft folds about her.

  "He is born, K."

  "He is born, dear."

  She stooped and kissed his cheek lightly.

  Christmas Day dawned thick and white. Sidney left the little house at six, with the street light still burning through a mist of falling snow.

  The hospital wards and corridors were still lighted when she went on duty at seven o'clock. She had been assigned to the men's surgical ward, and went there at once. She had not seen Carlotta Harrison since her mother's death; but she found her on duty in the surgical ward. For the second time in four months, the two girls were working side by side.