The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  "I believe you mean Joe Drummond."

  "No; I do not mean Joe Drummond."

  If he had found any encouragement in her face, he would have gone on recklessly; but her blank eyes warned him.

  "If you mean Max Wilson," said Sidney, "you are entirely wrong. He's not in love with me--not, that is, any more than he is in love with a dozen girls. He likes to be with me--oh, I know that; but that doesn't mean--anything else. Anyhow, after this disgrace--"

  "There is no disgrace, child."

  "He'll think me careless, at the least. And his ideals are so high, K."

  "You say he likes to be with you. What about you?"

  Sidney had been sitting in a low chair by the fire. She rose with a sudden passionate movement. In the informality of the household, she, had visited K. in her dressing-gown and slippers; and now she stood before him, a tragic young figure, clutching the folds of her gown across her breast.

  "I worship him, K.," she said tragically. "When I see him coming, I want to get down and let him walk on me. I know his step in the hall. I know the very way he rings for the elevator. When I see him in the operating-room, cool and calm while every one else is flustered and excited, he--he looks like a god."

  Then, half ashamed of her outburst, she turned her back to him and stood gazing at the small coal fire. It was as well for K. that she did not see his face. For that one moment the despair that was in him shone in his eyes. He glanced around the shabby little room, at the sagging bed, the collar-box, the pincushion, the old marble-topped bureau under which Reginald had formerly made his nest, at his untidy table, littered with pipes and books, at the image in the mirror of his own tall figure, stooped and weary.

  "It's real, all this?" he asked after a pause. "You're sure it's not just--glamour, Sidney?"

  "It's real--terribly real." Her voice was muffled, and he knew then that she was crying.

  She was mightily ashamed of it. Tears, of course, except in the privacy of one's closet, were not ethical on the Street.

  "Perhaps he cares very much, too."

  "Give me a handkerchief," said Sidney in a muffled tone, and the little scene was broken into while K. searched through a bureau drawer. Then:

  "It's all over, anyhow, since this. If he'd really cared he'd have come over to-night. When one is in trouble one needs friends."

  Back in a circle she came inevitably to her suspension. She would never go back, she said passionately. She was innocent, had been falsely accused. If they could think such a thing about her, she didn't want to be in their old hospital.

  K. questioned her, alternately soothing and probing.

  "You are positive about it?"

  "Absolutely. I have given him his medicines dozens of times."

  "You looked at the label?"

  "I swear I did, K."

  "Who else had access to the medicine closet?"

  "Carlotta Harrison carried the keys, of course. I was off duty from four to six. When Carlotta left the ward, the probationer would have them."

  "Have you reason to think that either one of these girls would wish you harm?"

  "None whatever," began Sidney vehemently; and then, checking herself,--"unless--but that's rather ridiculous."

  "What is ridiculous?"

  "I've sometimes thought that Carlotta--but I am sure she is perfectly fair with me. Even if she--if she--"

  "Yes?"

  "Even if she likes Dr. Wilson, I don't believe--Why, K., she wouldn't! It would be murder."

  "Murder, of course," said K., "in intention, anyhow. Of course she didn't do it. I'm only trying to find out whose mistake it was."

  Soon after that she said good-night and went out. She turned in the doorway and smiled tremulously back at him.

  "You have done me a lot of good. You almost make me believe in myself."

  "That's because I believe in you."

  With a quick movement that was one of her charms, Sidney suddenly closed the door and slipped back into the room. K., hearing the door close, thought she had gone, and dropped heavily into a chair.

  "My best friend in all the world!" said Sidney suddenly from behind him, and, bending over, she kissed him on the cheek.

  The next instant the door had closed behind her, and K. was left alone to such wretchedness and bliss as the evening had brought him.

  On toward morning, Harriet, who slept but restlessly in her towel, wakened to the glare of his light over the transom.

  "K.!" she called pettishly from her door. "I wish you wouldn't go to sleep and let your light burn!"

  K., surmising the towel and cold cream, had the tact not to open his door.

  "I am not asleep, Harriet, and I am sorry about the light. It's going out now."

  Before he extinguished the light, he walked over to the old dresser and surveyed himself in the glass. Two nights without sleep and much anxiety had told on him. He looked old, haggard; infinitely tired. Mentally he compared himself with Wilson, flushed with success, erect, triumphant, almost insolent. Nothing had more certainly told him the hopelessness of his love for Sidney than her good-night kiss. He was her brother, her friend. He would never be her lover. He drew a long breath and proceeded to undress in the dark.

  Joe Drummond came to see Sidney the next day. She would have avoided him if she could, but Mimi had ushered him up to the sewing-room boudoir before she had time to escape. She had not seen the boy for two months, and the change in him startled her. He was thinner, rather hectic, scrupulously well dressed.

  "Why, Joe!" she said, and then: "Won't you sit down?"

  He was still rather theatrical. He dramatized himself, as he had that night the June before when he had asked Sidney to marry him. He stood just inside the doorway. He offered no conventional greeting whatever; but, after surveying her briefly, her black gown, the lines around her eyes:--

  "You're not going back to that place, of course?"

  "I--I haven't decided."

  "Then somebody's got to decide for you. The thing for you to do is to stay right here, Sidney. People know you on the Street. Nobody here would ever accuse you of trying to murder anybody."

  In spite of herself, Sidney smiled a little.

  "Nobody thinks I tried to murder him. It was a mistake about the medicines. I didn't do it, Joe."

  His love was purely selfish, for he brushed aside her protest as if she had not spoken.

  "You give me the word and I'll go and get your things; I've got a car of my own now."

  "But, Joe, they have only done what they thought was right. Whoever made it, there was a mistake."

  He stared at her incredulously.

  "You don't mean that you are going to stand for this sort of thing? Every time some fool makes a mistake, are they going to blame it on you?"

  "Please don't be theatrical. Come in and sit down. I can't talk to you if you explode like a rocket all the time."

  Her matter-of-fact tone had its effect. He advanced into the room, but he still scorned a chair.

  "I guess you've been wondering why you haven't heard from me," he said. "I've seen you more than you've seen me."

  Sidney looked uneasy. The idea of espionage is always repugnant, and to have a rejected lover always in the offing, as it were, was disconcerting.

  "I wish you would be just a little bit sensible, Joe. It's so silly of you, really. It's not because you care for me; it's really because you care for yourself."

  "You can't look at me and say that, Sid."

  He ran his finger around his collar--an old gesture; but the collar was very loose. He was thin; his neck showed it.

  "I'm just eating my heart out for you, and that's the truth. And it isn't only that. Everywhere I go, people say, 'There's the fellow Sidney Page turned down when she went to the hospital.' I've got so I keep off the Street as much as I can."

  Sidney was half alarmed, half irritated. This wild, excited boy was not the doggedly faithful youth she had always known. It seemed to her that he was hardly sane--that u
nderneath his quiet manner and carefully repressed voice there lurked something irrational, something she could not cope with. She looked up at him helplessly.

  "But what do you want me to do? You--you almost frighten me. If you'd only sit down--"

  "I want you to come home. I'm not asking anything else now. I just want you to come back, so that things will be the way they used to be. Now that they have turned you out--"

  "They've done nothing of the sort. I've told you that."

  "You're going back?"

  "Absolutely."

  "Because you love the hospital, or because you love somebody connected with the hospital?"

  Sidney was thoroughly angry by this time, angry and reckless. She had come through so much that every nerve was crying in passionate protest.

  "If it will make you understand things any better," she cried, "I am going back for both reasons!"

  She was sorry the next moment. But her words seemed, surprisingly enough, to steady him. For the first time, he sat down.

  "Then, as far as I am concerned, it's all over, is it?"

  "Yes, Joe. I told you that long ago."

  He seemed hardly to be listening. His thoughts had ranged far ahead. Suddenly:--

  "You think Christine has her hands full with Palmer, don't you? Well, if you take Max Wilson, you're going to have more trouble than Christine ever dreamed of. I can tell you some things about him now that will make you think twice."

  But Sidney had reached her limit. She went over and flung open the door.

  "Every word that you say shows me how right I am in not marrying you, Joe," she said. "Real men do not say those things about each other under any circumstances. You're behaving like a bad boy. I don't want you to come back until you have grown up."

  He was very white, but he picked up his hat and went to the door.

  "I guess I AM crazy," he said. "I've been wanting to go away, but mother raises such a fuss--I'll not annoy you any more."

  He reached in his pocket and, pulling out a small box, held it toward her. The lid was punched full of holes.

  "Reginald," he said solemnly. "I've had him all winter. Some boys caught him in the park, and I brought him home."

  He left her standing there speechless with surprise, with the box in her hand, and ran down the stairs and out into the Street. At the foot of the steps he almost collided with Dr. Ed.

  "Back to see Sidney?" said Dr. Ed genially. "That's fine, Joe. I'm glad you've made it up."

  The boy went blindly down the Street.

  CHAPTER XX

  Winter relaxed its clutch slowly that year. March was bitterly cold; even April found the roads still frozen and the hedgerows clustered with ice. But at mid-day there was spring in the air. In the courtyard of the hospital, convalescents sat on the benches and watched for robins. The fountain, which had frozen out, was being repaired. Here and there on ward window-sills tulips opened their gaudy petals to the sun.

  Harriet had gone abroad for a flying trip in March and came back laden with new ideas, model gowns, and fresh enthusiasm. She carried out and planted flowers on her sister's grave, and went back to her work with a feeling of duty done. A combination of crocuses and snow on the ground had given her an inspiration for a gown. She drew it in pencil on an envelope on her way back in the street car.

  Grace Irving, having made good during the white sales, had been sent to the spring cottons. She began to walk with her head higher. The day she sold Sidney material for a simple white gown, she was very happy. Once a customer brought her a bunch of primroses. All day she kept them under the counter in a glass of water, and at evening she took them to Johnny Rosenfeld, still lying prone in the hospital.

  On Sidney, on K., and on Christine the winter had left its mark heavily. Christine, readjusting her life to new conditions, was graver, more thoughtful. She was alone most of the time now. Under K.'s guidance, she had given up the "Duchess" and was reading real books. She was thinking real thoughts, too, for the first time in her life.

  Sidney, as tender as ever, had lost a little of the radiance from her eyes; her voice had deepened. Where she had been a pretty girl, she was now lovely. She was back in the hospital again, this time in the children's ward. K., going in one day to take Johnny Rosenfeld a basket of fruit, saw her there with a child in her arms, and a light in her eyes that he had never seen before. It hurt him, rather--things being as they were with him. When he came out he looked straight ahead.

  With the opening of spring the little house at Hillfoot took on fresh activities. Tillie was house-cleaning with great thoroughness. She scrubbed carpets, took down the clean curtains, and put them up again freshly starched. It was as if she found in sheer activity and fatigue a remedy for her uneasiness.

  Business had not been very good. The impeccable character of the little house had been against it. True, Mr. Schwitter had a little bar and served the best liquors he could buy; but he discouraged rowdiness--had been known to refuse to sell to boys under twenty-one and to men who had already overindulged. The word went about that Schwitter's was no place for a good time. Even Tillie's chicken and waffles failed against this handicap.

  By the middle of April the house-cleaning was done. One or two motor parties had come out, dined sedately and wined moderately, and had gone back to the city again. The next two weeks saw the weather clear. The roads dried up, robins filled the trees with their noisy spring songs, and still business continued dull.

  By the first day of May, Tillie's uneasiness had become certainty. On that morning Mr. Schwitter, coming in from the early milking, found her sitting in the kitchen, her face buried in her apron. He put down the milk-pails and, going over to her, put a hand on her head.

  "I guess there's no mistake, then?"

  "There's no mistake," said poor Tillie into her apron.

  He bent down and kissed the back of her neck. Then, when she failed to brighten, he tiptoed around the kitchen, poured the milk into pans, and rinsed the buckets, working methodically in his heavy way. The tea-kettle had boiled dry. He filled that, too. Then:--

  "Do you want to see a doctor?"

  "I'd better see somebody," she said, without looking up. "And--don't think I'm blaming you. I guess I don't really blame anybody. As far as that goes, I've wanted a child right along. It isn't the trouble I am thinking of either."

  He nodded. Words were unnecessary between them. He made some tea clumsily and browned her a piece of toast. When he had put them on one end of the kitchen table, he went over to her again.

  "I guess I'd ought to have thought of this before, but all I thought of was trying to get a little happiness out of life. And,"--he stroked her arm,--"as far as I am concerned, it's been worth while, Tillie. No matter what I've had to do, I've always looked forward to coming back here to you in the evening. Maybe I don't say it enough, but I guess you know I feel it all right."

  Without looking up, she placed her hand over his.

  "I guess we started wrong," he went on. "You can't build happiness on what isn't right. You and I can manage well enough; but now that there's going to be another, it looks different, somehow."

  After that morning Tillie took up her burden stoically. The hope of motherhood alternated with black fits of depression. She sang at her work, to burst out into sudden tears.

  Other things were not going well. Schwitter had given up his nursery business; but the motorists who came to Hillfoot did not come back. When, at last, he took the horse and buggy and drove about the country for orders, he was too late. Other nurserymen had been before him; shrubberies and orchards were already being set out. The second payment on his mortgage would be due in July. By the middle of May they were frankly up against it. Schwitter at last dared to put the situation into words.

  "We're not making good, Til," he said. "And I guess you know the reason. We are too decent; that's what's the matter with us." There was no irony in his words.

  With all her sophistication, Tillie was vastly ignorant of life. He
had to explain.

  "We'll have to keep a sort of hotel," he said lamely. "Sell to everybody that comes along, and--if parties want to stay over-night--"

  Tillie's white face turned crimson.

  He attempted a compromise. "If it's bad weather, and they're married--"

  "How are we to know if they are married or not?"

  He admired her very much for it. He had always respected her. But the situation was not less acute. There were two or three unfurnished rooms on the second floor. He began to make tentative suggestions as to their furnishing. Once he got a catalogue from an installment house, and tried to hide it from her. Tillie's eyes blazed. She burned it in the kitchen stove.

  Schwitter himself was ashamed; but the idea obsessed him. Other people fattened on the frailties of human nature. Two miles away, on the other road, was a public house that had netted the owner ten thousand dollars profit the year before. They bought their beer from the same concern. He was not as young as he had been; there was the expense of keeping his wife--he had never allowed her to go into the charity ward at the asylum. Now that there was going to be a child, there would be three people dependent upon him. He was past fifty, and not robust.

  One night, after Tillie was asleep, he slipped noiselessly into his clothes and out to the barn, where he hitched up the horse with nervous fingers.

  Tillie never learned of that midnight excursion to the "Climbing Rose," two miles away. Lights blazed in every window; a dozen automobiles were parked before the barn. Somebody was playing a piano. From the bar came the jingle of glasses and loud, cheerful conversation.

  When Schwitter turned the horse's head back toward Hillfoot, his mind was made up. He would furnish the upper rooms; he would bring a barkeeper from town--these people wanted mixed drinks; he could get a second-hand piano somewhere.

  Tillie's rebellion was instant and complete. When she found him determined, she made the compromise that her condition necessitated. She could not leave him, but she would not stay in the rehabilitated little house. When, a week after Schwitter's visit to the "Climbing Rose," an installment van arrived from town with the new furniture, Tillie moved out to what had been the harness-room of the old barn and there established herself.