K Part 33

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 with 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 pa.s.sed them, and as often they pa.s.sed 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.

"G.o.d!" 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.