That passed unnoticed until they were on the highroad,
with the car running smoothly between yellowing fields
of wheat. Then:—
“So you’ve got it too!” he said.
“We’re a fine pair of fools. We’d
both be better off if I sent the car over a bank.”
He gave the wheel a reckless twist, and Le Moyne called
him to time sternly.
They had supper at the White Springs Hotel—not
on the terrace, but in the little room where Carlotta
and Wilson had taken their first meal together.
K. ordered beer for them both, and Joe submitted with
bad grace.
But the meal cheered and steadied him. K. found
him more amenable to reason, and, gaining his confidence,
learned of his desire to leave the city.
“I’m stuck here,” he said.
“I’m the only one, and mother yells blue
murder when I talk about it. I want to go to
Cuba. My uncle owns a farm down there.”
“Perhaps I can talk your mother over.
I’ve been there.”
Joe was all interest. His dilated pupils became
more normal, his restless hands grew quiet.
K.’s even voice, the picture he drew of life
on the island, the stillness of the little hotel in
its mid-week dullness, seemed to quiet the boy’s
tortured nerves. He was nearer to peace than
he had been for many days. But he smoked incessantly,
lighting one cigarette from another.
At ten o’clock he left K. and went for the car.
He paused for a moment, rather sheepishly, by K.’s
chair.
“I’m feeling a lot better,” he said.
“I haven’t got the band around my head.
You talk to mother.”
That was the last K. saw of Joe Drummond until the
next day.
Carlotta dressed herself with unusual care—not
in black this time, but in white. She coiled
her yellow hair in a soft knot at the back of her head,
and she resorted to the faintest shading of rouge.
She intended to be gay, cheerful. The ride
was to be a bright spot in Wilson’s memory.
He expected recriminations; she meant to make him
happy. That was the secret of the charm some
women had for men. They went to such women to
forget their troubles. She set the hour of their
meeting at nine, when the late dusk of summer had
fallen; and she met him then, smiling, a faintly perfumed
white figure, slim and young, with a thrill in her
voice that was only half assumed.
“It’s very late,” he complained.
“Surely you are not going to be back at ten.”
“I have special permission to be out late.”
“Good!” And then, recollecting their
new situation: “We have a lot to talk over.
It will take time.”
At the White Springs Hotel they stopped to fill the
gasolene tank of the car. Joe Drummond saw Wilson
there, in the sheet-iron garage alongside of the road.
The Wilson car was in the shadow. It did not
occur to Joe that the white figure in the car was
not Sidney. He went rather white, and stepped
out of the zone of light. The influence of Le
Moyne was still on him, however, and he went on quietly
with what he was doing. But his hands shook
as he filled the radiator.
