“Thanks; I guess I’ll not go out.”
Then, unexpectedly, she bent her head against a chair-back
and fell to silent crying. K. let her cry for
a moment. Then:—
“Now—tell me about it.”
“I’m just worried; that’s all.”
“Let’s see if we can’t fix up the
worries. Come, now, out with them!”
“I’m a wicked woman, Mr. Le Moyne.”
“Then I’m the person to tell it to.
I—I’m pretty much a lost soul myself.”
He put an arm over her shoulders and drew her up,
facing him.
“Suppose we go into the parlor and talk it out.
I’ll bet things are not as bad as you imagine.”
But when, in the parlor that had seen Mr. Schwitter’s
strange proposal of the morning, Tillie poured out
her story, K.’s face grew grave.
“The wicked part is that I want to go with him,”
she finished. “I keep thinking about being
out in the country, and him coming into supper, and
everything nice for him and me cleaned up and waiting—O
my God! I’ve always been a good woman until
now.”
“I—I understand a great deal better
than you think I do. You’re not wicked.
The only thing is—”
“Go on. Hit me with it.”
“You might go on and be very happy. And
as for the—for his wife, it won’t
do her any harm. It’s only—if
there are children.”
“I know. I’ve thought of that.
But I’m so crazy for children!”
“Exactly. So you should be. But
when they come, and you cannot give them a name—don’t
you see? I’m not preaching morality.
God forbid that I—But no happiness is built
on a foundation of wrong. It’s been tried
before, Tillie, and it doesn’t pan out.”
He was conscious of a feeling of failure when he left
her at last. She had acquiesced in what he said,
knew he was right, and even promised to talk to him
again before making a decision one way or the other.
But against his abstractions of conduct and morality
there was pleading in Tillie the hungry mother-heart;
law and creed and early training were fighting against
the strongest instinct of the race. It was a
losing battle.
The hot August days dragged on. Merciless sunlight
beat in through the slatted shutters of ward windows.
At night, from the roof to which the nurses retired
after prayers for a breath of air, lower surrounding
roofs were seen to be covered with sleepers.
Children dozed precariously on the edge of eternity;
men and women sprawled in the grotesque postures of
sleep.
There was a sort of feverish irritability in the air.
Even the nurses, stoically unmindful of bodily discomfort,
spoke curtly or not at all. Miss Dana, in Sidney’s
ward, went down with a low fever, and for a day or
so Sidney and Miss Grange got along as best they could.
Sidney worked like two or more, performed marvels
of bed-making, learned to give alcohol baths for fever
with the maximum of result and the minimum of time,
even made rounds with a member of the staff and came
through creditably.
