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Updated: April 30, 2025
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'd get away to Cuba if he could and start over again. He would forget the Street and let it forget him. The men in the garage were talking. "To Schwitter's, of course," one of them grumbled. "We might as well go out of business." "There's no money in running a straight place. Schwitter and half a dozen others are getting rich." "That was Wilson, the surgeon in town.
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.
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.
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.
He had a horror of knockout drops and the police. They laid her on the bed, her hat beside her; and Wilson, stripping down the long sleeve of her glove, felt her pulse. "There's a doctor in the next town," said Schwitter. "I was going to send for him, anyhow my wife's not very well." "I'm a doctor." "Is it anything serious?" "Nothing serious."
He meant a home, tenderness, children, perhaps. He turned away from the look in her eyes and stared out of the front window. "Them poplars out there ought to be taken away," he said heavily. "They're hell on sewers." Tillie found her voice at last: "I couldn't do it, Mr. Schwitter. I guess I'm a coward. Maybe I'll be sorry." "Perhaps, if you got used to the idea "
As if to cover the last traces of his late infamy, Schwitter himself was watering the worn places on the lawn with the garden can. The car went by. Above the low hum of the engine they could hear Tillie's voice, flat and unmusical, but filled with the harmonies of love as she sang to the child. When they had left the house far behind, K. was suddenly aware that Sidney was crying.
When I look in that glass at myself, and call myself what I am, I'd give a good bit to be back on the Street again." She found opportunity for a word with K. while Christine went ahead of him out of the barn. "I've been wanting to speak to you, Mr. Le Moyne." She lowered her voice. "Joe Drummond's been coming out here pretty regular. Schwitter says he's drinking a little.
The Street did not go out to see women in Tillie's situation. "But, K.!" she protested. "She needs another woman just now. She's going to have a child, Christine; and she has had no one to talk to but her hus but Mr. Schwitter and myself. She is depressed and not very well." "But what shall I say to her?
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