CHAPTER XVIII
K. saw Sidney for only a moment on Christmas Day. This was when the gaylittle sleigh had stopped in front of the house.
Sidney had hurried radiantly in for a moment. Christine's parlor wasgay with firelight and noisy with chatter and with the clatter of hertea-cups.
K., lounging indolently in front of the fire, had turned to see Sidneyin the doorway, and leaped to his feet.
"I can't come in," she cried. "I am only here for a moment. I am outsleigh-riding with Dr. Wilson. It's perfectly delightful."
"Ask him in for a cup of tea," Christine called out. "Here's AuntHarriet and mother and even Palmer!"
Christine had aged during the last weeks, but she was putting up a bravefront.
"I'll ask him."
Sidney ran to the front door and called: "Will you come in for a cup oftea?"
"Tea! Good Heavens, no. Hurry."
As Sidney turned back into the house, she met Palmer. He had come outin the hall, and had closed the door into the parlor behind him. His armwas still in splints, and swung suspended in a gay silk sling.
The sound of laughter came through the door faintly.
"How is he to-day?" He meant Johnny, of course. The boy's face wasalways with him.
"Better in some ways, but of course--"
"When are they going to operate?"
"When he is a little stronger. Why don't you come into see him?"
"I can't. That's the truth. I can't face the poor youngster."
"He doesn't seem to blame you; he says it's all in the game."
"Sidney, does Christine know that I was not alone that night?"
"If she guesses, it is not because of anything the boy has said. He hastold nothing."
Out of the firelight, away from the chatter and the laughter, Palmer'sface showed worn and haggard. He put his free hand on Sidney's shoulder.
"I was thinking that perhaps if I went away--"
"That would be cowardly, wouldn't it?"
"If Christine would only say something and get it over with! She doesn'tsulk; I think she's really trying to be kind. But she hates me, Sidney.She turns pale every time I touch her hand."
All the light had died out of Sidney's face. Life was terrible, afterall--overwhelming. One did wrong things, and other people suffered; orone was good, as her mother had been, and was left lonely, a widow, orlike Aunt Harriet. Life was a sham, too. Things were so different fromwhat they seemed to be: Christine beyond the door, pouring tea andlaughing with her heart in ashes; Palmer beside her, faultlessly dressedand wretched. The only one she thought really contented was K. He seemedto move so calmly in his little orbit. He was always so steady, sobalanced. If life held no heights for him, at least it held no depths.
So Sidney thought, in her ignorance!
"There's only one thing, Palmer," she said gravely. "Johnny Rosenfeldis going to have his chance. If anybody in the world can save him, MaxWilson can."
The light of that speech was in her eyes when she went out to the sleighagain. K. followed her out and tucked the robes in carefully about her.
"Warm enough?"
"All right, thank you."
"Don't go too far. Is there any chance of having you home for supper?"
"I think not. I am to go on duty at six again."
If there was a shadow in K.'s eyes, she did not see it. He waved themoff smilingly from the pavement, and went rather heavily back into thehouse.
"Just how many men are in love with you, Sidney?" asked Max, as Peggystarted up the Street.
"No one that I know of, unless--"
"Exactly. Unless--"
"What I meant," she said with dignity, "is that unless one counts veryyoung men, and that isn't really love."
"We'll leave out Joe Drummond and myself--for, of course, I am veryyoung. Who is in love with you besides Le Moyne? Any of the internes atthe hospital?"
"Me! Le Moyne is not in love with me."
There was such sincerity in her voice that Wilson was relieved.
K., older than himself and more grave, had always had an odd attractionfor women. He had been frankly bored by them, but the fact had remained.And Max more than suspected that now, at last, he had been caught.
"Don't you really mean that you are in love with Le Moyne?"
"Please don't be absurd. I am not in love with anybody; I haven't timeto be in love. I have my profession now."
"Bah! A woman's real profession is love."
Sidney differed from this hotly. So warm did the argument become thatthey passed without seeing a middle-aged gentleman, short and ratherheavy set, struggling through a snowdrift on foot, and carrying in hishand a dilapidated leather bag.
Dr. Ed hailed them. But the cutter slipped by and left him knee-deep,looking ruefully after them.
"The young scamp!" he said. "So that's where Peggy is!"
Nevertheless, there was no anger in Dr. Ed's mind, only a vague andinarticulate regret. These things that came so easily to Max, theaffection of women, gay little irresponsibilities like the stealingof Peggy and the sleigh, had never been his. If there was any faintresentment, it was at himself. He had raised the boy wrong--he hadtaught him to be selfish. Holding the bag high out of the drifts, hemade his slow progress up the Street.
At something after two o'clock that night, K. put down his pipeand listened. He had not been able to sleep since midnight. In hisdressing-gown he had sat by the small fire, thinking. The content of hisfirst few months on the Street was rapidly giving way to unrest. Hewho had meant to cut himself off from life found himself again in closetouch with it; his eddy was deep with it.
For the first time, he had begun to question the wisdom of what he haddone. Had it been cowardice, after all? It had taken courage, God knew,to give up everything and come away. In a way, it would have taken morecourage to have stayed. Had he been right or wrong?
And there was a new element. He had thought, at first, that he couldfight down this love for Sidney. But it was increasingly hard. Theinnocent touch of her hand on his arm, the moment when he had held herin his arms after her mother's death, the thousand small contacts of herreturns to the little house--all these set his blood on fire. And it wasfighting blood.
Under his quiet exterior K. fought many conflicts those winterdays--over his desk and ledger at the office, in his room alone,with Harriet planning fresh triumphs beyond the partition, even byChristine's fire, with Christine just across, sitting in silence andwatching his grave profile and steady eyes.
He had a little picture of Sidney--a snap-shot that he had takenhimself. It showed Sidney minus a hand, which had been out of range whenthe camera had been snapped, and standing on a steep declivitywhich would have been quite a level had he held the camera straight.Nevertheless it was Sidney, her hair blowing about her, eyes lookingout, tender lips smiling. When she was not at home, it sat on K.'sdresser, propped against his collar-box. When she was in the house, itlay under the pin-cushion.
Two o'clock in the morning, then, and K. in his dressing-gown, with thepicture propped, not against the collar-box, but against his lamp, wherehe could see it.
He sat forward in his chair, his hands folded around his knee, andlooked at it. He was trying to picture the Sidney of the photographin his old life--trying to find a place for her. But it was difficult.There had been few women in his old life. His mother had died many yearsbefore. There had been women who had cared for him, but he put themimpatiently out of his mind.
Then the bell rang.
Christine was moving about below. He could hear her quick steps. Almostbefore he had heaved his long legs out of the chair, she was tapping athis door outside.
"It's Mrs. Rosenfeld. She says she wants to see you."
He went down the stairs. Mrs. Rosenfeld was standing in the lower hall,a shawl about her shoulders. Her face was white and drawn above it.
"I've had word to go to the hospital," she said. "I thought maybe you'dgo with me. It seems as if I can't stand it alone. O
h, Johnny, Johnny!"
"Where's Palmer?" K. demanded of Christine.
"He's not in yet."
"Are you afraid to stay in the house alone?"
"No; please go."
He ran up the staircase to his room and flung on some clothing. In thelower hall, Mrs. Rosenfeld's sobs had become low moans; Christine stoodhelplessly over her.
"I am terribly sorry," she said--"terribly sorry! When I think whosefault all this is!"
Mrs. Rosenfeld put out a work-hardened hand and caught Christine'sfingers.
"Never mind that," she said. "You didn't do it. I guess you and Iunderstand each other. Only pray God you never have a child."
K. never forgot the scene in the small emergency ward to which Johnnyhad been taken. Under the white lights his boyish figure lookedstrangely long. There was a group around the bed--Max Wilson, two orthree internes, the night nurse on duty, and the Head.
Sitting just inside the door on a straight chair was Sidney--such aSidney as he never had seen before, her face colorless, her eyes wideand unseeing, her hands clenched in her lap. When he stood beside her,she did not move or look up. The group around the bed had parted toadmit Mrs. Rosenfeld, and closed again. Only Sidney and K. remained bythe door, isolated, alone.
"You must not take it like that, dear. It's sad, of course. But, afterall, in that condition--"
It was her first knowledge that he was there. But she did not turn.
"They say I poisoned him." Her voice was dreary, inflectionless.
"You--what?"
"They say I gave him the wrong medicine; that he's dying; that Imurdered him." She shivered.
K. touched her hands. They were ice-cold.
"Tell me about it."
"There is nothing to tell. I came on duty at six o'clock and gave themedicines. When the night nurse came on at seven, everything was allright. The medicine-tray was just as it should be. Johnny was asleep. Iwent to say good-night to him and he--he was asleep. I didn't give himanything but what was on the tray," she finished piteously. "I looked atthe label; I always look."
By a shifting of the group around the bed, K.'s eyes looked for a momentdirectly into Carlotta's. Just for a moment; then the crowd closed upagain. It was well for Carlotta that it did. She looked as if she hadseen a ghost--closed her eyes, even reeled.
"Miss Harrison is worn out," Dr. Wilson said brusquely. "Get some one totake her place."
But Carlotta rallied. After all, the presence of this man in this roomat such a time meant nothing. He was Sidney's friend, that was all.
But her nerve was shaken. The thing had gone beyond her. She had notmeant to kill. It was the boy's weakened condition that was turning herrevenge into tragedy.
"I am all right," she pleaded across the bed to the Head. "Let me stay,please. He's from my ward. I--I am responsible."
Wilson was at his wits' end. He had done everything he knew withoutresult. The boy, rousing for an instant, would lapse again into stupor.With a healthy man they could have tried more vigorous measures--couldhave forced him to his feet and walked him about, could have beaten himwith knotted towels dipped in ice-water. But the wrecked body on the bedcould stand no such heroic treatment.
It was Le Moyne, after all, who saved Johnny Rosenfeld's life. For, whenstaff and nurses had exhausted all their resources, he stepped forwardwith a quiet word that brought the internes to their feet astonished.
There was a new treatment for such cases--it had been tried abroad. Helooked at Max.
Max had never heard of it. He threw out his hands.
"Try it, for Heaven's sake," he said. "I'm all in."
The apparatus was not in the house--must be extemporized, indeed, atlast, of odds and ends from the operating-room. K. did the work, hislong fingers deft and skillful--while Mrs. Rosenfeld knelt by the bedwith her face buried; while Sidney sat, dazed and bewildered, on herlittle chair inside the door; while night nurses tiptoed along thecorridor, and the night watchman stared incredulous from outside thedoor.
When the two great rectangles that were the emergency ward windowshad turned from mirrors reflecting the room to gray rectangles in themorning light; Johnny Rosenfeld opened his eyes and spoke the firstwords that marked his return from the dark valley.
"Gee, this is the life!" he said, and smiled into K.'s watchful face.
When it was clear that the boy would live, K. rose stiffly from thebedside and went over to Sidney's chair.
"He's all right now," he said--"as all right as he can be, poor lad!"
"You did it--you! How strange that you should know such a thing. How amI to thank you?"
The internes, talking among themselves, had wandered down to theirdining-room for early coffee. Wilson was giving a few last instructionsas to the boy's care. Quite unexpectedly, Sidney caught K.'s hand andheld it to her lips. The iron repression of the night, of months indeed,fell away before her simple caress.
"My dear, my dear," he said huskily. "Anything that I can do--foryou--at any time--"
It was after Sidney had crept like a broken thing to her room thatCarlotta Harrison and K. came face to face. Johnny was quite consciousby that time, a little blue around the lips, but valiantly cheerful.
"More things can happen to a fellow than I ever knew there was!" hesaid to his mother, and submitted rather sheepishly to her tears andcaresses.
"You were always a good boy, Johnny," she said. "Just you get wellenough to come home. I'll take care of you the rest of my life. We willget you a wheel-chair when you can be about, and I can take you out inthe park when I come from work."
"I'll be passenger and you'll be chauffeur, ma."
"Mr. Le Moyne is going to get your father sent up again. With sixty-fivecents a day and what I make, we'll get along."
"You bet we will!"
"Oh, Johnny, if I could see you coming in the door again and yelling'mother' and 'supper' in one breath!"
The meeting between Carlotta and Le Moyne was very quiet. She had beenmaking a sort of subconscious impression on the retina of his mindduring all the night. It would be difficult to tell when he actuallyknew her.
When the preparations for moving Johnny back to the big ward had beenmade, the other nurses left the room, and Carlotta and the boy weretogether. K. stopped her on her way to the door.
"Miss Harrison!"
"Yes, Dr. Edwardes."
"I am not Dr. Edwardes here; my name is Le Moyne."
"Ah!"
"I have not seen you since you left St. John's."
"No; I--I rested for a few months."
"I suppose they do not know that you were--that you have had anyprevious hospital experience."
"No. Are you going to tell them?"
"I shall not tell them, of course."
And thus, by simple mutual consent, it was arranged that each shouldrespect the other's confidence.
Carlotta staggered to her room. There had been a time, just before dawn,when she had had one of those swift revelations that sometimes come atthe end of a long night. She had seen herself as she was. The boy wasvery low, hardly breathing. Her past stretched behind her, a series ofsmall revenges and passionate outbursts, swift yieldings, slow remorse.She dared not look ahead. She would have given every hope she had in theworld, just then, for Sidney's stainless past.
She hated herself with that deadliest loathing that comes of completeself-revelation.
And she carried to her room the knowledge that the night's struggle hadbeen in vain--that, although Johnny Rosenfeld would live, she had gainednothing by what he had suffered. The whole night had shown her thehopelessness of any stratagem to win Wilson from his new allegiance. Shehad surprised him in the hallway, watching Sidney's slender figureas she made her way up the stairs to her room. Never, in all his pastovertures to her, had she seen that look in his eyes.