K

CHAPTER XI

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.

Dr. Ed Wilson had sent a woman patient into the ward, and his visits were the breath of life to the girl.

“How're they treating you?” he asked her, one day, abruptly.

“Very well.”

“Look at me squarely. You're pretty and you're young. Some of them will try to take it out of you. That's human nature. Has anyone tried it yet?”

Sidney looked distressed.

“Positively, no. It's been hot, and of course it's troublesome to tell me everything. I—I think they're all very kind.”

He reached out a square, competent hand, and put it over hers.

“We miss you in the Street,” he said. “It's all sort of dead there since you left. Joe Drummond doesn't moon up and down any more, for one thing. What was wrong between you and Joe, Sidney?”

“I didn't want to marry him; that's all.”

“That's considerable. The boy's taking it hard.”

Then, seeing her face:—

“But you're right, of course. Don't marry anyone unless you can't live without him. That's been my motto, and here I am, still single.”

He went out and down the corridor. He had known Sidney all his life. During the lonely times when Max was at college and in Europe, he had watched her grow from a child to a young girl. He did not suspect for a moment that in that secret heart of hers he sat newly enthroned, in a glow of white light, as Max's brother; that the mere thought that he lived in Max's house (it was, of course Max's house to her), sat at Max's breakfast table, could see him whenever he wished, made the touch of his hand on hers a benediction and a caress.

Sidney finished folding linen and went back to the ward. It was Friday and a visiting day. Almost every bed had its visitor beside it; but Sidney, running an eye over the ward, found the girl of whom she had spoken to Le Moyne quite alone. She was propped up in bed, reading; but at each new step in the corridor hope would spring into her eyes and die again.

“Want anything, Grace?”

“Me? I'm all right. If these people would only get out and let me read in peace—Say, sit down and talk to me, won't you? It beats the mischief the way your friends forget you when you're laid up in a place like this.”

“People can't always come at visiting hours. Besides, it's hot.”

“A girl I knew was sick here last year, and it wasn't too hot for me to trot in twice a week with a bunch of flowers for her. Do you think she's been here once? She hasn't.”

Then, suddenly:—

“You know that man I told you about the other day?”

Sidney nodded. The girl's anxious eyes were on her.

“It was a shock to me, that's all. I didn't want you to think I'd break my heart over any fellow. All I meant was, I wished he'd let me know.”

Her eyes searched Sidney's. They looked unnaturally large and somber in her face. Her hair had been cut short, and her nightgown, open at the neck, showed her thin throat and prominent clavicles.

“You're from the city, aren't you, Miss Page?”

“Yes.”

“You told me the street, but I've forgotten it.”

Sidney repeated the name of the Street, and slipped a fresh pillow under the girl's head.

“The evening paper says there's a girl going to be married on your street.”

“Really! Oh, I think I know. A friend of mine is going to be married. Was the name Lorenz?”

“The girl's name was Lorenz. I—I don't remember the man's name.”

“She is going to marry a Mr. Howe,” said Sidney briskly. “Now, how do you feel? More comfy?”

“Fine! I suppose you'll be going to that wedding?”

“If I ever get time to have a dress made, I'll surely go.”

Toward six o'clock the next morning, the night nurse was making out her reports. On one record, which said at the top, “Grace Irving, age 19,” and an address which, to the initiated, told all her story, the night nurse wrote:—

“Did not sleep at all during night. Face set and eyes staring, but complains of no pain. Refused milk at eleven and three.”

Carlotta Harrison, back from her vacation, reported for duty the next morning, and was assigned to E ward, which was Sidney's. She gave Sidney a curt little nod, and proceeded to change the entire routine with the thoroughness of a Central American revolutionary president. Sidney, who had yet to learn that with some people authority can only assert itself by change, found herself confused, at sea, half resentful.

Once she ventured a protest:—

“I've been taught to do it that way, Miss Harrison. If my method is wrong, show me what you want, and I'll do my best.”

“I am not responsible for what you have been taught. And you will not speak back when you are spoken to.”

Small as the incident was, it marked a change in Sidney's position in the ward. She got the worst off-duty of the day, or none. Small humiliations were hers: late meals, disagreeable duties, endless and often unnecessary tasks. Even Miss Grange, now reduced to second place, remonstrated with her senior.

“I think a certain amount of severity is good for a probationer,” she said, “but you are brutal, Miss Harrison.”

“She's stupid.”

“She's not at all stupid. She's going to be one of the best nurses in the house.”

“Report me, then. Tell the Head I'm abusing Dr. Wilson's pet probationer, that I don't always say 'please' when I ask her to change a bed or take a temperature.”

Miss Grange was not lacking in keenness. She did not go to the Head, which is unethical under any circumstances; but gradually there spread through the training-school a story that Carlotta Harrison was jealous of the new Page girl, Dr. Wilson's protegee. Things were still highly unpleasant in the ward, but they grew much better when Sidney was off duty. She was asked to join a small class that was studying French at night. As ignorant of the cause of her popularity as of the reason of her persecution, she went steadily on her way.

And she was gaining every day. Her mind was forming. She was learning to think for herself. For the first time, she was facing problems and demanding an answer. Why must there be Grace Irvings in the world? Why must the healthy babies of the obstetric ward go out to the slums and come back, in months or years, crippled for the great fight by the handicap of their environment, rickety, tuberculous, twisted? Why need the huge mills feed the hospitals daily with injured men?

And there were other things that she thought of. Every night, on her knees in the nurses' parlor at prayers, she promised, if she were accepted as a nurse, to try never to become calloused, never to regard her patients as “cases,” never to allow the cleanliness and routine of her ward to delay a cup of water to the thirsty, or her arms to a sick child.

On the whole, the world was good, she found. And, of all the good things in it, the best was service. True, there were hot days and restless nights, weary feet, and now and then a heartache. There was Miss Harrison, too. But to offset these there was the sound of Dr. Max's step in the corridor, and his smiling nod from the door; there was a “God bless you” now and then for the comfort she gave; there were wonderful nights on the roof under the stars, until K.'s little watch warned her to bed.

While Sidney watched the stars from her hospital roof, while all around her the slum children, on other roofs, fought for the very breath of life, others who knew and loved her watched the stars, too. K. was having his own troubles in those days. Late at night, when Anna and Harriet had retired, he sat on the balcony and thought of many things. Anna Page was not well. He had noticed that her lips were rather blue, and had called in Dr. Ed. It was valvular heart disease. Anna was not to be told, or Sidney. It was Harriet's ruling.

“Sidney can't help any,” said Harriet, “and for Heaven's sake let her have her chance. Anna may live for years. You know her as well as I do. If you tell her anything at all, she'll have Sidney here, waiting on her hand and foot.”

And Le Moyne, fearful of urging too much because his own heart was crying out to have the girl back, assented.

Then, K. was anxious about Joe. The boy did not seem to get over the thing the way he should. Now and then Le Moyne, resuming his old habit of wearying himself into sleep, would walk out into the country. On one such night he had overtaken Joe, tramping along with his head down.

Joe had not wanted his company, had plainly sulked. But Le Moyne had persisted.

“I'll not talk,” he said; “but, since we're going the same way, we might as well walk together.”

But after a time Joe had talked, after all. It was not much at first—a feverish complaint about the heat, and that if there was trouble in Mexico he thought he'd go.

“Wait until fall, if you're thinking of it,” K. advised. “This is tepid compared with what you'll get down there.”

“I've got to get away from here.”

K. nodded understandingly. Since the scene at the White Springs Hotel, both knew that no explanation was necessary.

“It isn't so much that I mind her turning me down,” Joe said, after a silence. “A girl can't marry all the men who want her. But I don't like this hospital idea. I don't understand it. She didn't have to go. Sometimes”—he turned bloodshot eyes on Le Moyne—“I think she went because she was crazy about somebody there.”

“She went because she wanted to be useful.”

“She could be useful at home.”

For almost twenty minutes they tramped on without speech. They had made a circle, and the lights of the city were close again. K. stopped and put a kindly hand on Joe's shoulder.

“A man's got to stand up under a thing like this, you know. I mean, it mustn't be a knockout. Keeping busy is a darned good method.”

Joe shook himself free, but without resentment. “I'll tell you what's eating me up,” he exploded. “It's Max Wilson. Don't talk to me about her going to the hospital to be useful. She's crazy about him, and he's as crooked as a dog's hind leg.”

“Perhaps. But it's always up to the girl. You know that.”

He felt immeasurably old beside Joe's boyish blustering—old and rather helpless.

“I'm watching him. Some of these days I'll get something on him. Then she'll know what to think of her hero!”

“That's not quite square, is it?”

“He's not square.”

Joe had left him then, wheeling abruptly off into the shadows. K. had gone home alone, rather uneasy. There seemed to be mischief in the very air.