K

CHAPTER XVII

By Christmas Day Sidney was back in the hospital, a little wan, but valiantly determined to keep her life to its mark of service. She had a talk with K. the night before she left.

Katie was out, and Sidney had put the dining-room in order. K. sat by the table and watched her as she moved about the room.

The past few weeks had been very wonderful to him: to help her up and down the stairs, to read to her in the evenings as she lay on the couch in the sewing-room; later, as she improved, to bring small dainties home for her tray, and, having stood over Katie while she cooked them, to bear them in triumph to that upper room—he had not been so happy in years.

And now it was over. He drew a long breath.

“I hope you don't feel as if you must stay on,” she said anxiously. “Not that we don't want you—you know better than that.”

“There is no place else in the whole world that I want to go to,” he said simply.

“I seem to be always relying on somebody's kindness to—to keep things together. First, for years and years, it was Aunt Harriet; now it is you.”

“Don't you realize that, instead of your being grateful to me, it is I who am undeniably grateful to you? This is home now. I have lived around—in different places and in different ways. I would rather be here than anywhere else in the world.”

But he did not look at her. There was so much that was hopeless in his eyes that he did not want her to see. She would be quite capable, he told himself savagely, of marrying him out of sheer pity if she ever guessed. And he was afraid—afraid, since he wanted her so much—that he would be fool and weakling enough to take her even on those terms. So he looked away.

Everything was ready for her return to the hospital. She had been out that day to put flowers on the quiet grave where Anna lay with folded hands; she had made her round of little visits on the Street; and now her suit-case, packed, was in the hall.

“In one way, it will be a little better for you than if Christine and Palmer were not in the house. You like Christine, don't you?”

“Very much.”

“She likes you, K. She depends on you, too, especially since that night when you took care of Palmer's arm before we got Dr. Max. I often think, K., what a good doctor you would have been. You knew so well what to do for mother.”

She broke off. She still could not trust her voice about her mother.

“Palmer's arm is going to be quite straight. Dr. Ed is so proud of Max over it. It was a bad fracture.”

He had been waiting for that. Once at least, whenever they were together, she brought Max into the conversation. She was quite unconscious of it.

“You and Max are great friends. I knew you would like him. He is interesting, don't you think?”

“Very,” said K.

To save his life, he could not put any warmth into his voice. He would be fair. It was not in human nature to expect more of him.

“Those long talks you have, shut in your room—what in the world do you talk about? Politics?”

“Occasionally.”

She was a little jealous of those evenings, when she sat alone, or when Harriet, sitting with her, made sketches under the lamp to the accompaniment of a steady hum of masculine voices from across the hall. Not that she was ignored, of course. Max came in always, before he went, and, leaning over the back of a chair, would inform her of the absolute blankness of life in the hospital without her.

“I go every day because I must,” he would assure her gayly; “but, I tell you, the snap is gone out of it. When there was a chance that every cap was YOUR cap, the mere progress along a corridor became thrilling.” He had a foreign trick of throwing out his hands, with a little shrug of the shoulders. “Cui bono?” he said—which, being translated, means: “What the devil's the use!”

And K. would stand in the doorway, quietly smoking, or go back to his room and lock away in his trunk the great German books on surgery with which he and Max had been working out a case.

So K. sat by the dining-room table and listened to her talk of Max that last evening together.

“I told Mrs. Rosenfeld to-day not to be too much discouraged about Johnny. I had seen Dr. Max do such wonderful things. Now that you are such friends,”—she eyed him wistfully,—“perhaps some day you will come to one of his operations. Even if you didn't understand exactly, I know it would thrill you. And—I'd like you to see me in my uniform, K. You never have.”

She grew a little sad as the evening went on. She was going to miss K. very much. While she was ill she had watched the clock for the time to listen for him. She knew the way he slammed the front door. Palmer never slammed the door. She knew too that, just after a bang that threatened the very glass in the transom, K. would come to the foot of the stairs and call:—

“Ahoy, there!”

“Aye, aye,” she would answer—which was, he assured her, the proper response.

Whether he came up the stairs at once or took his way back to Katie had depended on whether his tribute for the day was fruit or sweetbreads.

Now that was all over. They were such good friends. He would miss her, too; but he would have Harriet and Christine and—Max. Back in a circle to Max, of course.

She insisted, that last evening, on sitting up with him until midnight ushered in Christmas Day. Christine and Palmer were out; Harriet, having presented Sidney with a blouse that had been left over in the shop from the autumn's business, had yawned herself to bed.

When the bells announced midnight, Sidney roused with a start. She realized that neither of them had spoken, and that K.'s eyes were fixed on her. The little clock on the shelf took up the burden of the churches, and struck the hour in quick staccato notes.

Sidney rose and went over to K., her black dress in soft folds about her.

“He is born, K.”

“He is born, dear.”

She stooped and kissed his cheek lightly.

Christmas Day dawned thick and white. Sidney left the little house at six, with the street light still burning through a mist of falling snow.

The hospital wards and corridors were still lighted when she went on duty at seven o'clock. She had been assigned to the men's surgical ward, and went there at once. She had not seen Carlotta Harrison since her mother's death; but she found her on duty in the surgical ward. For the second time in four months, the two girls were working side by side.

Sidney's recollection of her previous service under Carlotta made her nervous. But the older girl greeted her pleasantly.

“We were all sorry to hear of your trouble,” she said. “I hope we shall get on nicely.”

Sidney surveyed the ward, full to overflowing. At the far end two cots had been placed.

“The ward is heavy, isn't it?”

“Very. I've been almost mad at dressing hour. There are three of us—you, myself, and a probationer.”

The first light of the Christmas morning was coming through the windows. Carlotta put out the lights and turned in a business-like way to her records.

“The probationer's name is Wardwell,” she said. “Perhaps you'd better help her with the breakfasts. If there's any way to make a mistake, she makes it.”

It was after eight when Sidney found Johnny Rosenfeld.

“You here in the ward, Johnny!” she said.

Suffering had refined the boy's features. His dark, heavily fringed eyes looked at her from a pale face. But he smiled up at her cheerfully.

“I was in a private room; but it cost thirty plunks a week, so I moved. Why pay rent?”

Sidney had not seen him since his accident. She had wished to go, but K. had urged against it. She was not strong, and she had already suffered much. And now the work of the ward pressed hard. She had only a moment. She stood beside him and stroked his hand.

“I'm sorry, Johnny.”

He pretended to think that her sympathy was for his fall from the estate of a private patient to the free ward.

“Oh, I'm all right, Miss Sidney,” he said. “Mr. Howe is paying six dollars a week for me. The difference between me and the other fellows around here is that I get a napkin on my tray and they don't.”

Before his determined cheerfulness Sidney choked.

“Six dollars a week for a napkin is going some. I wish you'd tell Mr. Howe to give ma the six dollars. She'll be needing it. I'm no bloated aristocrat; I don't have to have a napkin.”

“Have they told you what the trouble is?”

“Back's broke. But don't let that worry you. Dr. Max Wilson is going to operate on me. I'll be doing the tango yet.”

Sidney's eyes shone. Of course, Max could do it. What a thing it was to be able to take this life-in-death of Johnny Rosenfeld's and make it life again!

All sorts of men made up Sidney's world: the derelicts who wandered through the ward in flapping slippers, listlessly carrying trays; the unshaven men in the beds, looking forward to another day of boredom, if not of pain; Palmer Howe with his broken arm; K., tender and strong, but filling no especial place in the world. Towering over them all was the younger Wilson. He meant for her, that Christmas morning, all that the other men were not—to their weakness strength, courage, daring, power.

Johnny Rosenfeld lay back on the pillows and watched her face.

“When I was a kid,” he said, “and ran along the Street, calling Dr. Max a dude, I never thought I'd lie here watching that door to see him come in. You have had trouble, too. Ain't it the hell of a world, anyhow? It ain't much of a Christmas to you, either.”

Sidney fed him his morning beef tea, and, because her eyes filled up with tears now and then at his helplessness, she was not so skillful as she might have been. When one spoonful had gone down his neck, he smiled up at her whimsically.

“Run for your life. The dam's burst!” he said.

As much as was possible, the hospital rested on that Christmas Day. The internes went about in fresh white ducks with sprays of mistletoe in their buttonholes, doing few dressings. Over the upper floors, where the kitchens were located, spread toward noon the insidious odor of roasting turkeys. Every ward had its vase of holly. In the afternoon, services were held in the chapel downstairs.

Wheel-chairs made their slow progress along corridors and down elevators. Convalescents who were able to walk flapped along in carpet slippers.

Gradually the chapel filled up. Outside the wide doors of the corridor the wheel-chairs were arranged in a semicircle. Behind them, dressed for the occasion, were the elevator-men, the orderlies, and Big John, who drove the ambulance.

On one side of the aisle, near the front, sat the nurses in rows, in crisp caps and fresh uniforms. On the other side had been reserved a place for the staff. The internes stood back against the wall, ready to run out between rejoicings, as it were—for a cigarette or an ambulance call, as the case might be.

Over everything brooded the after-dinner peace of Christmas afternoon.

The nurses sang, and Sidney sang with them, her fresh young voice rising above the rest. Yellow winter sunlight came through the stained-glass windows and shone on her lovely flushed face, her smooth kerchief, her cap, always just a little awry.

Dr. Max, lounging against the wall, across the chapel, found his eyes straying toward her constantly. How she stood out from the others! What a zest for living and for happiness she had!

The Episcopal clergyman read the Epistle:

“Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.”

That was Sidney. She was good, and she had been anointed with the oil of gladness. And he—

His brother was singing. His deep bass voice, not always true, boomed out above the sound of the small organ. Ed had been a good brother to him; he had been a good son.

Max's vagrant mind wandered away from the service to the picture of his mother over his brother's littered desk, to the Street, to K., to the girl who had refused to marry him because she did not trust him, to Carlotta last of all. He turned a little and ran his eyes along the line of nurses.

Ah, there she was. As if she were conscious of his scrutiny, she lifted her head and glanced toward him. Swift color flooded her face.

The nurses sang:—

     “O holy Child of Bethlehem!
      Descend to us, we pray;
      Cast out our sin, and enter in,
      Be born in us to-day.”
 

The wheel-chairs and convalescents quavered the familiar words. Dr. Ed's heavy throat shook with earnestness.

The Head, sitting a little apart with her hands folded in her lap and weary with the suffering of the world, closed her eyes and listened.

The Christmas morning had brought Sidney half a dozen gifts. K. sent her a silver thermometer case with her monogram, Christine a toilet mirror. But the gift of gifts, over which Sidney's eyes had glowed, was a great box of roses marked in Dr. Max's copper-plate writing, “From a neighbor.”

Tucked in the soft folds of her kerchief was one of the roses that afternoon.

Services over, the nurses filed out. Max was waiting for Sidney in the corridor.

“Merry Christmas!” he said, and held out his hand.

“Merry Christmas!” she said. “You see!”—she glanced down to the rose she wore. “The others make the most splendid bit of color in the ward.”

“But they were for you!”

“They are not any the less mine because I am letting other people have a chance to enjoy them.”

Under all his gayety he was curiously diffident with her. All the pretty speeches he would have made to Carlotta under the circumstances died before her frank glance.

There were many things he wanted to say to her. He wanted to tell her that he was sorry her mother had died; that the Street was empty without her; that he looked forward to these daily meetings with her as a holy man to his hour before his saint. What he really said was to inquire politely whether she had had her Christmas dinner.

Sidney eyed him, half amused, half hurt.

“What have I done, Max? Is it bad for discipline for us to be good friends?”

“Damn discipline!” said the pride of the staff.

Carlotta was watching them from the chapel. Something in her eyes roused the devil of mischief that always slumbered in him.

“My car's been stalled in a snowdrift downtown since early this morning, and I have Ed's Peggy in a sleigh. Put on your things and come for a ride.”

He hoped Carlotta could hear what he said; to be certain of it, he maliciously raised his voice a trifle.

“Just a little run,” he urged. “Put on your warmest things.”

Sidney protested. She was to be free that afternoon until six o'clock; but she had promised to go home.

“K. is alone.”

“K. can sit with Christine. Ten to one, he's with her now.”

The temptation was very strong. She had been working hard all day. The heavy odor of the hospital, mingled with the scent of pine and evergreen in the chapel; made her dizzy. The fresh outdoors called her. And, besides, if K. were with Christine—

“It's forbidden, isn't it?”

“I believe it is.” He smiled at her.

“And yet, you continue to tempt me and expect me to yield!”

“One of the most delightful things about temptation is yielding now and then.”

After all, the situation seemed absurd. Here was her old friend and neighbor asking to take her out for a daylight ride. The swift rebellion of youth against authority surged up in Sidney.

“Very well; I'll go.”

Carlotta had gone by that time—gone with hate in her heart and black despair. She knew very well what the issue would be. Sidney would drive with him, and he would tell her how lovely she looked with the air on her face and the snow about her. The jerky motion of the little sleigh would throw them close together. How well she knew it all! He would touch Sidney's hand daringly and smile in her eyes. That was his method: to play at love-making like an audacious boy, until quite suddenly the cloak dropped and the danger was there.

The Christmas excitement had not died out in the ward when Carlotta went back to it. On each bedside table was an orange, and beside it a pair of woolen gloves and a folded white handkerchief. There were sprays of holly scattered about, too, and the after-dinner content of roast turkey and ice-cream.

The lame girl who played the violin limped down the corridor into the ward. She was greeted with silence, that truest tribute, and with the instant composing of the restless ward to peace.

She was pretty in a young, pathetic way, and because to her Christmas was a festival and meant hope and the promise of the young Lord, she played cheerful things.

The ward sat up, remembered that it was not the Sabbath, smiled across from bed to bed.

The probationer, whose name was Wardwell, was a tall, lean girl with a long, pointed nose. She kept up a running accompaniment of small talk to the music.

“Last Christmas,” she said plaintively, “we went out into the country in a hay-wagon and had a real time. I don't know what I am here for, anyhow. I am a fool.”

“Undoubtedly,” said Carlotta.

“Turkey and goose, mince pie and pumpkin pie, four kinds of cake; that's the sort of spread we have up in our part of the world. When I think of what I sat down to to-day—!”

She had a profound respect for Carlotta, and her motto in the hospital differed from Sidney's in that it was to placate her superiors, while Sidney's had been to care for her patients.

Seeing Carlotta bored, she ventured a little gossip. She had idly glued the label of a medicine bottle on the back of her hand, and was scratching a skull and cross-bones on it.

“I wonder if you have noticed something,” she said, eyes on the label.

“I have noticed that the three-o'clock medicines are not given,” said Carlotta sharply; and Miss Wardwell, still labeled and adorned, made the rounds of the ward.

When she came back she was sulky.

“I'm no gossip,” she said, putting the tray on the table. “If you won't see, you won't. That Rosenfeld boy is crying.”

As it was not required that tears be recorded on the record, Carlotta paid no attention to this.

“What won't I see?”

It required a little urging now. Miss Wardwell swelled with importance and let her superior ask her twice. Then:—

“Dr. Wilson's crazy about Miss Page.”

A hand seemed to catch Carlotta's heart and hold it.

“They're old friends.”

“Piffle! Being an old friend doesn't make you look at a girl as if you wanted to take a bite out of her. Mark my word, Miss Harrison, she'll never finish her training; she'll marry him. I wish,” concluded the probationer plaintively, “that some good-looking fellow like that would take a fancy to me. I'd do him credit. I am as ugly as a mud fence, but I've got style.”

She was right, probably. She was long and sinuous, but she wore her lanky, ill-fitting clothes with a certain distinction. Harriet Kennedy would have dressed her in jade green to match her eyes, and with long jade earrings, and made her a fashion.

Carlotta's lips were dry. The violinist had seen the tears on Johnny Rosenfeld's white cheeks, and had rushed into rollicking, joyous music. The ward echoed with it. “I'm twenty-one and she's eighteen,” hummed the ward under its breath. Miss Wardwell's thin body swayed.

“Lord, how I'd like to dance! If I ever get out of this charnel-house!”

The medicine-tray lay at Carlotta's elbow; beside it the box of labels. This crude girl was right—right. Carlotta knew it down to the depths of her tortured brain. As inevitably as the night followed the day, she was losing her game. She had lost already, unless—

If she could get Sidney out of the hospital, it would simplify things. She surmised shrewdly that on the Street their interests were wide apart. It was here that they met on common ground.

The lame violin-player limped out of the ward; the shadows of the early winter twilight settled down. At five o'clock Carlotta sent Miss Wardwell to first supper, to the surprise of that seldom surprised person. The ward lay still or shuffled abut quietly. Christmas was over, and there were no evening papers to look forward to.

Carlotta gave the five-o'clock medicines. Then she sat down at the table near the door, with the tray in front of her. There are certain thoughts that are at first functions of the brain; after a long time the spinal cord takes them up and converts them into acts almost automatically. Perhaps because for the last month she had done the thing so often in her mind, its actual performance was almost without conscious thought.

Carlotta took a bottle from her medicine cupboard, and, writing a new label for it, pasted it over the old one. Then she exchanged it for one of the same size on the medicine tray.

In the dining-room, at the probationers' table, Miss Wardwell was talking.

“Believe me,” she said, “me for the country and the simple life after this. They think I'm only a probationer and don't see anything, but I've got eyes in my head. Harrison is stark crazy over Dr. Wilson, and she thinks I don't see it. But never mind; I paid, her up to-day for a few of the jolts she has given me.”

Throughout the dining-room busy and competent young women came and ate, hastily or leisurely as their opportunity was, and went on their way again. In their hands they held the keys, not always of life and death perhaps, but of ease from pain, of tenderness, of smooth pillows, and cups of water to thirsty lips. In their eyes, as in Sidney's, burned the light of service.

But here and there one found women, like Carlotta and Miss Wardwell, who had mistaken their vocation, who railed against the monotony of the life, its limitations, its endless sacrifices. They showed it in their eyes.

Fifty or so against two—fifty who looked out on the world with the fearless glance of those who have seen life to its depths, and, with the broad understanding of actual contact, still found it good. Fifty who were learning or had learned not to draw aside their clean starched skirts from the drab of the streets. And the fifty, who found the very scum of the gutters not too filthy for tenderness and care, let Carlotta and, in lesser measure, the new probationer alone. They could not have voiced their reasons.

The supper-room was filled with their soft voices, the rustle of their skirts, the gleam of their stiff white caps.

When Carlotta came in, she greeted none of them. They did not like her, and she knew it.

Before her, instead of the tidy supper-table, she was seeing the medicine-tray as she had left it.

“I guess I've fixed her,” she said to herself.

Her very soul was sick with fear of what she had done.