K

CHAPTER V

Sidney and K. Le Moyne sat under a tree and talked. In Sidney's lap lay a small pasteboard box, punched with many holes. It was the day of releasing Reginald, but she had not yet been able to bring herself to the point of separation. Now and then a furry nose protruded from one of the apertures and sniffed the welcome scent of pine and buttonball, red and white clover, the thousand spicy odors of field and woodland.

“And so,” said K. Le Moyne, “you liked it all? It didn't startle you?”

“Well, in one way, of course—you see, I didn't know it was quite like that: all order and peace and quiet, and white beds and whispers, on top,—you know what I mean,—and the misery there just the same. Have you ever gone through a hospital?”

K. Le Moyne was stretched out on the grass, his arms under his head. For this excursion to the end of the street-car line he had donned a pair of white flannel trousers and a belted Norfolk coat. Sidney had been divided between pride in his appearance and fear that the Street would deem him overdressed.

At her question he closed his eyes, shutting out the peaceful arch and the bit of blue heaven overhead. He did not reply at once.

“Good gracious, I believe he's asleep!” said Sidney to the pasteboard box.

But he opened his eyes and smiled at her.

“I've been around hospitals a little. I suppose now there is no question about your going?”

“The superintendent said I was young, but that any protegee of Dr. Wilson's would certainly be given a chance.”

“It is hard work, night and day.”

“Do you think I am afraid of work?”

“And—Joe?”

Sidney colored vigorously and sat erect.

“He is very silly. He's taken all sorts of idiotic notions in his head.”

“Such as—”

“Well, he HATES the hospital, of course. As if, even if I meant to marry him, it wouldn't be years before he can be ready.”

“Do you think you are quite fair to Joe?”

“I haven't promised to marry him.”

“But he thinks you mean to. If you have quite made up your mind not to, better tell him, don't you think? What—what are these idiotic notions?”

Sidney considered, poking a slim finger into the little holes in the box.

“You can see how stupid he is, and—and young. For one thing, he's jealous of you!”

“I see. Of course that is silly, although your attitude toward his suspicion is hardly flattering to me.”

He smiled up at her.

“I told him that I had asked you to bring me here to-day. He was furious. And that wasn't all.”

“No?”

“He said I was flirting desperately with Dr. Wilson. You see, the day we went through the hospital, it was hot, and we went to Henderson's for soda-water. And, of course, Joe was there. It was really dramatic.”

K. Le Moyne was daily gaining the ability to see things from the angle of the Street. A month ago he could have seen no situation in two people, a man and a girl, drinking soda-water together, even with a boy lover on the next stool. Now he could view things through Joe's tragic eyes. And there as more than that. All day he had noticed how inevitably the conversation turned to the young surgeon. Did they start with Reginald, with the condition of the morning-glory vines, with the proposition of taking up the quaint paving-stones and macadamizing the Street, they ended with the younger Wilson.

Sidney's active young brain, turned inward for the first time in her life, was still on herself.

“Mother is plaintively resigned—and Aunt Harriet has been a trump. She's going to keep her room. It's really up to you.”

“To me?”

“To your staying on. Mother trusts you absolutely. I hope you noticed that you got one of the apostle spoons with the custard she sent up to you the other night. And she didn't object to this trip to-day. Of course, as she said herself, it isn't as if you were young, or at all wild.”

In spite of himself, K. was rather startled. He felt old enough, God knew, but he had always thought of it as an age of the spirit. How old did this child think he was?

“I have promised to stay on, in the capacity of watch-dog, burglar-alarm, and occasional recipient of an apostle spoon in a dish of custard. Lightning-conductor, too—your mother says she isn't afraid of storms if there is a man in the house. I'll stay, of course.”

The thought of his age weighed on him. He rose to his feet and threw back his fine shoulders.

“Aunt Harriet and your mother and Christine and her husband-to-be, whatever his name is—we'll be a happy family. But, I warn you, if I ever hear of Christine's husband getting an apostle spoon—”

She smiled up at him. “You are looking very grand to-day. But you have grass stains on your white trousers. Perhaps Katie can take them out.”

Quite suddenly K. felt that she thought him too old for such frivolity of dress. It put him on his mettle.

“How old do you think I am, Miss Sidney?”

She considered, giving him, after her kindly way, the benefit of the doubt.

“Not over forty, I'm sure.”

“I'm almost thirty. It is middle age, of course, but it is not senility.”

She was genuinely surprised, almost disturbed.

“Perhaps we'd better not tell mother,” she said. “You don't mind being thought older?”

“Not at all.”

Clearly the subject of his years did not interest her vitally, for she harked back to the grass stains.

“I'm afraid you're not saving, as you promised. Those are new clothes, aren't they?”

“No, indeed. Bought years ago in England—the coat in London, the trousers in Bath, on a motor tour. Cost something like twelve shillings. Awfully cheap. They wear them for cricket.”

That was a wrong move, of course. Sidney must hear about England; and she marveled politely, in view of his poverty, about his being there. Poor Le Moyne floundered in a sea of mendacity, rose to a truth here and there, clutched at luncheon, and achieved safety at last.

“To think,” said Sidney, “that you have really been across the ocean! I never knew but one person who had been abroad. It is Dr. Max Wilson.”

Back again to Dr. Max! Le Moyne, unpacking sandwiches from a basket, was aroused by a sheer resentment to an indiscretion.

“You like this Wilson chap pretty well, don't you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You talk about him rather a lot.”

This was sheer recklessness, of course. He expected fury, annihilation. He did not look up, but busied himself with the luncheon. When the silence grew oppressive, he ventured to glance toward her. She was leaning forward, her chin cupped in her palms, staring out over the valley that stretched at their feet.

“Don't speak to me for a minute or two,” she said. “I'm thinking over what you have just said.”

Manlike, having raised the issue, K. would have given much to evade it. Not that he had owned himself in love with Sidney. Love was not for him. But into his loneliness and despair the girl had came like a ray of light. She typified that youth and hope that he had felt slipping away from him. Through her clear eyes he was beginning to see a new world. Lose her he must, and that he knew; but not this way.

Down through the valley ran a shallow river, making noisy pretensions to both depth and fury. He remembered just such a river in the Tyrol, with this same Wilson on a rock, holding the hand of a pretty Austrian girl, while he snapped the shutter of a camera. He had that picture somewhere now; but the girl was dead, and, of the three, Wilson was the only one who had met life and vanquished it.

“I've known him all my life,” Sidney said at last. “You're perfectly right about one thing: I talk about him and I think about him. I'm being candid, because what's the use of being friends if we're not frank? I admire him—you'd have to see him in the hospital, with every one deferring to him and all that, to understand. And when you think of a man like that, who holds life and death in his hands, of course you rather thrill. I—I honestly believe that's all there is to it.”

“If that's the whole thing, that's hardly a mad passion.” He tried to smile; succeeded faintly.

“Well, of course, there's this, too. I know he'll never look at me. I'll be one of forty nurses; indeed, for three months I'll be only a probationer. He'll probably never even remember I'm in the hospital at all.”

“I see. Then, if you thought he was in love with you, things would be different?”

“If I thought Dr. Max Wilson was in love with me,” said Sidney solemnly, “I'd go out of my head with joy.”

One of the new qualities that K. Le Moyne was cultivating was of living each day for itself. Having no past and no future, each day was worth exactly what it brought. He was to look back to this day with mingled feelings: sheer gladness at being out in the open with Sidney; the memory of the shock with which he realized that she was, unknown to herself, already in the throes of a romantic attachment for Wilson; and, long, long after, when he had gone down to the depths with her and saved her by his steady hand, with something of mirth for the untoward happening that closed the day.

Sidney fell into the river.

They had released Reginald, released him with the tribute of a shamefaced tear on Sidney's part, and a handful of chestnuts from K. The little squirrel had squeaked his gladness, and, tail erect, had darted into the grass.

“Ungrateful little beast!” said Sidney, and dried her eyes. “Do you suppose he'll ever think of the nuts again, or find them?”

“He'll be all right,” K. replied. “The little beggar can take care of himself, if only—”

“If only what?”

“If only he isn't too friendly. He's apt to crawl into the pockets of any one who happens around.”

She was alarmed at that. To make up for his indiscretion, K. suggested a descent to the river. She accepted eagerly, and he helped her down. That was another memory that outlasted the day—her small warm hand in his; the time she slipped and he caught her; the pain in her eyes at one of his thoughtless remarks.

“I'm going to be pretty lonely,” he said, when she had paused in the descent and was taking a stone out of her low shoe. “Reginald gone, and you going! I shall hate to come home at night.” And then, seeing her wince: “I've been whining all day. For Heaven's sake, don't look like that. If there's one sort of man I detest more than another, it's a man who is sorry for himself. Do you suppose your mother would object if we stayed, out here at the hotel for supper? I've ordered a moon, orange-yellow and extra size.”

“I should hate to have anything ordered and wasted.”

“Then we'll stay.”

“It's fearfully extravagant.”

“I'll be thrifty as to moons while you are in the hospital.”

So it was settled. And, as it happened, Sidney had to stay, anyhow. For, having perched herself out in the river on a sugar-loaf rock, she slid, slowly but with a dreadful inevitability, into the water. K. happened to be looking in another direction. So it occurred that at one moment, Sidney sat on a rock, fluffy white from head to feet, entrancingly pretty, and knowing it, and the next she was standing neck deep in water, much too startled to scream, and trying to be dignified under the rather trying circumstances. K. had not looked around. The splash had been a gentle one.

“If you will be good enough,” said Sidney, with her chin well up, “to give me your hand or a pole or something—because if the river rises an inch I shall drown.”

To his undying credit, K. Le Moyne did not laugh when he turned and saw her. He went out on the sugar-loaf rock, and lifted her bodily up its slippery sides. He had prodigious strength, in spite of his leanness.

“Well!” said Sidney, when they were both on the rock, carefully balanced.

“Are you cold?”

“Not a bit. But horribly unhappy. I must look a sight.” Then, remembering her manners, as the Street had it, she said primly:—

“Thank you for saving me.”

“There wasn't any danger, really, unless—unless the river had risen.”

And then, suddenly, he burst into delighted laughter, the first, perhaps, for months. He shook with it, struggled at the sight of her injured face to restrain it, achieved finally a degree of sobriety by fixing his eyes on the river-bank.

“When you have quite finished,” said Sidney severely, “perhaps you will take me to the hotel. I dare say I shall have to be washed and ironed.”

He drew her cautiously to her feet. Her wet skirts clung to her; her shoes were sodden and heavy. She clung to him frantically, her eyes on the river below. With the touch of her hands the man's mirth died. He held her very carefully, very tenderly, as one holds something infinitely precious.