Sidney went into the operating-room late in the spring as the result of a conversation between the younger Wilson and the Head.
“When are you going to put my protegee into the operating-room?” asked Wilson, meeting Miss Gregg in a corridor one bright, spring afternoon.
“That usually comes in the second year, Dr. Wilson.”
He smiled down at her. “That isn't a rule, is it?”
“Not exactly. Miss Page is very young, and of course there are other girls who have not yet had the experience. But, if you make the request—”
“I am going to have some good cases soon. I'll not make a request, of course; but, if you see fit, it would be good training for Miss Page.”
Miss Gregg went on, knowing perfectly that at his next operation Dr. Wilson would expect Sidney Page in the operating-room. The other doctors were not so exigent. She would have liked to have all the staff old and settled, like Dr. O'Hara or the older Wilson. These young men came in and tore things up.
She sighed as she went on. There were so many things to go wrong. The butter had been bad—she must speak to the matron. The sterilizer in the operating-room was out of order—that meant a quarrel with the chief engineer. Requisitions were too heavy—that meant going around to the wards and suggesting to the head nurses that lead pencils and bandages and adhesive plaster and safety-pins cost money.
It was particularly inconvenient to move Sidney just then. Carlotta Harrison was off duty, ill. She had been ailing for a month, and now she was down with a temperature. As the Head went toward Sidney's ward, her busy mind was playing her nurses in their wards like pieces on a checkerboard.
Sidney went into the operating-room that afternoon. For her blue uniform, kerchief, and cap she exchanged the hideous operating-room garb: long, straight white gown with short sleeves and mob-cap, gray-white from many sterilizations. But the ugly costume seemed to emphasize her beauty, as the habit of a nun often brings out the placid saintliness of her face.
The relationship between Sidney and Max had reached that point that occurs in all relationships between men and women: when things must either go forward or go back, but cannot remain as they are. The condition had existed for the last three months. It exasperated the man.
As a matter of fact, Wilson could not go ahead. The situation with Carlotta had become tense, irritating. He felt that she stood ready to block any move he made. He would not go back, and he dared not go forward.
If Sidney was puzzled, she kept it bravely to herself. In her little room at night, with the door carefully locked, she tried to think things out. There were a few treasures that she looked over regularly: a dried flower from the Christmas roses; a label that he had pasted playfully on the back of her hand one day after the rush of surgical dressings was over and which said “Rx, Take once and forever.”
There was another piece of paper over which Sidney spent much time. It was a page torn out of an order book, and it read: “Sigsbee may have light diet; Rosenfeld massage.” Underneath was written, very small:
“You are the most beautiful person in the world.”
Two reasons had prompted Wilson to request to have Sidney in the operating-room. He wanted her with him, and he wanted her to see him at work: the age-old instinct of the male to have his woman see him at his best.
He was in high spirits that first day of Sidney's operating-room experience. For the time at least, Carlotta was out of the way. Her somber eyes no longer watched him. Once he looked up from his work and glanced at Sidney where she stood at strained attention.
“Feeling faint?” he said.
She colored under the eyes that were turned on her.
“No, Dr. Wilson.”
“A great many of them faint on the first day. We sometimes have them lying all over the floor.”
He challenged Miss Gregg with his eyes, and she reproved him with a shake of her head, as she might a bad boy.
One way and another, he managed to turn the attention of the operating-room to Sidney several times. It suited his whim, and it did more than that: it gave him a chance to speak to her in his teasing way.
Sidney came through the operation as if she had been through fire—taut as a string, rather pale, but undaunted. But when the last case had been taken out, Max dropped his bantering manner. The internes were looking over instruments; the nurses were busy on the hundred and one tasks of clearing up; so he had a chance for a word with her alone.
“I am proud of you, Sidney; you came through it like a soldier.”
“You made it very hard for me.”
A nurse was coming toward him; he had only a moment.
“I shall leave a note in the mail-box,” he said quickly, and proceeded with the scrubbing of his hands which signified the end of the day's work.
The operations had lasted until late in the afternoon. The night nurses had taken up their stations; prayers were over. The internes were gathered in the smoking-room, threshing over the day's work, as was their custom. When Sidney was free, she went to the office for the note. It was very brief:—
I have something I want to say to you, dear. I think you know what it is. I never see you alone at home any more. If you can get off for an hour, won't you take the trolley to the end of Division Street? I'll be there with the car at eight-thirty, and I promise to have you back by ten o'clock.
MAX.
The office was empty. No one saw her as she stood by the mail-box. The ticking of the office clock, the heavy rumble of a dray outside, the roll of the ambulance as it went out through the gateway, and in her hand the realization of what she had never confessed as a hope, even to herself! He, the great one, was going to stoop to her. It had been in his eyes that afternoon; it was there, in his letter, now.
It was eight by the office clock. To get out of her uniform and into street clothing, fifteen minutes; on the trolley, another fifteen. She would need to hurry.
But she did not meet him, after all. Miss Wardwell met her in the upper hall.
“Did you get my message?” she asked anxiously.
“What message?”
“Miss Harrison wants to see you. She has been moved to a private room.”
Sidney glanced at K.'s little watch.
“Must she see me to-night?”
“She has been waiting for hours—ever since you went to the operating-room.”
Sidney sighed, but she went to Carlotta at once. The girl's condition was puzzling the staff. There was talk of “T.R.”—which is hospital for “typhoid restrictions.” But T.R. has apathy, generally, and Carlotta was not apathetic. Sidney found her tossing restlessly on her high white bed, and put her cool hand over Carlotta's hot one.
“Did you send for me?”
“Hours ago.” Then, seeing her operating-room uniform: “You've been THERE, have you?”
“Is there anything I can do, Carlotta?”
Excitement had dyed Sidney's cheeks with color and made her eyes luminous. The girl in the bed eyed her, and then abruptly drew her hand away.
“Were you going out?”
“Yes; but not right away.”
“I'll not keep you if you have an engagement.”
“The engagement will have to wait. I'm sorry you're ill. If you would like me to stay with you tonight—”
Carlotta shook her head on her pillow.
“Mercy, no!” she said irritably. “I'm only worn out. I need a rest. Are you going home to-night?”
“No,” Sidney admitted, and flushed.
Nothing escaped Carlotta's eyes—the younger girl's radiance, her confusion, even her operating room uniform and what it signified. How she hated her, with her youth and freshness, her wide eyes, her soft red lips! And this engagement—she had the uncanny divination of fury.
“I was going to ask you to do something for me,” she said shortly; “but I've changed my mind about it. Go on and keep your engagement.”
To end the interview, she turned over and lay with her face to the wall. Sidney stood waiting uncertainly. All her training had been to ignore the irritability of the sick, and Carlotta was very ill; she could see that.
“Just remember that I am ready to do anything I can, Carlotta,” she said. “Nothing will—will be a trouble.”
She waited a moment, but, receiving no acknowledgement of her offer, she turned slowly and went toward the door.
“Sidney!”
She went back to the bed.
“Yes. Don't sit up, Carlotta. What is it?”
“I'm frightened!”
“You're feverish and nervous. There's nothing to be frightened about.”
“If it's typhoid, I'm gone.”
“That's childish. Of course you're not gone, or anything like it. Besides, it's probably not typhoid.”
“I'm afraid to sleep. I doze for a little, and when I waken there are people in the room. They stand around the bed and talk about me.”
Sidney's precious minutes were flying; but Carlotta had gone into a paroxysm of terror, holding to Sidney's hand and begging not to be left alone.
“I'm too young to die,” she would whimper. And in the next breath: “I want to die—I don't want to live!”
The hands of the little watch pointed to eight-thirty when at last she lay quiet, with closed eyes. Sidney, tiptoeing to the door, was brought up short by her name again, this time in a more normal voice:—
“Sidney.”
“Yes, dear.”
“Perhaps you are right and I'm going to get over this.”
“Certainly you are. Your nerves are playing tricks with you to-night.”
“I'll tell you now why I sent for you.”
“I'm listening.”
“If—if I get very bad,—you know what I mean,—will you promise to do exactly what I tell you?”
“I promise, absolutely.”
“My trunk key is in my pocket-book. There is a letter in the tray—just a name, no address on it. Promise to see that it is not delivered; that it is destroyed without being read.”
Sidney promised promptly; and, because it was too late now for her meeting with Wilson, for the next hour she devoted herself to making Carlotta comfortable. So long as she was busy, a sort of exaltation of service upheld her. But when at last the night assistant came to sit with the sick girl, and Sidney was free, all the life faded from her face. He had waited for her and she had not come. Would he understand? Would he ask her to meet him again? Perhaps, after all, his question had not been what she had thought.
She went miserably to bed. K.'s little watch ticked under her pillow. Her stiff cap moved in the breeze as it swung from the corner of her mirror. Under her window passed and repassed the night life of the city—taxicabs, stealthy painted women, tired office-cleaners trudging home at midnight, a city patrol-wagon which rolled in through the gates to the hospital's always open door. When she could not sleep, she got up and padded to the window in bare feet. The light from a passing machine showed a youthful figure that looked like Joe Drummond.
Life, that had always seemed so simple, was growing very complicated for Sidney: Joe and K., Palmer and Christine, Johnny Rosenfeld, Carlotta—either lonely or tragic, all of them, or both. Life in the raw.
Toward morning Carlotta wakened. The night assistant was still there. It had been a quiet night and she was asleep in her chair. To save her cap she had taken it off, and early streaks of silver showed in her hair.
Carlotta roused her ruthlessly.
“I want something from my trunk,” she said.
The assistant wakened reluctantly, and looked at her watch. Almost morning. She yawned and pinned on her cap.
“For Heaven's sake,” she protested. “You don't want me to go to the trunk-room at this hour!”
“I can go myself,” said Carlotta, and put her feet out of bed.
“What is it you want?”
“A letter on the top tray. If I wait my temperature will go up and I can't think.”
“Shall I mail it for you?”
“Bring it here,” said Carlotta shortly. “I want to destroy it.”
The young woman went without haste, to show that a night assistant may do such things out of friendship, but not because she must. She stopped at the desk where the night nurse in charge of the rooms on that floor was filling out records.
“Give me twelve private patients to look after instead of one nurse like Carlotta Harrison!” she complained. “I've got to go to the trunk-room for her at this hour, and it next door to the mortuary!”
As the first rays of the summer sun came through the window, shadowing the fire-escape like a lattice on the wall of the little gray-walled room, Carlotta sat up in her bed and lighted the candle on the stand. The night assistant, who dreamed sometimes of fire, stood nervously by.
“Why don't you let me do it?” she asked irritably.
Carlotta did not reply at once. The candle was in her hand, and she was staring at the letter.
“Because I want to do it myself,” she said at last, and thrust the envelope into the flame. It burned slowly, at first a thin blue flame tipped with yellow, then, eating its way with a small fine crackling, a widening, destroying blaze that left behind it black ash and destruction. The acrid odor of burning filled the room. Not until it was consumed, and the black ash fell into the saucer of the candlestick, did Carlotta speak again. Then:—
“If every fool of a woman who wrote a letter burnt it, there would be less trouble in the world,” she said, and lay back among her pillows.
The assistant said nothing. She was sleepy and irritated, and she had crushed her best cap by letting the lid of Carlotta's trunk fall on her. She went out of the room with disapproval in every line of her back.
“She burned it,” she informed the night nurse at her desk. “A letter to a man—one of her suitors, I suppose. The name was K. Le Moyne.”
The deepening and broadening of Sidney's character had been very noticeable in the last few months. She had gained in decision without becoming hard; had learned to see things as they are, not through the rose mist of early girlhood; and, far from being daunted, had developed a philosophy that had for its basis God in His heaven and all well with the world.
But her new theory of acceptance did not comprehend everything. She was in a state of wild revolt, for instance, as to Johnny Rosenfeld, and more remotely but not less deeply concerned over Grace Irving. Soon she was to learn of Tillie's predicament, and to take up the cudgels valiantly for her.
But her revolt was to be for herself too. On the day after her failure to keep her appointment with Wilson she had her half-holiday. No word had come from him, and when, after a restless night, she went to her new station in the operating-room, it was to learn that he had been called out of the city in consultation and would not operate that day. O'Hara would take advantage of the free afternoon to run in some odds and ends of cases.
The operating-room made gauze that morning, and small packets of tampons: absorbent cotton covered with sterilized gauze, and fastened together—twelve, by careful count, in each bundle.
Miss Grange, who had been kind to Sidney in her probation months, taught her the method.
“Used instead of sponges,” she explained. “If you noticed yesterday, they were counted before and after each operation. One of these missing is worse than a bank clerk out a dollar at the end of the day. There's no closing up until it's found!”
Sidney eyed the small packet before her anxiously.
“What a hideous responsibility!” she said.
From that time on she handled the small gauze sponges almost reverently.
The operating-room—all glass, white enamel, and shining nickel-plate—first frightened, then thrilled her. It was as if, having loved a great actor, she now trod the enchanted boards on which he achieved his triumphs. She was glad that it was her afternoon off, and that she would not see some lesser star—O'Hara, to wit—usurping his place.
But Max had not sent her any word. That hurt. He must have known that she had been delayed.
The operating-room was a hive of industry, and tongues kept pace with fingers. The hospital was a world, like the Street. The nurses had come from many places, and, like cloistered nuns, seemed to have left the other world behind. A new President of the country was less real than a new interne. The country might wash its soiled linen in public; what was that compared with enough sheets and towels for the wards? Big buildings were going up in the city. Ah! but the hospital took cognizance of that, gathering as it did a toll from each new story added. What news of the world came in through the great doors was translated at once into hospital terms. What the city forgot the hospital remembered. It took up life where the town left it at its gates, and carried it on or saw it ended, as the case might be. So these young women knew the ending of many stories, the beginning of some; but of none did they know both the first and last, the beginning and the end.
By many small kindnesses Sidney had made herself popular. And there was more to it than that. She never shirked. The other girls had the respect for her of one honest worker for another. The episode that had caused her suspension seemed entirely forgotten. They showed her carefully what she was to do; and, because she must know the “why” of everything, they explained as best they could.
It was while she was standing by the great sterilizer that she heard, through an open door, part of a conversation that sent her through the day with her world in revolt.
The talkers were putting the anaesthetizing-room in readiness for the afternoon. Sidney, waiting for the time to open the sterilizer, was busy, for the first time in her hurried morning, with her own thoughts. Because she was very human, there was a little exultation in her mind. What would these girls say when they learned of how things stood between her and their hero—that, out of all his world of society and clubs and beautiful women, he was going to choose her?
Not shameful, this: the honest pride of a woman in being chosen from many.
The voices were very clear.
“Typhoid! Of course not. She's eating her heart out.”
“Do you think he has really broken with her?”
“Probably not. She knows it's coming; that's all.”
“Sometimes I have wondered—”
“So have others. She oughtn't to be here, of course. But among so many there is bound to be one now and then who—who isn't quite—”
She hesitated, at a loss for a word.
“Did you—did you ever think over that trouble with Miss Page about the medicines? That would have been easy, and like her.”
“She hates Miss Page, of course, but I hardly think—If that's true, it was nearly murder.”
There were two voices, a young one, full of soft southern inflections, and an older voice, a trifle hard, as from disillusion.
They were working as they talked. Sidney could hear the clatter of bottles on the tray, the scraping of a moved table.
“He was crazy about her last fall.”
“Miss Page?” (The younger voice, with a thrill in it.)
“Carlotta. Of course this is confidential.”
“Surely.”
“I saw her with him in his car one evening. And on her vacation last summer—”
The voices dropped to a whisper. Sidney, standing cold and white by the sterilizer, put out a hand to steady herself. So that was it! No wonder Carlotta had hated her. And those whispering voices! What were they saying? How hateful life was, and men and women. Must there always be something hideous in the background? Until now she had only seen life. Now she felt its hot breath on her cheek.
She was steady enough in a moment, cool and calm, moving about her work with ice-cold hands and slightly narrowed eyes. To a sort of physical nausea was succeeding anger, a blind fury of injured pride. He had been in love with Carlotta and had tired of her. He was bringing her his warmed-over emotions. She remembered the bitterness of her month's exile, and its probable cause. Max had stood by her then. Well he might, if he suspected the truth.
For just a moment she had an illuminating flash of Wilson as he really was, selfish and self-indulgent, just a trifle too carefully dressed, daring as to eye and speech, with a carefully calculated daring, frankly pleasure-loving. She put her hands over her eyes.
The voices in the next room had risen above their whisper.
“Genius has privileges, of course,” said the older voice. “He is a very great surgeon. To-morrow he is to do the Edwardes operation again. I am glad I am to see him do it.”
Sidney still held her hands over her eyes. He WAS a great surgeon: in his hands he held the keys of life and death. And perhaps he had never cared for Carlotta: she might have thrown herself at him. He was a man, at the mercy of any scheming woman.
She tried to summon his image to her aid. But a curious thing happened. She could not visualize him. Instead, there came, clear and distinct, a picture of K. Le Moyne in the hall of the little house, reaching one of his long arms to the chandelier over his head and looking up at her as she stood on the stairs.
“My God, Sidney, I'm asking you to marry me!”
“I—I know that. I am asking you something else, Max.”
“I have never been in love with her.”
His voice was sulky. He had drawn the car close to a bank, and they were sitting in the shade, on the grass. It was the Sunday afternoon after Sidney's experience in the operating-room.
“You took her out, Max, didn't you?”
“A few times, yes. She seemed to have no friends. I was sorry for her.”
“That was all?”
“Absolutely. Good Heavens, you've put me through a catechism in the last ten minutes!”
“If my father were living, or even mother, I—one of them would have done this for me, Max. I'm sorry I had to. I've been very wretched for several days.”
It was the first encouragement she had given him. There was no coquetry about her aloofness. It was only that her faith in him had had a shock and was slow of reviving.
“You are very, very lovely, Sidney. I wonder if you have any idea what you mean to me?”
“You meant a great deal to me, too,” she said frankly, “until a few days ago. I thought you were the greatest man I had ever known, and the best. And then—I think I'd better tell you what I overheard. I didn't try to hear. It just happened that way.”
He listened doggedly to her account of the hospital gossip, doggedly and with a sinking sense of fear, not of the talk, but of Carlotta herself. Usually one might count on the woman's silence, her instinct for self-protection. But Carlotta was different. Damn the girl, anyhow! She had known from the start that the affair was a temporary one; he had never pretended anything else.
There was silence for a moment after Sidney finished. Then:
“You are not a child any longer, Sidney. You have learned a great deal in this last year. One of the things you know is that almost every man has small affairs, many of them sometimes, before he finds the woman he wants to marry. When he finds her, the others are all off—there's nothing to them. It's the real thing then, instead of the sham.”
“Palmer was very much in love with Christine, and yet—”
“Palmer is a cad.”
“I don't want you to think I'm making terms. I'm not. But if this thing went on, and I found out afterward that you—that there was anyone else, it would kill me.”
“Then you care, after all!”
There was something boyish in his triumph, in the very gesture with which he held out his arms, like a child who has escaped a whipping. He stood up and, catching her hands, drew her to her feet. “You love me, dear.”
“I'm afraid I do, Max.”
“Then I'm yours, and only yours, if you want me,” he said, and took her in his arms.
He was riotously happy, must hold her off for the joy of drawing her to him again, must pull off her gloves and kiss her soft bare palms.
“I love you, love you!” he cried, and bent down to bury his face in the warm hollow of her neck.
Sidney glowed under his caresses—was rather startled at his passion, a little ashamed.
“Tell me you love me a little bit. Say it.”
“I love you,” said Sidney, and flushed scarlet.
But even in his arms, with the warm sunlight on his radiant face, with his lips to her ear, whispering the divine absurdities of passion, in the back of her obstinate little head was the thought that, while she had given him her first embrace, he had held other women in his arms. It made her passive, prevented her complete surrender.
And after a time he resented it. “You are only letting me love you,” he complained. “I don't believe you care, after all.”
He freed her, took a step back from her.
“I am afraid I am jealous,” she said simply. “I keep thinking of—of Carlotta.”
“Will it help any if I swear that that is off absolutely?”
“Don't be absurd. It is enough to have you say so.”
But he insisted on swearing, standing with one hand upraised, his eyes on her. The Sunday landscape was very still, save for the hum of busy insect life. A mile or so away, at the foot of two hills, lay a white farmhouse with its barn and outbuildings. In a small room in the barn a woman sat; and because it was Sunday, and she could not sew, she read her Bible.
“—and that after this there will be only one woman for me,” finished Max, and dropped his hand. He bent over and kissed Sidney on the lips.
At the white farmhouse, a little man stood in the doorway and surveyed the road with eyes shaded by a shirt-sleeved arm. Behind him, in a darkened room, a barkeeper was wiping the bar with a clean cloth.
“I guess I'll go and get my coat on, Bill,” said the little man heavily. “They're starting to come now. I see a machine about a mile down the road.”
Sidney broke the news of her engagement to K. herself, the evening of the same day. The little house was quiet when she got out of the car at the door. Harriet was asleep on the couch at the foot of her bed, and Christine's rooms were empty. She found Katie on the back porch, mountains of Sunday newspapers piled around her.
“I'd about give you up,” said Katie. “I was thinking, rather than see your ice-cream that's left from dinner melt and go to waste, I'd take it around to the Rosenfelds.”
“Please take it to them. I'd really rather they had it.”
She stood in front of Katie, drawing off her gloves.
“Aunt Harriet's asleep. Is—is Mr. Le Moyne around?”
“You're gettin' prettier every day, Miss Sidney. Is that the blue suit Miss Harriet said she made for you? It's right stylish. I'd like to see the back.”
Sidney obediently turned, and Katie admired.
“When I think how things have turned out!” she reflected. “You in a hospital, doing God knows what for all sorts of people, and Miss Harriet making a suit like that and asking a hundred dollars for it, and that tony that a person doesn't dare to speak to her when she's in the dining-room. And your poor ma...well, it's all in a lifetime! No; Mr. K.'s not here. He and Mrs. Howe are gallivanting around together.”
“Katie!”
“Well, that's what I call it. I'm not blind. Don't I hear her dressing up about four o'clock every afternoon, and, when she's all ready, sittin' in the parlor with the door open, and a book on her knee, as if she'd been reading all afternoon? If he doesn't stop, she's at the foot of the stairs, calling up to him. 'K.,' she says, 'K., I'm waiting to ask you something!' or, 'K., wouldn't you like a cup of tea?' She's always feedin' him tea and cake, so that when he comes to table he won't eat honest victuals.”
Sidney had paused with one glove half off. Katie's tone carried conviction. Was life making another of its queer errors, and were Christine and K. in love with each other? K. had always been HER friend, HER confidant. To give him up to Christine—she shook herself impatiently. What had come over her? Why not be glad that he had some sort of companionship?
She went upstairs to the room that had been her mother's, and took off her hat. She wanted to be alone, to realize what had happened to her. She did not belong to herself any more. It gave her an odd, lost feeling. She was going to be married—not very soon, but ultimately. A year ago her half promise to Joe had gratified her sense of romance. She was loved, and she had thrilled to it.
But this was different. Marriage, that had been but a vision then, loomed large, almost menacing. She had learned the law of compensation: that for every joy one pays in suffering. Women who married went down into the valley of death for their children. One must love and be loved very tenderly to pay for that. The scale must balance.
And there were other things. Women grew old, and age was not always lovely. This very maternity—was it not fatal to beauty? Visions of child-bearing women in the hospitals, with sagging breasts and relaxed bodies, came to her. That was a part of the price.
Harriet was stirring, across the hall. Sidney could hear her moving about with flat, inelastic steps.
That was the alternative. One married, happily or not as the case might be, and took the risk. Or one stayed single, like Harriet, growing a little hard, exchanging slimness for leanness and austerity of figure, flat-chested, thin-voiced. One blossomed and withered, then, or one shriveled up without having flowered. All at once it seemed very terrible to her. She felt as if she had been caught in an inexorable hand that had closed about her.
Harriet found her a little later, face down on her mother's bed, crying as if her heart would break. She scolded her roundly.
“You've been overworking,” she said. “You've been getting thinner. Your measurements for that suit showed it. I have never approved of this hospital training, and after last January—”
She could hardly credit her senses when Sidney, still swollen with weeping, told her of her engagement.
“But I don't understand. If you care for him and he has asked you to marry him, why on earth are you crying your eyes out?”
“I do care. I don't know why I cried. It just came over me, all at once, that I—It was just foolishness. I am very happy, Aunt Harriet.”
Harriet thought she understood. The girl needed her mother, and she, Harriet, was a hard, middle-aged woman and a poor substitute. She patted Sidney's moist hand.
“I guess I understand,” she said. “I'll attend to your wedding things, Sidney. We'll show this street that even Christine Lorenz can be outdone.” And, as an afterthought: “I hope Max Wilson will settle down now. He's been none too steady.”
K. had taken Christine to see Tillie that Sunday afternoon. Palmer had the car out—had, indeed, not been home since the morning of the previous day. He played golf every Saturday afternoon and Sunday at the Country Club, and invariably spent the night there. So K. and Christine walked from the end of the trolley line, saying little, but under K.'s keen direction finding bright birds in the hedgerows, hidden field flowers, a dozen wonders of the country that Christine had never dreamed of.
The interview with Tillie had been a disappointment to K. Christine, with the best and kindliest intentions, struck a wrong note. In her endeavor to cover the fact that everything in Tillie's world was wrong, she fell into the error of pretending that everything was right.
Tillie, grotesque of figure and tragic-eyed, listened to her patiently, while K. stood, uneasy and uncomfortable, in the wide door of the hay-barn and watched automobiles turning in from the road. When Christine rose to leave, she confessed her failure frankly.
“I've meant well, Tillie,” she said. “I'm afraid I've said exactly what I shouldn't. I can only think that, no matter what is wrong, two wonderful pieces of luck have come to you. Your husband—that is, Mr. Schwitter—cares for you,—you admit that,—and you are going to have a child.”
Tillie's pale eyes filled.
“I used to be a good woman, Mrs. Howe,” she said simply. “Now I'm not. 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. He don't like him loafing around here: he sent him home last Sunday. What's come over the boy?”
“I'll talk to him.”
“The barkeeper says he carries a revolver around, and talks wild. I thought maybe Sidney Page could do something with him.”
“I think he'd not like her to know. I'll do what I can.”
K.'s face was thoughtful as he followed Christine to the road.
Christine was very silent, on the way back to the city. More than once K. found her eyes fixed on him, and it puzzled him. Poor Christine was only trying to fit him into the world she knew—a world whose men were strong but seldom tender, who gave up their Sundays to golf, not to visiting unhappy outcasts in the country. How masculine he was, and yet how gentle! It gave her a choking feeling in her throat. She took advantage of a steep bit of road to stop and stand a moment, her fingers on his shabby gray sleeve.
It was late when they got home. Sidney was sitting on the low step, waiting for them.
Wilson had come across at seven, impatient because he must see a case that evening, and promising an early return. In the little hall he had drawn her to him and kissed her, this time not on the lips, but on the forehead and on each of her white eyelids.
“Little wife-to-be!” he had said, and was rather ashamed of his own emotion. From across the Street, as he got into his car, he had waved his hand to her.
Christine went to her room, and, with a long breath of content, K. folded up his long length on the step below Sidney.
“Well, dear ministering angel,” he said, “how goes the world?”
“Things have been happening, K.”
He sat erect and looked at her. Perhaps because she had a woman's instinct for making the most of a piece of news, perhaps—more likely, indeed—because she divined that the announcement would not be entirely agreeable, she delayed it, played with it.
“I have gone into the operating-room.”
“Fine!”
“The costume is ugly. I look hideous in it.”
“Doubtless.”
He smiled up at her. There was relief in his eyes, and still a question.
“Is that all the news?”
“There is something else, K.”
It was a moment before he spoke. He sat looking ahead, his face set. Apparently he did not wish to hear her say it; for when, after a moment, he spoke, it was to forestall her, after all.
“I think I know what it is, Sidney.”
“You expected it, didn't you?”
“I—it's not an entire surprise.”
“Aren't you going to wish me happiness?”
“If my wishing could bring anything good to you, you would have everything in the world.”
His voice was not entirely steady, but his eyes smiled into hers.
“Am I—are we going to lose you soon?”
“I shall finish my training. I made that a condition.”
Then, in a burst of confidence:—
“I know so little, K., and he knows so much! I am going to read and study, so that he can talk to me about his work. That's what marriage ought to be, a sort of partnership. Don't you think so?”
K. nodded. His mind refused to go forward to the unthinkable future. Instead, he was looking back—back to those days when he had hoped sometime to have a wife to talk to about his work, that beloved work that was no longer his. And, finding it agonizing, as indeed all thought was that summer night, he dwelt for a moment on that evening, a year before, when in the same June moonlight, he had come up the Street and had seen Sidney where she was now, with the tree shadows playing over her.
Even that first evening he had been jealous.
It had been Joe then. Now it was another and older man, daring, intelligent, unscrupulous. And this time he had lost her absolutely, lost her without a struggle to keep her. His only struggle had been with himself, to remember that he had nothing to offer but failure.
“Do you know,” said Sidney suddenly, “that it is almost a year since that night you came up the Street, and I was here on the steps?”
“That's a fact, isn't it!” He managed to get some surprise into his voice.
“How Joe objected to your coming! Poor Joe!”
“Do you ever see him?”
“Hardly ever now. I think he hates me.”
“Why?”
“Because—well, you know, K. Why do men always hate a woman who just happens not to love them?”
“I don't believe they do. It would be much better for them if they could. As a matter of fact, there are poor devils who go through life trying to do that very thing, and failing.”
Sidney's eyes were on the tall house across. It was Dr. Ed's evening office hour, and through the open window she could see a line of people waiting their turn. They sat immobile, inert, doggedly patient, until the opening of the back office door promoted them all one chair toward the consulting-room.
“I shall be just across the Street,” she said at last. “Nearer than I am at the hospital.”
“You will be much farther away. You will be married.”
“But we will still be friends, K.?”
Her voice was anxious, a little puzzled. She was often puzzled with him.
“Of course.”
But, after another silence, he astounded her. She had fallen into the way of thinking of him as always belonging to the house, even, in a sense, belonging to her. And now—
“Shall you mind very much if I tell you that I am thinking of going away?”
“K.!”
“My dear child, you do not need a roomer here any more. I have always received infinitely more than I have paid for, even in the small services I have been able to render. Your Aunt Harriet is prosperous. You are away, and some day you are going to be married. Don't you see—I am not needed?”
“That does not mean you are not wanted.”
“I shall not go far. I'll always be near enough, so that I can see you”—he changed this hastily—“so that we can still meet and talk things over. Old friends ought to be like that, not too near, but to be turned on when needed, like a tap.”
“Where will you go?”
“The Rosenfelds are rather in straits. I thought of helping them to get a small house somewhere and of taking a room with them. It's largely a matter of furniture. If they could furnish it even plainly, it could be done. I—haven't saved anything.”
“Do you ever think of yourself?” she cried. “Have you always gone through life helping people, K.? Save anything! I should think not! You spend it all on others.” She bent over and put her hand on his shoulder. “It will not be home without you, K.”
To save him, he could not have spoken just then. A riot of rebellion surged up in him, that he must let this best thing in his life go out of it. To go empty of heart through the rest of his days, while his very arms ached to hold her! And she was so near—just above, with her hand on his shoulder, her wistful face so close that, without moving, he could have brushed her hair.
“You have not wished me happiness, K. Do you remember, when I was going to the hospital and you gave me the little watch—do you remember what you said?”
“Yes”—huskily.
“Will you say it again?”
“But that was good-bye.”
“Isn't this, in a way? You are going to leave us, and I—say it, K.”
“Good-bye, dear, and—God bless you.”