The announcement of Sidney's engagement was not to be made for a year. Wilson, chafing under the delay, was obliged to admit to himself that it was best. Many things could happen in a year. Carlotta would have finished her training, and by that time would probably be reconciled to the ending of their relationship.
He intended to end that. He had meant every word of what he had sworn to Sidney. He was genuinely in love, even unselfishly—as far as he could be unselfish. The secret was to be carefully kept also for Sidney's sake. The hospital did not approve of engagements between nurses and the staff. It was disorganizing, bad for discipline.
Sidney was very happy all that summer. She glowed with pride when her lover put through a difficult piece of work; flushed and palpitated when she heard his praises sung; grew to know, by a sort of intuition, when he was in the house. She wore his ring on a fine chain around her neck, and grew prettier every day.
Once or twice, however, when she was at home, away from the glamour, her early fears obsessed her. Would he always love her? He was so handsome and so gifted, and there were women who were mad about him. That was the gossip of the hospital. Suppose she married him and he tired of her? In her humility she thought that perhaps only her youth, and such charm as she had that belonged to youth, held him. And before her, always, she saw the tragic women of the wards.
K. had postponed his leaving until fall. Sidney had been insistent, and Harriet had topped the argument in her businesslike way. “If you insist on being an idiot and adopting the Rosenfeld family,” she said, “wait until September. The season for boarders doesn't begin until fall.”
So K. waited for “the season,” and ate his heart out for Sidney in the interval.
Johnny Rosenfeld still lay in his ward, inert from the waist down. K. was his most frequent visitor. As a matter of fact, he was watching the boy closely, at Max Wilson's request.
“Tell me when I'm to do it,” said Wilson, “and when the time comes, for God's sake, stand by me. Come to the operation. He's got so much confidence that I'll help him that I don't dare to fail.”
So K. came on visiting days, and, by special dispensation, on Saturday afternoons. He was teaching the boy basket-making. Not that he knew anything about it himself; but, by means of a blind teacher, he kept just one lesson ahead. The ward was intensely interested. It found something absurd and rather touching in this tall, serious young man with the surprisingly deft fingers, tying raffia knots.
The first basket went, by Johnny's request, to Sidney Page.
“I want her to have it,” he said. “She got corns on her fingers from rubbing me when I came in first; and, besides—”
“Yes?” said K. He was tying a most complicated knot, and could not look up.
“I know something,” said Johnny. “I'm not going to get in wrong by talking, but I know something. You give her the basket.”
K. looked up then, and surprised Johnny's secret in his face.
“Ah!” he said.
“If I'd squealed she'd have finished me for good. They've got me, you know. I'm not running in 2.40 these days.”
“I'll not tell, or make it uncomfortable for you. What do you know?”
Johnny looked around. The ward was in the somnolence of mid-afternoon. The nearest patient, a man in a wheel-chair, was snoring heavily.
“It was the dark-eyed one that changed the medicine on me,” he said. “The one with the heels that were always tapping around, waking me up. She did it; I saw her.”
After all, it was only what K. had suspected before. But a sense of impending danger to Sidney obsessed him. If Carlotta would do that, what would she do when she learned of the engagement? And he had known her before. He believed she was totally unscrupulous. The odd coincidence of their paths crossing again troubled him.
Carlotta Harrison was well again, and back on duty. Luckily for Sidney, her three months' service in the operating-room kept them apart. For Carlotta was now not merely jealous. She found herself neglected, ignored. It ate her like a fever.
But she did not yet suspect an engagement. It had been her theory that Wilson would not marry easily—that, in a sense, he would have to be coerced into marriage. Some clever woman would marry him some day, and no one would be more astonished than himself. She thought merely that Sidney was playing a game like her own, with different weapons. So she planned her battle, ignorant that she had lost already.
Her method was simple enough. She stopped sulking, met Max with smiles, made no overtures toward a renewal of their relations. At first this annoyed him. Later it piqued him. To desert a woman was justifiable, under certain circumstances. But to desert a woman, and have her apparently not even know it, was against the rules of the game.
During a surgical dressing in a private room, one day, he allowed his fingers to touch hers, as on that day a year before when she had taken Miss Simpson's place in his office. He was rewarded by the same slow, smouldering glance that had caught his attention before. So she was only acting indifference!
Then Carlotta made her second move. A new interne had come into the house, and was going through the process of learning that from a senior at the medical school to a half-baked junior interne is a long step back. He had to endure the good-humored contempt of the older men, the patronizing instructions of nurses as to rules.
Carlotta alone treated him with deference. His uneasy rounds in Carlotta's precinct took on the state and form of staff visitations. She flattered, cajoled, looked up to him.
After a time it dawned on Wilson that this junior cub was getting more attention than himself: that, wherever he happened to be, somewhere in the offing would be Carlotta and the Lamb, the latter eyeing her with worship. Her indifference had only piqued him. The enthroning of a successor galled him. Between them, the Lamb suffered mightily—was subject to frequent “bawling out,” as he termed it, in the operating-room as he assisted the anaesthetist. He took his troubles to Carlotta, who soothed him in the corridor—in plain sight of her quarry, of course—by putting a sympathetic hand on his sleeve.
Then, one day, Wilson was goaded to speech.
“For the love of Heaven, Carlotta,” he said impatiently, “stop making love to that wretched boy. He wriggles like a worm if you look at him.”
“I like him. He is thoroughly genuine. I respect him, and—he respects me.”
“It's rather a silly game, you know.”
“What game?”
“Do you think I don't understand?”
“Perhaps you do. I—I don't really care a lot about him, Max. But I've been down-hearted. He cheers me up.”
Her attraction for him was almost gone—not quite. He felt rather sorry for her.
“I'm sorry. Then you are not angry with me?”
“Angry? No.” She lifted her eyes to his, and for once she was not acting. “I knew it would end, of course. I have lost a—a lover. I expected that. But I wanted to keep a friend.”
It was the right note. Why, after all, should he not be her friend? He had treated her cruelly, hideously. If she still desired his friendship, there was no disloyalty to Sidney in giving it. And Carlotta was very careful. Not once again did she allow him to see what lay in her eyes. She told him of her worries. Her training was almost over. She had a chance to take up institutional work. She abhorred the thought of private duty. What would he advise?
The Lamb was hovering near, hot eyes on them both. It was no place to talk.
“Come to the office and we'll talk it over.”
“I don't like to go there; Miss Simpson is suspicious.”
The institution she spoke of was in another city. It occurred to Wilson that if she took it the affair would have reached a graceful and legitimate end.
Also, the thought of another stolen evening alone with her was not unpleasant. It would be the last, he promised himself. After all, it was owing to her. He had treated her badly.
Sidney would be at a lecture that night. The evening loomed temptingly free.
“Suppose you meet me at the old corner,” he said carelessly, eyes on the Lamb, who was forgetting that he was only a junior interne and was glaring ferociously. “We'll run out into the country and talk things over.”
She demurred, with her heart beating triumphantly.
“What's the use of going back to that? It's over, isn't it?”
Her objection made him determined. When at last she had yielded, and he made his way down to the smoking-room, it was with the feeling that he had won a victory.
K. had been uneasy all that day; his ledgers irritated him. He had been sleeping badly since Sidney's announcement of her engagement. At five o'clock, when he left the office, he found Joe Drummond waiting outside on the pavement.
“Mother said you'd been up to see me a couple of times. I thought I'd come around.”
K. looked at his watch.
“What do you say to a walk?”
“Not out in the country. I'm not as muscular as you are. I'll go about town for a half-hour or so.”
Thus forestalled, K. found his subject hard to lead up to. But here again Joe met him more than halfway.
“Well, go on,” he said, when they found themselves in the park; “I don't suppose you were paying a call.”
“No.”
“I guess I know what you are going to say.”
“I'm not going to preach, if you're expecting that. Ordinarily, if a man insists on making a fool of himself, I let him alone.”
“Why make an exception of me?”
“One reason is that I happen to like you. The other reason is that, whether you admit it or not, you are acting like a young idiot, and are putting the responsibility on the shoulders of some one else.”
“She is responsible, isn't she?”
“Not in the least. How old are you, Joe?”
“Twenty-three, almost.”
“Exactly. You are a man, and you are acting like a bad boy. It's a disappointment to me. It's more than that to Sidney.”
“Much she cares! She's going to marry Wilson, isn't she?”
“There is no announcement of any engagement.”
“She is, and you know it. Well, she'll be happy—not! If I'd go to her to-night and tell her what I know, she'd never see him again.” The idea, thus born in his overwrought brain, obsessed him. He returned to it again and again. Le Moyne was uneasy. He was not certain that the boy's statement had any basis in fact. His single determination was to save Sidney from any pain.
When Joe suddenly announced his inclination to go out into the country after all, he suspected a ruse to get rid of him, and insisted on going along. Joe consented grudgingly.
“Car's at Bailey's garage,” he said sullenly. “I don't know when I'll get back.”
“That won't matter.” K.'s tone was cheerful. “I'm not sleeping, anyhow.”
That passed unnoticed until they were on the highroad, with the car running smoothly between yellowing fields of wheat. Then:—
“So you've got it too!” he said. “We're a fine pair of fools. We'd both be better off if I sent the car over a bank.”
He gave the wheel a reckless twist, and Le Moyne called him to time sternly.
They had supper at the White Springs Hotel—not on the terrace, but in the little room where Carlotta and Wilson had taken their first meal together. K. ordered beer for them both, and Joe submitted with bad grace.
But the meal cheered and steadied him. K. found him more amenable to reason, and, gaining his confidence, learned of his desire to leave the city.
“I'm stuck here,” he said. “I'm the only one, and mother yells blue murder when I talk about it. I want to go to Cuba. My uncle owns a farm down there.”
“Perhaps I can talk your mother over. I've been there.”
Joe was all interest. His dilated pupils became more normal, his restless hands grew quiet. K.'s even voice, the picture he drew of life on the island, the stillness of the little hotel in its mid-week dullness, seemed to quiet the boy's tortured nerves. He was nearer to peace than he had been for many days. But he smoked incessantly, lighting one cigarette from another.
At ten o'clock he left K. and went for the car. He paused for a moment, rather sheepishly, by K.'s chair.
“I'm feeling a lot better,” he said. “I haven't got the band around my head. You talk to mother.”
That was the last K. saw of Joe Drummond until the next day.
Carlotta dressed herself with unusual care—not in black this time, but in white. She coiled her yellow hair in a soft knot at the back of her head, and she resorted to the faintest shading of rouge. She intended to be gay, cheerful. The ride was to be a bright spot in Wilson's memory. He expected recriminations; she meant to make him happy. That was the secret of the charm some women had for men. They went to such women to forget their troubles. She set the hour of their meeting at nine, when the late dusk of summer had fallen; and she met him then, smiling, a faintly perfumed white figure, slim and young, with a thrill in her voice that was only half assumed.
“It's very late,” he complained. “Surely you are not going to be back at ten.”
“I have special permission to be out late.”
“Good!” And then, recollecting their new situation: “We have a lot to talk over. It will take time.”
At the White Springs Hotel they stopped to fill the gasolene tank of the car. Joe Drummond saw Wilson there, in the sheet-iron garage alongside of the road. The Wilson car was in the shadow. It did not occur to Joe that the white figure in the car was not Sidney. He went rather white, and stepped out of the zone of light. The influence of Le Moyne was still on him, however, and he went on quietly with what he was doing. But his hands shook as he filled the radiator.
When Wilson's car had gone on, he went automatically about his preparations for the return trip—lifted a seat cushion to investigate his own store of gasolene, replacing carefully the revolver he always carried under the seat and packed in waste to prevent its accidental discharge, lighted his lamps, examined a loose brake-band.
His coolness gratified him. He had been an ass: Le Moyne was right. He'd get away—to Cuba if he could—and start over again. He would forget the Street and let it forget him.
The men in the garage were talking.
“To Schwitter's, of course,” one of them grumbled. “We might as well go out of business.”
“There's no money in running a straight place. Schwitter and half a dozen others are getting rich.”
“That was Wilson, the surgeon in town. He cut off my brother-in-law's leg—charged him as much as if he had grown a new one for him. He used to come here. Now he goes to Schwitter's, like the rest. Pretty girl he had with him. You can bet on Wilson.”
So Max Wilson was taking Sidney to Schwitter's, making her the butt of garage talk! The smiles of the men were evil. Joe's hands grew cold, his head hot. A red mist spread between him and the line of electric lights. He knew Schwitter's, and he knew Wilson.
He flung himself into his car and threw the throttle open. The car jerked, stalled.
“You can't start like that, son,” one of the men remonstrated. “You let 'er in too fast.”
“You go to hell!” Joe snarled, and made a second ineffectual effort.
Thus adjured, the men offered neither further advice nor assistance. The minutes went by in useless cranking—fifteen. The red mist grew heavier. Every lamp was a danger signal. But when K., growing uneasy, came out into the yard, the engine had started at last. He was in time to see Joe run his car into the road and turn it viciously toward Schwitter's.
Carlotta's nearness was having its calculated effect on Max Wilson. His spirits rose as the engine, marking perfect time, carried them along the quiet roads.
Partly it was reaction—relief that she should be so reasonable, so complaisant—and a sort of holiday spirit after the day's hard work. Oddly enough, and not so irrational as may appear, Sidney formed a part of the evening's happiness—that she loved him; that, back in the lecture-room, eyes and even mind on the lecturer, her heart was with him.
So, with Sidney the basis of his happiness, he made the most of his evening's freedom. He sang a little in his clear tenor—even, once when they had slowed down at a crossing, bent over audaciously and kissed Carlotta's hand in the full glare of a passing train.
“How reckless of you!”
“I like to be reckless,” he replied.
His boyishness annoyed Carlotta. She did not want the situation to get out of hand. Moreover, what was so real for her was only too plainly a lark for him. She began to doubt her power.
The hopelessness of her situation was dawning on her. Even when the touch of her beside him and the solitude of the country roads got in his blood, and he bent toward her, she found no encouragement in his words:—“I am mad about you to-night.”
She took her courage in her hands:—“Then why give me up for some one else?”
“That's—different.”
“Why is it different? I am a woman. I—I love you, Max. No one else will ever care as I do.”
“You are in love with the Lamb!”
“That was a trick. I'm sorry, Max. I don't care for anyone else in the world. If you let me go I'll want to die.”
Then, as he was silent:—
“If you'll marry me, I'll be true to you all my life. I swear it. There will be nobody else, ever.”
The sense, if not the words, of what he had sworn to Sidney that Sunday afternoon under the trees, on this very road! Swift shame overtook him, that he should be here, that he had allowed Carlotta to remain in ignorance of how things really stood between them.
“I'm sorry, Carlotta. It's impossible. I'm engaged to marry some one else.”
“Sidney Page?”—almost a whisper.
“Yes.”
He was ashamed at the way she took the news. If she had stormed or wept, he would have known what to do. But she sat still, not speaking.
“You must have expected it, sooner or later.”
Still she made no reply. He thought she might faint, and looked at her anxiously. Her profile, indistinct beside him, looked white and drawn. But Carlotta was not fainting. She was making a desperate plan. If their escapade became known, it would end things between Sidney and him. She was sure of that. She needed time to think it out. It must become known without any apparent move on her part. If, for instance, she became ill, and was away from the hospital all night, that might answer. The thing would be investigated, and who knew—
The car turned in at Schwitter's road and drew up before the house. The narrow porch was filled with small tables, above which hung rows of electric lights enclosed in Japanese paper lanterns. Midweek, which had found the White Springs Hotel almost deserted, saw Schwitter's crowded tables set out under the trees. Seeing the crowd, Wilson drove directly to the yard and parked his machine.
“No need of running any risk,” he explained to the still figure beside him. “We can walk back and take a table under the trees, away from those infernal lanterns.”
She reeled a little as he helped her out.
“Not sick, are you?”
“I'm dizzy. I'm all right.”
She looked white. He felt a stab of pity for her. She leaned rather heavily on him as they walked toward the house. The faint perfume that had almost intoxicated him, earlier, vaguely irritated him now.
At the rear of the house she shook off his arm and preceded him around the building. She chose the end of the porch as the place in which to drop, and went down like a stone, falling back.
There was a moderate excitement. The visitors at Schwitter's were too much engrossed with themselves to be much interested. She opened her eyes almost as soon as she fell—to forestall any tests; she was shrewd enough to know that Wilson would detect her malingering very quickly—and begged to be taken into the house. “I feel very ill,” she said, and her white face bore her out.
Schwitter and Bill carried her in and up the stairs to one of the newly furnished rooms. The little man was twittering with anxiety. He had a horror of knockout drops and the police. They laid her on the bed, her hat beside her; and Wilson, stripping down the long sleeve of her glove, felt her pulse.
“There's a doctor in the next town,” said Schwitter. “I was going to send for him, anyhow—my wife's not very well.”
“I'm a doctor.”
“Is it anything serious?”
“Nothing serious.”
He closed the door behind the relieved figure of the landlord, and, going back to Carlotta, stood looking down at her.
“What did you mean by doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“You were no more faint than I am.”
She closed her eyes.
“I don't remember. Everything went black. The lanterns—”
He crossed the room deliberately and went out, closing the door behind him. He saw at once where he stood—in what danger. If she insisted that she was ill and unable to go back, there would be a fuss. The story would come out. Everything would be gone. Schwitter's, of all places!
At the foot of the stairs, Schwitter pulled himself together. After all, the girl was only ill. There was nothing for the police. He looked at his watch. The doctor ought to be here by this time. It was sooner than they had expected. Even the nurse had not come. Tillie was alone, out in the harness-room. He looked through the crowded rooms, at the overflowing porch with its travesty of pleasure, and he hated the whole thing with a desperate hatred.
Another car. Would they never stop coming! But perhaps it was the doctor. A young man edged his way into the hall and confronted him.
“Two people just arrived here. A man and a woman—in white. Where are they?”
It was trouble then, after all!
“Upstairs—first bedroom to the right.” His teeth chattered. Surely, as a man sowed he reaped.
Joe went up the staircase. At the top, on the landing, he confronted Wilson. He fired at him without a word—saw him fling up his arms and fall back, striking first the wall, then the floor.
The buzz of conversation on the porch suddenly ceased. Joe put his revolver in his pocket and went quietly down the stairs. The crowd parted to let him through.
Carlotta, crouched in her room, listening, not daring to open the door, heard the sound of a car as it swung out into the road.
On the evening of the shooting at Schwitter's, there had been a late operation at the hospital. Sidney, having duly transcribed her lecture notes and said her prayers, was already asleep when she received the insistent summons to the operating-room. She dressed again with flying fingers. These night battles with death roused all her fighting blood. There were times when she felt as if, by sheer will, she could force strength, life itself, into failing bodies. Her sensitive nostrils dilated, her brain worked like a machine.
That night she received well-deserved praise. When the Lamb, telephoning hysterically, had failed to locate the younger Wilson, another staff surgeon was called. His keen eyes watched Sidney—felt her capacity, her fiber, so to speak; and, when everything was over, he told her what was in his mind.
“Don't wear yourself out, girl,” he said gravely. “We need people like you. It was good work to-night—fine work. I wish we had more like you.”
By midnight the work was done, and the nurse in charge sent Sidney to bed.
It was the Lamb who received the message about Wilson; and because he was not very keen at the best, and because the news was so startling, he refused to credit his ears.
“Who is this at the 'phone?”
“That doesn't matter. Le Moyne's my name. Get the message to Dr. Ed Wilson at once. We are starting to the city.”
“Tell me again. I mustn't make a mess of this.”
“Dr. Wilson, the surgeon, has been shot,” came slowly and distinctly. “Get the staff there and have a room ready. Get the operating-room ready, too.”
The Lamb wakened then, and roused the house. He was incoherent, rather, so that Dr. Ed got the impression that it was Le Moyne who had been shot, and only learned the truth when he got to the hospital.
“Where is he?” he demanded. He liked K., and his heart was sore within him.
“Not in yet, sir. A Mr. Le Moyne is bringing him. Staff's in the executive committee room, sir.”
“But—who has been shot? I thought you said—”
The Lamb turned pale at that, and braced himself.
“I'm sorry—I thought you understood. I believe it's not—not serious. It's Dr. Max, sir.”
Dr. Ed, who was heavy and not very young, sat down on an office chair. Out of sheer habit he had brought the bag. He put it down on the floor beside him, and moistened his lips.
“Is he living?”
“Oh, yes, sir. I gathered that Mr. Le Moyne did not think it serious.”
He lied, and Dr. Ed knew he lied.
The Lamb stood by the door, and Dr. Ed sat and waited. The office clock said half after three. Outside the windows, the night world went by—taxi-cabs full of roisterers, women who walked stealthily close to the buildings, a truck carrying steel, so heavy that it shook the hospital as it rumbled by.
Dr. Ed sat and waited. The bag with the dog-collar in it was on the floor. He thought of many things, but mostly of the promise he had made his mother. And, having forgotten the injured man's shortcomings, he was remembering his good qualities—his cheerfulness, his courage, his achievements. He remembered the day Max had done the Edwardes operation, and how proud he had been of him. He figured out how old he was—not thirty-one yet, and already, perhaps—There he stopped thinking. Cold beads of sweat stood out on his forehead.
“I think I hear them now, sir,” said the Lamb, and stood back respectfully to let him pass out of the door.
Carlotta stayed in the room during the consultation. No one seemed to wonder why she was there, or to pay any attention to her. The staff was stricken. They moved back to make room for Dr. Ed beside the bed, and then closed in again.
Carlotta waited, her hand over her mouth to keep herself from screaming. Surely they would operate; they wouldn't let him die like that!
When she saw the phalanx break up, and realized that they would not operate, she went mad. She stood against the door, and accused them of cowardice—taunted them.
“Do you think he would let any of you die like that?” she cried. “Die like a hurt dog, and none of you to lift a hand?”
It was Pfeiffer who drew her out of the room and tried to talk reason and sanity to her.
“It's hopeless,” he said. “If there was a chance, we'd operate, and you know it.”
The staff went hopelessly down the stairs to the smoking-room, and smoked. It was all they could do. The night assistant sent coffee down to them, and they drank it. Dr. Ed stayed in his brother's room, and said to his mother, under his breath, that he'd tried to do his best by Max, and that from now on it would be up to her.
K. had brought the injured man in. The country doctor had come, too, finding Tillie's trial not imminent. On the way in he had taken it for granted that K. was a medical man like himself, and had placed his hypodermic case at his disposal.
When he missed him,—in the smoking-room, that was,—he asked for him.
“I don't see the chap who came in with us,” he said. “Clever fellow. Like to know his name.”
The staff did not know.
K. sat alone on a bench in the hall. He wondered who would tell Sidney; he hoped they would be very gentle with her. He sat in the shadow, waiting. He did not want to go home and leave her to what she might have to face. There was a chance she would ask for him. He wanted to be near, in that case.
He sat in the shadow, on the bench. The night watchman went by twice and stared at him. At last he asked K. to mind the door until he got some coffee.
“One of the staff's been hurt,” he explained. “If I don't get some coffee now, I won't get any.”
K. promised to watch the door.
A desperate thing had occurred to Carlotta. Somehow, she had not thought of it before. Now she wondered how she could have failed to think of it. If only she could find him and he would do it! She would go down on her knees—would tell him everything, if only he would consent.
When she found him on his bench, however, she passed him by. She had a terrible fear that he might go away if she put the thing to him first. He clung hard to his new identity.
So first she went to the staff and confronted them. They were men of courage, only declining to undertake what they considered hopeless work. The one man among them who might have done the thing with any chance of success lay stricken. Not one among them but would have given of his best—only his best was not good enough.
“It would be the Edwardes operation, wouldn't it?” demanded Carlotta.
The staff was bewildered. There were no rules to cover such conduct on the part of a nurse. One of them—Pfeiffer again, by chance—replied rather heavily:—
“If any, it would be the Edwardes operation.”
“Would Dr. Edwardes himself be able to do anything?”
This was going a little far.
“Possibly. One chance in a thousand, perhaps. But Edwardes is dead. How did this thing happen, Miss Harrison?”
She ignored his question. Her face was ghastly, save for the trace of rouge; her eyes were red-rimmed.
“Dr. Edwardes is sitting on a bench in the hall outside!” she announced.
Her voice rang out. K. heard her and raised his head. His attitude was weary, resigned. The thing had come, then! He was to take up the old burden. The girl had told.
Dr. Ed had sent for Sidney. Max was still unconscious. Ed remembered about her when, tracing his brother's career from his babyhood to man's estate and to what seemed now to be its ending, he had remembered that Max was very fond of Sidney. He had hoped that Sidney would take him and do for him what he, Ed, had failed to do.
So Sidney was summoned.
She thought it was another operation, and her spirit was just a little weary. But her courage was indomitable. She forced her shoes on her tired feet, and bathed her face in cold water to rouse herself.
The night watchman was in the hall. He was fond of Sidney; she always smiled at him; and, on his morning rounds at six o'clock to waken the nurses, her voice was always amiable. So she found him in the hall, holding a cup of tepid coffee. He was old and bleary, unmistakably dirty too—but he had divined Sidney's romance.
“Coffee! For me?” She was astonished.
“Drink it. You haven't had much sleep.”
She took it obediently, but over the cup her eyes searched his.
“There is something wrong, daddy.”
That was his name, among the nurses. He had had another name, but it was lost in the mists of years.
“Get it down.”
So she finished it, not without anxiety that she might be needed. But daddy's attentions were for few, and not to be lightly received.
“Can you stand a piece of bad news?”
Strangely, her first thought was of K.
“There has been an accident. Dr. Wilson—”
“Which one?”
“Dr. Max—has been hurt. It ain't much, but I guess you'd like to know it.”
“Where is he?”
“Downstairs, in Seventeen.”
So she went down alone to the room where Dr. Ed sat in a chair, with his untidy bag beside him on the floor, and his eyes fixed on a straight figure on the bed. When he saw Sidney, he got up and put his arms around her. His eyes told her the truth before he told her anything. She hardly listened to what he said. The fact was all that concerned her—that her lover was dying there, so near that she could touch him with her hand, so far away that no voice, no caress of hers, could reach him.
The why would come later. Now she could only stand, with Dr. Ed's arms about her, and wait.
“If they would only do something!” Sidney's voice sounded strange to her ears.
“There is nothing to do.”
But that, it seemed, was wrong. For suddenly Sidney's small world, which had always sedately revolved in one direction, began to move the other way.
The door opened, and the staff came in. But where before they had moved heavily, with drooped heads, now they came quickly, as men with a purpose. There was a tall man in a white coat with them. He ordered them about like children, and they hastened to do his will. At first Sidney only knew that now, at last, they were going to do something—the tall man was going to do something. He stood with his back to Sidney, and gave orders.
The heaviness of inactivity lifted. The room buzzed. The nurses stood by, while the staff did nurses' work. The senior surgical interne, essaying assistance, was shoved aside by the senior surgical consultant, and stood by, aggrieved.
It was the Lamb, after all, who brought the news to Sidney. The new activity had caught Dr. Ed, and she was alone now, her face buried against the back of a chair.
“There'll be something doing now, Miss Page,” he offered.
“What are they going to do?”
“Going after the bullet. Do you know who's going to do it?”
His voice echoed the subdued excitement of the room—excitement and new hope.
“Did you ever hear of Edwardes, the surgeon?—the Edwardes operation, you know. Well, he's here. It sounds like a miracle. They found him sitting on a bench in the hall downstairs.”
Sidney raised her head, but she could not see the miraculously found Edwardes. She could see the familiar faces of the staff, and that other face on the pillow, and—she gave a little cry. There was K.! How like him to be there, to be wherever anyone was in trouble! Tears came to her eyes—the first tears she had shed.
As if her eyes had called him, he looked up and saw her. He came toward her at once. The staff stood back to let him pass, and gazed after him. The wonder of what had happened was growing on them.
K. stood beside Sidney, and looked down at her. Just at first it seemed as if he found nothing to say. Then:
“There's just a chance, Sidney dear. Don't count too much on it.”
“I have got to count on it. If I don't, I shall die.”
If a shadow passed over his face, no one saw it.
“I'll not ask you to go back to your room. If you will wait somewhere near, I'll see that you have immediate word.”
“I am going to the operating-room.”
“Not to the operating-room. Somewhere near.”
His steady voice controlled her hysteria. But she resented it. She was not herself, of course, what with strain and weariness.
“I shall ask Dr. Edwardes.”
He was puzzled for a moment. Then he understood. After all, it was as well. Whether she knew him as Le Moyne or as Edwardes mattered very little, after all. The thing that really mattered was that he must try to save Wilson for her. If he failed—It ran through his mind that if he failed she might hate him the rest of her life—not for himself, but for his failure; that, whichever way things went, he must lose.
“Dr. Edwardes says you are to stay away from the operation, but to remain near. He—he promises to call you if—things go wrong.”
She had to be content with that.
Nothing about that night was real to Sidney. She sat in the anaesthetizing-room, and after a time she knew that she was not alone. There was somebody else. She realized dully that Carlotta was there, too, pacing up and down the little room. She was never sure, for instance, whether she imagined it, or whether Carlotta really stopped before her and surveyed her with burning eyes.
“So you thought he was going to marry you!” said Carlotta—or the dream. “Well, you see he isn't.”
Sidney tried to answer, and failed—or that was the way the dream went.
“If you had enough character, I'd think you did it. How do I know you didn't follow us, and shoot him as he left the room?”
It must have been reality, after all; for Sidney's numbed mind grasped the essential fact here, and held on to it. He had been out with Carlotta. He had promised—sworn that this should not happen. It had happened. It surprised her. It seemed as if nothing more could hurt her.
In the movement to and from the operating room, the door stood open for a moment. A tall figure—how much it looked like K.!—straightened and held out something in its hand.
“The bullet!” said Carlotta in a whisper.
Then more waiting, a stir of movement in the room beyond the closed door. Carlotta was standing, her face buried in her hands, against the door. Sidney suddenly felt sorry for her. She cared a great deal. It must be tragic to care like that! She herself was not caring much; she was too numb.
Beyond, across the courtyard, was the stable. Before the day of the motor ambulances, horses had waited there for their summons, eager as fire horses, heads lifted to the gong. When Sidney saw the outline of the stable roof, she knew that it was dawn. The city still slept, but the torturing night was over. And in the gray dawn the staff, looking gray too, and elderly and weary, came out through the closed door and took their hushed way toward the elevator. They were talking among themselves. Sidney, straining her ears, gathered that they had seen a miracle, and that the wonder was still on them.
Carlotta followed them out.
Almost on their heels came K. He was in the white coat, and more and more he looked like the man who had raised up from his work and held out something in his hand. Sidney's head was aching and confused.
She sat there in her chair, looking small and childish. The dawn was morning now—horizontal rays of sunlight on the stable roof and across the windowsill of the anaesthetizing-room, where a row of bottles sat on a clean towel.
The tall man—or was it K.?—looked at her, and then reached up and turned off the electric light. Why, it was K., of course; and he was putting out the hall light before he went upstairs. When the light was out everything was gray. She could not see. She slid very quietly out of her chair, and lay at his feet in a dead faint.
K. carried her to the elevator. He held her as he had held her that day at the park when she fell in the river, very carefully, tenderly, as one holds something infinitely precious. Not until he had placed her on her bed did she open her eyes. But she was conscious before that. She was so tired, and to be carried like that, in strong arms, not knowing where one was going, or caring—
The nurse he had summoned hustled out for aromatic ammonia. Sidney, lying among her pillows, looked up at K.
“How is he?”
“A little better. There's a chance, dear.”
“I have been so mixed up. All the time I was sitting waiting, I kept thinking that it was you who were operating! Will he really get well?”
“It looks promising.”
“I should like to thank Dr. Edwardes.”
The nurse was a long time getting the ammonia. There was so much to talk about: that Dr. Max had been out with Carlotta Harrison, and had been shot by a jealous woman; the inexplicable return to life of the great Edwardes; and—a fact the nurse herself was willing to vouch for, and that thrilled the training-school to the core—that this very Edwardes, newly risen, as it were, and being a miracle himself as well as performing one, this very Edwardes, carrying Sidney to her bed and putting her down, had kissed her on her white forehead.
The training-school doubted this. How could he know Sidney Page? And, after all, the nurse had only seen it in the mirror, being occupied at the time in seeing if her cap was straight. The school, therefore, accepted the miracle, but refused the kiss.
The miracle was no miracle, of course. But something had happened to K. that savored of the marvelous. His faith in himself was coming back—not strongly, with a rush, but with all humility. He had been loath to take up the burden; but, now that he had it, he breathed a sort of inarticulate prayer to be able to carry it.
And, since men have looked for signs since the beginning of time, he too asked for a sign. Not, of course, that he put it that way, or that he was making terms with Providence. It was like this: if Wilson got well, he'd keep on working. He'd feel that, perhaps, after all, this was meant. If Wilson died—Sidney held out her hand to him.
“What should I do without you, K.?” she asked wistfully.
“All you have to do is to want me.”
His voice was not too steady, and he took her pulse in a most businesslike way to distract her attention from it.
“How very many things you know! You are quite professional about pulses.”
Even then he did not tell her. He was not sure, to be frank, that she'd be interested. Now, with Wilson as he was, was no time to obtrude his own story. There was time enough for that.
“Will you drink some beef tea if I send it to you?”
“I'm not hungry. I will, of course.”
“And—will you try to sleep?”
“Sleep, while he—”
“I promise to tell you if there is any change. I shall stay with him.”
“I'll try to sleep.”
But, as he rose from the chair beside her low bed, she put out her hand to him.
“K.”
“Yes, dear.”
“He was out with Carlotta. He promised, and he broke his promise.”
“There may have been reasons. Suppose we wait until he can explain.”
“How can he explain?” And, when he hesitated: “I bring all my troubles to you, as if you had none. Somehow, I can't go to Aunt Harriet, and of course mother—Carlotta cares a great deal for him. She said that I shot him. Does anyone really think that?”
“Of course not. Please stop thinking.”
“But who did, K.? He had so many friends, and no enemies that I knew of.”
Her mind seemed to stagger about in a circle, making little excursions, but always coming back to the one thing.
“Some drunken visitor to the road-house.”
He could have killed himself for the words the moment they were spoken.
“They were at a road-house?”
“It is not just to judge anyone before you hear the story.”
She stirred restlessly.
“What time is it?”
“Half-past six.”
“I must get up and go on duty.”
He was glad to be stern with her. He forbade her rising. When the nurse came in with the belated ammonia, she found K. making an arbitrary ruling, and Sidney looking up at him mutinously.
“Miss Page is not to go on duty to-day. She is to stay in bed until further orders.”
“Very well, Dr. Edwardes.”
The confusion in Sidney's mind cleared away suddenly. K. was Dr. Edwardes! It was K. who had performed the miracle operation—K. who had dared and perhaps won! Dear K., with his steady eyes and his long surgeon's fingers! Then, because she seemed to see ahead as well as back into the past in that flash that comes to the drowning and to those recovering from shock, and because she knew that now the little house would no longer be home to K., she turned her face into her pillow and cried. Her world had fallen indeed. Her lover was not true and might be dying; her friend would go away to his own world, which was not the Street.
K. left her at last and went back to Seventeen, where Dr. Ed still sat by the bed. Inaction was telling on him. If Max would only open his eyes, so he could tell him what had been in his mind all these years—his pride in him and all that.
With a sort of belated desire to make up for where he had failed, he put the bag that had been Max's bete noir on the bedside table, and began to clear it of rubbish—odd bits of dirty cotton, the tubing from a long defunct stethoscope, glass from a broken bottle, a scrap of paper on which was a memorandum, in his illegible writing, to send Max a check for his graduating suit. When K. came in, he had the old dog-collar in his hand.
“Belonged to an old collie of ours,” he said heavily. “Milkman ran over him and killed him. Max chased the wagon and licked the driver with his own whip.”
His face worked.
“Poor old Bobby Burns!” he said. “We'd raised him from a pup. Got him in a grape-basket.”
The sick man opened his eyes.