"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."
CHAPTER XXIII
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 eye
s 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.
CHAPTER XXIV
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. H
e 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."
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