K

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER XIII

  A few days after Wilson's recognition of K., two most exciting thingshappened to Sidney. One was that Christine asked her to be maid of honorat her wedding. The other was more wonderful. She was accepted, andgiven her cap.

  Because she could not get home that night, and because the little househad no telephone, she wrote the news to her mother and sent a note to LeMoyne:

  DEAR K.,--I am accepted, and IT is on my head at this minute. I am asconscious of it as if it were a halo, and as if I had done something todeserve it, instead of just hoping that someday I shall. I am writingthis on the bureau, so that when I lift my eyes I may see It. I amafraid just now I am thinking more of the cap than of what it means. ItIS becoming!

  Very soon I shall slip down and show it to the ward. I have promised.I shall go to the door when the night nurse is busy somewhere, andturn all around and let them see it, without saying a word. They love alittle excitement like that.

  You have been very good to me, dear K. It is you who have made possiblethis happiness of mine to-night. I am promising myself to be very good,and not so vain, and to love my enemies--, although I have none now.Miss Harrison has just congratulated me most kindly, and I am sure poorJoe has both forgiven and forgotten.

  Off to my first lecture!

  SIDNEY.

  K. found the note on the hall table when he got home that night, andcarried it upstairs to read. Whatever faint hope he might have had thather youth would prevent her acceptance he knew now was over. With theletter in his hand, he sat by his table and looked ahead into the emptyyears. Not quite empty, of course. She would be coming home.

  But more and more the life of the hospital would engross her. Hesurmised, too, very shrewdly, that, had he ever had a hope that shemight come to care for him, his very presence in the little housemilitated against him. There was none of the illusion of separation;he was always there, like Katie. When she opened the door, she called"Mother" from the hall. If Anna did not answer, she called him, in muchthe same voice.

  He had built a wall of philosophy that had withstood even Wilson'srecognition and protest. But enduring philosophy comes only with time;and he was young. Now and then all his defenses crumbled before apassion that, when he dared to face it, shook him by its very strength.And that day all his stoicism went down before Sidney's letter. Its veryfrankness and affection hurt--not that he did not want her affection;but he craved so much more. He threw himself face down on the bed, withthe paper crushed in his hand.

  Sidney's letter was not the only one he received that day. When, inresponse to Katie's summons, he rose heavily and prepared for dinner, hefound an unopened envelope on the table. It was from Max Wilson:--

  DEAR LE MOYNE,--I have been going around in a sort of haze all day. Thefact that I only heard your voice and scarcely saw you last night hasmade the whole thing even more unreal.

  I have a feeling of delicacy about trying to see you again so soon. I'mbound to respect your seclusion. But there are some things that have gotto be discussed.

  You said last night that things were "different" with you. I know aboutthat. You'd had one or two unlucky accidents. Do you know any man in ourprofession who has not? And, for fear you think I do not know what I amtalking about, the thing was threshed out at the State Society when thequestion of the tablet came up. Old Barnes got up and said: "Gentlemen,all of us live more or less in glass houses. Let him who is withoutguilt among us throw the first stone!" By George! You should have heardthem!

  I didn't sleep last night. I took my little car and drove around thecountry roads, and the farther I went the more outrageous your positionbecame. I'm not going to write any rot about the world needing men likeyou, although it's true enough. But our profession does. You working ina gas office, while old O'Hara bungles and hacks, and I struggle alongon what I learned from you!

  It takes courage to step down from the pinnacle you stood on. So it'snot cowardice that has set you down here. It's wrong conception. AndI've thought of two things. The first, and best, is for you to go back.No one has taken your place, because no one could do the work. But ifthat's out of the question,--and only you know that, for only you knowthe facts,--the next best thing is this, and in all humility I make thesuggestion.

  Take the State exams under your present name, and when you've got yourcertificate, come in with me. This isn't magnanimity. I'll be getting adamn sight more than I give.

  Think it over, old man.

  M.W.

  It is a curious fact that a man who is absolutely untrustworthy aboutwomen is often the soul of honor to other men. The younger Wilson,taking his pleasures lightly and not too discriminatingly, was making anoffer that meant his ultimate eclipse, and doing it cheerfully, with hiseyes open.

  K. was moved. It was like Max to make such an offer, like him to make itas if he were asking a favor and not conferring one. But the offer lefthim untempted. He had weighed himself in the balance, and found himselfwanting. No tablet on the college wall could change that. And when,late that night, Wilson found him on the balcony and added appeal toargument, the situation remained unchanged. He realized its hopelessnesswhen K. lapsed into whimsical humor.

  "I'm not absolutely useless where I am, you know, Max," he said. "I'veraised three tomato plants and a family of kittens this summer, helpedto plan a trousseau, assisted in selecting wall-paper for the room justinside,--did you notice it?--and developed a boy pitcher with a ballthat twists around the bat like a Colles fracture around a splint!"

  "If you're going to be humorous--"

  "My dear fellow," said K. quietly, "if I had no sense of humor, I shouldgo upstairs to-night, turn on the gas, and make a stertorous entranceinto eternity. By the way, that's something I forgot!"

  "Eternity?" "No. Among my other activities, I wired the parlor forelectric light. The bride-to-be expects some electroliers as weddinggifts, and--"

  Wilson rose and flung his cigarette into the grass.

  "I wish to God I understood you!" he said irritably.

  K. rose with him, and all the suppressed feeling of the interview wascrowded into his last few words.

  "I'm not as ungrateful as you think, Max," he said. "I--you've helpeda lot. Don't worry about me. I'm as well off as I deserve to be, andbetter. Good-night."

  "Good-night."

  Wilson's unexpected magnanimity put K. in a curious position--left him,as it were, with a divided allegiance. Sidney's frank infatuation forthe young surgeon was growing. He was quick to see it. And where beforehe might have felt justified in going to the length of warning her, nowhis hands were tied.

  Max was interested in her. K. could see that, too. More than once he hadtaken Sidney back to the hospital in his car. Le Moyne, handicapped atevery turn, found himself facing two alternatives, one but little betterthan the other. The affair might run a legitimate course, ending inmarriage--a year of happiness for her, and then what marriage withMax, as he knew him, would inevitably mean: wanderings away, remorsefulreturns to her, infidelities, misery. Or, it might be less serious butalmost equally unhappy for her. Max might throw caution to the winds,pursue her for a time,--K. had seen him do this,--and then, growingtired, change to some new attraction. In either case, he could only waitand watch, eating his heart out during the long evenings when Anna readher "Daily Thoughts" upstairs and he sat alone with his pipe on thebalcony.

  Sidney went on night duty shortly after her acceptance. All of herorderly young life had been divided into two parts: day, when oneplayed or worked, and night, when one slept. Now she was compelled toa readjustment: one worked in the night and slept in the day. Thingsseemed unnatural, chaotic. At the end of her first night report Sidneyadded what she could remember of a little verse of Stevenson's. Sheadded it to the end of her general report, which was to the effect thateverything had been quiet during the night except the neighborhood.

  "And does it not seem hard to you, When all the sky is clear and blue, And I should like so much to play, To hav
e to go to bed by day?"

  The day assistant happened on the report, and was quite scandalized.

  "If the night nurses are to spend their time making up poetry," shesaid crossly, "we'd better change this hospital into a young ladies'seminary. If she wants to complain about the noise in the street, sheshould do so in proper form."

  "I don't think she made it up," said the Head, trying not to smile."I've heard something like it somewhere, and, what with the heat and thenoise of traffic, I don't see how any of them get any sleep."

  But, because discipline must be observed, she wrote on the slip theassistant carried around: "Please submit night reports in prose."

  Sidney did not sleep much. She tumbled into her low bed at nine o'clockin the morning, those days, with her splendid hair neatly braided downher back and her prayers said, and immediately her active young mindfilled with images--Christine's wedding, Dr. Max passing the door of herold ward and she not there, Joe--even Tillie, whose story was now thesensation of the Street. A few months before she would not have caredto think of Tillie. She would have retired her into the land ofthings-one-must-forget. But the Street's conventions were not holdingSidney's thoughts now. She puzzled over Tillie a great deal, and overGrace and her kind.

  On her first night on duty, a girl had been brought in from the Avenue.She had taken a poison--nobody knew just what. When the internes hadtried to find out, she had only said: "What's the use?"

  And she had died.

  Sidney kept asking herself, "Why?" those mornings when she could not getto sleep. People were kind--men were kind, really,--and yet, for somereason or other, those things had to be. Why?

  After a time Sidney would doze fitfully. But by three o'clock she wasalways up and dressing. After a time the strain told on her. Lack ofsleep wrote hollows around her eyes and killed some of her bright color.Between three and four o'clock in the morning she was overwhelmed onduty by a perfect madness of sleep. There was a penalty for sleeping onduty. The old night watchman had a way of slipping up on one nodding.The night nurses wished they might fasten a bell on him!

  Luckily, at four came early-morning temperatures; that roused her. Andafter that came the clatter of early milk-wagons and the rose hues ofdawn over the roofs. Twice in the night, once at supper and again towarddawn, she drank strong black coffee. But after a week or two her nerveswere stretched taut as a string.

  Her station was in a small room close to her three wards. But she satvery little, as a matter of fact. Her responsibility was heavy on her;she made frequent rounds. The late summer nights were fitful, feverish;the darkened wards stretched away like caverns from the dim light nearthe door. And from out of these caverns came petulant voices, uneasymovements, the banging of a cup on a bedside, which was the signal ofthirst.

  The older nurses saved themselves when they could. To them, perhaps justa little weary with time and much service, the banging cup meant not somuch thirst as annoyance. They visited Sidney sometimes and cautionedher.

  "Don't jump like that, child; they're not parched, you know."

  "But if you have a fever and are thirsty--"

  "Thirsty nothing! They get lonely. All they want is to see somebody."

  "Then," Sidney would say, rising resolutely, "they are going to see me."

  Gradually the older girls saw that she would not save herself. Theyliked her very much, and they, too, had started in with willing feetand tender hands; but the thousand and one demands of their servicehad drained them dry. They were efficient, cool-headed, quick-thinkingmachines, doing their best, of course, but differing from Sidney in thattheir service was of the mind, while hers was of the heart. To them,pain was a thing to be recorded on a report; to Sidney, it was writtenon the tablets of her soul.

  Carlotta Harrison went on night duty at the same time--her last nightservice, as it was Sidney's first. She accepted it stoically. She hadcharge of the three wards on the floor just below Sidney, and of theward into which all emergency cases were taken. It was a difficultservice, perhaps the most difficult in the house. Scarcely a night wentby without its patrol or ambulance case. Ordinarily, the emergency wardhad its own night nurse. But the house was full to overflowing. Belatedvacations and illness had depleted the training-school. Carlotta, givendouble duty, merely shrugged her shoulders.

  "I've always had things pretty hard here," she commented briefly."When I go out, I'll either be competent enough to run a whole hospitalsinglehanded, or I'll be carried out feet first."

  Sidney was glad to have her so near. She knew her better than she knewthe other nurses. Small emergencies were constantly arising and findingher at a loss. Once at least every night, Miss Harrison would hear asoft hiss from the back staircase that connected the two floors, and,going out, would see Sidney's flushed face and slightly crooked capbending over the stair-rail.

  "I'm dreadfully sorry to bother you," she would say, "but So-and-Sowon't have a fever bath"; or, "I've a woman here who refuses hermedicine." Then would follow rapid questions and equally rapid answers.Much as Carlotta disliked and feared the girl overhead, it neveroccurred to her to refuse her assistance. Perhaps the angels who keepthe great record will put that to her credit.

  Sidney saw her first death shortly after she went on night duty. It wasthe most terrible experience of all her life; and yet, as death goes, itwas quiet enough. So gradual was it that Sidney, with K.'s little watchin hand, was not sure exactly when it happened. The light was very dimbehind the little screen. One moment the sheet was quivering slightlyunder the struggle for breath, the next it was still. That was all. Butto the girl it was catastrophe. That life, so potential, so tremendous athing, could end so ignominiously, that the long battle should terminatealways in this capitulation--it seemed to her that she could not standit. Added to all her other new problems of living was this one of dying.

  She made mistakes, of course, which the kindly nurses forgot toreport--basins left about, errors on her records. She rinsed herthermometer in hot water one night, and startled an interne by sendinghim word that Mary McGuire's temperature was a hundred and ten degrees.She let a delirious patient escape from the ward another night and goairily down the fire-escape before she discovered what had happened!Then she distinguished herself by flying down the iron staircase andbringing the runaway back single-handed.

  For Christine's wedding the Street threw off its drab attire and assumeda wedding garment. In the beginning it was incredulous about some of thedetails.

  "An awning from the house door to the curbstone, and a policeman!"reported Mrs. Rosenfeld, who was finding steady employment at the Lorenzhouse. "And another awning at the church, with a red carpet!"

  Mr. Rosenfeld had arrived home and was making up arrears of rest andrecreation.

  "Huh!" he said. "Suppose it don't rain. What then?" His Jewish fatherspoke in him.

  "And another policeman at the church!" said Mrs. Rosenfeld triumphantly.

  "Why do they ask 'em if they don't trust 'em?"

  But the mention of the policemen had been unfortunate. It recalled tohim many things that were better forgotten. He rose and scowled at hiswife.

  "You tell Johnny something for me," he snarled. "You tell him when hesees his father walking down street, and he sittin' up there alone onthat automobile, I want him to stop and pick me up when I hail him. Mewalking, while my son swells around in a car! And another thing." Heturned savagely at the door. "You let me hear of him road-housin', andI'll kill him!"

  The wedding was to be at five o'clock. This, in itself, defied alltraditions of the Street, which was either married in the very earlymorning at the Catholic church or at eight o'clock in the evening atthe Presbyterian. There was something reckless about five o'clock. TheStreet felt the dash of it. It had a queer feeling that perhaps such amarriage was not quite legal.

  The question of what to wear became, for the men, an earnest one. Dr. Edresurrected an old black frock-coat and had a "V" of black cambric setin the vest. Mr. Jenkins, the grocer, rented a cutaway, and
bought anew Panama to wear with it. The deaf-and-dumb book agent who boarded atMcKees', and who, by reason of his affliction, was calmly ignorant ofthe excitement around him, wore a borrowed dress-suit, and consideredhimself to the end of his days the only properly attired man in thechurch.

  The younger Wilson was to be one of the ushers. When the newspapers cameout with the published list and this was discovered, as well as thatSidney was the maid of honor, there was a distinct quiver through thehospital training-school. A probationer was authorized to find outparticulars. It was the day of the wedding then, and Sidney, who hadnot been to bed at all, was sitting in a sunny window in the DormitoryAnnex, drying her hair.

  The probationer was distinctly uneasy.

  "I--I just wonder," she said, "if you would let some of the girls comein to see you when you're dressed?"

  "Why, of course I will."

  "It's awfully thrilling, isn't it? And--isn't Dr. Wilson going to be anusher?"

  Sidney colored. "I believe so."

  "Are you going to walk down the aisle with him?"

  "I don't know. They had a rehearsal last night, but of course I was notthere. I--I think I walk alone."

  The probationer had been instructed to find out other things; so she setto work with a fan at Sidney's hair.

  "You've known Dr. Wilson a long time, haven't you?"

  "Ages."

  "He's awfully good-looking, isn't he?"

  Sidney considered. She was not ignorant of the methods of the school. Ifthis girl was pumping her--

  "I'll have to think that over," she said, with a glint of mischief inher eyes. "When you know a person terribly well, you hardly know whetherhe's good-looking or not."

  "I suppose," said the probationer, running the long strands of Sidney'shair through her fingers, "that when you are at home you see him often."

  Sidney got off the window-sill, and, taking the probationer smilingly bythe shoulders, faced her toward the door.

  "You go back to the girls," she said, "and tell them to come in and seeme when I am dressed, and tell them this: I don't know whether I am towalk down the aisle with Dr. Wilson, but I hope I am. I see him veryoften. I like him very much. I hope he likes me. And I think he'shandsome."

  She shoved the probationer out into the hall and locked the door behindher.

  That message in its entirety reached Carlotta Harrison. Her smoulderingeyes flamed. The audacity of it startled her. Sidney must be very sureof herself.

  She, too, had not slept during the day. When the probationer whohad brought her the report had gone out, she lay in her long whitenight-gown, hands clasped under her head, and stared at the vault-likeceiling of her little room.

  She saw there Sidney in her white dress going down the aisle of thechurch; she saw the group around the altar; and, as surely as she laythere, she knew that Max Wilson's eyes would be, not on the bride, buton the girl who stood beside her.

  The curious thing was that Carlotta felt that she could stop the weddingif she wanted to. She'd happened on a bit of information--many a weddinghad been stopped for less. It rather obsessed her to think of stoppingthe wedding, so that Sidney and Max would not walk down the aisletogether.

  There came, at last, an hour before the wedding, a lull in the feverishactivities of the previous month. Everything was ready. In the Lorenzkitchen, piles of plates, negro waiters, ice-cream freezers, and Mrs.Rosenfeld stood in orderly array. In the attic, in the center of asheet, before a toilet-table which had been carried upstairs for herbenefit, sat, on this her day of days, the bride. All the second storyhad been prepared for guests and presents.

  Florists were still busy in the room below. Bridesmaids were clusteredon the little staircase, bending over at each new ring of the bell andcalling reports to Christine through the closed door:--

  "Another wooden box, Christine. It looks like more plates. What will youever do with them all?"

  "Good Heavens! Here's another of the neighbors who wants to see how youlook. Do say you can't have any visitors now."

  Christine sat alone in the center of her sheet. The bridesmaids had beensternly forbidden to come into her room.

  "I haven't had a chance to think for a month," she said. "And I've gotsome things I've got to think out."

  But, when Sidney came, she sent for her. Sidney found her sitting on astiff chair, in her wedding gown, with her veil spread out on a smallstand.

  "Close the door," said Christine. And, after Sidney had kissed her:--

  "I've a good mind not to do it."

  "You're tired and nervous, that's all."

  "I am, of course. But that isn't what's wrong with me. Throw that veilsome place and sit down."

  Christine was undoubtedly rouged, a very delicate touch. Sidney thoughtbrides should be rather pale. But under her eyes were lines that Sidneyhad never seen there before.

  "I'm not going to be foolish, Sidney. I'll go through with it, ofcourse. It would put mamma in her grave if I made a scene now."

  She suddenly turned on Sidney.

  "Palmer gave his bachelor dinner at the Country Club last night. Theyall drank more than they should. Somebody called father up to-day andsaid that Palmer had emptied a bottle of wine into the piano. He hasn'tbeen here to-day."

  "He'll be along. And as for the other--perhaps it wasn't Palmer who didit."

  "That's not it, Sidney. I'm frightened."

  Three months before, perhaps, Sidney could not have comforted her; butthree months had made a change in Sidney. The complacent sophistriesof her girlhood no longer answered for truth. She put her arms aroundChristine's shoulders.

  "A man who drinks is a broken reed," said Christine. "That's what I'mgoing to marry and lean on the rest of my life--a broken reed. And thatisn't all!"

  She got up quickly, and, trailing her long satin train across the floor,bolted the door. Then from inside her corsage she brought out and heldto Sidney a letter. "Special delivery. Read it."

  It was very short; Sidney read it at a glance:--

  Ask your future husband if he knows a girl at 213 ---- Avenue.

  Three months before, the Avenue would have meant nothing to Sidney. Nowshe knew. Christine, more sophisticated, had always known.

  "You see," she said. "That's what I'm up against."

  Quite suddenly Sidney knew who the girl at 213 ---- Avenue was. Thepaper she held in her hand was hospital paper with the heading torn off.The whole sordid story lay before her: Grace Irving, with her thin faceand cropped hair, and the newspaper on the floor of the ward beside her!

  One of the bridesmaids thumped violently on the door outside.

  "Another electric lamp," she called excitedly through the door. "AndPalmer is downstairs."

  "You see," Christine said drearily. "I have received another electriclamp, and Palmer is downstairs! I've got to go through with it, Isuppose. The only difference between me and other brides is that I knowwhat I'm getting. Most of them do not."

  "You're going on with it?"

  "It's too late to do anything else. I am not going to give thisneighborhood anything to talk about."

  She picked up her veil and set the coronet on her head. Sidney stoodwith the letter in her hands. One of K.'s answers to her hot questionhad been this:--

  "There is no sense in looking back unless it helps us to look ahead.What your little girl of the ward has been is not so important as whatshe is going to be."

  "Even granting this to be true," she said to Christine slowly,--"and itmay only be malicious after all, Christine,--it's surely over and donewith. It's not Palmer's past that concerns you now; it's his future withyou, isn't it?"

  Christine had finally adjusted her veil. A band of duchesse lace roselike a coronet from her soft hair, and from it, sweeping to the end ofher train, fell fold after fold of soft tulle. She arranged the coronetcarefully with small pearl-topped pins. Then she rose and put her handson Sidney's shoulders.

  "The simple truth is," she said quietly, "that I might hold Palmer ifI cared--ter
ribly. I don't. And I'm afraid he knows it. It's my pridethat's hurt, nothing else."

  And thus did Christine Lorenz go down to her wedding.

  Sidney stood for a moment, her eyes on the letter she held. Already, inher new philosophy, she had learned many strange things. One of them wasthis: that women like Grace Irving did not betray their lovers; that thecode of the underworld was "death to the squealer"; that one played thegame, and won or lost, and if he lost, took his medicine. If not Grace,then who? Somebody else in the hospital who knew her story, of course.But who? And again--why?

  Before going downstairs, Sidney placed the letter in a saucer and setfire to it with a match. Some of the radiance had died out of her eyes.

  The Street voted the wedding a great success. The alley, however, wasrather confused by certain things. For instance, it regarded the awningas essentially for the carriage guests, and showed a tendency to duckin under the side when no one was looking. Mrs. Rosenfeld absolutelyrefused to take the usher's arm which was offered her, and said sheguessed she was able to walk up alone.

  Johnny Rosenfeld came, as befitted his position, in a completechauffeur's outfit of leather cap and leggings, with the shield that washis State license pinned over his heart.

  The Street came decorously, albeit with a degree of uncertainty as tosupper. Should they put something on the stove before they left, in caseonly ice cream and cake were served at the house? Or was it just as wellto trust to luck, and, if the Lorenz supper proved inadequate, to sitdown to a cold snack when they got home?

  To K., sitting in the back of the church between Harriet and Anna, thewedding was Sidney--Sidney only. He watched her first steps down theaisle, saw her chin go up as she gained poise and confidence, watchedthe swinging of her young figure in its gauzy white as she passed himand went forward past the long rows of craning necks. Afterward he couldnot remember the wedding party at all. The service for him was Sidney,rather awed and very serious, beside the altar. It was Sidney who camedown the aisle to the triumphant strains of the wedding march, Sidneywith Max beside her!

  On his right sat Harriet, having reached the first pinnacle of hernew career. The wedding gowns were successful. They were more thanthat--they were triumphant. Sitting there, she cast comprehensive eyesover the church, filled with potential brides.

  To Harriet, then, that October afternoon was a future of endless laceand chiffon, the joy of creation, triumph eclipsing triumph. But toAnna, watching the ceremony with blurred eyes and ineffectual bluishlips, was coming her hour. Sitting back in the pew, with her handsfolded over her prayer-book, she said a little prayer for her straightyoung daughter, facing out from the altar with clear, unafraid eyes.

  As Sidney and Max drew near the door, Joe Drummond, who had beenstanding at the back of the church, turned quickly and went out. Hestumbled, rather, as if he could not see.