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"Do you believe that, K.?"
"I do. He saw Max coming out and misunderstood. He fired at him then."
"He did it for me. I feel very guilty, K., as if it all comes back to me. I'll write to him, of course. Poor Joe!"
He watched her go down the hall toward the night nurse's desk. He would have given everything just then for the right to call her back, to take her in his arms and comfort her. She seemed so alone. He himself had gone through loneliness and heartache, and the shadow was still on him. He waited until he saw her sit down at the desk and take up a pen. Then he went back into the quiet room.
He stood by the bedside, looking down. Wilson was breathing quietly: his color was coming up, as he rallied from the shock. In K.'s mind now was just one thought—to bring him through for Sidney, and then to go away. He might follow Joe to Cuba. There were chances there. He could do sanitation work, or he might try the Canal.
The Street would go on working out its own salvation. He would have to think of something for the Rosenfelds. And he was worried about Christine. But there again, perhaps it would be better if he went away. Christine's story would have to work itself out. His hands were tied.
He was glad in a way that Sidney had asked no questions about him, had accepted his new identity so calmly. It had been overshadowed by the night tragedy. It would have pleased him if she had shown more interest, of course. But he understood. It was enough, he told himself, that he had helped her, that she counted on him. But more and more he knew in his heart that it was not enough. "I'd better get away from here," he told himself savagely.
And having taken the first step toward flight, as happens in such cases, he was suddenly panicky with fear, fear that he would get out of hand, and take her in his arms, whether or no; a temptation to run from temptation, to cut everything and go with Joe that night. But there his sense of humor saved him. That would be a sight for the gods, two defeated lovers flying together under the soft September moon.
Some one entered the room. He thought it was Sidney and turned with the light in his eyes that was only for her. It was Carlotta.
She was not in uniform. She wore a dark skirt and white waist and her high heels tapped as she crossed the room. She came directly to him.
"He is better, isn't he?"
"He is rallying. Of course it will be a day or two before we are quite sure."
She stood looking down at Wilson's quiet figure.
"I guess you know I've been crazy about him," she said quietly. "Well, that's all over. He never really cared for me. I played his game and I—lost. I've been expelled from the school."
Quite suddenly she dropped on her knees beside the bed, and put her cheek close to the sleeping man's hand. When after a moment she rose, she was controlled again, calm, very white.
"Will you tell him, Dr. Edwardes, when he is conscious, that I came in and said good-bye?"
"I will, of course. Do you want to leave any other message?"
She hesitated, as if the thought tempted her. Then she shrugged her shoulders.
"What would be the use? He doesn't want any message from me."
She turned toward the door. But K. could not let her go like that. Her face frightened him. It was too calm, too controlled. He followed her across the room.
"What are your plans?"
"I haven't any. I'm about through with my training, but I've lost my diploma."
"I don't like to see you going away like this."
She avoided his eyes, but his kindly tone did what neither the Head nor the Executive Committee had done that day. It shook her control.
"What does it matter to you? You don't owe me anything."
"Perhaps not. One way and another I've known you a long time."
"You never knew anything very good."
"I'll tell you where I live, and—"
"I know where you live."
"Will you come to see me there? We may be able to think of something."
"What is there to think of? This story will follow me wherever I go! I've tried twice for a diploma and failed. What's the use?"
But in the end he prevailed on her to promise not to leave the city until she had seen him again. It was not until she had gone, a straight figure with haunted eyes, that he reflected whimsically that once again he had defeated his own plans for flight.
In the corridor outside the door Carlotta hesitated. Why not go back? Why not tell him? He was kind; he was going to do something for her. But the old instinct of self-preservation prevailed. She went on to her room.
Sidney brought her letter to Joe back to K. She was flushed with the effort and with a new excitement.
"This is the letter, K., and—I haven't been able to say what I wanted, exactly. You'll let him know, won't you, how I feel, and how I blame myself?"
K. promised gravely.
"And the most remarkable thing has happened. What a day this has been! Somebody has sent Johnny Rosenfeld a lot of money. The ward nurse wants you to come back."
The ward had settled for the night. The well-ordered beds of the daytime were chaotic now, torn apart by tossing figures. The night was hot and an electric fan hummed in a far corner. Under its sporadic breezes, as it turned, the ward was trying to sleep.
Johnny Rosenfeld was not asleep. An incredible thing had happened to him. A fortune lay under his pillow. He was sure it was there, for ever since it came his hot hand had clutched it.
He was quite sure that somehow or other K. had had a hand in it. When he disclaimed it, the boy was bewildered.
"It'll buy the old lady what she wants for the house, anyhow," he said. "But I hope nobody's took up a collection for me. I don't want no charity."
"Maybe Mr. Howe sent it."
"You can bet your last match he didn't."
In some unknown way the news had reached the ward that Johnny's friend, Mr. Le Moyne, was a great surgeon. Johnny had rejected it scornfully.
"He works in the gas office," he said, "I've seen him there. If he's a surgeon, what's he doing in the gas office. If he's a surgeon, what's he doing teaching me raffia-work? Why isn't he on his job?"
But the story had seized on his imagination.
"Say, Mr. Le Moyne."
"Yes, Jack."
He called him "Jack." The boy liked it. It savored of man to man. After all, he was a man, or almost. Hadn't he driven a car? Didn't he have a state license?
"They've got a queer story about you here in the ward."
"Not scandal, I trust, Jack!"
"They say that you're a surgeon; that you operated on Dr. Wilson and saved his life. They say that you're the king pin where you came from." He eyed K. wistfully. "I know it's a damn lie, but if it's true—"
"I used to be a surgeon. As a matter of fact I operated on Dr. Wilson to-day. I—I am rather apologetic, Jack, because I didn't explain to you sooner. For—various reasons—I gave up that—that line of business. To-day they rather forced my hand."
"Don't you think you could do something for me, sir?"
When K. did not reply at once, he launched into an explanation.
"I've been lying here a good while. I didn't say much because I knew I'd have to take a chance. Either I'd pull through or I wouldn't, and the odds were—well, I didn't say much. The old lady's had a lot of trouble. But now, with THIS under my pillow for her, I've got a right to ask. I'll take a chance, if you will."
"It's only a chance, Jack."
"I know that. But lie here and watch these soaks off the street. Old, a lot of them, and gettin' well to go out and starve, and—My God! Mr. Le Moyne, they can walk, and I can't."
K. drew a long breath. He had started, and now he must go on. Faith in himself or no faith, he must go on. Life, that had loosed its hold on him for a time, had found him again.
"I'll go over you carefully to-morrow, Jack. I'll tell you your chances honestly."
"I have a thousand dollars. Whatever you charge—"
"I'll take it out of my board bill in the new house!"
At four o'clock that morning K. got back from seeing Joe off. The trip had been without accident.
Over Sidney's letter Joe had shed a shamefaced tear or two. And during the night ride, with K. pushing the car to the utmost, he had felt that the boy, in keeping his hand in his pocket, had kept it on the letter. When the road was smooth and stretched ahead, a gray-white line into the night, he tried to talk a little courage into the boy's sick heart.
"You'll see new people, new life," he said. "In a month from now you'll wonder why you ever hung around the Street. I have a feeling that you're going to make good down there."
And once, when the time for parting was very near,—"No matter what happens, keep on believing in yourself. I lost my faith in myself once. It was pretty close to hell."
Joe's response showed his entire self-engrossment.
"If he dies, I'm a murderer."
"He's not going to die," said K. stoutly.
At four o'clock in the morning he left the car at the garage and walked around to the little house. He had had no sleep for forty-five hours; his eyes were sunken in his head; the skin over his temples looked drawn and white. His clothes were wrinkled; the soft hat he habitually wore was white with the dust of the road.
As he opened the hall door, Christine stirred in the room beyond. She came out fully dressed.
"K., are you sick?"
"Rather tired. Why in the world aren't you in bed?"
"Palmer has just come home in a terrible rage. He says he's been robbed of a thousand dollars."
"Where?"
Christine shrugged her shoulders.
"He doesn't know, or says he doesn't. I'm glad of it. He seems thoroughly frightened. It may be a lesson."
In the dim hall light he realized that her face was strained and set. She looked on the verge of hysteria.
"Poor little woman," he said. "I'm sorry, Christine."
The tender words broke down the last barrier of her self-control.
"Oh, K.! Take me away. Take me away! I can't stand it any longer."
She held her arms out to him, and because he was very tired and lonely, and because more than anything else in the world just then he needed a woman's arms, he drew her to him and held her close, his cheek to her hair.
"Poor girl!" he said. "Poor Christine! Surely there must be some happiness for us somewhere."
But the next moment he let her go and stepped back.
"I'm sorry." Characteristically he took the blame. "I shouldn't have done that—You know how it is with me."
"Will it always be Sidney?"
"I'm afraid it will always be Sidney."
CHAPTER XXVIII
Johnny Rosenfeld was dead. All of K.'s skill had not sufficed to save him. The operation had been a marvel, but the boy's long-sapped strength failed at the last.
K., set of face, stayed with him to the end. The boy did not know he was going. He roused from the coma and smiled up at Le Moyne.
"I've got a hunch that I can move my right foot," he said. "Look and see."
K. lifted the light covering.
"You're right, old man. It's moving."
"Brake foot, clutch foot," said Johnny, and closed his eyes again.
K. had forbidden the white screens, that outward symbol of death. Time enough for them later. So the ward had no suspicion, nor had the boy.
The ward passed in review. It was Sunday, and from the chapel far below came the faint singing of a hymn. When Johnny spoke again he did not open his eyes.
"You're some operator, Mr. Le Moyne. I'll put in a word for you whenever I get a chance."
"Yes, put in a word for me," said K. huskily.
He felt that Johnny would be a good mediator—that whatever he, K., had done of omission or commission, Johnny's voice before the Tribunal would count.
The lame young violin-player came into the ward. She had cherished a secret and romantic affection for Max Wilson, and now he was in the hospital and ill. So she wore the sacrificial air of a young nun and played "The Holy City."
Johnny was close on the edge of his long sleep by that time, and very comfortable.
"Tell her nix on the sob stuff," he complained. "Ask her to play 'I'm twenty-one and she's eighteen.'"
She was rather outraged, but on K.'s quick explanation she changed to the staccato air.
"Ask her if she'll come a little nearer; I can't hear her."
So she moved to the foot of the bed, and to the gay little tune Johnny began his long sleep. But first he asked K. a question: "Are you sure I'm going to walk, Mr. Le Moyne?"
"I give you my solemn word," said K. huskily, "that you are going to be better than you have ever been in your life."
It was K. who, seeing he would no longer notice, ordered the screens to be set around the bed, K. who drew the coverings smooth and folded the boy's hands over his breast.
The violin-player stood by uncertainly.
"How very young he is! Was it an accident?"
"It was the result of a man's damnable folly," said K. grimly. "Somebody always pays."
And so Johnny Rosenfeld paid.
The immediate result of his death was that K., who had gained some of his faith in himself on seeing Wilson on the way to recovery, was beset by his old doubts. What right had he to arrogate to himself again powers of life and death? Over and over he told himself that there had been no carelessness here, that the boy would have died ultimately, that he had taken the only chance, that the boy himself had known the risk and begged for it.
The old doubts came back.
And now came a question that demanded immediate answer. Wilson would be out of commission for several months, probably. He was gaining, but slowly. And he wanted K. to take over his work.
"Why not?" he demanded, half irritably. "The secret is out. Everybody knows who you are. You're not thinking about going back to that ridiculous gas office, are you?"
"I had some thought of going to Cuba."
"I'm damned if I understand you. You've done a marvelous thing; I lie here and listen to the staff singing your praises until I'm sick of your name! And now, because a boy who wouldn't have lived anyhow—"
"That's not it," K. put in hastily. "I know all that. I guess I could do it and get away with it as well as the average. All that deters me—I've never told you, have I, why I gave up before?"
Wilson was propped up in his bed. K. was walking restlessly about the room, as was his habit when troubled.
"I've heard the gossip; that's all."
"When you recognized me that night on the balcony, I told you I'd lost my faith in myself, and you said the whole affair had been gone over at the State Society. As a matter of fact, the Society knew of only two cases. There had been three."
"Even at that—"
"You know what I always felt about the profession, Max. We went into that more than once in Berlin. Either one's best or nothing. I had done pretty well. When I left Lorch and built my own hospital, I hadn't a doubt of myself. And because I was getting results I got a lot of advertising. Men began coming to the clinics. I found I was making enough out of the patients who could pay to add a few free wards. I want to tell you now, Wilson, that the opening of those free wards was the greatest self-indulgence I ever permitted myself. I'd seen so much careless attention given the poor—well, never mind that. It was almost three years ago that things began to go wrong. I lost a big case."
"I know. All this doesn't influence me, Edwardes."
"Wait a moment. We had a system in the operating-room as perfect as I could devise it. I never finished an operation without having my first assistant verify the clip and sponge count. But that first case died because a sponge had been left in the operating field. You know how those things go; you can't always see them, and one goes by the count, after reasonable caution. Then I lost another case in the same way—a free case.
"As well as I could tell, the precautions had not been relaxed. I was doing from four to six cases a day. After the second one I almost went crazy. I made up my mind, if there was ever another, I'd give up and go away."
"There was another?"
"Not for several months. When the last case died, a free case again, I performed my own autopsy. I allowed only my first assistant in the room. He was almost as frenzied as I was. It was the same thing again. When I told him I was going away, he offered to take the blame himself, to say he had closed the incision. He tried to make me think he was responsible. I knew—better."
"It's incredible."
"Exactly; but it's true. The last patient was a laborer. He left a family. I've sent them money from time to time. I used to sit and think about the children he left, and what would become of them. The ironic part of it was that, for all that had happened, I was busier all the time. Men were sending me cases from all over the country. It was either stay and keep on working, with that chance, or—quit. I quit." "But if you had stayed, and taken extra precautions—"
"We'd taken every precaution we knew."
Neither of the men spoke for a time. K. stood, his tall figure outlined against the window. Far off, in the children's ward, children were laughing; from near by a very young baby wailed a thin cry of protest against life; a bell rang constantly. K.'s mind was busy with the past—with the day he decided to give up and go away, with the months of wandering and homelessness, with the night he had come upon the Street and had seen Sidney on the doorstep of the little house.
"That's the worst, is it?" Max Wilson demanded at last.
"That's enough."
"It's extremely significant. You had an enemy somewhere—on your staff, probably. This profession of ours is a big one, but you know its jealousies. Let a man get his shoulders above the crowd, and the pack is after him." He laughed a little. "Mixed figure, but you know what I mean."
K. shook his head. He had had that gift of the big man everywhere, in every profession, of securing the loyalty of his followers. He would have trusted every one of them with his life.
"You're going to do it, of course."
"Take up your work?"
"Yes."
He stirred restlessly. To stay on, to be near Sidney, perhaps to stand by as Wilson's best man when he was married—it turned him cold. But he did not give a decided negative. The sick man was flushed and growing fretful; it would not do to irritate him.
"Give me another day on it," he said at last. And so the matter stood.
Max's injury had been productive of good, in one way. It had brought the two brothers closer together. In the mornings Max was restless until Dr. Ed arrived. When he came, he brought books in the shabby bag—his beloved Burns, although he needed no book for that, the "Pickwick Papers," Renan's "Lives of the Disciples." Very often Max world doze off; at the cessation of Dr. Ed's sonorous voice the sick man would stir fretfully and demand more. But because he listened to everything without discrimination, the older man came to the conclusion that it was the companionship that counted. It pleased him vastly. It reminded him of Max's boyhood, when he had read to Max at night. For once in the last dozen years, he needed him.
"Go on, Ed. What in blazes makes you stop every five minutes?" Max protested, one day.
Dr. Ed, who had only stopped to bite off the end of a stogie to hold in his cheek, picked up his book in a hurry, and eyed the invalid over it.
"Stop bullying. I'll read when I'm ready. Have you any idea what I'm reading?"
"Of course."
"Well, I haven't. For ten minutes I've been reading across both pages!"
Max laughed, and suddenly put out his hand. Demonstrations of affection were so rare with him that for a moment Dr. Ed was puzzled. Then, rather sheepishly, he took it.
"When I get out," Max said, "we'll have to go out to the White Springs again and have supper."
That was all; but Ed understood.
Morning and evening, Sidney went to Max's room. In the morning she only smiled at him from the doorway. In the evening she went to him after prayers. She was allowed an hour with him then.
The shooting had been a closed book between them. At first, when he began to recover, he tried to talk to her about it. But she refused to listen. She was very gentle with him, but very firm.
"I know how it happened, Max," she said—"about Joe's mistake and all that. The rest can wait until you are much better."
If there had been any change in her manner to him, he would not have submitted so easily, probably. But she was as tender as ever, unfailingly patient, prompt to come to him and slow to leave. After a time he began to dread reopening the subject. She seemed so effectually to have closed it. Carlotta was gone. And, after all, what good could he do his cause by pleading it? The fact was there, and Sidney knew it.
On the day when K. had told Max his reason for giving up his work, Max was allowed out of bed for the first time. It was a great day. A box of red roses came that day from the girl who had refused him a year or more ago. He viewed them with a carelessness that was half assumed.
The news had traveled to the Street that he was to get up that day. Early that morning the doorkeeper had opened the door to a gentleman who did not speak, but who handed in a bunch of early chrysanthemums and proceeded to write, on a pad he drew from his pocket:—
"From Mrs. McKee's family and guests, with their congratulations on your recovery, and their hope that they will see you again soon. If their ends are clipped every day and they are placed in ammonia water, they will last indefinitely." Sidney spent her hour with Max that evening as usual. His big chair had been drawn close to a window, and she found him there, looking out. She kissed him. But this time, instead of letting her draw away, he put out his arms and caught her to him.
"Are you glad?"
"Very glad, indeed," she said soberly.
"Then smile at me. You don't smile any more. You ought to smile; your mouth—"
"I am almost always tired; that's all, Max."
She eyed him bravely.
"Aren't you going to let me make love to you at all? You get away beyond my reach."
"I was looking for the paper to read to you."
A sudden suspicion flamed in his eyes.
"Sidney."
"Yes, dear."
"You don't like me to touch you any more. Come here where I can see you."
The fear of agitating him brought her quickly. For a moment he was appeased.
"That's more like it. How lovely you are, Sidney!" He lifted first one hand and then the other to his lips. "Are you ever going to forgive me?"
"If you mean about Carlotta, I forgave that long ago."
He was almost boyishly relieved. What a wonder she was! So lovely, and so sane. Many a woman would have held that over him for years—not that he had done anything really wrong on that nightmare excursion. But so many women are exigent about promises.
"When are you going to marry me?"
"We needn't discuss that to-night, Max."
"I want you so very much. I don't want to wait, dear. Let me tell Ed that you will marry me soon. Then, when I go away, I'll take you with me."
"Can't we talk things over when you are stronger?"
Her tone caught his attention, and turned him a little white. He faced her to the window, so that the light fell full on her.
"What things? What do you mean?"
He had forced her hand. She had meant to wait; but, with his keen eyes on her, she could not dissemble.
"I am going to make you very unhappy for a little while."
"Well?"
"I've had a lot of time to think. If you had really wanted me, Max—"
"My God, of course I want you!"
"It isn't that I am angry. I am not even jealous. I was at first. It isn't that. It's hard to make you understand. I think you care for me—"
"I love you! I swear I never loved any other woman as I love you."
Suddenly he remembered that he had also sworn to put Carlotta out of his life. He knew that Sidney remembered, too; but she gave no sign.
"Perhaps that's true. You might go on caring for me. Sometimes I think you would. But there would always be other women, Max. You're like that. Perhaps you can't help it."
"If you loved me you could do anything with me." He was half sullen.
By the way her color leaped, he knew he had struck fire. All his conjectures as to how Sidney would take the knowledge of his entanglement with Carlotta had been founded on one major premise—that she loved him. The mere suspicion made him gasp.
"But, good Heavens, Sidney, you do care for me, don't you?"
"I'm afraid I don't, Max; not enough."
She tried to explain, rather pitifully. After one look at his face, she spoke to the window.
"I'm so wretched about it. I thought I cared. To me you were the best and greatest man that ever lived. I—when I said my prayers, I—But that doesn't matter. You were a sort of god to me. When the Lamb—that's one of the internes, you know—nicknamed you the 'Little Tin God,' I was angry. You could never be anything little to me, or do anything that wasn't big. Do you see?"
He groaned under his breath.
"No man could live up to that, Sidney."
"No. I see that now. But that's the way I cared. Now I know that I didn't care for you, really, at all. I built up an idol and worshiped it. I always saw you through a sort of haze. You were operating, with everybody standing by, saying how wonderful it was. Or you were coming to the wards, and everything was excitement, getting ready for you. I blame myself terribly. But you see, don't you? It isn't that I think you are wicked. It's just that I never loved the real you, because I never knew you."
When he remained silent, she made an attempt to justify herself.
"I'd known very few men," she said. "I came into the hospital, and for a time life seemed very terrible. There were wickednesses I had never heard of, and somebody always paying for them. I was always asking, Why? Why? Then you would come in, and a lot of them you cured and sent out. You gave them their chance, don't you see? Until I knew about Carlotta, you always meant that to me. You were like K.—always helping."
The room was very silent. In the nurses' parlor, a few feet down the corridor, the nurses were at prayers.
"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want," read the Head, her voice calm with the quiet of twilight and the end of the day.
"He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters."
The nurses read the response a little slowly, as if they, too, were weary.
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death—"
The man in the chair stirred. He had come through the valley of the shadow, and for what? He was very bitter. He said to himself savagely that they would better have let him die. "You say you never loved me because you never knew me. I'm not a rotter, Sidney. Isn't it possible that the man you, cared about, who—who did his best by people and all that—is the real me?"
She gazed at him thoughtfully. He missed something out of her eyes, the sort of luminous, wistful look with which she had been wont to survey his greatness. Measured by this new glance, so clear, so appraising, he sank back into his chair.
"The man who did his best is quite real. You have always done the best in your work; you always will. But the other is a part of you too, Max. Even if I cared, I would not dare to run the risk."
Under the window rang the sharp gong of a city patrol-wagon. It rumbled through the gates back to the courtyard, where its continued clamor summoned white-coated orderlies.
An operating-room case, probably. Sidney, chin lifted, listened carefully. If it was a case for her, the elevator would go up to the operating-room. With a renewed sense of loss, Max saw that already she had put him out of her mind. The call to service was to her a call to battle. Her sensitive nostrils quivered; her young figure stood erect, alert.
"It has gone up!"
She took a step toward the door, hesitated, came back, and put a light hand on his shoulder.
"I'm sorry, dear Max."
She had kissed him lightly on the cheek before he knew what she intended to do. So passionless was the little caress that, perhaps more than anything else, it typified the change in their relation.
When the door closed behind her, he saw that she had left her ring on the arm of his chair. He picked it up. It was still warm from her finger. He held it to his lips with a quick gesture. In all his successful young life he had never before felt the bitterness of failure. The very warmth of the little ring hurt.
Why hadn't they let him die? He didn't want to live—he wouldn't live. Nobody cared for him! He would—
His eyes, lifted from the ring, fell on the red glow of the roses that had come that morning. Even in the half light, they glowed with fiery color.
The ring was in his right hand. With the left he settled his collar and soft silk tie.
K. saw Carlotta that evening for the last time. Katie brought word to him, where he was helping Harriet close her trunk,—she was on her way to Europe for the fall styles,—that he was wanted in the lower hall.
"A lady!" she said, closing the door behind her by way of caution. "And a good thing for her she's not from the alley. The way those people beg off you is a sin and a shame, and it's not at home you're going to be to them from now on."
So K. had put on his coat and, without so much as a glance in Harriet's mirror, had gone down the stairs. Carlotta was in the lower hall. She stood under the chandelier, and he saw at once the ravages that trouble had made in her. She was a dead white, and she looked ten years older than her age.
"I came, you see, Dr. Edwardes."
Now and then, when some one came to him for help, which was generally money, he used Christine's parlor, if she happened to be out. So now, finding the door ajar, and the room dark, he went in and turned on the light.
"Come in here; we can talk better."
She did not sit down at first; but, observing that her standing kept him on his feet, she sat finally. Evidently she found it hard to speak.
"You were to come," K. encouraged her, "to see if we couldn't plan something for you. Now, I think I've got it."
"If it's another hospital—and I don't want to stay here, in the city."
"You like surgical work, don't you?"
"I don't care for anything else."
"Before we settle this, I'd better tell you what I'm thinking of. You know, of course, that I closed my hospital. I—a series of things happened, and I decided I was in the wrong business. That wouldn't be important, except for what it leads to. They are trying to persuade me to go back, and—I'm trying to persuade myself that I'm fit to go back. You see,"—his tone was determinedly cheerful, "my faith in myself has been pretty nearly gone. When one loses that, there isn't much left."
"You had been very successful." She did not look up.
"Well, I had and I hadn't. I'm not going to worry you about that. My offer is this: We'll just try to forget about—about Schwitter's and all the rest, and if I go back I'll take you on in the operating-room."
"You sent me away once!"
"Well, I can ask you to come back, can't I?" He smiled at her encouragingly.
"Are you sure you understand about Max Wilson and myself?"
"I understand."
"Don't you think you are taking a risk?"
"Every one makes mistakes now and then, and loving women have made mistakes since the world began. Most people live in glass houses, Miss Harrison. And don't make any mistake about this: people can always come back. No depth is too low. All they need is the willpower."
He smiled down at her. She had come armed with confession. But the offer he made was too alluring. It meant reinstatement, another chance, when she had thought everything was over. After all, why should she damn herself? She would go back. She would work her finger-ends off for him. She would make it up to him in other ways. But she could not tell him and lose everything.
"Come," he said. "Shall we go back and start over again?"
He held out his hand.
CHAPTER XXIX
Late September had come, with the Street, after its summer indolence taking up the burden of the year. At eight-thirty and at one the school bell called the children. Little girls in pig-tails, carrying freshly sharpened pencils, went primly toward the school, gathering, comet fashion, a tail of unwilling brothers as they went.
An occasional football hurtled through the air. Le Moyne had promised the baseball club a football outfit, rumor said, but would not coach them himself this year. A story was going about that Mr. Le Moyne intended to go away.
The Street had been furiously busy for a month. The cobblestones had gone, and from curb to curb stretched smooth asphalt. The fascination of writing on it with chalk still obsessed the children. Every few yards was a hop-scotch diagram. Generally speaking, too, the Street had put up new curtains, and even, here and there, had added a coat of paint.
To this general excitement the strange case of Mr. Le Moyne had added its quota. One day he was in the gas office, making out statements that were absolutely ridiculous. (What with no baking all last month, and every Sunday spent in the country, nobody could have used that amount of gas. They could come and take their old meter out!) And the next there was the news that Mr. Le Moyne had been only taking a holiday in the gas office,—paying off old scores, the barytone at Mrs. McKee's hazarded!—and that he was really a very great surgeon and had saved Dr. Max Wilson.
The Street, which was busy at the time deciding whether to leave the old sidewalks or to put down cement ones, had one evening of mad excitement over the matter,—of K., not the sidewalks,—and then had accepted the new situation.
But over the news of K.'s approaching departure it mourned. What was the matter with things, anyhow? Here was Christine's marriage, which had promised so well,—awnings and palms and everything,—turning out badly. True, Palmer Howe was doing better, but he would break out again. And Johnny Rosenfeld was dead, so that his mother came on washing-days, and brought no cheery gossip; but bent over her tubs dry-eyed and silent—even the approaching move to a larger house failed to thrill her. There was Tillie, too. But one did not speak of her. She was married now, of course; but the Street did not tolerate such a reversal of the usual processes as Tillie had indulged in. It censured Mrs. McKee severely for having been, so to speak, and accessory after the fact.
The Street made a resolve to keep K., if possible. If he had shown any "high and mightiness," as they called it, since the change in his estate, it would have let him go without protest. But when a man is the real thing,—so that the newspapers give a column to his having been in the city almost two years,—and still goes about in the same shabby clothes, with the same friendly greeting for every one, it demonstrates clearly, as the barytone put it, that "he's got no swelled head on him; that's sure."
"Anybody can see by the way he drives that machine of Wilson's that he's been used to a car—likely a foreign one. All the swells have foreign cars." Still the barytone, who was almost as fond of conversation as of what he termed "vocal." "And another thing. Do you notice the way he takes Dr. Ed around? Has him at every consultation. The old boy's tickled to death."
A little later, K., coming up the Street as he had that first day, heard the barytone singing:—
"Home is the hunter, home from the hill, And the sailor, home from sea."
Home! Why, this WAS home. The Street seemed to stretch out its arms to him. The ailanthus tree waved in the sunlight before the little house. Tree and house were old; September had touched them. Christine sat sewing on the balcony. A boy with a piece of chalk was writing something on the new cement under the tree. He stood back, head on one side, when he had finished, and inspected his work. K. caught him up from behind, and, swinging him around—
"Hey!" he said severely. "Don't you know better than to write all over the street? What'll I do to you? Give you to a policeman?"
"Aw, lemme down, Mr. K."
"You tell the boys that if I find this street scrawled over any more, the picnic's off."
"Aw, Mr. K.!"
"I mean it. Go and spend some of that chalk energy of yours in school."
He put the boy down. There was a certain tenderness in his hands, as in his voice, when he dealt with children. All his severity did not conceal it. "Get along with you, Bill. Last bell's rung."
As the boy ran off, K.'s eye fell on what he had written on the cement. At a certain part of his career, the child of such a neighborhood as the Street "cancels" names. It is a part of his birthright. He does it as he whittles his school desk or tries to smoke the long dried fruit of the Indian cigar tree. So K. read in chalk an the smooth street:—
Max Wilson Marriage. Sidney Page Love.
[Note: the a, l, s, and n of "Max Wilson" are crossed through, as are the S, d, n, and a of "Sidney Page"]
The childish scrawl stared up at him impudently, a sacred thing profaned by the day. K. stood and looked at it. The barytone was still singing; but now it was "I'm twenty-one, and she's eighteen." It was a cheerful air, as should be the air that had accompanied Johnny Rosenfeld to his long sleep. The light was gone from K.'s face again. After all, the Street meant for him not so much home as it meant Sidney. And now, before very long, that book of his life, like others, would have to be closed.
He turned and went heavily into the little house.
Christine called to him from her little balcony:—
"I thought I heard your step outside. Have you time to come out?"
K. went through the parlor and stood in the long window. His steady eyes looked down at her.
"I see very little of you now," she complained. And, when he did not reply immediately: "Have you made any definite plans, K.?"
"I shall do Max's work until he is able to take hold again. After that—"
"You will go away?"
"I think so. I am getting a good many letters, one way and another. I suppose, now I'm back in harness, I'll stay. My old place is closed. I'd go back there—they want me. But it seems so futile, Christine, to leave as I did, because I felt that I had no right to go on as things were; and now to crawl back on the strength of having had my hand forced, and to take up things again, not knowing that I've a bit more right to do it than when I left!"
"I went to see Max yesterday. You know what he thinks about all that."
He took an uneasy turn up and down the balcony.
"But who?" he demanded. "Who would do such a thing? I tell you, Christine, it isn't possible."
She did not pursue the subject. Her thoughts had flown ahead to the little house without K., to days without his steps on the stairs or the heavy creak of his big chair overhead as he dropped into it.
But perhaps it would be better if he went. She had her own life to live. She had no expectation of happiness, but, somehow or other, she must build on the shaky foundation of her marriage a house of life, with resignation serving for content, perhaps with fear lurking always. That she knew. But with no active misery. Misery implied affection, and her love for Palmer was quite dead.
"Sidney will be here this afternoon."
"Good." His tone was non-committal.
"Has it occurred to you, K., that Sidney is not very happy?"
He stopped in front of her.
"She's had a great anxiety."
"She has no anxiety now. Max is doing well."
"Then what is it?"
"I'm not quite sure, but I think I know. She's lost faith in Max, and she's not like me. I—I knew about Palmer before I married him. I got a letter. It's all rather hideous—I needn't go into it. I was afraid to back out; it was just before my wedding. But Sidney has more character than I have. Max isn't what she thought he was, and I doubt whether she'll marry him."
K. glanced toward the street where Sidney's name and Max's lay open to the sun and to the smiles of the Street. Christine might be right, but that did not alter things for him.
Christine's thoughts went back inevitably to herself; to Palmer, who was doing better just now; to K., who was going away—went back with an ache to the night K. had taken her in his arms and then put her away. How wrong things were! What a mess life was!
"When you go away," she said at last, "I want you to remember this. I'm going to do my best, K. You have taught me all I know. All my life I'll have to overlook things; I know that. But, in his way, Palmer cares for me. He will always come back, and perhaps sometime—"
Her voice trailed off. Far ahead of her she saw the years stretching out, marked, not by days and months, but by Palmer's wanderings away, his remorseful returns.
"Do a little more than forgetting," K. said. "Try to care for him, Christine. You did once. And that's your strongest weapon. It's always a woman's strongest weapon. And it wins in the end."
"I shall try, K.," she answered obediently.
But he turned away from the look in her eyes.
Harriet was abroad. She had sent cards from Paris to her "trade." It was an innovation. The two or three people on the Street who received her engraved announcement that she was there, "buying new chic models for the autumn and winter—afternoon frocks, evening gowns, reception dresses, and wraps, from Poiret, Martial et Armand, and others," left the envelopes casually on the parlor table, as if communications from Paris were quite to be expected.
So K. lunched alone, and ate little. After luncheon he fixed a broken ironing-stand for Katie, and in return she pressed a pair of trousers for him. He had it in mind to ask Sidney to go out with him in Max's car, and his most presentable suit was very shabby.
"I'm thinking," said Katie, when she brought the pressed garments up over her arm and passed them in through a discreet crack in the door, "that these pants will stand more walking than sitting, Mr. K. They're getting mighty thin."
"I'll take a duster along in case of accident," he promised her; "and to-morrow I'll order a suit, Katie."
"I'll believe it when I see it," said Katie from the stairs. "Some fool of a woman from the alley will come in to-night and tell you she can't pay her rent, and she'll take your suit away in her pocket-book—as like as not to pay an installment on a piano. There's two new pianos in the alley since you came here."
"I promise it, Katie."
"Show it to me," said Katie laconically. "And don't go to picking up anything you drop!"
Sidney came home at half-past two—came delicately flushed, as if she had hurried, and with a tremulous smile that caught Katie's eye at once.
"Bless the child!" she said. "There's no need to ask how he is to-day. You're all one smile."
The smile set just a trifle.
"Katie, some one has written my name out on the street, in chalk. It's with Dr. Wilson's, and it looks so silly. Please go out and sweep it off."
"I'm about crazy with their old chalk. I'll do it after a while."
"Please do it now. I don't want anyone to see it. Is—is Mr. K. upstairs?"
But when she learned that K. was upstairs, oddly enough, she did not go up at once. She stood in the lower hall and listened. Yes, he was there. She could hear him moving about. Her lips parted slightly as she listened.
Christine, looking in from her balcony, saw her there, and, seeing something in her face that she had never suspected, put her hand to her throat.
"Sidney!"
"Oh—hello, Chris."
"Won't you come and sit with me?"
"I haven't much time—that is, I want to speak to K."
"You can see him when he comes down."
Sidney came slowly through the parlor. It occurred to her, all at once, that Christine must see a lot of K., especially now. No doubt he was in and out of the house often. And how pretty Christine was! She was unhappy, too. All that seemed to be necessary to win K.'s attention was to be unhappy enough. Well, surely, in that case—
"How is Max?"
"Still better."
Sidney sat down on the edge of the railing; but she was careful, Christine saw, to face the staircase. There was silence on the balcony. Christine sewed; Sidney sat and swung her feet idly.
"Dr. Ed says Max wants you to give up your training and marry him now."
"I'm not going to marry him at all, Chris."
Upstairs, K.'s door slammed. It was one of his failings that he always slammed doors. Harriet used to be quite disagreeable about it.
Sidney slid from the railing.
"There he is now."
Perhaps, in all her frivolous, selfish life, Christine had never had a bigger moment than the one that followed. She could have said nothing, and, in the queer way that life goes, K. might have gone away from the Street as empty of heart as he had come to it.
"Be very good to him, Sidney," she said unsteadily. "He cares so much."
CHAPTER XXX
K. was being very dense. For so long had he considered Sidney as unattainable that now his masculine mind, a little weary with much wretchedness, refused to move from its old attitude.
"It was glamour, that was all, K.," said Sidney bravely.
"But, perhaps," said K., "it's just because of that miserable incident with Carlotta. That wasn't the right thing, of course, but Max has told me the story. It was really quite innocent. She fainted in the yard, and—"
Sidney was exasperated.
"Do you want me to marry him, K.?"
K. looked straight ahead.
"I want you to be happy, dear."
They were on the terrace of the White Springs Hotel again. K. had ordered dinner, making a great to-do about getting the dishes they both liked. But now that it was there, they were not eating. K. had placed his chair so that his profile was turned toward her. He had worn the duster religiously until nightfall, and then had discarded it. It hung limp and dejected on the back of his chair. Past K.'s profile Sidney could see the magnolia tree shaped like a heart.
"It seems to me," said Sidney suddenly, "that you are kind to every one but me, K."
He fairly stammered his astonishment:—
"Why, what on earth have I done?"
"You are trying to make me marry Max, aren't you?"
She was very properly ashamed of that, and, when he failed of reply out of sheer inability to think of one that would not say too much, she went hastily to something else:
"It is hard for me to realize that you—that you lived a life of your own, a busy life, doing useful things, before you came to us. I wish you would tell me something about yourself. If we're to be friends when you go away,"—she had to stop there, for the lump in her throat—"I'll want to know how to think of you,—who your friends are,—all that."
He made an effort. He was thinking, of course, that he would be visualizing her, in the hospital, in the little house on its side street, as she looked just then, her eyes like stars, her lips just parted, her hands folded before her on the table.
"I shall be working," he said at last. "So will you."
"Does that mean you won't have time to think of me?"
"I'm afraid I'm stupider than usual to-night. You can think of me as never forgetting you or the Street, working or playing."
Playing! Of course he would not work all the time. And he was going back to his old friends, to people who had always known him, to girls—
He did his best then. He told her of the old family house, built by one of his forebears who had been a king's man until Washington had put the case for the colonies, and who had given himself and his oldest son then to the cause that he made his own. He told of old servants who had wept when he decided to close the house and go away. When she fell silent, he thought he was interesting her. He told her the family traditions that had been the fairy tales of his childhood. He described the library, the choice room of the house, full of family paintings in old gilt frames, and of his father's collection of books. Because it was home, he waxed warm over it at last, although it had rather hurt him at first to remember. It brought back the other things that he wanted to forget.
But a terrible thing was happening to Sidney. Side by side with the wonders he described so casually, she was placing the little house. What an exile it must have been for him! How hopelessly middle-class they must have seemed! How idiotic of her to think, for one moment, that she could ever belong in this new-old life of his!
What traditions had she? None, of course, save to be honest and good and to do her best for the people around her. Her mother's people, the Kennedys went back a long way, but they had always been poor. A library full of paintings and books! She remembered the lamp with the blue-silk shade, the figure of Eve that used to stand behind the minister's portrait, and the cherry bookcase with the Encyclopaedia in it and "Beacon Lights of History." When K., trying his best to interest her and to conceal his own heaviness of spirit, told her of his grandfather's old carriage, she sat back in the shadow.
"Fearful old thing," said K.,—"regular cabriolet. I can remember yet the family rows over it. But the old gentleman liked it—used to have it repainted every year. Strangers in the city used to turn around and stare at it—thought it was advertising something!"
"When I was a child," said Sidney quietly, "and a carriage drove up and stopped on the Street, I always knew some one had died!"
There was a strained note in her voice. K., whose ear was attuned to every note in her voice, looked at her quickly. "My great-grandfather," said Sidney in the same tone, "sold chickens at market. He didn't do it himself; but the fact's there, isn't it?"
K. was puzzled.
"What about it?" he said.
But Sidney's agile mind had already traveled on. This K. she had never known, who had lived in a wonderful house, and all the rest of it—he must have known numbers of lovely women, his own sort of women, who had traveled and knew all kinds of things: girls like the daughters of the Executive Committee who came in from their country places in summer with great armfuls of flowers, and hurried off, after consulting their jeweled watches, to luncheon or tea or tennis.
"Go on," said Sidney dully. "Tell me about the women you have known, your friends, the ones you liked and the ones who liked you."
K. was rather apologetic.
"I've always been so busy," he confessed. "I know a lot, but I don't think they would interest you. They don't do anything, you know—they travel around and have a good time. They're rather nice to look at, some of them. But when you've said that you've said it all."
Nice to look at! Of course they would be, with nothing else to think of in all the world but of how they looked.
Suddenly Sidney felt very tired. She wanted to go back to the hospital, and turn the key in the door of her little room, and lie with her face down on the bed.
"Would you mind very much if I asked you to take me back?"
He did mind. He had a depressed feeling that the evening had failed. And his depression grew as he brought the car around. He understood, he thought. She was grieving about Max. After all, a girl couldn't care as she had for a year and a half, and then give a man up because of another woman, without a wrench.
"Do you really want to go home, Sidney, or were you tired of sitting there? In that case, we could drive around for an hour or two. I'll not talk if you'd like to be quiet." Being with K. had become an agony, now that she realized how wrong Christine had been, and that their worlds, hers and K.'s, had only touched for a time. Soon they would be separated by as wide a gulf as that which lay between the cherry bookcase—for instance,—and a book-lined library hung with family portraits. But she was not disposed to skimp as to agony. She would go through with it, every word a stab, if only she might sit beside K. a little longer, might feel the touch of his old gray coat against her arm. "I'd like to ride, if you don't mind."
K. turned the automobile toward the country roads. He was remembering acutely that other ride after Joe in his small car, the trouble he had had to get a machine, the fear of he knew not what ahead, and his arrival at last at the road-house, to find Max lying at the head of the stairs and Carlotta on her knees beside him.
"K." "Yes?"
"Was there anybody you cared about,—any girl,—when you left home?"
"I was not in love with anyone, if that's what you mean."
"You knew Max before, didn't you?"
"Yes. You know that."
"If you knew things about him that I should have known, why didn't you tell me?"
"I couldn't do that, could I? Anyhow—"
"Yes?"
"I thought everything would be all right. It seemed to me that the mere fact of your caring for him—" That was shaky ground; he got off it quickly. "Schwitter has closed up. Do you want to stop there?"
"Not to-night, please."
They were near the white house now. Schwitter's had closed up, indeed. The sign over the entrance was gone. The lanterns had been taken down, and in the dusk they could see Tillie rocking her baby on the porch. As if to cover the last traces of his late infamy, Schwitter himself was watering the worn places on the lawn with the garden can.
The car went by. Above the low hum of the engine they could hear Tillie's voice, flat and unmusical, but filled with the harmonies of love as she sang to the child.
When they had left the house far behind, K. was suddenly aware that Sidney was crying. She sat with her head turned away, using her handkerchief stealthily. He drew the car up beside the road, and in a masterful fashion turned her shoulders about until she faced him.
"Now, tell me about it," he said.
"It's just silliness. I'm—I'm a little bit lonely."
"Lonely!"
"Aunt Harriet's in Paris, and with Joe gone and everybody—"
"Aunt Harriet!"
He was properly dazed, for sure. If she had said she was lonely because the cherry bookcase was in Paris, he could not have been more bewildered. And Joe! "And with you going away and never coming back—"
"I'll come back, of course. How's this? I'll promise to come back when you graduate, and send you flowers."
"I think," said Sidney, "that I'll become an army nurse."
"I hope you won't do that."
"You won't know, K. You'll be back with your old friends. You'll have forgotten the Street and all of us."
"Do you really think that?"
"Girls who have been everywhere, and have lovely clothes, and who won't know a T bandage from a figure eight!"
"There will never be anybody in the world like you to me, dear."
His voice was husky.
"You are saying that to comfort me."
"To comfort you! I—who have wanted you so long that it hurts even to think about it! Ever since the night I came up the Street, and you were sitting there on the steps—oh, my dear, my dear, if you only cared a little!"
Because he was afraid that he would get out of hand and take her in his arms,—which would be idiotic, since, of course, she did not care for him that way,—he gripped the steering-wheel. It gave him a curious appearance of making a pathetic appeal to the wind-shield.
"I have been trying to make you say that all evening!" said Sidney. "I love you so much that—K., won't you take me in your arms?"
Take her in his arms! He almost crushed her. He held her to him and muttered incoherencies until she gasped. It was as if he must make up for long arrears of hopelessness. He held her off a bit to look at her, as if to be sure it was she and no changeling, and as if he wanted her eyes to corroborate her lips. There was no lack of confession in her eyes; they showed him a new heaven and a new earth.
"It was you always, K.," she confessed. "I just didn't realize it. But now, when you look back, don't you see it was?"
He looked back over the months when she had seemed as unattainable as the stars, and he did not see it. He shook his head.
"I never had even a hope."
"Not when I came to you with everything? I brought you all my troubles, and you always helped."
Her eyes filled. She bent down and kissed one of his hands. He was so happy that the foolish little caress made his heart hammer in his ears.
"I think, K., that is how one can always tell when it is the right one, and will be the right one forever and ever. It is the person—one goes to in trouble."
He had no words for that, only little caressing touches of her arm, her hand. Perhaps, without knowing it, he was formulating a sort of prayer that, since there must be troubles, she would, always come to him and he would always be able to help her.
And Sidney, too, fell silent. She was recalling the day she became engaged to Max, and the lost feeling she had had. She did not feel the same at all now. She felt as if she had been wandering, and had come home to the arms that were about her. She would be married, and take the risk that all women took, with her eyes open. She would go through the valley of the shadow, as other women did; but K. would be with her. Nothing else mattered. Looking into his steady eyes, she knew that she was safe. She would never wither for him.
Where before she had felt the clutch of inexorable destiny, the woman's fate, now she felt only his arms about her, her cheek on his shabby coat.
"I shall love you all my life," she said shakily.
His arms tightened about her.
The little house was dark when they got back to it. The Street, which had heard that Mr. Le Moyne approved of night air, was raising its windows for the night and pinning cheesecloth bags over its curtains to keep them clean.
In the second-story front room at Mrs. McKee's, the barytone slept heavily, and made divers unvocal sounds. He was hardening his throat, and so slept with a wet towel about it.
Down on the doorstep, Mrs. McKee and Mr. Wagner sat and made love with the aid of a lighted match and the pencil-pad.
The car drew up at the little house, and Sidney got out. Then it drove away, for K. must take it to the garage and walk back.
Sidney sat on the doorstep and waited. How lovely it all was! How beautiful life was! If one did one's best by life, it did its best too. How steady K.'s eyes were! She saw the flicker of the match across the street, and knew what it meant. Once she would have thought that that was funny; now it seemed very touching to her.
Katie had heard the car, and now she came heavily along the hall. "A woman left this for Mr. K.," she said. "If you think it's a begging letter, you'd better keep it until he's bought his new suit to-morrow. Almost any moment he's likely to bust out."
But it was not a begging letter. K. read it in the hall, with Sidney's shining eyes on him. It began abruptly:—
"I'm going to Africa with one of my cousins. She is a medical missionary. Perhaps I can work things out there. It is a bad station on the West Coast. I am not going because I feel any call to the work, but because I do not know what else to do.
"You were kind to me the other day. I believe, if I had told you then, you would still have been kind. I tried to tell you, but I was so terribly afraid.
"If I caused death, I did not mean to. You will think that no excuse, but it is true. In the hospital, when I changed the bottles on Miss Page's medicine-tray, I did not care much what happened. But it was different with you.
"You dismissed me, you remember. I had been careless about a sponge count. I made up my mind to get back at you. It seemed hopeless—you were so secure. For two or three days I tried to think of some way to hurt you. I almost gave up. Then I found the way.
"You remember the packets of gauze sponges we made and used in the operating-room? There were twelve to each package. When we counted them as we got them out, we counted by packages. On the night before I left, I went to the operating-room and added one sponge every here and there. Out of every dozen packets, perhaps, I fixed one that had thirteen. The next day I went away.
"Then I was terrified. What if somebody died? I had meant to give you trouble, so you would have to do certain cases a second time. I swear that was all. I was so frightened that I went down sick over it. When I got better, I heard you had lost a case and the cause was being whispered about. I almost died of terror.
"I tried to get back into the hospital one night. I went up the fire-escape, but the windows were locked. Then I left the city. I couldn't stand it. I was afraid to read a newspaper.
"I am not going to sign this letter. You know who it is from. And I am not going to ask your forgiveness, or anything of that sort. I don't expect it. But one thing hurt me more than anything else, the other night. You said you'd lost your faith in yourself. This is to tell you that you need not. And you said something else—that any one can 'come back.' I wonder!"
K. stood in the hall of the little house with the letter in his hand. Just beyond on the doorstep was Sidney, waiting for him. His arms were still warm from the touch of her. Beyond lay the Street, and beyond that lay the world and a man's work to do. Work, and faith to do it, a good woman's hand in the dark, a Providence that made things right in the end.
"Are you coming, K.?"
"Coming," he said. And, when he was beside her, his long figure folded to the short measure of the step, he stooped humbly and kissed the hem of her soft white dress.
Across the Street, Mr. Wagner wrote something in the dark and then lighted a match.
"So K. is in love with Sidney Page, after all!" he had written. "She is a sweet girl, and he is every inch a man. But, to my mind, a certain lady—"
Mrs. McKee flushed and blew out the match.
Late September now on the Street, with Joe gone and his mother eyeing the postman with pitiful eagerness; with Mrs. Rosenfeld moving heavily about the setting-up of the new furniture; and with Johnny driving heavenly cars, brake and clutch legs well and Strong. Late September, with Max recovering and settling his tie for any pretty nurse who happened along, but listening eagerly for Dr. Ed's square tread in the hall; with Tillie rocking her baby on the porch at Schwitter's, and Carlotta staring westward over rolling seas; with Christine taking up her burden and Grace laying hers down; with Joe's tragic young eyes growing quiet with the peace of the tropics.
"The Lord is my shepherd," she reads. "I shall not want."..."Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."
Sidney, on her knees in the little parlor, repeats the words with the others. K. has gone from the Street, and before long she will join him. With the vision of his steady eyes before her, she adds her own prayer to the others—that the touch of his arms about her may not make her forget the vow she has taken, of charity and its sister, service, of a cup of water to the thirsty, of open arms to a tired child.
THE END |
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