K Part 10

"To me?"

"To your staying on. Mother trusts you absolutely. I hope you noticed that you got one of the apostle spoons with the custard she sent up to you the other night. And she didn't object to this trip to-day. Of course, as she said herself, it isn't as if you were young, or at all wild."

In spite of himself, K. was rather startled. He felt old enough, G.o.d knew, but he had always thought of it as an age of the spirit. How old did this child think he was?

"I have promised to stay on, in the capacity of watch-dog, burglar-alarm, and occasional recipient of an apostle spoon in a dish of custard. Lightning-conductor, too--your mother says she isn't afraid of storms if there is a man in the house. I'll stay, of course."

The thought of his age weighed on him. He rose to his feet and threw back his fine shoulders.

"Aunt Harriet and your mother and Christine and her husband-to-be, whatever his name is--we'll be a happy family. But, I warn you, if I ever hear of Christine's husband getting an apostle spoon--"

She smiled up at him. "You are looking very grand to-day. But you have gra.s.s stains on your white trousers. Perhaps Katie can take them out."

Quite suddenly K. felt that she thought him too old for such frivolity of dress. It put him on his mettle.

"How old do you think I am, Miss Sidney?"

She considered, giving him, after her kindly way, the benefit of the doubt.

"Not over forty, I'm sure."

"I'm almost thirty. It is middle age, of course, but it is not senility."

She was genuinely surprised, almost disturbed.

"Perhaps we'd better not tell mother," she said. "You don't mind being thought older?"

"Not at all."

Clearly the subject of his years did not interest her vitally, for she harked back to the gra.s.s stains.

"I'm afraid you're not saving, as you promised. Those are new clothes, aren't they?"

"No, indeed. Bought years ago in England--the coat in London, the trousers in Bath, on a motor tour. Cost something like twelve shillings.

Awfully cheap. They wear them for cricket."

That was a wrong move, of course. Sidney must hear about England; and she marveled politely, in view of his poverty, about his being there.

Poor Le Moyne floundered in a sea of mendacity, rose to a truth here and there, clutched at luncheon, and achieved safety at last.

"To think," said Sidney, "that you have really been across the ocean! I never knew but one person who had been abroad. It is Dr. Max Wilson."

Back again to Dr. Max! Le Moyne, unpacking sandwiches from a basket, was aroused by a sheer resentment to an indiscretion.

"You like this Wilson chap pretty well, don't you?"

"What do you mean?"

"You talk about him rather a lot."

This was sheer recklessness, of course. He expected fury, annihilation.

He did not look up, but busied himself with the luncheon. When the silence grew oppressive, he ventured to glance toward her. She was leaning forward, her chin cupped in her palms, staring out over the valley that stretched at their feet.

"Don't speak to me for a minute or two," she said. "I'm thinking over what you have just said."

Manlike, having raised the issue, K. would have given much to evade it.

Not that he had owned himself in love with Sidney. Love was not for him. But into his loneliness and despair the girl had came like a ray of light. She typified that youth and hope that he had felt slipping away from him. Through her clear eyes he was beginning to see a new world.

Lose her he must, and that he knew; but not this way.

Down through the valley ran a shallow river, making noisy pretensions to both depth and fury. He remembered just such a river in the Tyrol, with this same Wilson on a rock, holding the hand of a pretty Austrian girl, while he snapped the shutter of a camera. He had that picture somewhere now; but the girl was dead, and, of the three, Wilson was the only one who had met life and vanquished it.

"I've known him all my life," Sidney said at last. "You're perfectly right about one thing: I talk about him and I think about him. I'm being candid, because what's the use of being friends if we're not frank?

I admire him--you'd have to see him in the hospital, with every one deferring to him and all that, to understand. And when you think of a manlike that, who holds life and death in his hands, of course you rather thrill. I--I honestly believe that's all there is to it."

"If that's the whole thing, that's hardly a mad pa.s.sion." He tried to smile; succeeded faintly.

"Well, of course, there's this, too. I know he'll never look at me.

I'll be one of forty nurses; indeed, for three months I'll be only a probationer. He'll probably never even remember I'm in the hospital at all."

"I see. Then, if you thought he was in love with you, things would be different?"

"If I thought Dr. Max Wilson was in love with me," said Sidney solemnly, "I'd go out of my head with joy."

One of the new qualities that K. Le Moyne was cultivating was of living each day for itself. Having no past and no future, each day was worth exactly what it brought. He was to look back to this day with mingled feelings: sheer gladness at being out in the open with Sidney; the memory of the shock with which he realized that she was, unknown to herself, already in the throes of a romantic attachment for Wilson; and, long, long after, when he had gone down to the depths with her and saved her by his steady hand, with something of mirth for the untoward happening that closed the day.

Sidney fell into the river.

They had released Reginald, released him with the tribute of a shamefaced tear on Sidney's part, and a handful of chestnuts from K. The little squirrel had squeaked his gladness, and, tail erect, had darted into the gra.s.s.

"Ungrateful little beast!" said Sidney, and dried her eyes. "Do you suppose he'll ever think of the nuts again, or find them?"

"He'll be all right," K. replied. "The little beggar can take care of himself, if only--"

"If only what?"

"If only he isn't too friendly. He's apt to crawl into the pockets of any one who happens around."

She was alarmed at that. To make up for his indiscretion, K. suggested a descent to the river. She accepted eagerly, and he helped her down. That was another memory that outlasted the day--her small warm hand in his; the time she slipped and he caught her; the pain in her eyes at one of his thoughtless remarks.

"I'm going to be pretty lonely," he said, when she had paused in the descent and was taking a stone out of her low shoe. "Reginald gone, and you going! I shall hate to come home at night." And then, seeing her wince: "I've been whining all day. For Heaven's sake, don't look like that. If there's one sort of man I detest more than another, it's a man who is sorry for himself. Do you suppose your mother would object if we stayed, out here at the hotel for supper? I've ordered a moon, orange-yellow and extra size."

"I should hate to have anything ordered and wasted."

"Then we'll stay."

"It's fearfully extravagant."

"I'll be thrifty as to moons while you are in the hospital."