K Part 13

There were people in the hotel parlor. Le Moyne took the frenzied boy by the elbow and led him past the door to the empty porch.

"Now," he said, "if you will keep your voice down, I'll listen to what you have to say."

"You know what I've got to say."

This failing to draw from K. Le Moyne anything but his steady glance, Joe jerked his arm free, and clenched his fist.

"What did you bring her out here for?"

"I do not know that I owe you any explanation, but I am willing to give you one. I brought her out here for a trolley ride and a picnic luncheon. Incidentally we brought the ground squirrel out and set him free."

He was sorry for the boy. Life not having been all beer and skittles to him, he knew that Joe was suffering, and was marvelously patient with him.

"Where is she now?"

"She had the misfortune to fall in the river. She is upstairs." And, seeing the light of unbelief in Joe's eyes: "If you care to make a tour of investigation, you will find that I am entirely truthful. In the laundry a maid--"

"She is engaged to me"--doggedly. "Everybody in the neighborhood knows it; and yet you bring her out here for a picnic! It's--it's d.a.m.ned rotten treatment."

His fist had unclenched. Before K. Le Moyne's eyes his own fell. He felt suddenly young and futile; his just rage turned to bl.u.s.tering in his ears.

"Now, be honest with yourself. Is there really an engagement?"

"Yes," doggedly.

"Even in that case, isn't it rather arrogant to say that--that the young lady in question can accept no ordinary friendly attentions from another man?"

Utter astonishment left Joe almost speechless. The Street, of course, regarded an engagement as a setting aside of the affianced couple, an isolation of two, than which marriage itself was not more a solitude a deux. After a moment:--

"I don't know where you came from," he said, "but around here decent men cut out when a girl's engaged."

"I see!"

"What's more, what do we know about you? Who are you, anyhow? I've looked you up. Even at your office they don't know anything. You may be all right, but how do I know it? And, even if you are, renting a room in the Page house doesn't ent.i.tle you to interfere with the family. You get her into trouble and I'll kill you!"

It took courage, that speech, with K. Le Moyne towering five inches above him and growing a little white about the lips.

"Are you going to say all these things to Sidney?"

"Does she allow you to call her Sidney?"

"Are you?"

"I am. And I am going to find out why you were upstairs just now."

Perhaps never in his twenty-two years had young Drummond been so near a thrashing. Fury that he was ashamed of shook Le Moyne. For very fear of himself, he thrust his hands in the pockets of his Norfolk coat.

"Very well," he said. "You go to her with just one of these ugly insinuations, and I'll take mighty good care that you are sorry for it.

I don't care to threaten. You're younger than I am, and lighter. But if you are going to behave like a bad child, you deserve a licking, and I'll give it to you."

An overflow from the parlor poured out on the porch. Le Moyne had got himself in hand somewhat. He was still angry, but the look in Joe's eyes startled him. He put a hand on the boy's shoulder.

"You're wrong, old man," he said. "You're insulting the girl you care for by the things you are thinking. And, if it's any comfort to you, I have no intention of interfering in any way. You can count me out. It's between you and her." Joe picked his straw hat from a chair and stood turning it in his hands.

"Even if you don't care for her, how do I know she isn't crazy about you?"

"My word of honor, she isn't."

"She sends you notes to McKees'."

"Just to clear the air, I'll show it to you. It's no breach of confidence. It's about the hospital."

Into the breast pocket of his coat he dived and brought up a wallet.

The wallet had had a name on it in gilt letters that had been carefully sc.r.a.ped off. But Joe did not wait to see the note.

"Oh, d.a.m.n the hospital!" he said--and went swiftly down the steps and into the gathering twilight of the June night.

It was only when he reached the street-car, and sat huddled in a corner, that he remembered something.

Only about the hospital--but Le Moyne had kept the note, treasured it!

Joe was not subtle, not even clever; but he was a lover, and he knew the ways of love. The Pages' roomer was in love with Sidney whether he knew it or not.

CHAPTER VII

Carlotta Harrison pleaded a headache, and was excused from the operating-room and from prayers.

"I'm sorry about the vacation," Miss Gregg said kindly, "but in a day or two I can let you off. Go out now and get a little air."

The girl managed to dissemble the triumph in her eyes.

"Thank you," she said languidly, and turned away. Then: "About the vacation, I am not in a hurry. If Miss Simpson needs a few days to straighten things out, I can stay on with Dr. Wilson."

Young women on the eve of a vacation were not usually so reasonable.

Miss Gregg was grateful.

"She will probably need a week. Thank you. I wish more of the girls were as thoughtful, with the house full and operations all day and every day."

Outside the door of the anaesthetizing-room Miss Harrison's languor vanished. She sped along corridors and up the stairs, not waiting for the deliberate elevator. Inside of her room, she closed and bolted the door, and, standing before her mirror, gazed long at her dark eyes and bright hair. Then she proceeded briskly with her dressing.

Carlotta Harrison was not a child. Though she was only three years older than Sidney, her experience of life was as of three to Sidney's one.

The product of a curious marriage,--when Tommy Harrison of Harrison's Minstrels, touring Spain with his troupe, had met the pretty daughter of a Spanish shopkeeper and eloped with her,--she had certain qualities of both, a Yankee shrewdness and capacity that made her a capable nurse, complicated by occasional outcroppings of southern Europe, furious bursts of temper, slow and smouldering vindictiveness. A pa.s.sionate creature, in reality, smothered under hereditary Ma.s.sachusetts caution.

She was well aware of the risks of the evening's adventure. The only dread she had was of the discovery of her escapade by the hospital authorities. Lines were sharply drawn. Nurses were forbidden more than the exchange of professional conversation with the staff. In that world of her choosing, of hard work and little play, of service and self-denial and vigorous rules of conduct, discovery meant dismissal.