K Part 23

She dropped her head on his arm, and he saw that she was crying. If he made a gesture to draw her to him, she never knew it. After a moment she looked up.

"I'm much braver than this in the hospital. But when it's one's own!"

K. was sorely tempted to tell her the truth and bring her back to the little house: to their old evenings together, to seeing the younger Wilson, not as the white G.o.d of the operating-room and the hospital, but as the dandy of the Street and the neighbor of her childhood--back even to Joe.

But, with Anna's precarious health and Harriet's increasing engrossment in her business, he felt it more and more necessary that Sidney go on with her training. A profession was a safeguard. And there was another point: it had been decided that Anna was not to know her condition. If she was not worried she might live for years. There was no surer way to make her suspect it than by bringing Sidney home.

Sidney sent Katie to ask Dr. Ed to come over after dinner. With the sunset Anna seemed better. She insisted on coming downstairs, and even sat with them on the balcony until the stars came out, talking of Christine's trousseau, and, rather fretfully, of what she would do without the parlors.

"You shall have your own boudoir upstairs," said Sidney valiantly.

"Katie can carry your tray up there. We are going to make the sewing-room into your private sitting-room, and I shall nail the machine-top down."

This pleased her. When K. insisted on carrying her upstairs, she went in a flutter.

"He is so strong, Sidney!" she said, when he had placed her on her bed.

"How can a clerk, bending over a ledger, be so muscular? When I have callers, will it be all right for Katie to show them upstairs?"

She dropped asleep before the doctor came; and when, at something after eight, the door of the Wilson house slammed and a figure crossed the street, it was not Ed at all, but the surgeon.

Sidney had been talking rather more frankly than usual. Lately there had been a reserve about her. K., listening intently that night, read between words a story of small persecutions and jealousies. But the girl minimized them, after her way.

"It's always hard for probationers," she said. "I often think Miss Harrison is trying my mettle."

"Harrison!"

"Carlotta Harrison. And now that Miss Gregg has said she will accept me, it's really all over. The other nurses are wonderful--so kind and so helpful. I hope I shall look well in my cap."

Carlotta Harrison was in Sidney's hospital! A thousand contingencies flashed through his mind. Sidney might grow to like her and bring her to the house. Sidney might insist on the thing she always spoke of--that he visit the hospital; and he would meet her, face to face. He could have depended on a man to keep his secret. This girl with her somber eyes and her threat to pay him out for what had happened to her--she meant danger of a sort that no man could fight.

"Soon," said Sidney, through the warm darkness, "I shall have a cap, and be always forgetting it and putting my hat on over it--the new ones always do. One of the girls slept in hers the other night! They are tulle, you know, and quite stiff, and it was the most erratic-looking thing the next day!"

It was then that the door across the street closed. Sidney did not hear it, but K. bent forward. There was a part of his brain always automatically on watch.

"I shall get my operating-room training, too," she went on. "That is the real romance of the hospital. A--a surgeon is a sort of hero in a hospital. You wouldn't think that, would you? There was a lot of excitement to-day. Even the probationers' table was talking about it.

Dr. Max Wilson did the Edwardes operation."

The figure across the Street was lighting a cigarette. Perhaps, after all--

"Something tremendously difficult--I don't know what. It's going into the medical journals. A Dr. Edwardes invented it, or whatever they call it. They took a picture of the operating-room for the article.

The photographer had to put on operating clothes and wrap the camera in sterilized towels. It was the most thrilling thing, they say--"

Her voice died away as her eyes followed K.'s. Max, cigarette in hand, was coming across, under the ailanthus tree. He hesitated on the pavement, his eyes searching the shadowy balcony.

"Sidney?"

"Here! Right back here!"

There was vibrant gladness in her tone. He came slowly toward them.

"My brother is not at home, so I came over. How select you are, with your balcony!"

"Can you see the step?"

"Coming, with bells on."

K. had risen and pushed back his chair. His mind was working quickly.

Here in the darkness he could hold the situation for a moment. If he could get Sidney into the house, the rest would not matter. Luckily, the balcony was very dark.

"Is any one ill?"

"Mother is not well. This is Mr. Le Moyne, and he knows who you are very well, indeed."

The two men shook hands.

"I've heard a lot of Mr. Le Moyne. Didn't the Street beat the Linburgs the other day? And I believe the Rosenfelds are in receipt of sixty-five cents a day and considerable peace and quiet through you, Mr. Le Moyne.

You're the most popular man on the Street."

"I've always heard that about YOU. Sidney, if Dr. Wilson is here to see your mother--"

"Going," said Sidney. "And Dr. Wilson is a very great person, K., so be polite to him."

Max had roused at the sound of Le Moyne's voice, not to suspicion, of course, but to memory. Without any apparent reason, he was back in Berlin, tramping the country roads, and beside him--

"Wonderful night!"

"Great," he replied. "The mind's a curious thing, isn't it. In the instant since Miss Page went through that window I've been to Berlin and back! Will you have a cigarette?"

"Thanks; I have my pipe here."

K. struck a match with his steady hands. Now that the thing had come, he was glad to face it. In the flare, his quiet profile glowed against the night. Then he flung the match over the rail.

"Perhaps my voice took you back to Berlin."

Max stared; then he rose. Blackness had descended on them again, except for the dull glow of K.'s old pipe.

"For G.o.d's sake!"

"Sh! The neighbors next door have a bad habit of sitting just inside the curtains."

"But--you!"

"Sit down. Sidney will be back in a moment. I'll talk to you, if you'll sit still. Can you hear me plainly?"

After a moment--"Yes."

"I've been here--in the city, I mean--for a year. Name's Le Moyne. Don't forget it--Le Moyne. I've got a position in the gas office, clerical. I get fifteen dollars a week. I have reason to think I'm going to be moved up. That will be twenty, maybe twenty-two."

Wilson stirred, but he found no adequate words. Only a part of what K.

said got to him. For a moment he was back in a famous clinic, and this man across from him--it was not believable!