K Part 40

"You say he likes to be with you. What about you?"

Sidney had been sitting in a low chair by the fire. She rose with a sudden pa.s.sionate movement. In the informality of the household, she, had visited K. in her dressing-gown and slippers; and now she stood before him, a tragic young figure, clutching the folds of her gown across her breast.

"I worship him, K.," she said tragically. "When I see him coming, I want to get down and let him walk on me. I know his step in the hall. I know the very way he rings for the elevator. When I see him in the operating-room, cool and calm while every one else is fl.u.s.tered and excited, he--he looks like a G.o.d."

Then, half ashamed of her outburst, she turned her back to him and stood gazing at the small coal fire. It was as well for K. that she did not see his face. For that one moment the despair that was in him shone in his eyes. He glanced around the shabby little room, at the sagging bed, the collar-box, the pincushion, the old marble-topped bureau under which Reginald had formerly made his nest, at his untidy table, littered with pipes and books, at the image in the mirror of his own tall figure, stooped and weary.

"It's real, all this?" he asked after a pause. "You're sure it's not just--glamour, Sidney?"

"It's real--terribly real." Her voice was m.u.f.fled, and he knew then that she was crying.

She was mightily ashamed of it. Tears, of course, except in the privacy of one's closet, were not ethical on the Street.

"Perhaps he cares very much, too."

"Give me a handkerchief," said Sidney in a m.u.f.fled tone, and the little scene was broken into while K. searched through a bureau drawer. Then:

"It's all over, anyhow, since this. If he'd really cared he'd have come over to-night. When one is in trouble one needs friends."

Back in a circle she came inevitably to her suspension. She would never go back, she said pa.s.sionately. She was innocent, had been falsely accused. If they could think such a thing about her, she didn't want to be in their old hospital.

K. questioned her, alternately soothing and probing.

"You are positive about it?"

"Absolutely. I have given him his medicines dozens of times."

"You looked at the label?"

"I swear I did, K."

"Who else had access to the medicine closet?"

"Carlotta Harrison carried the keys, of course. I was off duty from four to six. When Carlotta left the ward, the probationer would have them."

"Have you reason to think that either one of these girls would wish you harm?"

"None whatever," began Sidney vehemently; and then, checking herself,--"unless--but that's rather ridiculous."

"What is ridiculous?"

"I've sometimes thought that Carlotta--but I am sure she is perfectly fair with me. Even if she--if she--"

"Yes?"

"Even if she likes Dr. Wilson, I don't believe--Why, K., she wouldn't!

It would be murder."

"Murder, of course," said K., "in intention, anyhow. Of course she didn't do it. I'm only trying to find out whose mistake it was."

Soon after that she said good-night and went out. She turned in the doorway and smiled tremulously back at him.

"You have done me a lot of good. You almost make me believe in myself."

"That's because I believe in you."

With a quick movement that was one of her charms, Sidney suddenly closed the door and slipped back into the room. K., hearing the door close, thought she had gone, and dropped heavily into a chair.

"My best friend in all the world!" said Sidney suddenly from behind him, and, bending over, she kissed him on the cheek.

The next instant the door had closed behind her, and K. was left alone to such wretchedness and bliss as the evening had brought him.

On toward morning, Harriet, who slept but restlessly in her towel, wakened to the glare of his light over the transom.

"K.!" she called pettishly from her door. "I wish you wouldn't go to sleep and let your light burn!"

K., surmising the towel and cold cream, had the tact not to open his door.

"I am not asleep, Harriet, and I am sorry about the light. It's going out now."

Before he extinguished the light, he walked over to the old dresser and surveyed himself in the gla.s.s. Two nights without sleep and much anxiety had told on him. He looked old, haggard; infinitely tired. Mentally he compared himself with Wilson, flushed with success, erect, triumphant, almost insolent. Nothing had more certainly told him the hopelessness of his love for Sidney than her good-night kiss. He was her brother, her friend. He would never be her lover. He drew a long breath and proceeded to undress in the dark.

Joe Drummond came to see Sidney the next day. She would have avoided him if she could, but Mimi had ushered him up to the sewing-room boudoir before she had time to escape. She had not seen the boy for two months, and the change in him startled her. He was thinner, rather hectic, scrupulously well dressed.

"Why, Joe!" she said, and then: "Won't you sit down?"

He was still rather theatrical. He dramatized himself, as he had that night the June before when he had asked Sidney to marry him. He stood just inside the doorway. He offered no conventional greeting whatever; but, after surveying her briefly, her black gown, the lines around her eyes:--

"You're not going back to that place, of course?"

"I--I haven't decided."

"Then somebody's got to decide for you. The thing for you to do is to stay right here, Sidney. People know you on the Street. n.o.body here would ever accuse you of trying to murder anybody."

In spite of herself, Sidney smiled a little.

"n.o.body thinks I tried to murder him. It was a mistake about the medicines. I didn't do it, Joe."

His love was purely selfish, for he brushed aside her protest as if she had not spoken.

"You give me the word and I'll go and get your things; I've got a car of my own now."

"But, Joe, they have only done what they thought was right. Whoever made it, there was a mistake."

He stared at her incredulously.

"You don't mean that you are going to stand for this sort of thing?

Every time some fool makes a mistake, are they going to blame it on you?"