The hot August days dragged on. Merciless sunlight beat in through the
slatted shutters of ward windows. At night, from the roof to which the
nurses retired after prayers for a breath of air, lower surrounding
roofs were seen to be covered with sleepers. Children dozed precariously
on the edge of eternity; men and women sprawled in the grotesque
postures of sleep.
There was a sort of feverish irritability in the air. Even the nurses,
stoically unmindful of bodily discomfort, spoke curtly or not at all.
Miss Dana, in Sidney's ward, went down with a low fever, and for a day
or so Sidney and Miss Grange got along as best they could. Sidney worked
like two or more, performed marvels of bed-making, learned to give
alcohol baths for fever with the maximum of result and the minimum
of time, even made rounds with a member of the staff and came through
creditably.
Dr. Ed Wilson had sent a woman patient into the ward, and his visits
were the breath of life to the girl.
“How're they treating you?” he asked her, one day, abruptly.
“Very well.”
“Look at me squarely. You're pretty and you're young. Some of them will
try to take it out of you. That's human nature. Has anyone tried it
yet?”
Sidney looked distressed.
“Positively, no. It's been hot, and of course it's troublesome to tell
me everything. I--I think they're all very kind.”
He reached out a square, competent hand, and put it over hers.
“We miss you in the Street,” he said. “It's all sort of dead there since
you left. Joe Drummond doesn't moon up and down any more, for one thing.
What was wrong between you and Joe, Sidney?”
“I didn't want to marry him; that's all.”
“That's considerable. The boy's taking it hard.”
Then, seeing her face:--
“But you're right, of course. Don't marry anyone unless you can't live
without him. That's been my motto, and here I am, still single.”
He went out and down the corridor. He had known Sidney all his life.
During the lonely times when Max was at college and in Europe, he had
watched her grow from a child to a young girl. He did not suspect for
a moment that in that secret heart of hers he sat newly enthroned, in
a glow of white light, as Max's brother; that the mere thought that
he lived in Max's house (it was, of course Max's house to her), sat at
Max's breakfast table, could see him whenever he wished, made the touch
of his hand on hers a benediction and a caress.
Sidney finished folding linen and went back to the ward. It was Friday
and a visiting day. Almost every bed had its visitor beside it; but
Sidney, running an eye over the ward, found the girl of whom she had
spoken to Le Moyne quite alone. She was propped up in bed, reading; but
at each new step in the corridor hope would spring into her eyes and die
again.
“Want anything, Grace?”
“Me? I'm all right. If these people would only get out and let me read
in peace--Say, sit down and talk to me, won't you? It beats the mischief
the way your friends forget you when you're laid up in a place like
this.”
“People can't always come at visiting hours. Besides, it's hot.”
“A girl I knew was sick here last year, and it wasn't too hot for me to
trot in twice a week with a bunch of flowers for her. Do you think she's
been here once? She hasn't.”
Then, suddenly:--
“You know that man I told you about the other day?”
Sidney nodded. The girl's anxious eyes were on her.
“It was a shock to me, that's all. I didn't want you to think I'd break
my heart over any fellow. All I meant was, I wished he'd let me know.”
Her eyes searched Sidney's. They looked unnaturally large and somber in
her face. Her hair had been cut short, and her nightgown, open at the
neck, showed her thin throat and prominent clavicles.
“You're from the city, aren't you, Miss Page?”
“Yes.”
“You told me the street, but I've forgotten it.”
Sidney repeated the name of the Street, and slipped a fresh pillow under
the girl's head.
“The evening paper says there's a girl going to be married on your
street.”
“Really! Oh, I think I know. A friend of mine is going to be married.
Was the name Lorenz?”
“The girl's name was Lorenz. I--I don't remember the man's name.”
“She is going to marry a Mr. Howe,” said Sidney briskly. “Now, how do
you feel? More comfy?”
“Fine! I suppose you'll be going to that wedding?”
“If I ever get time to have a dress made, I'll surely go.”
Toward six o'clock the next morning, the night nurse was making out her
reports. On one record, which said at the top, “Grace Irving, age 19,”
and an address which, to the initiated, told all her story, the night
nurse wrote:--
“Did not sleep at all during night. Face set and eyes staring, but
complains of no pain. Refused milk at eleven and three.”
Carlotta Harrison, back from her vacation, reported for duty the next
morning, and was assigned to E ward, which was Sidney's. She gave Sidney
a curt little nod, and proceeded to change the entire routine with the
thoroughness of a Central American revolutionary president. Sidney, who
had yet to learn that with some people authority can only assert itself
by change, found herself confused, at sea, half resentful.
Once she ventured a protest:--
“I've been taught to do it that way, Miss Harrison. If my method is
wrong, show me what you want, and I'll do my best.”
“I am not responsible for what you have been taught. And you will not
speak back when you are spoken to.”
Small as the incident was, it marked a change in Sidney's position
in the ward. She got the worst off-duty of the day, or none. Small
humiliations were hers: late meals, disagreeable duties, endless and
often unnecessary tasks. Even Miss Grange, now reduced to second place,
remonstrated with her senior.
“I think a certain amount of severity is good for a probationer,” she
said, “but you are brutal, Miss Harrison.”
“She's stupid.”
“She's not at all stupid. She's going to be one of the best nurses in
the house.”
“Report me, then. Tell the Head I'm abusing Dr. Wilson's pet
probationer, that I don't always say 'please' when I ask her to change a
bed or take a temperature.”
Miss Grange was not lacking in keenness. She did not go to the Head,
which is unethical under any circumstances; but gradually there spread
through the training-school a story that Carlotta Harrison was jealous
of the new Page girl, Dr. Wilson's protegee. Things were still highly
unpleasant in the ward, but they grew much better when Sidney was off
duty. She was asked to join a small class that was studying French at
night. As ignorant of the cause of her popularity as of the reason of
her persecution, she went steadily on her way.
And she was gaining every day. Her mind was forming. She was learning
to think for herself. For the first time, she was facing problems and
demanding an answer. Why must there be Grace Irvings in the world? Why
must the healthy babies of the obstetric ward go out to the slums and
come back, in months or years, crippled for the great fight by the
handicap of their environment, rickety, tuberculous, twisted? Why need
the huge mills feed the hospitals daily with injured men?
And there were other things that she thought of. Every night, on her
knees in the nurses' parlor at prayers, she promised, if she were
accepted as a nurse, to try never to become calloused, never to regard
her patients as “cases,” never to allow the cleanliness and routine of
her ward to delay a cup of water to the thirsty, or her arms to a sick
child.
On the whole, the world was good, she found. And, of all the good things
in it, the best was service. True, there were hot days and restless
nights, weary feet, and now and then a heartache. There was Miss
Harrison, too. But to offset these there was the sound of Dr. Max's step
in the corridor, and his smiling nod from the door; there was a “God
bless you” now and then for the comfort she gave; there were wonderful
nights on the roof under the stars, until K.'s little watch warned her
to bed.
While Sidney watched the stars from her hospital roof, while all around
her the slum children, on other roofs, fought for the very breath of
life, others who knew and loved her watched the stars, too. K. was
having his own troubles in those days. Late at night, when Anna and
Harriet had retired, he sat on the balcony and thought of many things.
Anna Page was not well. He had noticed that her lips were rather blue,
and had called in Dr. Ed. It was valvular heart disease. Anna was not to
be told, or Sidney. It was Harriet's ruling.
“Sidney can't help any,” said Harriet, “and for Heaven's sake let her
have her chance. Anna may live for years. You know her as well as I do.
If you tell her anything at all, she'll have Sidney here, waiting on her
hand and foot.”
And Le Moyne, fearful of urging too much because his own heart was
crying out to have the girl back, assented.
Then, K. was anxious about Joe. The boy did not seem to get over the
thing the way he should. Now and then Le Moyne, resuming his old habit
of wearying himself into sleep, would walk out into the country. On one
such night he had overtaken Joe, tramping along with his head down.
Joe had not wanted his company, had plainly sulked. But Le Moyne had
persisted.
“I'll not talk,” he said; “but, since we're going the same way, we might
as well walk together.”
But after a time Joe had talked, after all. It was not much at first--a
feverish complaint about the heat, and that if there was trouble in
Mexico he thought he'd go.
“Wait until fall, if you're thinking of it,” K. advised. “This is tepid
compared with what you'll get down there.”
“I've got to get away from here.”
K. nodded understandingly. Since the scene at the White Springs Hotel,
both knew that no explanation was necessary.
“It isn't so much that I mind her turning me down,” Joe said, after a
silence. “A girl can't marry all the men who want her. But I don't
like this hospital idea. I don't understand it. She didn't have to go.
Sometimes”--he turned bloodshot eyes on Le Moyne--“I think she went
because she was crazy about somebody there.”
“She went because she wanted to be useful.”
“She could be useful at home.”
For almost twenty minutes they tramped on without speech. They had made
a circle, and the lights of the city were close again. K. stopped and
put a kindly hand on Joe's shoulder.
“A man's got to stand up under a thing like this, you know. I mean, it
mustn't be a knockout. Keeping busy is a darned good method.”
Joe shook himself free, but without resentment. “I'll tell you what's
eating me up,” he exploded. “It's Max Wilson. Don't talk to me about her
going to the hospital to be useful. She's crazy about him, and he's as
crooked as a dog's hind leg.”
“Perhaps. But it's always up to the girl. You know that.”
He felt immeasurably old beside Joe's boyish blustering--old and rather
helpless.
“I'm watching him. Some of these days I'll get something on him. Then
she'll know what to think of her hero!”
“That's not quite square, is it?”
“He's not square.”
Joe had left him then, wheeling abruptly off into the shadows. K. had
gone home alone, rather uneasy. There seemed to be mischief in the very
air.