K. was being very dense. For so long had he considered Sidney as
unattainable that now his masculine mind, a little weary with much
wretchedness, refused to move from its old attitude.
“It was glamour, that was all, K.,” said Sidney bravely.
“But, perhaps,” said K., “it's just because of that miserable incident
with Carlotta. That wasn't the right thing, of course, but Max has told
me the story. It was really quite innocent. She fainted in the yard,
and--”
Sidney was exasperated.
“Do you want me to marry him, K.?”
K. looked straight ahead.
“I want you to be happy, dear.”
They were on the terrace of the White Springs Hotel again. K. had
ordered dinner, making a great to-do about getting the dishes they both
liked. But now that it was there, they were not eating. K. had placed
his chair so that his profile was turned toward her. He had worn the
duster religiously until nightfall, and then had discarded it. It hung
limp and dejected on the back of his chair. Past K.'s profile Sidney
could see the magnolia tree shaped like a heart.
“It seems to me,” said Sidney suddenly, “that you are kind to every one
but me, K.”
He fairly stammered his astonishment:--
“Why, what on earth have I done?”
“You are trying to make me marry Max, aren't you?”
She was very properly ashamed of that, and, when he failed of reply out
of sheer inability to think of one that would not say too much, she went
hastily to something else:
“It is hard for me to realize that you--that you lived a life of your
own, a busy life, doing useful things, before you came to us. I wish you
would tell me something about yourself. If we're to be friends when you
go away,”--she had to stop there, for the lump in her throat--“I'll want
to know how to think of you,--who your friends are,--all that.”
He made an effort. He was thinking, of course, that he would be
visualizing her, in the hospital, in the little house on its side
street, as she looked just then, her eyes like stars, her lips just
parted, her hands folded before her on the table.
“I shall be working,” he said at last. “So will you.”
“Does that mean you won't have time to think of me?”
“I'm afraid I'm stupider than usual to-night. You can think of me as
never forgetting you or the Street, working or playing.”
Playing! Of course he would not work all the time. And he was going back
to his old friends, to people who had always known him, to girls--
He did his best then. He told her of the old family house, built by one
of his forebears who had been a king's man until Washington had put the
case for the colonies, and who had given himself and his oldest son then
to the cause that he made his own. He told of old servants who had wept
when he decided to close the house and go away. When she fell silent, he
thought he was interesting her. He told her the family traditions that
had been the fairy tales of his childhood. He described the library, the
choice room of the house, full of family paintings in old gilt frames,
and of his father's collection of books. Because it was home, he waxed
warm over it at last, although it had rather hurt him at first to
remember. It brought back the other things that he wanted to forget.
But a terrible thing was happening to Sidney. Side by side with the
wonders he described so casually, she was placing the little house. What
an exile it must have been for him! How hopelessly middle-class they
must have seemed! How idiotic of her to think, for one moment, that she
could ever belong in this new-old life of his!
What traditions had she? None, of course, save to be honest and good
and to do her best for the people around her. Her mother's people, the
Kennedys went back a long way, but they had always been poor. A library
full of paintings and books! She remembered the lamp with the blue-silk
shade, the figure of Eve that used to stand behind the minister's
portrait, and the cherry bookcase with the Encyclopaedia in it and
“Beacon Lights of History.” When K., trying his best to interest her and
to conceal his own heaviness of spirit, told her of his grandfather's
old carriage, she sat back in the shadow.
“Fearful old thing,” said K.,--“regular cabriolet. I can remember yet
the family rows over it. But the old gentleman liked it--used to have
it repainted every year. Strangers in the city used to turn around and
stare at it--thought it was advertising something!”
“When I was a child,” said Sidney quietly, “and a carriage drove up and
stopped on the Street, I always knew some one had died!”
There was a strained note in her voice. K., whose ear was attuned to
every note in her voice, looked at her quickly. “My great-grandfather,”
said Sidney in the same tone, “sold chickens at market. He didn't do it
himself; but the fact's there, isn't it?”
K. was puzzled.
“What about it?” he said.
But Sidney's agile mind had already traveled on. This K. she had never
known, who had lived in a wonderful house, and all the rest of it--he
must have known numbers of lovely women, his own sort of women, who had
traveled and knew all kinds of things: girls like the daughters of the
Executive Committee who came in from their country places in summer
with great armfuls of flowers, and hurried off, after consulting their
jeweled watches, to luncheon or tea or tennis.
“Go on,” said Sidney dully. “Tell me about the women you have known,
your friends, the ones you liked and the ones who liked you.”
K. was rather apologetic.
“I've always been so busy,” he confessed. “I know a lot, but I don't
think they would interest you. They don't do anything, you know--they
travel around and have a good time. They're rather nice to look at, some
of them. But when you've said that you've said it all.”
Nice to look at! Of course they would be, with nothing else to think of
in all the world but of how they looked.
Suddenly Sidney felt very tired. She wanted to go back to the hospital,
and turn the key in the door of her little room, and lie with her face
down on the bed.
“Would you mind very much if I asked you to take me back?”
He did mind. He had a depressed feeling that the evening had failed.
And his depression grew as he brought the car around. He understood, he
thought. She was grieving about Max. After all, a girl couldn't care as
she had for a year and a half, and then give a man up because of another
woman, without a wrench.
“Do you really want to go home, Sidney, or were you tired of sitting
there? In that case, we could drive around for an hour or two. I'll not
talk if you'd like to be quiet.” Being with K. had become an agony, now
that she realized how wrong Christine had been, and that their worlds,
hers and K.'s, had only touched for a time. Soon they would be separated
by as wide a gulf as that which lay between the cherry bookcase--for
instance,--and a book-lined library hung with family portraits. But she
was not disposed to skimp as to agony. She would go through with it,
every word a stab, if only she might sit beside K. a little longer,
might feel the touch of his old gray coat against her arm. “I'd like to
ride, if you don't mind.”
K. turned the automobile toward the country roads. He was remembering
acutely that other ride after Joe in his small car, the trouble he
had had to get a machine, the fear of he knew not what ahead, and his
arrival at last at the road-house, to find Max lying at the head of the
stairs and Carlotta on her knees beside him.
“K.” “Yes?”
“Was there anybody you cared about,--any girl,--when you left home?”
“I was not in love with anyone, if that's what you mean.”
“You knew Max before, didn't you?”
“Yes. You know that.”
“If you knew things about him that I should have known, why didn't you
tell me?”
“I couldn't do that, could I? Anyhow--”
“Yes?”
“I thought everything would be all right. It seemed to me that the mere
fact of your caring for him--” That was shaky ground; he got off it
quickly. “Schwitter has closed up. Do you want to stop there?”
“Not to-night, please.”
They were near the white house now. Schwitter's had closed up, indeed.
The sign over the entrance was gone. The lanterns had been taken down,
and in the dusk they could see Tillie rocking her baby on the porch. As
if to cover the last traces of his late infamy, Schwitter himself was
watering the worn places on the lawn with the garden can.
The car went by. Above the low hum of the engine they could hear
Tillie's voice, flat and unmusical, but filled with the harmonies of
love as she sang to the child.
When they had left the house far behind, K. was suddenly aware that
Sidney was crying. She sat with her head turned away, using her
handkerchief stealthily. He drew the car up beside the road, and in a
masterful fashion turned her shoulders about until she faced him.
“Now, tell me about it,” he said.
“It's just silliness. I'm--I'm a little bit lonely.”
“Lonely!”
“Aunt Harriet's in Paris, and with Joe gone and everybody--”
“Aunt Harriet!”
He was properly dazed, for sure. If she had said she was lonely
because the cherry bookcase was in Paris, he could not have been more
bewildered. And Joe! “And with you going away and never coming back--”
“I'll come back, of course. How's this? I'll promise to come back when
you graduate, and send you flowers.”
“I think,” said Sidney, “that I'll become an army nurse.”
“I hope you won't do that.”
“You won't know, K. You'll be back with your old friends. You'll have
forgotten the Street and all of us.”
“Do you really think that?”
“Girls who have been everywhere, and have lovely clothes, and who won't
know a T bandage from a figure eight!”
“There will never be anybody in the world like you to me, dear.”
His voice was husky.
“You are saying that to comfort me.”
“To comfort you! I--who have wanted you so long that it hurts even to
think about it! Ever since the night I came up the Street, and you were
sitting there on the steps--oh, my dear, my dear, if you only cared a
little!”
Because he was afraid that he would get out of hand and take her in his
arms,--which would be idiotic, since, of course, she did not care for
him that way,--he gripped the steering-wheel. It gave him a curious
appearance of making a pathetic appeal to the wind-shield.
“I have been trying to make you say that all evening!” said Sidney. “I
love you so much that--K., won't you take me in your arms?”
Take her in his arms! He almost crushed her. He held her to him and
muttered incoherencies until she gasped. It was as if he must make up
for long arrears of hopelessness. He held her off a bit to look at her,
as if to be sure it was she and no changeling, and as if he wanted her
eyes to corroborate her lips. There was no lack of confession in her
eyes; they showed him a new heaven and a new earth.
“It was you always, K.,” she confessed. “I just didn't realize it. But
now, when you look back, don't you see it was?”
He looked back over the months when she had seemed as unattainable as
the stars, and he did not see it. He shook his head.
“I never had even a hope.”
“Not when I came to you with everything? I brought you all my troubles,
and you always helped.”
Her eyes filled. She bent down and kissed one of his hands. He was so
happy that the foolish little caress made his heart hammer in his ears.
“I think, K., that is how one can always tell when it is the right one,
and will be the right one forever and ever. It is the person--one goes
to in trouble.”
He had no words for that, only little caressing touches of her arm, her
hand. Perhaps, without knowing it, he was formulating a sort of prayer
that, since there must be troubles, she would always come to him and he
would always be able to help her.
And Sidney, too, fell silent. She was recalling the day she became
engaged to Max, and the lost feeling she had had. She did not feel the
same at all now. She felt as if she had been wandering, and had come
home to the arms that were about her. She would be married, and take the
risk that all women took, with her eyes open. She would go through the
valley of the shadow, as other women did; but K. would be with her.
Nothing else mattered. Looking into his steady eyes, she knew that she
was safe. She would never wither for him.
Where before she had felt the clutch of inexorable destiny, the woman's
fate, now she felt only his arms about her, her cheek on his shabby
coat.
“I shall love you all my life,” she said shakily.
His arms tightened about her.
The little house was dark when they got back to it. The Street, which
had heard that Mr. Le Moyne approved of night air, was raising its
windows for the night and pinning cheesecloth bags over its curtains to
keep them clean.
In the second-story front room at Mrs. McKee's, the barytone slept
heavily, and made divers unvocal sounds. He was hardening his throat,
and so slept with a wet towel about it.
Down on the doorstep, Mrs. McKee and Mr. Wagner sat and made love with
the aid of a lighted match and the pencil-pad.
The car drew up at the little house, and Sidney got out. Then it drove
away, for K. must take it to the garage and walk back.
Sidney sat on the doorstep and waited. How lovely it all was! How
beautiful life was! If one did one's best by life, it did its best too.
How steady K.'s eyes were! She saw the flicker of the match across the
street, and knew what it meant. Once she would have thought that that
was funny; now it seemed very touching to her.
Katie had heard the car, and now she came heavily along the hall. “A
woman left this for Mr. K.,” she said. “If you think it's a begging
letter, you'd better keep it until he's bought his new suit to-morrow.
Almost any moment he's likely to bust out.”
But it was not a begging letter. K. read it in the hall, with Sidney's
shining eyes on him. It began abruptly:--
“I'm going to Africa with one of my cousins. She is a medical
missionary. Perhaps I can work things out there. It is a bad station on
the West Coast. I am not going because I feel any call to the work, but
because I do not know what else to do.
“You were kind to me the other day. I believe, if I had told you then,
you would still have been kind. I tried to tell you, but I was so
terribly afraid.
“If I caused death, I did not mean to. You will think that no excuse,
but it is true. In the hospital, when I changed the bottles on Miss
Page's medicine-tray, I did not care much what happened. But it was
different with you.
“You dismissed me, you remember. I had been careless about a sponge
count. I made up my mind to get back at you. It seemed hopeless--you
were so secure. For two or three days I tried to think of some way to
hurt you. I almost gave up. Then I found the way.
“You remember the packets of gauze sponges we made and used in the
operating-room? There were twelve to each package. When we counted them
as we got them out, we counted by packages. On the night before I left,
I went to the operating-room and added one sponge every here and there.
Out of every dozen packets, perhaps, I fixed one that had thirteen. The
next day I went away.
“Then I was terrified. What if somebody died? I had meant to give you
trouble, so you would have to do certain cases a second time. I swear
that was all. I was so frightened that I went down sick over it. When
I got better, I heard you had lost a case and the cause was being
whispered about. I almost died of terror.
“I tried to get back into the hospital one night. I went up the
fire-escape, but the windows were locked. Then I left the city. I
couldn't stand it. I was afraid to read a newspaper.
“I am not going to sign this letter. You know who it is from. And I am
not going to ask your forgiveness, or anything of that sort. I don't
expect it. But one thing hurt me more than anything else, the other
night. You said you'd lost your faith in yourself. This is to tell you
that you need not. And you said something else--that any one can 'come
back.' I wonder!”
K. stood in the hall of the little house with the letter in his hand.
Just beyond on the doorstep was Sidney, waiting for him. His arms were
still warm from the touch of her. Beyond lay the Street, and beyond that
lay the world and a man's work to do. Work, and faith to do it, a good
woman's hand in the dark, a Providence that made things right in the
end.
“Are you coming, K.?”
“Coming,” he said. And, when he was beside her, his long figure folded
to the short measure of the step, he stooped humbly and kissed the hem
of her soft white dress.
Across the Street, Mr. Wagner wrote something in the dark and then
lighted a match.
“So K. is in love with Sidney Page, after all!” he had written. “She
is a sweet girl, and he is every inch a man. But, to my mind, a certain
lady--”
Mrs. McKee flushed and blew out the match.
Late September now on the Street, with Joe gone and his mother eyeing
the postman with pitiful eagerness; with Mrs. Rosenfeld moving heavily
about the setting-up of the new furniture; and with Johnny driving
heavenly cars, brake and clutch legs well and Strong. Late September,
with Max recovering and settling his tie for any pretty nurse who
happened along, but listening eagerly for Dr. Ed's square tread in the
hall; with Tillie rocking her baby on the porch at Schwitter's, and
Carlotta staring westward over rolling seas; with Christine taking up
her burden and Grace laying hers down; with Joe's tragic young eyes
growing quiet with the peace of the tropics.
“The Lord is my shepherd,” she reads. “I shall not want.”... “Yea, though
I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
Sidney, on her knees in the little parlor, repeats the words with the
others. K. has gone from the Street, and before long she will join him.
With the vision of his steady eyes before her, she adds her own prayer
to the others--that the touch of his arms about her may not make her
forget the vow she has taken, of charity and its sister, service, of a
cup of water to the thirsty, of open arms to a tired child.