The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  "Don't speak to me for a minute or two," she said. "I'm thinking over what you have just said."

  Manlike, having raised the issue, K. would have given much to evade it. Not that he had owned himself in love with Sidney. Love was not for him. But into his loneliness and despair the girl had came like a ray of light. She typified that youth and hope that he had felt slipping away from him. Through her clear eyes he was beginning to see a new world. Lose her he must, and that he knew; but not this way.

  Down through the valley ran a shallow river, making noisy pretensions to both depth and fury. He remembered just such a river in the Tyrol, with this same Wilson on a rock, holding the hand of a pretty Austrian girl, while he snapped the shutter of a camera. He had that picture somewhere now; but the girl was dead, and, of the three, Wilson was the only one who had met life and vanquished it.

  "I've known him all my life," Sidney said at last. "You're perfectly right about one thing: I talk about him and I think about him. I'm being candid, because what's the use of being friends if we're not frank? I admire him--you'd have to see him in the hospital, with every one deferring to him and all that, to understand. And when you think of a manlike that, who holds life and death in his hands, of course you rather thrill. I--I honestly believe that's all there is to it."

  "If that's the whole thing, that's hardly a mad passion." He tried to smile; succeeded faintly.

  "Well, of course, there's this, too. I know he'll never look at me. I'll be one of forty nurses; indeed, for three months I'll be only a probationer. He'll probably never even remember I'm in the hospital at all."

  "I see. Then, if you thought he was in love with you, things would be different?"

  "If I thought Dr. Max Wilson was in love with me," said Sidney solemnly, "I'd go out of my head with joy."

  One of the new qualities that K. Le Moyne was cultivating was of living each day for itself. Having no past and no future, each day was worth exactly what it brought. He was to look back to this day with mingled feelings: sheer gladness at being out in the open with Sidney; the memory of the shock with which he realized that she was, unknown to herself, already in the throes of a romantic attachment for Wilson; and, long, long after, when he had gone down to the depths with her and saved her by his steady hand, with something of mirth for the untoward happening that closed the day.

  Sidney fell into the river.

  They had released Reginald, released him with the tribute of a shamefaced tear on Sidney's part, and a handful of chestnuts from K. The little squirrel had squeaked his gladness, and, tail erect, had darted into the grass.

  "Ungrateful little beast!" said Sidney, and dried her eyes. "Do you suppose he'll ever think of the nuts again, or find them?"

  "He'll be all right," K. replied. "The little beggar can take care of himself, if only--"

  "If only what?"

  "If only he isn't too friendly. He's apt to crawl into the pockets of any one who happens around."

  She was alarmed at that. To make up for his indiscretion, K. suggested a descent to the river. She accepted eagerly, and he helped her down. That was another memory that outlasted the day--her small warm hand in his; the time she slipped and he caught her; the pain in her eyes at one of his thoughtless remarks.

  "I'm going to be pretty lonely," he said, when she had paused in the descent and was taking a stone out of her low shoe. "Reginald gone, and you going! I shall hate to come home at night." And then, seeing her wince: "I've been whining all day. For Heaven's sake, don't look like that. If there's one sort of man I detest more than another, it's a man who is sorry for himself. Do you suppose your mother would object if we stayed, out here at the hotel for supper? I've ordered a moon, orange-yellow and extra size."

  "I should hate to have anything ordered and wasted."

  "Then we'll stay."

  "It's fearfully extravagant."

  "I'll be thrifty as to moons while you are in the hospital."

  So it was settled. And, as it happened, Sidney had to stay, anyhow. For, having perched herself out in the river on a sugar-loaf rock, she slid, slowly but with a dreadful inevitability, into the water. K. happened to be looking in another direction. So it occurred that at one moment, Sidney sat on a rock, fluffy white from head to feet, entrancingly pretty, and knowing it, and the next she was standing neck deep in water, much too startled to scream, and trying to be dignified under the rather trying circumstances. K. had not looked around. The splash had been a gentle one.

  "If you will be good enough," said Sidney, with her chin well up, "to give me your hand or a pole or something--because if the river rises an inch I shall drown."

  To his undying credit, K. Le Moyne did not laugh when he turned and saw her. He went out on the sugar-loaf rock, and lifted her bodily up its slippery sides. He had prodigious strength, in spite of his leanness.

  "Well!" said Sidney, when they were both on the rock, carefully balanced.

  "Are you cold?"

  "Not a bit. But horribly unhappy. I must look a sight." Then, remembering her manners, as the Street had it, she said primly:--

  "Thank you for saving me."

  "There wasn't any danger, really, unless--unless the river had risen."

  And then, suddenly, he burst into delighted laughter, the first, perhaps, for months. He shook with it, struggled at the sight of her injured face to restrain it, achieved finally a degree of sobriety by fixing his eyes on the river-bank.

  "When you have quite finished," said Sidney severely, "perhaps you will take me to the hotel. I dare say I shall have to be washed and ironed."

  He drew her cautiously to her feet. Her wet skirts clung to her; her shoes were sodden and heavy. She clung to him frantically, her eyes on the river below. With the touch of her hands the man's mirth died. He held her very carefully, very tenderly, as one holds something infinitely precious.

  CHAPTER VI

  The same day Dr. Max operated at the hospital. It was a Wilson day, the young surgeon having six cases. One of the innovations Dr. Max had made was to change the hour for major operations from early morning to mid-afternoon. He could do as well later in the day,--his nerves were steady, and uncounted numbers of cigarettes did not make his hand shake,--and he hated to get up early.

  The staff had fallen into the way of attending Wilson's operations. His technique was good; but technique alone never gets a surgeon anywhere. Wilson was getting results. Even the most jealous of that most jealous of professions, surgery, had to admit that he got results.

  Operations were over for the afternoon. The last case had been wheeled out of the elevator. The pit of the operating-room was in disorder--towels everywhere, tables of instruments, steaming sterilizers. Orderlies were going about, carrying out linens, emptying pans. At a table two nurses were cleaning instruments and putting them away in their glass cases. Irrigators were being emptied, sponges recounted and checked off on written lists.

  In the midst of the confusion, Wilson stood giving last orders to the interne at his elbow. As he talked he scoured his hands and arms with a small brush; bits of lather flew off on to the tiled floor. His speech was incisive, vigorous. At the hospital they said his nerves were iron; there was no let-down after the day's work. The internes worshiped and feared him. He was just, but without mercy. To be able to work like that, so certainly, with so sure a touch, and to look like a Greek god! Wilson's only rival, a gynecologist named O'Hara, got results, too; but he sweated and swore through his operations, was not too careful as to asepsis, and looked like a gorilla.

  The day had been a hard one. The operating room nurses were fagged. Two or three probationers had been sent to help cleanup, and a senior nurse. Wilson's eyes caught the nurse's eyes as she passed him.

  "Here, too, Miss Harrison!" he said gayly. "Have they set you on my trail?"

  With the eyes of the room on her, the girl answered primly:--

  "I'm to be in your office in the mornings, Dr. Wilson, and anywhere I am needed in the afternoons."<
br />
  "And your vacation?"

  "I shall take it when Miss Simpson comes back."

  Although he went on at once with his conversation with the interne, he still heard the click of her heels about the room. He had not lost the fact that she had flushed when he spoke to her. The mischief that was latent in him came to the surface. When he had rinsed his hands, he followed her, carrying the towel to where she stood talking to the superintendent of the training school.

  "Thanks very much, Miss Gregg," he said. "Everything went off nicely."

  "I was sorry about that catgut. We have no trouble with what we prepare ourselves. But with so many operations--"

  He was in a magnanimous mood. He smiled' at Miss Gregg, who was elderly and gray, but visibly his creature.

  "That's all right. It's the first time, and of course it will be the last."

  "The sponge list, doctor."

  He glanced over it, noting accurately sponges prepared, used, turned in. But he missed no gesture of the girl who stood beside Miss Gregg.

  "All right." He returned the list. "That was a mighty pretty probationer I brought you yesterday."

  Two small frowning lines appeared between Miss Harrison's dark brows. He caught them, caught her somber eyes too, and was amused and rather stimulated.

  "She is very young."

  "Prefer 'em young," said Dr. Max. "Willing to learn at that age. You'll have to watch her, though. You'll have all the internes buzzing around, neglecting business."

  Miss Gregg rather fluttered. She was divided between her disapproval of internes at all times and of young probationers generally, and her allegiance to the brilliant surgeon whose word was rapidly becoming law in the hospital. When an emergency of the cleaning up called her away, doubt still in her eyes, Wilson was left alone with Miss Harrison.

  "Tired?" He adopted the gentle, almost tender tone that made most women his slaves.

  "A little. It is warm."

  "What are you going to do this evening? Any lectures?"

  "Lectures are over for the summer. I shall go to prayers, and after that to the roof for air."

  There was a note of bitterness in her voice. Under the eyes of the other nurses, she was carefully contained. They might have been outlining the morning's work at his office.

  "The hand lotion, please."

  She brought it obediently and poured it into his cupped hands. The solutions of the operating-room played havoc with the skin: the surgeons, and especially Wilson, soaked their hands plentifully with a healing lotion.

  Over the bottle their eyes met again, and this time the girl smiled faintly.

  "Can't you take a little ride to-night and cool off? I'll have the car wherever you say. A ride and some supper--how does it sound? You could get away at seven--"

  "Miss Gregg is coming!"

  With an impassive face, the girl took the bottle away. The workers of the operating-room surged between them. An interne presented an order-book; moppers had come in and waited to clean the tiled floor. There seemed no chance for Wilson to speak to Miss Harrison again.

  But he was clever with the guile of the pursuing male. Eyes of all on him, he turned at the door of the wardrobe-room, where he would exchange his white garments for street clothing, and spoke to her over the heads of a dozen nurses.

  "That patient's address that I had forgotten, Miss Harrison, is the corner of the Park and Ellington Avenue."

  "Thank you."

  She played the game well, was quite calm. He admired her coolness. Certainly she was pretty, and certainly, too, she was interested in him. The hurt to his pride of a few nights before was healed. He went whistling into the wardrobe-room. As he turned he caught the interne's eye, and there passed between them a glance of complete comprehension. The interne grinned.

  The room was not empty. His brother was there, listening to the comments of O'Hara, his friendly rival.

  "Good work, boy!" said O'Hara, and clapped a hairy hand on his shoulder. "That last case was a wonder. I'm proud of you, and your brother here is indecently exalted. It was the Edwardes method, wasn't it? I saw it done at his clinic in New York."

  "Glad you liked it. Yes. Edwardes was a pal at mine in Berlin. A great surgeon, too, poor old chap!"

  "There aren't three men in the country with the nerve and the hand for it."

  O'Hara went out, glowing with his own magnanimity. Deep in his heart was a gnawing of envy--not for himself, but for his work. These young fellows with no family ties, who could run over to Europe and bring back anything new that was worth while, they had it all over the older men. Not that he would have changed things. God forbid!

  Dr. Ed stood by and waited while his brother got into his street clothes. He was rather silent. There were many times when he wished that their mother could have lived to see how he had carried out his promise to "make a man of Max." This was one of them. Not that he took any credit for Max's brilliant career--but he would have liked her to know that things were going well. He had a picture of her over his office desk. Sometimes he wondered what she would think of his own untidy methods compared with Max's extravagant order--of the bag, for instance, with the dog's collar in it, and other things. On these occasions he always determined to clear out the bag.

  "I guess I'll be getting along," he said. "Will you be home to dinner?"

  "I think not. I'll--I'm going to run out of town, and eat where it's cool."

  The Street was notoriously hot in summer. When Dr. Max was newly home from Europe, and Dr. Ed was selling a painfully acquired bond or two to furnish the new offices downtown, the brothers had occasionally gone together, by way of the trolley, to the White Springs Hotel for supper. Those had been gala days for the older man. To hear names that he had read with awe, and mispronounced, most of his life, roll off Max's tongue--"Old Steinmetz" and "that ass of a Heydenreich"; to hear the medical and surgical gossip of the Continent, new drugs, new technique, the small heart-burnings of the clinics, student scandal--had brought into his drab days a touch of color. But that was over now. Max had new friends, new social obligations; his time was taken up. And pride would not allow the older brother to show how he missed the early days.

  Forty-two he was, and; what with sleepless nights and twenty years of hurried food, he looked fifty. Fifty, then, to Max's thirty.

  "There's a roast of beef. It's a pity to cook a roast for one."

  Wasteful, too, this cooking of food for two and only one to eat it. A roast of beef meant a visit, in Dr. Ed's modest-paying clientele. He still paid the expenses of the house on the Street.

  "Sorry, old man; I've made another arrangement."

  They left the hospital together. Everywhere the younger man received the homage of success. The elevator-man bowed and flung the doors open, with a smile; the pharmacy clerk, the doorkeeper, even the convalescent patient who was polishing the great brass doorplate, tendered their tribute. Dr. Ed looked neither to right nor left.

  At the machine they separated. But Dr. Ed stood for a moment with his hand on the car.

  "I was thinking, up there this afternoon," he said slowly, "that I'm not sure I want Sidney Page to become a nurse."

  "Why?"

  "There's a good deal in life that a girl need not know--not, at least, until her husband tells her. Sidney's been guarded, and it's bound to be a shock."

  "It's her own choice."

  "Exactly. A child reaches out for the fire."

  The motor had started. For the moment, at least, the younger Wilson had no interest in Sidney Page.

  "She'll manage all right. Plenty of other girls have taken the training and come through without spoiling their zest for life."

  Already, as the car moved off, his mind was on his appointment for the evening.

  Sidney, after her involuntary bath in the river, had gone into temporary eclipse at the White Springs Hotel. In the oven of the kitchen stove sat her two small white shoes, stuffed with paper so that they might dry in shape. Back in a detached laundry, a
sympathetic maid was ironing various soft white garments, and singing as she worked.

  Sidney sat in a rocking-chair in a hot bedroom. She was carefully swathed in a sheet from neck to toes, except for her arms, and she was being as philosophic as possible. After all, it was a good chance to think things over. She had very little time to think, generally.

  She meant to give up Joe Drummond. She didn't want to hurt him. Well, there was that to think over and a matter of probation dresses to be talked over later with her Aunt Harriet. Also, there was a great deal of advice to K. Le Moyne, who was ridiculously extravagant, before trusting the house to him. She folded her white arms and prepared to think over all these things. As a matter of fact, she went mentally, like an arrow to its mark, to the younger Wilson--to his straight figure in its white coat, to his dark eyes and heavy hair, to the cleft in his chin when he smiled.

  "You know, I have always been more than half in love with you myself..."

  Some one tapped lightly at the door. She was back again in the stuffy hotel room, clutching the sheet about her.

  "Yes?"

  "It's Le Moyne. Are you all right?"

  "Perfectly. How stupid it must be for you!"

  "I'm doing very well. The maid will soon be ready. What shall I order for supper?"

  "Anything. I'm starving."

  Whatever visions K. Le Moyne may have had of a chill or of a feverish cold were dispelled by that.

  "The moon has arrived, as per specifications. Shall we eat on the terrace?"

  "I have never eaten on a terrace in my life. I'd love it."

  "I think your shoes have shrunk."

  "Flatterer!" She laughed. "Go away and order supper. And I can see fresh lettuce. Shall we have a salad?"

  K. Le Moyne assured her through the door that he would order a salad, and prepared to descend.

  But he stood for a moment in front of the closed door, for the mere sound of her moving, beyond it. Things had gone very far with the Pages' roomer that day in the country; not so far as they were to go, but far enough to let him see on the brink of what misery he stood.