K

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER IV

  On the morning after Sidney had invited K. Le Moyne to take her to walk,Max Wilson came down to breakfast rather late. Dr. Ed had breakfasted anhour before, and had already attended, with much profanity on the partof the patient, to a boil on the back of Mr. Rosenfeld's neck.

  "Better change your laundry," cheerfully advised Dr. Ed, cutting a stripof adhesive plaster. "Your neck's irritated from your white collars."

  Rosenfeld eyed him suspiciously, but, possessing a sense of humor also,he grinned.

  "It ain't my everyday things that bother me," he replied. "It's myblankety-blank dress suit. But if a man wants to be tony--"

  "Tony" was not of the Street, but of its environs. Harriet was "tony"because she walked with her elbows in and her head up. Dr. Max was"tony" because he breakfasted late, and had a man come once a week andtake away his clothes to be pressed. He was "tony," too, because he hadbrought back from Europe narrow-shouldered English-cut clothes, when theStreet was still padding its shoulders. Even K. would have been classedwith these others, for the stick that he carried on his walks, for thefact that his shabby gray coat was as unmistakably foreign in cut as Dr.Max's, had the neighborhood so much as known him by sight. But K., sofar, had remained in humble obscurity, and, outside of Mrs. McKee's, wasknown only as the Pages' roomer.

  Mr. Rosenfeld buttoned up the blue flannel shirt which, with a pair ofDr. Ed's cast-off trousers, was his only wear; and fished in his pocket.

  "How much, Doc?"

  "Two dollars," said Dr. Ed briskly.

  "Holy cats! For one jab of a knife! My old woman works a day and a halffor two dollars."

  "I guess it's worth two dollars to you to be able to sleep on yourback." He was imperturbably straightening his small glass table. He knewRosenfeld. "If you don't like my price, I'll lend you the knife the nexttime, and you can let your wife attend to you."

  Rosenfeld drew out a silver dollar, and followed it reluctantly with alimp and dejected dollar bill.

  "There are times," he said, "when, if you'd put me and the missus and aknife in the same room, you wouldn't have much left but the knife."

  Dr. Ed waited until he had made his stiff-necked exit. Then he took thetwo dollars, and, putting the money into an envelope, indorsed it in hisillegible hand. He heard his brother's step on the stairs, and Dr. Edmade haste to put away the last vestiges of his little operation.

  Ed's lapses from surgical cleanliness were a sore trial to the youngerman, fresh from the clinics of Europe. In his downtown office, to whichhe would presently make his leisurely progress, he wore a white coat,and sterilized things of which Dr. Ed did not even know the names.

  So, as he came down the stairs, Dr. Ed, who had wiped his tinyknife with a bit of cotton,--he hated sterilizing it; it spoiled theedge,--thrust it hastily into his pocket. He had cut boils withoutboiling anything for a good many years, and no trouble. But he was wisewith the wisdom of the serpent and the general practitioner, and therewas no use raising a discussion.

  Max's morning mood was always a cheerful one. Now and then the way ofthe transgressor is disgustingly pleasant. Max, who sat up until allhours of the night, drinking beer or whiskey-and-soda, and playingbridge, wakened to a clean tongue and a tendency to have a cigarettebetween shoes, so to speak. Ed, whose wildest dissipation had perhapsbeen to bring into the world one of the neighborhood's babies, wakenedcustomarily to the dark hour of his day, when he dubbed himself failureand loathed the Street with a deadly loathing.

  So now Max brought his handsome self down the staircase and paused atthe office door.

  "At it, already," he said. "Or have you been to bed?"

  "It's after nine," protested Ed mildly. "If I don't start early, I neverget through."

  Max yawned.

  "Better come with me," he said. "If things go on as they've been doing,I'll have to have an assistant. I'd rather have you than anybody, ofcourse." He put his lithe surgeon's hand on his brother's shoulder."Where would I be if it hadn't been for you? All the fellows know whatyou've done."

  In spite of himself, Ed winced. It was one thing to work hard that theremight be one success instead of two half successes. It was a differentthing to advertise one's mediocrity to the world. His sphere of theStreet and the neighborhood was his own. To give it all up and becomehis younger brother's assistant--even if it meant, as it would, betterhours and more money--would be to submerge his identity. He could notbring himself to it.

  "I guess I'll stay where I am," he said. "They know me around here, andI know them. By the way, will you leave this envelope at Mrs. McKee's?Maggie Rosenfeld is ironing there to-day. It's for her."

  Max took the envelope absently.

  "You'll go on here to the end of your days, working for a pittance,"he objected. "Inside of ten years there'll be no general practitioners;then where will you be?"

  "I'll manage somehow," said his brother placidly. "I guess there willalways be a few that can pay my prices better than what you specialistsask."

  Max laughed with genuine amusement.

  "I dare say, if this is the way you let them pay your prices."

  He held out the envelope, and the older man colored.

  Very proud of Dr. Max was his brother, unselfishly proud, of his skill,of his handsome person, of his easy good manners; very humble, too, ofhis own knowledge and experience. If he ever suspected any lack offiner fiber in Max, he put the thought away. Probably he was too rigidhimself. Max was young, a hard worker. He had a right to play hard.

  He prepared his black bag for the day's calls--stethoscope, thermometer,eye-cup, bandages, case of small vials, a lump of absorbent cotton ina not over-fresh towel; in the bottom, a heterogeneous collection ofinstruments, a roll of adhesive plaster, a bottle or two of sugar-milktablets for the children, a dog collar that had belonged to a deadcollie, and had put in the bag in some curious fashion and thereremained.

  He prepared the bag a little nervously, while Max ate. He felt thatmodern methods and the best usage might not have approved of the bag. Onhis way out he paused at the dining-room door.

  "Are you going to the hospital?"

  "Operating at four--wish you could come in."

  "I'm afraid not, Max. I've promised Sidney Page to speak about her toyou. She wants to enter the training-school."

  "Too young," said Max briefly. "Why, she can't be over sixteen."

  "She's eighteen."

  "Well, even eighteen. Do you think any girl of that age is responsibleenough to have life and death put in her hands? Besides, although Ihaven't noticed her lately, she used to be a pretty little thing. Thereis no use filling up the wards with a lot of ornaments; it keeps theinternes all stewed up."

  "Since when," asked Dr. Ed mildly, "have you found good looks in a girla handicap?"

  In the end they compromised. Max would see Sidney at his office. Itwould be better than having her run across the Street--would put thingson the right footing. For, if he did have her admitted, she would haveto learn at once that he was no longer "Dr. Max"; that, as a matter offact, he was now staff, and entitled to much dignity, to speech withoutcontradiction or argument, to clean towels, and a deferential interne athis elbow.

  Having given his promise, Max promptly forgot about it. The Street didnot interest him. Christine and Sidney had been children when he went toVienna, and since his return he had hardly noticed them. Society, alwayskind to single men of good appearance and easy good manners, had takenhim up. He wore dinner or evening clothes five nights out of seven, andwas supposed by his conservative old neighbors to be going the pace. Therumor had been fed by Mrs. Rosenfeld, who, starting out for her day'swashing at six o'clock one morning, had found Dr. Max's car, lampslighted, and engine going, drawn up before the house door, with itsowner asleep at the wheel. The story traveled the length of the Streetthat day.

  "Him," said Mrs. Rosenfeld, who was occasionally flowery, "sittin' upas straight as this washboard, and his silk hat shinin' in the sun; butexceptin' the car, whi
ch was workin' hard and gettin' nowhere, the wholeoutfit in the arms of Morpheus."

  Mrs. Lorenz, whose day it was to have Mrs. Rosenfeld, and who wasunfamiliar with mythology, gasped at the last word.

  "Mercy!" she said. "Do you mean to say he's got that awful drug habit!"

  Down the clean steps went Dr. Max that morning, a big man, almost astall as K. Le Moyne, eager of life, strong and a bit reckless, not fine,perhaps, but not evil. He had the same zest of living as Sidney, butwith this difference--the girl stood ready to give herself to life: heknew that life would come to him. All-dominating male was Dr. Max, thatmorning, as he drew on his gloves before stepping into his car. It wasafter nine o'clock. K. Le Moyne had been an hour at his desk. The McKeenapkins lay ironed in orderly piles.

  Nevertheless, Dr. Max was suffering under a sense of defeat as he rodedowntown. The night before, he had proposed to a girl and had beenrejected. He was not in love with the girl,--she would have been asuitable wife, and a surgeon ought to be married; it gives peopleconfidence,--but his pride was hurt. He recalled the exact words of therejection.

  "You're too good-looking, Max," she had said, "and that's the truth. Nowthat operations are as popular as fancy dancing, and much less bother,half the women I know are crazy about their surgeons. I'm too fond of mypeace of mind."

  "But, good Heavens! haven't you any confidence in me?" he had demanded.

  "None whatever, Max dear." She had looked at him with level,understanding eyes.

  He put the disagreeable recollection out of his mind as he parked hiscar and made his way to his office. Here would be people who believedin him, from the middle-aged nurse in her prim uniform to the row ofpatients sitting stiffly around the walls of the waiting-room. Dr. Max,pausing in the hall outside the door of his private office, drew a longbreath. This was the real thing--work and plenty of it, a chance to showthe other men what he could do, a battle to win! No humanitarian was he,but a fighter: each day he came to his office with the same battle lust.

  The office nurse had her back to him. When she turned, he faced anagreeable surprise. Instead of Miss Simpson, he faced a young andattractive girl, faintly familiar.

  "We tried to get you by telephone," she explained. "I am from thehospital. Miss Simpson's father died this morning, and she knew youwould have to have some one. I was just starting for my vacation, sothey sent me."

  "Rather a poor substitute for a vacation," he commented.

  She was a very pretty girl. He had seen her before in the hospital, buthe had never really noticed how attractive she was. Rather stunningshe was, he thought. The combination of yellow hair and dark eyeswas unusual. He remembered, just in time, to express regret at MissSimpson's bereavement.

  "I am Miss Harrison," explained the substitute, and held out his longwhite coat. The ceremony, purely perfunctory with Miss Simpson on duty,proved interesting, Miss Harrison, in spite of her high heels, beingsmall and the young surgeon tall. When he was finally in the coat, shewas rather flushed and palpitating.

  "But I KNEW your name, of course," lied Dr. Max. "And--I'm sorry aboutthe vacation."

  After that came work. Miss Harrison was nimble and alert, but thesurgeon worked quickly and with few words, was impatient when she couldnot find the things he called for, even broke into restrained profanitynow and then. She went a little pale over her mistakes, but preservedher dignity and her wits. Now and then he found her dark eyes fixedon him, with something inscrutable but pleasing in their depths. Thesituation was: rather piquant. Consciously he was thinking only of whathe was doing. Subconsciously his busy ego was finding solace after lastnight's rebuff.

  Once, during the cleaning up between cases, he dropped to a personality.He was drying his hands, while she placed freshly sterilized instrumentson a glass table.

  "You are almost a foreign type, Miss Harrison. Last year, in a Londonballet, I saw a blonde Spanish girl who looked like you."

  "My mother was a Spaniard." She did not look up.

  Where Miss Simpson was in the habit of clumping through the morning inflat, heavy shoes, Miss Harrison's small heels beat a busy tattoo onthe tiled floor. With the rustling of her starched dress, the sound wasessentially feminine, almost insistent. When he had time to notice it,it amused him that he did not find it annoying.

  Once, as she passed him a bistoury, he deliberately placed his finehand over her fingers and smiled into her eyes. It was play for him; itlightened the day's work.

  Sidney was in the waiting-room. There had been no tedium in themorning's waiting. Like all imaginative people, she had the gift ofdramatizing herself. She was seeing herself in white from head tofoot, like this efficient young woman who came now and then to thewaiting-room door; she was healing the sick and closing tired eyes; shewas even imagining herself proposed to by an aged widower with grownchildren and quantities of money, one of her patients.

  She sat very demurely in the waiting-room with a magazine in her lap,and told her aged patient that she admired and respected him, but thatshe had given herself to the suffering poor.

  "Everything in the world that you want," begged the elderly gentleman."You should see the world, child, and I will see it again through youreyes. To Paris first for clothes and the opera, and then--"

  "But I do not love you," Sidney replied, mentally but steadily. "In allthe world I love only one man. He is--"

  She hesitated here. It certainly was not Joe, or K. Le Moyne of thegas office. It seem to her suddenly very sad that there was no oneshe loved. So many people went into hospitals because they had beendisappointed in love.

  "Dr. Wilson will see you now."

  She followed Miss Harrison into the consulting room. Dr. Max--not thegloved and hatted Dr. Max of the Street, but a new person, one she hadnever known--stood in his white office, tall, dark-eyed, dark-haired,competent, holding out his long, immaculate surgeon's hand, and smilingdown at her.

  Men, like jewels, require a setting. A clerk on a high stool, poringover a ledger, is not unimpressive, or a cook over her stove. But placethe cook on the stool, poring over the ledger! Dr. Max, who had livedall his life on the edge of Sidney's horizon, now, by the simplechanging of her point of view, loomed large and magnificent. Perhapshe knew it. Certainly he stood very erect. Certainly, too, there wasconsiderable manner in the way in which he asked Miss Harrison to go outand close the door behind her.

  Sidney's heart, considering what was happening to it, behaved very well.

  "For goodness' sake, Sidney," said Dr. Max, "here you are a young ladyand I've never noticed it!"

  This, of course, was not what he had intended to say, being staff andall that. But Sidney, visibly palpitant, was very pretty, much prettierthan the Harrison girl, beating a tattoo with her heels in the nextroom.

  Dr. Max, belonging to the class of man who settles his tie every time hesees an attractive woman, thrust his hands into the pockets of his longwhite coat and surveyed her quizzically.

  "Did Dr. Ed tell you?"

  "Sit down. He said something about the hospital. How's your mother andAunt Harriet?"

  "Very well--that is, mother's never quite well." She was sitting forwardon her chair, her wide young eyes on him. "Is that--is your nurse fromthe hospital here?"

  "Yes. But she's not my nurse. She's a substitute."

  "The uniform is so pretty." Poor Sidney! with all the things she hadmeant to say about a life of service, and that, although she was young,she was terribly in earnest.

  "It takes a lot of plugging before one gets the uniform. Look here,Sidney; if you are going to the hospital because of the uniform, andwith any idea of soothing fevered brows and all that nonsense--"

  She interrupted him, deeply flushed. Indeed, no. She wanted to work.She was young and strong, and surely a pair of willing hands--that wasabsurd about the uniform. She had no silly ideas. There was so much todo in the world, and she wanted to help. Some people could give money,but she couldn't. She could only offer service. And, partly throughearnestness and partly throu
gh excitement, she ended in a sort ofnervous sob, and, going to the window, stood with her back to him.

  He followed her, and, because they were old neighbors, she did notresent it when he put his hand on her shoulder.

  "I don't know--of course, if you feel like that about it," he said,"we'll see what can be done. It's hard work, and a good many times itseems futile. They die, you know, in spite of all we can do. And thereare many things that are worse than death--"

  His voice trailed off. When he had started out in his profession, hehad had some such ideal of service as this girl beside him. For justa moment, as he stood there close to her, he saw things again with theeyes of his young faith: to relieve pain, to straighten the crooked,to hurt that he might heal,--not to show the other men what he coulddo,--that had been his early creed. He sighed a little as he turnedaway.

  "I'll speak to the superintendent about you," he said. "Perhaps you'dlike me to show you around a little."

  "When? To-day?"

  He had meant in a month, or a year. It was quite a minute before hereplied:--

  "Yes, to-day, if you say. I'm operating at four. How about threeo'clock?"

  She held out both hands, and he took them, smiling.

  "You are the kindest person I ever met."

  "And--perhaps you'd better not say you are applying until we find out ifthere is a vacancy."

  "May I tell one person?"

  "Mother?"

  "No. We--we have a roomer now. He is very much interested. I should liketo tell him."

  He dropped her hands and looked at her in mock severity.

  "Much interested! Is he in love with you?"

  "Mercy, no!"

  "I don't believe it. I'm jealous. You know, I've always been more thanhalf in love with you myself!"

  Play for him--the same victorious instinct that had made him touch MissHarrison's fingers as she gave him the instrument. And Sidney knew howit was meant; she smiled into his eyes and drew down her veil briskly.

  "Then we'll say at three," she said calmly, and took an orderly andunflurried departure.

  But the little seed of tenderness had taken root. Sidney, passing in thelast week or two from girlhood to womanhood,--outgrowing Joe, had sheonly known it, as she had outgrown the Street,--had come that day intoher first contact with a man of the world. True, there was K. Le Moyne.But K. was now of the Street, of that small world of one dimension thatshe was leaving behind her.

  She sent him a note at noon, with word to Tillie at Mrs. McKee's to putit under his plate:--

  DEAR MR. LE MOYNE,--I am so excited I can hardly write. Dr. Wilson, thesurgeon, is going to take me through the hospital this afternoon. Wishme luck. SIDNEY PAGE.

  K. read it, and, perhaps because the day was hot and his butter softand the other "mealers" irritable with the heat, he ate little or noluncheon. Before he went out into the sun, he read the note again.To his jealous eyes came a vision of that excursion to the hospital.Sidney, all vibrant eagerness, luminous of eye, quick of bosom; andWilson, sardonically smiling, amused and interested in spite of himself.He drew a long breath, and thrust the note in his pocket.

  The little house across the way sat square in the sun. The shades of hiswindows had been lowered against the heat. K. Le Moyne made an impulsivemovement toward it and checked himself.

  As he went down the Street, Wilson's car came around the corner. LeMoyne moved quietly into the shadow of the church and watched the car goby.