K

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER XIX

  To Harriet Kennedy, Sidney's sentence of thirty days' suspension cameas a blow. K. broke the news to her that evening before the time forSidney's arrival.

  The little household was sharing in Harriet's prosperity. Katie hada helper now, a little Austrian girl named Mimi. And Harriet hadestablished on the Street the innovation of after-dinner coffee. It wasover the after-dinner coffee that K. made his announcement.

  "What do you mean by saying she is coming home for thirty days? Is thechild ill?"

  "Not ill, although she is not quite well. The fact is, Harriet,"--forit was "Harriet" and "K." by this time,--"there has been a sort ofsemi-accident up at the hospital. It hasn't resulted seriously, but--"

  Harriet put down the apostle-spoon in her hand and stared across at him.

  "Then she has been suspended? What did she do? I don't believe she didanything!"

  "There was a mistake about the medicine, and she was blamed; that'sall."

  "She'd better come home and stay home," said Harriet shortly. "I hope itdoesn't get in the papers. This dressmaking business is a funny sort ofthing. One word against you or any of your family, and the crowd's offsomewhere else."

  "There's nothing against Sidney," K. reminded her. "Nothing in theworld. I saw the superintendent myself this afternoon. It seems it's amere matter of discipline. Somebody made a mistake, and they cannot letsuch a thing go by. But he believes, as I do, that it was not Sidney."

  However Harriet had hardened herself against the girl's arrival, all shehad meant to say fled when she saw Sidney's circled eyes and patheticmouth.

  "You child!" she said. "You poor little girl!" And took her corsetedbosom.

  For the time at least, Sidney's world had gone to pieces about her. Allher brave vaunt of service faded before her disgrace.

  When Christine would have seen her, she kept her door locked and askedfor just that one evening alone. But after Harriet had retired, andMimi, the Austrian, had crept out to the corner to mail a letter back toGratz, Sidney unbolted her door and listened in the little upper hall.Harriet, her head in a towel, her face carefully cold-creamed, had goneto bed; but K.'s light, as usual, was shining over the transom. Sidneytiptoed to the door.

  "K.!"

  Almost immediately he opened the door.

  "May I come in and talk to you?"

  He turned and took a quick survey of the room. The picture was againstthe collar-box. But he took the risk and held the door wide.

  Sidney came in and sat down by the fire. By being adroit he managed toslip the little picture over and under the box before she saw it. It isdoubtful if she would have realized its significance, had she seen it.

  "I've been thinking things over," she said. "It seems to me I'd betternot go back."

  He had left the door carefully open. Men are always more conventionalthan women.

  "That would be foolish, wouldn't it, when you have done so well? And,besides, since you are not guilty, Sidney--"

  "I didn't do it!" she cried passionately. "I know I didn't. But I'velost faith in myself. I can't keep on; that's all there is to it. Alllast night, in the emergency ward, I felt it going. I clutched at it. Ikept saying to myself: 'You didn't do it, you didn't do it'; and all thetime something inside of me was saying, 'Not now, perhaps; but sometimeyou may.'"

  Poor K., who had reasoned all this out for himself and had come to thesame impasse!

  "To go on like this, feeling that one has life and death in one's hand,and then perhaps some day to make a mistake like that!" She looked up athim forlornly. "I am just not brave enough, K."

  "Wouldn't it be braver to keep on? Aren't you giving up very easily?"

  Her world was in pieces about her, and she felt alone in a wide andempty place. And, because her nerves were drawn taut until they wereready to snap, Sidney turned on him shrewishly.

  "I think you are all afraid I will come back to stay. Nobody reallywants me anywhere--in all the world! Not at the hospital, not here, notanyplace. I am no use."

  "When you say that nobody wants you," said K., not very steadily, "I--Ithink you are making a mistake."

  "Who?" she demanded. "Christine? Aunt Harriet? Katie? The only personwho ever really wanted me was my mother, and I went away and left her!"

  She scanned his face closely, and, reading there something she did notunderstand, she colored suddenly.

  "I believe you mean Joe Drummond."

  "No; I do not mean Joe Drummond."

  If he had found any encouragement in her face, he would have gone onrecklessly; but her blank eyes warned him.

  "If you mean Max Wilson," said Sidney, "you are entirely wrong. He's notin love with me--not, that is, any more than he is in love with adozen girls. He likes to be with me--oh, I know that; but that doesn'tmean--anything else. Anyhow, after this disgrace--"

  "There is no disgrace, child."

  "He'll think me careless, at the least. And his ideals are so high, K."

  "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 asudden passionate movement. In the informality of the household, she,had visited K. in her dressing-gown and slippers; and now she stoodbefore him, a tragic young figure, clutching the folds of her gownacross her breast.

  "I worship him, K.," she said tragically. "When I see him coming, I wantto get down and let him walk on me. I know his step in the hall. Iknow the very way he rings for the elevator. When I see him in theoperating-room, cool and calm while every one else is flustered andexcited, he--he looks like a god."

  Then, half ashamed of her outburst, she turned her back to him and stoodgazing at the small coal fire. It was as well for K. that she did notsee his face. For that one moment the despair that was in him shone inhis eyes. He glanced around the shabby little room, at the sagging bed,the collar-box, the pincushion, the old marble-topped bureau under whichReginald had formerly made his nest, at his untidy table, littered withpipes 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 notjust--glamour, Sidney?"

  "It's real--terribly real." Her voice was muffled, and he knew then thatshe was crying.

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

  "Perhaps he cares very much, too."

  "Give me a handkerchief," said Sidney in a muffled tone, and the littlescene 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 comeover to-night. When one is in trouble one needs friends."

  Back in a circle she came inevitably to her suspension. She would nevergo back, she said passionately. She was innocent, had been falselyaccused. If they could think such a thing about her, she didn't want tobe 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 fourto six. When Carlotta left the ward, the probationer would have them."

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

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

  "What is ridiculous?"

  "I've sometimes thought that Carlotta--but I am sure she is perfectlyfair 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 shedidn't do it. I'm only trying to find out whose mistake it was."

&nbs
p; Soon after that she said good-night and went out. She turned in thedoorway 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 closedthe 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 aloneto 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 tosleep and let your light burn!"

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

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

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

  Joe Drummond came to see Sidney the next day. She would have avoidedhim if she could, but Mimi had ushered him up to the sewing-room boudoirbefore 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 thatnight the June before when he had asked Sidney to marry him. He stoodjust inside the doorway. He offered no conventional greeting whatever;but, after surveying her briefly, her black gown, the lines around hereyes:--

  "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 tostay right here, Sidney. People know you on the Street. Nobody herewould ever accuse you of trying to murder anybody."

  In spite of herself, Sidney smiled a little.

  "Nobody thinks I tried to murder him. It was a mistake about themedicines. I didn't do it, Joe."

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

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

  "But, Joe, they have only done what they thought was right. Whoever madeit, 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 onyou?"

  "Please don't be theatrical. Come in and sit down. I can't talk to youif you explode like a rocket all the time."

  Her matter-of-fact tone had its effect. He advanced into the room, buthe still scorned a chair.

  "I guess you've been wondering why you haven't heard from me," he said."I've seen you more than you've seen me."

  Sidney looked uneasy. The idea of espionage is always repugnant, andto have a rejected lover always in the offing, as it were, wasdisconcerting.

  "I wish you would be just a little bit sensible, Joe. It's so silly ofyou, really. It's not because you care for me; it's really because youcare for yourself."

  "You can't look at me and say that, Sid."

  He ran his finger around his collar--an old gesture; but the collar wasvery loose. He was thin; his neck showed it.

  "I'm just eating my heart out for you, and that's the truth. And itisn't only that. Everywhere I go, people say, 'There's the fellow SidneyPage turned down when she went to the hospital.' I've got so I keep offthe Street as much as I can."

  Sidney was half alarmed, half irritated. This wild, excited boy was notthe doggedly faithful youth she had always known. It seemed to herthat he was hardly sane--that underneath his quiet manner and carefullyrepressed voice there lurked something irrational, something she couldnot cope with. She looked up at him helplessly.

  "But what do you want me to do? You--you almost frighten me. If you'donly sit down--"

  "I want you to come home. I'm not asking anything else now. I just wantyou to come back, so that things will be the way they used to be. Nowthat they have turned you out--"

  "They've done nothing of the sort. I've told you that."

  "You're going back?"

  "Absolutely."

  "Because you love the hospital, or because you love somebody connectedwith the hospital?"

  Sidney was thoroughly angry by this time, angry and reckless. She hadcome through so much that every nerve was crying in passionate protest.

  "If it will make you understand things any better," she cried, "I amgoing back for both reasons!"

  She was sorry the next moment. But her words seemed, surprisinglyenough, to steady him. For the first time, he sat down.

  "Then, as far as I am concerned, it's all over, is it?"

  "Yes, Joe. I told you that long ago."

  He seemed hardly to be listening. His thoughts had ranged far ahead.Suddenly:--

  "You think Christine has her hands full with Palmer, don't you? Well,if you take Max Wilson, you're going to have more trouble than Christineever dreamed of. I can tell you some things about him now that will makeyou think twice."

  But Sidney had reached her limit. She went over and flung open the door.

  "Every word that you say shows me how right I am in not marrying you,Joe," she said. "Real men do not say those things about each other underany circumstances. You're behaving like a bad boy. I don't want you tocome back until you have grown up."

  He was very white, but he picked up his hat and went to the door.

  "I guess I AM crazy," he said. "I've been wanting to go away, but motherraises such a fuss--I'll not annoy you any more."

  He reached in his pocket and, pulling out a small box, held it towardher. The lid was punched full of holes.

  "Reginald," he said solemnly. "I've had him all winter. Some boys caughthim in the park, and I brought him home."

  He left her standing there speechless with surprise, with the box in herhand, and ran down the stairs and out into the Street. At the foot ofthe steps he almost collided with Dr. Ed.

  "Back to see Sidney?" said Dr. Ed genially. "That's fine, Joe. I'm gladyou've made it up."

  The boy went blindly down the Street.