 CHAPTER XIII of K. A few days after Wilson's recognition of Kaye, two most exciting things happened to Sydney. One was that Christine asked her to be made of honor at her wedding, the other was more wonderful. She was accepted and given her cap. Because she could not get home that night and because the little house had no telephone, she wrote the news to her mother and sent a note to Lemoine. Dear Kaye, I am accepted and it is on my head at this minute. I am as conscious of it as if it were a halo and as if I had done something to deserve it instead of just hoping that someday I shall. I am writing this on the bureau so that when I lift my eyes I may see it. I am afraid just now I am thinking more of the cap than of what it means. It is becoming. Very soon I shall slip down and show it to the ward. I have promised. I shall go to the door when the night nurse is busy somewhere and turn all around and let them see it without saying a word. They love a little excitement like that. You have been very good to me, dear Kaye. It is you who have made possible this happiness of mine tonight. I am promising myself to be very good and not so vain and to love my enemies, although I have none now. Miss Harrison has just congratulated me most kindly and I am sure poor Joe has both forgiven and forgotten. Off to my first lecture, Sydney. Kaye found the note on the hall table when he got home that night and carried it upstairs to read. Whatever faint hope he might have had that her youth would prevent her acceptance he knew now was over. With the letter in his hand he sat by his table and looked ahead into the empty years. Not quite empty, of course. She would be coming home. But more and more the life of the hospital would engross her. He surmised too very shrewdly that had he ever had a hope that she might come to care for him, his very presence in the little house militated against him. There was none of the illusion of separation. He was always there, like Kaye. When she opened the door she called mother from the hall. If Anna did not answer, she called him in much the same voice. He had built a wall of philosophy that had withstood even Wilson's recognition and protest. But enduring philosophy comes only with time and he was young. Now and then all his defenses crumbled before a passion that, when he dared to face it, shook him by its very strength. And that day all his stoicism went down before Sydney's letter. It's very frankness and affection hurt. Not that he did not want her affection, but he craved so much more. He threw himself face down on the bed with the paper crushed in his hand. Sydney's letter was not the only one he received that day. When in response to Katie's summons he rose heavily and prepared for dinner, he found an unopened envelope on the table. It was from Max Wilson. Dear Lemoine, I have been going around in a sort of haze all day. The fact that I only heard your voice and scarcely saw you last night has made the whole thing even more unreal. I have a feeling of delicacy about trying to see you again so soon. I'm bound to respect your seclusion, but there are some things that have got to be discussed. You said last night that things were different with you. I know about that. You've had one or two unlucky accidents. Do you know any man in our profession who has not? And, for fear you think I do not know what I am talking about, the thing was threshed out at the state society when the question of the tablet came up. Old Barnes got up and said, Gentlemen, all of us live more or less in glass houses. Let him who is without guilt among us throw the first stone. By George you should have heard them. I didn't sleep last night. I took my little car and drove around the country roads, and the farther I went the more outrageous your position became. I'm not going to write any rot about the world needing men like you, although it's true enough. But, our profession does. You working in a gas office while old O'Hara bungles and hacks, and I struggle along on what I learned from you. It takes courage to step down from the pinnacle you stood on, so it's not cowardice that has set you down here. It's wrong conception. And I've thought of two things. The best and first is for you to go back. No one has taken your place because no one could do the work, but if that's out of the question, and only you know that, for only you know the facts, the next best thing is this, and in all humility I make the suggestion. Take the state exams under your present name, and when you've got your certificate, come in with me. This isn't magnanimity. I'll be getting a damn sight more than I give. Think it, over old man. M.W. It is a curious fact that a man who is absolutely untrustworthy about women is often the soul of honor to other men. The younger Wilson, taking his pleasures lightly and not too discriminatingly, was making an offer that meant his ultimate eclipse and doing it cheerfully with his eyes open. Kay was moved. It was like Max to make such an offer, like him to make it as if he were asking a favor and not conferring one. But the offer left him untempted. He had weighed himself in the balance and found himself wanting. No tablet on the college wall could change that. And when, late that night, Wilson found him on the balcony and added appeal to argument, the situation remained unchanged. He realized its hopelessness when Kay lapsed into whimsical humor. I'm not absolutely useless where I am, you know, Max, he said. I've raised three tomato plants and a family of kittens this summer helped to plan a true so, assisted in selecting wallpaper for the room just inside. Did you notice it? And developed a boy pitcher with a ball that twists around the bat like a colleague's fracture around a splint. If you're going to be humorous, my dear fellow said Kay quietly, if I had no sense of humor, I should go upstairs tonight, turn on the gas, and make a sturtorous entrance into eternity. By the way, that's something I forgot. Eternity? No. Among my other activities, I wired the parlor for electric light. The bride-to-be expects some electrolyirs as wedding gifts and Wilson rose and flung his cigarette into the grass. I wish to God I understood you, he said irritably. Kay rose with him, and all the suppressed feeling of the interview was crowded into his last few words. I'm not as ungrateful as you think, Max, he said. I, you've helped a lot. Don't worry about me. I'm as well off as I deserve to be, and better. Good night. Good night. Wilson's unexpected magnanimity put Kay in a curious position, left him, as it were, with a divided allegiance. Sidney's frank infatuation for the young surgeon was growing. He was quick to see it. And where before he might have felt justified in going to the length of warning her, now his hands were tied. Max was interested in her. Kay could see that, too. More than once he had taken Sidney back to the hospital in his car. Lemoine, handicapped at every turn, found himself facing two alternatives, one but little better than the other. The affair might run a legitimate course ending in marriage, a year of happiness for her, and then what marriage with Max, as he knew him, would inevitably mean, wanderings away, remorseful returns to her, infidelity's misery. Or it might be less serious, but almost equally unhappy for her. Max might throw caution to the winds, pursue her for a time. Kay had seen him do this, and then, growing tired, changed to some new attraction. In either case, he could only wait and watch, eating his heart out during the long evenings when Anna read her daily thoughts upstairs, and he sat alone with his pipe on the balcony. Sidney went on night duty shortly after her acceptance. All of her orderly young life had been divided into two parts, day when one played or worked, and night when one slept. Now she was compelled to a readjustment. One worked in the night and slept in the day. Things seemed unnatural, chaotic. At the end of her first night report, Sidney added what she could remember of a little verse of Stevenson's. She added it to the end of her general report, which was to the effect that everything had been quiet during the night except the neighborhood. And does it not seem hard to you, when all the sky is clear and blue, and I should like so much to play, to have to go to bed by day. The day assistant happened on the report and was quite scandalized. If the night nurses are to spend their time making up poetry, she said crossly, we'd better change this hospital into a young lady's seminary. If she wants to complain about the noise in the street, she should do so in proper form. I don't think she made it up, said the head, trying not to smile. I've heard something like it somewhere, and what with the heat and the noise of traffic, I don't see how any of them get any sleep. But because discipline must be observed, she wrote on the slip the assistant carried around, please submit night reports in prose. Sidney did not sleep much. She tumbled into her low bed at nine o'clock in the morning those days with her splendid hair neatly braided down her back and her prayers said, and immediately her active young mind filled with images, Christine's wedding, Dr. Max passing the door of her old ward and she not there, Joe, even Tilly, whose story was now the sensation of the street. A few months before she would not have cared to think of Tilly. She would have retired her into the land of things one must forget. But the street's conventions were not holding Sidney's thoughts now. She puzzled over Tilly a great deal and over Grace and her kind. On her first night on duty, a girl had been brought in from the avenue. She had taken a poison. Nobody knew just what. When the interns had tried to find out, she had only said, what's the use? And she had died. Sidney kept asking herself why those mornings when she could not get to sleep. People were kind. Men were kind, really. And yet for some reason or other, those things had to be. Why? After a time, Sidney would doze fitfully. But by three o'clock, she was always up and dressing. After a time, the strain told on her. Lack of sleep wrote hollows around her eyes and killed some of her bright color. Between three and four o'clock in the morning, she was overwhelmed on duty by a perfect madness of sleep. There was a penalty for sleeping on duty. The old night watchman had a way of slipping up on one nodding. The night nurses wished they might fasten a bell on him. Luckily at four came early morning temperatures that roused her. And after that came the clatter of early milk wagons and the rosy hues of dawn over the roofs. Twice in the night, once at supper and again toward dawn, she drank strong black coffee. But after a week or two, her nerves were stretched, taught as a string. Her station was in a small room close to her three wards. But she sat very little as a matter of fact. Her responsibility was heavy on her. She made frequent rounds. The late summer nights were fitful, feverish. The darkened wards stretched away like caverns from the dim light near the door. And from out of these caverns came petulant voices, uneasy movements, the banging of a cup on a bedside which was the signal of thirst. The older nurses saved themselves when they could. To them, perhaps just a little weary with time and much service, the banging cup meant not so much thirst as annoyance. They visited Sydney sometimes and cautioned her. Don't jump like that child. They're not parched, you know. But if you have a fever and are thirsty, thirsty nothing. They get lonely. All they want is to see somebody. Then, Sydney would say rising resolutely, they're going to see me. Gradually, the older girls saw that she would not save herself. They liked her very much and they too had started in with willing feet and tender hands. But the thousand and one demands of their service had drained them dry. They were efficient, cool-headed, quick-thinking machines, doing their best, of course, but differing from Sydney in that their service was of the mind, while hers was of the heart. To them, pain was a thing to be recorded on a report. To Sydney, it was written on the tablets of her soul. Carlotta Harrison went on night duty at the same time. Her last night service, as it was Sydney's first, she accepted it stoically. She had charge of the three wards on the floor just below Sydney and of the ward into which all emergency cases were taken. It was a difficult service, perhaps the most difficult in the house. Scarcely a night went by without its patrol or ambulance case. Ordinarily, the emergency ward had its own night nurse, but the house was full to overflowing. Belated vacations and illness had depleted the training school. Carlotta, given double duty, merely shrugged her shoulders. I've always had things pretty hard here, she commented briefly. When I go out, I'll either be competent enough to run a whole hospital single-handed or I'll be carried out feet first. Sydney was glad to have her so near. She knew her better than she knew the other nurses. Small emergencies were constantly arising and finding her at a loss. Once, at least every night, Miss Harrison would hear a soft hiss from the back staircase that connected the two floors and going out would see Sydney's flushed face and slightly crooked cap bending over the stair rail. I'm dreadfully sorry to bother you, she would say, but so-and-so won't have a fever bath or I have a woman here who refuses her medicine then would follow rapid questions and equally rapid answers much as Carlotta disliked and feared the girl overhead. It never occurred to her to refuse her assistance. Perhaps the angels who keep the great record will put that to her credit. Sydney saw her first death shortly after she went on night duty. It was the most terrible experience of all her life and yet as death goes it was quiet enough. So gradual was it that Sydney, with Kay's little watch in hand, was not sure exactly when it happened. The light was very dim behind the little screen. One moment the sheet was quivering slightly under the struggle for breath, the next it was still. That was all. But to the girl it was catastrophe. That life so potential, so tremendous a thing, could end so ignominiously that the long battle should terminate always in this capitulation. It seemed to her that she could not stand it. Added to all her other new problems of living was this one of dying. She made mistakes, of course, which the kindly nurses forgot to report. Basins left about errors on her records. She rinsed her thermometer in hot water one night and startled an intern by sending him word that Mary Maguire's temperature was 110 degrees. She let a delirious patient escape from the ward another night and go airily down the fire escape before she discovered what had happened. Then she distinguished herself by flying down the iron staircase and bringing the runaway back single-handed. For Christine's wedding, the street threw off its drab attire and assumed a wedding garment. In the beginning it was incredulous about some of the details. An awning from the house door to the curb stone and a policeman reported Mrs. Rosenfeld who was finding steady employment at the Lorenz house and another awning at the church with a red carpet. Mr. Rosenfeld had arrived home and was making up arrears of rest and recreation. Huh, he said. Suppose it don't rain. What then? His Jewish father spoke in him. And another policeman at the church said Mrs. Rosenfeld triumphantly. What do they ask him if they don't trust him? But the mention of the policemen had been unfortunate. It recalled to him many things that were better forgotten. He rose and scowled at his wife. You tell Johnny something from me, he snarled. You tell him when he sees his father walking down the street and he's sitting up there alone on that automobile. I want him to stop and pick me up when I hail him. Me walking while my son swells around in a car. And another thing. He turns savagely at the door. You let me hear of him roadhouse and I'll kill him. The wedding was to be at five o'clock. This in itself defied all traditions of the street which were either married in the very early morning at the Catholic Church or at eight o'clock in the evening at the Presbyterian. There was something reckless about five o'clock. The street felt the dash of it. It had a queer feeling that perhaps such a marriage was not quite legal. The question of what to wear became for the men an earnest one. Dr. Ed resurrected an old black frock coat and had a thee of black cambrick set in the vest. Mr. Jenkins the grocer rented a cutaway and bought a new Panama to wear with it. The deaf and dumb book agent who boarded at McKee's and who by reason of his affliction was calmly ignorant of the excitement around him wore a borrowed dress suit and considered himself to the end of his days the only properly attired man in the church. The younger Wilson was to be one of the ushers. When the newspapers came out with the published list and this was discovered as well as that Sidney was the maid of honor. There was a distinct quiver through the hospital training school. A probationer was authorized to find out particulars. It was the day of the wedding then and Sidney who had not been to bed at all was sitting in a sunny window in the dormitory annex drying her hair. The probationer was distinctly uneasy. I just wonder she said if you would let some of the girls come in to see you when you're dressed. Why of course I will. It's awfully thrilling isn't it and isn't Dr. Wilson going to be an usher Sidney colored. I believe so. Are you going to walk down the aisle with him? I don't know. They had a rehearsal last night but of course I was not there. I think I walk alone. The probationer had been instructed to find out other things so she set to work with a fan at Sidney's hair. You've known Dr. Wilson a long time haven't you? Ages. He's awfully good looking isn't he? Sidney considered she was not ignorant of the methods of the school if this girl was pumping her. I'll have to think that over she said with a glint of mischief in her eyes when you know a person terribly well you hardly know whether he's good looking or not. I suppose said the probationer running the long strands of Sidney's hair through her fingers that when you are at home you see him often. Sidney got off the window sill and taking the probationer smilingly by the shoulders faced her toward the door. You go back to the girls she said and tell them to come in and see me when I am dressed and tell them this. I don't know whether I am to walk down the aisle with Dr. Wilson but I hope I am. I see him very often. I like him very much. I hope he likes me and I think he's handsome. She shoved the probationer out into the hall and locked the door behind her. That message in its entirety reached Carlotta Harrison. Her smoldering eyes flamed. The audacity of it startled her. Sidney must be very sure of herself. She too had not slept during the day when the probationer who had brought her the report had gone out she lay in her long white nightgown hands clasped under her head and staring at the vault-like ceiling of her little room. She saw there Sidney in her white dress going down the aisle of the church. She saw the group around the altar and as surely as she lay there she knew that Max Wilson's eyes would be not on the bride but on the girl who stood beside her. The curious thing was that Carlotta felt that she could stop the wedding if she wanted to. She'd happened on a bit of information. Many a wedding had been stopped for less. It rather obsessed her to think of stopping the wedding so that Sidney and Max would not walk down the aisle together. There came at last an hour before the wedding, a lull in the feverish activities of the previous month. Everything was ready. In the Lorenz kitchen, piles of plates, Negro waders, ice cream freezers, and Mrs. Rosenfeld stood in orderly array in the attic in the center of a sheet before a toilet table which had been carried upstairs for her benefit sat on this, her day of days, the bride. All the second story had been prepared for guests and presents. Floris were still busy in the room below. Bridesmaids were clustered on the little staircase, bending over at each new ring of the bell and calling reports to Christine through the closed door. Another wooden box, Christine, it looks like more plates. What will you ever do with them all? Good heavens, here's another of the neighbors who wants to see how you look. Do say you can't have any visitors now. Christine sat alone in the center of her sheet. The Bridesmaids had been sternly forbidden to come into her room. I haven't had a chance to think for a month, she said, and I've got some things I've got to think out. But when Sydney came, she sent for her. Sydney found her sitting on a stiff chair in her wedding gown with her veil spread out on a small stand. Close the door, said Christine, and, after Sydney had kissed her, I have a good mind not to do it. You're tired and nervous, that's all. I am, of course, but that isn't what's wrong with me. Throw that veil someplace and sit down. Christine was undoubtedly rouged, a very delicate touch. Sydney thought Brides should be rather pale. But under her eyes were lines that Sydney had never seen there before. I'm not going to be foolish, Sydney. I'll go through with it, of course. It would put Mama in her grave if I made a scene now. She suddenly turned on Sydney. Palmer gave his bachelor dinner at the country club last night. They all drank more than they should. Somebody called Father up today and said that Palmer had emptied a bottle of wine into the piano. He hasn't been here today. He'll be along. And as for the other, perhaps it wasn't Palmer who did it. That's not it, Sydney. I'm frightened. Three months before, perhaps Sydney could not have comforted her. But three months had made a change in Sydney. The complacent sophistries of her girlhood no longer answered for truth. She put her arms around Christine's shoulders. A man who drinks is a broken reed, said Christine. That's what I'm going to marry and lean on the rest of my life, a broken reed. And that isn't all. She got up quickly and trailing her long satin train across the floor, bolted the door. Then from inside her corsage, she brought out and held to Sydney a letter. Special delivery. Read it. It was very short. Sydney read it at a glance. Ask your future husband if he knows a girl at 213 Blank Avenue. Three months before, the avenue would have meant nothing to Sydney. Now she knew. Christine, more sophisticated, had always known. You see, she said, that's what I'm up against. Quite suddenly, Sydney knew who the girl at 213 Blank Avenue was. The paper she held in her hand was hospital paper with the heading torn off. The whole sorted story lay before her, grace, Irving, with her thin face and cropped hair and the newspaper on the floor of the ward beside her. One of the bridesmaids thumped violently on the door outside. Another electric lamp, she called excitedly through the door, and Palmer is downstairs. You see, Christine said drearily, I have received another electric lamp and Palmer is downstairs. I've got to go through with it, I suppose. The only difference between me and other brides is that I know what I'm getting. Most of them do not. You're going on with it? It's too late to do anything else. I'm not going to give this neighborhood anything to talk about. She picked up her veil and set the coronet on her head. Sydney stood with the letter in her hands. One of Kay's answers to her hot question had been this. There is no sense in looking back unless it helps us to look ahead. What your little girl of the ward has been is not so important as what she is going to be. Even granting this is true, she said to Christine slowly, and it may only be malicious after all, Christine. It's surely over and done with. It's not Palmer's past that concerns you now. It's his future with you, isn't it? Christine had finally adjusted her veil, a band of duchess lace rose like a coronet from her soft hair, and from it, sweeping to the end of her train, fell fold after fold of soft tulle. She arranged the coronet carefully with small pearl-topped pins. Then she rose and put her hands on Sydney's shoulders. The simple truth is, she said quietly, that I might hold Palmer if I cared terribly, I don't, and I'm afraid he knows it. It's my pride that's hurt, nothing else. And thus did Christine Lorenz go down to her wedding. Sydney stood for a moment, her eyes on the letter she held. Already in her new philosophy, she had learned many strange things. One of them was this, that women like Grace Irving did not betray their lovers, that the code of the underworld was death to the squealer, that one played the game, and one or lost, and if he lost, took his medicine. If not Grace, then who? Somebody else in the hospital who knew her story, of course, but who? And again, why? Before going downstairs, Sydney placed the letter in a saucer and set fire to it with a match. Some of the radiance had died out of her eyes. The street voted the wedding a great success. The alley, however, was rather confused by certain things. For instance, it regarded the awning as essentially for the carriage guests and showed a tendency to duck in under the side when no one was looking. Mrs. Rosenfeld absolutely refused to take the usher's arm which was offered her and said she guessed she was able to walk up alone. Johnny Rosenfeld came, as befitted his position, in a complete chauffeur's outfit of leather cap and leggings with the shield that was his state license pinned over his heart. The street came decorously, albeit with a degree of uncertainty as to supper. Should they put something on the stove before they left in case only ice cream and cake were served at the house? Or was it just as well to trust to luck and if the Lorenz supper proved inadequate to sit down to a cold snack when they got home? To Kay, sitting in the back of the church between Harriet and Anna, the wedding was Sydney, Sydney only. He watched her first steps down the aisle, saw her chin go up as she gained poise and confidence, watched the swinging of her young figure in its gauzy white as she passed him and went forward past the long rows of craning necks. Afterward he could not remember the wedding party at all. The service for him was Sydney, rather odd and very serious beside the altar. It was Sydney who came down the aisle to the triumphant strains of the wedding march, Sydney with Max beside her. On his right sat Harriet, having reached the first pinnacle of her new career. The wedding gowns were successful. They were more than that. They were triumphant. Sitting there she cast comprehensive eyes over the church, filled with potential brides. To Harriet then, that October afternoon was a future of endless lace and chiffon, the joy of creation, triumph, eclipsing triumph. But to Anna, watching the ceremony with blurred eyes and ineffectual bluish lips, was coming her hour. Sitting back in the pew with her hands folded over her prayer book, she said a little prayer for her straight young daughter, facing out from the altar with clear unafraid eyes. As Sydney and Max drew near the door, Joe Drummond, who had been standing at the back of the church, turned quickly and went out. He stumbled, rather, as if he could not see. Chapter 14 of K This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rita Butros. K by Mary Roberts Reinhart. Chapter 14 The supper at the White Springs Hotel had not been the last supper Carlotta Harrison and Max Wilson had taken together. Carlotta had selected for her vacation a small town within easy motoring distance of the city, and two or three times during her two weeks off duty, Wilson had gone out to see her. He liked being with her. She stimulated him. For once that he could see Sydney he saw Carlotta twice. She had kept the affair well in hand. She was playing for high stakes. She knew quite well the kind of man with whom she was dealing that he would pay as little as possible. But she knew too that let him want a thing enough, he would pay any price for it, even marriage. She was very skillful. The very ardour in her face was in her favour. Behind her hot eyes lurked cold calculation. She would put the thing through and show those polling nurses with their pious eyes and evening prayers a thing or two. During that entire vacation he never saw her in anything more elaborate than the simplest of white dresses modestly open at the throat, sleeves rolled up to show her satiny arms. There were no other borders at the little farmhouse. She sat for hours in the summer evenings in the square yard filled with apple trees that bordered the highway, carefully posed over a book, but with her keen eyes always on the road. She read Browning, Emerson, Swinburne. Once he found her with a book that she hastily concealed, he insisted on seeing it and secured it. It was a book on brain surgery. Confronted with it, she blushed and dropped her eyes. His delighted vanity found in it the most insidious of compliments as she had intended. I feel such an idiot when I am with you. She said, I wanted to know a little more about the things you do. That put their relationship on a new and advanced basis. Thereafter he occasionally talked surgery instead of sentiment. He found her responsive intelligent. His work, a sealed book to this woman before, lay open to her. Now and then their professional discussions ended in something different. The two lines of their interest converged. Gad, he said one day, I look forward to these evenings. I can talk shop with you without either shocking or nauseating you. You are the most intelligent woman I know and one of the prettiest. He had stopped the machine on the crest of a hill for the ostensible purpose of admiring the view. As long as you talk shop, she said, I feel that there is nothing wrong in our being together. But when you say the other thing, is it wrong to tell a pretty woman you admire her? Under our circumstances, yes. He twisted around in the seat and sat looking at her, the loveliest mouth in the world, he said, and kissed her suddenly. She had expected it for at least a week, but her surprise was well done. Well done also was her silence during the homeward ride. No, she was not angry, she said. It was only that he had set her thinking. When she got out of the car, she bad him good night and goodbye. He only laughed. Don't you trust me, he said, leading out to her. She raised her dark eyes. It is not that. I do not trust myself. After that nothing could have kept him away and she knew it. Man demands both danger and play. Therefore he selects woman as the most dangerous of toys. A spice of danger had entered into their relationship. It had become infinitely pecan. He motored out to the farm the next day to be told that Miss Harrison had gone for a long walk and had not said when she would be back. That pleased him. Evidently she was frightened. Every man likes to think that he is a bit of a devil. Dr. Max settled his tie and leaving his car outside the whitewashed fence, departed blithely on foot in the direction Carlotta had taken. She knew her man, of course. He found her face down under a tree, looking pale and worn and bearing all the evidence of a severe mental struggle. She rose in confusion when she heard his step and retreated a foot or two with her hands out before her. How dare you she cried. How dare you follow me. I've got to have a little time alone. I've got to think things out. He knew it was play acting, but rather liked it. And because he was quite as skillful as she was, he struck a match on the trunk of the tree and lighted a cigarette before he answered. I was afraid of this, he said, playing up. You take it entirely too hard. I'm not really a villain, Carlotta. It was the first time he had used her name. Sit down and let us talk things over. She sat down at a safe distance and looked across the little clearing to him with the somber eyes that were her great asset. You can afford to be very calm, she said, because this is only play to you. I know it. I've known it all along. I'm a good listener and not unattractive, but what is play for you is not necessarily play for me. I'm going away from here. For the first time he found himself believing in her sincerity, why the girl was white. He did want to hurt her. If she cried, he was at the mercy of any woman who cried. Give up your training? What else can I do? This sort of thing cannot go on, Dr. Max. She did cry then, real tears, and he went over beside her and took her in his arms. Don't do that, he said. Please don't do that. You make me feel like a scoundrel, and I've only been taking a little bit of happiness. That's all. I swear it. She lifted her head from his shoulder. You mean you are happy with me? Very, very happy, said Dr. Max, and kissed her again on the lips. The one element Carlotta had left out of her calculations was herself. She had known the man had taken the situation at its proper value, but she had left out this important factor in the equation. That factor, which in every relationship between man and woman, determines the equation, the woman. Into her calculating ambition had come a new and destroying element. She, who like Kay in his little room on the street, had put aside love and the things thereof, found it would not be put aside. By the end of her short vacation, Carlotta Harrison was wildly in love with the younger Wilson. They continued to meet, not as often as before, but once a week perhaps. The meetings were full of danger now, and if for the girl they lost by this quality, they gained attraction for the man. She was shrewd enough to realize her own situation. The thing had gone wrong. She cared, and he did not. It was all a game now, not hers. All women are intuitive. Women in love are dangerously so. As well as she knew that his passion for her was not the real thing, so also she realized that there was growing up in his heart something akin to the real thing for Sidney Page. Suspicion became certainty after a talk they had over the supper table at a country roadhouse the day after Christine's wedding. How was the wedding tiresome, she asked. Thrilling, there's always something thrilling to me in a man tying himself up for a life to one woman. It's so reckless, her eyes narrowed. That's not exactly the law and the profits, is it? It's the truth, to think of selecting out of all the world one woman and electing to spend the rest of one's days with her, although his eyes look past Carlotta into the distance. Sidney Page was one of the bridesmaids, he said, irrelevantly. She was lovelier than the bride. Pretty but stupid, said Carlotta. I like her. I've really tried to teach her things, but, you know, she shrugged her shoulders. Dr. Max was learning wisdom. If there was a twinkle in his eye, he veiled it discreetly. But once again in the machine, he bent over and put his cheek against hers. You little cat, you're jealous, he said exultantly. Nevertheless, although he might smile, the image of Sidney lay very close to his heart those autumn days, and Carlotta knew it. Sidney came off night duty the middle of November. The night duty had been a time of comparative peace to Carlotta. There were no evenings when Dr. Max could bring Sidney back to the hospital in his car. Sidney's half days at home were occasions for agonies of jealousy on Carlotta's part. On such an occasion, a month after the wedding, she could not contain herself. She pleaded her old excuse of headache and took the trolley to a point near the end of the street. After twilight fell, she slowly walked the length of the street. Christine and Palmer had not returned from their wedding journey. The November evening was not cold, and on the little balcony sat Sidney and Dr. Max. Kay was there too, had she only known it, sitting back in the shadow and saying little, his steady eyes on Sidney's profile. But this, Carlotta did not know, she went on down the street in a frenzy of jealous anger. After that, two ideas ran concurrent in Carlotta's mind. One was to get Sidney out of the way, the other was to make Wilson proposed to her. In her heart, she knew that on the first depended the second. A week later, she made the same frantic excursion. But with a different result, Sidney was not in sight or Wilson, but standing on the wooden doorstep of the little house was Lemoine. The Alanthus trees were bare at that time, throwing gaunt arms upward to the November sky. The street lamp, which in the summer left the doorstep in the shadow, now shone through the branches and threw into strong relief Lemoine's tall figure and set face. Carlotta saw him too late to retreat, but he did not see her. She went on startled, her busy brain scheming anew. Another element had entered into her plotting. It was the first time she had known that Kay lived in the page house. It gave her a sense of uncertainty and deadly fear. She made her first friendly overture of many days to Sidney the following day. They met in the locker room in the basement, where the street clothing for the ward patients was kept. Here, rolled in bundles and ticketed, side by side lay the heterogeneous garments in which the patients had met accident or illness. Rags and tidiness, filth and cleanliness lay almost touching. Far away, on the other side of the whitewashed basement, men were unloading gleaming cans of milk. Floods of sunlight came down the cellar way, touching their white coats and turning the cans to silver. Everywhere was the religion of the hospital, which is order. Sidney, harking back from recent sights to the staircase conversation of her night duty, smiled at Carlotta cheerfully. A miracle is happening, she said. Grace Irving is going out today. When one remembers how ill she was and how we thought she could not live, it's rather a triumph, isn't it? Are those her clothes? Sidney examined with some dismay the elaborate negligee garments in her hand. She can't go out in those. I shall have to lend her something. A little of the light died out of her face. She's had a hard fight, and she has won, she said. But when I think of what she's probably going back to, Carlotta shrugged her shoulders. It's all in the day's work, she observed indifferently. You can take them up into the kitchen and give them steady work, pairing potatoes, or put them in the laundry, ironing. In the end, it's the same thing. They all go back. She drew a package from the locker and looked at it ruefully. Well, what do you know about this? Here's a woman who came in in a nightgown and a pair of slippers, and now she wants to go out in a half hour. She turned on her way out of the locker room and shot a quick glance at Sidney. I happened to be on your street the other night, she said. You live across the street from Wilson's, don't you? Yes? I thought so. I had heard you speak of the house. Your, your brother was standing on the steps. Sidney laughed. I have no brother. That's a rumor. A Mr. Lamoine. It isn't really right to call him a rumor. He's one of the family now. Lamoine. He had even taken another name. It had hit him hard, for sure. Kay's name had struck an always responsive cord in Sidney. The two girls went toward the elevator together. With a very little encouragement, Sidney talked of Kay. She was pleased at Miss Harrison's friendly tone, glad that things were all right between them again. At her floor, she put a timid hand on the girl's arm. I was afraid I had offended you or displeased you, she said. I'm so glad it isn't so. Carlotta shivered under her hand. Things were not going any too well with Kay. True, he had received his promotion at the office and with this present affluence of $22 a week, he was able to do several things. Mrs. Rosenfeld now washed and ironed one day a week at the little house so that Kay thee might have more time to look after Anna. He had increased also the amount of money that he periodically sent east. So far, well enough. The thing that rankled and filled him with a sense of failure was Max Wilson's attitude. It was not unfriendly. It was indeed consistently respectful, almost reverential. But he clearly considered Lemoine's position absurd. There was no true comradeship between the two men, but there was beginning to be constant association and lately a certain amount of friction. They thought differently about almost everything. Wilson began to bring all his problems to Lemoine. There were long consultations in that small upper room. Perhaps more than one man or woman who did not know of Kay's existence owed his life to him that fall. Under Kay's direction, Max did marvels. Cases began to come in for him from the surrounding towns. To his own daring was added a new and remarkable technique. But Lemoine, who had found resignation if not content, was once again in touch with the work he loved. There were times when, having thrashed a case out together and outlined the next day's work for Max, he would walk for hours into the night out over the hills fighting his battle. The longing was on him to be in the thick of things again. The thought of the gas office and its deadly round sickened him. It was on one of his long walks that Kay found tilly. It was December then, gray and raw, with a wet snow that changed to rain as it fell. The country roads were ankle-deep with mud. The wayside paths thick with sodden leaves. The dreariness of the countryside that Saturday afternoon suited his mood. He had ridden to the end of the streetcar line and started his walk from there. As was his custom, he wore no overcoat but a short sweater under his coat. Somewhere along the road he had picked up a mongrel dog and, as if in sheer desire for human society, it trotted companionably at his heels. Seven miles from the end of the car line, he found a roadhouse and stopped in for a glass of scotch. He was chilled through. The dog went in with him and stood looking up into his face. It was as if he submitted but wondered why this indoors with the sense of the road ahead and the trails of rabbits over the fields. The house was set in a valley at the foot of two hills. Through the mist of the December afternoon, it had loomed pleasantly before him. The door was ajar and he stepped into a little hall covered with ingrained carpet. To the right was the dining room, the table covered with a white cloth and in its exact center an uncompromising bunch of dried flowers. To the left the typical parlor of such places. It might have been the parlor of the White Springs Hotel in duplicate plush self-rocker and all. Over everything was silence and a pervading smell of fresh varnish. The house was aggressive with new paint. The sagging old floors shown with it, the doors gleamed. Hello, called Kay. There were slow footsteps upstairs, the closing of a bureau drawer, the rustle of a woman's dress coming down the stairs. Kay, standing uncertainly on a carpet oasis that was the center of the parlor varnish, stripped off his sweater. Not very busy here this afternoon, he said to the unseen female on the staircase. Then he saw her. It was Tilly. She put a hand against the door frame to steady herself. Tilly surely but a new Tilly. With her hair loosened around her face, a fresh blue chintz dress open at the throat, a black velvet bow on her breast. Here was a Tilly fuller, infinitely more attractive than he had remembered her. But she did not smile at him. There was something about her eyes, not unlike the dog's expression, submissive but questioning. Well, you found me, Mr. Lemoine. And when he held out his hand smiling, I just had to do it, Mr. Kay. And how's everything going? You look mighty fine and happy, Tilly. I'm all right. Mr. Schwitter's gone to the post office. He'll be back at five. Will you have a cup of tea or will you have something else? The instinct of the street was still strong in Tilly. The street did not approve of something else. Scotch and soda, said Lemoine. And shall I buy a ticket for you to punch? But she only smiled faintly. He was sorry he had made the blunder. Evidently the street and all that pertained was a sore subject. So this was Tilly's new home. It was for this that she had exchanged the virginal integrity of her life at Mrs. McKee's. For this windswept little house, tidally ugly, infinitely lonely. There were two crayon enlargements over the mantle. One was Schwitter, evidently. The other was the paper doll wife. Kay wondered what curious instinct of self-abnegation had caused Tilly to leave the wife there undisturbed. Back of its position of honor, he saw the girl's realization of her own situation. On a wooden shelf exactly between the two pictures was another base of dried flowers. Tilly brought the Scotch already mixed in a tall glass. Kay would have preferred to mix it himself, but the Scotch was good. He felt a new respect for Mr. Schwitter. You gave me a turn at first, said Tilly, but I'm right glad to see you, Mr. Lemoine. Now that the roads are bad, nobody comes very much. It's lonely. Until now Kay and Tilly, when they met, had met conversationally on the common ground of food. They no longer had that, and between them both lay a barrier their last conversation. Are you happy, Tilly said Kay suddenly? I expected you'd ask me that. I've been thinking what to say. Her reply set him watching her face. More attractive it certainly was, but happy? There was a wistfulness about Tilly's mouth that set him wondering. Is he good to you? He's about the best man on earth. He's never said a crossword to me, even at first, when I was panicky and scared at every sound. Lemoine nodded understandingly. I burned a lot of victuals when I first came, running off and hiding when I heard people around the place. It used to seem to me that what I'd done was written on my face, but he never said a word. That's over now? I don't run. I am still frightened. Then it has been worthwhile. Tilly glanced up at the two pictures on the mantle. Sometimes it is, when he comes in tired, and I have a chicken ready or some fried ham and eggs for his supper, and I see him begin to look rested. He lights his pipe, and many an evening he helps me with the dishes. He's happy. He's getting fat. But you, Lemoine persisted? I wouldn't go back to where I was, but I am not happy, Mr. Lemoine. There's no use pretending. I want a baby. All along I've wanted a baby. He wants one. This place is his, and he'd like a boy to come into it when he's gone. But my God, if I did have one, what would it be? Kay's eyes followed hers to the picture, and the everlasting's underneath. And she, there isn't any prospect of her? No. There was no solution to Tilly's problem. Lemoine, standing on the hearth and looking down at her, realized that, after all, Tilly must work out her own salvation. He could offer her no comfort. They talked far into the growing twilight of the afternoon. Tilly was hungry for news of the street, must know of Christine's wedding, of Harriet, of Sydney and her hospital, and when he had told her all, she said silent, rolling her handkerchief and her fingers. Then, take the four of us, she said suddenly, Christine Lorenz and Sydney Page and Miss Harriet and me. And which one would you have picked to go wrong like this? I guess from the looks of things, most folks would have thought it would be the Lorenz girl. They'd have picked Harriet Kennedy for the hospital and me for the dressmaking, and it would have been Sydney Page that got married and had an automobile. Well, that's life. She looked up at Kay shrewdly. There were some people out here lately. They didn't know me, and I heard them talking. They said Sydney Page was going to marry Dr. Max Wilson. Possibly. I believe there is no engagement yet. He had finished with his glass. Tilly rose to take it away. As she stood before him, she looked up into his face. If you like her as well as I think you do, Mr. Lemoine, you won't let him get her. I'm afraid that's not up to me, is it? What would I do with a wife, Tilly? You'd be faithful to her. That's more than he would be. I guess in the long run, that would count more than money. That was what Kay took home with him after his encounter with Tilly. He pondered it on his way back to the streetcar as he struggled against the wind. The weather had changed. Wagon tracks along the road were filled with water and had begun to freeze. The rain had turned to a driving sleet that cut his face. Halfway to the trolley line, the dog turned off into a by-road. Kay did not miss him. The dog stared after him, one foot raised. Once again, his eyes were like Tilly's as she had waved goodbye from the porch. His head sunk on his breast. Kay covered miles of road with his long swinging pace and fought his battle. Was Tilly right after all and had he been wrong? Why should he efface himself if it meant Sydney's unhappiness? Why not accept Wilson's offer and start over again? Then, if things went well, the temptation was strong that stormy afternoon. He put it from him at last because of the conviction that whatever he did would make no change in Sydney's ultimate decision. If she cared enough for Wilson, she would marry him. He felt that she cared enough. End of Chapter 14 Chapter 15 of Kay This is a LibriBox recording. All LibriBox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriBox.org. Reading by Stephen Seidel. Kay by Mary Roberts-Reinhart Chapter 15 Palmer and Christine returned from their wedding trip the day Kay discovered Tilly. Anna Page made much of the arrival, insisted on dinner for them that night at the little house, must help Christine unpack her trunks and arrange her wedding gifts about the apartment. She was brighter than she had been for days, more interested. The wonders of the true soul filtered with admiration and a sort of jealous envy for Sydney who could have none of these things. In a pathetic sort of way, she mothered Christine in lieu of her own daughter. And it was her quick eye that discerned something wrong. Christine was not quite happy. Under her excitement was an undercurrent of reserve. Anna, rich in maternity of nothing else, felt it and in reply to some speech of Christine's that struck her as hard, not quite fitting, she gave her a gentle admonishing. Married life takes a little adjusting, my dear, she said. After we've lived to ourselves for a number of years, it is not easy to live for someone else. Christine straightened from the tea table that she was arranging. Well, that's true, of course, but why should the woman do all the adjusting? Men are more set, said poor Anna, who had never been set in anything in her life. It is harder for them to give in. And, of course, Palmer is older in his habits, the less set about Palmer's habits the better, flashed Christine. I appeared to have married a bunch of habits. She gave over her unpacking and sat down listlessly by the fire, while Anna moved about, busy with the small activities that delighted her. Six weeks of Palmer's society in unlimited amounts had bored Christine to distraction. She sat with folded hands and looked into a future that seemed to include nothing but Palmer. Palmer, asleep with his mouth open, Palmer, shaving before breakfast and irritable until he had had his coffee. Palmer, yawning over the newspaper. And there was a darker side to the picture than that. There was a vision of Palmer slipping quietly into his room and falling into the heavy sleep, not of drunkenness, perhaps, but of drink. That had happened twice. She knew now that it would happen again and again as long as he lived. Drinking leads to other things. The letter she had received on her wedding day was burned into her brain. There would be that in the future, too, probably. Christine was not without courage. She was making a brave clutch at happiness. But that afternoon or the first day at home, she was terrified. She was glad when Anna went and left her alone by her fire. But when she heard a step in the hall, she opened the door herself. She had determined to meet Palmer with a smile. Tears brought nothing. She had learned that already. Men liked smiling women and good cheer. Daughters of joy, they called the girls, like the one on the avenue. So she opened the door, smiling. But it was Kay in the hall. She waited, while with his back to her he shook himself like a great dog. When he turned, she was watching him. You, said Lemoine, why welcome home. He smiled down at her, his kindly eyes sliding. It's good to be home and to see you again. Won't you come into my fire? I'm wet. All the more reason why you should come, she cried gaily and held the door wide. The little parlor was cheerful with fire and soft lamps, bright with silver vases full of flowers. Kay stepped inside and took a critical survey of the room. Well, he said, between us we've made a pretty good job of this. Eye with the paper and the wiring, and you with your pretty furnishings and your pretty self. He glanced at her appreciatively. Christine saw his approval and was happier than she had been for weeks. She put on the thousand little heirs and graces that were part of her. Elder Chin Hai looked up at him with the little appealing glances that she had found were wasted on Palmer. She lighted the spirit lamp to make tea, drew out the best chair for him, and patted a cushion with her well-cared forehands. A big chair for a big man, she said, and see, here's a footstool. I am ridiculously fond of being babied, said Kay, and quite basked in his new atmosphere of well-being. This was better than his empty room upstairs than cramping along country roads than his own thoughts. And now how is everything, asked Christine from across the fire. Do tell me all the scandal of the street. There has been no scandal since you went away, said Kay. And because each was glad not to be left to his own thoughts, they laughed at this bit of unconscious humor. Seriously, said Lemoine, we've been very quiet. I have had my salary raised and I am now rejoicing at twenty-two dollars a week. I'm still not accustomed to it. Just when I had all my ideas fixed for fifteen, I get twenty-two and have to reassemble them. I'm disgustingly rich. It's very disagreeable when one's income becomes a burden, said Christine gravely. She was finding in Lemoine something that she needed just then. A solidity, a sort of dependability that had nothing to do with heaviness. She felt that here was a man she could trust, almost confide in. She liked his long hands, his shabby but well-cut clothes, his fine profile with its strong chin. She left off her little affectations that tribute to his own lack of them and sat back in her chair watching the fire. When Kay chose he could talk well. The Howes had been to Bermuda on their wedding trip. He knew Bermuda. That gave them a common ground. Christine relaxed under his steady voice. As for Kay, he frankly enjoyed the little visit. He dreamed self at last with regret out of his chair. You've been very nice to ask me in, Mrs. Howe, he said. I hope you will allow me to come again, but of course you're going to be very gay. It seemed to Christine that she would never be gay again. She did not want him to go away. The sound of his deep voice gave her a sense of security. She liked the clasp of his hand he held out to her. When at last he made a move toward the door. Tell Mr. Howe, I am sorry he missed our little party, said Lemoine, and thank you. Will you come again? asked Christine rather wistfully. Just as often as you ask me. As he closed the door behind him, there was a new light in Christine's eyes. Things were not right, but after all they were not hopeless. One might still have friends, big and strong, steady of eye and voice. When Palmer came home, the smile she gave him was not forced. The day's exertion had been bad for Anna. Lemoine found her on the couch in the transformed sewing room and gave her a quick glance of apprehension. She was popped up high with pillows with a bottle of aromatic ammonia beside her. Just short of breath, she panted. I must get down, sitting here, coming home to supper, and the others, Palmer and that was as far as she got. Kay, watch in hand, found her pulse thin, stringy, irregular. He had been prepared for some such emergency, and he hurried into his room for amyl nitrate. When he came back, she was almost unconscious. There was no time even to call Katie. He broke the capsule in a towel and held it over her face. After a time, the spasm relaxed, but her condition remained alarming. Ferriette, who had come home by that time, sat by the couch and held her sister's hand. Only once in the next hour or so did she speak. They had sent for Dr. Ed, but he had not come yet. Ferriette was too wretched to notice the professional manner in which Kay set to work over Anna. I've been a very hard sister to her, she said. If you can pull her through, I'll try to make up for it. Christine sat on the stairs outside, frightened and helpless. They had sent for Sydney, but the little house had no telephone, and the message was slow and getting off. At six o'clock Dr. Ed came panting up the stairs and into the room. Kay stood back. Well, this is sad, Ferriette, said Dr. Ed. Why, in the name of heaven, when I wasn't around, didn't you get another doctor? If she had had some amyl nitrate, I gave her some nitrate of amyl, said Kay quietly. There was really no time to send for anybody. She almost went under at half past five. Max had kept his word, and even Dr. Ed did not suspect Kay's secret. He gave a quick glance at this tall young man who spoke so quietly of what he had done for the sick woman and went on with his own work. Sydney arrived a little after six, and from that moment the confusion in the sick room was at an end. She moved Christine from the stairs, where Katie, on her numerous errands, must crawl over her, set Ferriette to warming her mother's bed and getting it ready. Opened windows, brought order and quiet, and then, with death in her eyes, she took up her position beside her mother. This was no time for weeping. That would come later. Once she turned to Kay, standing watchfully beside her. I think you have known this for a long time, she said, and when he did not answer, why did you let me stay away from her? It would have been such a little time. We were trying to do our best for both of you, he replied. Anna was unconscious and sinking fast. One thought obsessed Sydney. She repeated it over and over. It came as a cry from the depths of the girl's new experience. She has had so little of life, she said, over and over, so little, just a street. She never knew anything else. And finally Kay took it up. After all, Sydney, he said, the street is life. The world is only many streets. She had a great deal. She had love and content, and she had you. Anna died a little after midnight, a quiet passing, so that only Sydney and the two men knew when she went away. It was Harriet who collapsed. During all that long evening, she had tapped looking back over years of small unkindnesses. The thorn of Anna's inefficiency had always rankled in her flesh. She had been hard, uncompromising, thwarted. And now it was forever too late. Kay had watched Sydney carefully. Once he thought she was fainting and went to her, but she shook her head. I'm all right. Do you think you could get them all out of the room and let me have her alone for just a few minutes? He cleared the room and took up his vigil outside the door. And as he stood there, he thought of what he had said to Sydney about the street. It was a world of its own. Here in this very house were death and separation, Harriet's starved life, Christine and Palmer beginning a long and doubtful future together and himself, a failure and an imposter. When he opened the door again, Sydney was standing by her mother's bed. He went to her and she turned and put her head against his shoulder like a tired child. Take me away Kay, she said pettifly. And with his arm around her, he led her out of the room. Outside of her small immediate circle, Anna's death was hardly felt. The little house went on much as before. Harriet carried back to her business a heaviness of spirit that made it difficult to bear with the small irritations of her day. Perhaps Anna's incapacity, which had always annoyed her, had been physical. She must have had her trouble a long time. She remembered other women of the street who had crept through inefficient days and had at last laid down their burdens and closed their mild eyes to the lasting astonishment of their families. What did they think about these women as they potted about? Did they resent the impatience that met their lagging movements, the indifference that would not see how they were failing? Hot tears fell on Harriet's fashion book as it lay on her knee. Not only for Anna, for Anna's prototypes everywhere. On Sydney, and in less major, of course, on Kay, fell the real brunt of the disaster. Sydney kept up well until after the funeral, but went down the next day with a low fever. Overwork and grief, said Dr. Ed, and sternly forbader the hospital again until Christmas. Morning and evening Kay stopped at her door and inquired for her, and morning and evening came Sydney's reply. Much better, I'll surely be up tomorrow. But the grays dragged on and she did not get about. Downstairs, Christine and Palmer had entered on the round of mid-winter gayities. Palmer's crowd was a lively one. There were dinners and dances, weakened excursions to country houses. The street grew accustomed to seeing automobiles stop before the little house at all hours of the night. Johnny Rosenfeld, driving Palmer's car, took to falling asleep at the wheel in broad daylight, and voiced his discontent to his mother. You never know when you work with them, guys, she said briefly. We start out for a half-hours run in the evening and get home with the milk wagons. And the more some of them have had to drink, the more they want to drive the machine. If I get a chance, I'm going to beat it while it wins my way. But talk as he might. In Johnny Rosenfeld's loyal heart, there was no thought of desertion. Palmer had given him a man's job and he would stick by it, no matter what came. There were some things that Johnny Rosenfeld did not tell his mother. There were evenings when the Howe car was filled, not with Christine and her friends, but with women of a different world. Evenings when the destination was not a country estate, but a roadhouse. Evenings when Johnny Rosenfeld, ousted from the driver's seat by some drunken youth, would hold tight to the swinging car and say such fragments of prayers as he could remember. Johnny Rosenfeld, who had started life with few illusions, was in danger of losing such as he had. One such night, Christine put in lying wakefully in her bed, while a clock on the mantle told hour after hour into the night. Palmer did not come home at all. He sent a note from the office in the morning. I hope you're not worried, darling. The car broke down near the country club last night and there was nothing to do but spend the night there. I would have sent you word, but I did not want to rouse you. What do you say to the theater tonight and supper afterward? Christine was learning. She telephoned the country club that morning and found that Palmer had not been there. But though she knew now that he was deceiving her, as he had always deceived her, as probably he always would, she hesitated to confront him with what she knew. She shrank as many a woman has shrunk before from confronting him with his lie. But the second time it happened, she was roused. It was almost Christmas then and Sydney was well on the way to recovery, dinner and very white, but going slowly up and down the staircase on Kay's arm and sitting with Harriet and Kay at the dinner table. She was begging to be back on duty for Christmas and Kay felt that he would soon have to give her up. At three o'clock one morning, Sydney roused from a light sleep to hear a rapping on her door. Is that you, Aunt Harriet? She called. It's Christine. May I come in? Sydney unlocked her door. Christine slipped into the room. She carried a candle and before she spoke, she looked at Sydney's watch on the bedside table. I hope my clock was wrong, she said. I am sorry to awaken you, Sydney, but I don't know what to do. Are you ill? No, Palmer has not come home. What time is it? After three o'clock, Sydney had lighted the gas and was throwing on her dressing gown. When he went out, did he say he said nothing? We had been quarreling. Sydney, I'm going home in the morning. Oh, you don't mean that, do you? Don't I look as if I mean it? How much of this sort of thing is a woman supposed to endure? Well, perhaps he has been delayed. These things always seem terrible in the middle of the night, but by morning, Christine whirled on her. This isn't the first time. You remember the letter I got on my wedding day? Yes? He's gone back to her. Oh, Christine. Oh, I'm sure you're wrong. He's devoted to you. I don't believe it. Believe it or not, said Christine doggedly. That's exactly what has happened. I got something out of that little raft of a Rosenfeld boy and the rest I know because I know Palmer. He's out with her tonight. The hospital had taught Sydney one thing, that it took many people to make a world and that out of these, some were inevitably vicious. But vice had remained for her a clear abstraction. There were such people and because one was in the world for service, one cared for them. Even the savior had been kind to the woman of the streets. But here, abruptly, Sydney found the great injustice of the world. That because of this vice, the good suffer more than the wicked. Her young spirit rose in hot rebellion. It isn't fair, she cried. It makes me hate all the men in the world. Palmer cares for you and yet he can do a thing like this. Christine was pacing nervously up and down the room. Mayor Companion Chip had sued her. She was now, on the surface at least, less excited than Sydney. They're not all like Palmer, thank heaven, she said. There are decent men. My father is one. And your Kay here in the house is another. At four o'clock in the morning, Palmer Howe came home. Christine met him in the lower hall. He was rather pale, but entirely sober. She confronted him in her straight, white gown and waited for him to speak. I'm sorry to be so late, Chris, he said. The fact is, I am all in. I was driving the car out seven mile run. We blew out a tire and the thing turned over. Christine noticed then that his right arm was hanging, inert, by his side. End of Chapter 15. Chapter 16 of Kay. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ms. Pack. Kay by Mary Roberts Reinhardt. Chapter 16. Young Howe had been firmly resolved to give up all his bachelor habits with his wedding day. In his indolent rather selfish way, he was much in love with his wife, but with the inevitable misunderstandings of the first months of marriage had come a desire to be appreciated once again at his face value. Grace had taken him not for what he was, but for what he seemed to be. With Christine, the veil was rent. She knew him now, all his small indolences, his affectations, his weaknesses. Later on, like other women, since the world began, she would learn to disassemble, to affect, to believe what he was not. Grace had learned this lesson long ago. It was the ABC of her knowledge. And so back to Grace six weeks after his wedding day came Palmer Howe, not with a suggestion to renew the old relationship, but for comradeship. Christine sulked. He wanted good cheer. Christine was intolerant. He wanted tolerance. She disapproved of him and showed her disapproval. He wanted approval. He wanted life to be comfortable and cheerful without recriminations. A little work and much play. A drink when one was thirsty. Distorted, though it was, and founded on a wrong basis, perhaps deep in his heart, Palmer s only longing was for his happiness. But this happiness must be of an active sort. Not content, which is passive, but enjoyment. On out, he said, I ve got a car now. No taxi working its head off for us. Just a little run over the country roads, eh? It was the afternoon of the day before Christine s night visit to Sydney. The office had been closed owing to a death, and Palmer was in possession of a holiday. Come on, he coaxed. We ll go to the climbing rows and have supper. I don t want to go. That s not true, Grace, and you know it. You and I are through. It s your doing, not mine. The roads are frozen hard, and hours run into the country will bring your color back. Much you care about that, go and ride with your wife, said the girl, and flung away from him. The last few weeks had filled out her thin figure, but she still bore traces of her illness. Her short hair was curled over her head. She looked curiously boyish, almost sexless. Because she saw him wince when she mentioned Christine, her ill temper increased. She showed her teeth. You get out of here, she said suddenly. I didn t ask you to come back. I don t want you. Good heavens, Grace. You always knew I would have to marry someday. I was sick. I nearly died. I didn t hear any reports of you hanging around the hospital to learn how I was getting along. He laughed rather seepously. I had to be careful. You know that as well as I do. I know half the staff there. Besides one of them, he hesitated over his wife s name. A girl I knew very well was in the training school. There would have been the devil to pay if I d as much as called up. You never told me you were going to get married. Cornered, he slipped an arm around her, but she shook him off. I meant to tell you, honey, but you got sick. Anyhow, I hated to tell you, honey. He had furnished the flat for her. There was a comfortable feeling of coming home about going there again. And now that the worst minute of their meeting was over, he was visibly happier. But Grace continued to stand, eyeing him somberly. I ve got something to tell you, she said. Don t have a fit and don t laugh. If you do, I ll jump out of the window. I ve got a place in a state of store. I m going to be straight, Palmer. Good for you. He meant it. She was a nice girl, and he was fond of her. The other was a dog s life, and he was not unselfish about it. She could not belong to him. He did not want her to belong to anyone else. One of the nurses in the hospital, a Miss Page, has got me something to do at Lipton in Hamburg s. I am going to be on for the January White Cell. If I make good, they will keep me. He had put her aside without a qualm, and now he met her announcement with approval. He meant to let her alone. They would have a holiday together, and then they would say goodbye. And she had not fooled him. She still cared. He was getting off well, all things considered. She might have raised a row. Good work, he said. You ll be a lot happier, but that isn t any reason why we shouldn t be friends, is it? Just friends. I mean that. I would like to feel as if I could stop in now and then and say, how do you do? I promised Miss Page. Never mind Miss Page. The mention of Sydney s name brought up in his mind Christine as he had left her that morning. He scowled. Things were not going well at home. There was something wrong with Christine. She used to be a good sport, but she had never been the same since the day of the wedding. He thought her attitude toward him was one of suspicion. It made him uncomfortable. But any attempt on his part to fathom it only met with cold silence. That had been her attitude that morning. I ll tell you what we ll do, he said. We won t go to any of the old places. I found a new road house in the country that s respectable enough to suit anybody. We ll go out to sweaters and get some dinner. I promised to get you back early. How s that? In the end, she gave in. And on the way out, he lived up to the letter of their agreement. The situation exhilarated him. Grace with her new era of virtue, her new aloofness, his comfortable car, Johnny Rosenfeld s discreet back and alert ears. The adventure had all the thrill of a new conquest in it. He treated the girl with deference, did not insist when she refused a cigarette, felt glowingly virtuous and exultant at the same time. When the car drew up before the schwitter place, he slipped a $5 bill into Johnny Rosenfeld s not over clean hand. I don t mind the ears, he said. Just watch your tongue, lad. And Johnny stalled his engine in sheer surprise. There s just enough of a Jew in me, said Johnny, to know how to talk a lot and say nothing, Mr. Howe. He crawled stiffly out of the car and prepared to crank it. I ll just give her the once over now and then, he said. She ll free solid if I let her stand. Grace had gone up the narrow path to the house. She had the gift of looking well in her clothes and her small hat with its long quill and her motorcoat were chic and becoming. She never overdressed as Christine was inclined to do. Fortunately for Palmer, Tilly did not see him. A heavy German maid waited at the table in the dining room while Tilly baked waffles in the kitchen. Johnny Rosenfeld, going around the side path to the kitchen door with visions of hot coffee and a country supper for his frozen stomach, saw her through the window, bending flushed over the stove and hesitated. Then without a word, he tiptoed back to the car again and crawling into the tenot covered himself with rugs. In his untutored mind were certain great qualities and loyalty to his employer was one. The $5 in his pocket had nothing whatever to do with it. At 18, he had developed a philosophy of four words. It took the place of the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments and the Catechism. It was mine your own business. The discovery of Tilly s hiding place interested but did not thrill him. Tilly was his cousin. If she wanted to do the sort of thing she was doing, that was her affair. Tilly and her middle-aged lover Palmer Howe and Grace, the alley was not unfamiliar with such relationships. It viewed them with tolerance until they were found out when it raised its hands. True to his promise, Palmer awakened the sleeping boy before nine o'clock. Grace had eaten little and drank nothing, but Howe was slightly stimulated. Give her the once over, he told Johnny, and then go back and crawl into the rugs again. I'll drive in. Grace sat beside him. Their progress was slow and rough over the country roads, but when they reached the state road, Howe threw open the throttle. He drove well. The liquor was in his blood. He took chances and got away with them, laughing at the girl's gasp of dismay. Wait until I get beyond Simkinsville, he said, and I'll let her out. You're going to travel tonight, honey. The girl sat beside him with her eyes fixed ahead. He had been drinking and the warmth of the liquor was in his voice. She was determined on one thing. She was going to make him live up to the letter of his promise to go away at the house door, and more and more she realized it would be difficult. His mood was reckless, masterful. Instead of laughing when she drew back from a proffered caress, he turned surly, obstinate lines that she remembered appeared from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth. She was uneasy. Finally, she had on a plan to make him stop somewhere in her neighborhood and let her get out of the car. She would not come back after that. There was another car going into the city. Now it passed them, and as often they passed it. It became a contest of wits. Palmer's car lost on the hills but gained on the long level stretches, which gleamed with a coating of thin ice. I wish you'd let them get ahead Palmer. It's silly and it's reckless. I told you, we'd travel tonight. He turned a little glance at her. What the deuce was the matter with women anyhow? Were none of them cheerful anymore? Here was grace as sober as Christine. He felt outraged, defrauded. His light car skidded and struck the big car heavily. On a smooth road, perhaps nothing more serious than broken mud guards would have been the result. But on the ice, the small car slewed around and slid over the edge of the bank. At the bottom of the declivity, it turned over. Grace was flung clear out of the wreckage. Hal freed himself and stood erect, with one arm hanging at his side. There was no sound at all from the boy under the tenot. The big car had stopped. Down the bank plunged a heavy gorilla-like figure, long arms pushing aside the frozen branches of trees. When he reached the car, O'Hara found Grace sitting unhurt on the ground. In the wreck of the car, the lamps had not been extinguished. But by their light, he made out howl, swaying dizzily. Anybody underneath? The chauffeur. He's dead, I think. He doesn't answer. The other members of O'Hara's party had crawled down the bank by that time. With the aid of a jack, they got the car up. Johnny Rosenfeld lay doubled on his face underneath. When he came to and opened his eyes, Grace almost shrieked with relief. I'm alright, said Johnny Rosenfeld. And when they offered him whiskey, away with the firewater. I'm no drinker. I espasm a pain twisted his face. I guess I'll get up. With his arms, he lifted himself to a sitting position and fell back again. God, he said. I can't move my legs. He drew a long breath. I hope you don't feel as if you must stay on. She said anxiously. Not that we don't want you. You know better than that. There is no place else in the whole world that I want to go to, he said simply. I seem to be always relying on somebody's kindness too. To keep things together, first for years and years it was Ontario. Now it is you. Don't you realize that, instead of you being grateful to me, it is I who am undeniably grateful to you. This is home now. I have lived around, in different places and in different ways. I would rather be here than anywhere else in the world. But he did not look at her. There was so much that was hopeless in his eyes that he did not want her to see. She would be quite capable, he told himself savagely, of marrying him out of sheer pity, if she ever guessed. And he was afraid, afraid, since he wanted her so much, that he would be full and weakling enough to take her even on those terms. So he looked away. Everything was ready for her return to the hospital. She had been out that day to put flowers on the quiet grave where Anna lay, with folded hands. She had made her round of little visits on the street, and now her suitcase packed, was in the hole. In one way it would be a little better for you than if Christine and Palmer were not in the house. You like Christine, don't you? Very much. She likes you, Kay. She depends on you, too, especially since that night, when you took care of Palmer's arm before we got Dr. Max. I often think, Kay, what a good doctor you would have been. You knew so well what to do for mother. She broke off. She still could not trust her voice about her mother. Palmer's arm is going to be quite straight. Dr. Ed is so proud of Max over it. It was a bad fracture. He had been waiting for that. Once at least, whenever they were together, she brought Max into the conversation. She was quite unconscious of it. You and Max are great friends. I knew you would like him. He is interesting, don't you think? Very, said Kay. To save his life he could not put any warmth into his voice. He would be fair. It was not in human nature to expect more of him. Those long talks you have shut in your room. What in the world do you talk about? Politics? Occasionally. She was a little jealous of those evenings when she sat alone or when Harriet, sitting with her, made sketches under the lamp to the accompaniment of a steady hum of masculine voices from across the whole. Not that she was ignored, of course. Max came in always before he went and, leaning over the back of a chair, would inform her of the absolute blankness of life in the hospital without her. I go every day because I must. He would assure her gaily. But I tell you, the snap has gone out of it. When there was a chance that every cap was your cap, the mere progress along a corridor became thrilling. He had a foreign trick of throwing at his hands, with a little shrug of the shoulders. Quibono, he said, which, being translated, means what the devil is to use. And Kay would stand in the doorway quietly smoking. Park go back to his room and lock away in his trunk the great German books on surgery with which he and Max had been working out a case. So Kay sat by the dining-room table and listened to her talk of Max that last evening together. I told Mrs. Rosenfeld today not to be too much discouraged about Johnny. I had seen Dr. Max do such wonderful things. Now that you are such friends, she eyed him wistfully. Perhaps someday you will come to one of his operations. Even if you didn't understand exactly, I know it would thrill you. And I'd like you to see me in my uniform, Kay. You never have. She grew a little sad as the evening went on. She was going to miss Kay very much. While she was ill she had watched the clock for the time to listen for him. She knew the way he slammed the front door. Palmer never slammed the door. She knew too that, just after a bang that threatened the very glass and the transom, Kay would come to the foot of the stairs and call, Ahoy there! Ai-ai, she would answer, which was, he assured her, the proper response. Whether he came up the stairs at once, or took his way back to Kaytee, had depended on whether his tribute for the day was fruit or sweet-breads. Now that was all over. They were such good friends, she would miss him. He would miss her too. But he would have Harriet and Christine and Max. Back in a circle to Max, of course. She insisted that last evening on sitting up with him until midnight ushered in Christmas Day. Christine and Palmer were out, Harriet, having presented Sydney with a blouse that had been left over in the shop from the autumn's business, had yawned herself to bed. When the bells announced midnight, Sydney roused with a start. She realized that neither of them had spoken, and that Kay's eyes were fixed on her. The little clock on the shelf took up the burden of the churches and struck the hour in quick staccato notes. Sydney rose and went over to Kay. Her black dress and soft folds about her. He is born Kay. He is born dear. She stooped and kissed his cheek lightly. Christmas Day dawned thick and white. Sydney left the little house at six, with the street lights still burning through a mist of falling snow. The hospital wards and corridors were still lighted when she went on duty at seven o'clock. She had been assigned to the men's surgical ward and went there at once. She had not seen Carlotta Harrison since her mother's death, but she found her on duty in the surgical ward. For the second time in four months, the two girls were working side by side. Sydney's recollection of her previous service under Carlotta made her nervous, but the older girl greeted her pleasantly. We were all sorry to hear of your trouble, she said. I hope we shall get on nicely. Sydney surveyed the ward, full to overflowing. At the far end, two cots had been placed. The ward is heavy, isn't it? Very. I've been almost mad at dressing hour. There are three of us, you, myself, and a probationer. The first light of the Christmas morning was coming through the windows. Carlotta put out the lights and turned in a business-like way to her records. The probationer's name is Wardwell, she said. Perhaps you'd better help her with the breakfasts. If there's any way to make a mistake, she makes it. It was after eight when Sydney found Johnny Rosenfeld. You here in the ward, Johnny, she said. Suffering had refined the boy's features. His dark, heavily-fringed eyes looked at her from a pale face, but he smiled up at her cheerfully. I was in a private room, but it cost thirty plunks a week, so I moved. Why pay rent? Sydney had not seen him since his accident. She had wished to go, but Kay had urged against it. She was not strong, and she had already suffered much. And now the work of the ward pressed hard. She had only a moment. She stood beside him and stroked his hand. I'm sorry, Johnny. He pretended to think that her sympathy were his fall from the estate of a private patient to the free ward. Oh, I'm all right, Miss Sydney, he said. Mr. Howe is paying six dollars a week for me. The difference between me and the other fellows around here is that I get a napkin on my tray, and they don't. Before his determined cheerfulness, Sydney choked. Six dollars a week for a napkin is going some. I wish you'd tell Mr. Howe to give Ma the six dollars. She'll be needing it. I'm no bloated aristocrat. I don't have to have a napkin. Have they told you what the trouble is? Backs broke. But don't let that worry you. Dr. Max Wilson is going to operate on me. I'll be doing the tango yet. Sydney's eyes shone. Of course Max could do it. And what a thing it was to be able to take his life and death of Johnny Rosenfeld's and make out life again. All sorts of men made up Sydney's world, the derelicts who wandered through the ward and flapping slippers, listlessly carrying trays, the unshaven men in the beds, looking forward to another day of boredom, if not of pain. Palmer Howe with his broken arm, Kay, tender and strong, but filling no special place in the world. Towering over them all was the younger Wilson. He meant for her that Christmas morning all that the other men were not, to their weakness, strength, courage, daring, power. Johnny Rosenfeld laid back on his pillows and watched her face. When I was a kid, he said, and ran along the street, calling Dr. Max a dude, I never thought I'd die here watching that door to see him come in. You've had trouble too. Ain't it the hell of a world anyhow? It ain't much of a Christmas to you either. Sydney fed him his morning beef tea, and because her eyes filled up with tears now and then, at his helplessness, she was not so skillful as she might have been. When one spoonful had gone down his neck, he smiled up at her whimsically. Run for your life, the dams burst, he said. As much as was possible the hospital rested on that Christmas day. The interns went about in fresh white ducks, with sprays of mistletoe in their buttonholes, doing few dressings. Over the upper floors, where the kitchens were located, spread towards noon the insidious odor of roasting turkeys. Every ward had its vows of holly, and the afternoon services were held in the chapel downstairs. Wheelchairs made their slow progress along corridors and down elevators. Convalescents who were able to walk flapped along in carpet slippers. Gradually the chapel filled up. Outside the wide doors of the corridor the wheelchairs were arranged in a semi-circle. Behind them, dressed for the occasion, were the elevator men, the orderlies, and Big John, who drove the ambulance. On one side of the aisle near the front sat the nurses in rows in crisp caps and fresh uniforms. On the other side had been reserved a place for the staff. The interns stood back against the wall, ready to run out between rejoicings, as it were, for a cigarette or an ambulance call, as the case might be. Over everything brooded the after-dinner peace of Christmas afternoon. The nurses sang, and Sydney sang with them, her fresh young voice rising above the rest. Yellow winter sunlight came through the stained glass windows, and shone on her lovely flushed face, her smooth kerchief, her cap, always just a little awry. Dr. Max, lounging against the wall across the chapel, found his eyes straying toward her constantly. How she stood out from the others, what a zest for living, and for happiness she had. The Episcopal clergyman read the Epistle, Thou hast lumped righteousness, and hated iniquity. Therefore God, even Thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows. That was Sydney, she was good, and she had been anointed with the oil of gladness, and he—his brother was singing, his deep bass voice, not always true, boomed out above the sound of the small organ. Ed had been a good brother to him, he had been a good son. Max's vagrant mind wandered away from the service, to the picture of his mother over his brother's litter desk, to the street, to Kay, to the girl who had refused to marry him, because she did not trust him, to Carlotta, last of all. He turned a little and ran his eyes along the line of nurses. Ah, there she was. As if she were conscious of his scrutiny she lifted her head and glanced toward him. Swift colour flooded her face. The nurses sang, O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray, cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today. The wheelchairs and convalescence quavered the familiar words. Dr. Ed's heavy throat shook with earnestness. The head, sitting a little apart, with her hands folded in her lap, and weary, with the suffering of the world, closed her eyes and listened. The Christmas morning had brought Sydney half a dozen gifts. Kay sent her a silver thermometer case with her monogram. Christine, a toilet mirror, put a gift to gifts over which Sydney's eyes had glowed. Was a great box of roses, marked in Dr. Max's copper plate writing, from a neighbour. Tucked in the soft folds of her kerchief was one of the roses that afternoon. Services over the nurses filed out. Max was waiting for Sydney in the corridor. Merry Christmas, he said, and held out his hand. Merry Christmas, she said. You see, she glanced down to the rose she wore. The others make the most splendid bit of colour in the ward. But they were for you. They are not any less mine, because I am letting other people have a chance to enjoy them. Under all his gaiety he was curiously diffident with her. All the pretty speeches he would have made to Carlotta under the circumstances died before her frank glance. There were many things he wanted to say to her. He wanted to tell her that he was sorry her mother had died, that the street was empty without her, that he looked forward to these daily meetings with her as a holy man to his hour before his saint. What he really said was to inquire politely whether she had had her Christmas dinner. Sydney eyed him half amused, half hurt. What have I done, Max? Is it bad for discipline for us to be good friends? Damn discipline! said the pride of the staff. Carlotta was watching them from the chapel. Something in her eyes roused the devil of mischief that always slumbered in him. My car has been stalled in a snow-dereft downtown since early this morning, and I have Ed's Peggy in a sleigh. Put on your things and come for a ride. He hoped Carlotta could hear what he had said. To be certain of it he maliciously raised his voice a trifle. Just a little run, he urged. Put on your warmest things. Sydney protested. She was to be free that afternoon until six o'clock, but she had promised to go home. Kay is alone. Kay can sit with Christine. Ten to one he's with her now. The temptation was very strong. She had been working hard all day. The heavy odor of the hospital, mingled with a scent of pine and evergreen in the chapel, made her dizzy. The fresh outdoors called her, and besides, if Kay were with Christine, it's forbidden, isn't it? I believe it is, he smiled at her. And yet you continue to tempt me and expect me to yield. One of the most delightful things about temptation is yielding, now and then. After all, the situation seemed absurd. Here was her old friend and neighbour, asking to take her out for a daylight ride. The swift rebellion of youth against authority surged up in Sydney. Very well, I'll go. Carlotta had gone by that time, gone with hate in her heart and black despair. She knew very well what the issue would be. Sydney would drive with him, and he would tell her how lovely she looked with the air on her face and the snow about her. The jerky motion of the little sly would throw them close together. How well she knew it all, he would touch Sydney's hand daringly and smile in her eyes. That was his method, to play at love-making, like an audacious boy, until quite suddenly the coke dropped and the danger was there. The Christmas excitement had not died out in the ward when Carlotta went back to it. On each bedside table was an orange and beside it a pair of woolen gloves and a folded white handkerchief. There were sprays of holly scattered about, too, and the after-dinner content of roast turkey and ice-cream. The lame girl who played the violin limped down the corridor into the ward. She was greeted with silence, that truest tribute, and with the instant composing of the restless ward to peace. She was pretty in a young pathetic way, and because to her Christmas was a festival and meant hope and the promise of the young Lord, she played cheerful things. The ward sat up, remembered that it was not the Sabbath, smiled across from bed to bed. The probationer, whose name was Wardwell, was a tall lean girl with a long pointed nose. She kept up a running accompaniment of small talk to the music. Last Christmas, she said plaintively, we went out into the country in a hay wagon and had a real time. I don't know what I'm here for, anyhow, I'm a fool. Undoubtedly, said Carlotta, turkey and goose mince pie and pumpkin pie, four kinds of cake, that's the sort of spread we have up in our part of the world, when I think of what I sat down to today. She had a profound respect for Carlotta and her motto in the hospital differed from Sidney's, in that it was to placate her superiors, while Sidney's had been to care for her patients. Seeing Carlotta bored, she ventured a little gossip. She had idly glued the label of a medicine model on the back of her hand and was scratching a skull and crossbones on it. I wonder if you've noticed something, she said, eyes on the label. I have noticed that the three o'clock medicines are not given, said Carlotta sharply, and Miss Wardwell, still labelled and adorned, made the rounds of the ward. When she came back, she was sulky. I'm no gossip, she said, putting the tray on the table. If you won't see, you won't. That Rosenfeld boy is crying. As it was not required that tears be recorded on the record, Carlotta paid no attention to this. What won't I see? It required a little urging now. Miss Wardwell swelled with importance and let her superior ask her twice, then. Dr. Wilson's crazy about Miss Page. A hand seemed to catch Carlotta's heart and hold it. They're old friends. Piffle. Being an old friend doesn't make you look at a girl as if you wanted to take a bite out of her. Mark my word, Miss Harrison. She'll never finish her training. She'll marry him. I wish, concluded the probationer plaintively, that some good-looking fellow like that would take a fancy to me. I do, in credit. I'm as ugly as a mud-fence, but I've got style. She was right, probably. She was long insinuous, but she wore her lanky, ill-fitting clothes, with a certain distinction. Harriet Kennedy would have dressed her in jade green to match her eyes, with long jade earrings, and made her a fashion. Carlotta's lips were dry. The violinist had seen the tears on Johnny Rosenfeld's white cheeks, and had rushed into rollicking joyous music. The ward echoed with it. I'm twenty-one and she's eighteen, hummed the ward under its breath. Miss Wardwell's thin body swayed. Lord, how I'd like to dance, if I ever get out of this charnel-house. The medicine tray lay at Carlotta's elbow, beside it the box of labels. This crude girl was right. Carlotta knew it down to the depths of her tortured brain. As inevitably, as the night followed the day, she was losing her game. She had lost already, unless. If she could get Sidney out of the hospital, it would simplify things. She surmised shrewdly that on the street their interests were wide apart. It was here that they met on common ground. The lame violin player limped out of the ward. The shadows of the early winter twilight settled down. At five o'clock Carlotta sent Miss Wardwell to the first supper, and to the surprise of that seldom-surprised person. The ward lay still, or shuffled about quietly. Christmas was over, and there were no evening papers to look forward to. Carlotta gave the five o'clock medicines, then she sat down at the table near the door, with a tray in front of her. There are certain thoughts that are at first functions of the brain. After a long time the spinal cord takes them up and converts them into acts almost automatically. Perhaps because, for the last month, she had done the thing so often in her mind, its actual performance was almost without conscious thought. Carlotta took a bottle from her medicine cupboard and, writing a new label for it, pasted it over the old one. Then she exchanged it for one of the same size on the medicine tray. In the dining room at the probationer's table Miss Wardwell was talking. Believe me, she said, me for the country, and the simple life after this. They think I'm only a probationer, and don't see anything, but I've got eyes in my head. Harris and the stark crazy over Dr. Wilson, and she thinks I don't see it, but never mind. I paid her up to-day for a few of the jolts she's given me. Throughout the dining room busy and competent young women came and ate, hastily or leisurely, as their opportunity was, and went on their way again. In their hands they held the keys, not always of life and death, perhaps, but of ease from pain, of tenderness, of smooth pillows, and cups of water to thirsty lips. In their eyes as in Sydney's burned the light of service. But here and there one found women, like Carlotta and Miss Wardwell, who had mistaken their vocation, who railed against the monotony of the life, its limitations, its endless sacrifices. They showed it in their eyes. Fifty or so against two. Fifty, who looked out on the world with the fearless glance of those who had seen life to its depths, and with the broad understanding of actual contact, still found it good. Fifty, who were learning or had learned not to draw aside their clean starched skirts from the drab of the streets, and the fifty, who found the very scum of the gutters not too filthy for tenderness and care, let Carlotta and, in lesser measure, the new probationer alone. They could not have voiced their reasons. The supper room was filled with their soft voices, the rustle of their skirts, the gleam of their stiff white caps. When Carlotta came in she greeted none of them. They did not like her, and she knew it. Before her, instead of the tidy supper table, she was seeing the medicine tray as she had left it. I guess I fixed her, she said to herself. Her very soul was sick with fear of what she had done. End of Chapter 17