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, and by their light he made out Howe, 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 all right,” said Johnny Rosenfeld. And, when they offered him whiskey: “Away with the fire-water. I am no drinker. I—I—” A spasm of 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.”
CHAPTER XVII
By Christmas Day Sidney was back in the hospital, a little wan, but valiantly determined to keep her life to its mark of service. She had a talk with K. the night before she left.
Katie was out, and Sidney had put the dining-room in order. K. sat by the table and watched her as she moved about the room.
The past few weeks had been very wonderful to him: to help her up and down the stairs, to read to her in the evenings as she lay on the couch in the sewing-room; later, as she improved, to bring small dainties home for her tray, and, having stood over Katie while she cooked them, to bear them in triumph to that upper room—he had not been so happy in years.
And now it was over. 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 to—to keep things together. First, for years and years, it was Aunt Harriet; now it is you.”
“Don’t you realize that, instead of your 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 fool 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 hall.
“In one way, it will 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, K. 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, K., 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 K.
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 hall. 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 gayly; “but, I tell you, the snap is 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 out his hands, with a little shrug of the shoulders. “Cui bono?” he said—which, being translated, means: “What the devil’s the use!”
And K. would stand in the doorway, quietly smoking, or 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 K. sat by the dining-room table and listened to her talk of Max that last evening together.
“I told Mrs. Rosenfeld to-day 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 some day 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, K. You never have.”
She grew a little sad as the evening went on. She was going to miss K. 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 in the transom, K. would come to the foot of the stairs and calclass="underline" —
“Ahoy, there!”
“Aye, aye,” 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 Katie had depended on whether his tribute for the day was fruit or sweetbreads.
Now that was all over. They were such good friends. 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 Sidney 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, Sidney roused with a start. She realized that neither of them had spoken, and that K.‘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.
Sidney rose and went over to K., her black dress in soft folds about her.
“He is born, K.”
“He is born, dear.”
She stooped and kissed his cheek lightly.
Christmas Day dawned thick and white. Sidney left the little house at six, with the street light 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.
Sidney’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.”
Sidney 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.”