The first light of the Christmas morning was coming through the windows. Carlotta put out the lights and turned in a businesslike 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 Sidney 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?”
Sidney had not seen him since his accident. She had wished to go, but K. 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 was for his fall from the estate of a private patient to the free ward.
“Oh, I’m all right, Miss Sidney,” 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 Sidney 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?”
“Back’s broke. But don’t let that worry you. Dr. Max Wilson is going to operate on me. I’ll be doing the tango yet.”
Sidney’s eyes shone. Of course, Max could do it. What a thing it was to be able to take this life-in-death of Johnny Rosenfeld’s and make it life again!
All sorts of men made up Sidney’s world: the derelicts who wandered through the ward in 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; K., tender and strong, but filling no especial 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 lay back on the 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 lie here watching that door to see him come in. You have had trouble, too. Ain’t it the hell of a world, anyhow? It ain’t much of a Christmas to you, either.”
Sidney 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 dam’s burst!” he said.
As much as was possible, the hospital rested on that Christmas Day. The internes 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 toward noon the insidious odor of roasting turkeys. Every ward had its vase of holly. In the afternoon, services were held in the chapel downstairs.
Wheel-chairs 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 wheel-chairs were arranged in a semicircle. 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 internes 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 Sidney 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 loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.”
That was Sidney. 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 littered desk, to the Street, to K., 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 color 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 to-day.”
The wheel-chairs and convalescents 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 Sidney half a dozen gifts. K. sent her a silver thermometer case with her monogram, Christine a toilet mirror. But the gift of gifts, over which Sidney’s eyes had glowed, was a great box of roses marked in Dr. Max’s copper-plate writing, “From a neighbor.”
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 Sidney 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 color in the ward.”
“But they were for you!”
“They are not any the less mine because I am letting other people have a chance to enjoy them.”
Under all his gayety 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.
Sidney 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’s been stalled in a snowdrift 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 said; to be certain of it, he maliciously raised his voice a trifle.
“Just a little run,” he urged. “Put on your warmest things.”
Sidney protested. She was to be free that afternoon until six o’clock; but she had promised to go home.
“K. is alone.”
“K. can sit with Christine. Ten to one, he’s with her now.”