Down on the doorstep, Mrs. McKee and Mr. Wagner sat and made love with the aid of a lighted match and the pencil-pad.
The car drew up at the little house, and Sidney got out. Then it drove away, for K. must take it to the garage and walk back.
Sidney sat on the doorstep and waited. How lovely it all was! How beautiful life was! If one did one’s best by life, it did its best too. How steady K.‘s eyes were! She saw the flicker of the match across the street, and knew what it meant. Once she would have thought that that was funny; now it seemed very touching to her.
Katie had heard the car, and now she came heavily along the hall. “A woman left this for Mr. K.,” she said. “If you think it’s a begging letter, you’d better keep it until he’s bought his new suit tomorrow. Almost any moment he’s likely to bust out.”
But it was not a begging letter. K. read it in the hall, with Sidney’s shining eyes on him. It began abruptly:—
“I’m going to Africa with one of my cousins. She is a medical missionary. Perhaps I can work things out there. It is a bad station on the West Coast. I am not going because I feel any call to the work, but because I do not know what else to do.
“You were kind to me the other day. I believe, if I had told you then, you would still have been kind. I tried to tell you, but I was so terribly afraid.
“If I caused death, I did not mean to. You will think that no excuse, but it is true. In the hospital, when I changed the bottles on Miss Page’s medicine-tray, I did not care much what happened. But it was different with you.
“You dismissed me, you remember. I had been careless about a sponge count. I made up my mind to get back at you. It seemed hopeless—you were so secure. For two or three days I tried to think of some way to hurt you. I almost gave up. Then I found the way.
“You remember the packets of gauze sponges we made and used in the operating-room? There were twelve to each package. When we counted them as we got them out, we counted by packages. On the night before I left, I went to the operating-room and added one sponge every here and there. Out of every dozen packets, perhaps, I fixed one that had thirteen. The next day I went away.
“Then I was terrified. What if somebody died? I had meant to give you trouble, so you would have to do certain cases a second time. I swear that was all. I was so frightened that I went down sick over it. When I got better, I heard you had lost a case and the cause was being whispered about. I almost died of terror.
“I tried to get back into the hospital one night. I went up the fire-escape, but the windows were locked. Then I left the city. I couldn’t stand it. I was afraid to read a newspaper.
“I am not going to sign this letter. You know who it is from. And I am not going to ask your forgiveness, or anything of that sort. I don’t expect it. But one thing hurt me more than anything else, the other night. You said you’d lost your faith in yourself. This is to tell you that you need not. And you said something else—that any one can ‘come back.’ I wonder!”
K. stood in the hall of the little house with the letter in his hand. Just beyond on the doorstep was Sidney, waiting for him. His arms were still warm from the touch of her. Beyond lay the Street, and beyond that lay the world and a man’s work to do. Work, and faith to do it, a good woman’s hand in the dark, a Providence that made things right in the end.
“Are you coming, K.?”
“Coming,” he said. And, when he was beside her, his long figure folded to the short measure of the step, he stooped humbly and kissed the hem of her soft white dress.
Across the Street, Mr. Wagner wrote something in the dark and then lighted a match.
“So K. is in love with Sidney Page, after all!” he had written. “She is a sweet girl, and he is every inch a man. But, to my mind, a certain lady—”
Mrs. McKee flushed and blew out the match.
Late September now on the Street, with Joe gone and his mother eyeing the postman with pitiful eagerness; with Mrs. Rosenfeld moving heavily about the setting-up of the new furniture; and with Johnny driving heavenly cars, brake and clutch legs well and Strong. Late September, with Max recovering and settling his tie for any pretty nurse who happened along, but listening eagerly for Dr. Ed’s square tread in the hall; with Tillie rocking her baby on the porch at Schwitter’s, and Carlotta staring westward over rolling seas; with Christine taking up her burden and Grace laying hers down; with Joe’s tragic young eyes growing quiet with the peace of the tropics.
“The Lord is my shepherd,” she reads. “I shall not want.”…“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
Sidney, on her knees in the little parlor, repeats the words with the others. K. has gone from the Street, and before long she will join him. With the vision of his steady eyes before her, she adds her own prayer to the others— that the touch of his arms about her may not make her forget the vow she has taken, of charity and its sister, service, of a cup of water to the thirsty, of open arms to a tired child.
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