night assistant sent coffee down to them, and they drank it. Dr. Ed stayed in his brother’s room, and said to his mother, under his breath, that he’d tried to do his best by Max, and that from now on it would be up to her.
K. had brought the injured man in. The country doctor had come, too, finding Tillie’s trial not imminent. On the way in he had taken it for granted that K. was a medical man like himself, and had placed his hypodermic case at his disposal.
When he missed him,—in the smoking-room, that was,—he asked for him.
“I don’t see the chap who came in with us,” he said. “Clever fellow. Like to know his name.”
The staff did not know.
K. sat alone on a bench in the hall. He wondered who would tell Sidney; he hoped they would be very gentle with her. He sat in the shadow, waiting. He did not want to go home and leave her to what she might have to face. There was a chance she would ask for him. He wanted to be near, in that case.
He sat in the shadow, on the bench. The night watchman went by twice and stared at him. At last he asked K. to mind the door until he got some coffee.
“One of the staff’s been hurt,” he explained. “If I don’t get some coffee now, I won’t get any.”
K. promised to watch the door.
A desperate thing had occurred to Carlotta. Somehow, she had not thought of it before. Now she wondered how she could have failed to think of it. If only she could find him and he would do it! She would go down on her knees—would tell him everything, if only he would consent.
When she found him on his bench, however, she passed him by. She had a terrible fear that he might go away if she put the thing to him first. He clung hard to his new identity.
So first she went to the staff and confronted them. They were men of courage, only declining to undertake what they considered hopeless work. The one man among them who might have done the thing with any chance of success lay stricken. Not one among them but would have given of his best—only his best was not good enough.
“It would be the Edwardes operation, wouldn’t it?” demanded Carlotta.
The staff was bewildered. There were no rules to cover such conduct on the part of a nurse. One of them— Pfeiffer again, by chance—replied rather heavily:—
“If any, it would be the Edwardes operation.”
“Would Dr. Edwardes himself be able to do anything?”
This was going a little far.
“Possibly. One chance in a thousand, perhaps. But Edwardes is dead. How did this thing happen, Miss Harrison?”
She ignored his question. Her face was ghastly, save for the trace of rouge; her eyes were red-rimmed.
“Dr. Edwardes is sitting on a bench in the hall outside!” she announced.
Her voice rang out. K. heard her and raised his head. His attitude was weary, resigned. The thing had come, then! He was to take up the old burden. The girl had told.
Dr. Ed had sent for Sidney. Max was still unconscious. Ed remembered about her when, tracing his brother’s career from his babyhood to man’s estate and to what seemed now to be its ending, he had remembered that Max was very fond of Sidney. He had hoped that Sidney would take him and do for him what he, Ed, had failed to do.
So Sidney was summoned.
She thought it was another operation, and her spirit was just a little weary. But her courage was indomitable. She forced her shoes on her tired feet, and bathed her face in cold water to rouse herself.
The night watchman was in the hall. He was fond of Sidney; she always smiled at him; and, on his morning rounds at six o’clock to waken the nurses, her voice was always amiable. So she found him in the hall, holding a cup of tepid coffee. He was old and bleary, unmistakably dirty too—but he had divined Sidney’s romance.
“Coffee! For me?” She was astonished.
“Drink it. You haven’t had much sleep.”
She took it obediently, but over the cup her eyes searched his.
“There is something wrong, daddy.”
That was his name, among the nurses. He had had another name, but it was lost in the mists of years.
“Get it down.”
So she finished it, not without anxiety that she might be needed. But daddy’s attentions were for few, and not to be lightly received.
“Can you stand a piece of bad news?”
Strangely, her first thought was of K.
“There has been an accident. Dr. Wilson—”
“Which one?”
“Dr. Max—has been hurt. It ain’t much, but I guess you’d like to know it.”
“Where is he?”
“Downstairs, in Seventeen.”
