Project Gutenberg's Etext Red Pepper Burns, by Grace S. Richmond
Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!
Please take a look at the important information in this header.
We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this.
*It must legally be the first thing seen when opening the book.*
In fact, our legal advisors said we can't even change margins.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
further information is included below. We need your donations.
Title: Red Pepper Burns
Author: Grace S. Richmond
July, 2001 [Etext #2725]
[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
Project Gutenberg's Etext Red Pepper Burns, by Grace S. Richmond
******This file should be named rpbrn10.txt or rpbrn10.zip******
Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, rpbrn11.txt
VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, rpbrn10a.txt
This Etext prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer.
Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
copyright notice is included. Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any
of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.
We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance
of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till
midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A
preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
and editing by those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an
up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes
in the first week of the next month. Since our ftp program has
a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a
look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a
new copy has at least one byte more or less.
Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The
time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This
projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value
per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-six text
files per month, or 432 more Etexts in 1999 for a total of 2000+
If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the
total should reach over 200 billion Etexts given away this year.
The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
Files by December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
which is only ~5% of the present number of computer users.
At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we
manage to get some real funding; currently our funding is mostly
from Michael Hart's salary at Carnegie-Mellon University, and an
assortment of sporadic gifts; this salary is only good for a few
more years, so we are looking for something to replace it, as we
don't want Project Gutenberg to be so dependent on one person.
We need your donations more than ever!
All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are
tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. (CMU = Carnegie-
Mellon University).
For these and other matters, please mail to:
Project Gutenberg
P. O. Box 2782
Champaign, IL 61825
When all other email fails. . .try our Executive Director:
Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org
if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if
it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .
We would prefer to send you this information by email.
******
To access Project Gutenberg etexts, use any Web browser
to view http://promo.net/pg. This site lists Etexts by
author and by title, and includes information about how
to get involved with Project Gutenberg. You could also
download our past Newsletters, or subscribe here. This
is one of our major sites, please email hart@pobox.com,
for a more complete list of our various sites.
To go directly to the etext collections, use FTP or any
Web browser to visit a Project Gutenberg mirror (mirror
sites are available on 7 continents; mirrors are listed
at http://promo.net/pg).
Mac users, do NOT point and click, typing works better.
Example FTP session:
ftp metalab.unc.edu
login: anonymous
password: your@login
cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
cd etext90 through etext99 or etext00 through etext01, etc.
dir [to see files]
get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]
GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]
***
**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**
(Three Pages)
***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical
medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-
tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor
Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at
Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project"). Among other
things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and
without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this
etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
time to the person you received it from. If you received it
on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
receive it electronically.
THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
may have other legal rights.
INDEMNITY
You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
or:
[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this
requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however,
if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-
cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as
*EITHER*:
[*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
does *not* contain characters other than those
intended by the author of the work, although tilde
(~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
be used to convey punctuation intended by the
author, and additional characters may be used to
indicate hypertext links; OR
[*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
form by the program that displays the etext (as is
the case, for instance, with most word processors);
OR
[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
or other equivalent proprietary form).
[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
"Small Print!" statement.
[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
net profits you derive calculated using the method you
already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you
don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are
payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon
University" within the 60 days following each
date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)
your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,
scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty
free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution
you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg
Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".
We are planning on making some changes in our donation structure
in 2000, so you might want to email me, hart@pobox.com beforehand.
*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
This Etext prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer.
Red Pepper Burns
by Grace S. Richmond
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. IN WHICH HE VOWS A VOW
II. IN WHICH HE CREATES A CIRCUS
III. IN WHICH HE ASSUMES A RESPONSIBILITY
IV. IN WHICH HE MAKES A CONCESSION
V. IN WHICH HE IS ROUGH ON A FRIEND
VI. IN WHICH HE PRESCRIBES FOR HIMSELF
VII. IN WHICH HE CONTINUES TO SAW WOOD
VIII. IN WHICH HE IS UNREASONABLY PREOCCUPIED
IX. IN WHICH HE SUFFERS A DEFEAT
X. IN WHICH HE PROVES HIMSELF A HOST
XI. IN WHICH HE GETS EVEN WITH HIMSELF
XII. IN WHICH HE HAS HIS OWN WAY
XIII. IN WHICH HE MAKES NO EVENING CALL
XIV. IN WHICH HE DEFIES SUPERSTITION
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH HE VOWS A VOW
"There comes the Green Imp "
"How can you tell?"
"Don't you hear? Red's coming in on five cylinders for all he
can get out of 'em. Anybody else would stop and fix up. He's
in too much of a hurry - as usual."
The Green Imp tore past the porch where Burns's neighbours
waved arms of greeting which he failed to see, for he did not
turn his head. The car went round the curve of the driveway
at perilous speed, and only the fact that from road to old red
barn was a good twenty rods made it seem possible that the
Green Imp could come to a standstill in time to prevent its
banging into the rear wall of the barn.
Two minutes later Burns ran by the Chesters' porch on his way
to his own. Chester hailed him.
"What's your everlasting hurry, Red? Come up and sit down and
cool off."
"Not now," called back a voice curtly, out of the June
twilight. The big figure ran on and disappeared into the
small house, the door slamming shut behind it.
"Red's in a temper. Tell by the sound of his voice.
"Is he ever in anything except a temper?" inquired a guest of
the Chesters. Arthur Chester turned on her.
"Show's you don't know him much, Pauline. He's the owner of
the fiercest good disposition ever heard of. He's the
pepperest proposition of an angel this earth has ever seen.
He's a red-headed, sharp-tongued brute of a saint - "
"Why, Arthur Chester!"
"He's a pot of mustard that's clear balm - if you don't mind
getting stung when it's applied."
"Well, of all the - "
"I'm going over to get something for this abominable headache
- and, incidentally, to find out what's the row. He's
probably lost a patient - it always goes to his brain like
that. When he abuses his beloved engine that way it's because
some other machinery has stopped somewhere."
"If he's lost a patient you'd better let him alone, dear,"
advised his wife, Winifred.
"No - he needs to get his mind off it, on me. I can fix up a
few symptoms for him."
"He'll see through you," called Mrs. Chester softly, after
him.
"No doubt of that. But it may divert him, just the same."
Chester made his way across the lawn and in at the side door
which led to the dimly lighted village offices of Redfield
Pepper Burns, physician and surgeon. Not that the
gilt-lettered sign on the glass of the office door read that
way. "R. F. Burns, M.D." was the brief inscription above the
table of "office hours," and the owner of the name invariably
so curtailed it. But among his friends the full name had
inevitably been turned into the nickname, for the big,
red-haired, quick-tempered, warm-hearted fellow was "Red
Pepper Burns" as irresistibly to them as he had been, a decade
earlier, to his classmates in college.
As Chester went in at the door a figure arose slowly from its
position - flung full length, face downward, on a couch in the
shadowy inner office and came into view.
"Toothache? Dentist down the street," said a blurred voice
unsympathetically.
Chester laughed. "Oh, come, Red," said he. "Give me some of
that headache dope. I'm all out."
"Glad to hear it. You don't get any more from me."
"Why not? I've got a sure-enough headache - I didn't come
over to quiz you. The blamed thing whizzes like a buzz saw."
"Can't help it. Go soak it."
Chester advanced. "I'll get the powders myself, then. I know
the bottle."
A substantial barrier interposed. "No, you don't. You've
taken up six ounces of that stuff do seven days. You quit
to-night."
"Look here, Red, what's the use of taking it out on me like
that, if you are mad at something? If your head - "
"I wish it did ache - like ten thousand furies. It might take
some of the pressure off somewhere else," growled R. P. Burns.
He shut the door of the inner office hard behind him.
"I thought so," declared Arthur Chester, suddenly forgetting
about his headache in his anxiety to know the explanation of
the five cylinders. It was a small suburban town in which
they lived, and if something had gone wrong it was a matter of
common interest. "Can you tell me about it ?" he asked - a
little diffidently, for none knew better than he that things
could not always be told, and that no lips were locked tighter
than Red Pepper's when the secret was not his to tell.
"Engine's on the blink. Got to go out and fix it," was the
unpromising reply. Burns picked up a sparkplug from the
office desk as he spoke.
"Had your dinner?"
"Don't want it."
"Shall I go out with you?"
The answer was an unintelligible grunt. As Chester was about
to follow his friend out - for there could be no doubt that
Red Pepper Burns was his friend in spite of this somewhat
surly, though by no means unusual, treatment - another door
opened tentatively, and a head was cautiously inserted.
"Your dinner's ready, Doctor Burns," said a doubtful voice.
Burns turned. "Leave a pitcher of milk on the table for me,
Cynthia," he said in a gentler voice than Chester had yet
heard from him tonight, crisp though it was. "Nothing else."
Chester, catching a glimpse of a brightly lighted dining-room
and a table lavishly spread, undertook to remonstrate. He had
seen the housekeeper's disappointed face, also. But Burns cut
him short.
"Come along - if you must," said he, and stalked out into the
night.
For an hour, in the light from one of the Green Imp's lamps,
Chester sat on an overturned box and watched Burns work. He
worked savagely, as if applying surgical measures to a mood as
well as to a machine. He worked like a skilled mechanic as
well; every turn of a nut, every polish of a thread meaning
definite means to an end. The night was hot and he had thrown
off coat and collar and rolled his sleeves high, so a brawny
arm gleamed in the bright lamplight, and the open shirt
exposed a powerful neck. Chester, who was of slighter build
and not as tall as he would have liked to be, watched
enviously.
"Whatever goes wrong with your affairs, Red," he observed
suddenly, breaking a long interval during which the engine had
been made to throb and whirl like the "ten thousand furies" to
whom its engineer had lately made allusion, "you have the
tremendous asset of a magnificent body to fall back on for
comfort."
With a movement of the hand Burns stopped his engine, now
running quietly, and stood up straight. He threw out one bare
arm, grimy and oily with his labours. "Two hours ago," said
he in a voice now controlled and solemn, "if by cutting off
that right arm at the shoulder I could have saved a human life
I'd have done it."
"And now," retorted Chester quickly, "now, two hours after -
would you cut it off now?"
Red Pepper looked at him. The arm dropped. "No," said he, "I
wouldn't. Not for a dozen lives like that. I'm not heroic,
after all - only hot and cold by jumps, like a thermometer.
But I ache all over, just the same. She runs like a bird now.
Jump in - we'll take a spin and try her out on the road. I
may need her before midnight."
Nothing loth, for he knew the Green Imp and her driver and had
had many a swift run on a moonlight night before in the same
company, Chester took the slim roadster's other seat, watching
the long green hood point the way down the driveway, past the
porch where the women, in white gowns showing coolly in the
light from the arc lamp at the corner of the street, called a
goodbye.
"Back - some time," replied Chester's voice, rising above the
low purr of the engine with a note of satisfaction in it. The
figure beside him, still in open, white shirt, with bare arms
and uncovered, thick thatch of red hair, did not turn its
head.
"Arthur's never so happy as when he's out with Red in the
Green Imp," Winifred said to her guest as the roadster shot
away under the elms which drooped beneath the arc light.
"Doctor Burns is certainly the oddest man I ever saw," replied
the guest, swinging idly in the hammock and watching the car
out of sight down the long vista of the village street. "He
hasn't given me one real good look yet. I suppose if I were a
patient he would favour me with an all-seeing gaze out of
those Irish-Scotch barbarian eyes of his, but as it is" - her
voice was slightly petulant - "I believe I shall have to do as
Arthur has: make up some symptoms and go over to his office."
"If you do you'll get precisely the same treatment I presume
Arthur had." Mrs. Chester laughed as she spoke. "I doubt very
much whether he comes back with any headache medicine."
"But he got a moonlight ride in that beauty of a car," the
guest declared enviously. "That treatment would suit me
wonderfully well, whatever was the matter."
"Would you have gone with him in his shirt-sleeves? He's
plainly in a shirt-sleeve mood to-night."
"I think a drive in the moonlight with a `brute of a saint' in
shirt-sleeves, with arms like those, might be interesting,"
mused the guest, indicating invisible patterns on the porch
with the toe of a white slipper.
"He would probably talk cars and engines every mile in the
most matter-of-fact way," Winifred Chester assured her. "No
woman yet has ever been able, as far as this town knows, to
strike a spark of romance out of Red Pepper Burns."
"Yet he has red hair," murmured the guest to herself, and
continued to look thoughtfully down the street along which the
Green Imp had shot out toward the open! country beyond.
Out in that open country, miles away, the car running with
that exquisite precision of rotating cylinder explosions which
is music to the trained ear of the mechanic at the wheel, the
two men sat silent. The pace of the Green Imp was one to cut
off speech, for the road wets straight and empty, stretching
like a white ribbon under the stars, with now and then a band
of midnight shade crossing it where arching tree-tops met the
course which invites an open throttle and the intent eye which
goes with it.
Suddenly the car struck aside from the straightaway and with
open cut-out roared up a steep hill by means of which a narrow
road led off toward a part of the country not often selected
by motorists for pleasure spins. Chester recognized that his
companion had a purpose beyond that of "trying out" his
engine, unless, indeed, the tough and rocky grade were a test.
But Burns was still silent, and the other man applied himself
to holding on. A mile up the road the car came to an abrupt
standstill before a tiny house.
"Going to make a call, after all?" was on Chester's lips, but
the sight of something, showing white beside the door in the
lamplight which streamed out upon a small, decrepit porch,
drove back the words.
Burns left a silent engine and strode up the straggling path
with the light tread of the heavy man whose muscles are under
his control. He walked in at the open door without knocking,
and Chester caught the sharp sound of a woman's voice at a
tension, saying: "Oh, Doctor!"
It seemed to him an hour, though by his watch it was but nine
minutes, that he sat watching the little flimsy streamer of
white flutter to and fro in the lamplight, his heart beating
heavily, as a father's will at sight of the sign of some other
man's loss.
At the end of those interminable nine minutes Burns was back
again in the car. He turned the Green Imp about as quietly as
if she were a cat stealing out of the yard, and sent her down
the rocky road at her slowest speed. At the bottom of the
hill he broke the long silence.
'Couldn't have slept an hour if I hadn't come back," he said
in a low tone. "Back and apologized for being a brute. It's
eased me up a bit I think it's eased her, too, poor soul."
"Then it wasn't losing the case " Chester began doubtfully.
He was never sure just when it was safe to ask Red Pepper
questions, but he thought it seemed safer than usual now.
"No, it wasn't losing the case, though that was bad enough.
It was losing my infernal hair-trigger of a temper that's been
cutting in like a knife. I had the boy where he ought to get
well if they followed my precautions a thousand times
repeated. This morning his heart was a whole lot stronger; it
only needed time. Tonight his mother let him sit up - in
spite of all I'd threatened her with if she did. He went out
like a snuffed candle. When I saw it I was so angry with her
I" - he thrust up one hand and ran it through his thick locks
with a gesture of savagery - "I let loose on her - poor soul
with her heart already broken. He was the only boy - of
course, - I ought to have been shot on the spot."
He sent the car flying down the road. Chester could think of
nothing to say. He could imagine the sort of apology Red had
given the boy's mother - one to make her forgive and adore
him. No doubt it had "eased her." It must have been a hard
thing for R. P. Burns, M.D., to do. Suddenly recalling this
he said so, and added a word of admiration. Burns turned on
him.
"Boy," he said, "I'm the toughest case on my list. I'm a
chronic patient. Just as I think I have myself in hand I
suffer a relapse. I break out in a new place. Of all men who
need self-control, it's a surgeon needs it most. Sometimes,
I'm in too much of a temper to operate - just because a nurse
has failed to provide the right sutures. Every red hair on my
head stands up like a porcupine's quills - my hand isn't
steady I can't trust my own judgment till I've cooled down.
There's only one hope for me "
He broke off abruptly, and the Green Imp accelerated her pace
as they came to the long, straight road home. Until they
reached the turn under the elms which led to the town, he left
the sentence unfinished, while Chester waited. Chester felt
it would be worth waiting for - that which Red Pepper might
say next. When it came it surprised him - it even gave him a
strange thrill coming from Red Pepper.
"I've put my case into the only competent hands," said Burns
slowly and quite simply. "I've promised my Maker I'll never
insult His name again."
CHAPTER II
IN WHICH HE CREATES A CIRCUS
"Doctor Burns - "
"Yes, Miss Mathewson."
"The long-distance telephone, please."
Burns excused himself to the last patient of the evening
series, and shut himself in with the long-distance. When he
came out he was looking at his watch. From its face he turned
to that of his office nurse - the one hardly less businesslike
in expression than the other.
"Miss Mathewson, my aunt telephones that my father and mother
are both sick, each anxious to distraction about the other,
she about them both, and under the weather herself. If you
and I can catch the ten-fifteen to-night we can be there by
two, and by leaving there at four we can be back here in time
for the morning's operations. If they need you I'll leave you
there for a day or two - by your leave. We'll take the Green
Imp into the city - the ten-fifteen doesn't stop here. Then
it'll be at the hospital when we want it in the morning.
You've twenty minutes to get ready."
"Very well, Doctor Burns."
The office bell rang. Burns fled toward the inner office.
Miss Mathewson discovered the guest of the Chesters on the
doorstep - all in white, with a face which usually stimulated
interest wherever it was seen.
"May I see Doctor Burns just a minute - for Mr. Chester?" The
caller took her cue cleverly from Miss Mathewson's face, which
at the moment expressed schedules and engagements thick as
blackberries in August. Burns, just closing the inner door,
caught Chester's name. He pulled off his white office coat,
slid into his gray tweed one, and opened the door.
"What can I do for Mr. Chester - in three minutes?" he
inquired, coming forward. Miss Mathewson, aware of the
shortness of time, vanished.
"Give me something for his headache, please," replied the
young person in white promptly. Schedules and engagements
were in R. P. Burns's eyes also; they looked at her without
appearing to see her at all. To this she was not accustomed
and it displeased her.
"Was it too severe for him to come himself?"
"Much too severe. He has gone to bed with it."
"Mrs. Chester closely attending him?"
"Certainly - or I shouldn't be here." The eyes of the
Chesters' guest sparkled. Something about the cool tone of
this question displeased her still more.
"Tell him to get up and go out and walk a mile, breathing deep
all the way."
"No medicine?"
"Not a grain. He ought to know better than to ask."
"He does, I think. He suggested that possibly if I asked -
But I see for myself how that wouldn't make the slightest
difference."
"I'm glad your perceptions are so acute," replied Burns
gravely.
"Are the three minutes up?" asked the caller.
He looked at his watch. "I think not quite. Is there
anything of importance to fill the one remaining?"
"Nothing whatever - except to mention your fee." The guest
receded gracefully from the door.
"If the patient will follow directions I'll ask no fee. If he
doesn't I'll exact one when I see him again. Forgive my
haste, Miss - Halstead?"
"Hempstead," corrected the caller crisply. "Don't mention it,
Doctor - Brown. Good night."
The Chesters' guest lingered on the porch before going in to
report the failure of her mission. She was still lingering
there when the Green Imp, carrying no open-shirted mechanic,
but a properly clothed professional gentleman and a severely
dressed professional lady, whirled away down the drive.
"He really was going somewhere in a hurry, then," admitted the
guest. "In which case I can't be quite so offended. I wonder
if that nurse enjoys her trips with him - when his mouth
doesn't happen to be shut like a steel trap."
If she could have seen the pair on the train which presently
bore them flying away across the state, she would hardly have
envied either of them. Between abstraction on the one side
and reserve an the other, they exchanged less conversation
than two strangers might have done. When Miss Mathewson's
eyes drooped with weariness her companion made her as
comfortable as he could and bade her rest. His own eyes were
untouched by slumber: he stared straight before him or out
into the night, seeing nothing but a white farmhouse far
ahead, where his anxious thoughts were waiting for his body to
catch up.
"Are they much sick, Zeke?."
"Wal, I dunno hardly, Red. - You goin' to drive? They're
pretty lively, them blacks. Ain't used to comin' to the
station at two o'clock in the mornin'. Your ma's been
worryin' about your pa for a consid'able spell, and now that
she's took down so severe herself he's gone to pieces some.
Miss Ellen'll be glad to see you."
The blacks covered the mile from the station as they had never
covered it before, and Burns was in the house five minutes
before they had expected him.
"Mother, here's your big boy. - Dad, here I am - here's Red.
Bless your hearts -you wanted me, didn't you?"
They could hardly tell him how they had wanted him, but he saw
it in their faces.
"I've got to take the four o'clock back - worse luck! - for
some operations I can't postpone. But between now and then
I'm going to look you over and set you straight, and I'll be
back again in two days if you need me. Now for it. Mother
first. Come here, Aunt Ellen, and tell me all about her."
R. P. Burns, M.D., had never been quicker nor more thorough at
examination of a pair of patients than with these. He went
straight at them both, each in the presence of the other, Miss
Mathewson capably assisting. With his most professional air
he asked his questions, applied his trained senses to the
searching tests made of special organs, and gave directions
for future treatment. Then he sat back and looked at them.
"Do I appear worried about her, Dad?"
"Why, you don't seem to, Red."
"Miss Mathewson, should you gather from my appearance that I
am consumed with anxiety?"
"I think you seem very much relieved, Doctor Burns."
"Mother, as you look at Dad over on the couch there, does he
strike you as appearing like a frightfully sick man?"
Mrs. Burns smiled faintly in the direction of the couch, but
her eyes came immediately back to her son's. "He seems a good
deal better since you came, Redfield."
"There's not a thing the matter with either of you except what
can be fixed up in a week. You've got scared to death about
each other, and that's pulled you both down. What you need
more than anything else is to go to a circus - and, by George!
- Since I didn't observe any tents in the darkness as we
drove along, you shall have one come to you. Look here! Did
you know I'd kept up my old athletic stunts these nine years
since I left college?"
He pulled off his coat, waistcoat, collar, shoes, rolled his
shirt-sleeves as high as they would go, and turned a series of
handsprings across the wide room. Then he stood on his head;
he balanced chairs on his chin; he seized his father's hickory
stick and went through a set of military evolutions. Then he
put on his shoes, eyeing his patients with satisfaction. His
mother had lifted her head to watch him, and Miss Mathewson
had tucked an extra pillow under it. His father had drawn
himself up to a half-sitting posture and was regarding his son
with pride.
"I never thought so well of those doings before," he was
saying. "If they've kept you as supple as a willow, in spite
of your weight, I should say you'd better keep 'em up."
"You bet I will! - See here, Aunt Ellen - you used to play the
`Irish Washerwoman: Mind playing it now? Miss Mathewson and I
are going to do a cakewalk."
He glanced, laughing, at his office nurse. She was staring at
him wide-eyed. He threw back his head, showing a splendid
array of white teeth as he roared at her expression.
"Forget `Doctor Burns,' please," said he, in answer to the
expression. "He's discharged this case as not serious enough
for him, and left it to Red Pepper to administer a few gentle
stimulants on the quack order. Come! You can do a cake walk!
Forget you're a graduate of any training school but the
vaudeville show!"
He caught her hand. Flushing so that her plain face became
almost pretty, she yielded - for the hand was insistent. Miss
Ellen leaned bewildered against the door which led to the
sitting-room where the old piano stood. Her nephew looked at
her again, with the eyes which the Chesters' guest had
somewhat incoherently described as "Irish-Scotch-barbarian."
He said, "Please, Aunt Ellen, there's a good fellow," at which
Mr. Burns, Senior, chuckled under his breath; for anything
less like that of a "good fellow" was never seen than Sister
Ellen's prim little personality. Miss Ellen went protestingly
to the piano. Was it right, her manner said, to be performing
in this idiotic manner at this unholy hour of three o'clock in
the morning - in a sick-room?
It mattered little whether Miss Mathewson could or could not
dance the "Irish Washerwoman," or any other antic dance
improvised to that live air; she had only to yield herself to
Red Pepper Burns's hands and steps, and let him disport
himself around her. A most startlingly hilarious performance
was immediately and effectively produced. At the height of
it, a door across the sitting-room, which commanded a strip of
the bedroom beyond, opened cautiously and Zeke Crandall's eye
glued itself to the aperture, an eye astonished beyond belief.
"If that there Red ain't a-cuttin' up jest exactly as he used
to when he was a boy - and his pa and ma sick a-bed! If 'twas
anybody but Red I'd say he was crazy."
Then he caught the sound of a laugh from lips he had not heard
laugh like that for a year - a chuckling, delighted laugh,
only slightly asthmatic and wholly unrestrained. He began to
laugh himself.
"If folks round here could see Red Burns now they'd never
believe the stories about his gettin' to be such a darned
successful man at his business," he reflected. "Of all the
goin's on! Look at him now! An' that nurse! An' Miss Ellen
a-playin' for 'em! Oh, my eye!"
Songs followed - college songs, popular airs, opera bits - all
delivered in' a resounding barytone and accompanied by
thumping chords improvised by the performer. Out through the
open windows they floated, and one astonished villages driving
by to take the early train caught the exultant strains:
"Oh, see dat watermillion a-smilin' fro' de fence,
How I wish dat watermillion it was mine.
Oh, de white folks must be foolish,
Dey need a heap of sense,
Or dye'd nebber leave it dar upon de vine!
Oh, de ham-bone am sweet,
An' de bacon am good,
An' de 'possum fat am berry, berry fine;
But gib me, yes, gib me,
Oh, how I wish you would,
Dat watermillion growin' on de vine!"
Before they knew it the early morning light was creeping in at
the small-paned windows. Burns consulted his watch.
"If you'll give us a cup of coffee, Aunt Ellen, we'll be off
in fifteen minutes. Miss Mathewson - his glance mirthfully
surveyed her - "Aunt Ellen will take you upstairs and give you
a chance to put that magnificent brown hair into a condition
where it will not shock the natives at the station. As for
mine - "
When Aunt Ellen and Miss Mathewson, each in her own way
feeling as if she had passed through an extraordinary
experience likely never to occur again, had hurried away,
Burns applied himself to a process of reconstruction. When
every rebellious red hair had been reduced to its usual order
and his thick locks lay with the little wave in them as his
mother had begun to brush them years ago; when collar and
cravat rose sedately above the gray tweed coat, and a fresh,
fine handkerchief had replaced the dingy one which had been
through every manner of exercise in the "circus," Burns drew
up a chair and faced his patients with the keen, professional
gaze which told him whether or not his night's work had been
good therapeutics.
"When I've gone you're to have breakfast, and I think you'll
both eat it," he said, smiling at them, his eyes bright with
affection and contentment. "Then you're to compose yourselves
for sleep, and I think you'll both sleep. To-morrow Dad's to
be out on the porch - all June is out there, and the roses are
in full bloom. Day after to-morrow Mother'll be there, too,
in the hammock. As soon as these cases I operate on this
morning are out of danger I'll be down again for a whole day.
I'll keep the time clear."
"I'm afraid," said his father, looking suddenly anxious for a
new cause, "your being up all night won't make your hand any
steadier for those operations, Red."
"On the contrary, as a matter of fact, Dad, it'll be a lot
steadier just because of my being up all night, assuring
myself that there's nothing serious the matter with you and
Mother, except the need of a bit of jollying by your boy -
which you've certainly had right off the reel, eh? Aunt Ellen
thinks yet I've probably killed you. Are you the worse for
it, Mother? Give it to me straight, now!"
He bent over her, his fingers on her delicate wrist. She
smiled up into his eyes. "Redfield!" she murmured. "As if I
could ever be the worse for having you come home!"
He dropped on his knees beside the bed, looking at her with
the eyes of the boy she had borne. "Bless me, Mother," he
said unsteadily, all the fun gone out of his face. "I - need
it - to keep decent."
The last three words were under his breath, but she heard the
others and laid her hand on the red head with a tremulous soft
word or two which lie could barely catch.
In a minute he had risen, his cheek flushed high, and was
gripping his father's hand. "You, too, Dad," he begged. "I'm
only Red this morning - going back into the world."
His father's hand and voice shook as he administered the
little ceremony, used only once before in his son's life -
when at fourteen he first went away to school. Few grown men
would have asked for it again, he felt that. Coming from Red
he was sure the request meant more than they could know.
Then the professional gentleman whom the world knew - the
world which was not acquainted with Red Pepper Burns - and the
professional lady who was his assistant went decorously away
into the early June morning. Zeke was grinning to himself as
he saw them step aboard the train.
"Looks mighty fine in them clipper-built city clothes, Red
does," he reflected. "If that there young woman chose to give
him away, now but I kind of guess she won't - under the
circumstances!"
CHAPTER III
IN WHICH HE ASSUMES A RESPONSIBILITY
"Red, the new car is here. Come and look her over."
It was Burns's neighbour on the other side, James Macauley,
Junior. R. P. Burns laid down his saw, with which in the late
June twilight he had been doing vigorous work at a small
woodpile behind the house. He stood up straight, throwing
back his shoulders to take the kink out of them.
"All right," said he. "I think I'm fit for general society
again. I wasn't when I tackled this job. Nothing like
fifteen minutes of woodpile for taking the temper out of the
saw -and the man."
Macauley, a stout, good-humoured fellow of thirty-five,
laughed. "That temper of yours, Red has it been on the
rampage again?"
"It has. Don't talk about it or it'll lift to confounded red
head again - it's only scotched for the present. New car's
here, eh?"
"Yes, and the pretty widow's here, too - my wife's sister,
Ellen Lessing. We ve a great plan for tomorrow, Red. I can't
venture to drive this elephant of a car yet, but the women are
wild for a trip in her. She holds seven. Martha wants you to
drive us and the Chesters to-morrow a hundred and fifty miles
seventy-five to F-- and back. Will you do it? You're not so
horribly busy just now, and Mrs. Lessing and Pauline Hempstead
together ought to make it worth while for you."
This feature of the invitation did not appear to appeal to
Burns, but the sight of the touring car, brave and shining in
russet and brass, plainly did.
"Not that I'd care to drive such a whale for myself, but I
shouldn't mind a run for the fun of trying her out. You say
she's been driven enough to warm up her engines? Suppose we
take her out and let me get the feel of her mouth before
to-morrow?"
"Come on." And they were off.
"For a whale she's a bird," was Burns's paradoxical verdict
two hours later. The "trying out" had merged into a smooth
run of forty-five miles at not anything like the full pace of
which the motor was capable. "Best not to overheat her at
first. Run your first three hundred miles with consideration
for her vital organs - she'll have her wind by that time."
Next morning four women, long-coated, tissue-veiled, watched
the brown beauty roll invitingly up to Macauley's porch steps.
As she crossed the lawn with Winifred, Pauline Hempstead, the
guest of the Chesters, was studying not only the car, but the
undeniably attractive gray-clad figure of the lately-arrived
younger sister of Mrs. Macauley. "Will Red P. look at her
any more than he does at me?" she murmured in Winifred
Chester's ear.
"I doubt it, my dear. But he'll be foolish if he doesn't,
won't he?"
"I don't care for widows myself."
"I presume not." Winifred laughed comprehendingly.
"How old is she?"
"Twenty-eight, I believe - though she doesn't look it."
"Doesn't look it! She looks a lot more."
Winifred laughed still, quietly. Although Pauline undoubtedly
had the advantage of Ellen in years, her fair-haired,
blue-eyed, somewhat sumptuous beauty was not of so youthful a
type as the darker colouring and slenderer outlines of
Martha's sister.
The man at the wheel of the brown car lifted his leather cap
as the women came out, but he left all the bestowal of them to
the other men. Miss Hempstead asked to be allowed to sit
beside the driver, but Macauley vowed that on the first long
run of his new machine he himself should occupy that post of
honour and interest.
"Coming back, then," insisted the girl, and Macauley agreed
reluctantly. Burns made no comment, but applied himself to
his task - not only then, but also for every minute of the
seventy-five miles to their destination.
"He might as well be a hired chauffeur," complained Miss
Hempstead when, during a stop of ten minutes on account of a
switching freight train, she had leaned forward and attempted
in vain to carry on a conversation with Burns. "That
abstracted mood of his - is there any breaking into it?"
"Fall out and break your collar-bone. He'll be all
attention," advised Chester.
"Thank you. I'm almost tempted to. Why don't you drive
awhile, Mr. Macauley, and give him a rest?"
"And let him sit here in the middle with you? He couldn't be
pried loose from that wheel now. Besides, I haven't driven
this car yet, and she's too different in her steering from my
old one. I shouldn't like to try with this crowd behind me."
They reached the distant city; drew up at the steps of the
most attractive hotel; went in to lunch. That is to say, all
did this except R. P. Burns. He remained in the garage in the
rear where he had taken the car, busying himself with some
details of mechanism whose working did not quite suit him. In
spite of summons and appeals he continued to work until the
rest had finished; then he bolted in to wash off dust and
engine grease, ate his lunch in ten minutes - Macauley sitting
by and expostulating - and bolted out again.
"We're going to walk about a bit," Chester announced, invading
the garage. "The girls insist that you come. Where are your
eyes, man? If Pauline bores you - I admit that she's a trifle
persistent, but she's jolly good company, I think - try Mrs.
Lessing. She's delightful, and not the pursuing style at all
- she's learned better. She hasn't shown the slightest
interest in you all morning. That ought to attract you."
"I'm going to try a bit of adjustment on this timer now that
Mac's out of the way. Go along, and don't bother me." Burns
was in his shirt-sleeves again and spoke gruffly. His cap was
off, and thick locks lay damply against his moist brow; in his
eyes sparkled enthusiasm but not for women.
"You certainly are a hopeless case," and Chester went back to
his party.
"We might as well not have a bachelor along," mourned Pauline.
"Four women - with only two old married men to look after them
- it's a shame."
"But we're both of us much handsomer than Red Pepper Burns,"
asserted James Macauley, Junior. "And I've hardly spoken a
word to my wife since I started - that sort of thing ought to
content you."
"It doesn't. And neither of you is half as good-looking as
Doctor Burns. He has the most interesting profile I ever saw
- and I ought to know - I seldom catch sight of his full
face."
"I shouldn't suppose an interesting profile, whatever that is,
would offset a shock of fire-red hair. Now, both Chester's
hair and mine - "
"His hair isn't fire-red. It's a - rather strong - auburn."
Macauley shouted and the rest laughed with him.
"Rather strong! I should say it was. I've been worried about
having him sit near the gasoline tank, it brings his hair so
close to a high combustible. But it has one advantage: if we
don't get home before dark we shan't need to light up. Red's
torch of a head will do the trick; we can come in by the
refulgence from that."
"I shall be sitting in its light going back, anyhow," Miss
Hempstead exulted.
"Much good it will do you," prophesied Chester.
It did Pauline so much good as that she was able to obtain
many looks at the profile she admired, for she saw it
clean-cut against the passing landscape for the sixty miles of
daylight out of the seventy-five miles home, while she sat
beside its owner and tried many times to draw him into talk.
His taciturnity on this particular day was a thing beyond any
experience with it she had yet had. She had heard Burns talk,
and talk well, on many different subjects, the while he sat
upon the Chesters' porch of a summer evening, the three of
them about him, and he had seemed to enjoy talking. He
certainly could not be wholly occupied with the machine, for
at no time did he let the engine out for what it could do, but
contented himself with a steady, moderate pace very different
from the sort of furious speed in which he and the Green Imp
were accustomed to indulge when occasion offered. Altogether
he presented to the girl a problem which she could not solve
and was never further from solving than during the
seventy-five miles she sat beside him on the run home.
"You're all to come in and have an ice-cool, salad-y supper
with us," Mrs. Macauley declared as the car turned in at the
home driveway. "Hot coffee, too, if you want it - or even
beefsteak if you prefer. But I thought since it was so hot -"
"I'll take the beefsteak," announced Burns over his shoulder,
"if I find nothing urgent for, me to do. If there's a call -"
"If there is, make it, and you shall have the beefsteak when
you get back," Martha promised him. Mrs. Macauley was of the
sort of young married woman who delights to make her friends
comfortable - and none better than Red Pepper, who was her
husband's most valued friend, as he was that of his neighbour
on the other side, Arthur Chester.
To everybody's regret the call was waiting, and as the party
went in to supper they waved their hands at the Green Imp
flying away down the road. It was not till long after the
"ice-cool, salad-y supper" was ended and the women, freshly
clad, were sitting on the porch again, the men smoking on the
steps below them, that tine Green Imp came back.
Ten minutes later a large figure crossed the lawn at a pace
which suggested both reluctance and fatigue.
"If it hadn't been for that beefsteak - " Burns began.
"You wouldn't have come," finished Macauley. "Oh, we know
that! Go in and get it, Red, and perhaps afterward the charms
of human society will have their inning."
Whether or not the beefsteak made the difference, a change had
taken place when R. P. Burns at length returned to the
comforts of the porch. He threw himself upon a crimson
cushion on the upper step, precisely at the feet, as it
chanced, of Ellen Lessing. As he leaned comfortably back
against the porch pillar he looked directly up into her face,
his eyes meeting hers with an odd, searching expression as if
he now saw her for the first time. Pauline, gazing enviously
across, saw the black eyes meet the hazel ones in the dim
light, and noted that a curiously long look was exchanged -
the sort of look which denotes that two people are observing
each other closely, without attempt at producing an
impression, only at discovering what is there.
But when Burns began to talk he appeared to address the
midsummer night air, staring off into it and speaking rather
low, so that they all leaned forward to listen. For, at last,
he seemed to have something other than motor cars upon his
mind.
"He's a mighty taking little chap," he said musingly. "Curly
black hair, eyes like coals - with a fringe around 'em like a
hedge. Cheeks none too round - but milk and eggs and good red
steaks will take care of that. A body like a cherubs - when
it's filled out a bit."
"What in the name of gibberish are you giving as, Red?"
inquired Macauley.
"Name's Bob," went on Red Pepper. "By all the odd chances!
That's what decided me. `Bobby Burns' - it was the last
straw!"
"Is he crazy?" asked Chester of the company. They seemed
undecided. They were listening closely.
"Clothes - one pair of patched breeches -remember `Little
Breeches,' Ches? - one faded flannel shirt - mended till
there wasn't much left to mend. A straw hat with a fringe
around it - uneven fringe. Inside - a heartache as big as a
little fellow could carry and stagger under it. Think of
having the heartache - at five and for your grandmother!"
"Why for his grandmother?" asked Winifred Chester.
"Because there wasn't anybody else to have it for. Rest all
gone, grandmother the one who attended the breeches and
patched the shirt, and went without food herself lest the
boy's cheeks get thinner yet. That was what fixed her at last
- she hadn't enough vitality to pull her through."
"So that was the matter with you to-day," hazarded Chester.
"Worried about your patient all day and found you'd lost her
when you got back?"
Burns turned upon him with a characteristic flash. "You go
join the ranks of the snap-shots. They sometimes miss fire.
No, I didn't. I'd lost her before I went or I wouldn't have
gone, not for you or any other box-party. It was the kiddie
that was on my mind - as I'd seen him last."
"Where is he now?" asked Martha Macauley urgently. She was
the mother of two small sons, and Burns's sketch had
interested her.
He looked up at her. "Want to see him?"
"Of course I do. Did you take him to somebody in town? Are
you going to send him to the asylum in the city?"
"Do you want to see him?". Burns inquired of Winifred
Chester. He rose.
"Red! What do you mean? Have you got a child here?"
"Come along, all of you, if you like. He won't wake up. He's
sleeping like a top - can't help it, with all that bread and
milk inside of him. Part cream it was, too. I saw Cynthia
chucking it in. He'd got her, good and plenty, in the first
five minutes. Bless her susceptible heart! Come on."
"Talk of susceptible hearts," jeered Macauley as he followed.
"There's the softest one in the county."
"Nobody would ever guess it," murmured Pauline Hempstead.
They tiptoed into the house, across the offices into the big,
square room which was Burns's own. He switched on a hooded
reading-light beside the bed and turned it so that its rays
fell on the small occupant.
He lay in spread-eagle, small-child fashion, arms and legs
thrown wide, the black, curly head disdaining the pillow, one
fist clutching a man's riding-crop. In sleep the little face
was an exquisite one; the onlookers might guess what it would
be awake.
Burns pointed at the crop, smiling. "That was the nearest
approach to a plaything I could muster to-night. To-morrow
the shops will help me out."
"I'll send over plenty in the morning, Red," whispered Martha
Macauley. Her eyes were suspiciously shiny.
"Did you bring him home just now?" questioned Winifred.
Burns nodded. "I hadn't meant to get him to-night, if I did
at all. My call took me within half a mile. I went over and
saw him again. That settled it."
The small sleeper stirred, sighed. Burns turned off the light
in a twinkling. "He's not used to electricity point blank,"
he chuckled.
Going down the steps a hand touched his arm. He looked into
Ellen Lessing's upturned face and discovered anew that it was
a face to hold the attention of a man. But there was no
coquetry in it. Instead, he saw a stirred look in eyes which
struck him suddenly as singularly like those of the child he
had just shown her, "black, with a fringe around 'em."
"Doctor Burns," she said, "will you give me the very great
pleasure of dressing the boy? I know how to do it."
"Of course, if you want to," he responded gladly. "I hoped
you ladies would look after that."
"Let me do it alone," she urged. "They have their children:
it would only be a task to them. To me - I can't tell you
what a delight it would be."
"I'll take you and Bob to the city in the morning if you'll
go."
"It will be a happy morning for Bob and me, then," she
answered, and he saw it in her face that it would be. But he
felt that it was because of the boy; not for any other reason.
It occurred to him that it might possibly be a happy morning
for the driver of the Green Imp, also.
"So Ellen's going to dress the brat." Macauley was strolling
over the lawn with Chester and Burns, as, having out-sat the
women on the Macauley porch, the men were turning bedward,
reluctant to leave the cool star-shine of the July night.
"It's easy to see why she wants to do that. Her
three-year-old boy would have been just about this Bob's age
by now. Tough luck, wasn't it? - when he was all she had
left since Jack got out of the game?"
Burns stared at him. "Oh, that's why? I didn't know about
her boy, or I'd forgotten it if I was ever told. She will
enjoy fitting Bob out, if I can keep her from putting him into
white clothes to make him resemble an angel instead of a small
boy with an eye for dirt."
"You'll find Ellen's no fool," Macauley assured him warmly.
"But if she takes an interest in the boy it'll be the best
thing that could happen to him. She has a lot of money. She
may get a notion to adopt him."
But upon this Red Pepper Burns spoke with decision. "Confound
you, the kiddie belongs to me. Didn't I tell you his name is
now Robert Burns? She may dress him if she likes. She can't
have him, not by a long shot. He's mine!"
"Oh, well, it might be arranged," murmured Macauley, but not
quite low enough. In a flash he was laid flat on his back on
the lawn, a menacing figure standing over him.
"None of that!" growled the man with the temper. "Not now or
any other time." Then he laughed and let his victim up.
"Alcohol will take out grass stains, Jim," he advised. "Tell
Martha that."
CHAPTER IV
IN WHICH HE MAKES A CONCESSION
Red Pepper Burns opened his eyes. What on earth was that? A
small voice piping at him from within close range? But how
could that be?
Something bumped against him. He turned his head on his
pillow. A small figure at his side had raised itself upon its
elbow; big black eyes in a pale little face were staring at
him in affright. Burns roused himself, suddenly very wide
awake indeed.
"It's all right, little man," said he, pulling the child
gently into the warmth of his encircling arm. "You came home
with me last night. Don't you remember? You're going to make
me a visit. And this morning after breakfast we're going to
drive to town and buy a train of cars - red, shiny cars and an
engine with a bell on it. What do you think of that?"
It did not take long to change Bob's fright into the happiest
anticipations. Red Pepper Burns was at his best with
children; he had what their mothers called "a way with them."
A knock at the door and Cynthia's voice calling," Here's some
things for the little boy, Doctor," put an end to a full
half-hour of delightful comradeship, during which the sheets
of the bed had became a tent and the two were soldiers resting
after a day's march. Burns rose and took in the parcel.
Martha Macauley had sent it. Her boy Harold was the nearest
in size to Bob of any of the children of his neighbours, and
the parcel held everything needed from undershirt to scarlet
Windsor scarf to tie under the rolling collar of the blue
blouse.
"A bath first, Bob," and his new guardian initiated him into
the exciting experience of a splash in a big white tub, in
water decidedly warmer than it would be a week hence when he
should have become used to the invigorating cool plunge. Then
Burns, glowing from contact with water as cold as it could be
got from the tap, clad in bathrobe and slippers, attempted to
solve the mysteries of Bob's toilet. Roars of laughter
interspersed with high pipings of glee presently brought
Cynthia to the door.
"Can't I help you, Doctor Burns?" she called anxiously.
"Not a bit of it, Cynthia: much obliged. I'm having the time
of my life. Stand still, son; let's try it this way round!"
came back to the housekeeper's ears.
"I ain't never wore so many fings before," Bob declared
doubtfully, as a small white waist with, dangling elastic
stocking-supporters was finally discovered to go best buttoned
in the back.
"I know. But you'll see how fine it is to have your stockings
held up for you. Hi! Here are some sandals, Bob! Barefoot
sandals, only we'll wear them over stockings to-day, since
we're going shopping. Now for these blue garments I wonder
how they go. Shapeless-looking things, they look to me. I
suppose they'll resolve into baggy knickers and the sort of
long shirt with a belt to it the youngsters of your age all
wear. Here we go. Does this top part button behind, Bob,
like the waist? No, I think not . . . . It sure looks odd,
whichever way we don it, but that may be because it's pretty
big. Harold's several sizes bigger than you, though he can't
be much older. Give me six months and I'll have you filling
out any other five-year-olds clothes."
"My hands - they're all gone," remarked the child, holding out
his arms. The blue sleeves did, indeed, cover them to the
finger-tips. Laughing, Burns rolled the cloth back, making an
awkward bunch at the wrist, but allowing the small hands
freedom.
"When Mrs. Lessing trains her eye on you she'll want to make
time getting to the shops," Burns observed, struggling with
the scarlet scarf and finally tying it like a four-in-hand.
"But you're clean, Bob, and hungry, I hope. Now I want a
great big hug to pay me for dressing you."
He held out his arms, and his new charge sprang into them,
pressing arms like sticks around the strong neck of the man
who seemed to him already the best friend he had in the world
- as he was.
At eleven o'clock, a round of calls made, the Green Imp carne
for Bob and Mrs. Lessing. They met him, hand in hand, the
little figure in its voluminous misfit clothes looking quaint,
enough beside the perfect outlines of his companion's attire.
But both faces were very happy.
"How many dollars do you suppose Ellen has, stowed away in
that handsome purse of hers, ready to spend on the child?"
Martha Macauley queried of Winifred Chester as they watched
the Green Imp out of sight from the Macauley porch.
Mrs. Chester shook her head. "I've no idea. She'll want to
get him everything a child could have. But Red won't let
her."
"He won't know. He'll drop them at a store and go off to the
hospital. The things will come home by special delivery, and
the next thing he sees will be Bob in silk socks and white
linen."
"I don't believe it. He'll go shopping with them. He's wild
over the boy, and he doesn't care a straw what people might
think who saw the three together. He'll tyrannize over Ellen
- and she'll let him, for the pleasure of being ruled by a man
once more!"
It was a shrewd prophecy and goes to show that women really
understand each other pretty well - women of the same sort.
For Red Pepper Burns did go shopping with the pair from start
to finish. It was an experience he did not see any, occasion
for missing.
"You won't mind my coming, too?" was all the permission he
asked, and Mrs. Lessing answered simply: "Surely not, if you
care to. We shall want your judgment."
She had not conducted them to a department store, but to the
small shop of a decidedly exclusive children's outfitter.
Burns knew nothing about the presumably greater cost of buying
a wardrobe in a place like this, but he soon scented danger.
He scrutinized certain glass showcases containing wax lay
figures of pink-cheeked youngsters attired as for the stage,
and boomed his first caution into his companion's ear.
"That's not the sort of puppet we want to make out of Bob,
eh?" he suggested.
She turned, smiling. "Not unless you intend to keep him in a
glass case, Doctor Burns."
"No long-trousered imitation of a sailor-boy, either, please,"
said he, pointing, disfavour in his eye, at the presentment of
a curly-headed infant of five in a Jack-tar outfit of white
flannel topped by an expensive straw hat.
"I see you're not going to trust me," murmured Mrs. Lessing,
as a slim-waisted, trailing-black-gowned saleswoman
approached.
"I'll trust you, but I intend to keep my eye on you," admitted
Burns frankly. He observed with interest the wonderful figure
of the saleswoman. Quite possibly that lady thought he was
admiring her, for nothing in his face could have told her that
he was mapping out in his surgeon's mind her physical anatomy,
and speculating as to where in the name of Hygeia she could
have disposed of her digestive organs in a circumference the
diminutive size of that!
Underwear first. Mrs. Lessing went straight at the
foundations of Bob's make up, and began to look over boxes of
little gossamer shirts and tiny union suits of a fabric so
delicately fine that Burns handled a fold of it suspiciously.
"Silk?" he questioned.
She shook her head, the corners of her mouth curving. "Only a
thread now and then. Mostly lisle - for very hot weather.
These others have some wool in them, for cooler days. Those
nearest you are quite warm, though very light in weight. For
really cold weather - "
"You're not planning to watch the thermometer and keep him
changing underwear accordingly?"
"Not at all, Doctor Burns. But four weights for the year
aren't too many, are they?"
"Are you buying for a year ahead?"
"Please let me. I shall not be here when he needs to change."
Their eyes met. Something in hers made him desist from
argument.
Stockings came next. Mrs. Lessing bought substantial tan ones
in quantity, long and well reenforced. Then she took up socks
of russet and of white. "Shall you object to his wearing
these a good, deal?" she asked Burns. He took up one small
sample, running his fingers into it. "I should think he might
put his toes through one of those in an hour or two," he
suggested. "His legs are pretty thin. Do you think pipe-stem
legs in short socks, to say nothing of bruises and scratches,
really attractive?"
"You want him to go barefooted a good deal of the time, don't
you?"
"Sure. But legs in socks are neither fish, flesh, nor good
red herring, to my thinking."
In spite of the smile on his lips, he looked obstinate and she
deliberated, drawing a white sock unmistakably fine and
expensive over her gray-gloved hand. Plainly she wanted to
see Bob in socks and strap slippers, of the sort her boy would
have worn. As she studied the sock Burns studied her profile.
"Get him a pair, for your own satisfaction," he conceded.
He did not hear the order she gave, but the saleswoman was
pleasantly smiling as she checked it.
The next thing that happened, Bob was being measured. Then he
was trying on Russian blouse suits that fitted, practical
little garments of blue galatea, of tan-coloured linen crash,
even of brown holland. Burns looked on approvingly. The
clothes turned Bob into a gentleman's son, no doubt of that,
but it was the sort of gentleman's son who can have the very
best of romping, good times.
Something diverted Bums's attention for a little, and when he
turned back to Bob a bright scarlet reefer had been pulled on
over his blouse, and a wide sailor hat with a scarlet ribbon
crowned his black curls. The result was engagingly
picturesque. But the critic frowned.
"I'm afraid that won't do, Mrs. Lessing," he objected
decidedly.
"You don't like the colour? Not with his hair and eyes?"
"It won't hurt his hair, but it will his eyes. The sun on
that red will torture him."
"Will it? I shouldn't have thought of it. So many children
wear them."
"And shortly come to spectacles. Try it yourself for half an
hour."
She drew off the reefer. Bob objected. "I like the red
jacky, Dotter Burns," he said. It was his first comment.
Hitherto he had been in a dazed state, submitting wonderingly
to this strange experience.
Another small coat of tan-coloured cloth with a gorgeous
red-and-brown emblem on the sleeve consoled him:
"I think we are through," said Mrs. Lessing Burns looked at
her.
"No white clothes?" he asked.
"Did you want him to have some?"
"No. But I thought you would."
"I have ordered three suits to be made for him," she admitted,
flushing a little. "They will be very plain and will launder
beautifully. He will wear them only on special occasions. Do
you mind?"
"Well, not on those conditions," he agreed reluctantly.
They went to a shoe shop, and Bob became the richer for
leather sandals, canvas shoes, and various other footwear,
some of it undeniably fine. Burns took one little black
slipper into his hand.
"I wonder what Bob's grandmother would say to that," he
observed in a whisper.
Ellen Lessing regarded its mate. Her lashes hid her eyes, but
her lip quivered and he saw it. The salesman was busy with
Bob. Burns laid his hand for an instant on hers. She looked
up, and a smile struggled with the tears.
A toy shop came last. Here Bob was in an ecstasy. His
companions walked up and down the aisles, following his eager
steps. Mrs. Lessing would have filled his arms, but she found
the way obstructed.
"He may have the train of cars," Burns consented. "But they
must be cars he'll have to pull about for himself. No, not
the trotting horse, nor the trolley on the track, nor any
other of the mechanical stuff. I'll get him that dandy little
tool-chest and that box of building blocks, but that's
enough."
"The mechanical toys are of the best, sir," suggested the
salesman. "They won't break except with pretty rough
handling."
"That's bad," Burns asserted. "The quicker they broke, the
less objection I'd have to 'em. It's a wonder the modern
child has a trace of resource or inventiveness left in him.
Teach him to construct, not to destroy, then you've done
something for him."
"Isn't he rather young for tools?" Mrs. Lessing was turning
over a small saw in her hands, feeling its sharp teeth with a
premonitory finger.
"There are gauze and bandages in the office." He laughed at
her expression as she laid down the saw.
"You won't object to that box of tin soldiers?" she asked.
"Decidedly. You don't want to spoil him at the start. For a
boy who never had a toy in his life he's acquired enough now
to turn his head. Come away, Mrs. Lessing - flee temptation.
Come, Bobby boy." And Burns led the way.
Bob, astride of a marvellous rocking-horse taller than
himself, was like to weep. Mrs. Lessing went to him. He
whispered something in her ear. She came back to Burns.
"Doctor Burns," said she, "every boy has a rocking-horse.
He's just the age to enjoy it. Surely it won't hazard his
inventiveness: it will develop it. He'll ride all over the
country, as you do in the Green Imp."
"What's the price?"
"It's not costly and it's a very good one."
Burns inquired the price again; this time he asked the
salesman. Then he spoke low:
"Fifteen dollars seems `not costly' to you, I suppose. Think
of Bob yesterday, with not a toy to his name."
"That's why I want to give him one to-day."
"He'll be just as happy riding a stick - as soon as he forgets
this."
"He won't forget it. Look at his eyes."
"You're looking at his eyes all the time. That's what undoes
you."
He had to look away from her eyes then himself, or he felt
quite suddenly that he, too, would have been undone. He had
resisted the entreaty in women's eyes many times, but not
always, despite the reputation he held for indifference.
"Doctor Burns, won't you give me this one pleasure? You've
really been quite firm all the morning."
She was smiling, but he had himself in hand again and he was
blunt with her. "Bob's bachelor's child now," he said. "He
must be trained according to bachelors' ideas. Come, you know
it's out of reason to give the youngster any more to-day. Be
sensible."
They followed him out of the store, Bob's hand held fast in
hers. Somehow, they both looked very young as they stood
outside the shop window, gazing back at the marvellous display
within. He felt as if he were being rather cruel to them
both. This was absurd, of course, when one considered the box
of blocks, the train of cars and the toolkit. The child had
enough playthings already to send him out of his head. Burns
drove away rapidly to get out of range of other windows which
seemed filled with rocking-horses to-day.
He looked down at Bob.
"Happy, little chap?" he asked.
Bob nodded. His arms clasped the red train but he was not
looking at it.
"Like the cars?"
Bob nodded. His wide sailor hat obscured his face. Burns
could see only the tip of the small nose.
"You'll have a splendid time with those blocks, won't you?"
Again the nod, but no reply.
"The hammer's pretty nice, too, isn't it?"
Once more the dumb answer. But the silence seemed odd, for
Bob had long since lost his fear 'of these companions.
"Look up here, Bob."
Reluctantly the child obeyed. Burns caught one fleeting
glimpse of wet black lashes. One big tear was slowly stealing
down the pale little cheek.
"What's the matter, old man?"
No reply.
Burns looked at Ellen Lessing behind Bob's back. She did not
meet his glance. She was looking at the boy. It struck him
that her profile made the most enchanting outline he had ever
seen. He tried to steel his heart against them both. He knew
his theory was right; he now had the chance to put it into
practice.
The Green Imp turned a corner to the right. They were not yet
out of the city, and at the next block the car turned another
corner, also to the right. At the end of another block the
Imp, swerved once more - to the right. This brought them back
to the wide street which led to the shopping district they had
lately left. With silent passengers the Imp threaded its way
to the toy shop. In front of it Burns stopped the car. He
got out and went in and came out, the big rocking-horse in the
arms of the salesman who followed him.
He looked up at their faces. Bob's was one wide-eyed
countenance of incredulous joy. The other's - if he had seen
there satisfaction at having brought a man to terms he felt he
should have despised her; but that was not what he saw.
There was, by planning carefully, just room to wedge the
rocking-horse in at Mrs. Lessing's feet without encroaching on
the steering-gear. As they drove off, Bob was bending over
and gently, stroking the animal's splendid black mane, with
little chuckles and gurgles of joy. Once more Burns looked at
Ellen Lessing behind Bob's back.
"You're happy now, aren't you?" he asked in tone of assurance.
"Then, confound it, I must own I'm paid for letting my wise
bachelor notions go hang, just for this time!"
"Thank you," she answered very gently. "And I'm paid for
trying to be reasonable."
He laughed, suddenly content. Between them, the little lad
who had never owned a toy in his life, stowing the red train
carefully away between has feet, gave himself wholly to the
rocking-horse.
Well, Ellen," was Martha Macauley's greeting to her sister,
"did you have as interesting a time dressing the child as you
expected?"
"I had a charming tune," replied Mrs. Lessing. She shook the
dust out of her long gray veils smiling at her memory of the
morning.
"Did R. P. prove docile?"
Docile' doesn't seem to me just the word."
"I used it in an attempt at fine irony," explained! Mrs.
Macauley.
"Well, was he tractable, then?"
"He was very polite and kind and jolly - until the real
business of shopping began. Then he became suspicious - and a
trifle autocratic." She recalled his look as he told her
that he would trust her, but that he meant to keep an eye upon
her.
Didn't you get your own way about anything?" demanded her
sister, with eager curiosity.
Ellen looked at her. Martha noted that the soft black eves
were glowing, and that she had not seen Ellen appear more
alive and interested since the days before trouble came to
her. "Do you imagine we fought a battle over our shopping?"
she asked, her lips curving with merriment.
"But you don't tell me. I'm anxious to know whether we shall
see the boy dressed according to Red's ideas or yours."
"We agreed beautifully on nearly all points of his dressing.
Where we differed, we - compromised."
"Red never compromises with anybody, so I suppose it was done
by your giving in?"
"He never compromises? You do him injustice." He can
compromise royally - by the same method of `giving in.'"
"I simply can't believe it," murmured Martha,, shaking her
head.
CHAPTER V
IN WHICH HE IS ROUGH ON A FRIEND
"RED"
"Yes?"
"Are you through with that rabble? Can you 'tend to a
friend?"
Redfield Pepper Burns wheeled around in his revolving chair
and glanced sharply at Arthur Chester. What he saw made him
follow the moment's inspection with a direct question.
"Sit down. What have you been doing?"
Chester sat down. His face was white. He held up one shaking
hand. "Red, what's the matter with me?"
Burns continued to study the man before him. He made no move
to examine into his condition, just looked steadily into the
other's face with a gaze before which his patient presently
shifted uneasily.
"Well, of all the ways to treat a fellow!" He tried to laugh.
"Is that the way you do with the rest of the bunch that come
to you every day? Or are you trying to hypnotize me?"
"Look me in the eye, Ches. What have you been doing?"
"Working like a fiend in that infernal office. If there's any
hotter place - "
"There'll be a hotter one for you right on this earth, if you
keep on the way you're going."
He rose suddenly, and approaching Chester closely, looked
intently into the uplifted eyes. He sat down again. "Own
up!" he commanded bluntly.
"Red," begged Chester, "quit this sort of thing. Go at me in
the usual way. I - I think I'm a bit nervous tonight. I
can't stand your gun-fire."
"All right. When did you begin?"
"Five weeks ago when you were away. I didn't mean to get into
it, Red, on my word I didn't, after all you've warned me. But
it was so beastly hot - and there was a lot of extra work at
the office. My head got to going it night and day. I - say"
- he leaned suddenly forward, has head on his hands - "I can
tell you better if you give me some kind of a bracer - I feel
- so - deadly."
Burns got up and prepared something in a glass something not
particularly palatable, but when it had taken action, which it
promptly did, Chester's white face had acquired a tinge of
colour and he could go on.
"I stopped in Gardner's office one day when my head was worse
than usual. Had to meet a man in ten minutes - important deal
on for the house - had to be at my best. Told Gardner so. He
fixed me."
"He did - blame him - fixed you for a dope-fiend. I've told
you a hundred times you had precisely the kind of temperament
that must avoid that sort of thing like the gallows." Burns
hit the desk with his fist as he spoke, with a thump of
impatience.
"It seems to set me up for a while - I can do anything. Then
afterward - "
"You're getting the afterward all right. How much do you
take?"
Chester mentioned the amount of the drug, stating reluctantly
that for the last two days he had been obliged slightly to
increase it in order to get the full effect.
"Of course you have - that's the insidiousness of the devil's
stuff. How soon does it get into action?"
"Oh, right away - almost instantly."
"What! Is your imagination strong enough to - See here,
Ches" - Burns leaned forward "you're taking the stuff by
mouth, of course?"
Chester's eyes went down. "Why - I tried it that way - but it
was so slow "
Burns ejaculated something under his breath; the quick colour,
always ready to flare under his clear skin, leaped out.
"Gardner gave you a hypo, I suppose?"
"Yes."
"So you went and bought a syringe and taught yourself the
trick. Suppose you give me a look at it."
Like a shamed schoolboy Chester unwillingly drew forth the
small case from his pocket. Burns received it. He opened it
and took out the tiny instrument. "It looks like a very good
one," he observed with a sort of deadly quietness. and with
one motion of his big fingers snapped the glass barrel in two.
At this Chester took fire. "That's going a little too far!"
he burst out in wrath.
"Is it? Thought it was you who had gone too far. It's up to
me to bring you back - while I can. Getting this little fiend
out of the way is the first step. Keep cool, Ches - and I'll
try to do the same, though it makes my blood boil to think how
little you've cared for my lectures to you on this very
thing."
"I have cared. But I had no idea "
"Well, you have one now. It's taken you five weeks to acquire
enough of a habit to give you some trouble to drop it. You're
that sort and that's the way it works, anyhow. I wonder you
came to me to-night. Found yourself out of the stuff and
didn't like to try to get it here where folks know you?"
"If you want to put everything in the most disagreeable way
you can - yes," admitted Chester testily.
"That's precisely what I want to do. Put it in such a
disagreeable way that your backbone'll stiffen up a bit and
give us something to start with. If I make you mad all the
better - so long as you don't go back to fools like Gardner,
who never hesitate to give a fellow like you a sample of what
that drug'll do for 'em:"
"What are you going to do? I shan't sleep to-night, and I've
got to be in the office to-morrow morning."
"When's your vacation due?"
"Not till week after next."
"Arrange to take it now."
"I can't. Stillinger's off on his, Monday morning."
"Could you have yours now if he waited?"
"Yes, but I wouldn't ask him."
"I would." Burns took down the receiver of his desk
telephone.
"Red, stop - I don't want - "
Burns paid no attention to him. In five minutes he had the
city connection and his man. He stated the case: Chester was
in urgent need of taking his vacation without delay, but was
not willing to ask the favour of his office associate. He,
Burns, his friend's physician, did not scruple to ask it if it
would not interfere too seriously with Mr. Stillinger's plans.
No diplomat could re quest a favour more courteously than R.
P. Burns, M.D. The reply was the one to be expected of
Stillinger, bachelor and amiable fellow, who was fond of
Chester and hoped it was nothing serious. Tell him to go
ahead with his vacation, Stillinger said, and not to worry
over office affairs.
"Now!" Burns wheeled round from the telephone. "Will you put
yourself in my hands?"
"Do you honestly think I'm such an abandoned case - already,"
began Chester unhappily, "that you have to - "
"Listen to me, Ches. I don't think you're an abandoned case -
that's nonsense - after five weeks. But I do think you're
well started on a road that it's ruin to travel. You began it
way back last winter by taking that headache stuff in double
the dose I gave you, without consulting me, every time you
felt a trifle below par. That's why I took it away from you.
You felt the loss of it, and you were an easy mark for
Gardner's dope. You've grown so dependent on that already
that you're going to have a fight to get along without it.
You can't fight and do office work, so I'm going to make the
most of my chance during this fortnight's vacation - if you'll
give me leave. If you won't - I think I'll knock you down and
get you where I want you that way."
He smiled - a smile with so much spirit and affection in it
that Chester's eyes filled, to his own astonishment, for up to
this point he had been both hurt and angry. After a moment he
said, with his eyes on the floor, but in a different tone from
any he had yet used: "Go ahead, Red. I'll try to prove I have
some stuff in me yet."
"Of course you have." Burns's hand was on his friend's
shoulder. "That's what I'm counting on. Prove it by
following directions to the letter. And begin by coming with
me for a trip into the country. I have to see a case before I
go to bed, and the air will do your head good."
It was the first of many similar trips. Arthur Chester may
fairly have been said to spend the succeeding fortnight in the
company of the Green Imp and its driver. From morning till
night, and often in the night itself when he found it
impossible to sleep, he was living in the open air by means of
this device. Of walking, also, he did an increasing amount as
his strength grew under the regimen Burns insisted upon. But
for the first week, in spite of all the help his physician
could give him, he found himself indeed involved in a fierce
struggle - a struggle with shaken and unmanageable nerves;
with a desperate craving for the soothing, uplifting effect of
the drug to which he was forced to admit he had become
perilously accustomed; with a black depression of spirit which
was worse than anything else he had to combat.
It was at the worst of one of these periods of darkness that,
alone with his patient upon a hilltop where the two had
climbed, leaving the Green Imp at a point where the road had
become impossible, Burns said suddenly:
"Ches, I believe, with all my care to give you the treatment I
thought you needed, I've failed to point out the most potent
remedy of all."
Chester shook his head. "You've done everything, Red. All
the trouble's with me. I'm so pitiably weak - so much weaker
than I ever dreamed I could be. I can't seem to care whether
I get out of this or not. All I want is to lie down and go to
sleep - and never wake up."
The last words came under his breath, but Burns heard them.
He showed no sign of being startled, though this mood was a
gloomier one than he had yet seen his patient succumb to.
Instead, he went on talking in a tone of confidence:
"I ought to have known enough to apply this remedy, because
it's one I've tried myself. If you could know, since the
night you heard me make a certain vow, what a time I've had
with myself to keep it, you'd understand that I know what it
means to try to break up a habit. Mine's the habit of years.
With my temper and some of my associations, intemperate
profanity's been the easiest thing in the world to fall into.
When things went wrong, out would come the oaths like water
out of a spring - though that's a false comparison: like the
filth out of a sewer, I'd better say."
"We all swear more or less," acknowledged Chester, his head in
his hands.
"Not as I did - and you know it. I've been responsible for
many a boy's taking it up, though I didn't realize it.
Because I was athletic and in for sports with them, they
thought I was the whole thing. They laughed when I got mad
and ripped out a lot of language: they copied it. But I never
heard myself as others hear me till that night I let go at the
mother who'd ignorantly murdered her boy by disobeying orders.
On the way home that night I woke up - came to myself - I
don't know how. The stars were unusually bright, and I looked
up at them and thought of that child's soul going back to its
Maker . . . . and then thought of my curses following it and
coming to His ear."
A silence fell. When Burns broke it, it was in a voice deep
with feeling.
"The next words I sent up to that ear were in a different
shape. I think it was the first real prayer I'd ever said
since the little parrot prayers my mother taught me. That was
the first: it hasn't been the last. I don't suppose I say
much that would sound like the preacher's language, but Ches,
what I do believe is that - I get what I ask for. That's -
help to fight my temptations. And profanity isn't the only
one nor the toughest one to down."
Chester looked up. For a moment he forgot himself and his
wretchedness. "It's hard to believe it's you, Red - talking
like this."
"I know it must be hard, but it ought to be the more
convincing on that account. I belong to a profession of
materialists, and all at once it's grown to seem to me the
strangest thing in life that a man who studies the anatomy of
this body of ours should be a materialist. To watch its
workings and then doubt the God who made it is sheet wilful
blindness. But, Ches - I've got my eyes open at last. The
God who made me is up there, and He knows and cares how I go
on with the job. As for answering my appeals for help when I
get hard pressed - the, biggest sign I have of that is a human
one. Since Bobby Burns came to sleep in that little bed next
mine, it's been a whole lot easier to get on."
A deep sigh was Chester's reply to this. He had a small boy
and girl of his own. For their sakes and Winifred's he knew
he must fight this fight out and win. But as for getting
tangible help from the Creator of a body handicapped by nerves
like his! He began to say this, but Burns broke in upon him
with the answer he would least have expected at a moment like
this a great, ringing laugh, the sound of which brought the
slow blood to Chester's white face.
"If you consider wrecked nerves like mine a laughing matter -"
he broke out.
But Burns, his laugh over, was sober again and his voice was
earnest. "Arthur Chester, don't make Him responsible for your
`wrecked nerves.' They weren't wrecked when you were
furnished with them. You've done the wrecking yourself by
breaking pretty nearly every law that governs the workings of
the human machine. You're paying the penalty. But you're
going to get the upper hand. From now on, in spite of your
office life, you're going to get good red blood in your veins
- and your brains. The worst is over now - the second week
will be easier. But what I'm trying to tell you is that
you'll get that upper hand a lot quicker if" - his cheek grew
hot with this strange, unaccustomed effort at putting things
he had never spoken of before into words - "if you'll just
reach up and take hold of that `Upper Hand' that, according to
my new belief and experience, is ready to reach down to you.
It's stronger than yours: you'll feel the upward pull."
He broke off and got to his feet. The two had been sitting on
a fallen log, looking off over the hills toward a distant
river winding its blue length through fields of living green.
"I wasn't exactly cut out for a preacher, Ches," he added
after a minute. "I hope my talk doesn't sound to you like
`cant.' I'm a pretty poor specimen of a chap to be setting up
my own example for anybody to follow."
"I don't think you've been setting up your own example,"
Chester replied. He pulled himself up limply from the log,
yet out of his face had gone the black look which had been
there when he carne up the hill. "And what you've said
doesn't sound like `cant' to me, Red. It sounds more like
'can.'"
Red Pepper Burns held out his hand. His big; warm fingers
closed hard over the thin; cold ones which met them. Then the
two men, without more words, went away down the hill. From
this hour Arthur Chester afterward dated the beginning of the
end of the fight.
CHAPTER VI
IN WHICH HE PRESCRIBES FOR HIMSELF
"Red," observed James Macauley, junior, "this place of yours
looks like a drunkard's home."
He glanced around him as he spoke. The criticism certainly
found justification in every corner. No more neglected office
could have been discovered belonging to any practitioner
within an area of many miles.
"I suppose it does," rejoined Burns from the depths of a big,
dusty leather chair where he sat stretched in an attitude
expressing extreme fatigue. " But I don't care a hang."
Macauley looked at him. His eyes were closed. His arms lay
upon the chair arms, relaxed and limp. For the first time his
friend observed what might have been noted by a critical eye
on any day during the last fortnight. The lines on the
ordinarily strong, health-tinted face were deeper than he had
ever seen them; the cheeks were thinner; there were even
shadows under the thick eyelashes which outlined the lids of
the closed eyes.
"Look here, old man," Macauley cried, sudden conviction
seizing him, "you're working altogether too hard. This
miserable city epidemic has done you out. I've thought all
the time you were trying to cover too much ground."
"Ground's had to be covered," replied the other briefly,
without opening his eyes.
"Have the other fellows worked as hard as you?"
"Harder."
"I don't believe it. They're all city men. You've done all
this city work and looked after your own patients here, too,
to say nothing of living in both places at once. With your
housekeeper gone home to her sick folks, and Miss Mathewson
off on one of your cases - no wonder this place looks the way
it does."
"It doesn't matter. Cut it out about the place. I'm going
back in ten minutes."
"You are! Not going to get to bed?"
"Don't know. I might snatch a nap now if you'd quit talking."
Macauley closed his mouth. Presently he got up and stole out
of the room. He was back again in a trice, a flask in one
hand, a soda siphon in the other, and a small glass balanced
on his thumb. When Burns, at the sound of a clock ticking
somewhere, rubbed his eyes with his fists striking in and
reluctantly opened them, Macauley spoke briskly:
"See here - I'm going to give you a bracer. I know your
confounded notions, but they don't cut any figure when you
need something to pull you together the way you do to-night."
He started to measure out the amber liquid into the glass, but
Burns put up a hand.
"Much obliged, but I don't want any."
"You idiot - don't you know when to make an exception to your
rule? I admit you've won out over the other fellows just by
keeping a steady hand, but you're dead as a dog for rest
to-night and you need a stiff one, if I'm any judge."
"You're not - for me." Burns sat up. O Heavens, man, if I
were going to break my rule at all it wouldn't be for a drink
of anything. It would be for a stab in the arm with something
that beats your stuff all out for stimulating the fatigue out
of a fellow and making him feel like working till he drops."
"Why don't you have it then?" asked Macauley curiously. "I
should think if ever a used-up chap were justified in - "
"Don't give me that talk if you're my friend. It's hard
enough to hold out without resorting to that game. I don't
need you to advise it. I've seen enough of that sort of
suicide. Buller and Fields are both down and out, and they
began to brace early in the epidemic. Van Horn's a wreck,
though he keeps going; and I tell you, I've more respect for
that man than I ever had before. He's a poseur and a toadier,
no doubt of that, and I've always despised him for it, but he
has real ability and he's worked like a fiend through this
muss, and not all for his rich patients, either. But he's
weakening fast, and it's drug stimulation that's done it. No,
sir: not for mine. But I'll make myself a cup of coffee, for
I've got to keep awake, and I shall sleep in my tracks if I
don't."
He got up and stumbled out into his deserted kitchen.
Macauley followed, helping as best he knew how, and watched
his friend gulp down two cupfulls of a muddy liquid with
feeling of admiration such as a small act of large
significance may sometimes stir in one who apprehends.
Two days later Burns, starting toward home in the Imp at a
late hour in the morning, passed a figure on a corner of a
city street waiting for the outward-bound trolley. He slowed
down beside it.
"May I take you home?" he asked, cap in hand, and interest
showing in eyes which a moment before had been heavy with
fatigue.
Ellen Lessing looked up. "I shall be very glad," she
answered, as she met his outstretched hand and let it draw her
upward to the vacant seat. "The car is always so full at this
hour, and I was longing for the feeling of the wind against my
face"
"It's cool for late August, and you'll get a breeze on the
road home that will refresh you. You haven't touched water or
milk in this plague-stricken district, I hope?"
"No, indeed. Martha warned me a dozen times before I left.
How are things? Any better?"
"No new cases in twenty-four hours, and the old ones well in
hand. I'm getting home earlier to-day than I've done for a
month, and hope to have a few hours off duty. I was planning
what to do with them as I came upon you."
"I should think you could do nothing better with them than to
go home and sleep," she advised, looking up at his face with a
critical, friendly survey of the signs of weariness written
plainly there. "You are worn out, and that means something
when one says it of so strong a man as you."
"I could sleep a week, but I'm not sure that a few hours would
more than aggravate my need. Besides, I shouldn't be at home
an hour before I should be called out again. No, my plans
were forming themselves differently, and now that I've met you
they're taking definite shape. I want - well - suppose I
don't tell you! Would you trust me to take you off on a
rest-seeking expedition without explaining what I mean to do?"
"On a `rest-seeking expedition'?" she repeated. "Doctor
Burns, are you sure you hadn't better go on that alone?
Suppose I chatter all the way?"
He smiled. "You're not a chatterer. And I don't want to go
alone. I haven't had a chance for an hour with you for a
month, I think. This is the only way I can get it. Will you
go?"
"You provoke my curiosity. Yes, I think I'll go. I've been
shopping all the morning and I deserve a reward of rest, if
you're sure you know where to find it."
He turned the Imp abruptly aside from the boulevard leading
out of town down which they had been speeding. He made a
detour of certain side streets which brought him up before a
small side establishment bearing a sign which set forth an
alluring invitation to motoring parties in need of food. He
disappeared therein, and was absent for the space of a full
twenty minutes. When he returned he was followed by a waiter
with a hamper to whose bestowal in the back of the car he
looked carefully.
As they sped away again, Burns turned to his companion, a
smile of anticipation on his face, to meet a glance of some
apprehension.
"You're not repenting your rash trust of me already, are you?"
he demanded.
"I'm remembering that Martha has four guests at luncheon
to-day, and expects me to be there!"
"Is that all? Don't let that worry you. We'll simply have a
breakdown somewhere on the road conveniently near to a spot I
know, where I can broil the beefsteak I have in that hamper,
and make the coffee. `Unavoidable detention' will be your
apology."
"`Irresistible temptation' will be my confession," she
admitted. "I'm not good at subterfuge and I'm so hungry that
the mere mention of beefsteak out-of-doors - "
"If it weighs against the plates and salads of a woman's
luncheon I shall have a great respect for you. Come on, let's
run away! You from social duties, I from professional ones.
I'll agree to stand out Martha in your defense. Unless, of
course, the opportunity to wear a pretty frock and throw all
the other women in the shade - "
She laughed. "That's precisely what Martha wants me to do!"
"Then fail her and let the other women win. It's too late to
repent, anyhow, for here's where we turn off."
The Imp itself seemed to be running away, so swiftly and
silently it covered the new road leading off into the hills.
Presently it was climbing them.
"I want to get where no call-boy monotonously repeating
'Doc-tor Bur-rns, Doc-tor Bur-rns', can get hold of me," the
Imp's driver explained. "I suppose you're not dressed - nor
shod - for a rough walk of a quarter of a mile where the car
can't go?"
"I'll sacrifice skirts and soles," she promised. "Isn't the
air out here glorious? I thought I was tired when I left the
city: now I could climb that hill and enjoy it."
"That's precisely what we'll do, then. There's a view from
the top worth the scramble, but I wasn't sure you'd be game
for it. Perhaps I'll know you better at the end of this
afternoon than I do now. Is there a jolly, athletic girl
hidden away under that demure manner of yours I've seen so
far, I wonder?"
"Lead the way up that hill and you'll find out," she answered
with a challenging flash of her dark eyes.
He lodged the Imp among a clump of pines, got out the hamper
and turned to his companion. She had pulled off her gloves,
removed hat and veil and folded her long, gray coat away in
the car. This left her dressed in the trim gray skirt of
walking length and the gray silk blouse she had worn for
shopping. Burns looked at her with approval.
"Transformed by magic from a fashionable lady in street attire
to a girl ready for the woods," was his comment. "I'm glad
you leave off the hat - I'll match you by doffing the cap.
Now aren't we a pair? Are you in for a rush up that first
slope? Jove, I'm not half so tired as I was an hour ago,
already!"
He caught her hand in his, his other arm through the hamper
handle, and ran with her up the slope. At the edge of the
steeper climb to come they stopped, breathing fast. "This
isn't the way to begin, of course," he admitted as they both
regained their breath, laughing at their own enthusiasm, "but
I couldn't resist that dash - a sort of dash for freedom. Now
we'll take it more easily."
They worked their way up and up among the rocks, he always in
advance, reaching down a muscular right arm to help her at the
steeper places, and once giving her a knee to step on when
progress could be made only up the straight face of a big
boulder. It was undoubtedly a stiff climb for a woman, but
she showed no signs of flinching, and though her cheeks glowed
richly and her wavy black locks were a trifle loosened from
their usual order when at last she set foot upon the plateau
at the top, she showed only the temporary fatigue to be
expected after such unusual exertion.
"That makes the blood course through one's arteries in a way
worth while," was his comment as he regarded with satisfaction
the splendid colour in her checks and the sparkle in her eyes.
"Talk about rest! That's the way to get it! Burn up the
products of fatigue, replace them with fresh cells full of
oxygen, and you get rejuvenation. Look at that stretch of
country before us! Isn't that worth the climb?"
"It's glorious! I've often looked at this height as our car
drove by on the road over there, and wanted to climb it. But
Martha and Jim are always for reeling off miles, and so, I
thought, were you. I imagined there was nobody but myself to
care for this."
"And I thought you liked the porch and the pretty clothes you
wear there better than anything I could show you in the open,"
he owned with a laugh. "Not that I haven't enjoyed that porch
and the sight of the clothes - they don't seem to be just like
Martha's and Winifred's somehow, though I can't tell why!
I've wanted to ask you off for a trip like this, but never was
sure you'd enjoy it. I'm glad I've found out. I feel as if
I'd wasted the summer."
He fell to gathering wood for his fire, and when she had
regained her breath she helped him in spite of his
remonstrance. "Let me have all the fun, too," she begged. "I
haven't had a chance like this for four years. I used to camp
in flannels all summer long, in the roughest sort of style,
and loved it dearly. I could stand the tension of a long
social winter twice as well as the other women on account of
it."
He understood, knowing that her husband had occupied a
prominent official position which called upon him to maintain
a corresponding place in the society of the city in which they
had lived. Although he knew her to be still under thirty, he
realized that on account of her early marriage she had had
much experience in the world of affairs. It was this aspect
of her he had always borne in mind as he had seen her before.
Now he was beginning to recognize another side of her
character and tastes, a side which interested him even more
than the other had done.
Like a pair of children they collected their firewood, racing
together to the base of operations with armfuls of dry sticks.
When there was a big pile she surprised him by asking to be
allowed to make the fire herself.
"I'll prove to you I'm a woodsman," she asserted, and when she
had performed her task after the most approved fashion of the
skilled camper, he acknowledged that she had made good her
boast. As the smoke cleared away in the direction which left
the view unobscured and the spot he had selected for the
lunching-place free from smoke, he grinned approvingly.
"I've no doubt you could grill the steak and brew the coffee
with equal skill," he admitted, "but I'm not going to let you.
That's my job. I want to prove my prowess. Sit down on that
log, please, and oversee me."
She watched with hungry interest while he also gave evidence
of his craft. It could hardly be the first time that a hamper
had been packed for him at the place in the city, for nothing
he needed had been left out, even to a big bottle of spring
water with which to make the coffee. When his work was nearly
complete she spread a square of white linen upon a flat rock
and set forth the other contents of the hamper - olives and
bread and butter, crisp celery-hearts, and cream cheese and a
tin of biscuits. She heated the plates and cups before the
fire, and as he withdrew his steak from the coals she set a
smoking hot platter before him and offered him the materials
for seasoning.
"You're a crack camper for sure," he declared. "Ah-h - does
that steak look fit for the gods, or not? How's the coffee?
Clear?"
"Perfect. And the steak looks as if it would melt in one's
mouth. Oh, isn't this fun? How glad I am I'm here and not at
that luncheon!" She consulted a tiny watch. "It's two
o'clock -they're sitting down," she exulted. "Martha has
waited half an hour for me and given me up, and she's
perfectly furious. I'm wicked enough to feel that that fact
is going to make this meal taste all the better!"
"Stolen steak and bread and butter eaten in secret have an
extra relish - no doubt of that. Here - this juicy bit is for
you to begin on. Set your teeth into it, partner! How's that
for food, I ask of you?"
Sitting on the ground opposite each other with the flat rock
between, they consumed this Arcadian banquet, eating with the
zest born of exertion and the open air, the sunshine and the
comradeship.
"Nothing has tasted quite so good to me in a year," said she
when the steak had vanished, dipping a white celery-heart in
salt and biting the end off with teeth still whiter.
"Nothing ever tasted so good to me," said he, leaning on his
elbow and spreading a crisp biscuit with a layer of cheese.
"I always think that of each meal I eat in a place like this,
but this one seems to have a special flavour. I wonder if it
can be the company?"
He smiled across at her, the sunshine among the pine needles
of the tree above him throwing flecks of bright copper among
the thick locks of his hair.
"I think the company is usually an important part of all such
outings," she admitted frankly. "I never took one before in
the society of a wornout doctor who began to look like a boy
again before he had finished his coffee. I really shouldn't
know you were the same person who invited me to go on this
expedition."
"There's nothing like it for renewing one, body and mind.
Actual physical repose isn't often the best cure for
weariness: it's change of thought and occupation, particularly
if the open air is a part of the cure. I've forgotten I have
a care in the world: all I can think of is - may I say it? -
yourself! I can't get over the wonder of seeing you turn from
what Bob calls his `pretty lady' into the girl I see before me
- a girl who looks about nineteen, with a capacity for good
sport in the open air I never dreamed of."
"The open air would renew everybody's youth, I think, if
everybody would go to living out-of-doors. We're through,
aren't we? There isn't a crumb left! Now please go off and
let me clear up and pack away. That's always the woman's
part. Couldn't you lie down on that inviting carpet of
needles over there under the big pine and get a bit of sleep?"
"Sleep - when I can talk to you?"
She nodded. "Yes, indeed. I'm not going to talk just now,
anyhow, so you might as well make the best of it. Throw
yourself down with your hands under your head, and look up at
those beautiful boughs. Please!"
Rather reluctantly h® obeyed, and she could see that, weary as
he undoubtedly still was in spite of the refreshing meal, he
really did not want to lose any of her society. Lying at full
length on his side, his head propped on his hand, talking in
the lazy tone of after-dinner content which had descended upon
him, he continued to watch her as she repacked the hamper. It
was not until she deliberately forsook him that he gave up to
her wishes. But when, having been out of his sight for ten
minutes, she peered cautiously through the bushes behind which
she had screened herself, she saw what she had hoped for. His
whole weary frame was stretched upon the pine-needle carpet,
the lines of his face were relaxed, and his eyes fast shut.
The sun was far down the hills when he awoke. He lay blinking
at the low-sweeping boughs above him for a little without
realizing where he was; then, as the midsummer stillness which
surrounded him took hold of his senses, he turned his head to
recall to himself the conditions under which he had been
sleeping. Only the hamper under a tree close by gave evidence
that he was here by his own volition. He stared about,
remembering that be had had a companion. He got somewhat
stiffly to his feet, discovering as he did so that he had lain
for a long time without stirring from the position in which
slumber had overtaken him.
"Mrs. Lessing!" he called.
>From some distance away came back a blithe answer: "Here,
Doctor Burns!"
He started in the direction of the voice and presently came
upon her sitting on a big granite boulder, busy with a lapful
of pine cones out of which she seemed to be constructing
something. She looked up, smiling.
"Why in the world did you let me sleep all the afternoon?" he
reproached her.
"I should have wakened you in ten minutes more. Have I made
you late for your work? I understood that you could afford a
few hours for rest. You've only slept three."
"Three! Good heavens! When I might have been spending them
with you!"
He looked so chagrined that her smile changed into outright
laughter. "You are very flattering. But I've been taking
much more satisfaction in your repose than I could possibly
have done in your society, no matter how brilliant you might
have been."
"That's not flattering, but I admit it has its practical side.
Those three hours' sleep in the open air have put me on my
feet again. Just the same, I want to eat my cake and have it,
too! Promise me three consecutive hours of your company when
I'm awake, or I shan't get over regretting what I've missed.
Will you do this again with me some September day when I can
make the time?"
"I promise with pleasure. I've had a charming afternoon all
by myself and wandered all over the hillside, dreaming
midsummer day-dreams. We must go, mustn't we?" She stood up,
her hands full of her work.
"Tell me some of them, won't you, while we climb down to the
car?" he begged.
"My happiest one," she said as they descended, "is the making
of a country home for little crippled children. I think I've
found the spot - the old Fairmount place - it's not more than
five miles from here. If I can only buy it at a reasonable
figure - "
"Mrs. Lessing!" he broke in. "So that's the sort of thing
that makes your day-dreams! No wonder - well! - "
"Why should you be surprised? Isn't that a delightful dream?
If I can only make it come true - "
"You can. Do you want a visiting surgeon?"
"Of course I do. Will you - "
"Why, Mrs. Lessing," said he, stopping short just below her on
the steep path and looking up into her face with eyes of eager
pleasure, "that's been one of my dreams so long I can't
remember when I began to think about it. But I haven't been
able to finance it yet, nor to find time to get anybody else
to do it. If you'll provide the place I'll do everything I
can to make it a success. There are no less than four
children this minute I'm longing to get into such a home.
We'll go into partnership if you'll take me. I why - you see,
I can't even talk straight about it! And you - I thought you
were a society woman!"
"I am a society woman, I suppose," she answered laughing,
"though our ideas might differ as to what that term stands
for. But why should that prevent my caring for this lovely
plan?"
"Evidently it doesn't. How many sides have you anyhow? I've
found out two new ones to-day. Girl - and patron saint - "
"Ah, don't make fun of me. I'm no girl and very far from any
kind of saint. Please help me down this four-foot drop as if
I were a very, very old lady, for my head is dizzy with joy
that I've found somebody to care for my schemes."
He leaped down and held up his arms. "Come, grandma!" he
invited, his face full of mischief and enthusiasm and
happiness.
"I think I'll play girl, after all," she refused gaily and,
accepting one hand only, swung herself lightly down to his
side.
"And it's `bracers' the fellows think they need to put the
heart back into them!" jeered Red Pepper Burns to himself.
"Let them try the open country and a comrade like this - if
there is another anywhere on earth! But they can't have her!"
CHAPTER VII
IN WHICH HE CONTINUES TO SAW WOOD
Here you are at last, Red, you sinner, and I'm the loser.
Ches and I've had a bet on since we saw the Green Imp tear off
just as the first guests were coming. I vowed it was a fake
call and you'd never get back till the musicians were
green-flannelling their instruments."
"I knew he wouldn't do us a cut-away trick like that,"
declared Arthur Chester with an affectionate, white-gloved
hand on Burns's black-clad arm. "Not that I'd have blamed you
on a night like this. What people want to give dances for in
August, with the thermometer at the top of the tree, I don't
know."
"Go along in, old man, and see the ladies. Take out Pauline.
Mrs. Lessing isn't dancing. Make a sitting-out engagement
with the lovely widow, then bolt out here. That's my advice,"
urged Macauley.
"Much obliged, I will. Wouldn't have come if Winifred hadn't
cornered me."
"She's doing her duty by Pauline, and she considers her duty
isn't done till she's secured the men Pauline wants. But I
say - when you get a look at Ellen you'll forget the rivulets
coursing down your neck. It's the first time she's worn
anything not suggestive of past experiences. It's only white
tonight, but - " Macauley's pause was eloquent.
Burns pushed on into the house, through whose open doors and
windows came sounds of revelry. A stringed orchestra was
playing somewhere out of sight, and to its music the late
arrival, holding his head well up that he might keep his
collar intact until the latest possible moment, set his course
toward his hostess.
Outside, in the bower which had been made of the porch,
Chester, disgracefully shuffling off the duties of host and
lounging with Macauley and two or three other of the young
married men, reported through the flower-hung window the
progress of the victim led to the sacrifice.
"He's shouldered his way to Win - he's shaking hands and
trying not to look hot. Hi! Pauline's sighted him already.
She's making for him like the arrow to the target."
"Or the bullet for the hippopotamus," suggested Macauley under
his breath in Chester's ear. He, too, began to reconnoiter.
"He's asking her if she saved the first one for him, and she's
telling him she did till the last minute. Her card is full
now, but he shall have the last half of this next one.
Doesn't he look overjoyed?" Chester chuckled wickedly.
"Where's Ellen? Why isn't she on deck now just as Red comes?"
Macauley began to fume. "She's behaved nobly all the evening
so far - she might have a rational being how for a partner as
her reward. But I presume she's sitting out somewhere with
that chump of a Wardlaw - he follows her like a shadow and
she's too kindhearted to shake him. She's - "
A voice speaking softly from the lawn below the porch
interrupted him. "Is Doctor Burns urns here?" it asked.
Chester went over to the rail. "He's only just come, you
know, Miss Mathewson. You don't have to call him out this
minute, do you?"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Chester, but I'm afraid I must. The call is
very urgent."
"Tell 'em to get somebody else."
"Doctor Burns wouldn't like it - they're special friends of
his."
"Oh, well - I suppose he'll see the bright side of getting out
of that Turkish bath in there, but I must say I wish I didn't
have to pull through this whole affair without his support,"
grumbled Chester as he went in to find Burns, now disappeared
into the inner rooms where the music came from.
Red Pepper came out looking the name more than usual, for
three rounds of the floor had brought, as it seemed to him,
every drop of blood to his face, and his hair clung damply to
his brow. He held a brief colloquy with his office nurse.
"No way out; I'll have to go, Ches," said he with ill-
concealed joy."
"But you'll hustle? You'll make one more try of it?" begged
Chester. "This thing won't break up early: not with Pauline
pushing it. You'll be back in time to be taken out and fed?"
"Try to," and Burns disappeared off the end of the porch.
"Lucky dog," gloomed Macauley. "The call's five miles out on
the road to the city. I'd like to be in the Green Imp for the
spin Red'll make of it. By George! I - "
He broke off suddenly, gave a hasty look around and bolted off
the end of the porch into the semidarkness of the lawn. He
ran across behind the houses to his own back porch, procured a
dustcoat from within and dashed back, regardless of the bodily
heat he was generating. As the Green Imp backed out of the
barn Macauley swung himself into the unoccupied seat.
Burns, also in dust-coat pulled on over his evening clothes,
grinned cheerfully. "Deserter?" he queried.
"You'll be back within the hour, won't you?"
"Less than that, probably. The Imp's running like a bird
to-night - show you her paces when we get out. Hi, there!
Who's that chasing us? Well, of all the - you, too, Ches?''
Panting, Chester flung himself upon the running-board just as
the car turned out of the yard. "Had a hunt for my coat -
nearly lost you!" he gasped.
Burns stopped the car. "See here, sonny," he expostulated.
"You happen to be host, you know. I might be detained out
there, though I don't expect it."
"I'll take the trolley back if you are," replied Chester,
settling himself. "I can't stand it to see you fellows cut
away out of the pow-wow and not go, too. I'll take my
chances."
"So be it!" and, laughing, with a glance back at the gaily
lighted house, Burns sent the car on her course. "You two are
always bragging up the married life," he remarked as the Green
Imp gathered speed, "but it strikes me you're pretty eager to
get away from the glories of your wives' entertaining."
"It's one curious thing," admitted Macauley thoughtfully,
"that no matter how harmonious a couple may be they're bound
to differ on what does and does not constitute entertainment."
"Of course, a girl like Pauline always wants to dance, no
matter how torrid the night," explained Chester. "Win and I
have to consider our guest's wish. But you can bet Pauline
isn't getting her wish - not with R. P. Burns running around
the country all the evening and only making five-minute stops
at her side."
By the speed with which the Green Imp swallowed the ground it
looked as if Burns might make several such trips and still
interpolate a number of "five-minute stops" before the affair
at the Chester house should be over. Before his passengers
were well aware of the distance they had covered he pulled up
in front of a small cottage. They settled themselves
comfortably to await a fifteen-minute stay, but in five he was
out again. Both dust coat and clawhammer were off - his
sleeves were rolled to the elbow.
"I'm in for it, boys," he said. "Can't get away under two
hours at the shortest. Sorry. But they didn't let me know
what they wanted me for, and I'm caught. You'll have to drive
home. Call up Johnny Caruthers and let him bring back the Imp
and Miss Mathewson. I can't be spared long enough to go
myself, so take her this note to tell her what to bring. Get
busy, now.
He handed Macauley a hasty scrawl on a prescription blank, and
smiled at the discomfited faces of his two friends showing
plainly in the lights which streamed from the house.
"You look blamed pleased over your job," growled Macauley.
"I like the job all right," admitted Burns; "particularly when
contrasted with - "
"You wouldn't say it if you'd caught one glimpse of Mrs. L."
called back Chester, as the Imp responded somewhat erratically
to Macauley's unaccustomed touch. But all the answer they got
was, an emphatic "Don't change gears as if you were running a
thrashing machine, Mac."
It was two hours and a half later that Burns came out of the
small cottage again, wiping a damp face, his white shirt-front
a pathetic ruin, his hastily reassumed white waistcoat and tie
decidedly the worse for having been carelessly handled. But
his face, when he turned it toward the stars as he crossed the
tiny patch of a flower-bordered yard, was a contented one.
"It pays up all the arrears when you can leave a chunk of
happiness behind you as big as that one," he said to himself.
Johnny Caruthers had gone home by trolley long ago, and Miss
Mathewson was to remain for the night and return with the
doctor when he came for his morning after-visit. Burns sent
the Green Imp off at a moderate pace, musing as he drove
through the now moderated and refreshing air of two o'clock in
the morning.
"Party must be about over by now; think it'll adjourn without
seeing any more of Red Pepper and his misused dress clothes,"
he reflected. "I suppose those dancing puppets think they've
had a good time, but it isn't in it with mine. Bless the
little woman: she's happy over her first boy! He's a winner,
too. As for Tom, I could have tipped him over with a nod of
the head when he was thanking me for leaving the
merry-go-round to stand by. It must feel pretty good to be
the father of a promising specimen like that. Must beat the
adopting business several leagues. And that's not saying that
Bobby Burns isn't the best thing that ever happened to R. P."
Philosophizing thus, he presently sent the Green Imp at her
quietest pace in at the home driveway. The Chester house was
still brilliantly illumined; his own dark except for the dim
light in the office and - he discovered it as he rounded the
turn - a sort of half-radiance coming from the windows of his
own room, where Bob slept in the small bed beside his own.
Burns gazed anxiously at this, for it showed that somebody had
turned on the hooded electric. He was accustomed to leave the
door open into his private office; in which a light was always
burning, and with this Bob had hitherto been satisfied.
"He must have waked up and called for Cynthia," he decided.
Housing the Imp, he quietly crossed the lawn to the window,
avoiding any sound of footsteps on the gravelled paths. Both
windows, screened by wire and awnings, were wide open; he
could see with ease into the room, for the house was an old
one and stood low. Climbing wistaria vines wreathed the
windows, and sheltered by these he found himself secure from
observation.
For after the first look he became exceedingly anxious not to
be discovered. He had come home in the stirred and gentle
mood often brought upon him by his part in such a scene as the
one he had lately left behind him. In the first wave of joy
swept by a birth into a home, whether humble or exalted, the
man who has been of service in the hour of trial is often
caught and lifted into a sympathetic pleasure which lasts for
some time after he has gone on to less satisfying work. Burns
had often jeered gently at himself for being, as he
considered, more than ordinarily susceptible to a sort of odd
tenderness of feeling under such conditions, and as he stared
in at the scene before him he was uneasily conscious that he
could not have come upon it at a more vulnerable moment.
Bobby Burns was sitting straight up in bed, his cheeks
flushed, his eyelids reddened as if with prolonged crying, but
his small face radiant with happiness as he regarded his
companion, his plump little fist thrust tight into the hand
which held his. In a chair close beside him sat a figure in
silvery white; bare, beautifully-moulded arms, from which the
gloves had been pulled and flung aside upon the bed, gleaming
in the glow from the hooded light.
Black head was close to black head, her black lashes and his
disclosed dark eyes curiously alike in the distracting glance
of them; even the colouring of the faces was similar, for both
showed the warm and peachy hues laid there by the summer sun.
"They might easily be mother and son," was the thought forced
upon the spectator. His own cheek suddenly burned, in the
shadow of the wistaria vines.
He listened abstractedly to the conclusion of the story: it
must have been a charming tale, for the boy's cry of regret
when it ended was eloquent. But the eavesdropper heard with
full appreciation the richness of the low voice and could not
wonder at Bob's delight in it. He watched with absorbed eyes
the embrace exchanged between the two and, forgetting to be
cautious, allowed his shifted foot to crunch the gravel under
the window.
Quicker than thought the light went out. Burns made for the
office door, consumed with eagerness to catch her before she
could get away. But when he set foot upon the threshold of
his room only the little figure, pulling itself again erect in
the bed, met his eyes in the dim light issuing from the
office, and otherwise the room was empty.
"Nobody heard me cryin' but her," explained Bob to his
questioning guardian. "Cynthia was all goned away and I heard
the fiddles and they made me cry. She comed in and told me
stories. I love her. But she wented awful quick out that
way." He pointed toward a French window opening like a door
upon the lawn. "I wish she didn't go so quick. She looked
awful pretty, all white and shiny. She loves me, I think,
don't you?"
"Of course, old man. That's your particular good luck - eh?
Now lie down and go to sleep and tell me all about it in the
morning."
"Aren't you going back to the party?" queried Bob anxiously.
"Hardly." Burns glanced humorously down at his attire. "But
I'm not going to bed just yet, so shut your eyes. I'll not be
far away."
The child obeyed. Exchanging the claw-hammer for his office
coat, Burns went out by way of the French window to the rear
of the house.
An hour afterward Arthur Chester, putting out lights,
discovered from a back window a familiar figure at a familiar
occupation. But at this hour of the night the sight struck
him as so extraordinary that, curiosity afire, he hurriedly
let himself out of the side door he had just locked, and
crossed the lawn.
"In the name of all lunatics, Red, why sawing wood? It can't
be ill temper at missing the show?"
In the August moonlight the figure straightened itself and
laid down the saw. "Go to bed, and don't bother your addle
pate about your neighbours. Can't a man cut up a few sticks
without your coming to investigate?"
"Saw a few more. You haven't got the full dose necessary
yet," advised Chester, his hands in his pockets. "Want me to
sit up with you till you work it all off?"
"It's beginning to look as if it wouldn't work off," muttered
R. P. Burns.
"Must be a worse attack than usual. How long have you been at
it?"
"Don't know."
"Sawed that whole heap at the side there?"
"Suppose so."
"Lost a patient?"
"No."
"Blow out a tire?"
"No."
"Bad news of any sort?"
"No. Go to bed."
"I feel I oughtn't to leave you," persisted Chester. "Don't
you think it might ease your mind to tell me about it?"
Burns came at him with the saw, and Chester fled. Burns went
back to his woodpile, marshalled the sawed sticks into orderly
ranks, then stood still once more and once more looked up at
the stars.
"If an hour of that on a night like this won't take the
nonsense out of me," he solemnly explained to a bright
particular planet now low in the heavens, "I must be past
help. But I'll be - drawn and quartered if I'll give in.
Haven't I had knockouts enough to be able to keep my head this
time? Red Pepper Burns, `Remember the Maine' Now, go to bed
yourself!"
CHAPTER VIII
IN WHICH HE IS UNREASONABLY PREOCCUPIED
"Red Pepper Burns, put down that stuff and come over. It's
nine o'clock, and Pauline goes tomorrow, as you very well
know. And not only Paul, but Mrs. Lessing. Paul's persuaded
her to start when she does, though she wasn't expecting to go
for three days longer."
R. P. Burns looked up abstractedly. "Can't come now. I'm
busy," he replied, and immediately became reabsorbed in the
big book he was studying.
Chester gazed at him amazedly. He sat at the desk in the
inner office, surrounded by books, medical magazines, foreign
reviews in both French and German, as Chester discovered on
approaching more closely, by loose anatomical plates, by
sheets of paper covered with rough sketches of something it
looked more like a snake in convulsions than anything else.
Evidently Burns was deep in some sort of professional
research.
It was not that the sight was an unaccustomed one. There
could be no question that R. P. Burns, M.D., was a close
student; this was not the first nor the fortieth time that his
friend had thus discovered him. The view to be had from the
point where Chester stood, of the small laboratory opening
from this office, was also a familiar one. He could see steam
arising from the sterilizer: he knew surgical instruments were
boiling merrily away there. A table was littered with objects
suggesting careful examination: a fine microscope in position;
a centrifuge, Bunsen burners, test-tubes; elsewhere other
apparatus of a description to make the uninitiated actively
sympathetic with the presumable coming victim.
The point of the situation to Chester was that astonishing
fact that Burns could hear unmoved of the immediate departure
of Ellen Lessing. He made up his mind that this scientific
enthusiast could not have assimilated the dreadful news; he
would try again.
"Red! Do you hear? She's going to-morrow - tomorrow!"
"Let her go. Don't bother me."
"I don't mean Pauline. Ellen's going, too."
Burns put up one sinewy hand and thrust it through his hair,
which already stood on end. His collar was off and he wore a
laboratory apron: his appearance was not prepossessing. He
pulled a piece of paper toward him and began to make rapid
lines. It was the snake again, in worse convulsions than
before. Evidently he had not heard. Chester approached the
desk.
"Red!" he shouted. "The patient isn't on the table yet: he
won't die if you listen to me one minute. I want you to take
this thing in. Mrs. Lessing - "
Knocking the sketch to one side and precipitating three books
and a mass of papers to the floor, Red stood up. He towered
above his shrinking fiend, wrath in his eye. His lips moved.
If it had been three months earlier Chester would have
expected to hear language of a lurid description. As it was,
the first syllable or two did slip out, but no more followed.
Only speech - good, vigorous Saxon, not to be misunderstood.
"Will you try to get it into your brain that I don't care a
hang who goes or where, so long as I figure out a way to do
this trick? The other fellows all say it can't be done. Not
one of 'em'll do it, not even Van Horn. I say it can, and I'm
going to do it to-morrow morning at nine o'clock, if I can
work out a tool to do it with and make it. And I can do that
if idiots like you will get out and keep out."
He sat down and was instantly lost again in his effort at
invention. Chester looked at him in silence for a minute
more, then he walked quietly out. Offended? Not he. He had
not listened to invective from that Celtic tongue for eight
years not to know that high tension over a coming critical
operation almost invariably meant brilliant success. But even
he had never seen Red Pepper keyed up quite so taut as this.
It must be a tremendous risk he meant to take. Success to him
- the queer, fine old boy!
"He may be over later when he gets that confounded snake of an
instrument figured out." Chester offered this to the group
upon his porch as consolation.
"And if he doesn't get it figured out before we break up, he
won't be over," prophesied Macauley. "Ten to one he forgets
to come and say good-bye before he starts for the hospital in
the morning."
"I'm going to be standing beside the driveway when he goes,"
vowed Pauline. "And if he doesn't notice me I'll climb on the
car."
"Ellen, don't go to-morrow," whispered Martha Macauley to her
sister. "Don't let it end this way. When he comes to, you'll
be gone, and that's such a pity just now."
"But I think I would rather be gone, dear." Ellen Lessing
whispered back.
"Oh, why? When Red's excited over a big success he's simply
off his head - there's no knowing what he won't do."
"I prefer him when he has his head. Don't urge, Martha. I've
promised to go in the morning with Pauline, and nothing could
make me change."
"It's a shame for him to be so absorbed. Who wants a man who
can forget the existence of a woman like that?"
"Who wants one who can't? A sorry surgeon he'd be - his hand
would shake. Don't talk about it any more, dear. I'm going
to enjoy this evening with you all. And I hope - oh, how I
hope - that operation will be a success!"
If it were not to be a success it would not be the fault of
the man who worked till one o'clock - two o'clock - three
o'clock it the morning to perfect the strangely convoluted
tool which was to help "do the trick" if it could be done.
Part of the work was done in the laboratory, part in the
machine shop which occupied a corner of the old red barn,
where the Green Imp lent her lamps as aids to the task in
hand. At four, the instrument finished, sterilized, and put
away as if it were worth its weight in gold - which it might
easily have been if it were to prove fitted to the peculiar
need - Burns went to bed. At six he was up again, had a cold
plunge and a hearty breakfast, and at seven was sending the
Imp out of the gateway, his office nurse beside him. If Mrs.
Lessing hoped the operation would be a success, Miss Mathewson
hoped and feared and longed with all her soul. Beneath the
uniform and behind the quiet, plain face of the young woman
who had been R. P. Burns's professional assistant for eight
years, lived a person than whom none cared more how things
went with him. But nobody knew that least of all Burns
himself. He only knew that he could not get on without her;
that never a suture that she had prepared made trouble for him
after an operation: and that none other of the hundred nice
details upon which the astounding results of modern surgery
depend was likely to go wrong if it were she who was
responsible.
At five o'clock that afternoon the Green Inn came back.
Arthur Chester had just returned from the office and had
thrown himself into a hammock on the porch, for the September
weather was like that of June. Catching the throbbing purr of
the Imp as the car swung in at the driveway Chester jumped up.
Burns flung out a triumphant arm; Miss Mathewson was smiling.
"By George, the old boy's won out!" Chester said to himself,
and hurried down to meet the Imp. "All over but the shouting,
Red?" he questioned eagerly.
"All over." Burns's face was aflame.
"Pull up and tell me about it."
The car came to a standstill. "Nothing to tell. The curve I
got on that bit of steel did the work, around the corner and
inside out. The fellows said it wouldn't; stood around and
croaked for an hour beforehand. Lord! I'd have died myself
before I'd have failed after that."
"Should have thought they'd have unsettled your nerve,"
declared Chester, looking as if he would like personally to
pitch into the entire medical profession.
"Didn't. Just made me mad. I can do anything when I'm mad -
if I can keep my mouth shut." Burns laughed rather
shamefacedly. "That's the one advantage of a temper. I say,
Ches, don't you want to go with me? There are probably half a
dozen calls waiting at the office. I'll run and see."
He jumped out, seized his surgical handbags and hurried away.
Miss Mathewson descended more deliberately, Chester plying her
with eager questions as he assisted her. "How was it? Pretty
big feather in his cap, Miss Mathewson?"
"Indeed it was, Mr. Chester. Every one of the other city
surgeons said it couldn't be done without killing the patient.
They all admitted that if she survived the operation she would
have every chance for recovery. They were all there to see.
I never knew them all there at once before."
"It would be ungenerous to imagine they wanted him to fail,"
chuckled Chester, "but we're, all human. How did they take it
when he succeeded?"
""They remembered they were gentlemen and scientists,"
declared Miss Mathewson - "all but one or two who aren't worth
mentioning. When they saw he had done it, they began to clap.
I don't believe there was ever such a burst of applause in
that surgery."
"What did the old fellow do? Tried to look modest, I
suppose," laughed Chester, glowing with pride and pleasure.
"He was white all through the operation - he always is, with
the strain. But he turned red all over when they cheered, and
just said: `Thank you, gentlemen.' It really was a wonderful
thing, Mr. Chester, even in these days. Only one man has done
it, a German, and he has done it only twice. Doctor Burns
will be distinguished after this."
"Good for him! No wonder he looks the way he does - as if
he'd like to turn a few handsprings," Chester reflected as he
watched the nurse's trim figure walk away.
Burns came back. "Jump in," he said. "Work enough to keep me
busy till bedtime. If there hadn't been, I'd have proposed a
beefsteak in the woods by way of a celebration and a let down.
I'm beginning to get a bit of reaction, of course; should have
liked an hour or two of jollity. You and Win, and Mrs.
Lessing and I might have - "
"Mrs. Lessing! You old chump, don't you remember she's gone?
Why, Mac started for the train with them all in his car, not
ten minutes before you came. They haven't been gone fifteen.
I begged off from going along because I was dusty and tired.
Just got home myself,"
R. P. Burns, making the circuit of the driveway behind the
houses and now turning the Imp's nose toward the street again,
stared at his friend in amazement.
"Why, she wasn't going till day after to-morrow!" he
exclaimed.
"I came over last night," drawled Chester in a longsuffering
tone, "and explained to you and shouted at you and tried in
every way to ram the idea into your head that Pauline had
wheedled Mrs. Lessing to start when she did, because their
routes lay together as far as Washington. You put me out,
calling me names and generally insulting me. It's all right,
of course. She's to spend the winter in South Carolina, but
she'll be back next summer. You can say good-bye to her then.
It'll do just as well."
Burns's watch was in his hand. "What time does that train
go?" he demanded.
"Five-thirty. You can't make it." Chester's watch was also
out. "What do you care? Send her a picture postcard
explaining that you forgot all about her until it was too - "
The last word was jerked back into his throat by the jump of
the Green Imp. She shot out of the driveway like a stone out
of a catapult, and was off down the mile road to the station,
All conveyances going to that train had passed quarter-hour
before, and the course was nearly clear.
"There's the train's smoke at the tunnel. You can't do it,"
asserted Chester, pointing to the black hole a few rods to one
side of the station whence a gray cloud was issuing. "She
only makes a two minute stop. You won't more than get on
board before - "
"If I get on board you drive into the city and meet me there,
will you?" begged Burns.
"I can't drive the Imp, Red; you know I can't."
"Then 'phone Johnny Caruthers from the station and send him in
for me. That'll give me fifteen minutes on the train."
"What's the use? Pauline'll be at your elbow every minute.
She'll - "
But Burns was paying no attention. He wag taking the Imp past
a lumbering farm-wagon with only two inches to spare between
himself and the ditch. Then the car was at the station, Burns
was out and through the building, through the gate and upon
the slowly-moving train after a moment's hasty argument with a
conductor to whom he could show no ticket. On the platform
James Macauley, junior, and Martha Macauley, Winifred Chester,
and four small children of assorted ages stared after the big
figure bolting into the Pullman. Bobby Burns gave a shriek of
delight followed by a wail of disappointment.
"By George, he's turned up, after all!" exulted Macauley, and
the two women looked at each other with meaning, relieved
glances.
In the car, the passengers observed interestedly the spectacle
of a large man with a mop of fiery red hair, from which he had
pulled a leather cap, striding, dust-covered, into the car and
up to the two prettiest young women there. One of these very
smartly clad in blue, received him with looks half gay, half
pouting, and with a storm of talk. The other, in gray, with a
face upon which no eye could rest once without covertly or
openly returning in deference to its charm, gave him a quiet
hand and turned away again to wave her farewell to the group
of friends on the platform
"Take my chair and I'll perch on the arm of Ellen's,"
commanded Pauline," while you explain, apologize and try to
make your peace with us. You'll find it hard work. I may
smile for the sake of appearances, but inside I'm really
awfully angry. So is Ellen, though she doesn't show it."
Thus Pauline, indefinitely prolonged and repeated, with
variations, interpolations, interruptions. It didn't matter;
Redfield Pepper Burns heard none of it. Even with Pauline
"perching" on the arm of Ellen Lessing's chair, her face
within eight inches of the other face, she was not within the
field of his vision.
"I am sure the operation was successful," said Mrs. Lessing.
"One can see it in his eyes," declared Pauline. "I never knew
hazel eyes could be so brilliant°'
"It went through," admitted Burns. "It had to, you know. And
I had a thing to make last evening "
"Arthur told us about it," chattered Pauline. "It was like a
sna - "
"You didn't miss my not coming over," said Burns. He was
leaning forward, his hands on his knees, his rumpled head near
enough so that very low tones could reach the person to whom
he spoke. He did not once look at Pauline. One would have
thought that that fact alone would have quieted her, but it
did not.
"Indeed we did - awfully!" cried Pauline.
"Neither did I myself, then, Mrs. Lessing. I miss it now. I
shall miss it more whenever I think about it. I don't know of
but one thing that can possibly make it up to me. "
"Name it! You don't deserve it, but our hearts are rather
tender, and we might grant - " Pauline looked arch. But what
was the use? Nobody saw. Even the passengers were watching
the one in gray. Spectators always watch the woman at whom
the man is looking. And in this case it seemed well worth
while, for even the most admirable reserve of manner could not
control the tell-tale colour which was slowly mounting under
the direct and continued gaze of the man with the red hair.
The man himself, it occurred to more than one passenger, was
rather well worth study.
"It's always been a theory of mine that no woman can know a
man until she's exchanged letters with him for a considerable
period of time - say, a winter," Burns went on. Pauline, made
some sort of an exclamation, but he failed to notice it -
"Neither can a man know a woman. It's a stimulating
experience. Suppose we try it?"
"How often do you propose to write to us?" inquired Pauline.
Now, at last, Red Pepper Burns looked at her. If she had
known him better, she would have known that all his vows to
keep his tongue from certain words were at that moment very
nearly as written in water. But the look he gave her stung
her for an instant into silence.
"I shall want to hear about Bob," Ellen replied, "all you can
tell me. I have promised to write to him. You will have to
read the letters aloud to him - which will give you a very
fair idea of what I am doing. But if you care for an extra
sheet for yourself - now and then - "
"An extra sheet! When I am in the mood I am likely to write a
dozen sheets to you. When I'm not, a page will be all you'll
care to read. Will you agree to the most erratic
correspondence you ever had, with the most erratic fellow?"
"It sounds very promising," she answered, smiling.
The train drew into the city station. The stop was a short
one, for the Limited was late. In the rush of outgoing and
incoming passengers Burns managed, for the space of sixty
seconds, to get out of range of Pauline's ears.
"I shall count the hours till I get that first letter," said
he.
She looked up. "You surely don't expect a letter till you
have sent one?"
He laughed. "I'm going home to begin to write it now," he
said.
Pauline accompanied him to the vestibule where he shook hands
with her forgivingly. From the platform he secured a last
glimpse of the other face, which gave him a friendly smile as
he saluted with his dusty leather cap held out toward her at
the length of his arm. When he could no longer see her he
drew a gusty sigh and turned away.
As he stood at the street entrance of the big station, waiting
for Johnny Caruthers and the Green Imp, this is what he was
saying to himself:
"Red, you've made more than one woman unhappy, to say nothing
of yourself, by making love to her because she was a beauty
and your head swam. This time you've tried rather hard to do
her the justice to wait till you know. Only time and absence
can settle that. Remember you found a nest of gray hairs in
your red pate this morning? That should show that you're
gaining wisdom at last, the salt in the red pepper, `the
seasoning of time,' eh, R. P.? But by the rate of my pulse at
this present moment I'm inclined to believe - it's going to be
a bit hard to write an absolutely sane letter. Perhaps it
would be safer if I knew Pauline Pry would see it! I'll try to
write as if I knew she would . . . . But by the spark I
thought I saw in those black eyes I don't really imagine
Pauline will!"
CHAPTER IX
IN WHICH HE SUFFERS A DEFEAT
The hands of the office clock were pointing to half after two,
on a certain September night, when Burns came into his office,
alone. The fire in the office fireplace, kept bright until
nearly midnight, when his housekeeper had given up waiting for
him and gone to bed, had burned to a few smouldering lumps of
cannel-slag. A big leather easy-chair, its arms worn with
much use, had been pulled into an inviting position before the
fireplace, and the night-light by the desk was burning, as
usual. All that could be expected had been done by the
kind-hearted Cynthia, who comprehended, by signs she knew well
and had been watching for several days, that affairs were
going wrong with her employer.
But he needed more than could be given him by things inanimate
- needed it woefully. He came in as a man comes who is not
only physically' weary to the point of exhaustion, but heart
sick and sore besides. He dropped his heavy surgical bags
upon the floor by the desk as if he wanted never to take them
up again, pulled off coat and cap and let them fall where they
would, then stumbled blindly over to the big chair and sank
into it with a great sigh, as if he had reached the end of all
endeavour.
If it had been physical fatigue alone which had brought him to
this pass he might have dropped asleep where he sat, and
waked, after an hour or two, to drag himself away to bed, like
one who had been drugged. For a short space, indeed, he lay
motionless in the chair in the attitude of one so spent for
sleep that he must needs find it in the first place his body
touches. But there are times when the mind will not let the
body rest. And this was one of them.
The scene he had left lately was burning before his tired
eyes; the sounds he had lately heard were beating in his
brain. For a week he had been putting every power he
possessed into the attaining of an end for which it had more
than once seemed to him that he would be willing to sacrifice
his own life. He had dared everything, fought every one, had
his own way in spite of every obstacle, believing to the last
that he could win, as he had so often won before, by sheer
contempt of danger. But this time he had failed.
That was all there was of it - he had failed, failed so
absolutely, so humiliatingly, so publicly - this was the way
he put it to himself - that he was in disgrace. He had
operated when others advised against operation and had seemed
to succeed, brilliantly and incredibly. Then the case had
begun to go wrong. He had operated a second time - against
all precedent, taking tremendous risks - and had lost.
But this was not the worst. He had lost cases before and had
suffered keenly over them, but not as he was suffering now.
In a world of death some cases must be lost, even by the most
successful of all of his profession. But this was an unusual
case. This was - O God how could he bear losing this one?
He had known her from a little girl of eight till now, when at
sixteen, bright, beautiful, winsome sixteen, he had . . .
what had he done? She might have had a chance for life -
without operation. He had taken that chance away. And she
had trusted him - how she had trusted him! Ah, there was the
bitter drop in the cup the turn of the knife in the raw wound.
When the others had opposed, she had looked up at him with
that smile of hers - how could she smile when she was in such
pain? - and whispered: "Please do whatever you want to, Doctor
Burns." And he had answered confidently: "Good for you,
Lucile - if only they'd all trust me like that I'd show them
what I could do!"
Vain boast - wild boast! He had d been a fool - twice a fool
- thrice a fool! He was a fool clear through - that was the
matter with him - a proud fool who had thought that with a.
thrust of his keen-edged tools he could turn Death himself
aside.
And when he had tried his hand a second time, in the last
futile effort to avert the impending disaster, she had trusted
him just the same. When he had said to her, speaking close to
her dull ear: "Dear little girl, I'm going to ask you to go to
sleep again for me," she had turned her head upon the pillow,
that tortured young head - he would not have thought she could
move it at ail - and had smiled at him again . . . for the
last time . . . He would remember that smile while he lived.
He got up from his chair as the intolerable memory smote him
again, as it had been smiting him these three hours since the
end had come. He began to pace the floor, back and forth back
and forth. There were those who said that R. P. Burns threw
off his cases easily, did not worry about them, did not take
it to heart when they went wrong. It is a thing often said of
the men who must turn from one patient to another, and show to
the second no hint of how the first may be faring. Those who
say it do not know - can never know.
The hours wore on. Burns could not sleep, could not even
relax and rest. To the first agony of disappointment
succeeded a depression so profound that it seemed to him he
could never rise above it and take up his work again. A
hundred times he went painfully over the details of the case,
from first to last. Why had he done as he had? Why had he
not listened to Grayson, to Van Horn, to Fields? Only Butler
had backed him up in his decisions - and he knew well enough
that Butler had done it only because of his faith in Burns
himself and his remembrance of some of his extraordinary
successes, not because his own judgment approved.
Five o'clock - six o'clock - he had thrown himself into the
chair again, and had, at last, dropped into an uneasy sort of
half slumber, when the office door quietly opened and Miss
Mathewson came in. It was two hours before she was due.
Burns roused and regarded her wonderingly, with eyes heavy and
blood-shot. She stood still and looked down at him, sympathy
in her face. She herself was pale with fatigue and loss of
sleep, for she had been with him throughout the week of
struggle over the case he had lost, and she knew the situation
as no one else, even his professional colleagues, knew it.
But she smiled wanly down at him, like a pitying angel.
"You didn't go to bed, Doctor," she said, very gently. "I was
afraid you wouldn't. Won't you go now? You know there's a
day's work before you."
He shook his head. "No - I'd rather get out in the air. I'm
going now. I'd like to take the Imp and - drive to - " "
"No, no!" - She spoke quickly, coming closer, as if she
understood and would not let him use the reckless, common
phrase which sometimes means despair. "I thought you might be
feeling like that - that's why I came early. Not that I can
say anything to cheer you, Doctor Burns - I know you care too
much for that. But there's one thing you must realize - you
must say it over and over to yourself - you did your best. No
human being can do more."
"A fool's best," he muttered. "Cold comfort that."
"Not a fool's best -a skilful surgeon s best."
He shook his head again, got slowly up from his chair, and
stood staring down into the ashes of the long-dead fire. The
usually straight shoulders were bent; the naturally
well-poised head, always carried confidently erect, was sunk
upon the broad chest.
Amy Mathewson watched him for a minute, her own face full of
pain; then laid her hand, rather timidly, upon his arm. He
looked round at her and tried to smile, but the effort only
made his expression the more pitiful.
"Bless your heart," said he, brokenly, "I believe you'd stand
by me to the last ditch of a failure."
Her eyes suddenly filled. "I'd let you operate - on my mother
- to-day," said she, in a low voice.
He gazed into her working face for a long moment, seized her
hand and wrung it hard, then strode away into the inner office
and flung the door shut behind him.
A half-hour later he came out. He had himself sternly in hand
again. His shoulders were squared, his head up; in his face
was written a peculiar grim defiance which those who did not
comprehend might easily mistake for the stoicism imputed to
men of his calling under defeat. Miss Mathewson knew better,
understood that it was taking all his courage to face his work
again, and realized as nobody else could that the day before
him would be one of the hardest he had yet had to live. But
she was hopeful that little by little he would come back to
the same recognition of that which she felt was really true,
that, in spite of the results, he had been justified in the
risk he had taken, and that he could not be blamed that
conditions which only a superhuman penetration could have
foreseen would arise to thwart him.
"Cynthia has your breakfast ready for you Doctor," Miss
Mathewson said quietly, as he came out. She did not look up
from the desk, where she was working on accounts. But as he
passed her, on his way to the dining-room, he laid his hand
for an instant on her shoulder, and when she looked up she met
his grateful eyes. She had given him the greatest proof of
confidence in her power, and it had been the one ray of light
in his black hour.
"Won't you take just a taste o' the chops, Doctor?" urged his
housekeeper, anxiously. She knew nothing of the situation,
but she had not served him for eight years not to have learned
something of his moods, and it was clear to her that he had
had little sleep for many nights.
But he put aside the plate. "I know they're fine, Cynthia,"
said he in his gentlest way. "But the coffee's all I want,
this morning. Another cup, please."
Cynthia hesitated, a motherly sort of solicitude in her homely
face. "Doctor, do you know you've had four, a'ready? And
it's awful strong."
"Have I! Well - perhaps that's enough. Thank you, Cynthia."
His housekeeper looked after him, as he left the room. "He's
terrible blue, to be so polite as that," she reflected. "When
he's happy he's in such a hurry he don't have time to thank a
body. Of the two. I guess I'd rather have him hustlin'
rude!"
In the middle of the day Burns met Van Horn.
"Sorry the case went wrong, Doctor," said his colleague.
There was a peculiar sparkle in his eye as he offered this
customary, perfunctory condolence.
"Thank you," replied Burns, shortly.
"I didn't wish to seem skeptical, and you certainly have had
remarkable success in somewhat similar cases. But it seemed
to me that in advising as I did I was holding the only safe
ground. Personally I'm not in favour of taking chances and in
this case it seemed to me they were pretty slim."
"They were."
"I did my best to assure the family that you were within your
rights."
"Much obliged."
"I don't blame you for feeling broken up about it," declared
the other man, soothingly. "But we all have to learn by
experience, and conservatism is one of the hardest lessons."
An ugly light was growing in Red Pepper's eye. He got away
without further words. Only last week Van Horn had been
helped out of a serious and baffling complication by Burns
himself, and no credit given to the rescuer. From him this
sort of high and mighty sympathy was particularly hard to
bear.
Around the corner he encountered Grayson. This, as it was so
little to be desired, was naturally to be expected.
"Too bad, Doctor," Grayson began, stopping to shake hands.
Van Horn had not even shaken hands. "I hoped till the last
that we were all wrong and you were right. But that heart
seemed dangerously shaky to me, though I know you didn't think
so."
"I didn't."
"There was a queer factor in the case, one I felt from the
first, though I couldn't put my finger on it. It was the
thing that made me advise against operation."
"I understand."
"But of course there's no use crying over spilt milk; you did
your best," continued Grayson cheerfully. "Pretty little girl
- plucky, too. Sorry to see her go."
Burns nodded - and bolted. These Job's comforters - were they
trying to make the thing seem even more unbearable than it
already was? Certainly they were succeeding admirably. He
went on about his work with set teeth, expecting at the next
turn to run into Fields. He would undoubtedly find him at the
hospital, ready to greet him with some croaking sympathy.
True to his expectations Fields met him at the door. He
himself was looking particularly prosperous and cheerful, as
people have a way of appearing to us when our trouble is root
theirs.
"Good morning, Doctor." Fields shook hands, evidently trying
to modify his own demeanour of unusual good cheer over a list
of patients all safely on the road to ultimate recovery. "I
want to express my regret over the way things came out last
night. Mighty pretty operation - if it had succeeded. Sorry
it didn't. Better luck next time."
"Much obliged." Burns had a bull-dog expression now. Not the
most discerning observer would have imagined he felt a twinge
of regret over his failure.
"Would you mind telling me what made you so confident that the
spleen had nothing to do with the complication?" Fields
inquired in a deprecatory manner which made Burns long to
twist his neck.
"Did you suggest that it did - beforehand?"
"I believe I did - if I remember."
"I believe you didn't - nor any other man till I got in and
found it. You all observed it then - and so did I. Excuse me
- I'm in too much of a hurry to stop to discuss the case now.
I'm due upstairs." And once more Burns made good his escape.
"Sore," was Field's verdict, looking after the man who had
been his successful rival for so long that this exception
could hardly fail to afford a decided, if rather shame-faced
satisfaction to a brother surgeon not above that quite human`
sentiment.
But in the course of the day Burns met Buller. He had dreaded
to meet him, but not for the same reason that he had dreaded
the others. Meeting Buller was quite another story.
"Old boy, I'm so sorry I could cry, if it would do you any
good," said Buller, his steady, honest gaze meeting his
friend's miserable eyes. For the defiance had melted out of
Burns's aspect and left it frankly wretched before the hearty
friendship in this man's whole attitude; friendship which
could be counted upon, like that of his office nurse's, to the
end of all things.
Burns swallowed hard, making no reply, because he could not.
But his hand returned the steady pressure of Butler's in a way
that showed he was grateful.
"I knew you'd take it hard - much harder than common. And, of
course, I understand why. Any man would. But I wish I could
make you feel the way I do about it. There's not one particle
of reason for you to blame yourself. I've thought the case
over and over from start to finish, and I'm more and more
convinced that she wouldn't have lived without the operation.
You gave her her only chance. Take that in? I mean it. I
went around there this morning and told the family so - I took
that liberty. It was a comfort to them, though they believed
anyway. They haven't lost a particle of faith in you."
Burns bit his lip till he had it under control, and could get
out a word or two of gratitude.
"And now I want a favour of you," the other went on hurriedly.
"A case I want you to see with me - possible operation within
a day or two."
Burns hesitated an instant, changing colour. Then: "Are you
sure you'd better have me?" he asked, a trifle huskily.
The other looked him in the eye. "Why not? I know of nobody
so competent. Come, man put that Satan of unreasonable
self-reproach behind you. When man becomes omniscient and
omnipotent there'll be no errors in his judgment or his
performance - and not before. Meanwhile we're all in the soup
of fallibility together. I - I'm not much at expressing
myself elegantly: but I trust I'm sufficiently forcible,"
smiled Buller. "Er - will you meet me at four at my office?
We'll go to the Arnolds' together, and I'll give you the
history of the case on the way. It's a corker, I assure you,
and it's keeping me awake nights."
Proceeding on his way alone in the Imp he had not wanted even
Johnny Caruthers's company to-day Burns found the heaviness of
his spirit lifting slightly very slightly. Tenderness toward
the little lost patient who had loved and trusted him so well
began gradually to usurp the place of the black hatred of what
he felt to be his own incompetency. Passing a florist's shop
he suddenly felt like giving that which, as it had occurred to
him before, had seemed to him would be only a mockery from his
hands. He went in and selected flowers - dozens and dozens of
white rosebuds, fresh and sweet - and sent them, with no card
at all, to her home.
Then he drove on to his next patient, to find himself
surrounded by an eager group of happy people, all rejoicing in
what appeared to them to be a marvelous deliverance from a
great impending danger, entirely due to his own foresight and
skill. He knew well enough that it way Nature herself who had
come to the rescue, and frankly told them so. But they
continued to thrust the honour upon him, and be could but come
away with a softened heart.
"I'll go on again," he said to himself. "I've got to go on.
Last night I thought I couldn't, but, of course, that's
nonsense. The best I can God knows I try . . . And I'll
never make that mistake again . . . But oh! - little Lucile -
little Lucille!"
CHAPTER X
IN WHICH HE PROVES HIMSELF A HOST
"Winifred," said R. P. Burns, invading Mrs. Arthur Chester's
sunny living-room one crisp October morning, leather cap in
hand, "I'm going to give a dinner to-night. Stag dinner for
Grant, of Edinburgh - man who taught me half the most
efficient surgery I know. He's over here, and I've just found
it out. Only been in the city two days: goes to-morrow."
"How interesting, Red! Where do you give it? At one of the
clubs or hotels in town?"
"That's the usual thing, of course. That's why I'm not going
to do it. Grant's a rugged sort of commonsense chap - hates
show and fuss. He gets an overpowering lot of being
`entertained' in precisely the conventional style. He's a
pretty big gun now, and he can't escape. When I told him I
was going to have him out for a plain dinner at home he looked
as relieved as if I'd offered him a reprieve for some
sentence."
"Undoubtedly he'll enjoy the relaxation. Hut you'll have a
caterer out from town, I suppose?"
"Not on your life. Cynthia can cook well enough for me, and I
know Ronald Grant's tastes like a book. But what I want to
ask is that you and Martha Macauley will come over and see
that the table looks shipshape. Cynthia's a captain of the
kitchen, but her ideas of table decoration are a trifle too
original even for me. Miss Mathewson's away on her vacation.
I'll send in some flowers. My silver and china are nothing
remarkable, bur as long as the food's right that doesn't
matter."
"I shall be delighted to do it for you, Red, as you know. So
will Martha. We - "
"Thanks immensely. I want Ches of course, and Jim Macauley's
coming. The rest are M, D.'s. I must be off."
He would have been off, without doubt, in an instant more, for
he was half out of the door as he spoke, but Winifred Chester
flew after him and laid an insistent hand on his coat sleeve.
"Red! You must stop long enough to tell me something about
it. How can I help you unless I know your plans? What hour
have yon set? How many are coming, and who? How many courses
are you going to have? Have you engaged a waitress?"
Red Pepper looked bewildered. "Is there all that to it?" he
inquired helplessly. "How in thunder - I beg your pardon -
how do I know how many courses there'll be? Ask Cynthia that.
The hour's seven-thirty; can't get around earlier, even if I
wanted to be less formal. There's Van Horn and Buller and
Fields and Grayson and Grant and Ches and Jim and - and
myself. I may have asked somebody else, seems as if did but I
can't remember. You'd better put on an extra plate in case I
have."
He was starting off again, but Winifred, laughing helplessly,
again detained him. "Red, you're too absurd! What about the
waitress? Shall I find one for you?"
"I supposed Cynthia could serve us; she always does me."
"She can't to-night, and prepare things to send in, too."
"Oh, well, see to it if you'll be so kind; only let me go, for
I've only fifteen minutes now to meet a consultant ten miles
away. Good-bye, Win,"
He took time to turn and smile at her, and for the sake of the
smile - she knew of none other just like it - she forgave him
for involving her in the labours she already clearly foresaw
were to be hers. How precisely like Red Pepper Burns it was
to plan for a "stag" dinner in this inconsequent way! If it
had been a coming operation, now, no detail of preparation
would have been too insignificant to command his attention.
But in the present instance unquestionably all he had done was
to appear at the door of the kitchen and casually inform
Cynthia that eight or nine men were coming to dinner to-night,
and he'd trust her to see that they should have something good
to eat. Poor Cynthia!
Winifred ran over to consult Martha Macauley and together they
braved Burns's housekeeper in her kitchen. The result was
relief, as far as the dinner itself was concerned. Cynthia
was a superior cook, and long experience with exclusively
masculine tastes had taught her the sort of thing which,
however out of the beaten line for entertaining, was likely to
prove successful in pleasing "eight or nine men," wherever
they might hail from.
"Cynthia's planned a dinner that will be about as different
from Lazier's concoctions as could be imagined," Winifred said
to Martha, "but it will taste what Ches calls `licking good.'
Now for the table. I'm afraid Red's china and linen are none
too fine. We'll have to help him out there."
They helped him out. Only the finest of Martha's linen and
silver, the thinnest of Winifred's plates and cups and the
most precious of her glass would content them. When the table
was set in the low-ceiled, casement-windowed old dining-room
where Red Pepper was accustomed to bolt his meals alone when
he took time for them at all, it was a to table to suggest
arrogantly the hand of woman, Winifred eyed it with milled
satisfaction and concern.
"It looks lovely, Martha, but not a bit bachelor-like. Do you
suppose he'll mind?"
"Not as long as the food is right; and judging by the heavenly
smells from the kitchen there's no fear for that. But it's
five o'clock, and the flowers he promised you haven't come.
Do you suppose he's forgotten?"
"Of course he has. If he remembers the dinner itself it'll be
all we can expect of him. It doesn't matter. There are heaps
of pink and crimson asters yet in the garden, and some fall
anemones. We'll arrange them, and then if his flowers do come
we'll change. But they won't."
They didn't. But the pink and crimson asters furnished a
centrepiece decidedly more in keeping, somehow, with a men's
dinner than roses would have been, and the decorators were
content with them. Dora, Mrs. Macauley's own serving maid,
who was to take the part of the waitress Red Pepper had not
thought necessary, said they looked "awful tasty now."
"It's after seven and Red hasn't come yet." Winifred Chester
rushed at Arthur, dressing placidly. "Jim went in for the men
with his car, and said he'd surely have them here by
seven-twenty. You'll have to go over and do the honours for
him till he comes. He'll have to dress after he gets here."
"He won't stop to dress - not if he's late," predicted
Chester, obediently hastening. "He'll rush in at the last
minute, smelling horribly of antiseptics, and set everybody
laughing with some story. They won't care what he wears.
It's always a case of `where MacGregor sits, there's the head
of the table,' you know, with Red. I certainly hope nothing
will make him late. I'm not up to playing host to a lot of
physicians and surgeons. I should feel as if I were about to
be operated on."
"Nonsense, dear, there's no jollier company when they're off
duty. But Red isn't here yet, and I'm sure I hear Jim's
Gabriel down the road. Do hurry!"
Chester ran across the back lawn and in through Burns's
kitchen, startling Cynthia so that she nearly dropped the
salt-box into a sauce she was making for the beefsteak. He
reached the little front porch just in time to welcome the
batch of professional gentlemen who came talking and laughing
up the path together.
"Doctor Burns has been detained, but I'm sure he'll be here
soon," Chester explained, shaking hands, and discovering for
himself which was the famous Scottish surgeon by the "rugged
commonsense" look of the man, quite as R. P. Burns had
characterized him.
Seven-thirty - no Red Pepper. Seven-forty-five - eight
o'clock - still no sign of him; harder to be explained, no
sign from him. Why didn't he telephone or send a telegram or
a messenger? Waiting longer would not do; Cynthia, in the
kitchen, was becoming unnervingly agitated.
The dinner was served. Chester, at one end of the table,
Macauley at the other, both feeling a terrible responsibility
upon them, did their best. There had turned out to be two
extra guests instead of the one whom Burns had thought he
might have asked but couldn't be sure; and Winifred had had a
bad ten minutes looking out a full set of everything with
which to set his place. For Red Pepper's place must certainly
be left unfilled; it would be beyond the possibilities that
the dinner should end without him.
"I believe he has forgotten," whispered Martha to Winifred in
the office, from whose dim shadows they were surreptitiously
peering into the dining room to make sure that everything was
going properly.
"Oh, he couldn't, not with the Edinburgh man here. He's often
told us about Doctor Grant and how much he owes him. He does
look splendid and capable, doesn't he - for all he's so burly
and homely? And the other men all feel honoured to be here
with him; even Doctor Van Horn, who's always so impressed with
himself."
"They seem to be having a good time. And they're eating as if
they never saw food before. It's a success - as much as it
can be without the host himself. Oh, why doesn't Red come?"
"He wouldn't desert a patient in a crisis for a dozen
dinners."
"No, but he'd send word."
"Look at Arthur. He's hobnobbing with Doctor Grant as if he'd
always known him."
"Jim is having a bad time with Doctor Van Horn. I can see it
in his eye. Mercy! one of them looked this way. I'm afraid
he saw me. Come!"
The next time they reconnoitred, the dinner was working toward
its end. It was time, for it was nearly ten o'clock, and
Cynthia's courses though not many, had been mighty. Presently
the table had been cleared, and the men were drinking coffee
and lighting the excellent cigars which had been Macauley's
thought when he found that Red Pepper was not on hand to
provide them himself.
Under the influence of these genial stimulants - Burns never
offered any others, and one man who knew it had declined to
come - the sociability grew more positive. Chester relaxed
his legs under the table, feeling that at last Red's guests
could take care of themselves. Grayson proved an accomplished
story-teller; Buller had lately had some remarkable
adventures; even Ronald Grant, who had seemed a trifle
taciturn, related an extraordinary experience of another man.
The Scottish surgeon had the reputation of never talking about
himself.
The smoke grew thick. Macauley's cigars were of a strong
brand; the air was blue with their reek. Still the guests sat
about the table, and still the talk went on.
It was interrupted quite suddenly by the advent of Red Pepper
Burns himself. Macauley saw him first, standing in the
doorway between dining room and office, but for an instant he
did not know him. Macauley's startled look caught Chester's
attention; he sprang to his feet. At the same moment the
Scottish surgeon, following Chester's eyes, observed the
figure in the door. He was first to reach it.
"What's happened ye, lad?" he asked, and acted without waiting
for an answer. He threw a powerful arm about Burns's
shoulders and led him, reeling, back into the office where the
air was purer.
They crowded round, doctors though they were and had many
times sharply ordered other people not to crowd. They could
see at a glance that Burns was very faint, that his right arm
hung helpless at his side, that his forehead wore a blackening
bruise, and that his clothes were torn and covered with dirt.
For the rest they had to wait.
Grant took charge of his friend - the pupil whom he had never
forgotten. The arm was badly broken, too badly to be set
without an anaesthetic. In the inner office Van Horn, his
dress coat off, gave the chloroform while the Scotchman set
the arm; and the American surgeons, no longer crowding, but
standing off respectfully as if at a clinic, looked on
critically. It was rapid and deft work, they admitted,
especially since the surgeon was using another man's splints,
and the patient proved to be one of the subjects who fight the
anesthetic from beginning to end.
Chester, white-faced but plucky, stuck it out, but Macauley
fled to the outer air. Seeing a familiar long, dark form half
on, half off the driveway, he hurried toward it. A minute
later he had all the unoccupied guests around him on the lawn,
and one of the Green Imp's lamps was turned upon its crippled
shape.
"By George, he's had a bad accident," one and another of them
said as they examined the car's injuries. The hood was jammed
until they wondered why the engine was not disabled; the left
running-board was nearly torn off and the fender a shapeless
wreck. The green paint was scraped and splintered along the
left side.
"He must have come home by himself. How far, do you suppose?"
"Not far, driving with his left hand, and faint."
"He probably wasn't faint till he struck the indoor heat and
the tobacco smoke."
"He's come at least five miles. Look at that red clay on her
sides. There's no red clay like that around here except in
one place - at the old mill on the Red Bank road." Chester
demonstrated his theory excitedly. "I ought to know, I've
ridden with him on every out-of-the-way by-path in the county,
first any' last. There's a fright of a hill just there."
"Five miles with that arm? Gee!" This was Buller.
"Plucky," was Grayson's comment, and there was a general
agreement among the men standing round.
Macauley put his shoulder to the Imp. "Let's push her in,
fellows," he proposed. He had forgotten that they were
medical gentlemen of position. "I don't seem to want to drive
her just now," he explained.
They pushed the Imp to the red barn and shut it in with its
injuries. Then they went back to the house, where presently
Burns came out from under his anaesthetic and lay looking at
his guests from under the bandage which swathed his head.
"I'm mighty sorry to have broken up the fun this way,
gentlemen," he said with a pale sort of smile. "Grayson was
telling a story when I butted in, I think. Finish it, will
you, Grayson?"
"Not much. Yours is the story we want now, if you're up to
telling it. What happened out there on the Red Bank road?"
Burns scanned him. "How do you know what road?"
"Your friend Mr. Chester's detective instincts. He says
there's no other red clay like that that plasters your car.
By the way, that's a fast machine of yours. Did you lose
control on the hill?"
"That's it," acknowledged Burns simply. "I lost control."
Chester was staring at him. It was not in the nature of
reason to suppose that Red Pepper had lost control of that car
unless something else had happened first. The steering gear
of the Imp was certainly in perfect condition; Macauley had
said so. He wondered if Red meant that he had lost his
temper. But what could make him lose his temper - on Red Bank
hill?
They questioned him closely, all of them in turn. But that
was all he would say. He had lost control of the car. One or
two of the men who knew Burns least looked as if they could
tell what was the probable cause of such loss of control.
Chester wanted to knock them down as he fancied he recognized
this attitude of mind. And at last they went away - which was
certainly the best thing they could do in the circumstances.
All but Ronald Grant. The Scottish surgeon accepted without
hesitation Burns's suggestion that Doctor Grant should stay
and keep him company for an hour or two while he got used to
his arm, and should then sleep under his roof. So they
settled down, Burns on his couch, Grant in an armchair. When
Chester left he was thinking that, except for the outward
signs of his adventure, Burns did not look as unfit as might
have been expected for a happy hour with an old friend.
Just outside the house Chester himself had an adventure. He
was quite alone, and he almost ran into a slim figure on the
walk. The lights from the office shone out into the October
night, and Chester could see at a glance who the girl was,
even if the gleam of golden hair which all the town knew had
not told him. She was panting and her hand was on her side.
"Did Doctor Burns get home all right?" she cried under her
breath.
"What do you know about Doctor Burns?" was Chester's quick
reply. He was startled by the girl's appearance here at this
hour.
"It doesn't make any difference what I know. Tell me if he
got home. Was he much hurt? Why shouldn't you tell me that,
Mr. Chester?"
"He is home and all right. Do you want him professionally?
He can't go out to-night."
"I know he can't. But I had to know he got home. I - "
She sank down on the doorstep, shaken and sobbing. Chester
stood looking down at het, wondering what on earth he was to
say. What had Rose Seeley to do with Red? What had she to do
with his losing control on the Red Bank hill? A quick thought
crossed his mind, to be as quickly dismissed. No, whatever
Red's private affairs were, they could have nothing to do with
this Rose - too bruised and trampled a rose to take the fancy
of a man like him even in his most evil hour.
Suddenly she lifted her head. "He saved my life and 'most
lost his. They'd been making repairs on the hill and, some
way, the lanterns wasn't lit. It's an awful dark night. He
saw what he was comin' to and turned out sudden into the
grass. He had to go into the ditch, then, not to run over me
- and somebody else. He ran away!" Plainly that scornful
accent did not mean Burns. "I didn't. I helped him get the
car up. I got his engine goin' for him; he showed me how.
His arm was broke. There ain't no house for a mile out there.
I hated to see him try to come home alone. I've walked all
the way - run some of it - to make sure he got here."
"He got here," murmured Chester, thinking to himself that this
was the queerest story he'd over heard, but confident he would
never have any better version of it and pretty sure that it
was the true one.
"I suppose I'm a crazy fool to tell you, Mr. Chester," said
the girl thickly. "But you're a gentleman. You won't tell.
No more will he. He didn't tell you how it happened, did he?"
She did not ask the question. She made the assertion, looking
to him for confirmation. Chester gave it. "No, he didn't
tell," he said gravely,
When she had gone he crossed the lawn to his own home, musing.
"For a `plain, quiet dinner,'" said he, quoting a phrase of
Burns's used when he gave Chester the invitation, "I think
Red's has been about as spectacular as they make 'em. Bully
old boys"
CHAPTER XI.
IN WHICH HE GETS EVEN WITH HIMSELF
R. P. Burns sat at his desk in the inner office, laboriously
inscribing a letter with his left hand. It did not get on
well. The handwriting in the four lines he had succeeded in
fixing upon paper bore not the slightest resemblance to his
usual style; instead, it looked like the chirography of a
five-year-old attempting for the first time to copy from some
older person's script.
He held up the sheet and gazed at it in disgust. Then he
glanced resentfully at his sling-supported right arm,
especially at the fingers which protruded from the bandages in
unaccustomed limp whiteness. Then he shook his left fist at
it. "You'll do some work the minute you come out of those
splints," he said. "You'll work your passage back to fitness
quicker than an arm ever did before, you pale-faced shirk!"
Then he applied himself to his task, painfully forming a
series of pothooks until one more sentence was completed. He
read it over, then suddenly crumpled the sheet into a ball and
dropped it into the waste basket.
"Lie there!" he whimsically commanded it. "You're not fit to
go to a lady."
He got up and marched into the outer office where his office
nurse sat at a typewriter, making lout bills.
"Miss Mathewson," he requested gruffly, "please take a
dictation. No, not on the bill letterheads - on the regular
office sheets. I'll speak slowly. In fact, I'll probably
speak very slowly."
"I'm sorry I don't know shorthand," said Miss Mathewson,
preparing her paper.
"I'm not. Instead, I'd rather you'd be as slow as you can, to
give me time to think. I'm not used to transmitting mediums -
the battery may be weak - in fact, I'm pretty sure it is. All
ready? My dear Mrs. Lessing"
His cheek reddened suddenly as he saw the nurse's waiting
hands poised over the keys when she had written this address.
He cleared his throat and plunged in.
"This has been a typical November day, dull and cold. We had
fine October weather clear into the second week of this month,
but all at once it turned cold and dull. The leaves are all
off the trees - Hold on don't say that. She knows the leaves
are all off the trees the middle of November."
"I have it partly written."
"Oh! Well, go on, then; I'll fix it: a fact it may be
necessary to remind you of down there in South Carolina, where
- Miss Mathewson, do you suppose the leaves are on in South
Carolina?"
"I really don't know, Doctor Burns. I have always lived in
the North."
"So have I - bother it! Well, leave that out."
"But I've written `a fact it may be necessary - "
"Well, finish it: a fact at may be necessary to remind you of,
you have been gone so long. Oh, hang it -that sounds flat!
How can I tell how a sentence is coming out, this way? Let
that paragraph stand by itself - we'll hasten on to something
that will take the reader's mind off our unfortunate
beginning:
"You will be glad to know that Bobby Burns is well, and not
only well, but fat and hearty. He had a wrestling bout with
Harold Macauley the other day and downed him. He got a black
eye, but that didn't count, though you may not like to hear of
it. He is heavier than when you saw him - Oh, I've said that!
Miss Mathewson, when you see I'm repeating myself, hold me
up."
"I can't always tell when you're going to repeat yourself,"
Miss Mathewson objected.
"That's enough about Bob, anyhow. Mrs. Macauley writes her
all about him every week, only she probably didn't mention the
black eye. Well, let's start a new paragraph. When in doubt,
always start a new paragraph. It may turn out a gold mine.
"I found my work much crippled by the loss of my arm. Good
Heavens, that sounds as if I'd had it amputated! And I
suppose she naturally would infer that a man can't do as much
with his arm in a sling as he can when it's in commission.
Well, let it stand. I didn't realize how much surgery I was
doing till I had to cut it all out. `Cut it out,' that
certainly has a surgical ring. It sounds rather bragging,
too, I'm afraid. Never mind. The worst of it is to feel the
muscles ,atrophying from disuse and the tissues wasting, so
that when it comes out of the splints it will still have to be
cured of the degeneration the splints have - Oh, hold on, Miss
Mathewson - this sounds like a paper for a surgical journal!"
Burns, who had been walking up and down the room, cast himself
into an armchair and stared despairingly at his amanuensis.
But she reassured him by saying quietly that it was always
difficult to dictate when one was not used to it, and that the
letter sounded quite right.
"Well, if you think so, we'll try another paragraph - that's
certainly enough about me. Let me see - " He ran his left
hand through his hair.
Footsteps sounded upon the porch. Arthur Chester opened the
door.
"Oh, excuse me, Red. It's nothing. I was going for a tramp,
and I thought "
"I'm with you." Burns sprang to his feet looking immensely
relieved. "Thank you, Miss Mathewson, we'll finish another
time. Or perhaps I can scrawl a finish with my left hand.
I'll take the letter. I'll look in at Bob and get my hat in a
jiffy, Ches."
He seized the letter, ran into the inner office, looked in at
the dimly-lighted room where the boy was sleeping, took up a
soft hat and, out of sight of Miss Mathewson, crammed the
typewritten sheet into his pocket in a crumpled condition.
Pulling the soft hat well down over his eyes he followed
Chester out into the fresh November night, drawing a long
breath of satisfaction as the chill wind struck him.
"You were just in time to save me from an awful scrape I'd got
myself into," he remarked as they tramped away.
"I thought you looked hot and unhappy. Were you proposing to
Miss Mathewson by letter? It's always best to say those
things right out: letters are liable to misinterpretation,"
jeered Chester.
"You're right there. I was riding for a fall fast enough when
you reined up alongside. But what's a fellow to do when he
can't write himself, except in flytracks?"
"I presume the lady would prefer the fly-track to a
typewritten document executed by another woman."
"How do you know the thing was to a lady?" Burns demanded.
"That's easy. No man looks as upset as you did over a
communication to another man. What do you write to her for,
anyhow, when she's as near as Washington?"
"What?"
"Doesn't she keep you informed? Winifred says Martha says
Ellen came back up to Washington yesterday for the wedding of
a friend - hastily arranged - to an army officer suddenly
ordered somewhere - old friend of Ellen's - former bridesmaid
of hers, I believe. She - "
Burns had stopped short in the middle of the hubbly,
half-frozen street they were crossing. "How long does she
stay in Washington?"
"I don't know. Ask Win. Probably not long, since she only
came for this wedding. It's tonight, I think she said.
Aren't you coming?"
Burns walked on at a rapid stride with which Chester,
shorter-legged and narrower-chested, found it difficult to
keep up. They had their tramp, a four-mile course which they
were accustomed to cover frequently together at varying paces.
Chester thought they had never covered it quite so quickly nor
so silently before. For Burns, from the moment of receiving
Chester's news, appeared to fall into a reverie from which it
was impossible to draw him, and the subject of which his
companion found it not difficult to guess. After the first
half mile, Chester, than whom few men were more adaptable to a
friend's mood, accepted the situation and paced along as
silently as Burns, until the round was made and the two were
at Burns's door.
"Good night. Afraid I've been dumb as an oyster," was Burns's
curt farewell, and Chester chuckled as he walked away.
"Something'll come of the dumbness," he prophesied to himself.
Something did. It was a telegram, telephoned to the office by
a sender who rejoiced that having one's left arm in a sling
did not obstruct one's capacity to send pregnant messages by
wire. He had obtained the address from Martha Macauley, also
over the telephone:
"Mrs. E. F. Lessing, Washington, D. C.
Am leaving Washington to-night. Hope to have drive with you
to-morrow morning in place of letters impossible to write. R.
P. BURNS."
"I suppose that's a fool telegram," he admitted to himself as
he hung up the receiver, "but after that typing mess I had to
express myself somehow except by signs. Now to get off.
Luckily, this suit'll do. No time to change, anyhow."
He telephoned for a sleeper berth; he called up a village
physician and the house surgeon at the city hospital, and made
arrangements with each for seeing his patients during the two
nights and a day of his absence. He had no serious case on
hand and, of course, no surgical work, so that it was easier
to get away than it might be again for a year after his arm
should be once more to be counted on. Then he interviewed
Cynthia on the subject of Bob; after which he packed a small
bag, speculating with some amusement, as he did so, on the
succession of porters, bell-boys, waiters and hotel valets he
should have to fee during the next thirty-six hours to secure
their necessary assistance, from the fastening of his shoes to
the tying of his scarfs, the cutting up of his food, and the
rest of the hundred little services which must be rendered the
man with his right arm in a sling.
"I may not look a subject for travel, Miss Mathewson," he
announced with a brilliant smile, appearing once more in the
outer office, where the bill-copying was just coming to a
finish, "but I'm off, nevertheless. Thank you for your
struggle with my schoolboy composition. We won't need to
finish it. I'm - Oh, thunder!"
It was the office bell. Miss Mathewson answered it. Burns,
prepared to deny himself to all ordinary petitioners, saw the
man's face and stopped to listen. It was a rough-looking
fellow who told him his brief story, but the hearer listened
with attention and his face became grave. He turned to Miss
Mathewson.
"Call Johnny Caruthers and the Imp, please," he directed.
"Telephone the Pullman ticket office and change my berth
reservation from the ten-thirty to the one o'clock train."
He went out with the man, and Miss Mathewson heard him say:
"You walked in, Joe? You can ride back with us on the
running-board."
Ten minutes after he had gone Chester came again. He found
Miss Mathewson reading by the office droplight. On the desk
stood a travelling bag; beside it lay a light overcoat, not
the sort that Red Pepper was accustomed to wear in the car, a
dress overcoat with a silk lining. On it reposed a that and a
pair of gloves rolled into a ball, man fashion. Chester
regarded with interest these unmistakable signs of intended
travel.
"Doctor Burns going out of town?" he inquired casually. It
must be admitted that he had scented action of some sort on
the wind which had taken his friend from his company at the
conclusion of the walk. Ordinarily, Burns would have gone
into Chester's den and settled down for an hour of talk before
bedtime.
"I believe so," Miss Mathewson replied in the noncommittal
manner of the professional man's confidential assistant. "But
he has gone out for a call now."
"Back soon?"
"I don't know, Mr. Chester."
"Did he go in the Imp?"
"Yes."
"Country call, probably - they're the ones that bother a man
at night as long as he does country work. I've often told
Doctor Burns it was time he gave up this no-'count rural
practice. Well, do you know what time his train goes?"
"After midnight, some time." Miss Mathewson knew that Mr.
Chester was Doctor Burns's close friend, but she was too
accustomed to keep, her lips closed over her employers affairs
to give information, even to Chester, except under protest.
"Hm! Well, I believe I'll sit up for him and help him off. A
one-armed man needs an attendant. Don't stay up, Miss
Mathewson. I'll take any message he may leave for you."
"I'm afraid I ought to wait," replied the faithful nurse
doubtfully.
"I don't believe it. Go home and go to bed, like a tired
girl, as you no doubt are, and trust me. If he wants you I
promise to telephone you. I'll see him off and like to do it.
Come!"
There being no real reason for doing otherwise than follow
this most sensible advice, Miss Mathewson went away. Chester,
settling himself by the drop-light in the chair she had
vacated, fancied she looked a trifle disappointed and wondered
why. Surely, he reasoned, the girl must get enough of erratic
night work without sitting up merely to hand Burns his
overcoat and wish him a pleasant journey.
It was a long wait. Chester enlivened it by telephoning
Winifred that he wouldn't be home till morning - or sooner,
and elicited a flurry of questioning which he evaded rather
clumsily.
It was all right for him to be curious concerning Red's
affairs, he considered, but there was no need for the women to
get started on inquisitive questions.
He read himself asleep at last over the office magazines, and
was awakened by a hurried step on the porch and a gust of
November night air on his warm face.
"What are you doing here?" was the question which assaulted
him.
"Sitting up for you," was Chester's sleepy reply. He rubbed
his eyes. "Thought you might like to have me see you off:"
"I'm not going anywhere except back to the case I've just
left. Go home and go to bed."
Chester sat up. He looked at Burns with awakening interest.
He had never seen his friend's face look grimmer than it did
now under the gray slouch hat, which he had worn for the
tramp, pulled well down over his brows, and which, during all
his preparations and his hasty departure in the car, it had
not occurred to him to remove or to exchange for the leather
cap he usually wore on such trips.
" Back to a country case instead of to Washington?"
Incredulity was written large on Chester's face.
Burns nodded, growing grimmer than before, if that were
possible. He sat down on the arm of a chair, glancing over at
the desk where his belongings lay. "How did you know I was
going to Washington?"
"Inferred it."
"You're mighty quick at inference. Maybe I wasn't. But I
was. Now I'm not. That's all there is to it."
"But why not? Can't you turn the case over? I'll bet my hat
it's a dead-beat case at that!"
Burns nodded again. "It is."
"You're an ass, then."
"Perhaps."
"You don't expect - her - to stay in Washington waiting for
you, do you, when she only came up for that wedding and is
going straight back to keep some other engagements? That's
what Win says she's to do."
"No, I don't expect her to wait." Burns pulled the slouch hat
lower yet. Chester could barely see his eyes. He could only
hear the tone of his denial of any such absurd expectation.
Chester rose and stood looking down at his friend, who had
folded his left arm over his right in its sling, as he sat on
the chair arm, and looked the picture of dogged resignation.
"I suppose there's some reason at the bottom of what strikes
me as pure foolishness," he admitted. "You won't do me the
honour of mentioning it?"
"Case of infected wound in the foot. Threatened tetanus.
Five-year-old child."
"Nobody competent to treat the case but you?"
Burns looked up. Chester saw his eyes now, gloomy but
resolute. "No. It's up to me alone. I owe it to the woman.
It's the only child she has left: a girl. It was her boy I
sent to a better world with maledictions on his mother's
head."
Comprehension dawned at last on Chester's face. He saw that,
taking into consideration Burns's feeling in that matter,
there was really nothing to be said. "I hope you win out," he
evolved at length from the confusion of ideas in his mind.
"I hope I do." Burns rose. "I must send a telegram," he said,
and went to the telephone in the inner office.
While he was there Chester heard the honk of the Imp's horn
outside. When Burns came back he opened the outer door and
called to Johnny Caruthers, to know if he had obtained the
serum for which he had been sent to the druggist. Johnny
shouted back that he had. Burns turned to Chester.
"Good night," he said. "Much obliged for waiting up for me."
Then, with a certain fighting expression on his lips which
Chester had learned to know meant that his whole purpose was
set on the attainment of an end for which no price could be
too great to pay, Burns went out to Johnny Caruthers and the
Green Imp.
CHAPTER XII
IN WHICH HE HAS HIS OWN WAY
Doc" - Joe Tressler followed Burns down the path, leaving his
wife standing in the doorway, her eyes fixed, on the
retreating figure of the man who had saved to her her one
remaining child - "Doc, we ain't a-goin' to forget this!"
"Neither am I, Joe, for various reasons," replied Burns,
watching Johnny Caruthers try the Green Imp's spark. He
jumped in beside Johnny and looked back at Joe. "Remember,
now, keep things going just as I leave them, and I shall
expect to find Letty nearly as well as ever when I see her
again. I shall be back in five days. Good-bye."
"Yes."
"I'll be around when you get back, with some money."
Burns looked the man in the eye. "Oh, come, Joe, don't say
anything you don't mean."
"I mean it this time, Doe - I sure do. Me and the old woman -
we - Letty - " The fellow choked.
"All right, Joe. I'm as glad as you are Letty's safe. Take
care of her. Take care of your wife. Do a stroke of good,
back-breaking work once in a while. It'll help that tired
feeling of yours that's getting to be dangerously chronic.
You've no idea, Joe, what a satisfaction it is, now and then,
to feel that you've accomplished something. Try it.
Good-bye."
He waved his hand at the woman in the door, who responded with
a flutter of her dingy apron; which was immediately thereafter
applied to her eyes. Within, by the window, a little
pale-faced girl hugged a remarkable doll with yellow hair and
a red silk frock.
"You'd ought to be pretty proud, Letty Tressler," said the
woman, returning to the small convalescent, "to think Doc
kissed you when he left. He's been awful good to you, Doc
has, and him with that arm in a sling a-bothering him all the
time. But I didn't think he'd do that."
"Maybe it's 'cause I'm so clean now," speculated the child
weakly. "When he did it he whispered in my ear that he liked
clean faces."
"Letty, you ain't goin' to have any kind o' face but a clean
face after this, jest on account o' Doc Burns," vowed her
mother emotionally, and the child, her doll pressed against
her face, nodded.
Far down the road Burns was bidding Johnny Caruthers put on
more speed. "We have to make time to-day, Johnny," he
explained. "I'm going to get off on that ten-thirty to-night
if I have to break my other arm to do it. I don't know that
I'd be much more helpless than I am now if I did. Curious,
Johnny, how many things there are a man can't do with one
hand."
"I should say you could do more with that left hand of yours
than most folks can with both," declared young Caruthers,
honest admiration in his eye.
Burns laughed - a hearty, care-free laugh. He was in wild
spirits, Johnny could see that, and wondered why the Doctor
should be so happy over pulling a dead-beat family out of
their troubles. Everybody knew Joe Tressler. And Johnny
understood that the Doctor had given up going away on Joe's
account ten days ago, when he took the case on the eve of his
departure. Johnny had seen his employer in all stages of
tension since that day, as he had driven him out, at first
half-a-dozen times in the twenty-four hours, to this same
little old wreck of a house. Johnny had driven him to other
houses, also to one especially, in the city, where the lad had
sat and speculated much on the extremes of experience in the
life of a busy practitioner.
It was to this same house that Johnny took Burns next; a house
reached by a long drive through wonderful grounds, to a palace
of a home within which the man with his arm in the sling
disappeared with precisely the same rather brusque and hurried
bearing characteristic of him everywhere. But Johnny could
not see within. If he had, his honest eyes might have opened
still wider.
On his way upstairs Burns was intercepted by the master of the
house.
"You've decided to go with us, Doctor Burns, I hope?" The
question was put in the fashion of a person who expects but
one answer. But the answer proved to be not that one
expected.
"I'm sorry, but I can't do it, Mr. Walworth." Burns's left
hand, in the cordial grip which expresses hearty liking, was
retained while William Walworth, who was accustomed to be able
to arrange all things to his pleasure by the simple expedient
of paying whatever it might cost, stared into the bright hazel
eyes which met his with their usual straightforward glance.
"Can't'! But you must, my dear Doctor, Pardon me, but I feel
that no ordinary considerations can be allowed to stand in the
way. My daughter needs your care on this journey. Her mother
and I have agreed that her wish to have you with us must be
fulfilled. It's an essential factor in her recovery."
"It's not essential at all, Mr. Walworth. Miss Evelyn is well
started on the road to full health; she has only to keep on.
My going with you would be a mere matter of pleasing her, and
that's not in the least necessary."
His smile softened the words which struck upon the ear of the
magnate with an unaccustomed sound. Mr. Walworth released
Burns's hand, his manner stiffening slightly.
"I must differ with you, Doctor. I feel that at this stage
Evelyn's pleasure is a thing to be planned for. She has taken
this fancy to have you with us on the Mediterranean cruise.
We'll agree to land you and send you home at the end of a
couple of months if you positively feel that you can't neglect
your practice longer. But let me remind you, Doctor, that
your fee will be made to cover all possible income from your
practice during that time, and - I shall not be contented to
measure its size by that."
It was Burns's turn to stiffen within, if he did not let it
show outwardly. He spoke positively and finally. Even
William Walworth saw that it would be of no use to urge a man
who said quite quietly:
"I've thought it over, as I promised you, and decided against
it. I assure you I appreciate the honour you would do me, and
I should immensely like the experience. But I know my going
is not necessary to Miss Evelyn's recovery, and that's the
only thing that could make me hesitate. I'll go up and see
her at once, if you will forgive my haste. I have a busy day
before me."
William Walworth looked after him as he ran up the stately
staircase, and his thoughts were somewhat as Johnny
Caruthers's had been. "He's more of a man, crippled like
that, than any I know. I wonder why he won't go. I wonder.
But he won't, that's settled. Now to appease Evelyn. He'll
not find that so easy."
Burns did not find it easy. He sat down beside the
convalescent, a patient who had everything on her side with
which to win her chosen physician's consent to stay by her
till she should be in the possession once more of the blooming
beauty which had made her one of the envied of the earth. He
told her, in the direct manner he had used with her father,
that he could not fall in with their plans.
When he came away he was tingling all over. It had been so
plain. She had tried to disguise it, but she was where she
could not run to cover, and he had seen it all. It gave him
no pleasure: he was not that sort. He was sorry for the girl,
but he was not in the least anxious about her. She would get
over it; it was not his fault - he was conscience-clear on
that. If ever he had been coolly - however kindly -
professional in his bearing it had been in this home of great
wealth, where it would have gone against his inmost grain to
have seemed to court liking. If anything, his orders had been
more curt, his concessions fewer, his whole treatment of the
case on simpler lines than it might have been in almost any
less pretentious home with which he was familiar.
He ran down the stone steps in eager haste to be gone, his
vision still engaged with the reproachful look Evelyn's mother
had given him when she heard of his incredible refusal to
accompany the Walworths on the luxuriously-equipped expedition
in search of recuperation and enjoyment for the idolized only
daughter. "This settles me with them to the end of time, I
suppose," he said to himself. As the car ran down the drive,
he straightened his shoulders with a sense of thankfulness
that his practice was not often in the homes of the
comparatively few people who can afford to buy even that most
precious of commodities, the time of others, when that time
has been consecrated to certain uses.
"Not going to stop for lunch, Doctor?" inquired young
Caruthers anxiously, as the round of calls went on and one
o'clock passed, with the Imp in a portion of the city remote
from the hotel at which
Burns was accustomed to refresh himself and Johnny when home
was out of the question.
"We'll go to the hospital next, and I shall be there a couple
of hours. You can go and fill up then. I must be back at the
office by four - for engagements."
So the day went. The busy physician who goes out of town for
even a five days' vacation must plan for it and do much
arranging in various ways. In spite of the fact that it would
still be many weeks before Burns could attempt surgery again,
he was having plenty to do. Only the determination to get
away this time without fail made it possible for him to go.
But there would be never a time when he could better be
spared, and he meant to let nothing hinder his purpose.
"The arm's coming on well," was Doctor Buller's verdict late
that afternoon as he gave the healing member its usual
manipulation and massage. "It takes patience to wait, though,
doesn't it, Burns? Never tried a broken arm myself, but I
should say that hand must be itching to be at work in the
operating-room again."
"Itching! It's burning, blistering, scarifying! I never knew
how I liked that part of my work till I had to come down to an
exclusive practice in pills and plasters. Grayson's doing a
stunt to-day that would have driven me mad with envy if I
could have stopped to look on. Doing it cleverly, too, by the
report I had from Van Horn just now. When Van takes the
trouble to praise another man it means something."
"Means it's been forced from him," commented Buller.
"Besides, Van enjoys praising Grayson to you. He's enjoyed
your smashed arm, too, the old fraud. Was he ever so decent
to you before?"
Burns laughed. "You can't strike fire that way today," he
declared. "Hold on! You're not going to put that arm back
into the splints?"
"Of course I am. It lacks two days yet off the shortest
modern regulation period. Come on here."
"Leave 'em off. I'll take the consequences."
"Don't be foolish, man. If I had my way I'd keep the thing
put up another full week. I'm not an advocate of this hurry
business."
"I am. The arm's well enough to come out. I'll wear it in a
sling, but I want my coat sleeve on, and I'm going to have it
on. Fix me up, will you? I'm in a hurry."
"You're going on a journey?"
"Yes. Get busy."
"That's the very reason why you should keep that arm out of
danger till you get back. Jostling round in a crowd "
"Is this my arm or yours?" thundered Burns.
Buller laughed. "Don't knock me down with it, Pepper-pot. It
may be your arm, but you're my patient, and I - "
"Don't you fool yourself. If you won't fix me up I'll go out
with it hanging, I can judge my own condition. Will you dress
me and put any arm in this sling here, or must I send for
Grayson? He's none of your idiotic conservatives."
"Keep quiet, and I'll make you look pretty, little boy. I see
- these are new clothes just home from the tailor, and they're
an elegant fit. Bully fresh scarf, peach of a pin, brand-new
black silk sling - Oh, I say!"
For with his good left arm Burns was threatening his
professional friend in a way that looked ominous. But a laugh
was in his eye, now that he had got his way, and the
altercation ended in a fire of jokes. Then Burns stood up.
"You're a jewel, Buller boy," said he. "You've brought me
through in great shape. It was a nasty fracture, and you've
given me an arm that'll be as good as new. I'm grateful - you
know that. Now, if you'll look over that list I gave you of
cases here in the city, and go out once to take a look at
Letty Tressler, I'll be ever faithfully yours. Griggs'll see
to my village practice. Now I'm off."
"Hope you enjoy your trip. Must be a concentrated pleasure,
to be crammed into five days and still make you look like a
schoolboy just let out," observed Buller as Burns turned, with
his band on the door-knob.
"A dose doesn't have to be big to be powerful," rejoined
Burns, opening the door.
"Nitro-glycerin, eh?" Buller called after the departing bulk
of his friend. "Don't let it carry you too far up. You might
come down with a thud!"
"He's right enough there," was what Burns murmured to himself
as he caught the elevator in the great building in which
Buller's office was a crowded corner. "I may come down in
just that style. But better that than any more of this dead
level of suspense. I don't think I could stand that one more
day."
He and Johnny Caruthers whirled home in the Imp to find
Burns's village office as crowded as Buller's city one. It
was late before he could get his dinner, and after it he was
kept busy turning calls over to other men. It was the usual
experience to have work pile up during the last hours, as if
Fate were against his breaking his chains and meant to tie him
hand and foot.
'I'm going to get out of this right now," he announced
suddenly to Miss Mathewson an hour before train time, as he
turned away from a siege over the telephone with one
hysterical lady who felt that her life depended upon his
remaining to see her through an attack of indigestion. "If I
don't, something will come in that will pull hard to keep me
home, and I'm not going to be kept. I'll trust you not to
look me up for the next hour, for I'll not tell you where I'm
going, and you can't guess, you know. Good-bye. Be a good
girl."
He wrung her hand, looking at her with that warmth of
friendliness which he was accustomed, when in the mood, to
bestow on her, recognizing how invaluable she was to him, and
never once recking what it meant to her to be so closely
associated with him. She answered in her usual quiet way,
wishing him a safe journey and bidding him be very careful of
the arm, no longer protected except by the silken sign that
injury had been done.
"In a crowd, you know, they won't notice the sling," she
warned him.
"Won't they? Well, if my trusty left can't protect my
battered right I've forgotten my boxing tricks. Don't be
anxious about that, little friend. See that Amy Mathewson has
a good time in my absence, will you? She's looking just a bit
worn, to me."
She smiled, but her eyes did not meet his: she dared not let
them. With all his kindness to her he did not often speak
with the real affection which was in his voice now. She
understood that he was, for some reason, keyed high over his
prospective journey even higher than he had been ten days
before when on the point of leaving. And she knew well enough
where he was going, though he had not told her. It would have
taken thirty-six hours to go to Washington, spend a brief time
there and return. It was going to take five days to go to
South Carolina, remain long enough to transact his business -
was it business? - and come back. And there had been no more
attempts to write letters by way of an amanuensis. The
affection for his assistant in his manner to her was genuine,
she did not doubt that, but it did not deceive her for a
moment. So, she did not let her eyes meet his. They rested,
instead, on the scarfpin which Buller had termed a "peach,"
but they did not see it. She could not remember when it had
been so hard to maintain that quiet control of herself which
had long since made her employer cease to reckon with the
possibilities of fire beneath.
R. P. Burns stole away with Johnny and the Imp, without so
much as letting his neighbours know of his intentions. He had
made sure that they were all well; that no incipient scarlet
fever or invading measles was threatening them. He smiled to
himself as the car went past the Chester house, to think how
interested they would be to know where he was going. But he
got safely off and nobody opened a door at sound of the Imp to
call to him to come in a minute because somebody seemed not
quite well.
And then, after all, he ran upon Arthur Chester - and at the
city station, to which he had taken the precaution to go,
although the ten-thirty stopped for a half-minute at the
village. It must be admitted that he tried to dodge his best
friend, but he did not succeed. His shoulders were too
conspicuous: he could not get away.
"Going to see an out-of-town patient at this hour of night?"
queried Chester, coming up warmly interested, as best friends
have a trick of being, in spite of all that can be done to
avert their curiosity.
"Where else would I be going?"
"I don't know where else, but I doubt if it's to see a
patient. There's an air about you that's not professional.
You - er - you can't be going to Washington? There's nobody
there now."
"No, only a few Government officials and some odds and ends of
hangers-on. To be sure, Congress is in session, but there's
nobody there. My train's been called, Ches; so long."
"Let me carry your bag." Chester reached for it. "I say, this
isn't a tool-kit - this is a stunner of a regulation
travelling bag. See here, Red," he was rushing along on the
other's side, fairly running to keep up with Burns's strides -
"how long are you going to be gone?"
"Long enough to get a change of air. The atmosphere's heavy
here with inquisitive people who call themselves your friends.
See here, Ches, you're not looking well. You need rest and
sleep. Go home and go to bed."
"You're always telling me to go home and go to bed. Not till
I see which train you take," panted Chester, his eyes
sparkling. "Ha! Going to turn in at Number Four gate, are
you? Sorry I can't take your bag inside. Well, possibly I
can guess your destination. Got your section clear through to
South Carolina? I say, keep your head, old man, keep your
head!"
Burns turned about, shook his fist at Arthur Chester, seized
his bag, rushed through the gateway and boarded the last of
the long string of Pullmans. On the platform he pulled off
his hat and waved it at his friend. He could forgive anybody
for anything tonight.
CHAPTER XIII
IN WHICH HE MAKES NO EVENING CALL
Burns opened the white gate - it was sagging a little on its
hinges -and walked up the moss-grown path between the rows of
liveoaks to the tall-columned portico of the still stately, if
somewhat timeworn and decayed, mansion among the shrubbery.
It was just at dusk, and far away somewhere a whippoorwill was
calling. It was the only sound on the quiet air.
The door was opened by an old negro servant, who hesitated
over his answer to the question put by this unknown person
looming up before him with his arm in a sling. Mrs. Elmore
was in, but she was not well and could not see any visitors
this evening.
"Is Mrs. Lessing in?"
"Yas, Sah, she is. But she done tole me she couldn't see
nobody herse'f. She tekkin' cah ob Miss Lucy."
Burns produced his card and made a persuasive request. The
old darky led the way to a long, nearly dark apartment, where
the scent of roses mingled with the peculiar odour of old
mahogany and ancient rugs and hangings. The servant lit a
tall, antique lamp with crystal pendants hanging from its
shade, the light from which fell upon a bowlful of crimson
roses so that they glowed richly. He left Burns, departing
with a shufing step and an air of grudging the strange
gentleman the occupancy of the room, although it was to be for
only so long as it would take to bring back word that neither
of the ladies would see him to-night.
Burns sat still for the space of two minutes then, as no
further sound could be heard in the quiet house, he became
restless. His pulses beat rather heavily and, to quiet them
or the sense of them, he got up and walked about, pausing at
one of the long French windows to gaze out into the dusky
labyrinth of a garden, where he could just make out paths
winding about among the bushes. The night was mild, and the
window stood ajar as if some one had lately come in.
Then he turned and saw her. She had almost reached him, but
he had not heard her, her footfall upon the old Turkey carpet
with its faded roses and lilies had been so light. She was in
white, and the light from the old lamp shone on her arms end
face and brought out the shadows of her hair and eyes. She
put out both hands - then quickly drew back one as her glance
fell upon the sling, and gave him her left, smiling. But he
drew the arm that had been broken out of its support and held
it out.
"Please take this hand, too," he said. "It will be its first
experience and, perhaps, it will put new life into it. It's
pretty limp yet."
She laid hers in it very gently, looking down at it as his
fingers closed slowly over hers.
"That's doing very well, I should think," she said. "It's
barely time for it to be independent yet, is it?"
"About time. I had something of a wrestle with Doctor Buller
to get him to leave the splints off. How warm and soft your
hand is. This one of mine has forgotten how the touch of
another hand feels."
"I'm sure you ought not to use it yet. Please put it back in
the sling." She drew her own hand gently away.
It occurred to him that while he had been absent from her he
had not been able to recall half her charm, and that if he had
he would never have been able to wait half so long before
pursuing her down into this Southern haunt of hers. He drew a
full, contented breath.
"At last," he said, "I am face to face with you. It's worth
the journey."
In the lamplight it seemed to him the rose cast a reflection
on her face which he had not observed at first.
"I'm so sorry Aunt Lucy isn't able to see you tonight," she
said - "unless she would consent go see you professionally.
She really ought "
He held up his hand "Not unless she is in serious straits,
please," he begged. "I've fled from patients, only to find
them all the way down on the train. I don't know what there
can be about me to suggest to a conductor that I'm the man
he's looking for to attend some emergency case, but he seems
to spot me. Only at the station before this did I get
released from the last of the series. Let me forget my
profession for a bit if I can, just now I'm only a man who's
come a long way to see you. Is it really you?"
He leaned forward, studying her intently. His head, with its
coppery thatch of heavy hair, showed powerful lines in the
lamplight; beneath his dark throws the hazel eyes glowed
black.
"It's certainly I," she answered lightly. "And being I, with
the mistress of the house prevented from showing you
hospitality, I must offer it. She begged me to make you
comfortable and to tell you she would see you in the morning.
You've had a long journey. You must want the comfort of a
room and hot water. I'll ring for Old Sam."
She crossed the room and pulled an old-fashioned bell-cord,
upon which a bell was heard to jangle far away. The old darky
reappeared.
"I should have gone to a hotel," Burns said, "if I could have
found one in the place."
"There is none. And if there had been Aunt Lucy would have
been much hurt to have you go there. Where did you leave your
bag?"
"At the station. I can stay only for a night and a day, so
it's a small one."
"I'll send Young Sam for it. Now let Sam take you to your
room, and in a few minutes I'll give you supper,"
"Don't bother about supper at this hour. I only want - "
"You want what you are to have, - some of Sue's delicious
Southern cookery." She smiled at him as he looked back at
her, following the old servant. "She's been in the family for
forty years and she loves to have company to appreciate her
dishes. Sam, you are to help Doctor Burns. He has had a
broken arm."
When Burns came down, fresh from a bath and comfortable with
clean linen, he smelled odours which made him realize that,
eager as he was for other things, he was human enough to be
intensely hungry with a healthy man's appetite. So he
surrendered himself to the fortunes that now befell him.
Old Sam conducted him to the dining-room, a quaintly
attractive apartment where candle-light illumined the bare
mahogany of the round table laid with a large square of linen
at his place and set with delicate ancient china and silver.
Ellen Lessing was already there in a high-backed chair
opposite the one set for him, a figure to which his eyes were
again drawn irresistibly and upon which they continued to rest
as he took his seat.
Sam disappeared toward the kitchen, and Burns spoke in a low
voice across the table.
"I feel as if I were in a dream," said he. "Forty-eight hours
ago I was rushing about, hundreds of miles from here, trying
to attend to the wants of a lot of people who seemed
determined not to let me get away. Now I'm down here in the
midst of all this quiet and peace, with you before me to look
at, and nobody to demand anything of me for at least
twenty-four hours. It's all too good to be true."
"It seems rather odd to me, too," she answered, letting her
eyes stray from his and rest upon the bowl of japonicas of a
glowing pink, which stood in the centre of the table. The
candle-light made little starry points in her dark eyes as she
looked at the rich-hued blooms. "The last person in the world
I was expecting to see to-night was you."
"I suppose I was as far from your thoughts as your
expectation," he suggested.
"How should I be thinking of a person who had not written to
me for so long I thought he had forgotten me?" she asked, and
then as he broke out into a delighted laugh at her expense she
grew as, pink as her flowers and seemed to welcome the return
of Sam bearing a trayful of Sue's good things to eat.
Fried chicken and sweet potatoes, beaten biscuit and fragrant
coffee, had a flavour all their own to Burns that night. He
ate as a hungry man should, yet never forgot his companion for
a moment or allowed her to imagine that he forgot her. And by
and by the meal was over and the two rose from the table.
"I must go and see that Auntie is comfortable for the night,
if you will excuse me for half an hour," said the person he
had come to see. "Will you wait in the drawing-room? I will
have Sam bring you some late magazines."
"I'll wait, and no magazines, thank you. I can fill the time
somehow," he answered. "But don't let it be more than the
half-hour, will you?"
He watched her until she disappeared from his sight at the
turn of the staircase landing, then went in to pace up and
down the long room, his left arm folded over his right, after
the fashion he had acquired since the right arm became
useless. After what seemed an interminable interval she came
back. He met her at the door.
"Are the duties all done?" he inquired.
"All done for the present. I must look in on Auntie by and
by, but I think she is going to sleep."
"May she sleep the sleep of the just! And there's nothing
more you feel it incumbent upon you to do for me? No more
sending me to my room, no more waiting upon me by Sam, no more
feeding me till my capacity is reached? Is there really no
notion in your mind as to how you can put off the coming
hour?"
His voice had its old, whimsical inflection, but there was a
deeper note in it, too. She parried him gently, yet not quite
so composedly as was her wont.
"Why should I want to put if off? Aren't we going to sit down
and have a delightful talk? I want to hear all about Bob and
Martha and all of them, and about your work since I saw you."
"You want to hear all about those things, do you? I had the
impression that we discussed them quite thoroughly while I was
at supper. Still, I can go over them all again if you insist.
It may take up another five minutes, and when one is fencing
for time, even five minutes counts."
It was his old way, with a vengeance. There was a saying of
Arthur Chester's current among his and Burns's friends that it
never was of any use to try to evade Red Pepper when once he
had begun to fire upon your defenses. With his eyes searching
you and his insolent tongue putting point blank questions to
you, you might as well capitulate first as last.
There being no conceivable answer to this thrust about fencing
for time, even for a woman experienced in replying skilfully
to men under all sorts of conditions, Ellen Lessing was forced
to look up or play the part of a shy girl. So she looked up,
lifting her head bravely. There really was nothing else to
do.
It was all in his face. He had not come all those hundreds of
miles to pay her an evening call, nor did he mean to be put
off longer. His eyes held hers: she could not withdraw them.
"It's odd," he said, speaking slowly, "how like a magnet
drawing a steel bar you've drawn me down here. Pull-pull-pull
an irresistible force. I wonder if the magnet feels the
attraction, too? Could it pull so hard if it didn't?"
There was a long minute during which neither stirred - it
might have been the counterpart of that minute, months back,
when they had first observed each other. Recognition it was,
perhaps, at the very first; there could be no question about
the recognition now - it went deep.
Suddenly he slipped his right arm out of the sling. Before
she could draw breath she was in the circle of his arms, but
he had not touched her.
"Am I wrong?" he was saying. "Has it pulled both ways from
the first?"
It must be as useless for the magnet to resist as for the bar.
And when they, have come within a certain distance of each
other -
If Red Pepper's left arm caught her in the stronger grasp, the
right did all, and more than all, that could have been
expected of it. It was his right arm which slowly drew her
hands up, one after the other, and indicated to them that
their place was; locked together, behind his neck.
An old garden in South Carolina is a place to lure the
Northerner out-of-doors. Before breakfast next morning Burns
was walking down the box-bordered paths, feasting his gaze and
his sense of fragrance on the clumps of blue and white
violets, the clusters of gay crocuses, the splendid spikes of
Roman hyacinths. But he did not fail to keep track of all
doorways in sight, and when she appeared at the open French
window of the drawing-room he was there in a trice, offering
her a bunch of purple violets and feasting his eyes upon her
morning freshness.
"I'm still dreaming, I think," said he when he had drawn her
back into the quiet room long enough to satisfy himself with
the active demonstration that possession means privilege, and
had himself fastened the violets in the front of her crisp
white morning dress. "Dreaming that I can stay down here in
this wonderful paradise with you and not go back to the
slave's life I lead."
"You would never be happy away from that slave's life long,
you know," she reminded him. "The rush of it is the joy of it
to you."
"How will it be to you? I shall be yours, you remember, till
Joe Tressler or any other ne'er-do-weel wants me, then I'm
his."
"But you'll always come back to me," said she.
"And will you be content with that?"
"So long as you want to come back."
He looked steadily into her eyes, and his own took fire.
"Want to come back! I've waited a long time to find the woman
I could be sure I should always want to come back to. I
thought there would never be such a woman: not for an erratic
fellow like me . . . . But now I'm wondering how I shall ever
be able to stay away."
CHAPTER XIV
IN WHICH HE DEFIES SUPERSTITION
Hades of Hymen! Red, are you making calls this morning?"
"Why not? I'm not to be married till noon, am I?"
"I say, take me with you, will you? I want to go along with a
man who has the nerve to see patients up to the last minute
before his wedding!"
"Takes less nerve than to sit around and wait for the fateful
hour, I should say. Come on, if you think you'll have time to
dress when you get back. It may be close work."
"Haven't you got to dress yourself?" demanded Arthur Chester,
settling himself in the car beside its driver. "Or shall you
go to the altar in tweeds with April mud on your boots?"
"Rather than not get there, yes. But I can dress in half the
time you can - always could, and necessity has developed the
art. Look here, there isn't any April mud. The roads are
fine."
"Oh, I suppose if I were booked for a wedding journey in the
Green Imp before the leaves were fairly out I shouldn't be
able to see any mud myself. As it is, well, I don't know the
colour of the bride's motoring clothes, but I presume they'll
be adapted to the circumstances. I never saw her look
anything but ready for whatever situation she happened to be
in. That's a trick that'll serve her many a good turn as the
wife of R. P. Burns, M.D., eh, Red?"
The Imp whirled about the country all the morning, having made
an early start. The car was in fine fettle, like a horse that
has been trained for a race. Although it was beginning its
second season it had never been in better trim for business.
The engine, having been cared for and seldom abused, was
running more smoothly than when it had been first put upon the
road. The Imp had had a fresh coat of the dark-green which
gave it its name, and its brasswork was shining as only Johnny
Caruthers by long and untiring labors could make metal shine.
It had that morning acquired a luggage-rack attached to its
rear, which was soon to receive a leather-covered motor trunk
at that moment receiving its final consignments in the
Macauley house; and there were several other new fittings
about the machine which indicated that it was presently to be
put to uses which had never been required of it before.
The Imp drew up in front of the hospital. Chester looked
anxiously at his watch for the twenty-seventh time that
morning. "For Heaven's sake, hurry, Red," he urged. "Women
are the dickens about having a wedding late, and it's ten
minutes of eleven now. Noon comes sure and soon, and at noon,
allow me to remind you - "
Burns nodded. "Keep cool, boy," he recommended. "No use
getting excited before a critical operation."
But he disappeared at a pace fast enough to satisfy Chester,
who sat back and said to himself that R. P. had come nearer
giving the crisis before him its appropriate name than he had
ever heard done before.
He became anxious again, however, before Burns returned, and
his watch was in his hand when the prospective bridegroom
bolted out of the hospital door and ran for his car as if he
had not a moment to spare.
"Glad to see you're losing your head a trifle at last,"
commented Chester as the Imp turned a dizzy curve and shot
away. "It's the only proper thing. But we've really enough
time if you don't stop anywhere else. What's the matter?
Good Lord, man, you'll get nabbed if you speed up like this
within limits. You - "
"Cut it and don't talk. I've got to make time," was all the
answer or explanation he received; and Chester, with the
wisdom of long association with Red Pepper at his pepperest,
obeyed.
As they approached the house Burns spoke for the first time
since they had left the city. "Go in and tell the bunch I
have to do an operation at the hospital as quick as I can get
my stuff and drive back there. I'll be back at - "
"Great Christopher, man! But - "
"I can be back by two. Ellen will understand."
"The deuce she will! Don't ask me to explain to her."
"I won't. I'll do it myself. You tell the rest."
The Imp shot up the driveway. Burns jumped out and ran to his
office. Five minutes later, instrument bag in hand, he ran
out again, Miss Mathewson following. He bolted in at the
Macauleys' front door. Chester had already broken the
incredible news to Martha Macauley and was standing out a
storm of expostulations and reproaches, as if by any chance
anybody could expect Arthur Chester to be able to stop R. P.
Burns when be had started upon any course of action
whatsoever. But when Burns himself appeared at the doorway
the situation came to a crisis. Towering beside a group of
palms which decorated the foot of the staircase Burns demanded
to see Ellen.
"Why, Red, you can't. She's - besides how can you - "
"Ask her to come where I can speak to her then. Quick,
please."
"But she - "
There was no knowing how long the sparring might have lasted,
or what extreme measures might have been taken, had not a
figure in a floating lilac-and-white garment, with two long
braids of dark hair hanging over its shoulders, appeared upon
the staircase landing. Burns looked up, saw it, and was up
the stairs to the landing before Chester could flick an
eyelash.
"Dear, to save a life I want to delay things just two hours.
There's nobody else to do it. Van Horn was taken ill just as
he was getting ready. The only other man who would venture
under the conditions - Grayson - is out of town."
His arms were about her as she stood a step above him. So,
her eyes were level with his.
"Do it, of course," she whispered. "And take my love with
you."
For one minute Burns stayed to tell her that he had known she
would send him to his duty, then he was off. The door slammed
behind him, and outside the Imp's horn sent back a parting
salute.
>From the bottom stair Martha Macauley, distressed young matron
and hostess, gazed up at her sister, who, with arms leaning on
the vine-wreathed rail at the landing, was smiling down at
her.
"Ellen! Was ever anything so crazy! I did suppose Red would
take time enough to be married in. There's everybody coming."
"So few you can easily telephone them all to wait."
"And the breakfast under way - "
"It will keep."
"Aren't you superstitious enough not to want to postpone your
wedding?" demanded Martha urgently.
The dark braids of hair swung violently as the bride's head
was emphatically shaken. "Martha! Take it back! Let
somebody die because I was afraid to wait two hours?"
"I don't believe anybody would die," insisted Martha.
"Somebody could be found. It's just Red's ridiculous craze
for surgery. I always said he'd rather operate than eat.
Now, it seems he'd rather operate than be - "
But at this moment a large, determined hand came over her
mouth from behind, as James Macauley, junior, arriving upon
the scene, asserted his authority. He was in bathrobe and
slippers, having been excitedly interviewed by Chester through
the bathroom door.
"Quit fussing, Marty. The thing can't be helped, and if Ellen
doesn't mind I don't know why we should. If we were having a
houseful it would be fierce, but with only ourselves and the
Chesters and the minister's family and Red's people - I'll go
telephone Mr. Harding now."
As Martha freed herself from the silencing hand the front door
opened again. This time it was Mrs. Richard Warburton -
Burns's young sister Anne - also in somewhat informal attire,
over which she had thrown an evening coat. She surveyed the
group with laughing eyes. She herself had been married within
the year.
"It's absurd, isn't it?" she cried. "But it's just like Red.
Ellen knows that, don't you, dear? Ellen'll not only take him
for better and for worse, but for present and for absent -
mostly absent! But we're rather proud of him over at the
house. Father's walking up and down and saying no other
fellow would have done it, and Mother's all tearful and
smiling. Dick wanted to go in with him, but of course Miss
Mathewson had to go: he seldom operates without her."
"It's so uncertain when he'll get back," mourned Martha, still
unreconciled.
"I made Miss Mathewson promise to telephone, the moment she
should know. It's lucky the wedding guests are all in the
family, isn't it? Ellen, dear" - pretty Anne ran up the
stairs to the landing - "I really don't see how, after he
caught sight of you in that fascinating garb, with your hair
down, he could ever tear himself away! You're positively the
loveliest thing I ever saw in all my life, and I'm almost out
of my senses with joy that you're to be my sister, even though
I never saw you in the world till yesterday! I always said
when Red did care for anybody for keeps, she'd be a jewel!"
Red Pepper came back at precisely twenty minutes of three.
His patient had given him a bad hour of anxiety immediately
after leaving the table, and he could not desert her until she
had rallied. But he felt easy about her now, and he had
arranged to leave her in Buller's hands - Buller, who did not
do major surgery himself, but was a most competent man when it
came to the care of surgical patients after operation. Burns
brought Amy Mathewson back with him, though she had begged to
be allowed to stay with the case.
"And not be at my wedding?" cried Red Pepper, in exuberant
spirits. "Why, I couldn't be properly married without you to
see me through!"
Upon which she had smiled and obeyed him, and taken a tighter
grip upon herself as he put her into the Green Imp for the
last ride together. That was what it was to her, though she
might yet go with him a thousand times to help him in his
work. To him it was a quick and joyful journey back to his
marriage.
"All right, Mother and Dad!" he exulted, coming in upon them
in their festal array. He shook hands with his father and his
brother-in-law; he kissed his mother. Then he ran for his own
room where Bobby Burns, just being finished off by Anne,
herself superbly dressed, shrieked with rapture at the sight
of him.
"Red! At last! I've laid everything ready; you've only to
jump into your bath; I turned on the water when Dick saw the
Imp down the road. Don't you dare have a vestige of a
surgical odour about you when you come out!"
In precisely seventeen minutes and. three-quarters the
bridegroom was ready to the last coppery affair on his head.
"Have I a `surgical odour,' Anne?" he asked as he came up to
her.
She buried her face on his shoulder, both arms about him,
regardless of her finery. "You're the dearest, sweetest old
trump of a brother that ever lived, and you smell like
sunshine and fresh air!" she cried. Whereat he shook with
laughter and patted her back as she clung to him,
"Promise me, Red," she begged, lifting her head, "that you
won't let anything - anything - keep you from going off with
Ellen in the Imp. She's been so lovely about this horrid
delay, but I'm always suspicious of you. Promise!"
"I promise you this," agreed her brother: "Wherever the Imp
and I go, after the minister has said the words, for this two
weeks Ellen shall go with me."
"Chester," said Dick Warburton as he stood in that gentleman's
company, looking over a stupendous assortment of wedding
gifts, which, in spite of the fact that nobody outside the
family had been asked to see Redfield Pepper Burns married,
overflowed two large rooms into the upper hall and almost over
the railing, "will you tell me who in the name of time sent
that rat-trap? This is the most extraordinary display of
gold, silver, and tinware that I ever saw, and I'm at the end
of my astonishment. But that rat-trap, is it a joke?"
"No joke whatever -," declared Chester. "It comes from one of
R, Red's - devoted friends - his own invention. And the point
of the thing is that the making of that rat-trap is going to
be the making of the worst dead-beat of a patient Red ever
stood by. I really believe Joe Tressler's going to get a
patent on it, which also will be Red's doing. But this is a
special, particular rat-trap made of extra fine materials,
suitable for a wedding gift!"
"Well, well," mused Burns's brother-in-law. "And what
millionaire sent the diamond pendant? By Jove, I haven't seen
finer jewels than those this side of the water."
"That came from the Walworths, I believe. Take it all
together, it's a great collection, isn't it? It shows up the
odder because Ellen wouldn't have the freak grateful-patient
gifts put to one side - or even thrown into a sort of refining
shadow. Fix your eye on that rainbow quilt, will you, Dicky,
alongside of the Florentine tapestry? That quilt would put
out your eye if you gazed upon it steadily, so let up on it by
regarding this match-safe. Wouldn't that - "
"That came from Johnny Caruthers," said a richly modulated low
voice behind him. "Please set it down carefully, Mr. Arthur
Chester."
The two men wheeled to see the bride come to the defense of
her wedding gifts. Behind her loomed her husband, laughing
over her head, his eyes none the less tender, like hers, for
the queer presents which meant no less of love and gratitude
than the costlier gifts, of which there was no mean array.
"I see you've married him, patients and all, Ellen Burns,"
declared Richard Warburton. "On the whole, it's your wisest
course. The less he knows you mind their devotion to him - "
"Mind it!" She gave him the flash of which the soft black eyes
were brilliantly capable. "Dick, I have no gift I like so
well as that rat-trap. You don't know the story, but I do,
and it means to me - fidelity to duty. And if there's one
great big thing in the world I think it's that!"
Over her head, Dick Warburton nodded at his brother-in-law.
"I'm glad we've got her into the family, Red," said he. "It's
a mighty rare thing to find a beautiful woman who knows how to
dress like a picture, with that ideal at the back of her head!
'Cherish her, Red. If you don't I'll come around and knock
you down!"
"I'll let you do it," agreed Burns soberly. All his marriage
vows were in his face.
It was quite dusk when the Green Imp got away. Johnny
Caruthers had the satisfaction of lighting up the car's lamps
- always a joy to him, and particularly so to-night, for even
the oil taillight bore witness to his trimming and polishing
till its red eye could gleam no brighter. As for the front
lamps and the searchlight the Imp's progress would be as down
an avenue of brilliance if its driver allowed them all full
play upon the road.
"She's in great trim, Johnny," said Burns's voice in his ear.
"I like her looks immensely. I shall hate to get a speck of
mud on her."
"Meaning the lady, Doc?" asked Johnny anxiously. "There's a
wet bit there under the elms, Doc, remember. It would be a
pity to splash any mud on her!"
He glanced toward the porch, his freckled face eloquent of his
admiration for the figure which was the centre of the group
gathered there.
Burns's eyes followed his. Bob, a picturesque, small person
in his wedding attire of white linen, was attempting to tie
Ellen's motor-veil for her, as she stooped, smiling, to the
level of his eager little arms. It occurred to both master
and man, as they watched the child's efforts to adjust the
floating chiffon, that veils, however useful, were to be
regretted when they were allowed even partially to obscure
faces like those of Red Pepper's wife.
"I meant the car, lad," explained Burns, laughing. "You've
done a great piece of work an her since I brought her home
this afternoon. I'm afraid you've done some last polishing
with your wedding clothes on, Johnny. Here's some, thing to
take the spots out."
"Oh, Doc!" breathed the boy. "Not to-night, Let me do it -
for you - and her."
The money went back into Burns's pocket, and his hand met
Johnny's in a hearty grasp. "That's better yet," said he,
"and thank you, John. If anybody but you were sending me off
I'd ask if everything was surely in the car But I'll not even
ask you."
"You don't need to," vowed the boy proudly. "And there's some
things in you don't need to know about, just extrys in case of
breakdown."
"Now, that," said his employer, "is what call proving one's
self a friend."
The Imp went cautiously through the "wet bit," for it lay
under the corner arc-light, and Johnny Caruthers would be
watching. But, once on the open road outside the village, the
pace quickened. For late April the roads were not bad, and if
they had been sloughs the Imp Could have pulled through them.
She had a great power hidden away in those six cylinders of
hers, had the Imp.
"You'll not mind if I stop at the hospital as we go through?"
questioned Burns. "Then we'll be off, out the old west road,
out of reach of telephones and summonses of any sort. But I
shall be just that much easier "
"Do stop, please. I'm sure you'll be more satisfied and so
shall I"
She sat quietly in the cat while he was gone looking up at the
lighted windows and thinking all sorts of sympathetic thoughts
concerning those inside -yet with a tiny fear in her heart
that he would find some new and unavoidable duty to detain
him. If he should
But he was back, and as the Imp's searchlight fell upon his
face, returning, she read there that he was free.
"Doing well, everything satisfactory, and I've not a care in
the world," he exulted as he leaped in. "Now we're off, and
never a stop till we've put a wide space between us and the
rest of them."
The Green Imp ran at its quietest along the city streets.
then through the thinning suburbs, and finally, with the
lights all behind them, the open country ahead, the long, low
car came out upon the straight highway which leads a hundred
miles before it comes again to any but insignificant hamlets
and small, rustic inns.
Burns had said little thus far, but as he glanced over his
shoulder at the now distant lights of the city he suddenly
spoke low, out of the quiet:
"We're out of reach of everything and everybody; nobody even
knows the road we're taking. We're all alone in the world
together. You can't think what that means to me. I've lived
nine years at the call of every soul that wanted me: hardly a
vacation except for study. A fortnight seems pretty short
allowance for a honeymoon; we'll take a longer one when we go
to Germany in the fall. But - for two weeks "
He looked down at her in the April starlight. He bent to
finish the statement, whatever it might have been, upon her
lips, for speech failed him. Then, with a happy laugh, he
gave the Green Imp her head.
End of Project Gutenberg's Etext Red Pepper Burns, by Grace S. Richmond