Читать книгу Red of the Redfields - Grace S. Richmond - Страница 3

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It was no longer necessary for Dr. Redfield Pepper Burns to employ a secretary or an office nurse. After fifteen rushing years of work in his profession he had quite suddenly gone to pieces—"shot," as he himself put it. The literal truth was that he had worn himself out at an early age. A machine can't be run overtime, year after year, with very little attention to oiling and cleaning and rest, without getting itself ultimately to the scrap-heap. Not that Burns was on any scrap-heap—or, if he was, that must be a place of much greater activity than is commonly supposed. But when an over-tired heart refuses to function without giving its owner frequent warning that it is liable to strike permanently, it becomes necessary for the owner to humour it.

Burns hated humouring that heart, but his distaste made no difference. The heart and his good friend, Dr. Max Buller, of the profession, had made it entirely clear to him that it was a matter in which he had no choice.

"Stop operating," commanded Buller, "or you'll stop some day in the middle of an operation. And that'll be good for neither you nor your patient. See?"

Burns saw. He had completed the last three jobs of that kind with considerable difficulty—he, who had always eaten up such work as if it were food.

"Stop active practice, Red, and come down to consultations——"

"Consultations! Baby food!"

"Nothing of the sort. They're the most important——"

"They're the biggest frauds known. Posing and compromising, backing and filling, trying to run two trains on one track! Neither willing to take the siding. The freight given the right of way while the limited frets and fumes, or runs by the signals, and the patient finds himself in a collision. If I can't practise I won't try to play the consultation game."

"Yes, you will, you can't get out of it. And it'll give you a chance to blow off a little steam now and then, and keep from exploding," Buller expounded. He knew his friend Red from A to Z and back again. "You've got to have something to do," he added, still more firmly.

"I'll go back to the lab," said Burns grimly.

"You will not. I'll not have you shutting yourself up in a two-by-four closet filled with gases and gore. Blood-counts and test-tubes are not for you. Look after your children's hospital, in a general way. See a few old patients who can't go on living unless you feel their pulses from time to time. Take a trip to—er—South America, or——"

Burns had ended the interview by abruptly leaving Buller's office—good old Buller, who understood him so thoroughly that he didn't mind at all, but took a stride after Red's departing figure and clapped a hand on his shoulder, an action which said mutely: "I know, and don't you think I don't."

Burns had stood up to it; it wasn't the first test of the kind. The break hadn't come without plenty of warning. And the consultation practice had been forced upon him by a friendly profession which had not only wanted to do all in its power for him but which really needed and desired the benefit of his strangely sharp insight into the affairs of the sick human body. Those of the sick human mind also—and necessarily, since the two are so closely connected—frequently came to his attention. So it was all in the day's work when he received a letter from his friend, Dr. John Leaver of Baltimore, concerning a patient of his own whom he wanted to send to Burns for a look-over and advice as to future treatment.

It was not in his office—that was little used these days—but before his fireside, with Ellen his wife sitting by, that Burns read the letter. He read it again aloud to her. Talking of consultants, Ellen was the best one he knew.

"Long ago, Red,"—wrote Leaver of Baltimore, at the top of his profession,—"I called you a specialist in human nature. You're more than that now, you're an authority. Now that you're not working quite so hard and fast as you'd like to, I fancy you're able to give even more time to certain types of cases that puzzle us all. I want to send you one. I've done the surgical work on his body—did some of it in France, after he crashed; the rest since we came back. He was a war correspondent—one of the best. Sneaked up into the air with a chum-aviator against orders, keen to see everything. And so forth. He's recovered up to a certain point; now he hangs fire. The slightest effort to go back to his old work—journalism—knocks him out again. Yet that's all he cares for. He's moody, cynical, hopeless. I've become extraordinarily interested in him. I know you will be. To give you a pointer, I should say he needs a special sort of contact he's practically never had. If you could introduce him to a certain type of home, with real people in it, the educated, understanding sort—particularly to a home with a mother in it (not a cushiony mother but one of character)—I should say it would be the best cure for him imaginable. I realize such places are hard to find, but you may know of one. I don't expect you and Ellen to take him into your home—understand that. And with all devotion and admiration for Ellen, she's not just the sort I have in mind. I seem to recall that in such towns as yours there are occasionally to be found such people as I'm thinking of—the sort that modern fiction says don't exist. Felix Rowe also says they don't exist. If he could spend some time in such a place, under your general observation, he might be saved for future usefulness. As it is I'm at the end of my resources, and yet I can't give him up. How about it?"

Burns looked up. A broad-shouldered man of forty, with a sprinkling of gray in the thick red thatch which in his school days, and in combination with a quick-fire temper, had earned him the nickname of Red Pepper, he still looked the part. Though his face now showed lines of care rather deeply graven, his hazel eyes were as alert and keen as ever, with the most direct glance ever encountered in a world of evasions. A certain peculiar force of individuality never left him, even when, as now, he lay back in the comfortable depths of a big wing chair, reading this letter. And he had no sooner completed the reading of it than he sat up, sliding forward to the edge of his seat as if he were about to spring up, an attitude characteristic of the days not long past when he seemed always poised for action.

"A young cynic who's got through with his life, eh?" he commented. "I see why Jack thinks you wouldn't do—if I'd have him here, which I wouldn't, by jolly! He wants to get his patient the sort of a mother who'd pull him around by the hair of his head, if he needed it, at the same time that she'd tuck him in if he happened to need that. Well! Sends him to me to prescribe for him—and takes care to send the prescription along ahead of him. There's your city specialist—and there's your consultation! Doggone it, I don't know whether I'll have the chap here on my hands or not. I'm no psychiatrist."

"That's just what he thinks you are, Red. You always have been that, whether you knew it or not."

"And I'm not keen on youthful cynics, whether they've been through the war or not. I detest poses of every sort. Cynicism's always a pose—always."

"Unless, dear, a mind is really affected, as this one easily may have been, by dreadful experience in the war."

Red looked at her. She was as well worth looking at as she had ever been, being the type of woman in the late thirties whose charm has grown only the richer for her years. A certain lovely serenity in her had long been to him his life preserver through stress and strain.

"His mind isn't affected, really. His nerves may be short-circuited,—undoubtedly are. Jack wouldn't send me a mental case; I know his ideas about those. I suppose I'll have to let this babe come along. Not conceivable to refuse J. L. anything, of course."

"You don't know that he's young, Red."

"Any man who needs a mother is young—and we all do, at that. I wish I hadn't lost mine. . . . I say, let's go and call on the Redfields. How would they do?"

"Would he want to be out in the country?"

"Can't call it the country. On the main road, trolley almost by the door, city line five miles away; village of Eastville only two, in the other direction."

"I presume Mr. Rowe would think it the far country, Red."

"Yes; think it the deep woods, the last outpost of civilization. That's what would be good for him, too, I'll warrant. Find out how people live away from the big centres—find out they don't stagnate, either. Stagnate! Len, you ought to know Marcia Redfield better."

Ellen Burns smiled. Red had always spoken admiringly of the Redfield family, his mother's cousins; had often suggested that the Burnses ought to see more of these nearest of kin left his side of the house. But he had always been too busy to take her; a call a year had been the most achieved. Nevertheless, Ellen had a very definite impression of what was to be found in the old, square frame house by the side of the road on the other side of the neighbouring city. Red had been driving daily to that city for fifteen years, but had been always in too much of a rush to go the five miles beyond it necessary to reach the home of the Redfields.

"I've always thought I'd like to know her better, dear. Marcia is a personality, and would be, anywhere. It seems a pity that she has to spend her life as she does, since Lincoln lost his eyesight."

"Pity! It's a crime. Let's go and see her—now. Eh?"

"Very well. If I may just stop in town for one errand."

"All you like, after the call. This time I want to stay as long as we can. Never did see enough of Marcia. Time I did, and you, too. Ready in five minutes?"

"Ten, Red, please."

Burns's watch was in his hand, he was on his feet. You can't make a man over by pointing out to him that it is time for him to slow down—not even by convincing him of it. In some ways Redfield Pepper Burns never would slow down: he would stop short while the engine was running at a good speed, though not as it had run those fifteen years, ceaselessly. He did not intend to commit suicide, though there had been moments, when he first knew——But neither would he ever be content to play the invalid, anxiously conserving what remained. Activity would continue to be the first law of his life. If such mild activities as calling on the Redfields had now to take the place of those which in the old days had brought him, gloved and masked and keyed taut, to the operating table—well, at the least the call wouldn't be a commonplace one, and something would come of it. Nothing ever interested Red unless something might come of it.

Anyhow, he could drive his car as fast as ever; that didn't take anything out of him; rather it put it in. That car had once been a long, slim, open roadster. Now, out of unwilling deference to Max Buller's advice and Ellen's wishes, it was a high-powered, shining coupé of an excellent make. He had rebelled at it; had called it contemptuously "The Jewel Box." (The old car had been "The Green Imp.") But when he had found that he could cover the miles in it as fast as ever, and that Ellen could go with him in it on days which would have been devastating in the wind-blown open car, he had grudgingly admitted that glass had its uses. None the less, the windows were always open, even to the wind-shield, in all but the stormiest weather. Johnny Carruthers, that long-tried and devoted mechanic and man of all work, now seasoned and married but still devoted to Doctor Burns, spent many an hour hosing and sponging and polishing the shining body, as of old.

"He always did make straight for the mud, if there was any," Johnny told his wife when she remonstrated over the time consumed on the car. "And always will. If he was a boy I don't think he'd be more careless about the splashing. What do I care? It's thankful I am he's here to drive it, though he don't care for it—nor me, neither—like for the Imp. This motor can't beat the Imp's, neither; that was the best motor I ever see; they don't make it no more—they can't, for the money. I'll say this one's a beauty, though. And he can get the speed out of her, same as ever—oh, boy! Why they don't pinch him! But then, every cop between here and the hospital knows the doctor; some of 'em's got kids he's saved for 'em."

So now, as usual, at the call of the garage telephone Johnny brought the Jewel Box around, looking ready for the best society, and Burns and Ellen got in. A fine pair they were to look at, Johnny thought, and knew he was not alone in the thinking. In the suburban town, as in the city, they were distinguished-looking people always. The broad, well-tailored shoulders, the touch of gray in the red hair, the upright bearing, the keen, worn face with its quick smile; Ellen's beauty and grace grown ripe and full; no wonder everybody knew or wanted to know the Burnses; their position was of the best, everywhere.

Twelve miles to the city; five beyond to the Redfield home on the open road; they were there within the hour—four o'clock in the crisp October afternoon. The shabby—for want of paint—homelike old farmhouse under the great trees seemed to beckon them, and at the sound of the slowing motor the front door opened to them. Marcia Redfield stood smiling in the doorway. Even if one had not seen her before, one would know that here was a woman worth coming many miles to meet.