Читать книгу Red and Black - Grace S. Richmond - Страница 5

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OF COURSE the day came, as it inevitably must, when Black and Red actually met, face to face, with no way out but to shake hands, look each other in the eye, and consider their acquaintance made? No, that day of proper introduction never came. But the day did come on which they looked each other in the eye without shaking hands—and another day, a long time after, they did shake hands. As to their friendship—but that’s what this story is about.

The day on which they looked each other in the eye first was on a Sunday morning, rather early. Black had done a perfectly foolhardy thing. It was a late June day, and the cherries in a certain tree just outside his bathroom window were blood-red ripe and tempting. Fresh from his cold tub—clad in shirt and trousers, unshaven—his mouth watering at the thought of eating cherries before breakfast, he climbed out of the window upon the sloping roof of the side porch, and let himself down to the edge to reach the cherries. He never knew how the fool thing happened, really; the only thing he did know was that he slipped suddenly upon the edge of the roof, wet with an early morning shower, and fell heavily to the ground below, striking on his right shoulder. And then, presently, he was sitting at the telephone in his study, addressing R. P. Burns, M.D., in terms which strove to be casual, inviting him to make a morning call at the manse.

“I’d come over myself,” he explained, “but I’m ashamed to say I’m a trifle shaky.”

“Naturally,” replied the crisp voice at the other end of the wire. “Go and lie down till I get there.”

“Please have your breakfast first,” requested Black, struggling hard to master a growing faintness. Whatever he had done to his shoulder, it hurt rather badly, though he didn’t mind that so much as the idea of disgracing himself in Burns’ eyes by going white and flabby over what was probably a trivial injury. To be sure he couldn’t use his arm, but it didn’t occur to him that he had actually dislocated that shoulder by so trifling a means as a slip from the manse roof. The manse roof, of all places! It wasn’t built for incumbent ministers to go upon, between a bath and a shave, and tumble from like a little boy—and on a Sunday morning, too!

The answer Red gave to Black’s suggestion that he have breakfast before coming resembled a grunt more than anything else. Black couldn’t determine whether the red-headed doctor meant to do it or not. The question was settled within five minutes by the arrival of Red, who came straight in at the open manse door, followed the call Black gave, “In here, please—at your left,” and appeared in the study doorway, surgical bag in his hand, and a somewhat grim expression—with which Black had already become familiar at a distance—upon his lips. Black sat in his red-cushioned wooden rocker, that most incongruous piece of furniture in the midst of the black walnut dignity of the manse study, and in it his appearance suggested that of a sick boy who has taken refuge in his mother’s arms. Indeed, it may have been with somewhat of that feeling that he had chosen it as the place in which to wait the coming of aid. Anyhow, his face, under its unshaven blur of beard, looked rather white, though his voice was steady.

“Mighty sorry to bother you at this hour, Doctor Burns,” he began, but was interrupted.

“Didn’t I tell you to lie down? What’s the use of sitting up and getting faint?”

“I’m all right.”

“Yes, I see! All alone here? Thought you had a housekeeper.” Red was opening up his bag and laying out supplies as he spoke.

“I have. She’s gone home for over Sunday.”

“They usually have—when anything happens. Well, come over here on this couch, if you can walk, and we’ll see what the trouble is.”

Black demonstrated that he could walk, though it was with considerable effort. Through all his undeniable faintness he was thinking with some exultation that this was a perfectly good chance to meet Red—and on his own ground, too. What luck!

Red made a brief examination.

“You’ve fixed that shoulder, all right,” he announced. “No matter—we’ll have you under a whiff of ether, and reduce it in a jiffy.”

“Thanks—no ether, please. You mean I’ve dislocated it?” inquired the patient, speaking with some difficulty.

“Good and proper. Here you are——” And without loss of time a peculiarly shaped article, made of wire and gauze and smelling abominably, came over Black’s face. It was instantly removed.

“I believe I said no ether, if you please!” remarked an extraordinarily obstinate voice.

“Nonsense, man! I’m only going to give you enough to relax you. I see some good stiff muscles there that may give me trouble.”

“Ether’ll make me sick, and I’ve got to preach this morning.”

“Preach—nothing!”

“It may be nothing,” agreed the patient, “but I’m going to preach it, just the same. And I won’t have an anæsthetic, thank you just as much, Doctor.”

Red said no more. No surgeon but is astute enough to tell whether a patient is bluffing or whether he means it. Unquestionably, though Black’s face was the colour of ashes, he meant it. Therefore Red proceeded to reduce the dislocation, without the advantage to himself—or to the patient—of the relaxing aid of the anæsthetic. It was a bad dislocation, and it took the doctor’s own sturdy muscles and all his professional skill to do the trick in a few quick, efficient moves and one tremendous pull. But it was all over in less time that it takes to tell it, and only one low groan had escaped Black’s tightly pressed lips. Nevertheless his forehead was wet and cold when he lay limp at the end of that bad sixty seconds.

A strong arm came under his shoulders, and a glass was held to his lips. “Drink this—you’ll be all right in a minute,” said a rather far-away voice, and Black obediently swallowed something which he didn’t much like—and which he probably would have refused to take if he had suspected that it was going to help buck him up the way it did. He had an absurd idea of not allowing himself to be bucked up by anything but his own will—not in the presence of Red, anyhow.

“Some nerve—for a preacher,” presently said the voice which sounded nearer now.

“Why—a preacher?” inquired Black, as belligerently as a man can who is stretched upon his back with his coat off, his arm being bandaged to his side, and a twenty-four hours’ growth of beard on his somewhat aggressive chin.

“Never mind,” Red commanded. “We won’t have it out now. I don’t blame you—that was hitting a man when he’s down.”

“I’m not down.” Black attempted to sit up. A vigorous arm detained him where he was.

“Just keep quiet a few minutes, and you’ll be the gainer in the end. By the way—can you shave with your left hand?”

“I never tried it.” Black’s left hand took account of his cheek and chin. “I was just going to shave when those—fool—cherries caught my eye.”

“Where’s your shaving stuff?”

Black looked up, startled. “Oh, I can’t let you——”

“Who’s going to do it? If you must preach, you don’t want to go to it looking like a pugilist, do you? Though I’m not so sure——” Red left the sentence unfinished, while a wicked smile played round his lips.

“I’ll do it myself—or send for a barber.”

“Oh, come on, Black! I’m perfectly competent to do the job, and now I’ve got my hand in on you I’d like to leave you looking the part you wouldn’t insist on playing if you weren’t pretty game. I’m not so sure I ought to let you——”

“I’d like to see you help it,” declared Black, and now he was smiling, too, and feeling distinctly better.

So it ended by Red’s going upstairs after the shaving materials, and then shaving Black, and doing it with decidedly less finish of style than might have been expected of a crack surgeon with a large reputation. He cut his victim once, and Black, putting up a hand and getting it all blood and lather, grinned up into Red’s face, who grinned back and expressed his regret at the slip. This does not mean that they had become friends—not from Red’s standpoint, at least, who would have befriended a sick dog and then shot him without compunction because he didn’t want him around. But it does mean that at last the two had met, on a man-to-man basis, and that Red’s respect for the man he had been in no hurry to meet had been considerably augmented. Black was pretty sure of this, and it helped to brace him more than the stimulant had done.

Two hours later Red cut a call on a rich patient much shorter than was politic, in order to get to the Stone Church in time to slip into a back pew. Before going in he gave young Perkins instructions not to call him out before the sermon ended for anything short of murder on the church doorstep, surprising that lively usher very much, since it was the first time such a thing had ever happened. In making this effort Red had Black in mind as a patient rather than a minister. A severe dislocation must naturally cause a certain amount of nervous shock which might prove disastrous to a man attempting to carry through a long service and spend most of the period upon his feet, within two hours after the accident occurred. Game though Black might be—well—Red admitted to himself that he rather wanted to see how the fellow whom he could no longer call “the Kid” would see the thing through.

Reactions are curious things. In this case, though it was true that Black had to steady himself more than once to keep his congregation from whirling dizzily and disconcertingly before his eyes, had to set his teeth and summon every ounce of will he possessed to keep on through the first three quarters of his service, after all it was Red who got the most of the reaction. For the sermon which Black preached contained a bomb thrown straight at the heads of a parish which, with half the world at war, was in its majority distinctly pacifist—as was many another church during the year of 1916. Black, before his sermon was done, had taken an out-and-out, unflinching stand for the place of the Church in times of war, and had declared that it must be on the side of the sword, when the sword was the only weapon which could thrust its way to peace.

Red, listening closely, forgetting that the man before him was his patient, found himself involuntarily admitting that whatever else he was, Robert McPherson Black was fearless in his speech. And there was probably no use in denying that the fellow had a way of putting things that, as James Macauley had asserted, effectually prevented the man in the pew from becoming absorbed in reveries of his own. It had been by no means unusual for R. P. Burns, surgeon, expecting to do a critical operation on Monday morning, to perform that operation in detail on Sunday morning, while sitting with folded arms and intent expression before a man who was endeavouring to interest him in spiritual affairs. On the present occasion, however, though the coming Monday’s clinical schedule was full to the hatches, Red was unable to detach himself for a moment from the subject being handled so vigorously by Black. Thus, listening through to the closing words, he discovered himself to be aflame with fires which another hand had kindled, and that hand, most marvellously, a preacher’s.

Young Perkins, hovering close to the rear seat into which Red had stolen upon coming in just before the sermon, considered the embargo raised with the closing words of Black, and had his whispered summons ready precisely as Black began his brief closing prayer. The scowl with which Red motioned him away surprised Perkins very much, causing him to retreat to the outer door, where in due season he delivered his message to the leisurely departing doctor—departing leisurely because he was eavesdropping.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” he had overheard one man of prominence saying to another in the vestibule. “Strikes me that’s going pretty strong. What’s the use of stirring up trouble? That sort of talk’s going to offend. Pulpit’s not called upon to go into matters of state—particularly now, when public sentiment’s so divided. Somebody better put a flea in his ear, eh?”

The other man nodded. “I believe a good deal as he does myself,” he admitted, cautiously, “but I don’t hold with offending people who have as good a right to their opinions as he has. I saw Johnstone wriggling more than once, toward the last—and he’s about the last man we want to make mad.”

R. P. Burns laid a heavy hand on the speaker’s arm. Turning, the other man looked into a pair of contemptuous hazel eyes, with whose glance, both friendly and fiery, he had been long familiar. “Oh, rot!” said a low voice in his ear.

“What do you mean?”

“Just that. Think it out.” And Burns was gone, in the press, with the quickness now of one accustomed to get where he would go, no matter how many were in the way.

He marched around to the vestry door, where he found Black standing, his gown off, his face gone rather white, though it had been full of colour when Red saw it last.

“Faint?” he asked.

“No—thanks, I’m all right. Just thought I’d like a whiff of fresh air.”

“Take a few deep breaths. I’ll give you a pick-up, if you say so.”

Black shook his head. “I’m all right,” he repeated.

“Shoulder ache?”

“Not much. I’m all right, I tell you, Doctor. Can’t you get over the idea that a preacher is a man of straw? Why, I—will you try a wrestle with me, sometime—when my shoulder’s fit again?”

Red laughed. “Down you in two minutes and fifteen seconds,” he prophesied.

“Try it, and see.” And Black walked back into the church, his cheek losing its pallor in a hurry.

On that Sunday the Lockharts, his first entertainers, insisted that he come to dinner. Though he had kept his slung shoulder and arm under his gown, the facts showed plainly, and the congregation was full of sympathy. With his housekeeper away, Black could find no way out, though he would have much preferred remaining quietly in his study, with four cups of coffee of his own amateur making, and whatever he could find in his larder left over from Saturday.

So he went to the Lockharts’, and there he met a person who had been in his congregation that morning, but whom he had not noted. She had seen that he had not noted her, but she had made up her mind that such blindness should not long continue. Her appearance was one well calculated to arrest the eye of man, and Black’s eye, though it was accustomed to dwell longer upon man than upon woman, was not one calculated by Nature to be altogether and indefinitely undiscerning.

With Annette Lockhart, daughter of the house, the guest, Miss Frances Fitch, a former school friend, held a brief consultation just before Black’s arrival.

“Think he’s the sort to fall for chaste severity, or feminine frivolity, when it comes to dress, Nanny?”

Miss Lockhart looked her friend over. “You’re just the same old plotter, aren’t you, Fanny Fitch?” she observed, frankly. “Well, it will take all you can do, and then some, if you expect to interest Mr. Black. But—if you want my advice—I should say chaste severity was your line.”

“There’s where you show your unintelligence,” declared Miss Fitch. “I shall be as frilly as I can, because you yourself are a model of smooth and tailored fitness, and he will want a relief for his eyes. He shall find it in me. Really, wasn’t he awfully game to preach, with that shoulder?”

“He’s a Scot,” said Nan Lockhart. “Of course he would, if it killed him.”

The result of this exchange of views was that Miss Fitch appeared looking like a fascinating young saint in a sheer white frock. Had she a white heart? Well, anyhow, she looked the embodiment of ingenuousness, for her masses of fair hair were too curly to be entirely subdued, no matter how confined, and her deep blue eyes beneath the blonde locks might have been those of a beautiful child.

“Oh, I say!” ejaculated Tom Lockhart, when she first came downstairs, the transformation from her dark smoothness of church garb to this spring-like outburst of whiteness hitting him full in his vulnerable young heart—as usual.

“Well—like me, Tommy dear?” asked Fanny Fitch, letting her fingers rest for the fraction of a second on his dark-blue coat-sleeve.

“Like you!” breathed Tom. “I say—why did I bring him home to dinner? Now you’ll just fascinate him—and forget me!”

“Forget you? Why, Tom!” And Miss Fitch gave him an enchanting glance which made his heart turn over. Then she went on into the big living room, where Robert McPherson Black, damaged shoulder and arm in a fine black silk sling, the colour now wholly restored to his interesting face, rose courteously to be presented to her. Of course he did not know it, but it was at that moment that he encountered a quite remarkable combination of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Up to now he had met each of these tremendous forces separately, but never before all together in one slim girl’s form. And yet, right here, it must be definitely asserted and thoroughly assimilated, that Fanny Fitch was what is known as an entirely “nice” girl, and in her heart at that hour was nothing which could be called an evil intent. The worst that could be said of her was that she was ruthless in exacting tribute—even as Cæsar. And when her eye had fallen upon the minister, with his right arm out of commission but the rest of him exceedingly assertive of power, she had coveted him. To her, the rest seemed easy.

As to Black—he was not “easy.” In his very young manhood he had loved very much the pretty daughter of his Southern employer, but she had been as far out of his reach as the furthermost star in the bright constellations which nightly met his eye in the skies above him. When she had married he had firmly and definitely put the thought of woman out of his head, and had formulated a code concerning the whole sex intended to hold throughout his ministry. During his entire first pastorate he had been a model of discretion—as a young minister in a country community must be, if he would not have his plans for service tumbling about his ears. Fortunately for him he was, by temperament and by training, not over susceptible to any ordinary feminine environment or approach. He had a hearty and wholesome liking for the comradeship of men, greatly preferring it to the frequent and unavoidable association with women necessary in the workings of church affairs. Even when his eye first rested upon the really enchanting beauty of Miss Fanny Fitch, if he could have exchanged her, as his companion at the Lockhart dinner table, for R. P. Burns, M.D., he would have done it in the twinkling of an eye. For had not Red shaved him that morning, and wasn’t another barrier most probably well down? It was of that he was thinking, and not, just then, of her.

But she forced him to think of her—it was an art in which she was a finished performer. She did it by cutting up for him that portion of a crown roast of spring lamb which Mr. Samuel Lockhart sent to him upon his plate. Up to that moment, throughout the earlier courses, he had been engaged with the rest in a general discussion of the subject of the war, quite naturally brought up by the sermon of the morning. But when it came to regarding helplessly the food which now appeared before him unmanageable by either fork or spoon, he found himself for the first time talking with Miss Fitch alone, while the conversation of the others went ahead upon a new tack.

“Oh, but this makes me think of how many poor fellows have to have their food cut up for them, over there,” she was saying, as her pretty, ringless fingers expertly prepared the tender meat for his consumption. “While you were speaking this morning I was wishing, as I’ve been wishing ever since this terrible war began, that I could be really helping, on the other side. If it hadn’t been for my mother, who is quite an invalid, I should have gone long ago. You made it all so real——”

A man may tell himself that he doesn’t like flattery, but if it is cleverly administered—and if, though he is modest enough, he can’t help knowing himself that he has done a good thing in a fine way—how can he quite help being human enough to feel a glow of pleasure? If it’s not overdone—and Miss Fitch knew much better than that—much can thus be accomplished in breaking down a masculine wall of reserve. Black’s wall didn’t break that Sunday—oh, not at all—but it undeniably did crumble a little bit along the upper edges.

After dinner was over, however, as if he were somehow subtly aware that the wall was undergoing an attack, Black withdrew with the other men to the further end of the living room to continue to talk things over. He was at some pains to seat himself so that he was facing these men, and had no view down the long room to the other end, where the women were gathered.

Miss Fitch, looking his way from a corner of a great divan, sent a smile and a wave toward Tom, who, torn between allegiance to Fanny and his new and absorbing devotion to Black, had for the time being followed the men. Then she said negligently to Nan Lockhart:

“Your minister certainly has a stunning profile. Look at it there against that dark-blue curtain.”

Nan looked for an instant, then back at her guest. “Oh, Fanny!” she murmured, rebukingly, “don’t you ever get tired of that game?”

“What game, my dear?”

“Oh—playing for every last one of them!” answered Annette Lockhart, with some impatience. She was a dark-eyed young woman with what might be called a strong face, by no means unattractive in its clean-cut lines. She had a personality all her own; she had been a leader always; people liked Nan Lockhart, and believed in her thoroughly. Her friendship for Fanny Fitch was a matter of old college ties—Fanny was nobody’s fool, and she was clever enough to keep a certain hold upon Nan through the exercise of a rather remarkable dramatic talent. Nan had written plays, and Fanny had acted them; and now that college days were over they had plans for the future which meant a continued partnership in the specialty of each.

“Interested in him yourself, I judge,” Miss Fitch replied teasingly. “Don’t worry! The chances are all with you. He’s horribly sober minded—he’ll fall for your sort sooner than for mine.”

But a certain gleam in her eyes said something else—that she was quite satisfied with the beginning she had made. Another man might have taken a seat where he could look at her; that Black deliberately looked the other way this astute young person considered proof positive that he found her unexpectedly distracting to his thoughts.

When, at the end of an hour, Black turned around, ready to take his farewell, Miss Fitch was absent from the room. He glanced about for her, found her not, told himself that he was glad, and went out. As the door of the living room closed behind him, she came down the stairs, a white hat on her head, a white parasol in her hand. They passed out of the house door together. At the street Miss Fitch turned in the direction of the manse, two blocks away. Black paused and removed his hat—with his left hand he did it rather awkwardly.

“It’s been very pleasant to meet you,” he said. “Is your stay to be long?”

“Several weeks, I believe. Are you really going that way, Mr. Black—or don’t you venture to walk down the street with any members of your congregation except men?”

He smiled. “I am really going this way, Miss Fitch—thank you! Would you care to know where?”

“To Doctor Burns—with your arm, I suppose. Is it very painful?”

“It’s doing very well. Isn’t this a magnificent day? I hope you’ll have a pleasant walk.”

“I can hardly help it, thank you—I’m so fond of walking—which Nan Lockhart isn’t—hard luck for me! Good-bye—and I shall not soon forget what I heard this morning.”

Her parting smile was one to remember—not a bit of pique that he hadn’t responded to her obvious invitation—no coquetry in it either, just charming friendliness, exceedingly disarming. As he turned away, striding off in the opposite direction from that which he naturally would have taken, he was frowning a little and saying to himself that it was going to be rather more difficult to keep the old guard up in a place like this than it had been in his country parish. His good Scottish conscience told him that though in deciding on the instant to make Doctor Burns a visit he had committed himself to something he didn’t want to do at all—go and bother the difficult doctor with his shoulder when it wasn’t necessary—he must do it now just the same, to square the thing. Heavens and earth—why shouldn’t he walk down the street with a beautiful young woman in white if she happened to be going his way, instead of putting himself out to go where he hated to, just to avoid her? Not that he cared to walk with her—he didn’t—he preferred not to. And the doctor would think him a weakling, after all, if he came to him complaining, as was the truth, that his shoulder was aching abominably, and his head to match, and that his pulse seemed to be jumping along unpleasantly. Well——

Just then R. P. Burns went by in his car at a terrific and wholly inexcusable speed, evidently rushing out of town. Black, recognizing him, breathed a sigh of relief. But he went around seven blocks to get back to the Manse without a chance of meeting anybody in white. At a very distant sight of anybody clothed all in white he turned up the first street, and this naturally lengthened his trip. So that when he was finally within the Manse’s sheltering walls he was very glad to give up bluffing for the day, and to stretch himself upon the leather couch in the study where that morning he had doggedly refused an anæsthetic. He rather wished he had one now! Confound it—he felt that he had been a fool more than once that day. Why should ministers have to act differently from other men, in any situation whatever? He made up his mind that the next time he climbed out on a slippery roof on a Sunday morning—well, he would do it if he wanted to! But the next time he turned up a side street to avoid anybody—or changed his direction because anybody was going the same way——

When he woke an hour later it was because his shoulder really was extremely sore and painful. But he wouldn’t have called Burns if he had known that that skillful surgeon could take away every last twinge. Anyhow—Burns had shaved him that morning! There was that that was good to remember about the day. Sometime—he would come closer to the red-headed doctor than that!