CHAPTER VIIISPENDTHRIFTS
ROBERT BLACK was dressing for the day. This procedure, simple and commonplace enough in the schedule of the ordinary man, was for him usually a somewhat complicated process. The reason for this was that he was apt to be, as to-day, attempting at the same time to finish the reading from some left-over chapter of the book he had been devouring the last thing before he went to bed. Of course he could neither take his cold tub nor shave his always darkening chin while perusing the latest addition to his rapidly growing library. But the moment these activities were over, he could and did don his attire for the day while engaged in scanning the printed page propped upon the chest of drawers before him. The result of this economy of time was that he seldom actually heard the bell ring to summon him to his breakfast, and was accustomed to appear in the dining-room doorway, book in one hand, morning paper just gathered in from the doorstep in the other, and to find there Mrs. Hodder awaiting him in a grieved silence. He would then offer her a smiling apology, upon which she would shake her head over the incomprehensible ways of men who thought more of the feeding of brains than body, and proceed devotedly to serve him with food kept hot for his coming.
On this particular morning Black, strolling in as usual, book under his arm, newspaper stretched before him,eagerly snatching at the headlines always big with war news these days, paused to finish a long paragraph, at the same time saying cheerfully, “Good morning, Mrs. Hodder. Late again, am I? Sorry! Afraid I’m hopeless. But—listen to this:” The paragraph finished, he looked up, emphatic comment on his lips. It died there even as it was born, for the room was empty, the table unset, the curtains at the windows undrawn. In brief, no breakfast was awaiting the minister this morning, and there was no possible explanation visible.
Black may have been an incorrigible student; he was also unquestionably a man of action. He threw book and paper upon the table and ascended the back stairs in long leaps. Had Mrs. Hodder overslept? It was inconceivable. The only other logical supposition then was that she was ill. If she were ill—and alone—of course he couldn’t get to her too soon—hence the leaps. She must be very ill indeed to keep her from preparing the breakfast which, he had discovered, was to her, in the manse, nothing less than a rite.
He knocked upon her door. An unhappy voice instantly replied: “Open the door—just a crack—Mr. Black, and I’ll tell you——”
He opened the door the required crack, and the explanation issued, in unmistakable accents of suffering:
“I tried my best to get down, I did indeed, Mr. Black. But the truth is I can’t move. No—no—” at an exclamation from outside the door denoting sympathy and alarm—“I haven’t got a stroke nor anything like that. It’s nothing more nor less than the lumbago, and I’m humiliated to death to think I got such a thing. I’m subject to it, and that’s the truth, and I never know when it’ll ketch me, but I haven’t had a touch of it since I’ve been with you.I begun to think there was something about the manse—and doing for a minister, maybe—that kept it away. But—it’s caught me good this time, and I don’t know what you’ll do for your breakfast. I think maybe you’d better go over to the——”
But here Black interrupted her. “I’ll get my own breakfast,” he announced firmly, “and yours, too. Stay perfectly quiet till I bring you up a tray. After that we’ll have the doctor in to see you——”
He was interrupted in his turn. “I don’t want any doctor. Doctors can’t do a thing for lumbago—except tell you you got chilled or something, and to keep still and rest up. When the pain goes it goes, and you can’t tell when. Maybe ’long about noon I can get downstairs. I don’t want any breakfast, and if you’ll go over to the——”
“I’m not going to the hotel, Mrs. Hodder—and you’re not going without your breakfast. I will——”
“You can’t cook!”
“I can cook enough to keep us from starving. Now, lie still and I’ll——”
“You don’t know where a thing is——”
“I can find out.”
A groan issued from the hidden bed. “I never knew a man that could. Listen here, Mr. Black. Now the coffee’s in the closet up above the kitchen table, the third door from the right. It’s in the same can it comes in, but it ain’t ground, and the grinder’s in the pantry, fastened to the wall. There may be some basins piled in front of it—I don’t remember—likely they is. The cream’s in the ice-chest—anddon’tskim the first pan you come to, because that’s night’s milk. You want to skim yesterday morning’s pan, and that’s pushed back farther. Now the bread-box——”
“I know where that is——”
“The oatmeal’s in the double-boiler—all you have to do is to set it front of the stove, and make sure the water ain’t all boiled away. Lucky I always cookthatthe night before. I suppose you don’t know how to light the gas in the broiler, so you can toast your bread. It’s the third knob to the left——”
Black got away at last, further instructions following him by the air line, in spite of his shouted assurance that he could find everything and do everything, and that his housekeeper should rest comfortably and stop worrying. It must be confessed, however, that he was worrying a bit himself, for his first thought that he would make a breakfast of oatmeal—since that was already cooked—and let it go at that, was instantly followed by the recollection that Mrs. Hodder didn’t eat oatmeal herself, but relied principally upon the toast and coffee and boiled egg he himself was accustomed to take with her. Unquestionably she must have these, and it was up to him to prepare them.
He removed his coat, rolled up his shirt-sleeves, and went at it. He lighted the gas and moved the double-boiler forward, thus assuring himself of one staple article upon the breakfast schedule. He then began a search for the coffee, congratulating himself upon remembering that the filtered beverage with which he was accustomed to be served took time to make. Thus began the tragic hour which followed....
Three quarters of an hour later young Tom Lockwood came to the manse door and rang the bell. Black paused, halfway between stove and pantry, then turned back to the stove, because his sense of smell told him unmistakably that something fatally wrong was occurring there.He tried to diagnose the case in a hurry, failed, and hastened unwillingly through the house to the door, wondering just how flushed and upset he looked. He felt both to an extreme degree. Absolutely nothing seemed to be going right with that breakfast.
Tom came in, in his customary breezy way. “Morning! Thought I’d drop in and see if you didn’t want to run up on the hills to-day, same as you said a while back, when we both had a morning to spare.” He paused, surveying his host with an observant eye. “Anything the matter, Mr. Black? Haven’t had—bad news, or anything?”
Black smiled. “Do I look as despondent as that? No, no—everything’s all right, thank you. But I’m afraid I can’t get away this morning to go with you. My housekeeper’s not very well. I——”
“Look here.” Tom eyed a black mark on the minister’s forehead, and noted the rolled-up shirt-sleeves. “You’re not—trying to get breakfast, are you? I say—I’ll bet that’s what you’re doing. If you are, let me help. I can make dandy coffee.” Suddenly he sniffed the air. “Something’s burning!”
The two ran back to the kitchen, making a race of it. Black won, his nostrils full now of a metallic odour. He dashed up to the stove where a double-boiler was protesting that its lower section had long since boiled dry and was being ruined, and hastily removed it. He gazed at it ruefully.
“She told me to look out for it,” he admitted.
“Some little cook, you are!” Tom, hands in pockets, surveyed a saucepan in which two eggs were boiling violently, fragments of white issuing from cracked shells. “Busted ’em when you put ’em in, didn’t you? Howlong have they been at it—or isn’t there any time limit to the way you like your eggs?”
Black snatched the saucepan off. “I think I must have put them on some twenty minutes ago. You see, the toast distracted my mind.” He set down the saucepan and hurriedly wrenched open the door of the broiler. “Oh—thunder!” he exploded. Blackened ruins were all that met the eye.
Tom leaned against a table, exploding joyously. “Want me to say it for you?” he offered.
“Thanks.” Black’s jaw was now set grimly. “I wonder if there’s any fool thing I haven’t done—or failed to do. Anyhow, the coffee——”
Tom got ahead of him at that, lifted the pot, turned up the lid, estimated the contents of the upper container, and shook his head. “The brew will be somewhat pale, methinks,” was his comment. “I say, Mr. Black, you’re no camper, are you?”
“Never had the chance. And never spent an hour learning to cook. I’m awfully humiliated, but that doesn’t help it any. It did seem simple—to boil an egg and make a slice of toast.”
“It isn’t—it’s darned complicated. Oatmeal and coffee make the scheme horribly intricate, too. I know all about it. I’ve leaped around between two campfires and frizzled my bacon to death while I rescued my coffee, and knocked over my coffee pot while I fished up the little scraps of bacon from the bottom of the frying-pan. Here—I’ll fix the coffee. Start some more toast, and we’ll hash up that hard-boiled-egg effect to lay on top, and pretend we meant it that way from the first. Along towards noon we’ll have that tray ready for the lady upstairs.”
“Tom, you’re a man and a brother. But I’m going tosend you off and see this thing through alone if it takes all day.” And Black pushed him gently but firmly toward the door. Tom, laughing, found it no use to resist. He paused to lay an appraising hand on the bare forearm which was showing such unexpected strength.
“Some muscle, I’ll say. Nobody’d guess it under that clerical coat-sleeve. Look here—you’ll come over to dinner to-night, and get a square meal? Mother’ll be——”
“Tom, if you so much as mention the situation here I’ll make you pay dearly—see if I don’t! We’re all right. I’ll never make these same mistakes again. If Mrs. Hodder isn’t down by night I’ll buy a tin of baked beans. Promise you won’t give me away.”
“Oh, all right, all right. You can trust me. But I don’t see why——”
“I do—and that’s enough. Good-bye, Tom.”
They went through the hall arm in arm, parted at the door, and Tom ran back to his car. “You’re some Scotchman, Robert Black,” he said to himself. “But I wish you’d let me make that coffee.”
It was nine-thirty by the kitchen clock when Mrs. Hodder received her breakfast tray. She had managed, smotheredly groaning, to don a wrapper, and to comb her iron-gray locks, so that according to her ideas of propriety she might decently admit her employer to her rigidly neat apartment.
“I’m terrible sorry to make you all this trouble, Mr. Black,” she said. “My, it’s wonderful how you’ve done all this.” And she eyed the little tray with its cup of steaming coffee, now a deep black in hue, its two slices of curling but unburned toast, and its opened egg.
“I think it’s rather wonderful myself,” the minister conceded. Moisture stood upon his brow; his right wristshowed a red mark as of a burn; but his look was triumphant. “I hope you’ll enjoy it. And I’ve asked Doctor Burns to look in, on his rounds, and fix you up. If he says you should have a nurse we’ll have one.”
“I don’t want the doctor, and I won’t have a nurse—for the lumbago; I’d feel like a fool. All that worries me is how you’ll manage till I can get round. You ain’t used to doin’ for yourself.”
“I’ve done for myself in most ways ever since I came over from Scotland, a boy of sixteen. Come, eat your egg, Mrs. Hodder. I’ll be back for the tray soon. Let me put another pillow behind your back——”
He would wait on her, she couldn’t help it, and it must be admitted she rather enjoyed it, in spite of the pain that caught her afresh with every smallest move. It was like having a nice son to look after her, she thought. She submitted to his edict that she was to trust him to run the house in her absence from the kitchen, and if she had her doubts as to how he would accomplish this, they gave way before the decision in his tone.
It was three days after this that Red, coming in at five in the afternoon, to take a look at Mrs. Hodder, whom he had been obliged to neglect since his first visit in a pressure of work for sicker patients, discovered Black in the midst of his new activities. The minister was hurriedly sweeping and dusting his study, having rushed home from a round of calls at the recollection that a committee meeting, which included three women, was to be held there that evening. Mrs. Hodder was accustomed to keep the room in careful order; he himself had been throwing things about it for three days now,—and undusted black walnut desks and other dark furniture certainly do show neglect in a fashion peculiarly unreserved.
“Well, well!” Red paused in the study door. “I knew you were a man of action, but I didn’t know it extended this far. Can’t anybody be found to bridge the chasm?”
“I don’t want anybody, thanks. A little exercise won’t hurt me. Will you stop a minute? I’ll dust that leather chair for you.”
To his surprise Red moved over to the chair and sat down on the arm of it. “You look a trifle weary,” he observed.
“That’s the dirt on my face. I swept the room with violence—it needed it. Most of the dust settled on me.”
“They should equip the manse with a vacuum cleaner. Been rather busy to-day?”
“Somewhat. Have you?” Black’s glance said that in both cases the fact went without saying.
“I heard of you in a place or two—been on your trail more or less all day, as it happens.”
“I presume so. This is my day for calling at the hospital. It struck me I was onyourtrail, Doctor.”
“A sort of vicious circle? If you feel as vicious as I do after it, you’re ready for anything. What do you say to a camp supper in the woods to-night—instead of tinned beans?”
There were two items in this speech which arrested Black’s attention. He stopped dusting. “What do you know about tinned beans?” he inquired, suspiciously.
“Tom has no use for ’em,” was the innocent reply. “Never mind—he didn’t tell anybody but me. I’ve been having things rather thick myself lately, and just now—well, I feel like taking to the tall timber. Want to go with me? The woods are rather nice—on a dry winter night like this.”
“You don’t mean it literally—a camp supper?”
“Good Lord, man, where were you brought up? I thought you were a country boy?”
“I am—of the South country—Scotland first—the States second. But I never went camping in my life. I never had time.”
“Till this week?” Red’s eyes twinkled enjoyingly. “You can make coffee by now, I’ll wager. But you can’t touch me at making it. Put on your collar and come along. I’ll treat you to a new experience, and by the look of you, you need it. So do I—we’ll clear out together.”
“I can’t leave Mrs. Hodder without her supper—and I have a committee meeting at eight. I’m mighty sorry, Doctor——”
“You needn’t be. I’ll fix the whole thing, and have you back in time for the bunch. Come—take orders from me, for once.”
Of course Black never had wanted to do anything in his life as he wanted to accept this extraordinary and most unprecedented invitation from the red-headed doctor whom he could not yet call his friend. The high barriers were down between them, there could be no doubt of that. Red no longer avoided the minister; he came to church now and then; the two met here and there with entire friendliness, and had more than once consulted each other on matters of mutual interest. But Red, except as he had taken Black into his car when passing him upon the road, had never directly sought him out on what looked like a basis of real pleasure in his society. And now, when Red, running upstairs to see Mrs. Hodder, and coming down to announce that all she wanted for supper was a little tea and bread and butter, and that it was up to Black to fix up a tray in a hurry and be ready when he, Red, shouldget back—in about fifteen minutes—well, Black was pretty glad to give in, cast his broom and dust cloth into the kitchen closet, wash his hands, and put a little water to boil in the bottom of the kettle over a gas flame turned up so high that it was warranted to have the water bubbling in a jiffy!
“Now, you just go along with the doctor and rest up,” commanded Mrs. Hodder, when the tray appeared. “He told me he was going to take you out to dinner—and I guess you need it—living on canned stuff, so. He thinks I can get down to-morrow, and I certainly do hope so. You look about beat out—and no wonder.”
With this cordial send-off Black ran downstairs like a boy let out of school, his weariness already lessening under the stimulus of the coming adventure. Tired? Just to amuse himself, late last evening, he had made a list of the things he had done, the people he had seen, the letters he had written, the telephone calls he had answered—and all the rest of it. It had been a formidable list. And living on tinned beans, and crackers and cheese, had not been—— Oh, well—what did it matter, so he had got his work done, slighted nothing and nobody—though he could be by no means sure of that! What minister ever could?
He dressed as Red had ordered—heavy shoes, sweater under his overcoat, cap instead of hat—he felt indeed like a boy off on a lark, only that his busy, self-supporting life had not furnished him with many comparisons in the way of larks. As he ran down the manse steps he realized that it was a perfect winter night. There had been little snow of late; the air was dry and not too cold; the stars were out. And he was going camping in the woods with Red Pepper Burns—and it was not up to him to do the cooking!
The car slid up to the curb, a big basket in the place where Black was to put his feet; he had to straddle it. There was not too much time to spare—only a little over two hours. The car leaped away down the street, and in no time was off over the macadamized road on which speed could be made. And then, a mile away from that road, with rough going for that mile—but who cared?—they came to a clump of woods lying on a hillside, and the two were out and scrambling up it in the dark, Red evidently following a trail with accuracy, for Black found no difficulty in keeping up with him.
Upon the top of the hill was a bare, stony space, sheltered from the sides but open to the stars. And here, in astonishingly little time, were made two leaping fires the basis for which had been a small basket of materials brought in the car, upon which hot foundation the gathered sticks of the wood had no choice but to burn. Rustling fuel with energy, Black soon found himself ready to discard his overcoat, and by the time the thick steak Red was manipulating had reached its rich perfection, as only that master of camp cookery could make it, Black was thinking that, big as it was, he could devour the whole of it himself.
Coffee—what coffee! Had he ever known the taste of it before, Black wondered, as he sniffed the delicious fragrance? Red had worked so swiftly—in entire silence—that the hands of Black’s watch pointed to a bare seven o’clock when he set his teeth into the first hot, juicy morsel of meat, feeling like a starved hound who has been fed upon scraps for a month.
“Oh, jolly!” he ejaculated. “I never tasted anything so good in my life. Or was so warm on a winter night—outdoors!”
“You bet you never tasted anything so good—nor were so warm outdoors. Why, man, you’ve missed the best fun in life, if this is your first experience. How does it happen?”
“I’ve never done anything but work, and my work never took me into the woods, that’s all. I’ve looked at them longingly many a time, but—there was always something else to do. What a place this is! Of all places on earth to come to to-night this seems the best. It’s an old favourite camping spot of yours?”
“One of many. This is nearest—I can run to it when I haven’t time to get farther. Even so—I don’t manage it very often.”
“I’m sure you don’t!” Black’s eyes, in the firelight, looked across into Red’s. The moment the cookery was done Red had replenished both fires, and the two men now sat on two facing logs between them. “Your time is fuller than that of any man I ever knew,” Black added.
“Lots of busy men in the world.”
“I know. But your hours are fuller than their full hours because of what you do—your profession.”
“I do only what I have to do. But you—I wonder if you know it, Black—you’re a spendthrift!”
“What?” The explosive tone spoke amazement.
Red nodded. “I’ve been wanting to tell you for some time. Do you know you probably weigh about fifteen pounds less than you did when you came here? Keep that up, and you’ll be down to rock bottom.”
Black laughed. He held up one arm, the hand clenched. “Do you remember the challenge I gave you last summer, Doctor, to a wrestle, any time you might take me up? If we weren’t both stuffed, just now, I’d have it out with you, here and now.”
“Very likely you could put it all over me—though I’m not so sure of that.” Red was eyeing his companion with the professional eye still. “But—go on as you are doing, and a year from now it’ll be different. You’re wasting nervous energy—and you can’t afford to. It’s as I say—you’re a spendthrift. What’s the use?”
“I’m a Scotsman—and that’s equivalent to saying I spend only what’s necessary. It’s a contradiction in terms——”
“It is not—excuse me. I’ve been reading about one of your Scottish regiments over there—cut to pieces—and they knew they were going to be when they went into it. Call them thrifty—of their lives?”
“Ah, that’s different. They were glorious. As for that, Doctor—to right-about-face with my defense—why shouldn’t one be a spendthrift with his life? You’re one yourself.”
“Not I. I practice my profession, and mine only. You practice—about four. Last week I caught you playing nurse to a family of small children while their mother went shopping.” Red held up a silencing hand at Black’s laughter. “Yes, I know she hadn’t been out for a month. That same night you made a speech somewhere—and sat up the rest of the night with Cary Ray—— Oh, yes—I know he’s improved a lot lately, but he got restless that night and you stuck by. Next day——”
“Doctor Burns——”
“Wait a minute. Next day you——”
“How do you come to be keeping tab on me?” Black stood up, fire in his eye. “See here! Last week you did seven operations on patients who couldn’t afford to pay you a cent—and they weren’t in charity wards, either. Day before yesterday——”
But he had to stop, having but fairly begun. Red’s expression said he wouldn’t stand for it. The two regarded each other in the light of the fires, and both faces were glowing ruddily. They suggested two antagonists about to spring.
“If I’m a spendthrift, so are you!” Black challenged. “Why shouldn’t we be, at that? Who gets anything out of life—not to mention giving anything—who isn’t a spendthrift? ‘He who saveth his life shall lose it’—and nobody knows that better than you, Doctor Burns!”
“But you waste yours, you know,” said Burns, with emphasis.
“No more than you do.”
“I do it to save life.”
“And what do I do it for?” The question came back like a shot, with stinging emphasis and challenge.
The two pairs of eyes continued to meet clashingly, and for a minute neither would give way. Then Red said, with a rather grudging admission, “I know you think you have to do all these extras, and you do them with intent and purpose, and willingly, at that. But I don’t back down on my proposition—that you’re working harder at it than is necessary. I’ll admit I want you to do what you can for Cary Ray—for his sister’s sake. But when it comes to the DuBoises, and the Corrigans, and the Andersons—why should you spend yourself on them—ungrateful beggars?”
“I can only ask you, Doctor, why you spend yourself on the Wellands and the Kalanskys, and the Kellys?”
Suddenly Red’s attitude changed, with one of those characteristic quick shifts which made him such delightful company. He looked at his watch and sat down on the log again. “Six minutes to stay, and then back to thatblamed committee meeting for yours, and back to my office for me—I can see ten people sitting there now, in my mind’s eye. Hang it—why can’t a fellow stay in the open when it’s there he can be at his best, physically and mentally?”
“It seems to make you a bit pugilistic!”
Red looked up, laughing. “How about you? For a parson it strikes me you can fight back with both fists.”
“Doctor—let’s have that wrestle now! I’d like it to remember.”
“You would, would you? Hold on—don’t take off your coat. I know better than to play tricks with my digestion like that, if you don’t. You’re younger than I—you might get away with it. But—I’ll give you that tussle some day you’re so anxious for.”
“Meanwhile—I wish you’d give me something else.”
“What’s that?” Red was instantly on his guard—Black could see that clearly. He had expected it. But it did not deter him from saying the thing he wanted to say.
“Shake hands with me. Did you know you never have?”
“Never have!”
“Not the way I want you to. I’m asking you now to shake hands with my profession. I’m tired of having you against it. I ask you to give it fair play in your mind. You admit that it’s worth while for you to spend the last drop you have for human life. But it’s wasting good red blood for a man to spend his for human souls. Do you mean it? Ah, Doctor Burns, you don’t. Tell me so—the way I want you to.”
The suspicion dropped out of Red’s eyes, but into them came something else—the showing of a dogged human will.He stood looking into the fire, his hands in his pockets—where they had been for some time. He made no motion to withdraw them. Black’s hands were clasped behind him—he made no motion to extend them. A long silence succeeded—or long it seemed to Black, at least. Had he lost his case? He had never thought to state it thus to Red—but when the moment came it had seemed to him he could do no otherwise.... His heart beat rather heavily.... How was Red going to take it?
The red-headed surgeon looked up at last. “Do you mean you want me to shake hands with your entire profession—all the men in it?”
“Are there no charlatans in medicine? Butyou—are the real thing. I wouldn’t deny you a handshake—if you wanted it.”
Slowly Red drew his right hand out of his pocket. “You want this tribute—to you, as a minister?”
Then Black’s eyes flamed. He took a step backward. “I want no ‘tribute,’ Doctor,—my heaven!—you don’t think that! All I want is—to know that—as a minister you can shake hands with me and believe—that I’m as real as I know you to be. If you can’t do that——” he turned aside. “Oh, never mind! I didn’t mean to try to force it from you. Let’s be off. It must be high time, and it’s more than high time if——”
A hand fell on his shoulder and stayed there. Another hand found his and gripped it tight. “Oh, come along. Bob Black!” said a gruff voice with yet a ring in it. “You’re the realest chap I know. And I’ve tried my darned best not to like you—and I can’t get away with it.Now—are you satisfied?”