CHAPTER XIIIA GREAT GASH
“CONFOUND you—pay some attention to me, will you? Do yougetwhat I’m saying? Everything’s in train. I’ve only to take my physical examination—papers came this morning, by the way—and get my passports, and I’m off. For the love of heaven, what’s the matter with you, Max Buller? Sitting there looking like a mollusc—like a barnacle glued to a rock—and me having transports all over the place! Don’t you know a magnificently happy man when you see one—and can’t you——”
Red’s manner suddenly changed, as Dr. Maxwell Buller looked up at him with an expression of mingled pain and protest. Red’s voice softened, his smiling lips grew sober.
“I beg your pardon, Max, old man,” he said. “You’re in trouble, and I’m a blind ass—as usual. What’s the matter? The Throckmorton case gone wrong, after all? Or worse things befallen? Come—out with it!”
Buller got up. He was Burns’ best friend in the profession—the two had stood together since the earliest days of medical school and hospital training. Buller was not a brilliant member of the healing fraternity, but a steady-going, conscientious, doggedly energetic practitioner on whose sturdy friendship through all the thick and thin of the regular grind Burns was accustomed to rely. Never a crisis in the professional affairs of either man but he calledwith confidence upon the bed-rock reliability of the other to see him through.
On this particular morning, Red, bursting with the latest developments in the arrangements he was pushing through in order to be able to get away and join Dr. John Leaver at an American hospital in France, had rushed into Buller’s office considerably before office hours. He had shouted his plans into the other’s ears—so to speak—though technically he had not much raised his voice above its customary low professional pitch. The whole effect of him, none the less, had been that of a boy roaring at a comrade across several fences that he had been given a holiday and was off for glorious sport. And here was his trusty comrade-in-arms glowering gloomily back at him and as good as saying that he grudged him his luck and hoped he’d have the worst possible time of it. That wasn’t a bit like Buller—good old Buller, who hadn’t a selfish hair on his head, and knew no such thing as professional jealousy where R. P. Burns was concerned. What in the name of time was the matter with him?
“I’d no idea,” said Buller, at last, and hesitating strangely, “the thing had gone so far. I knew you thought of going, but——”
“But what? Haven’t I been talking going for the last year and a half? And didn’t I call you up the other day when I got Jack Leaver’s cable and tell you I meant to put it through post-haste? Didn’t I——”
“Yes, you’ve told me all about it. You’ll remember that I’ve said a good deal about the need for you right here, and my hope that you’d delay going a while yet. I think I said——”
“I don’t know whatyousaid,” Red broke in impatiently, interrupting Buller’s slower speech in a way towhich the other was well used. “I was much too busy talking myself to notice what any idiot might be saying on lines like those. Good Lord! man, youknewI’d go the minute I got the chance. Why, I’m needed over there about sixteen thousand times more than I am here——”
Buller shook his head, his unhappy eyes on the worn rug of his office floor. The shake of that head inflamed Red into wild speech, his fist clenched and brought down on Buller’s desk till bottles jumped and papers flew off into space. Then, suddenly, he brought himself up short.
“All right,” he growled. “I’ve blown off. Now—explain yourself, if you can—which I doubt. But I can at least give you the chance.”
Buller cleared his throat. He ran his hand through the rapidly graying locks above his anxious brow, sat down at his desk again—as though it might be a little easier to say what he had to say in this customary seat of the judge delivering sentence—and looked unwillingly up at his friend. Red had moved up and closed in on him as he sat down, towering over the desk like a defiant prisoner.
“Get it over,” he commanded briefly.
“I’ll try to, Red, but—it’s hard to know how to begin.... You—suppose you let me go over you, will you?—as a sort of preliminary to the examination the Government surgeons will give you.”
“What for? Do you think I can’t pass? Isthatwhat’s bothering you?” A relieved laugh came with the words. “Me?” He smote his broad chest with all the confidence in the world—and Buller winced at the gesture. “Why, I’m strong as an ox.”
Buller opened a drawer and took out a stethoscope. “Well—you won’t mind——” he said, apologetically, and came around the desk as a man might who had to put apistol to the head of a beloved dog, and was dreading the sound of the shot.
“All right. But it’s about the foolest thing I ever knew you to put up to me.” Red pulled off his coat, stripped rapidly to the waist, and presented himself for the inquisition.
Two minutes of absolute silence succeeded during which Buller swallowed twice as if he were trying to get rid of his own palate. Then he stood up with his hand on Red’s shoulder.
“I’m—awfully sorry, lad,” he said—and looked it, in a fashion the other could not doubt.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you—remember that little trouble you had two years ago?”
“The—infection?”
“Yes. It’s left its mark.”
“What do youmean!”
“You’re all right for good solid hard work—here. But you aren’t quite in condition to meet the—requirements of the Service. You—you couldn’t get by, Red.”
Buller turned away, his chunky, square-fingered hand slightly unsteady as he put away the little tell-tale apparatus which had registered the hardest fact with which he had ever had to confront a patient—and a friend. There was a full minute’s silence behind him, while he deliberately kept his back turned, unwilling to witness the first coming to grips with the totally unsuspected revelation. Then:
“Do you mean to say my heart isn’t all right?” came in a queer, indignant tone which Buller knew meant only one thing: that Red minded nothing at all about his physical condition except as it was bound to affect the course upon which he had set out.
“Not—exactly.”
“Oh, quit treating me like a scared patient. I know youthinkyou heard——”
“I did hear it, Red. There’s no possible doubt. It’s unquestionably the result of the infection of two years ago. We all knew it then. I knew I’d find it now. That’s why——”
“I see. That’s why you’ve been advising me not to go. My place was here—knitting!”
Buller was silent. His broad, kind face worked a little as the big figure crossed the room to the window. He could look up now—Red’s back was toward him.
“Doesn’t the amount of work I stand up under, every earthly day and night, show that in spite of your blamed old dissection I could do a good job over there before I cash in—which, of course, may be indefinitely postponed? Nobody knows better than you that a fellow can go on working like a fiend for years with the rottenest sort of heart, and never even suspect himself that there’s a thing wrong——”
“I know.” Buller’s voice was gentle as a woman’s. “But—first you’ve got to pass the stiffest sort of Government tests, Red—and——”
“And I can’t, eh?”
It was done—Max Buller’s job. He didn’t have to answer that last question—which was no question, as he well knew. There was finality in Red’s own voice; he had accepted the fact. He knew too well the uselessness of doubting Buller’s judgment—the other man was too well qualified professionally for that. Red knew, also, as well as if he had been told in plain language, precisely what his own condition must be. Out of the race he was—that was all there was to it. Still fit to carry heavy burdens,capable of sustaining the old routine under the old terms, but unfit to take his place among the new runners on the new track, where the prize was to be greater than any he had ever won. And his splendid body, at that very minute, seemingly as perfect as it had ever been; every function, as far as he himself could be aware, in the smoothest running order! He could not even be more than usually conscious of the beat of his own heart, so apparently undisturbed it was by this intolerable news; while his spirit, his unquenched spirit, was giving him the hardest tussle of his life.
Buller was wrong—hemustbe wrong! He was “hearing things” that didn’t exist. Red wheeled about, the inconsistent accusation on his lips. It died at sight of his friend. Buller was slouched down in his swivel-chair, his chin on his breast, his head propped on his hand. Quite clearly Buller was taking this thing as hard—vicariously—as Red himself—as Buller usually took things that affected Red adversely. Oh, yes—the old boy knew—he couldn’t be fooled on a diagnosis like that. Red turned back to the window. It was all over—there was no possible appeal....
He went away almost immediately, and quite silently. There had been no torrent of speech since the blow actually went home. The red-headed surgeon with Celtic blood in his veins could be quiet enough when there was no use saying anything, as there certainly wasn’t now.
Two days later Robert Black, hurrying down the street, traveling bag in hand, passed the office of Redfield Pepper Burns just as the doctor’s car drew up at the curb. Black turned, halted, and came up to the car. Red was sitting still in it, waiting for him, the unstopped motor throbbingquietly. Black hadn’t seen him for several days, but the last he knew Red had been deep in his preparation for an early departure. It was on Black’s lips to say, “How’s everything coming on?”—knowing that no other subject had any interest for Red compared with that. But Red spoke first.
“You’ve got to know sooner or later,” he said, in his gruffest tone, “so you might as well know now. I’m not going over. That’s all. Can’t stop to talk about it.” And he set hand to gear-shift, and with a nod was off again, leaving Black standing looking after him, feeling as if something had hit him between the eyes.
As he walked on, after a moment, his mind was busy with the impressions it had received in that brief encounter. Red’s face had been set and stern; it was often that when he was worn with work over more than usually hard cases. His eyes had looked straight at Black with his customary unevasive gaze, but—there had been something strange in that look. He was unhappy—desperately unhappy, there could be no doubt about that. What could have happened so suddenly to put a spoke in the rapidly turning wheels of his plans? Black fell to puzzling over it, himself growing every moment more disturbed. He cared tremendously what happened to Red; he found himself caring more and more with each succeeding thought about it.
He was on his way to the station, to take a train for a distant city, where was to be held a reunion of his seminary class in the old halls of their training. He had been looking forward to it for weeks, in expectation of meeting certain classmates whom he had not seen for six years, and some of whom he might never meet again. He had been exchanging letter after letter with them about it, andanticipating the event with the ardour with which most men look forward to such reunions at that period in life. There was nothing to do but go, of course; though by now he was longing intensely to follow up Red, by some means, and find out what was the matter. He hadn’t liked the look in those hazel eyes, usually so full of spirit and purpose; the more he thought about it the surer he grew that Red was at some crisis in his life, and that he needed something he hadn’t got to help him face it. Of course he must be horribly disappointed not to be going across, oh, desperately disappointed! But there was more than that in the situation to make him look like that, Black was sure of it.
His feet continued to move toward the station, his eyes lifting to the clock upon its tower, which warned him that he must lose no time. He had his ticket and a sleeper reservation—it was fifteen hours’ journey back to the old ivy-covered halls which had grown dearer in his memory with each succeeding year of his absence. He was thinking that he couldn’t disappoint Evans, his best friend, or Desboro, his old college chum who was going to China on the next ship that sailed; such appointments were sacred—the men would never quite forgive him if he threw them over. But this he could do: he could go on for the dinner which was to take place the following evening, and then catch a late train back, cutting the rest of the program, and reaching home again after only forty-eight hours’ interval; he had expected to be absent at least five days. No, he couldn’t, either. Desboro was on for an address, that second evening, for which he had expressed particular hope that Black would remain. Desboro was a sensitive chap and he was going to China. Well—what——
His train had been called; those determined feet of his took him toward it, though his mind was now slowing them perceptibly. And then, suddenly, his will took charge of the matter—his will, and his love. He loved Red Pepper Burns—he knew it now, if he had not fully known it before; loved him even better than he did Desboro, or Evans, or any of the rest of them for whom he had cared so much in the old days. And Red was in trouble. Could he leave him to go on to hear Desboro’s speech, or wring Evans’ hand, or even to hear a certain one of his adored old professors say: “I’m especially glad to see you, Black—I want to hear all about you——” a probability he had been happily visualizing as worth the trip, though he should get nothing more out of it.
He turned about face with determination, his decision made. What was a class reunion, with all its pleasures—and its disappointments, too—compared with standing by a friend who needed him? The consciousness that Red was quite as likely to repel as to welcome him—more likely, at that—lent no hesitation to his steps. He went back to the ticket windows, succeeded in getting his money returned, and retraced his steps to the manse even more rapidly than he had come away from it. It was only as he let himself in at the door that he remembered that his little vacation was Mrs. Hodder’s as well, and that at his insistence she had left early that morning. He grinned rather ruefully at this thought; so it was to be burned toast and tinned beans again, instead of banquet food! Well, when a fellow was making sacrifices for a friend, let him make them and not permit the thought of a little lost food to make him hesitate. Banquets—and beans—interesting alliteration! And now—to find out about Red without loss of time.
Ten minutes later he was in Red’s home, standing, hat in hand, before Mrs. Burns, who had come to him without delay.
“I saw your husband just a minute this morning, and he told me it was all off with his going to France. That’s all he said—except that he had no time to talk about it. Of course I understood that he didn’t wantmeto talk about it. But something in his looks made me a little anxious. I thought you wouldn’t mind my coming to you. If you don’t want to tell me anything more, Mrs. Burns, that’s all right. But I wanted you to know that if anything has happened to make him—or you—unhappy, I care very much. And I wish I could help.”
Ellen Burns looked up into his face, and saw there all that one could wish to see in a friend’s face when one is in trouble. She answered as frankly as he had spoken, and he couldn’t help seeing that his coming was a relief to her.
“I’m going to tell you, Mr. Black,” she said. She remained standing; Black thought it might be because she was too ill at ease in mind to think of sitting down. “I am anxious about Red, too, because he doesn’t seem at all himself, since this happened. Two days ago his good friend Doctor Buller told him there was no chance of his passing the physical tests necessary for getting across, on account of trouble with his heart—which he hadn’t even suspected. He was very ill with blood poisoning two years ago. The disappointment has been even greater than I could have imagined it would be; he has never set his heart on anything as he has on this chance to be of service in France. Of course I am disappointed, too—I meant to follow him soon, when we could arrange it. And—it goes without saying—that the reason which keeps him is a good deal of a blow to me.”
“Yes—of course.”
She was speaking very quietly, and with entire control of voice and manner, and the sympathetic understanding in his tone did not undermine her, because there was no weakness in it.
“But—we have accepted it; there’s nothing else to do. Doctor Buller says it doesn’t mean that Red can’t go on working as hard as ever, for a long time—here. But that doesn’t help him any, just yet. He has been in—a mood—so dark ever since he knew, that even I can’t seem to lighten it. And just before you came I found—this. It—does make me anxious, Mr. Black, because I don’t quite know——”
She put her hand into a fold of her dress and brought out a leaf from the daily memorandum pad with a large sized date at the top, which was accustomed to lie on Red’s desk. He was in the habit of leaving upon it, each time he went out, a list of calls, or a statement regarding his whereabouts, that his office nurse or his wife might have no difficulty in finding him in case of need. In the present instance the page was well covered with the morning and afternoon lists of his regular rounds, including an early morning operation at the hospital. But the latest entry was of a different character. At the very bottom of the sheet, in the only space left, was scrawled the usual preliminary phrase, followed by a long and heavy dash, so that the effect of the whole was inevitably suggestive of a reckless mood: “Gone to ——”
Black studied this for some seconds before he lifted his eyes. “It may mean nothing at all,” he said, as quietly as Mrs. Burns had spoken, “except the reflection of his unhappiness. I can’t think it could mean anything else. Just the same”—and now he looked at the lovely face before him, to see in it that he might offer to do anythingat all which could mean help for Red—“I think I’d like to find him for you—and I will. I’m sure I can, even though you don’t know where he has gone. Can you guess at all where it might be?”
“He had the car,” she said, considering, “and he’s very apt, when things have gone wrong, to get off out of doors somewhere—alone—though he’s quite as likely to work off his trouble by driving at a furious pace over miles and miles of road. I’ve known him to jump out of the car and dash off into the woods, in some place I’d never seen before, and come back all out of breath and laughing, and say he’d left it all behind. I think, perhaps, that’s what he’s doing now. I hope he’ll come back laughing this time, though I—I can’t help wishing he’d taken me with him.”
“I wish he had.” Black thought he had never seen a woman take a thing like this with so much sense and courage. How could Red have left her behind, he wondered, just now, when she could do so much for him? Or—couldn’t she? Could any woman, no matter how finely understanding, do for him quite what another man could—a man who would know better than any woman just what it must mean to have the foundations suddenly knocked out from under him like that? “But,” he went on quickly, “I don’t think it will be difficult to find him because—there’s a way. And I’m going now, to try it. Don’t be worried. I have a strong feeling that your husband is coming out of this a bigger man even than when it hit him—he’s that sort of man.” He was silent an instant, and then went on: “And he won’t do anything God doesn’t mean him to do—because he isn’tthatsort of man. He’s not afraid of death—but he isn’t afraid of life, either. Good-bye—it’s going to be all right.”
They smiled at each other, heartened, both, by thethought of action. Black got away at once. It was, by now, well after six o’clock. He had had no dinner, but it didn’t occur to him to look out for food before he started on the long walk he meant to take. For, somehow, he was suddenly quite sure he knew where to go....
He had guessed right. Was it a guess? As he had walked at his best speed out of the town and over the highway toward the road upon which Red had taken him that winter night, months ago, he had been saying over and over, “Don’t let me be wrong, Lord—you know I’vegotto find him!” He was remembering something Red had said when he first led him up the trail and out upon the rocky little plateau: “This is a place I’ve never brought anybody to—not even my wife, as it happens—and probably wouldn’t be bringing you if we had time to go farther. I come here sometimes—to thrash things out, or get rid of my ugly temper. The place is littered with my chips.”
He recalled answering, “All right, Doctor. I won’t be looking for the chips.” But he had thoroughly appreciated being brought to the spot at all, recognizing it for one of those intimate places in a man’s experience which he keeps very much to himself. Where, now, would Red be so likely to go if he had something still to “thrash out,” after the two days of storm following the shock of Doctor Buller’s revelation?
At the bottom of the hill, well-hidden in a thicket of trees, Black came upon the car—and suddenly slowed his pace. He was close upon Red, then, and about to thrust himself in where he was pretty sure not to be wanted—at first. He meant to make himself wanted, if he knew how. Did he know how? Ah, that was where he must have help. It was going to take more than human wisdom, thus totry to deal with the sore heart, the baffled spirit, of the man who couldn’t have his own way at what doubtless seemed to him the greatest moment of his life. Black stopped short, close to a great oak, and put up his arm against it, and hid his face in his arm, and asked God mightily that in this hour He would use His servant’s personality as He would use a tool in His workshop, and show him how to come as close and touch as gently—and withal as healingly—as it might be possible for human personality to do when backed and reinforced by the Divine. A pretty big request? Yes, but the need was big. And Black didn’t put it in any such exalted phrasing—remember that. What he said was just this: “Please let me help. Imusthelp, for he needs me—and I don’t know how. But You do—and You can show me.”
Then, after a minute, he went on, springing up the trail, which was plain enough now, even in the fading daylight, to be easily followed. As he reached the top he came in sight of Red through the trees, and stopped short, not so much to regain his breath as because the sight of the man he had come to find made his heart turn over in sympathy, and for that instant he couldn’t go on.
Yet Red was in no dramatic attitude of despair. To the casual eye he would have looked as normal as man could look. He sat upon a log—one of two, facing each other, with a pile of blackened sticks and ashes between, reminiscent of past campfires. There had been no fire there recently—no spark lingered to tell the tale of warmth and light and comradeship that may be found in a fire. And what Red was doing was merely whittling a stick. Surely no tragedy was here, or fear of one.... The thing that told the tale, though, unmistakably, to Black’s sharpened eyes, was this: that the ground was littereddeep, all about Red’s feet, with the fresh whittlings of many sticks. “Chips,” indeed! Chips out of his very life, Black knew they were; hewed away ruthlessly, with no regard as to what was left behind in the cutting, or what was made thereof.
He could not stand and look on, unobserved, of course. So he came on, striding ahead; and when Red at last looked up it was to see Black advancing confidently, as a friend comes to join a friend. Red stared across the space; his eyes looked dazed, and a little bloodshot.
“I’ve come,” said Black, simply, “because, Red, I thought you needed me. Maybe you don’t want me, but I think you need me, and I’m hoping you won’t send me away. I don’t think I’ll go if you do.”
Red’s odd, almost unseeing gaze returned to the stick in his hand. He cut away two or three more big chunks from it, leaving it an unsightly remnant; then flung it away, to join the other jagged remnants upon the ground.
“Yes,” he said, in a hoarse voice quite unlike his own, “I guess maybe I do.”
Black’s heart leaped. He had not expected a reception like this. To be kicked out—metaphorically—or to be ungraciously permitted to remain—that was the best he could have hoped for. He sat down upon the other log, took off his hat and ran his hand through the locks on his moist brow; he was both warm and tired, but he was not in the least conscious of either fact. All he knew or cared for was that he had found his man—and had his chance at last! And now that he had it—the chance he had so long wanted, to make this man he loved his friend forever—he was not thinking of that part of his wish at all. He had got beyond that; all he wanted now was tosee him through his trouble, though it might make him less his friend than ever.
The two sat in silence for a minute. Then Red spoke. With an odd twist of the mouth he pointed to an axe lying at the foot of a tree not far away. Above it, in the trunk, showed a great fresh gash, the beginning of a skilled woodsman’s work upon a tree which he means to fell.
“I began to chop down that tree,” he said, in the same queer, hoarse voice. “That’s what I’ve always done—when the pressure got too high. Then—I remembered. If I chopped it down, I might—end things. There’s no telling. Buller says my machinery’s got past the chopping point—it’s time to take to whittling. So—I’m whittling—as you see.”
“I see,” said Black. He spoke cheerfully—there was no pity in his voice. In his eyes—but Red was not looking at those.
“That’s why,” went on Red, after a minute, “I’m not going to France. They don’t need whittlers over there.”
“Do you think you’re a whittler?”
“What else?”
“You don’t look much like one—to me.”
“Don’t say that to me!” challenged Red, with a touch of the old fire. “There’s no cure for my hurt in the thought that I can keep on working—over here—until the machinery breaks down entirely—which may not be for a good while yet. I want what I want—and I can’t have it. What I can have’s no good compared with that. It may look good to you—it doesn’t to me. That’s all there is of it.”
“You don’t look like a whittler to me,” Black repeated, sturdily. “You look like a tree chopper. I can’t—andwon’t—think of you any other way.... I wish you’d put up that knife!”
Red stared at him. “Make you nervous?” he questioned.
“It makesyounervous. Put it up. Play with the axe, if you like; that’s more in character.”
The two looked each other in the eye for a minute. The clear gaze of Black met the bloodshot one of Red.
“Here—I’ll get it for you,” offered Black, and got up and went over and picked up the axe, its blade shining, its edge keen as one of Red’s instruments. Black ran his fingers cautiously along it. “I suppose no surgeon ever owned a dull axe,” he commented, as he brought it to Red. “This would cut a hair, I think. Take it—and put up the knife to please me, will you?”
“Anything to oblige.” Grimly Red accepted the axe, snapped the knife shut and dropped it into his pocket. “Anything else? Going to preach to me now with the axe for a text?”
“I think so. I’m glad you’re ready. But the axe won’t do for a text—nor even for an illustration. I’ve got that here.” He put his hand to his pocket and drew out a little, worn, leather-bound Book, over which he looked with a keen, fearless gaze at Red. “See here,” he said. “I could try a lot of applied psychology leading up to this little Book—and you’d recognize, all the way, that that was what I was doing. What’s the use? When you go to see a patient, and know by the look of him and the few things he tells you what’s the matter, you don’t lead up by degrees to giving him the medicine he needs, do you? Not you! You write your prescription on the spot, and say ‘Take this.’ And he takes it and gets well.”
“Or dies—if I’m out of luck. It isn’t the medicine that decides it, either way. It’s his own power of resistance. So your simile’s no good.”
Black nodded. This sounded to him somewhat more like the old Red. “Yours is, then,” he said. “It’s your power of resistance I’m calling on. You used it just now—when you stopped chopping at that tree. Do you think I don’t know—you wanted to keep on, and take the possible consequences—which you almost hoped—or thought you hoped—would be the probable ones?”
And now Red’s startled eyes met his. “My God!” he ejaculated, and got to his feet quickly, dropping the axe. He strode away among the trees for a minute, then came slowly back.
“Do you think, Bob Black,” he demanded, “you dare tackle a case like mine? I see you know what I’m up against. Do you imagine there’s anything in that Book there that—fits my case?” And Black saw that his eyes looked hungrily at the little Book—as men’s eyes have looked since it was given shape. When there is nowhere else to go for wisdom, even the most unwonted hands open the Book—and find there what they honestly seek.
“I know there is.” Black opened the Book—it fell open easily, as one much used. He looked along its pages, as one familiar with every line. It took but a moment to find the words he sought. In a clear, quiet voice he read the great, brave words of Paul the apostle:
“Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air:But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.”
“Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.
And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.
I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air:
But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.”
A long silence followed the reading of these words. Suddenly it had seemed to Robert Black that nothing he could say could possibly add to the splendid challenge of them to a flagging human spirit. Almost immediately upon reading the last word he had walked away—he had risen to read them, as if such words could be said only by a man upon his feet. He was gone for perhaps ten minutes, and all the while his heart was back there by the ashes of the dead campfire with Red—fighting alone, as a man must fight, no matter how his friend would help him. Somehow Black was sure that hewasfighting—it was not in Red—it couldn’t be—to lay down his arms. Or, if he had in this one black hour laid them down, it would be to take them up again—itmustbe so. All Black’s own dogged will, plus his love and his faith in God and in this man, were back there in the woods with Red.
By and by he went back himself. Red was no longer sitting on the log, he was standing by a tree, at the edge of the plateau, looking off through a narrow vista at the blue hills in the distance all but veiled now in the dimness of the coming night. At the sound of Black’s footsteps on the snapping twigs he turned.
“Well, lad,” he said, in a weary voice which was yet quite his own, “I guess you’ve won out over my particular personal devil this time. Ihave‘preached to others’—I expect I’ve got to stand by my own preaching now. It’s all right. I’d got too used to having my own way—orforcing it—that’s all. I’ll try to take my medicine like a man. I’ve been taking it—like a coward. Now—we’ll say no more about it.”
“Not another word. Except—would you mind if I built a little fire, and burned up those chips?”
“I wish you would.”
With quick motions Black made a heap of them on the old campfire ashes, touched them off with the match Red silently handed him—he had matches of his own, but he took Red’s—and stood looking down into the curling flames. The chips burned as merrily and brilliantly as if they had not been the signs of human despair, and the two men watched till the small fire had burned down to a last orange glow of embers.
Then Black, taking off his hat, said in a way so simple that the listening ears could not want to be stopped from the sound of the words: “Please, Lord, help us to run, ‘not uncertainly,’ nor fight, as those that ‘beat the air.’ Give us faith and courage for the long way—and bring us to the end of the course, by and by—but not till we have ‘run a good race’—all the way. Amen.”
Still silently, after that, the two went down the trail, now in deep shadow. Red went first, to lead the way, and Black noted with joy that he plunged along down the trail with much his old vigour of step. At almost the bottom he suddenly halted and turned:
“See here, Bob Black,” he said, accusingly. “I thought you were on your way to the station when I saw you this morning. Weren’t you off for those doings at your old Alma Mater you’ve been counting on?”
“I changed my mind.”
“What! After you saw me?”
“Of course.”
There was an instant’s stunned silence on the red-headed doctor’s part, broken by Black’s laugh.
“One would think you never gave up a play or a good dinner or almost anything you’d wanted, to go and set a broken leg—or to reduce a dislocated shoulder before breakfast!”
But when Red finally spoke the hoarseness was back in his voice—only it seemed to be a different sort of hoarseness:
“What did you do it for?”
“I think you know. Because I wanted to stand by you.”
Red turned again, and began to go on down the trail. But at the bottom he once more stopped short.
“Lad,” he said, with some diffidence, “there’s a story in that Book of yours—the other part of it—that always interested me, only I didn’t think there were many examples of that sort of standing by in present days. I begin to think there may be one or two.”
“Which story is that?” Black asked, eagerly—though he concealed the eagerness.
“That—I’ll have to leave you to guess!” said the other man—and said not another word all the way home. He sent the car at its swiftest pace along the road, took Black to his own door, held his hand for an instant in a hard grip, said “Good-night!” in his very gruffest tone, and left him.
But Black had guessed. And he had won his friend—for good and all, now—he was sure of that. How could it be otherwise?