CHAPTER XXIIITHE TOWN WAS EMPTY BEFORE
“OFcourseI’m going down to New York to see him in!” shouted Dr. Redfield Pepper Burns. He waved a cable message in his good right hand. “What did I wire Leaver to wire me the date for, if not so I could be on the pier yelling when that darn chaplain of the ——nth gets in? Why, if Cary Ray’s word is to be trusted, Black’s come through hell, same as the rest of ’em. Be there? YoubetI’ll be there.”
He was there. Nothing could have stopped him. He wanted to see instantly for himself that those shoulder and thigh injuries of which Leaver had written were not going to leave any serious or permanent results. Besides—oh, yes, he wanted to see the man himself, his friend,—who had faced death for him, as every soldier who went had faced it, for those who were left behind. He wanted to see Robert McPherson Black, and look into those keen, dark eyes of his, and see break over the well-remembered clean-cut face that smile which Red knew the first wave of his arm would bring.
People on that pier had to make way when a certain chaplain came down the gangway. A big man with a red head politely but irresistibly put them aside from his path, and they saw him grasp the chaplain’s hand. They didn’t hear much, but they saw that two friends had met.The very silence of that first instant told the story of a glad reunion.
Later, the words came fast enough. When Red could get Black to himself his first questions were pointedly professional. Satisfied upon the items he had wished made clear, he turned his attention to making his welcome manifest.
“I don’t want you to think I’ve lost my head,” he said, in the taxicab which was taking the two men to their train. Black was on furlough; the way had been made clear for him to go at once, though he was to rejoin his regiment when it came home later, pending his and his men’s discharge. “But I’m just so plain glad to have you back I’ve got to say it, and say it out loud. I knew well enough when you went you wouldn’t play safe, over there—and you haven’t.”
“Just how much use,” inquired Black, looking him straight in the eye, “would you have had for me if I had?”
“Not much.”
“Well, then——”
The two laughed, as men do when there is real emotion behind the laughter. Red let his welcome go at that for the present, and plunged into talk about the armistice and the present condition of things. But late that night, when Black having reached the haven of Red’s home, after a quick journey by the fastest train over the shortest route, was sent to his room at what Red considered a proper hour—midnight—he had wanted to sit up until morning, but he considered Black still a convalescent, and now in his charge—Red gave his friend his real welcome. To this day Black preserves a scrawl upon a certain professional prescription blank, which was pushed under his door that night just before he switched off his light.
All the evening he had been made to feel how they all cared. Mrs. Burns had given him the most satisfying of greetings; the Macauleys had rushed in to see him; Samuel Lockhart had called him upon the telephone to make an appointment for the morning. His whole parish would have been in to wring his hand if Red had not kept his actual arrival a secret for that night except to these chosen few. But nothing that anybody said or did gave him half the joy that he found in those few words written slantwise across the little white slip with R. P. Burns’ name and address printed at the top and no signature at all at the bottom. Considering that day, now almost three years back, when Robert Black had first looked across the space between pulpit and pew and coveted the red-headed doctor for his friend, and taking into account all the difficulties he had found in getting past the barriers Red had set up against him, it was not strange that his heart gave one big, glad throb of exultation as he read these words:—
“The town was empty before—it’s full now, though not another blamed beggar comes into it to-night.”
“The town was empty before—it’s full now, though not another blamed beggar comes into it to-night.”
Two months later Jane came home, to find Cary there before her, with Fanny as his bride. They had been married in Paris, “with all the thrills,” as Cary said, beaming proudly upon the slender figure in the French frock beside him, as he described the wedding to his sister. A few days later Robert Black and Jane Ray themselves were quietly married at the home of Dr. Redfield Pepper Burns and went at once to the manse, which had been made ready for them by the united efforts of Mrs. Burns, Miss Lockhart and Mrs. Hodder, Black’s former housekeeper.
At the wedding breakfast, Cary, self-appointed master ofceremonies, rose in his place. He looked around at the little company, his eyes resting first on one and then another, till he had swept the circle. Then he made a speech, which he always afterward asserted to be his masterpiece in the way of rhetorical effort, struck off, as it was, on the inspiration of the hour.
Getting up in the correspondent’s uniform which it had pleased him to put on once more for the occasion, since Black, as yet undischarged, was obliged still to wear the olive-drab with the cross upon the collar, Cary began:—
“In view of the fact that the bridegroom is still in O. D., it seems to me that it ought to be known to you people what it looks as if he never meant to tell you for himself. It’s only by chance that I found it out, but, by George! I’m going to tell you, since he won’t.”
He walked around to Black, and laid hand upon the topmost button of his new brother-in-law’s tunic. Black put up a hand and attempted to restrain him, but it could not be done, without a fight. He therefore submitted, the colour rising in his cheek, while Cary unfastened the tunic and threw back its left side, whereupon a certain famous war medal for distinguished service became visible.
“My faith!” burst from Red’s lips. “I knew it! But I never dared ask.”
“The wearer of this,” Cary went on, while Black’s eyes fell before the glow of joy he had caught in Jane’s, “went over the top with his men every blooming time they went, till Fritz finally got him. But before the shrapnel that put him out at last left the guns he had brought in wounded under every sort of hot fire, had taken every chance there was, and that last day—turned the trick that brought him this,——” and Cary laid a reverent hand upon the medal. “It happened this way——”
“No—please!——” began Black quickly, turning in protest. “Not now—nor here——”
But Cary wouldn’t be restrained. “Now—and here, by your leave, Bob, or without it. I won’t go into details, if you don’t like me to, but I will say this much: The story concerns a machine-gun on our side which had lost its last gunner, trying to put out a machine-gun nest of the enemy’s which was enfilading our men and mowing them down. This Bob Black of ours comes up, jumps in, and keeps things going all by himself till—the spit-fire over there was silenced. It may not have been the proper deed for the chaplain—I don’t know—but I do know that he saved ten times more lives than he took—and I say—here’s to him—and God bless him!”
The toast to which all had risen was drunk in a quivering silence, with Jane’s hand upon her husband’s shoulder, and her proud and beautiful eyes meeting his with a glance which said it all.
Then Black rose. “Sometime, Cary,” he said, with a glance, “I’ll be even with you for this. Sometime I shall have found out all the chancesyoutook, and I’ll recite them on some public occasion and make you wince as you never winced under shot and shell. But while we are drinking toasts—in this crystal clear water of our wedding feast which is better than any wine for such an hour—I want to propose one which is very near my heart. Not all the war medals that ever were struck would be big enough or fine enough to pin upon some of the breasts that most deserved them. One man I know, who desperately wanted to go across and take his part in the salvaging of life from the wreck, but couldn’t go, nevertheless contributed one of the most efficient means to saving life that has been used by some of the best surgeons there.And I want to say—‘here and now’—as Cary says—that I consider it took more gallantry on the part of this same red-headed—and red-blooded—fellow to stay here and carry on, as he did, with speeches and loan-raising, and all the rest of the unthanked tasks that he put through at heavy cost to his own endurance, than to have gone across, as he longed to do, and won medals by spectacular work that would have made his name famous on both sides of the water. So here’s to Dr. Redfield Pepper Burns, bearer of a heavier cross than I have ever borne,—and winner of one more shining. And I, too, say—God bless him!”
They looked into each others’ eyes, these two, across the table, and Red’s eyes fell before the light that was in Black’s. It was not only the light that his wedding day had brought there, it was the light of a friendship which should last throughout these two men’s lives, and bless both, all the way.
THE END