A STRANGE DAY
"Len, will you go for a day in the woods with me?"
Ellen Burns looked up from the old mahogany secretary which had been
hers in the southern-home days. She was busily writing letters, but the
request, from her busy husband, was so unusual that it arrested her
attention. Her glance travelled from his face to the window and back
again.
"I know it's pretty frosty," he acknowledged, "but the sun is bright,
and I'll build you a windbreak that'll keep you snug. I'm aching for a
day off--with you."
"Artful man! You know I can't resist when you put it that way, though I
ought not to leave this desk for two hours. Give me half an hour, and
tell me what you want for lunch."
"Cynthia and I'll take care of that. She's putting up the stuff now,
subject to your approval."
He was off to the kitchen, and Ellen finished the note she had begun,
put away the writing materials and letters, and ran up to her room. By
the end of the stipulated half hour she was down again, trimly clad in a
suit of brown tweeds, with a big coat for extra warmth and a close hat
and veil for breeze resistance.
"That's my girl! You never look prettier to my eyes than when you are
dressed like this. It's the real comrade look you have then, and I feel
as if we were shoulder to shoulder, ready for anything that might come."
"Just as if it weren't always that," she said in merry reproach as she
took her place beside him and the car rolled off.
"It's always great fun to go off with you unexpectedly like this," she
went on presently. "It seems so long since we've done it. It's been such
a busy year. Is everybody getting well to-day, that you can manage a
whole day?"
"All but one, and he doesn't need me just now. I could keep busy, of
course, but I got a sudden hankering for a day all alone with you in the
woods; and after that idea once struck me I'd have made way for it
anyhow, short of actually running away from duty."
"You need it, I know. We'll just leave all care behind and remember
nothing except how happy we are to be together. That never grows old,
does it, Red?"
"Never!" He spoke almost with solemnity, and gave her a long look as he
said it, which she met with one to match it. "You dear!" he murmured.
"Len, do you know I never loved you so well as I do to-day?"
"I wonder why?" She was smiling, and her colour, always duskily soft in
her cheek, grew a shade warmer. "Is it the brown tweeds?"
"It's the brown tweeds, and the midnight-dark hair, and the beautiful
black eyes, and--the lovely soul of my wife."
"Why, Red, dear--and all this so early in the morning? How will you end
if you begin like this?"
"I don't know--or care." Something strange looked out of his eyes for a
minute. "I know what I want to say now and I'm saying it. So much of the
time I'm too busy to make love to my wife, I'm going to do it
to-day--all day. I warn you now, so you can sidetrack me if you get
tired of it."
"I'm very likely to," she said with a gay tenderness. "To have you make
love to me without the chance of a telephone call to break in will be a
wonderful treat."
"It sure will to me."
It was a significant beginning to a strange day. They drove for twenty
miles, to find a certain place upon a bluff overlooking a small lake of
unusual beauty, far out of the way of the ordinary motor traveller.
They climbed a steep hill, coming out of the wooded hillside into the
full sunlight of the late October day, where spread an extended view of
the countryside, brilliant with autumn foliage. The air was crisp and
invigorating, and a decided breeze was stirring upon this lofty point,
so that the windbreak which Burns began at once to build was a necessary
protection if they were to remain long.
An hour of hard work, at which Ellen helped as much as she was allowed,
established a snug camp, its back against a great bowlder, its windward
side sheltered by a thick barrier of hemlocks cleverly placed, a brisk
bonfire burning in an angle where an improvised chimney carried off its
smoke and left the corner clear and warm.
"There!" Burns exclaimed in a tone of satisfaction as he threw himself
down upon the pine needle-strewn ground at Ellen's side. "How's this for
a comfortable nest? Think we can spend six contented hours here, my
honey?"
"Six days if you like. How I wish we could!"
"So do I. Jove, how I'd like it! I haven't had enough of you to satisfy
me for many a moon. And there's no trying to get it, except by running
away like this."
"We ought to do it oftener."
"We ought, but we can't. At least we couldn't. Perhaps now--"
He broke off, staring across the valley where the lake lay to the
distant hills, smoky blue and purple in spite of the clear sunlight
which lay upon them.
"Perhaps now--what?"
"Well--I might not be able to keep up my activity forever, and the time
might come when I should have to take less work and more rest."
"But you said 'now.'"
"Did I? I was just looking ahead a bit. Len, are you hungry, or shall we
wait a while for lunch?"
"Don't you want a little sleep before you eat? You haven't had too much
of it lately."
"It would taste rather good--if I might take it with my head in your
lap."
She arranged her own position so that she could maintain it comfortably,
and he extended his big form at full length upon the rug he had brought
up from the car and upon which she was already sitting. He smiled up
into her face as he laid his head upon her knees, and drew one of her
hands into his. "Now your little boy is perfectly content," he said.
* * * * *
It was an hour before he stirred, an hour in which Ellen's eyes had
silently noted that which had escaped them hitherto, a curious change in
his colour as he lay with closed eyes, a thinness of the flesh over the
cheek bones, dark shadows beneath the eyes. Whether he slept she could
not be sure. But when he sat up again these signs of wear and tear
seemed to vanish at the magic of his smile, which had never been
brighter. Nevertheless she watched him with a new sense of anxiety,
wondering if there might really be danger of his splendid physique
giving way before the rigour of his life.
She noted that he did not eat heartily at lunch, though he professed to
enjoy it; and afterward he was his old boyish self for a long time. Then
he grew quiet, and a silence fell between the pair while they sat
looking off into the distance, the October sunlight on their heads.
And then, quite suddenly, something happened.
"Red! What is the matter?" Ellen asked, startled.
In spite of the summer warmth of the spot in which they sat her
husband's big frame had begun to quiver and shake before her very eyes.
Evidently he was trying hard to control the strange fit of shivering
which had seized him.
"Don't be s-scared, d-dear," he managed to get out between rigid jaws.
"It's just a bit of a ch-chill. I'll b-be all right in a m-minute."
"In all this sunshine? Why, Red!" Ellen caught up the big coat she had
brought to the place and laid it about his shoulders--"you must have
taken cold. But how could you? Come--we must go at once."
"N-not just yet. I'll g-get over this s-soon."
He drew his arms about his knees, clasping them and doing his best to
master the shivering, while Ellen watched him anxiously. Never in her
life with Red had she seen him cold. His rugged frame, accustomed to all
weathers, hardened by years of sleeping beside wide-opened windows in
the wintriest of seasons, was always healthily glowing with warmth when
others were frankly freezing.
The chill was over presently, but close upon its heels followed
reaction, and Red Pepper's face flushed feverishly as he said, with a
gallant attempt at a smile: "Sit down again a minute, dear, while I tell
you what I'm up against. I wasn't sure, but this looks like it. You've
got to know now, because I'm undoubtedly in for a bit of trouble--and
that means you, too."
She waited silently, but her hand slipped into his. To her surprise he
drew it gently away. "Try the other one," he said. "It's in better shape
for holding."
She looked down at the hand he had withdrawn and which now lay upon his
knee. It was the firmly knit and sinewy hand she knew so well, the
typical hand of the surgeon with its perfectly kept, finely sensitive
fingertips, its broad and powerful thumb, its strong but not too thick
wrist. Not a blemish marked its fair surface, yet--was it very slightly
swollen? She could hardly be sure.
"Dear, tell me," she begged. "What has happened? Are you hurt--or
ill--and haven't let me know?"
"I thought it might not amount to anything; it's only a scratch in the
palm. But--"
"Red--did you get it--operating? On what?"
He nodded. "Operating. It's the usual way, the thing we all expect to
get some day. I've been lucky so far; that's all."
"But--you didn't give yourself a scratch; you never have done that?"
"No, not up to date anyhow. I might easily enough; I just haven't
happened to."
"Amy didn't?--She couldn't!"
"She didn't--and couldn't, thank heaven. She'd kill herself if she ever
did that unlucky trick. No, she wasn't assisting this time. It was an
emergency case, early yesterday morning--one of the other men brought in
the case. It was hopeless, but the family wanted us to try."
"What sort of a case, Red?" Ellen's very lips had grown white.
"Now see here, sweetheart, I had to tell you because I knew I was in
for a little trouble, but there's no need of your knowing any more than
this about it. It was just an accident--nobody's fault. The blamed
electric lights went off--for not over ten seconds, but it was the wrong
ten seconds. I didn't even know I was scratched till the thing began to
set up a row. I don't even yet understand how I got it in the palm.
That's unusual."
"Who did it?"
"I'm not going to tell you. He feels badly enough now, and it wasn't his
fault. He asked me at the time if he had touched me in the dark and I
said no. It was as slight a thing as that. If we'd known it at the time
we'd have fixed it up. We didn't, and that's all there was to it."
"You must tell me what sort of a case it was, Red."
He looked down at her. The two pairs of eyes met unflinchingly for a
minute, and each saw straight into the depths of the other. Burns
thought the eyes into which he gazed had never been more beautiful;
stabbed though they were now with intense shock, they were yet speaking
to him such utter love as it is not often in the power of man to
inspire.
He managed still to talk lightly. "I expect you know. What's the use of
using scientific terms? The case was rottenly septic; never mind the
cause. But--I'm going to be able to throw the thing off. Just give me
time."
"Let me see it, Red."
Reluctantly he turned the hand over, showing the small spot in which was
quite clearly the beginning of trouble. "Doesn't look like much, does
it?" he said.
"And it is not even protected."
"What was the use? The infection came at the time."
"And you did all that work in the windbreak. Oh, you ought not to have
done that!"
"Nonsense, dear. I wanted to, and I did it mostly with my left hand
anyhow."
"Your blood must be of the purest," she said steadily.
"It sure is. I expect I'll get my reward now for letting some things
alone that many men care for, and that I might have cared for, too--if
it hadn't been for my mother--and my wife."
"You are strong--strong."
"I am--a regular Titan. Yes, we'll fight this thing through somehow;
only I have to warn you it'll likely be a fight. I'll go to the
hospital."
"No!" It was a cry.
"No? Better think about that. Hospital's the best place for such cases."
"It can't be better than home--when it's like ours. We'll fight our
fight there, Red--and nowhere else."
He put one hand to his arm suddenly with an involuntary movement and a
contraction of the brow. But in the next breath he was smiling again.
"Perhaps we'd better be getting back," he admitted. "My head's beginning
to be a trifle unsteady. But, I'm glad a thousand times we've had this
day."
"Was it wise to take it, dear?"
"I'm sure of it. What difference could it make? Now we've had it--to
remember."
She shivered, there in the warm October sunlight. A chill seemed
suddenly to have come into the air, and to have struck her heart.
No more words passed between them until they were almost home. Then
Ellen said, very quietly: "Red, would you be any safer in the hospital
than at home?"
"Not safer, but where it would be easier for all concerned, in case
things get rather thick."
"Easier for you, too?"
He looked at her. "Do I have to speak the truth?"
"You must. If you would rather be there--"
"I would rather be as near you as I can stay. There's no use denying
that. But Van Horn wants me at the hospital."
"Is he to look after you?"
"Yes. Queer, isn't it? But he wants the job. No," at the unspoken
question in her face, "it wasn't Van. But he came in just as the trouble
began to show and--well, you know we're the best of friends now, and I
think I'd rather have him--and Buller, good old Buller--than anybody
else."
"Oh, but you won't need them both?" she cried, and then bit her lip.
"Of course not. But you know how the profession are--if one of them gets
down they all fall over one another to offer their services."
"They may all offer them, but they will have to come to you. You are
going to stay at home. You shall have the big guest room--made as you
want it. Just tell me what to do--"
"You may as well strip it," he told her quietly. "And--Len, I'd rather
be right there than anywhere else in the world. I think, when it's
ready, I'll just go to bed. I'd bluff a bit longer if I could,
but--perhaps--"
"I'm sure you ought," she said as quietly as he. But she was very glad
when the car turned in at the driveway.