RED AND BLACK
[Illustration: “‘_So here’s to Dr. Redfield Pepper Burns, bearer of a
heavier cross than I have ever borne, and winner of one more
shining...._’”]
RED AND BLACK
By GRACE S. RICHMOND
Author of
“_Mrs. Red Pepper_,” “_Red Pepper Burns_,”
“_Red Pepper’s Patients_,” “_Twenty-Fourth of June_,”
_Etc._
[Illustration]
WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
FRANCES ROGERS
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with Doubleday, Page & Company
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
TO
“MY BEST FRIENDS”
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. ACROSS THE SPACE 3
II. HEADLINES 17
III. NO ANAESTHETIC 31
IV. NOBODY TO SAY A PRAYER 48
V. PLAIN AS A PIKESTAFF 63
VI. HIGH LIGHTS 80
VII. RATHER A BIG THING 99
VIII. SPENDTHRIFTS 117
IX. “BURN, FIRE, BURN!” 134
X. A SHIFTING OF HONOURS 153
XI. A LONG APRIL NIGHT 174
XII. EVERYBODY PLOTS 192
XIII. A GREAT GASH 212
XIV. SOMETHING TO REMEMBER 233
XV. QUICKSILVER IN A TUBE 255
XVI. THE ALTAR OF HIS PURPOSE 276
XVII. NO OTHER WAY 291
XVIII. AT FOUR IN THE MORNING 307
XIX. A SCARLET FEATHER 328
XX. A HAPPY WARRIOR 341
XXI. A PEAL OF BELLS 354
XXII. IN HIS NAME 370
XXIII. THE TOWN WAS EMPTY BEFORE 376
RED AND BLACK
RED AND BLACK
CHAPTER I
ACROSS THE SPACE
Their first sight of each other--Red and Black--was across the space
which stretches between pulpit and pew. It’s sometimes a wide space,
and impassable; again, it’s not far, and the lines of communication are
always open. In this case, neither of them knew, as yet, just what the
distance was.
Black--Robert McPherson Black--if you want his full name, had been
a bit nervous in the vestry where he put on his gown. He had been
preaching only five years, and that in a Southern country parish, when
a visiting committee of impressive looking men had come to listen to
him--had come again--and once more--and then had startled him with
a call to the big suburban town and the fine old, ivy-grown church
generally known as the “Stone Church.”
“But, gentlemen,” he had said, swinging about quickly in his study
chair when Mr. Lockhart, the chairman of the committee, had asked him
if he would consider a call--“I’m--I’m--why, I’m not good enough for
you!”
The committee had smiled--it was quite a remarkable committee, and had
a sense of humour. At least Samuel Lockhart had, and one other of the
five who were waiting upon Mr. Black in his study after the evening
service.
“Meaning virtue--or ability?” inquired the chairman, with his friendly
smile.
“Both. You see--well, to put it honestly--I’m just a country boy as
yet, born in Scotland and brought up in your South. I haven’t had the
training----”
“Very good things have come out of the country--and Scotland--and
the South,” Mr. John Radway had suggested. “And I believe you are a
graduate of--a perfectly satisfactory college and seminary, and have
built this church up from desertion to popularity----”
Well, they had had it out on those lines, and others, in the next hour,
the committee falling more and more in love with its candidate--if so
emotional a phrase may be used of the feelings stirred in the breasts
of five middle-aged, steady-going, sensible men--as they watched the
young man’s face go from pale to red and back again, and heard him tell
them not only what he thought he was not, but what he thought they
might not be either--in so frank and winning a way that the more he
wasn’t sure he’d better come the surer they were he must!
In the end he came--called and accepted, after the modern methods,
wholly on the judgment of the committee, for he had refused absolutely
and finally to come and preach a candidating sermon. So when he emerged
from the vestry door, on that first May Sunday, he faced for the first
time his newly acquired congregation, and the church faced for the
first time its minister-elect. Which was wholly as it should be, and
the result was a tremendously large audience, on tiptoe with interest
and curiosity.
Red was not in the congregation when Black first came in through the
vestry door. Instead, as usual, he was racing along the road in a very
muddy car, trying to make four calls in the time in which he should
really have made two, because his wife had insisted very strenuously
that he should do his best to get to church on that particular morning.
It seemed that she had learned that the new minister was from the
South, and she, being a Southerner, naturally felt an instant sense of
loyalty. It was mighty seldom that Red could ever be got to church, not
so much because he didn’t want to go--though he didn’t, really, unless
the man he was to hear was exceptionally good--as because he couldn’t
get around to it, not once in a blue moon--or a Sunday morning sun.
And if, by strenuous exertion, he did arrive at church, there was one
thing which almost invariably happened--so what was the use? The young
usher for Doctor Burns’ aisle always grinned when he saw him come in,
because he knew perfectly that within a very short time, he, the usher,
would be tiptoeing down the aisle and whispering in the ear below the
heavy thatch of close-cropped, fire-red hair. And then Doctor Burns’
attending church for _that_ day would be over.
The chances seemed fair, however, on this particular morning, because
Red did not come into church till the preliminary service was well
along. He stole in while the congregation was on its feet singing a
hymn, so his entrance was not conspicuous; but Black saw him, just the
same. Black had already seen every man in the congregation, though he
had noted individually but few of the women. He saw this big figure,
stalwart yet well set up; he saw the red head--he could hardly help
that--it would be a landmark in any audience. He saw also the brilliant
hazel eyes, the strong yet finely cut face. To put it in a word, as
Redfield Pepper Burns came into the crowded church, his personality
reached out ahead of him and struck the man in the pulpit a heavy blow
over the heart. Too strong a phrase? Not a bit of it. If the thing has
never happened to you, then you’re not a witness, and your testimony
doesn’t count. But plenty of witnesses can be found.
Robert Black looked down the aisle, and instantly coveted this man for
a friend. “I’ve got to have you,” he said within himself, while the
people went on singing the last stanza of a great hymn. “I’ve got to
have you for a friend. I don’t know who else may be in this parish but
as long as _you’re_ here there’ll be something worth the very best I
can do. I wonder if you’ll be easy to get. I--doubt it.”
Now this was rather strange, for the family with whom he was staying
while the manse was being put in order for the new minister had spoken
warmly of Doctor Burns as the man whom they always employed, plainly
showing their affection for him, and adding that half the town adored
the red-headed person in question. When that red head came into church
late, looking as professional as such a man can’t possibly help
looking, it was easy enough for Black to guess that this was Doctor
Burns.
Across the space, then, they faced each other, these two, whose lives
were to react so powerfully, each upon the other--and only one of them
guessed it. To tell the truth, Red was more than a little weary that
Sunday morning; he was not just then electrically sensitive, like the
other man, to every impression--he was not that sort of man, anyhow.
He had been up half the night, and his hair-trigger temper--which had
inspired the nickname he had carried from boyhood--had gone off in
a loud explosion within less than an hour before he appeared in the
church. He was still inwardly seething slightly at the recollection,
though outwardly he had returned to calm. Altogether, he was not
precisely in a state of mind to gaze with favour upon the new man in
the pulpit, who struck him at once as disappointingly young. He had
been told by somebody that Robert McPherson Black was thirty-five,
but his first swift glance convinced him that Robert had not been
strictly truthful about his age--or else had encouraged an impression
that anybody with half an eye could see was a wrong one. He was quite
evidently a boy--a mere boy. Burns liked boys--but not in the pulpit,
attempting to take charge of his life and tell him what to do.
Therefore Red looked with an indifferent eye upon the tall figure
standing to read the Scriptures, but acknowledged in his mind that
the youth had a pleasing face and personality--Red liked black hair
and eyes--he had married them, and had never ceased to prefer that
colouring to any other. He admitted to himself that the intonations
of Black’s voice were surprisingly deep and manly for such a boy--and
then promptly closed his mind to further impressions, and ran his hand
through his red hair and breathed a heavy sigh of fatigue. Vigorous
fellow though he was at forty years, it was necessary for him to get an
occasional night’s sleep to even things up. If it hadn’t been for his
wife’s urging he might have been snatching forty winks this minute on a
certain comfortable wide davenport at home. These Southerners--how they
did hang together--and Black wasn’t a real Southerner, either, having
spent his boyhood in Scotland. Red could have heard the new man quite
as well next Sunday--or the one after. He glanced sidewise at his wife,
and his irritation faded--as it always did at the mere sight of her.
How lovely she was this morning, in her quiet church attire. Bless her
heart--if she wanted him there he was glad he had come. And of course
it was best for the children that they see their father in church now
and then.... But he hoped the boy in the pulpit would not make too
long a prayer--he, Red, was so deadly sleepy, he might go to sleep and
disgrace Ellen. It wouldn’t be the first time.
But he didn’t hear the prayer--and not because he went to sleep. It
was during the offertory sung by the expensive quartette (which he
didn’t like at all because he knew the tenor for a four-flusher and the
contralto for a little blonde fool, who sometimes got him up in the
night for her hysterics--though he admitted she could sing), that the
young usher came tiptoeing down the aisle and whispered the customary
message in the ear beneath the red thatch. Dr. Redfield Pepper Burns
had been in church precisely eleven minutes this time before being
called out. What in thunder was the use of his coming at all? He gave
an I-told-you-so look at his wife as he got up and hung his overcoat on
his arm and went up the aisle again, his competent shoulders followed
by the disappointed gaze of Black from the pulpit. The doors closed
behind him, and the young usher exhibited his watch triumphantly to
another young usher, making signs as of one who had won a bet. Eleven
minutes was the shortest time since February, when on a certain
remembered Sunday Burns had never got to his seat at all, but had been
followed down the aisle by the usher practically on a run. Somebody had
got himself smashed up by a passing trolley almost outside the door of
the sanctuary. Being an usher certainly had its compensations at times.
Yes, Black was disappointed. Of course he faced a large and interested
congregation, and everybody knows that a minister should not be more
anxious to preach to one man than to another. Unfortunately, being
quite human, he sometimes is. On this occasion, having suffered
that blow over the heart before mentioned, he had found himself
suddenly peculiarly eager to speak to the red-headed doctor--from
the pulpit--and convince him that he himself was not as young as he
looked--and that he could be a very good friend. Red looked to him like
the sort of man who needed a friend, in spite of all Black’s hostess
had said to him about Burns’ popularity and his enormous professional
practice. During those eleven minutes, through part of which Black had
been at leisure to glance several times at Red, he had received the
distinct impression that he was looking at a much overworked man, who
needed certain things rather badly--one of which was another man who
was not just a good-fellow sort of friend, but one who understood at
least a little of what life meant--and what it ought to mean.
Thus thinking Black rose to make his prayer--the prayer before the
sermon. His thoughts about Red had made him forget for a little that
he was facing his new congregation--and that was a good thing, for
it had taken away most of his nervousness. And after the prayer came
the sermon--and after the sermon came a very wonderful strain of
music which made Black lift his head toward the choir above him with
a sense of deep gratitude that music existed and could help him in
his task like that. At this time, of course, he didn’t know about the
“four-flusher” tenor, and the little fool of a blonde contralto who
always felt most like smiling at the moment when he was preaching
most earnestly. When he did know--well--in the end there were two new
members of that quartette.
So this was how Black and Red met for the first time--yet did not meet.
Though, after the seeing of Red across the as yet undetermined distance
between pulpit and pew, there followed a thousand other impressions,
and though after the service Black met any number of interesting
looking men and women who shook his hand and gave him cordial welcome,
the memory he carried away with him was that of R. P. Burns, M.D., as
the man he must at any cost come to know intimately.
As for Red--his impression was another story.
“Well, how did the Kid acquit himself?” he inquired, when he met his
family at the customary early afternoon Sunday dinner. There was quite
a group about the table, for his wife’s sister, Martha Macauley, her
husband, James Macauley, and their children were there. All these
people had been present at the morning service.
Macauley, ever first to reply to any question addressed to a company in
general, spoke jeeringly, turning his round, good-humoured face toward
his host:
“Why not fee young Perkins to leave you in your pew for once, and hear
for yourself? I’ve known you turn down plenty of calls when they took
you away from home, but, come to think of it, I never knew you to
refuse to cut and run from church!”
Burns frowned. “You’re not such a devoted worshipper yourself, Jim,
that you can act truant officer and get away with it. If you knew how I
hated to move out of that pew this morning----”
“Yes, you’d got all set for one of those head-up snoozes you take
when the sermon bores you. Well, let me tell you, if you’d stayed,
you wouldn’t have got any chance to sleep. He may be a kid--though he
doesn’t look so much like one when you get close--lines in his face if
you notice--he may be a kid, but he’s got the goods, and by George,
he delivered ’em this morning all right. Sleep! I wasn’t over and
above wide awake myself through the preliminaries, but I found myself
sitting up with a jerk when he let go his first bolt.”
“Bolt, eh?” Burns began to eat his soup with relish. As it happened he
had had no time for breakfast, and this was his first meal of the day.
“Jolly, this _is_ good soup!” he said. “Well!--I thought they always
spoke softly when they first came, and only fired up later. Didn’t
he begin on the ‘Dear Brethren, I’m pleased to be with you’ line? I
thought he looked rather conventional myself--and abominably young. I’m
not fond of green salad.”
“Green salad!” This was Martha Macauley, flushing and indignant. “Why,
he’s a _man_, Red, and a very fine one, if I’m any judge. And he can
preach--oh, how he _can_ preach!”
“I’m not asking any woman, Marty.” Burns gave his sister-in-law a
cynical little smile. “Trust any woman to fall for a handsome young
preacher with black eyes and a good voice, whatever he says. To be
sure, Ellen----”
“Oh, yes--you think Ellen is the only woman in the world with any
sense. Well, let me tell you Len ‘fell for him,’ just as much as I
did--only she never gives herself away, and probably won’t now, if you
ask her.”
Burns’ eyes met his wife’s. “Like him, eh, Len?” he asked. “Did the
black eyes--and his being a Southerner--get you, too?”
Mrs. Redfield Pepper Burns was an unusual woman. If she had not been,
at this challenge, she would have answered one of two things. Either
she would have said defiantly: “I certainly did like him--why shouldn’t
I, when Jim did--and _he’s_ a man! Why are you always prejudiced
against ministers?” or she would have said softly: “If you had heard
him, dear, I think you would have liked him yourself.” Instead
she answered, as a man might--only she was not in the least like a
man--“It’s hard to tell how one likes any minister at first sight. It’s
not the first sermon, but the twentieth, that tells the story. And
plenty of other things besides the preaching.”
“But you certainly got a good first impression, Len?” Martha cried,
at the same moment that James Macauley chuckled, “My, but that was a
clever stall!”
Mrs. Burns smiled at her husband, whose hazel eyes were studying her
intently. Red never ceased to wonder at the way people didn’t succeed
in cornering Ellen. She might find her way out with a smile alone, or
with a flash of those wonderful black-lashed eyes of hers, but find her
way out she always did. She found it now.
“Mr. Lockhart told me confidentially this morning that Mr. Black said
he wasn’t good enough for us. So at least we have been forewarned.
He’ll have to prove himself against his own admission.”
“Wasn’t good enough, eh?” growled Red Pepper, suddenly and
characteristically striking fire. “Did he think we wanted a ‘good
one’--a saint? I don’t, for one. My principal objection to him, without
having heard him, is that he looks as if his mother parted his hair
for him before he came, and put a clean handkerchief in his pocket.
Jolly--I like ’em to look less like poets and more like red-blooded
men! Not that I want ’em beefy, either. Speaking of beef--I’ll have
another slice. This going to church takes it out of a fellow.”
Jim Macauley howled. “Going to church! Coming away, you mean. Just a
look-in, for yours. As to the way you like your preachers, my private
opinion is you don’t like ’em at all.”
“Mr. Black doesn’t look like a poet, Red.” It was Martha Macauley
again. She and her brother-in-law seldom agreed upon any topic. “He
has the jolliest twinkle in those black eyes--and his hair is so crisp
with trying to curl that it doesn’t stay parted well at all--it was all
rumpled up before the end of his sermon. And he has a fine, healthy
colour--and the nicest smile----”
Burns sighed. “Jim, suppose there was a man up for the governorship in
our state, and we went around talking about his eyes and his hair and
his smile! Oh, Christopher! Don’t you women ever think about a man’s
_brains_?--what he has _in_ his head--not _on_ it?”
“It was you who began to talk about his looks!” Mrs. Macauley pointed
out triumphantly.
“Check!” called James, her husband. “She scores, Red! You did begin a
lot of pretty mean personal observations about his mother parting his
hair, and so forth. Shame!--it wasn’t sporting of you. The preacher
has brains, brother--brains, I tell you. I saw ’em myself, through his
skull. And he’s got a pretty little muscle, too. When he gripped my
hand I felt the bones crack--and me a golf player. I don’t know where
he got his--but he’s got it. These athletic parsons--look out for ’em.
They’re liable to turn the other cheek, according to instructions in
the Scriptures, and then hit you a crack with a good right arm. It
struck me this chap hadn’t been sitting on cushions all his life.
You’ll outweigh him by about fifty pounds, but I’ll bet he could down
you in a wrestling match.”
“Yes, and I’ll bet you’d like to see him do it,” murmured Red Pepper,
becoming genial again under the influence of his second cup of very
strong coffee, which was banishing his weariness like magic, as usual.
“Well, you won’t right away, because we’re not likely to get to that
stage of intimacy for some time. Ministers and doctors meet mostly in
places where each has a good chance to criticize the other’s job. When
I come to die I’d rather have my old friend, Max Buller, M.D., to say
a prayer for me--if he knows how--than any preacher who ever came down
the pike--except one, and that was a corking old bishop who was the
best sport I ever met in my life. Oh, it isn’t that I don’t respect the
profession--I do. But I want a minister to be a man as well, and I----”
“But it isn’t quite fair to take it for granted that he isn’t one, is
it, Red?” inquired the charming woman at the other side of the table
who was his wife.
James Macauley laughed. “Innocent of not being a man till he’s proved
guilty, eh, Red?” he suggested. “You know I really have quite a strong
suspicion that this particular minister is a regular fellow. The way he
looked me in the eye--well--I may be no judge of men----”
“You’re not,” declared his opponent, frankly. “Any chap with a cheerful
grin and a plausible line of talk can put it all over you. You’re too
good-natured to live. Now me--I’m a natural born cynic--I see too many
faces with the mask off not to be. I----”
“Yes, _you_! You’re the kind of cynic who’d sit up all night with a
preacher or any other man you happened to hate, and save his life, and
then floor him the first time you met him afterward by telling him you
hadn’t any bill against him because you weren’t a vet’rinary and didn’t
charge for treating donkeys.”
“Call that a joke--or an insult?” growled Red Pepper; then laughed and
switched the subject.
But next Sunday he did not see fit to get to church at all, and on the
following Sunday he couldn’t have done it if he’d tried, not having a
minute to breathe in for himself while fighting like a fiend to keep
the breath of life in a fellow-human. And between times he caught
not a sight of Robert Black, who, however, caught several sights of
him. R. P. Burns was in the habit of driving with his face straight
ahead, to avoid bowing every other minute to his myriad acquaintances
and patients. Though Black tried very hard more than once to catch
his eye when passing him close by the curb, he had a view only of the
clean-cut profile, the lips usually close set, the brows drawn over the
intent eyes. For Red was accustomed to think out his operative cases
while on the road, and when a man is mentally making incisions, tying
arteries, and blocking out the shortest cut to a cure, he has little
time to be recognizing passing citizens, not to mention a preacher whom
he persists in considering too much of a “kid” for his taste, in the
pulpit or out of it.
But Black, as you have been told, was of Scottish blood, and a Scot
bides his time. Black meant to know Red, and know him well. He was
pretty sure that the way to know him was not to go and hang around
his office, or to call upon his wife with Red sure to be away--as
Black discovered he always was, in ordinary calling hours. He knew he
couldn’t go and lay his hand on Red’s shoulder at a street corner and
tell him he wanted to know him. In fact, neither these nor any other of
the ordinary methods of bringing about an acquaintance with a man as
a preliminary to a friendship seemed to him to promise well. The best
he could do was to wait and watch an opportunity, and then--well--if
he could somehow do something to help Red out in a crisis, or even to
serve him in some really significant way without making any fuss about
it, he felt that possibly the thing he desired might come about.
Meanwhile--that blow over the heart which he had received at the first
sight of the big red-headed doctor continued to make itself felt.
Therefore, while Black went with a will at all the new duties of his
large parish, and made friends right and left--particularly with his
men, because he liked men and found it easier to get on with them than
with women--he did not for a day relax his watch for the time when he
should send a counter blow in under the guard which he somehow felt
was up against him, or forget to plan to make it a telling one when he
should deliver it.