HEADLINES
“Harps and voices!” ejaculated Robert Black, quite unconscious of the
source of his poetic expletive, “how are my poor little two hundred and
thirty-one books going to make any kind of a showing here?”
Small wonder that he looked dismayed. He had just caught his first
sight of the dignified manse study, with its long rows of empty black
walnut bookcases stretching, five shelves high, across three sides of
the large room. The manse, fortunately for a bachelor, was furnished as
to the main necessities of living, but it wanted all the details which
go to make a home. Though the study contained a massive black walnut
desk and chair, a big leather armchair, a luxurious leather couch,
and a very good and ecclesiastically sombre rug upon its floor, it
seemed bare enough to a man who had lately left a warm little room of
nondescript furnishing but most homelike atmosphere. To tell the truth,
Black was feeling something resembling a touch of homesickness which
seemed to centre in an old high-backed wooden rocking-chair cushioned
with “Turkey red.” He was wondering if he might send for that homely
old chair, and if he should, how it would look among these dignified
surroundings. He didn’t care a picayune how it might look--he decided
that he simply had to have it if he stayed. Which proved that it really
was homesickness for his country parish which had attacked him that
morning. Why not? Do you think him less of a man for that?
“Oh, yours’ll go quite a way!” young Tom Lockhart assured him
cheerfully. “And you can use the rest of the space for magazines and
papers.”
“Thanks!” replied Black, rather grimly grateful for this comforting
suggestion. He and the twenty-year-old son of his hostess had become
very good friends in the two days which had elapsed since Black’s
arrival. He had an idea that Tom was going to be a distinct asset in
the days to come. The young man’s fair hair and blue eyes were by no
means indicative of softness--being counteracted by a pugnacious snub
nose, a chin so positive that it might easily become a menace, and a
grin which decidedly suggested impishness.
“I’ll help unpack these, if you like.”
Tom laid hold of the books with a will. Black, his coat off, set them
up, thereby indisputably demonstrating that two hundred and thirty-one
volumes, even though a round two dozen of them be bulky with learning,
certainly do fill an inconceivably small space.
“Well, anyhow,” he said, resting from his labours, and determinedly
turning away from the embarrassing testimony of the bookshelves as to
his resources, to the invitation of the massive desk to be equipped
with the proper appliances to work, “a few pictures and things will
help to make it look as if somebody lived here. I’ve several pretty
good photographs and prints I thought I’d frame when I got here--I’ve
been saving them up for some time.”
He exhibited the collection with pride--they had lain across the top of
the books. Tom Lockhart hung over them critically.
“They’re bully!” was his judgment. “Not a bit what I’d have expected.
Not a saint or a harp among ’em. Oh, gee!--that horse race is great!
Where’d you get that? I mean--it’s foreign, isn’t it?”
Black laughed. “That’s just a bit of a hurdle race we had in a little
town down South. I’m on one of those horses.”
“You are! Oh, yes--I see--on the front one! Why, say--” he turned to
Black, enthusiasm lighting his face--“you’re one of those regular
horse-riding Southerners. This is on your family estate, I’ll wager.”
Black’s face flushed a little, but his eyes met the boy’s frankly. “I
was born in Scotland, and came over here when I was sixteen. I worked
for the man who lived in that house back there at the left. He let
me ride his horses. I broke the black one for him--and rode him to a
finish in that race. I was only seventeen then.”
Tom stared for a minute before his manners came to the rescue. “That’s
awfully interesting,” he said then, politely. Black could see the
confusion and wonderment in his mind as plainly as if the boy had given
expression to it. If the information had let Tom down a little, the
next instant he rallied to the recognition that here was a man out
of the ordinary. Tom was not a snob, but he had never before heard
a minister own to “working” for anybody, and it had startled him
slightly. But when he regarded Black, he saw a man who, while he looked
as if he had never worked for anybody, had not hesitated to declare
that he had. Tom thought he liked the combination.
“If you could tell me of a good place to get these framed,” Black said,
gathering up the photographs and prints as he spoke, “I believe I’ll
have it done right away. It’s the one thing that’ll make this big
house seem a little more like home.”
“That’s right. And I can tell you a peach of a place--in fact I’ll take
you there, if you want to go right now. It’s on our way back home. By
the way--” young Tom glanced round the big bare room--“if there’s any
stuff you want to get for the house to give it a kind of a jolly air,
you know, you’ll find it right there, at Jane Ray’s. She can advise
you, too.”
“I don’t suppose I’ll get anything but the frames,” Black answered
cautiously, as the two went out together. He had received an advance on
his new salary, and therefore he had more money in his pocket than he
had ever had before at one time, but he was too much in the habit of
needing to count every penny to think of starting out to buy anything
not strictly necessary. And already he knew Tom for the usual careless
spender, the rich man’s son. Very likely, he thought, this place to
which Tom was to take him was the most expensive place in the suburban
town. On second thought, he decided to take along only two of his
pictures--till he knew the prices he must pay.
* * * * *
It had not been a particularly busy morning for Jane Ray. She was
occupied with only one customer at the moment when Robert Black and
young Thomas Lockhart came down the side street upon which fronted her
shop--a side street down which many feet were accustomed to turn, in
search of Jane and her wares.
The customer with whom she was occupied stood with her at the rear of
the shop before several specimens of antique desks and chairs. All
about were other pieces, some of them proclaiming themselves rather
rare. Jane Ray herself also looked rather rare--for a shopkeeper,
inasmuch as she did not look like a shopkeeper at all, though the
chaste severity of her business attire rivalled that of her latest
acquired possession over which that morning she was gloating--a genuine
Adam mirror. This mirror reflected faithfully Jane’s smooth, chestnut
brown head, her slightly dusky skin with an underlying tinge of pink,
her dark eyes which held a spice of mischief in spite of their cool
alertness of glance, her faintly aggressive chin--which meant that she
could argue with you about the value of her goods and hold her own, and
in the end convince you, without making you unhappy about it--which is
a rare accomplishment, especially in so young a woman as was Miss Ray.
Robert Black and Tom, the latter self-constituted guide to furnishing
a manse with what might be called its superfluous necessities, entered
the shop and stood waiting. Jane saw them in her Adam mirror, but she
continued to discuss with her other customer the relative merits of a
Chippendale desk having all manner of hidden springs and drawers in
it, with those of a Sheraton pouch-table, a work-table with a silken
bag beneath it, and essentially feminine in its appeal. The customer
was making a present to his wife, and had fled to Jane in this trying
emergency--as did many another man. Jane always knew.
“Isn’t this some place?” murmured young Lockhart, proudly, hanging over
a glass show-case on a cherry gate-table. “Ever get into a woman’s shop
that catered to men like this one? Look at this case of pipes--aren’t
they stunners? She knows all there is to know about every last thing
she sells, and what’s more, she never keeps anything but good stuff.
Some of it’s pretty rare, and all of it’s corking. Look at those cats’
eyes!”
But Black had caught sight of certain headlines in a New York daily
lying beside the case of semi-precious stones which had attracted Tom.
It was a late morning edition, and this suburban town lay too far
from New York for the later morning editions to reach it before early
afternoon--anyhow, they were not to be had at the news-stands before
two o’clock, as Black had discovered yesterday. He seized the paper,
wondering how this woman shopkeeper had achieved the impossible. He was
a voracious reader of war-news, this Scotsman by blood and American to
the last loyal drop of it. But he was not satisfied with America’s part
in the great conflict. For this was April, nineteen sixteen, and the
thing had been going on for almost two years.
He devoured the black headlines.
“NO BREAK IN THE FRENCH LINES YET. SEVENTH WEEK OF THE STRUGGLE AT
VERDUN TOTAL GAIN ONLY FOUR TO FIVE MILES ON A THIRTY-FIVE MILE
FRONT.”
He flamed into low, swift speech, striking the paper before him with
his fist. Tom, listening, forgot to gaze upon the contents of the case
before him.
“Those French--aren’t they magnificent? Why aren’t we there, fighting
by their sides? Oh, we’ll get there yet, but it’s hard to wait. Think
of those fellows--holding on two long, anxious years! And they came
over here--Lafayette and the rest--and poured out their blood and their
money for us. And we think we’re doing something when we send them a
little food and some tobacco to buck up on!”
“I say--do you want to fight--a minister? Why, I thought all your
profession asked for was peace!” Young Tom’s tone was curious. He did
not soon forget the look in the face of the man who answered him.
“Peace! We do want peace--but not peace without honour! And no minister
fit to preach preaches anything like that! Don’t think it of us!”
“Well, I used to hear Doctor Curtin--the man before you. He seemed to
think---- But I didn’t agree with him,” Tom hastened to say, suddenly
deciding it best not to quote the pacific utterances of the former
holder of the priestly office. “I thought we ought to go to it. If this
country ever does get into it--though Dad thinks it’ll all be settled
this year--you bet I’ll enlist.”
“Enlist! I should say so!” And Black took up the paper again, eagerly
reading aloud the account which followed the headlines of the sturdy
holding of the fiercely contested ground at Verdun--that name which
will be remembered while the world lasts.
He looked up at length to find that the other customer had gone, and
that Miss Ray, the shopkeeper, had come forward. He looked into a face
which reflected his own pride in the French prowess, and forgot for the
instant that he had come to buy of her or that she was there to sell.
“It’s great, isn’t it--the way they are holding?” she said, in a
pleasant, low voice.
“Great?--it’s glorious! By the way--how do you get hold of this late
edition so early?”
“Have it sent up by special messenger from the city. Otherwise it would
be held over with the rest of the papers till the two o’clock train.”
Tom broke in. “Pretty clever of you, _I_ say, Miss Ray. Just like the
rest of your business methods--always ahead of the other fellow!”
“Thank you, Mr. Lockhart,” Miss Ray answered. “It wouldn’t do to let
one’s methods become as antique as one’s goods in this case, would it?”
“Miss Ray, I want to present my friend, Mr. Black.” Tom forgot his new
friend’s title as he made this introduction, but of course it didn’t
matter. Though Miss Ray seldom attended church anywhere, she could
hardly fail, in the talkative suburban town, to know that at the “Stone
Church” there was a new man. “He wants to get some of his pictures
framed, and of course I led him here,” added Tom, with his boyish grin.
He looked at Miss Ray with his usual frankly admiring gaze. No doubt
but she was worth it. Not often does a woman shopkeeper achieve the
subtle effect of being a young hostess in her own apartments as did
Jane Ray. And, as every woman shopkeeper knows, that is the highest, as
it is the most difficult, art of shopkeeping.
She scanned the pictures--one that of the hurdle race, the other a
view of a country road, with a white spired church in the distance.
In no time she had them fitted into precisely the right frames, these
enhancing their values as well-chosen frames do. Delighted but still
cautious, Black inquired the prices. Miss Ray mentioned them, adding
the phrase with which he was familiar, “with the clerical discount.”
“Thank you!” acknowledged Black. “What are they without the discount,
please?”
Miss Ray glanced at him. “I am accustomed to give it,” she observed.
“I am accustomed not to take it,” said the Scotsman, firmly. “But I’m
just as much obliged.”
She smiled, and told him the regular price. He counted this out,
expressed his pleasure in having found precisely what he wanted, and
led the way out.
Jane Ray looked after his well-set shoulders, noting that he did not
put his hat upon his close-cut, inclined-to-be-wirily-curly black hair
until he had reached the street. Then she looked down at the money in
her hand. “Wouldn’t take a discount--and didn’t ask me to come to his
church,” she commented to herself. “Must be rather a new sort.” She
then promptly dismissed him from her thoughts--until later in the day,
when the memory was brought back to her by another incident.
It was well along in the afternoon, and she had just sold a genuine
Eli Terry “grandfather” clock at a fair profit, and had bargained for
and secured several very beautiful pieces of Waterford glass which she
had long coveted. A succession of heavy showers had cleared her shop,
and she had found time to open a long roll which the expressman had
delivered in the morning, when the shop door admitted a person to whom
she turned an eager face.
“Oh, I’m glad it’s you!” she said. “Come and see what I have _now_!”
“Nothing doing,” replied R. P. Burns, M.D., with, however, a smile
which belied his words. “I want a present for a sick baby I’m going
to fix up in the morning. One of those painted Russian things of
yours--the last boy went crazy over ’em. No time for antiques.”
“This isn’t an antique--it’s the last word from the front, and _you’ll_
go crazy over _it_,” replied Miss Ray. Nevertheless she left the roll
and went to a corner in the back of the shop given over to all sorts
of foreign made and fascinating wooden toys. She selected a bear with
a wide smile and feet which walked, and a gay-hued parrot on a stick,
and took them to the big man who was waiting, like Mercury, poised on
an impatient foot. While he counted out the change she slipped over
to her roll of heavy papers, took out one, and when he looked up again
it was straight into a great French war poster held at the length of
Jane’s extended arms. He stared hard at it, and well he might, for it
was by one of the most famous of French artists, whose imagination had
been flaming with the vision of the desperate day.
“Well, by Joe!” Burns ejaculated, his hurry forgot. “I say----”
The poster’s owner waited quietly, lost to view behind the big sheet.
Burns studied every detail of the picture, losing no suggestion
indicated by the clever lines of the inspired pencil. It was only a
rough sketch, impressionistic to the last degree, yet holding unspoken
volumes in each bold outline. Then he drew a deep breath.
“Where did you get it?” he asked, as Jane lowered the poster. His eye
went back to the roll lying half opened on a mahogany table near by.
“They were sent over by an officer I know--straight from Paris. That
isn’t the most wonderful one by half, but I want you to see the rest
when you’re not so rushed for time.”
“I’m not particularly rushed,” replied Burns, with a grin. “At least,
I can stop if you’ve any more like this. I have to tear in and out of
your place, you know, because there’s always some idiot lurking behind
one of your screens to leap out and ask me searching questions about
patients. If you’ll bar your doors to the public some day, I’ll come
and spend an hour gazing at your stuff. Let’s see the posters, please.”
Jane spread them out, one after another, till half the shop was
covered. Burns walked from poster to poster, intent, frowning with
interest, his quick intelligence recognizing the extraordinary
impressions he was getting, his own imagination firing under the
stimulus of an art at its marvellous best. Before one of the smaller
posters he lingered longest--a wash drawing in colour of a poilu
holding his child in his arms, with its mother looking into his face.
“He’s just a kid, that fellow,” he said, in a smothered tone, “just a
kid, but he’s giving ’em both up. He won’t come back--somehow you know
that. And--it doesn’t seem to matter, if he helps save his country.
See here--you ought to do something with these. If the people of this
town could see them, a few more of them might wake up to the idea that
there’s a war on somewhere.”
“As soon as some English ones come I’ve sent for I intend to have an
exhibition, here in my shop, and sell them--for the benefit of French
and Belgian orphans. I expect to get all kinds of prices. Will you
auction them off for me?”
“You bet I will--if I can do it explosively enough. I’d do anything on
earth for a little chap like that.” He indicated a wistful Belgian baby
at the edge of a group of children. “Here are our youngsters, fed up
within an inch of their lives, and these poor little duffers living on
scraps, and too few of those. Oh, what a contrast! As for ourselves--we
come around and buy antiques to make our homes more stunning!”
He looked her in the eye, and she looked steadily back. Then she went
over to an impressive Georgian desk, opened a drawer and took out a
black-bound book. Returning, she silently held it out to him. It was a
text book on nursing, one of those required in a regulation hospital
course.
“Eh? What?” he ejaculated, taking the book. “Studying, are you--all
by yourself? How far are you?” He flipped the pages. “I see. Are you
serious?--You, a successful business woman? What do you want to do it
for?”
“Absolutely serious. This country will go into the war some day--it
must, or I can’t respect it any more. And when it does--well, keeping
an antique shop will be the deadest thing there is. I’ll nail up the
door and go ‘over there.’”
“And not to collect curios this time?” His bright hazel eyes were
studying her intently.
“Hardly. To be of use, if I can. I thought the more I knew of
nursing----”
“You can’t get very far alone, you know.”
“I can get far enough so that when I do manage to take a course I can
rush it--can’t I?”
“Don’t know--hard to cut any red tape. But all preparation counts, of
course. Well--I’ll give you a question to answer that’ll show up what
you do know.”
He proceeded to do this, considering for a minute, and then firing at
her not one but a series of interrogations. These were not unkindly
technical, but designed to test her practical knowledge of the
pages--which according to the marker he had found--she had evidently
lately finished. The answers she gave him appeared to satisfy him,
though he did not say so. Instead, closing the book with a snap, he
said:
“When you sail my wife and I will be on the same ship. We’d be there
now if we had our way--it’s all we talk about. Well----”
And he was about to say that he must hurry like mad now to make up for
time well lost, when the shop door opened to admit out of a sharp dash
of rain a customer who was trying to shelter a flat package beneath
his coat. For the second time that day Robert Black was bringing
pictures to be framed; in fact, they were the rest of the pile which he
had not ventured to bring the first time, lest Miss Ray’s prices be too
high for him.
Red gave him one look, and would have fled, but Black did not make for
the big doctor with outstretched hand--in fact, he did not seem to see
him. At the very front of the shop stood a particularly distinguished
looking Hepplewhite sideboard, its serpentine front exquisitely inlaid
with satinwood, its location one to catch the eye. It caught Black’s
eye--but not because of any cunning design of maker or shopkeeper.
Having filled the available space in the rear of the shop with her
war posters, Jane had worked toward the front, and the last and most
splendid of them she had propped upon the sideboard. In front of
it Black now came to a standstill, and Red, intending to leave the
place in haste at sight of the minister he was in no hurry to meet,
involuntarily paused to note the effect upon the “Kid”--as he persisted
in calling him--of the poster’s touchingly convincing appeal.
It was a drawing in black and white of a French mother taking leave
of her son, that subject which has employed so many clever pens
and brushes since the war began, but than which there is none more
universally powerful in its importunity. The indomitable courage in the
face of the Frenchwoman had in it a touch beyond that of the ordinary
artist to convey--one could not analyze it, but it gripped the heart
none the less, as Red himself could testify. He now watched it grip
Black.
Without taking his eyes from the picture Black propped his umbrella
against a chair, laid his hat and his package upon it, and stood still
before the Frenchwoman and her boy, unconscious of anything else. And
as he stood there, slowly his hands, hanging at his sides, became fists
which clenched themselves. Red, observing, his own hand upon the big
wrought-iron latch of the door, paused still a moment longer. The “Kid”
cared, did he? How much did he care, then? Red found himself rather
wanting to know.
Black looked up at last, saw the other man, saw that he was the quarry
he was so anxious to run down, but only said, as his gaze returned to
the poster, “And she’s only one of thousands, all with a spirit like
that!”
“Only one,” Red agreed. “They’re astonishing, those Frenchwomen.” Then
he went on out and closed the door behind him.
After he had gone he admitted to himself that since his wife was a
member of this man’s church, and Black probably knew that fact, he
himself might have stayed long enough to shake hands. At close range
his eyesight, trained to observe, had not been able to avoid noting
that Black was no boy, after all. There had been that in the face he
had momentarily turned toward Red to show plainly that he was in the
full first maturity of manhood. It may be significant that from this
moment, in whatever terms Red spoke of the minister at home when he
was forced by the exigencies of conversation to mention him at all, he
ceased to call him “the Kid.” So, though Black did not know it, he had
passed at least one barrier to getting to know the man he meant to make
his friend.