“Here you are at last, Red, you sinner, and I'm the loser. Ches and
I've had a bet on since we saw the Green Imp tear off just as the first
guests were coming. I vowed it was a fake call and you'd never get back
till the musicians were green-flannelling their instruments.”
“I knew he wouldn't do us a cut-away trick like that,” declared Arthur
Chester with an affectionate, white-gloved hand on Burns's black-clad
arm. “Not that I'd have blamed you on a night like this. What people
want to give dances for in August, with the thermometer at the top of
the tree, I don't know.”
“Go along in, old man, and see the ladies. Take out Pauline. Mrs.
Lessing isn't dancing. Make a sitting-out engagement with the lovely
widow, then bolt out here. That's my advice,” urged Macauley.
“Much obliged, I will. Wouldn't have come if Winifred hadn't cornered
me.”
“She's doing her duty by Pauline, and she considers her duty isn't done
till she's secured the men Pauline wants. But I say--when you get a look
at Ellen you'll forget the rivulets coursing down your neck. It's the
first time she's worn anything not suggestive of past experiences. It's
only white tonight, but--” Macauley's pause was eloquent.
Burns pushed on into the house, through whose open doors and windows
came sounds of revelry. A stringed orchestra was playing somewhere out
of sight, and to its music the late arrival, holding his head well up
that he might keep his collar intact until the latest possible moment,
set his course toward his hostess.
Outside, in the bower which had been made of the porch, Chester,
disgracefully shuffling off the duties of host and lounging with
Macauley and two or three other of the young married men, reported
through the flower-hung window the progress of the victim led to the
sacrifice.
“He's shouldered his way to Win--he's shaking hands and trying not to
look hot. Hi! Pauline's sighted him already. She's making for him like
the arrow to the target.”
“Or the bullet for the hippopotamus,” suggested Macauley under his
breath in Chester's ear. He, too, began to reconnoiter.
“He's asking her if she saved the first one for him, and she's telling
him she did till the last minute. Her card is full now, but he shall
have the last half of this next one. Doesn't he look overjoyed?” Chester
chuckled wickedly.
“Where's Ellen? Why isn't she on deck now just as Red comes?” Macauley
began to fume. “She's behaved nobly all the evening so far--she might
have a rational being how for a partner as her reward. But I presume
she's sitting out somewhere with that chump of a Wardlaw--he follows her
like a shadow and she's too kindhearted to shake him. She's--”
A voice speaking softly from the lawn below the porch interrupted him.
“Is Doctor Burns here?” it asked.
Chester went over to the rail. “He's only just come, you know, Miss
Mathewson. You don't have to call him out this minute, do you?”
“I'm sorry, Mr. Chester, but I'm afraid I must. The call is very
urgent.”
“Tell 'em to get somebody else.”
“Doctor Burns wouldn't like it--they're special friends of his.”
“Oh, well--I suppose he'll see the bright side of getting out of that
Turkish bath in there, but I must say I wish I didn't have to pull
through this whole affair without his support,” grumbled Chester as he
went in to find Burns, now disappeared into the inner rooms where the
music came from.
Red Pepper came out looking the name more than usual, for three rounds
of the floor had brought, as it seemed to him, every drop of blood
to his face, and his hair clung damply to his brow. He held a brief
colloquy with his office nurse.
“No way out; I'll have to go, Ches,” said he with ill-concealed joy.
“But you'll hustle? You'll make one more try of it?” begged Chester.
“This thing won't break up early: not with Pauline pushing it. You'll be
back in time to be taken out and fed?”
“Try to,” and Burns disappeared off the end of the porch.
“Lucky dog,” gloomed Macauley. “The call's five miles out on the road
to the city. I'd like to be in the Green Imp for the spin Red'll make of
it. By George! I--”
He broke off suddenly, gave a hasty look around and bolted off the end
of the porch into the semidarkness of the lawn. He ran across behind the
houses to his own back porch, procured a dustcoat from within and dashed
back, regardless of the bodily heat he was generating. As the Green Imp
backed out of the barn Macauley swung himself into the unoccupied seat.
Burns, also in dust-coat pulled on over his evening clothes, grinned
cheerfully. “Deserter?” he queried.
“You'll be back within the hour, won't you?”
“Less than that, probably. The Imp's running like a bird to-night--show
you her paces when we get out. Hi, there! Who's that chasing us? Well,
of all the--you, too, Ches?”
Panting, Chester flung himself upon the running-board just as the car
turned out of the yard. “Had a hunt for my coat--nearly lost you!” he
gasped.
Burns stopped the car. “See here, sonny,” he expostulated. “You happen
to be host, you know. I might be detained out there, though I don't
expect it.”
“I'll take the trolley back if you are,” replied Chester, settling
himself. “I can't stand it to see you fellows cut away out of the
pow-wow and not go, too. I'll take my chances.”
“So be it!” and, laughing, with a glance back at the gaily lighted
house, Burns sent the car on her course. “You two are always bragging up
the married life,” he remarked as the Green Imp gathered speed, “but
it strikes me you're pretty eager to get away from the glories of your
wives' entertaining.”
“It's one curious thing,” admitted Macauley thoughtfully, “that no
matter how harmonious a couple may be they're bound to differ on what
does and does not constitute entertainment.”
“Of course, a girl like Pauline always wants to dance, no matter how
torrid the night,” explained Chester. “Win and I have to consider our
guest's wish. But you can bet Pauline isn't getting her wish--not with
R. P. Burns running around the country all the evening and only making
five-minute stops at her side.”
By the speed with which the Green Imp swallowed the ground it looked as
if Burns might make several such trips and still interpolate a number
of “five-minute stops” before the affair at the Chester house should
be over. Before his passengers were well aware of the distance they
had covered he pulled up in front of a small cottage. They settled
themselves comfortably to await a fifteen-minute stay, but in five he
was out again. Both dust coat and clawhammer were off--his sleeves were
rolled to the elbow.
“I'm in for it, boys,” he said. “Can't get away under two hours at the
shortest. Sorry. But they didn't let me know what they wanted me for,
and I'm caught. You'll have to drive home. Call up Johnny Caruthers and
let him bring back the Imp and Miss Mathewson. I can't be spared long
enough to go myself, so take her this note to tell her what to bring.
Get busy, now.”
He handed Macauley a hasty scrawl on a prescription blank, and smiled at
the discomfited faces of his two friends showing plainly in the lights
which streamed from the house.
“You look blamed pleased over your job,” growled Macauley.
“I like the job all right,” admitted Burns; “particularly when
contrasted with--”
“You wouldn't say it if you'd caught one glimpse of Mrs. L.” called
back Chester, as the Imp responded somewhat erratically to Macauley's
unaccustomed touch. But all the answer they got was, an emphatic “Don't
change gears as if you were running a thrashing machine, Mac.”
It was two hours and a half later that Burns came out of the small
cottage again, wiping a damp face, his white shirt-front a pathetic
ruin, his hastily reassumed white waistcoat and tie decidedly the worse
for having been carelessly handled. But his face, when he turned it
toward the stars as he crossed the tiny patch of a flower-bordered yard,
was a contented one.
“It pays up all the arrears when you can leave a chunk of happiness
behind you as big as that one,” he said to himself. Johnny Caruthers had
gone home by trolley long ago, and Miss Mathewson was to remain for
the night and return with the doctor when he came for his morning
after-visit. Burns sent the Green Imp off at a moderate pace, musing as
he drove through the now moderated and refreshing air of two o'clock in
the morning.
“Party must be about over by now; think it'll adjourn without seeing
any more of Red Pepper and his misused dress clothes,” he reflected.
“I suppose those dancing puppets think they've had a good time, but
it isn't in it with mine. Bless the little woman: she's happy over her
first boy! He's a winner, too. As for Tom, I could have tipped him
over with a nod of the head when he was thanking me for leaving the
merry-go-round to stand by. It must feel pretty good to be the father of
a promising specimen like that. Must beat the adopting business several
leagues. And that's not saying that Bobby Burns isn't the best thing
that ever happened to R. P.”
Philosophizing thus, he presently sent the Green Imp at her quietest
pace in at the home driveway. The Chester house was still brilliantly
illumined; his own dark except for the dim light in the office and--he
discovered it as he rounded the turn--a sort of half-radiance coming
from the windows of his own room, where Bob slept in the small bed
beside his own. Burns gazed anxiously at this, for it showed that
somebody had turned on the hooded electric. He was accustomed to leave
the door open into his private office; in which a light was always
burning, and with this Bob had hitherto been satisfied.
“He must have waked up and called for Cynthia,” he decided. Housing the
Imp, he quietly crossed the lawn to the window, avoiding any sound of
footsteps on the gravelled paths. Both windows, screened by wire and
awnings, were wide open; he could see with ease into the room, for the
house was an old one and stood low. Climbing wistaria vines wreathed
the windows, and sheltered by these he found himself secure from
observation.
For after the first look he became exceedingly anxious not to be
discovered. He had come home in the stirred and gentle mood often
brought upon him by his part in such a scene as the one he had lately
left behind him. In the first wave of joy swept by a birth into a home,
whether humble or exalted, the man who has been of service in the hour
of trial is often caught and lifted into a sympathetic pleasure which
lasts for some time after he has gone on to less satisfying work. Burns
had often jeered gently at himself for being, as he considered, more
than ordinarily susceptible to a sort of odd tenderness of feeling under
such conditions, and as he stared in at the scene before him he was
uneasily conscious that he could not have come upon it at a more
vulnerable moment.
Bobby Burns was sitting straight up in bed, his cheeks flushed, his
eyelids reddened as if with prolonged crying, but his small face radiant
with happiness as he regarded his companion, his plump little fist
thrust tight into the hand which held his. In a chair close beside him
sat a figure in silvery white; bare, beautifully-moulded arms, from
which the gloves had been pulled and flung aside upon the bed, gleaming
in the glow from the hooded light.
Black head was close to black head, her black lashes and his disclosed
dark eyes curiously alike in the distracting glance of them; even the
colouring of the faces was similar, for both showed the warm and peachy
hues laid there by the summer sun.
“They might easily be mother and son,” was the thought forced upon the
spectator. His own cheek suddenly burned, in the shadow of the wistaria
vines.
He listened abstractedly to the conclusion of the story: it must have
been a charming tale, for the boy's cry of regret when it ended was
eloquent. But the eavesdropper heard with full appreciation the richness
of the low voice and could not wonder at Bob's delight in it. He watched
with absorbed eyes the embrace exchanged between the two and, forgetting
to be cautious, allowed his shifted foot to crunch the gravel under the
window.
Quicker than thought the light went out. Burns made for the office door,
consumed with eagerness to catch her before she could get away. But
when he set foot upon the threshold of his room only the little figure,
pulling itself again erect in the bed, met his eyes in the dim light
issuing from the office, and otherwise the room was empty.
“Nobody heard me cryin' but her,” explained Bob to his questioning
guardian. “Cynthia was all goned away and I heard the fiddles and they
made me cry. She comed in and told me stories. I love her. But she
wented awful quick out that way.” He pointed toward a French window
opening like a door upon the lawn. “I wish she didn't go so quick. She
looked awful pretty, all white and shiny. She loves me, I think, don't
you?”
“Of course, old man. That's your particular good luck--eh? Now lie down
and go to sleep and tell me all about it in the morning.”
“Aren't you going back to the party?” queried Bob anxiously.
“Hardly.” Burns glanced humorously down at his attire. “But I'm not
going to bed just yet, so shut your eyes. I'll not be far away.”
The child obeyed. Exchanging the claw-hammer for his office coat, Burns
went out by way of the French window to the rear of the house.
An hour afterward Arthur Chester, putting out lights, discovered from a
back window a familiar figure at a familiar occupation. But at this hour
of the night the sight struck him as so extraordinary that, curiosity
afire, he hurriedly let himself out of the side door he had just locked,
and crossed the lawn.
“In the name of all lunatics, Red, why sawing wood? It can't be ill
temper at missing the show?”
In the August moonlight the figure straightened itself and laid down the
saw. “Go to bed, and don't bother your addle pate about your neighbours.
Can't a man cut up a few sticks without your coming to investigate?”
“Saw a few more. You haven't got the full dose necessary yet,” advised
Chester, his hands in his pockets. “Want me to sit up with you till you
work it all off?”
“It's beginning to look as if it wouldn't work off,” muttered R. P.
Burns.
“Must be a worse attack than usual. How long have you been at it?”
“Don't know.”
“Sawed that whole heap at the side there?”
“Suppose so.”
“Lost a patient?”
“No.”
“Blow out a tire?”
“No.”
“Bad news of any sort?”
“No. Go to bed.”
“I feel I oughtn't to leave you,” persisted Chester. “Don't you think it
might ease your mind to tell me about it?”
Burns came at him with the saw, and Chester fled. Burns went back to
his woodpile, marshalled the sawed sticks into orderly ranks, then stood
still once more and once more looked up at the stars.
“If an hour of that on a night like this won't take the nonsense out of
me,” he solemnly explained to a bright particular planet now low in the
heavens, “I must be past help. But I'll be--drawn and quartered if I'll
give in. Haven't I had knockouts enough to be able to keep my head this
time? Red Pepper Burns, 'Remember the Maine' Now, go to bed yourself!”