Mrs. Red Pepper Part 28

"Never did get any satisfaction out of you," grumbled James Macauley, good humouredly. "I didn't suppose women had such a fine sense of honour when it came to talking over other women."

"Then it's time you found it out."

"What's this? Ellen giving you hot shot?" Burns came up, watch in hand. "It's time those people were back. They've probably fallen into a discussion of surgical methods, and forgotten the time."

The missing pair presently appeared. James Macauley looked curiously at them, but could detect no sign of sentiment about them. Indeed, as they came up the walk Leaver's voice was heard saying in a most matter-of-fact way:

"I'll send you a reprint on that subject. You'll find the German notion has completely changed--completely. Nothing has happened in a long time that so marks advance in research along those lines."

"He's safe," the observer whispered to Mrs. Burns. "No fun to be had out of that. Unless--he was clever enough to change his line when he came within earshot. It has been done, you know. I've done it myself, though I never jumped to German reprints as a safety station. But, you can usually tell by the woman. She looks as if she had merely been out for a nice walk. Not a hair out of place, no high colour, no--"

Ellen moved away from him. She was conscious that she, too, had been noting signs, but she would not join him further in discussing them.

"I am not good at farewell speeches," said John Leaver, holding Ellen's hand in both his own, when he had taken leave of every one else. "I only hope I can show you, somehow, how I feel about what you and your husband have done for me. I tried to tell Miss Mathewson something of the same thing, but she wouldn't have it, which was fortunate, for the words stuck in my throat."

Burns took him away. "If they hadn't, you'd have missed your train. We've got to make time, now."

As he took his place in the Green Imp Leaver looked across the street at the cottage back among the trees. Its windows were quite dark, although the hour was barely ten o'clock. Burns looked over, too.

"By the way," he said, as they moved away, "why wasn't Miss Ruston among the crowd a.s.sembled to see you off? As an acquaintance of yours in Baltimore she ought to join in the send-off back to that town."

"She gave me her good wishes this afternoon, after taking the photograph.

Red, speaking of Baltimore, when are you coming down?"

"When I get a card saying you are holding a clinic on a subject I'm anxious to see demonstrated."

"Do you expect me to go to holding clinics?"

"Surest thing in the world. You can't keep out of them."

"Do you suppose the men who saw my breakdown will be eager to welcome me back?"

"No question of it. Good Lord, man, you're not the first nor the ten-thousandth man who has broken down from overwork. Because my axe becomes dull I'm not going to refuse to use it when it comes back from the grindstone with a brighter edge than ever on it, am I? Wait till you see your reception. Some of those fellows have been making a lot of mistakes in your absence--have been trying to do things too big for them.

They'll be only too glad to turn some of their stunts over to you. And the big ones, who are your friends, will rejoice at sight of you. Of course you have rivals; you don't expect them to welcome you with open arms. They'll be sorry to see you back. Let them be sorry, and be hanged to them! Go in and show them that they're the ones who need a rest now, and that you'll take care of their work in their absence."

Leaver laughed. "Red, there's n.o.body just like you," he said.

"That's lucky. Too many explosives aren't safe to have around. I know, and have known all along, Jack, that it's been like a cat lecturing a king, my advice to you. A better simile would be the old one of the mouse gnawing the lion out of the net. If I've done anything for you, that's what I've done."

Leaver turned in his seat. "Red," said he--and his voice had a deep ring in it as he spoke--"you're about the biggest sized mouse I ever saw. I want to tell you this: Since I've been watching your work up here I've conceived a tremendous admiration for your standards. There are none finer, anywhere. I've come to feel that you couldn't do anything bigger or better in the largest place you could find. Indeed, this, for you, is the largest place, for you fill it as another man couldn't."

"The frog, in the marsh, where he lived, was king," Burns quoted, in an effort at lightness, for he was deeply touched.

"That's not the sort of king you are. You would be king anywhere. But you're willing to rule over a kingdom that may look small to some, but looks big as an empire to me, now that I understand. I've reached this point: I am almost--and sometime I expect to be entirely--glad that the thing happened to me which brought me here to you. You have done more for me than any man ever did. And there's one thing I think I owe to you to tell you. The greatest thing I've learned from you, though you haven't said much about it, is faith in the G.o.d above us. I'd about let go of that when I came here. Thanks to you, I've got hold of it again, and I mean never to let go. No man can afford to let go of that--permanently."

Burns was silent for a moment, in answer to this most unexpected tribute, silent because he could find no words. When he did speak there was a trace of huskiness in his voice. "I'm mighty glad to know that, Jack," he said simply.

Then, presently, for they had flown fast over the smooth road, they were entering the city limits, traversing a crowded thoroughfare, and approaching the great station on whose tower the illuminated face of the clock warned them there was little time to spare. Arrived there, every moment was consumed in a rush for tickets and in checking baggage.

Leaver secured his sleeper reservation with some difficulty, owing to a misunderstanding in the telegram engaging it, and at the last the two men had to run for the train. At the gate there was only s.p.a.ce for a hasty grip of two warm hands, a smile of understanding and affection, and an exchange of arm-wavings at a distance as Leaver reached his car, already on the verge of moving out.

As Burns drove away he was feeling a sense of loneliness as unpleasant as it was unexpected, and found himself longing to get back to a certain pair of arms whose hold was a panacea for every ache.

"He thinks he owes it all to me," he was saying by and by, when this desirable condition had been fulfilled. "But maybe I don't owe something to him. If the sight of a plucky fight for self-control is a bracing tonic to any man I've had one in watching him. I never saw a finer display of will against heavy odds. Another man in the shape he was in last spring would have gone under."

"It would be pretty difficult, I think, dear," said his wife, softly touching his thick locks, as his head lay on her lap, "for any man to go under with you pulling him out."

"I didn't pull him out. No man in creation can pull another out, no matter how strong his effort. The chap that's in the current has got to do every last ounce of the pulling himself. I don't say G.o.d can't help, for I'm positive He can, but I don't think a man can do much. And it's my belief that even G.o.d helps chiefly through making the man realize that he can help himself."

"For which office he sometimes appoints a man as his human instrument, doesn't he?"

Burns turned his head and touched his lips to the hand which had laid itself against his cheek.

"Perhaps, when he can't find a woman. As a power conductor she is the only, original, copper wire!"

The curiosity which James Macauley had freely expressed as to the probable degree of friends.h.i.+p between Leaver and Amy Mathewson, developed by months of close a.s.sociation, was, with him and with others, not unnatural. But, in Ellen's case, the desire to know just how much the situation had meant to Amy herself, was a result of her increasingly warm affection for a young woman of character and personal attractiveness, mingled with a sense of her own and her husband's responsibility in bringing together two people who might be expected to emerge from the encounter not a little affected by it.

On the morning after John Leaver's departure, Ellen, standing at a window, found herself watching with more than ordinary intentness the face of Amy as she came up the walk to the house. Lest Leaver should realize to what an extent his presence had disturbed the regular routine of Burns's office, Amy had not been allowed to resume her position according to the old regime, but had spent only a portion of her time there, more as a guest of the house might a.s.sume certain duties than as a regularly hired a.s.sistant would attend to them. This was, therefore, the first time, since Leaver had left the confinement in his room, that Amy Mathewson had appeared in the office in her old role, announced by the donning of her uniform.

"I certainly don't see any unhappiness there," said Ellen to herself, watching Amy as she stooped to pick up an early fallen scarlet leaf upon the lawn. She fastened it upon the severe whiteness of her attire, then came on to the house with an alert step, as if she approached work she looked forward to with zest. Her colour was more vivid than it had been last June, when first she began to live the outdoor life with her patient, her eyes were brighter, her whole personality seemed somehow more significant. Ellen had noted in her these signs of enriched life many times before during these weeks; but the fact that Amy's aspect, on the day after the departure of her comrade of the summer, seemed to have suffered no change, but that her whole air, as she came to her old task, was that of one who hastens to a congenial appointment, gave to Ellen a distinct sense of relief from an anxiety she had suffered from time to time throughout the whole experience.

Burns had gone away early, summoned by an insistent call, and the office was empty. Knowing this, Ellen went in to greet her friend. There could be no other term, now, for the whole-hearted bond between the two.

"Isn't it glorious, this touch of frost in the air?" Amy came in smiling, her cheeks bright with the sting of the early October morning. "And to-day--to-day, at last, I am free to go to work as I like. I don't believe Dr. Burns has sent out a bill for three months. He would go bankrupt before he would tell a man what he owed him."

"Do you like sending out bills so well as that?" Ellen asked, incredulous.

"I like anything that means being at work again, without having to play that I'm a lady of leisure at any moment that anybody wants my company.

I like to have things methodical and systematic. I don't even mind sending out bills, when I know they should be sent."

She stirred about the office, getting out her typewriter and oiling it, while the two talked of various things. Her whole manner was consistent with her words: she seemed to be full of the very joy of living. It occurred to Ellen once to wonder if, by any possibility, this could be the result of expectation of future continuance of her friends.h.i.+p with Leaver. But something happened presently which, though but a simple incident enough, and all in the day's routine, made any such supposition seem most unlikely.

The telephone bell rang. Ellen saw Amy's face change at the first sound of her questioner's voice, with that subtle change which sometimes tells more than the person engaged in this form of communication realizes.

"Yes, Dr. Burns," she said. "Yes ... Yes ... Yes ... Yes, I can have everything ready in an hour ... I will ... I won't forget one thing.... Yes ... Good-bye!"

Not an illuminating set of replies, given at long intervals which evidently spelled instructions from the other end of the wire. But Amy's voice was eager, her concise replies by no means veiled that fact, and Ellen could read, as plainly as if Amy had said it, that the voice which spoke to her was the one of all voices, as it had been for so long, which could give the commands she loved to obey.

She turned from the desk and looked at Ellen with the same animated expression of face. But even as she explained, she was taking instruments from their cases, setting out certain hand-bags, and preparing to fill them.

"It is an emergency case--operation--out in the country. Impossible to take the patient to the hospital; everything must be made ready on the spot. Dr. Burns is to come for me in an hour. He will let me stay with the case. It's work, Mrs. Burns; real work again, at last!"

"You extraordinary girl! A debutante, going to a party again, after enforced confinement at home, couldn't be gayer about it. I knew you loved your work, but I didn't know you loved it like that!"

"Didn't you?" Her hands moving swiftly, she seemed not to stop and think what was going to be wanted, she went from one preparation to another with swift, sure knowledge. "I'm not sure I did, myself, until I had to stop and take what was really just a long vacation, with hardly a thing to do. Vacations are very pleasant--for a while--but they may last too long."

"Evidently Dr. Leaver thought so, too. He seemed ready enough for work again."