Mrs. Red Pepper Part 8

"Injured me? Knifed me in the back, every chance he got. Always has--but he never had such a chance as he has now. And plays the part of an angel of light in that house--fools them all. I'm the ill-tempered incompetent, he's the forbearing wise man. The case is mine, but he's played the game till they all have more confidence in him than they have in me. And he's got all the cards in his hand!"

He flung himself off the couch, and began to pace the room. Speech, once unloosed, flowed freely enough now,--he could not keep it back.

"The patient is a man of prominence--the matter of his recovery is a great necessity. If he were able to bear it he ought to be operated upon; but there isn't one chance in a hundred he'd survive an operation at present. There's at least one chance in ten he'll get well without one.

I'm usually keen enough to operate, but for once I don't dare risk it.

Van Horn advises operation--unreservedly. And the deuce of it is that with every hour that goes by he lets the family understand that he considers the patient's chances for relief by operation are lessening.

He's fixing it so that however things come out he's safe, and however things come out I'm in the hole."

"Not if the patient gets well."

"No, but I tell you the chance for that is mighty slim--only one in ten, at best. So he holds the cards, except for that one chance of mine. And if the patient dies in the end it's because I didn't operate when he advised it--or so he'll let them see he thinks. Not in so many words, but in the cleverest innuendo of face and manner;--_that's_ what makes me so mad! If he'd fight in the open! But not he."

"Would he have liked to operate himself?"

Burns laughed--an ugly laugh, such as she had never before heard from his lips. "Couldn't have been hired to, not even in the beginning, when he first advocated it. And I couldn't have let him, knowing as well as I know anything in life that the patient would never have left the table alive. Don't you see I've had to fight for my patient's very life,--or rather for his slim chance to live,--knowing all the while that I was probably digging my own grave. Easy enough to let Van Horn operate, in the beginning, and kill the patient and prove himself right,--if he would have done it. Easy enough to pull out of the case and let them have somebody who would operate on Van Horn's advice."

"Is the patient going down?"

"No, he's holding his own fairly well, but the disease isn't one that would take him off overnight. It'll be a matter of two or three days yet, either way. How I'm going to get through them, with things going as they are;--meeting that Judas there at the bedside, three times a day, and trying to keep my infernal temper from making me disgrace myself--"

"Red, dear,--"

She rose and came to him, putting her hands on his shoulders and looking straight up into his face.

"That's where Dr. Van Horn is stronger than you, and in no other way. He can control himself."

"Not inside! Nor outside--if you know him. He's exactly as mad as I am, only--"

"He doesn't show it. And so he has the advantage."

"Do you think I don't know that? But I'm right and he's wrong--"

"So you are the one who should keep cool. You've heard the saying of some wise man--_'If you are right you have no need to lose your temper--if you are wrong you can't afford to.'_"

Red Pepper laid hold of the hands upon his shoulders, and looked down into his wife's eyes with fires burning fiercely in his own.

"You can give me all the wise advice you want to, but the fact remains.--I have reason to be angry, and I am angry, and I can't help it, and won't help it! Great heavens, I'm human!"

"Yes, dear, you're human, and so am I. You have great provocation, and I think I'm almost as angry, in my small way, with Dr. Van Horn, as you are, now that I know. But--I want you somehow to keep control of yourself. You are a gentleman, and he is not, but he is acting like a gentleman--hush--on the outside, I mean--and--you are not!"

"What!"

"Dear, _are_ you?"

"What do you know about it?"

"From the little I saw outside the house this morning."

He grasped her arms so tightly that he hurt her. "Lord! If you mean that I ought to grin at him, as he does at me, the snake in the gra.s.s--"

"I don't mean that, of course. But I do think you shouldn't allow yourself to look as if you wanted to knock him down."

"There's nothing in life that would give me greater satisfaction!"

He relaxed his grasp on her arms, and she let them drop from his shoulders. She turned aside, with a little droop of the head, as if she felt it useless to argue with one so stubbornly set on his own destruction.

He looked after her. "A big brute, am I not? Didn't know me before, did you? Thought I was all fine, warm heart and blarneying words. Well, I'm not. When a thing like this gets hold of me I'm--well, I won't shock your pretty ears by putting it into words."

He walked out of the room, leaving her standing looking after him with a strange expression on her face. Before she had moved, however, the door burst open again, and he was striding across the floor to her, to seize her in his arms.

"I _am_ a brute, and I know it, but I'm not so far gone as not to realize I'm wreaking my temper on the one I love best in the world. Forget it, darling, and don't worry about me. I've been through this sort of thing times enough before. Best not try to reform me--let me have my fling. I'm no Job nor Moses,--I wasn't built that way."

She lifted her head, and the action was full of spirit. "I don't want you a Job or a Moses, but a man! It's not manly to act as you are acting now."

He threw up his head. "Not manly! That's a new one. According to your code is there no just anger in the world?"

"Just anger, but not sane rage. You have reason to be angry but there's no reason in the world why you should let it consume you. Red, dear, why not--_bank the fires_?"

He stared down into her upturned face. He had thought he knew her, heart and soul, but he found himself thoroughly astonished by this new att.i.tude. He was so accustomed to a charming compliance in her, he could hardly realize that he was being brought to book in a manner at once so felicitous yet so firm. She gave him back his scrutiny without flinching, and somehow, though she put him in the wrong, he had never loved her better. Here was a comrade who could understand and influence him!

"Bank the fires, eh?" he growled. "Not put them out? I should suppose you would have wanted them drowned out in a flood of tears of repentance for letting them burn."

"No! You are you, and the fires are warming--when they are kept under control. You're fighting the harder for your patient's life because the fight's a hard one. But when you let the Devil fan the flame--"

He burst into a great, unexpected laugh and caught her to his breast again. "That's what I'm doing, is it? That ever I should have lived to hear you use a phrase like that! But it's a true one, I admit it. I've let his Satanic Majesty have his own way with me, and bade him welcome, too. I may again, when I get away from you. But--well--I know you're right. I--I'll try to bank the fires, little wife. Only don't expect too much."

"Red," said she,--and it was not at all the sort of rejoinder he might have expected after his concession,--"why is there no woodpile now behind the house?"

"Woodpile?" He was clearly puzzled. "Why, there's plenty of wood in the cellar, you know, if you want fires. You can't be suffering for them, this weather?"

"No, but I wish there were a woodpile there. Did you think you wouldn't need one any more after you were married? You should have laid in a double supply."

"But, what for? Oh!--" Light dawned upon him. "Somebody's told you how I used to whack at it."

"Yes, and I saw you once myself, only I didn't know what put the energy into your blows. It was a splendid safety-valve. Red,--send for a load of wood to-day, please!"

"In July! You hard-hearted little wretch! Do you want me reduced to a pulp?"

She nodded. "Better that than burning like a bonfire. And better than running the Imp sixty miles an hour. That doesn't help you,--it merely helps your arch enemy fan the flames."

He laughed again, and the sound of his own laughter did him good, according to the laws of Nature. "Bless you, you've put him to rout for the moment at least, and that's more than any other human soul has ever done for mine, before."

He kissed her, tenderly, and understanding what he did. In his heart he adored her for the sweetness and sense which had kept her from taking these days of trial as a personal affront and finding offence in them.

They went out to dinner, and Burns found himself somehow able to forget sufficiently to enjoy the appetizing dishes which were served to him, and to keep his brow clear and his mind upon the table talk. When he went away, afterward, back to the scene of his irritation and anxiety, he bore with him a peculiar sense of having his good genius with him, to help him tend those devastating fires of temperament which when they burned too fiercely could only hinder him in the fight he waged.

It was almost daybreak when he returned. Ellen was not asleep, although she did not expect him to come upstairs, if only for fear of disturbing her at that hour. But presently the cautious opening of her door caused her to raise her head and lift her arms. Her husband came to her, and sat down close beside her.