“I’m going to tell you, Mr. Black,” she said. She remained standing; Black thought it might be because she was too ill at ease in mind to think of sitting down. “I am anxious about Red, too, because he doesn’t seem at all himself, since this happened. Two days ago his good friend Doctor Buller told him there was no chance of his passing the physical tests necessary for getting across, on account of trouble with his heart—which he hadn’t even suspected. He was very ill with blood poisoning two years ago. The disappointment has been even greater than I could have imagined it would be; he has never set his heart on anything as he has on this chance to be of service in France. Of course I am disappointed, too—I meant to follow him soon, when we could arrange it. And—it goes without saying—that the reason which keeps him is a good deal of a blow to me.”
“Yes—of course.”
She was speaking very quietly, and with entire control of voice and manner, and the sympathetic understanding in his tone did not undermine her, because there was no weakness in it.
“But—we have accepted it; there’s nothing else to do. Doctor Buller says it doesn’t mean that Red can’t go on working as hard as ever, for a long time—here. But that doesn’t help him any, just yet. He has been in—a mood—so dark ever since he knew, that even I can’t seem to lighten it. And just before you came I found—this. It—does make me anxious, Mr. Black, because I don’t quite know——”
She put her hand into a fold of her dress and brought out a leaf from the daily memorandum pad with a large sized date at the top, which was accustomed to lie on Red’s desk. He was in the habit of leaving upon it, each time he went out, a list of calls, or a statement regarding his whereabouts, that his office nurse or his wife might have no difficulty in finding him in case of need. In the present instance the page was well covered with the morning and afternoon lists of his regular rounds, including an early morning operation at the hospital. But the latest entry was of a different character. At the very bottom of the sheet, in the only space left, was scrawled the usual preliminary phrase, followed by a long and heavy dash, so that the effect of the whole was inevitably suggestive of a reckless mood: “Gone to ——”
Black studied this for some seconds before he lifted his eyes. “It may mean nothing at all,” he said, as quietly as Mrs. Burns had spoken, “except the reflection of his unhappiness. I can’t think it could mean anything else. Just the same”—and now he looked at the lovely face before him, to see in it that he might offer to do anything at all which could mean help for Red—“I think I’d like to find him for you—and I will. I’m sure I can, even though you don’t know where he has gone. Can you guess at all where it might be?”
“He had the car,” she said, considering, “and he’s very apt, when things have gone wrong, to get off out of doors somewhere—alone—though he’s quite as likely to work off his trouble by driving at a furious pace over miles and miles of road. I’ve known him to jump out of the car and dash off into the woods, in some place I’d never seen before, and come back all out of breath and laughing, and say he’d left it all behind. I think, perhaps, that’s what he’s doing now. I hope he’ll come back laughing this time, though I—I can’t help wishing he’d taken me with him.”
“I wish he had.” Black thought he had never seen a woman take a thing like this with so much sense and courage. How could Red have left her behind, he wondered, just now, when she could do so much for him? Or—couldn’t she? Could any woman, no matter how finely understanding, do for him quite what another man could—a man who would know better than any woman just what it must mean to have the foundations suddenly knocked out from under him like that? “But,” he went on quickly, “I don’t think it will be difficult to find him because—there’s a way. And I’m going now, to try it. Don’t be worried. I have a strong feeling that your husband is coming out of this a bigger man even than when it hit him—he’s that sort of man.” He was silent an instant, and then went on: “And he won’t do anything God doesn’t mean him to do—because he isn’t that sort of man. He’s not afraid of death—but he isn’t afraid of life, either. Good-bye—it’s going to be all right.”
They smiled at each other, heartened, both, by the thought of action. Black got away at once. It was, by now, well after six o’clock. He had had no dinner, but it didn’t occur to him to look out for food before he started on the long walk he meant to take. For, somehow, he was suddenly quite sure he knew where to go....