Red and Black

by Grace S. Richmond

A low and heart-warming laugh came to him over the wire: “Oh!—I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m going to hang up the receiver.”

“Wait a minute! Will you be on the train? Won’t you take a chance? I may not get my friend in time to let you know, but I’ll surely have the message by the time you join me. Just remember—won’t you?—that—I’m going to France pretty soon——”

“Forgive me!” And the receiver clicked in his ear. It was high time. Two hurried people cannot talk over a telephone and not be using up minutes of which they have none too many.

The next half-hour Black spent in a manner calculated both to warm his body and cool his spirit, if the latter could have been readily cooled. In a smoking-hot telephone booth he struggled with the intricacies of a system temporarily in a snarl—of course it would have happened on this particular morning. He did, at length, get Mrs. Devoe on the wire. He cut short, as courteously as he could, her rejoicings at the sound of his remembered voice, and put his question. He received the cordial consent he knew he should, though his reason told him she would have preferred to see him alone. He was sorry—he couldn’t help that—he would make it up to her as best he could. But have this one day with Jane he must, if it could be brought about.

When he emerged from the booth at last it was much too late to get Jane, if she had left for her train. He might call up the shop and find out what had been her decision, and whether she was on her way, but somehow he preferred not to do that. Rather would he cherish the hope, until her train came in, that she was on it. Ten minutes more, and he would know. Meanwhile—he would try to cool off! Somehow—he had never been more stirred by a possibility—never so looked forward to seeing a train come in. If Jane would come, he felt that he should be almost happier than he could bear and not show it. If she did not come—how was he going to bear that? Suddenly all his fate seemed hanging in the balance. Absurd, when he had not the slightest intention of making a day of fate of it! He couldn’t do that; he had decided that long ago. It was only Jane’s friendship he had, or could ask to have; that was about the biggest thing he could want before he went away to the war. He was sure she felt that way, as well as he. Without talking about it at all, it had seemed to become understood between them. Why, then, should he be so brought to a tension by these plans for the day? He hardly knew—except that he was becoming momentarily more anxious to have them go through, and to find Jane on that hot and dusty local and bear her away with him for one day to the sea breezes. There could be no possible reason why he shouldn’t do it, with his good friend at the other end to make it seemly.

The train came in. It is probable that could Robert Black have caught a glimpse of the expression on his own face as he watched the stream of passengers getting off, he would have tried to look a shade less tense of eye and mouth! He was hoping, it must be confessed, that if Jane were there, there would be none of his parishioners coming in by that same train. If there were some of them aboard, however, he did not intend to attempt to cover his very obvious purpose of meeting Miss Ray. If there was one clause more emphatic than another in Black’s code, it was the one in which he set forth his right to do as his conscience and judgment sanctioned, provided he did so with absolute frankness and openness. But if he would brook no interference with his rights from others, neither would he tolerate intrigue or deceit on his own part.

Nobody whom he knew got off—the long line of passengers had thinned to a final straggler. When he had all but given her up, his heart sinking abominably—she appeared at the door of the car, evidently detained by a stranger asking information.... Was it the same weary Jane whom he had seen in the morning? It couldn’t be—this adorable young woman in the dark-blue summer travelling garb, with the look about her he had always noted of having been just freshly turned out by a most capable personal maid. How did she manage it, she who was accustomed to set her hand to so many practical affairs? And how, especially, had she managed it this morning of all mornings, when in an incredibly short space of time—— Oh, well, it wasn’t that Black thought all these things out; he just drank in the vision of her, after his hour of uncertainty, and rejoiced that she was here—and that she looked like that!

He smiled up at her, and she smiled back; it was like two chums meeting, he thought. He had grasped her hand before she was fairly down the last step of the car. The coming holiday suddenly had become a festival, now that she was here to share it.

“I oughtn’t to have come, you know,” she said, as they walked down the platform together. “I suppose that’s why I did come.”

“I don’t know any reason why you oughtn’t.”