Red and Black

by Grace S. Richmond

Mrs. Hodder, housekeeper to the manse, stood trembling in the study doorway, a telegram in her hand. Yes, Mrs. Hodder was trembling. Robert Black would never know how like a mother she felt toward him. A lonely, more than middle-aged woman can’t bake and brew and sew on buttons and generally look after a bachelor of any sort without coming to have a strong interest in him—normally a maternal one. And when the bachelor is one who treats her with the consideration and friendliness this man had always shown Henrietta Hodder, small wonder if she comes to have a proprietary interest in him little short of that belonging to actual kinship.

Black jumped up from his desk. It was Saturday night, and his sermon was still in preparation. This was unusual with him, but everything that could happen had happened, this week, to consume his time and delay him. Everybody, it seemed to him, in his parish, had needed his services for some crisis or other. He was tired of body and jaded of spirit, and he was extremely discontent with the outlines for the sermon which he had with difficulty dragged out of his unwilling mind. And now, in the twinkling of an eye, everything was changed.

He read the message in one hurried instant. Yes, it was here, couched in military language with military brevity. He was to proceed at once—nobody in the Service is ever ordered to go anywhere, always to proceed—and to report within forty-eight hours to his commanding officer at a camp at a long distance. This meant—yes, of course it meant—that he must leave town by the following evening, Sunday evening. And it meant also, equally of course, that between this hour and that he must be practically every minute on the jump. Well, he couldn’t but be glad of that.

His weariness vanished like magic. Mrs. Hodder, watching him read the message, knew by the way he stiffened and straightened those shoulders of his, which had been humped over his desk when she came to the door, that the expected call had come. He looked at her over the yellow sheet.

“Yes—this is it!” he said. “I must be off—to-morrow night.”

She swallowed a great lump in her throat. “I expect—there’ll be a many things to do,” she said. “I’ve got your clo’es in order—I’ve been keeping them mended up, ready—your socks and all.”

Black smiled. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that not an article of his ordinary apparel would go with him to France, but he hadn’t the heart just then. It struck him that Mrs. Hodder was looking a little odd to-night—strangely pale for one whose countenance was usually rather florid. Then—he saw her hand shake as she put it up to smooth back her already smooth gray hair, an act invariable with her when disturbed in mind. It came over him that his housekeeper was not just happy over his wonderful news. And suddenly, he almost understood why. Not quite. How could he know what ravages he had committed upon that staid, elderly heart?—he who had borne himself with such discretion under this roof that he had never so much as touched the woman’s hand except to shake it.

His own heart suffered, at this instant, its first pang at the thought of leaving this comfortable home of his and the ministrations of this plain person who had—yes, she had done her best to mother him—he knew it now—as far as a woman could who was shut away by all sorts of invisible barriers from any real approach. He put out his hand and took her trembling one and held it in both his own. He was a chaplain now, he was leaving his parish, he could do as his will dictated!

“I want you to know,” he said, “that I appreciate, as well as a man can, every thought you have taken for me. You’ve made this house seem as much like a real home as you could possibly have done. I shall remember it always.”

Pale? Had she been pale? She had flushed, in an odd, mottled sort of way, to her very ears—and the back of her neck. Her breath seemed to come a little short as she answered him.