Red and Black

by Grace S. Richmond

So he would rage, up and down the long living room in his own home, unable to find a ray of light in the whole dark situation. Even more poignant than these were his anxieties of a personal sort. Where—when he stopped to think about it—was Robert Black, that he hadn’t been heard from now for many weeks? Black had gone across with one of the first divisions, one made up of men many of whom had had former army training, men fit to fight at once, who had gone away believing that they would soon see active service. By great good fortune—or so Black had esteemed it—he had been sent for at the last minute to take the place of an old regimental chaplain who had fallen seriously ill. The substitute’s early and persistent applications for a post had commended him as one who meant to go anyhow, and so might as well be given the opportunity first as last. That was the sort they had wanted, for that was the sort they were themselves.

“Why, Bob’s last letter’s dated a good two months back,” Red announced, one June morning of that second summer, scanning the well-worn sheets. How many times had he read that letter, his wife wondered as she saw him consulting its pages again. Black wrote remarkably interesting letters. In spite of censorship he somehow managed to get in all sorts of vivid paragraphs in which not the sharpest eye could detect forbidden information—there was none there. But there was not lacking keen character drawing, graphic picturing of effect of sun and shadow, stimulating reactions, amusing anecdote. Red had never enjoyed any correspondence in his life as he had that with the chaplain of the ——th regiment, ——th division. And this was for many reasons, chief of which was the great and ever-growing bond of friendship between the two men, which separation just after it had been made forever secure had only served incredibly to strengthen and augment.

“I don’t understand it. I don’t like it. I wish I could hear,” Red complained, replacing the thin sheets in the now tattered flimsy envelope with the foreign postmarks and the official stamps of various sorts which proclaimed it a military missive. “He was writing fairly regularly up to that date, but then he stopped short off, as if he had been shot. Oh, I didn’t mean that—queer how that old common phrase needs to be avoided now. It’s none too improbable, either, in his case, if he ever gets near the Front. He’ll be no rear-guard sort of chaplain—that’s easy enough to know.”

He went off about his work, on this particular morning, with a heavier heart than usual. He hadn’t counted up before, just how many weeks it was since he had heard from Black; he only knew that he had been scanning the mails with a disappointed eye for a good while now. Where could Black be—what had happened to prevent his writing as before? Hang it!—Red wished he could hear this very day. His mental vision called up clearly the man’s handwriting on the foreign envelope; he always liked the look of it so well. It was rather a small script, but very clear, black, and full of character; the t’s were invariably crossed with vigour, and there were only straight forward marks, no curlycues. He wished he could see that handwriting within the hour, wished it with a queer certainty that he should most certainly not see it, either to-day or to-morrow. Black was somewhere off the line of communication, he grew surer and surer of it.

As the day advanced Red found his presentiment that his friend was close to danger amounting to a conviction. Red was not an imaginative person, and ordinarily he was a persistent optimist; to-day it seemed to be impossible to summon a particle of optimism concerning either the duration of the war or the personal safety of the man he cared for so deeply. He did care for him deeply—he no longer evaded or made light of his affection for Robert Black. What was the use? It was a fact accomplished; nothing that happened or didn’t happen could now change it; everything seemed to intensify it.

Close to eleven o’clock of the evening of this day Red was returning from a call which had taken him out just as he was beginning to think longingly of rest and sleep. Passing a news-stand he had bought the latest evening edition of the latest city daily sent out to the suburbs, and had found in it only a deepening presage of coming disaster to the armies of the Allies. This paper was sticking out of his pocket as he walked wearily along the deserted streets of the residence district, through a night air still and heavy with the lingering heat of the day. He took off his hat and mopped his forehead. Was it hot and still and heavy with languor and dread over there at this hour, too, he wondered, up on that bending Western front? Or were the shells bursting and the sky red and yellow with the flares of the guns, and black with smoke and death? Allowing for the difference in time it was almost four in the morning over there. Wasn’t it about this hour that things were apt to happen, over there, after a night of waiting? Wasn’t this often the “Zero” hour—“over there”?

To reach his own home he would naturally go by the manse, unless he went a little out of his way. It must be confessed that Red had acquired the habit, since Black left town, of going that little out of his way, when coming home at night from this part of town, to avoid passing the Stone Church and the deserted manse close by in its large shadow. He didn’t know quite why he should have yielded, at first unconsciously, afterward with full recognition of his feeling about it, to the wish not to see the drawn shades and darkened windows of his friend’s former habitation. But on this evening, somehow, almost without his own consent he found himself turning at that corner to go by the house.

Dark? Yes, it was dark—almost darker than usual, it seemed; though this was undoubtedly because the nearest arc-light was burning more feebly than ordinarily to-night. Anyhow, the place was enveloped in gloom. It presented a very different aspect from that which had belonged to it during the term of Black’s residence. His study had been one of the big square rooms upon the front, its windows always lighted in the evening, the shades drawn only low enough to insure privacy, not to prevent the warm glow of the study light from telling its friendly tale of the occupant within, at home to all comers at all hours, as he had been at pains to make understood.

Red didn’t like to look at those dark windows. Many and many a time during the last months before Black’s departure, after the friendship between the two men had become a known quantity no longer negligible, the big doctor had turned aside from the straight road home to make a late call in that study, the light beckoning him more and more irresistibly. Weary, or blue, or fuming over some unlucky or harassing happening in his work, he had gone stumbling or storming in, always to find a hearty welcome, and such quiet understanding and comradeship as soon eased the situation, whether he knew it then or only afterward. Many a pipe had he smoked while sitting in Black’s old red-cushioned rocker—to which he had taken an odd fancy—and many a story had he told, or listened to.... There could be no pipe-smoking there to-night, nor telling of stories. The fire upon that hearthstone was cold. God only knew when it would be lighted again, or whose hand would light it.

Red turned in at the walk which led to the manse door. He did not want to turn in, yet he could not go by. The lawn before the house was shaven; it had to be kept up because there was no dividing line between it and the close-cut green turf which surrounded the Stone Church. Between the vestry door and side door of the manse ran a short walk, so that the minister had only a few steps to take when he crossed the narrow space. Somehow Red could almost see the tall, well-built figure striding across that space, the strong face full of spirit....