Red and Black

by Grace S. Richmond

People on that pier had to make way when a certain chaplain came down the gangway. A big man with a red head politely but irresistibly put them aside from his path, and they saw him grasp the chaplain’s hand. They didn’t hear much, but they saw that two friends had met. The very silence of that first instant told the story of a glad reunion.

Later, the words came fast enough. When Red could get Black to himself his first questions were pointedly professional. Satisfied upon the items he had wished made clear, he turned his attention to making his welcome manifest.

“I don’t want you to think I’ve lost my head,” he said, in the taxicab which was taking the two men to their train. Black was on furlough; the way had been made clear for him to go at once, though he was to rejoin his regiment when it came home later, pending his and his men’s discharge. “But I’m just so plain glad to have you back I’ve got to say it, and say it out loud. I knew well enough when you went you wouldn’t play safe, over there—and you haven’t.”

“Just how much use,” inquired Black, looking him straight in the eye, “would you have had for me if I had?”

“Not much.”

“Well, then——”

The two laughed, as men do when there is real emotion behind the laughter. Red let his welcome go at that for the present, and plunged into talk about the armistice and the present condition of things. But late that night, when Black having reached the haven of Red’s home, after a quick journey by the fastest train over the shortest route, was sent to his room at what Red considered a proper hour—midnight—he had wanted to sit up until morning, but he considered Black still a convalescent, and now in his charge—Red gave his friend his real welcome. To this day Black preserves a scrawl upon a certain professional prescription blank, which was pushed under his door that night just before he switched off his light.

All the evening he had been made to feel how they all cared. Mrs. Burns had given him the most satisfying of greetings; the Macauleys had rushed in to see him; Samuel Lockhart had called him upon the telephone to make an appointment for the morning. His whole parish would have been in to wring his hand if Red had not kept his actual arrival a secret for that night except to these chosen few. But nothing that anybody said or did gave him half the joy that he found in those few words written slantwise across the little white slip with R. P. Burns’ name and address printed at the top and no signature at all at the bottom. Considering that day, now almost three years back, when Robert Black had first looked across the space between pulpit and pew and coveted the red-headed doctor for his friend, and taking into account all the difficulties he had found in getting past the barriers Red had set up against him, it was not strange that his heart gave one big, glad throb of exultation as he read these words:—

“The town was empty before—it’s full now, though not another blamed beggar comes into it to-night.”

Two months later Jane came home, to find Cary there before her, with Fanny as his bride. They had been married in Paris, “with all the thrills,” as Cary said, beaming proudly upon the slender figure in the French frock beside him, as he described the wedding to his sister. A few days later Robert Black and Jane Ray themselves were quietly married at the home of Dr. Redfield Pepper Burns and went at once to the manse, which had been made ready for them by the united efforts of Mrs. Burns, Miss Lockhart and Mrs. Hodder, Black’s former housekeeper.