Red and Black

by Grace S. Richmond

Burns stood straight again. He held up the sheet Jane offered him. It was a bit of wonderful colouring, showing a group of French peasants staring up at an airplane high overhead—the first British flier on his way to the Front. The awe, the faith in those watching eyes, was touching.

“Give me a hundred for this, won’t you?” he called. “Start the bid at that, and then send it flying. Never mind whether you want the poster or not. Some day it will be valuable—if not in money, then in sentiment. Now, then, who speaks?”

Nobody spoke. Then: “Oh, come, Doctor,” said one rotund gentleman, laughing, “you can’t rob us that way. The thing’s a cheap, machine-coloured print—interesting, certainly, but no more. I’ll give you ten for it—that’s enough. There’s just one poster in the whole show that’s worth a hundred dollars—and that’s the man on the horse. When you offer that I’ll be prepared to see you.”

“The man on the horse goes for not a cent under five hundred,” declared Burns, fiercely. “Starts at that—and ends at seven—eight—nine—a thousand! Meanwhile——”

But he couldn’t do it. It was a polite, suburban company, no great wealth in it, just comfortably prosperous people, not particularly patriotic as yet. The time was to come when they would see things differently, but at that period of the Great War they were mostly cold to the needs of the sufferers three thousand miles away. They saw no reason why Jane Ray should invite them to an exclusive showing of her really quite entertaining collection, and then expect them to open their pocket-books into her lap. Each one intended to buy one poster, of course, out of courtesy to Jane, but—the lower priced the better. And all the lower-priced ones were sold. The bidding went slack, all but died. Burns took out his big white handkerchief and wiped his brow, smiling ruefully down at Jane, who nodded encouragingly back. But even that encouraging nod couldn’t tell Red how to do it.

Before this distressing stage in the proceedings had been reached, Black, with a lightning-like working of the mind, had been making plans of his own in case they should be needed. He had stood beside Nan Lockhart, at the back of the room, his arms folded, his eyes watching closely the scene before him. He did not look at all, as he stood there, like a man who could take an auctioneer’s place and “get away with it,” as the modern expressive phrase goes. In his clerical dress, his dark hair very smooth above his clear brow, his eyes intent, his lips unconsciously pressed rather firmly together under the influence of his anxiety for Burns’ success in the difficult task, Black’s appearance suggested rather that of a restrained onlooker at a race who watches a favourite jockey, than that of one who longs to leap into the saddle and dash round the course himself, to win the race. But this was precisely what he was aching to do.

Deeply as he admired the clever surgeon, much as he hoped for the friendship of the highly intelligent man, he was not long in finding out that Red had not been built for a persuader in public places. If the red-headed doctor had been confronted with a desperate case of emergency surgery, he could have flung off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, commandeered an amateur nurse for an assistant, and achieved a victory as brilliant as it was spectacular. Doubtless, Black reflected, if it had been a matter of partisan politics, and an enemy to the good of the state had met Red in open debate, the doctor could have downed him in three rounds by sheer force of clean-cut argument and an arm thrown high in convincing gesture. But—given a roomful of well-to-do people, not overmuch interested in Belgian orphans, and a man trying to sell them something they didn’t want for more than they had any idea of paying for it—well—Red simply couldn’t do it, that was all. And Miss Ray, in picking him out for the job on account of his popularity and his well-known fearlessness in telling people what they must do—Miss Ray had simply missed it, that was all. It was an error in judgment, and nobody was seeing that more clearly than Jane herself, as Black discovered by each glance at her.

She was standing at Red’s elbow, handing him up posters one by one, and giving the buyer a charming glance of gratitude for each purchase as she moved forward to hand the poster spoken for. But her usually warm colour had receded a little, her lips, between the smiles, seemed a trifle set, and a peculiar sense of her disappointment reached across the room and impressed itself upon Black as definitely as if she had signalled to him. Just once he caught her eyes, as if in search of his, and he found himself giving her back a look of sympathy and understanding. He was longing to come to her aid. Would it be possible, in any way, to do that? He was accustomed to facing people, in the mass, as Red was not, and accustomed to handling them, to reading from their faces what would influence them; in plain words, to being master of them, and leading them whither they would not voluntarily go. Would the moment conceivably come when he could step into the breach and, without offending Red or seeming presumptuous, take his place?

At least he could be prepared. And as his mind worked, led by Red’s very mistakes into seeing what might offset them, a suggestion suddenly shaped itself. Instantly he acted upon it. He beckoned Tom Lockhart, took him quietly aside into the half-lighted rear shop where the big antique pieces removed from the larger room to make space crowded one another unmercifully, and spoke under his breath:

“Tom, you have more nerve than any fellow I know. Around the corner, on Seventh Street, at the Du Bois’s, there’s a Belgian baby—came to-day. Please go and ask them for it, will you?—and hurry back. Tell them to pick it out of the cradle just as it is, wrap a shawl around it, and let you bring it here. They’re French—they’ll understand—I was there to-day. Quick!”