Red and Black

by Grace S. Richmond

When she returned, her brother was talking fast and disconnectedly.

“I haven’t slept—” he was saying, in a tone that was half a wail—“I haven’t slept for a week—haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in months. I—— How can you expect—I tell you a fellow can’t keep going—work’s all gone to pot——”

Jane came close to him. “You shall stay here and rest up, Cary,” she said gently, with her hand on his hot head. “And I’ll feed you wonderfully and get you strong again. Could you take just a little something now?—A glass of milk—a tiny sandwich——”

He shook his head, with a gesture of distaste. “Don’t say food to me—don’t bring any in my sight. There’s just one thing I want—and I know you won’t give it to me. Jane——” he caught at her hand—“it would make me sleep, and God knows I need that—I shall die without it. I—that thing in the corner—oh, I didn’t think it would track me here——”

“It isn’t here. Forget it!” Black spoke sternly. “You’re going to bed, and to sleep—I’m going to see to that. Miss Ray—you’ll let me get your brother into his bed, won’t you? Once there, I’ll put him to sleep—I know I can—and that’s what he needs more than anything.”

“I’ll go and make his room ready,” said Jane Ray. She had to yield. She knew Cary needed a man’s hand, a man’s will. Strong and resourceful though she was, she understood that at this pass no woman could control the disordered nerves as a man could. She could only be thankful that she had this man at her service at this hour, though perhaps he was the last man she would have picked out, or have been willing to have know of her unhappy situation. But he knew it now, and somehow, as her eyes met his, she could not be quite sorry, after all, that it was he who was to help her. At least, whether he could deal with Cary or not, she could be absolutely sure that she could trust him. And this was not because of his profession—rather, to Jane, it was in spite of it.

So, presently, Black found himself putting Cary Ray to bed—in a room he didn’t in the least deserve to have, for it was unquestionably Jane’s own. Every detail of its furnishing told him that, though he did not allow himself to study it much from this point of view. It was rather a large room, and as simply outfitted as could be imagined, and yet somehow its whole aspect gave the impression of character and charm. And Black had never in his life hated to see a man installed in a place which didn’t belong to him as he hated to see Cary Ray made comfortable in this exquisitely chaste room of Jane’s. Yet he couldn’t very well protest. He knew as well as if he had been told that it was the only room of adequate size and comfort which she had to put at her brother’s service, and that, since he was ill and in need, she wouldn’t dream of tucking him up on a couch somewhere as a substitute. For one bad moment Black was astonished to discover that he was longing to pitch this dissipated young man out of the house, and tell his sister to keep her white sheets clean from his contaminated body.

But then, of course, he settled to his task, sternly putting such thoughts away from him. Having got Cary stretched between those same sheets, the lights extinguished—except that from an amber-shaded reading light beside the bed—instead of taking a chair he sat down on the foot of the bed in a friendly sort of way, and remarked in the most matter-of-fact tone in the world—“This reminds me of a night I spent once down in Virginia——” And from that he was off, by degrees, and not at all as if he had set himself to entertain his patient, into a recital that presently captured Cary’s hitherto fitful attention and held it until the sense of strangeness in the whole situation had somewhat gone by for the invalid—if not for the nurse.

The night was not spent, however, in telling stories. It is true that Cary himself told one or two—and lurid tales they were, with more than a suspicion of nightmare in them, the nightmare of drugs or of a disordered brain. There were intervals—though few of them—when the young man sank into a brief sleep, as if from profound exhaustion, but he invariably awoke with a start and a cry to a condition which became, as the hours went on, more and more difficult to control. Black did succeed in controlling it, by sheer force of will; he seemed to have a peculiar power to do this. His hand upon Cary’s, his voice in his ear, and time and again the strained nerves and muscles would relax, and the crisis would pass. But more than once, so wild was the almost delirium of the sufferer, that it took all Black’s physical strength to keep command.

Jane was there only a part of the time. It was during the periods of repose and half slumber that she would slip noiselessly into the room, stand watching her brother silently, or sit down upon the foot of the bed opposite Black, to look at the thin face on the pillow with her unhappy heart in her eyes. Black had never seen much of Jane’s heart before; he couldn’t help seeing something of it now. It was beyond his power to refrain, now and then, as the two sat in the hush of the night, so strangely thrown together in a situation which neither could ever have foreseen, from looking across at Jane’s clear-cut profile in the subdued light, and studying it as if he had never seen it before. His pity for her grew as the hours went by, and with his pity a tenderness grew also, until, quite suddenly, he was startled by a consciousness that he wanted to go around to her and take her hands in his and tell her—that he would stand by her to the last limit of his power.