“You may be proud of them,” he said, heartily. “And—they were of your blood. I don’t think I need question its virility. I guess I’d best leave it to you to decide what’s your course—and not butt in with my snap judgments.”
Black looked up. “Thank you, Doctor Burns,” he said, “for coming back.”
“Forget what I said—will you?”
“I don’t think I can—right away. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter—when you’re down and out with getting a letter like that. If I hadn’t been so hot with my own affairs I’d have seen for myself something’d happened.”
“It’s all right, Doctor.” Black rose wearily. “Some day I’m going to make you think differently. Until then—perhaps we’ll do better not to talk about it. I’m glad you’re going—I envy you. Let’s let it go at that, for to-night.”
Red held out his hand. “You’ll shake hands?”
“Of course.”
Somehow as he went away Red was feeling sorrier than he would have believed possible that anything had happened to make that handshake what he had felt it—a purely formal and perfunctory one. Why had he said those blamed mean things to Black about his profession, he wondered. Confound his red head and his impudent tongue! He liked Robert Black, liked him a lot, and better and better all the time; trusted him, too—he realized that. He had rushed into the manse study to-night from a genuine impulse to tell his good news to the man from whom he was surest of understanding and sympathy with his own riotous joy over his great luck in getting the chance to go across. And then he’d had to go and cut the fellow where he was already wide open with his own private sorrow! If there had been any way in which Red could have made it up to his friend—yes, Black had become his friend, no doubt of it, to rather an unanticipated degree—if there had been any way in which he could have made it up to him, taken the sting out of the hard words, and sent the “lad” to bed feeling that somebody besides his housekeeper cared that he was unhappy—well, Red would have given considerable, as he went away, to have done that thing. But there wasn’t any way. There hardly ever is.
If he had known just what he left behind him, in that manse study, undoubtedly Red would have been sorrier yet—if he could have fully understood it. It is possible that he could not just have understood, not having been made of quite the same fibre as the other man. What he would have understood, if he had chanced to see Black at about the third watch of the night, would have been that he was passing through some experience more tremendous than that which any loss of kin could possibly have brought him. The facts in the case were that, all unwittingly, Red Pepper Burns, with a few hasty words, had brought upon Robert Black the darkest hours he thus far had had to live through.