Mrs. Red Pepper Part 37

"She surely ought, and is. But not happier than the woman you see before you."

Burns came close, lifted a strand of silky dark hair and drew it through his fingers. Then he stooped and put it to his lips.

"You stand by the country doctor, do you?" he murmured.

"Always and forever, dear."

"And yet you are a city woman, born and bred."

"What has that to do with it? I should rather drive in the Green Imp over the country hills with you than ride in the most superb limousine in Baltimore--with any one else."

He gathered her close in his arms for a minute. "Begone, dull envy,"

said he. "From this moment I'll rejoice with Jack over every worldly possession and envy him nothing, not even the power to give his wife everything the world counts riches."

They went down to such a dinner as such homes are famous for. The candle-light from the fine old family candelabra fell upon four faces brilliant with the mature youthfulness which marks the years about the early thirties, the richest years of all yet lived. The splendid colour of the crimson roses in the centre of the table was not richer in its bloom than that in Charlotte's cheeks, nor the sparkle of the lights more attractive than that in Ellen's dark eyes. As for the two men--all the possible achievement of forceful manhood seemed written in their faces, so different in feature and colouring, so alike in the look of dominant purpose and the power born of will and untiring labour.

During dinner a telephone call summoned Leaver to a consultation.

Immediately at its close he went away, carrying Burns with him.

"You can't take me to a consultation, Jack," Burns had objected, with, however, a betraying light of eagerness in his eye. He had been four months away from work--he was hungry for it as a starving man for food.

"Can't I?" Leaver answered, coolly. "Come along and see. It's a chance to give the patient the opinion of an eminent specialist just back from Berlin."

"I'm no specialist."

"Aren't you? I think you are. Specialist in human nature, which, if the reports of this case are true, is the particular sort of diagnosis called for. Trust me, Red, and--put on your gloves!"

Burns had grinned over this suggestion. He hated gloves and seldom wore them, but out of consideration for his friend--and Baltimore--he extracted a pair of irreproachable ones, fresh from Berlin, and donned them, with only a derisive word for the uselessness of externals as practised by city professionals.

Left alone with Charlotte, in a pleasant corner of a stately library, by an open window through which she had watched the departure of the two men in the landau, Ellen turned to her.

"I can't tell you," she said, "how happy it makes me to see your happiness. John Leaver is so exactly the man, out of all the world, who is the husband for you. From all I know of you both, it seems to me I never saw a pair more perfectly mated."

"I'm glad it looks so from the outside," breathed Charlotte, softly. She too had watched the departing pair; waving her hand as her husband, under the electric light at the entrance, had turned to lift his hat and signal farewell. She still stood by the window, through which the soft air of the May night touched her warm cheek and stirred the lace about her white shoulders. "From the inside--O Len,--I can't tell you how it looks! I didn't know there was such glory in the world!"

"What do you think this fellow has done?" cried Red Pepper Burns, returning with his host at midnight. He towered in the doorway, looking in at his wife and Charlotte. From over his shoulder Leaver looked in also, smiling. "He's arranged for me to operate on one of his most critical cases to-morrow morning at his clinic. The country surgeon! Did you ever hear of such effrontery? I may be ridden out of town on a rail by to-morrow noon!"

"Hear the man! He looks like a country surgeon, doesn't he?" challenged Leaver, advancing. "London-made clothes, Bond-street neckwear, scarfpin from Rome, general air of confidence and calm. I a.s.sure you I was nowhere, when the family of my patient saw the lately arrived specialist from Berlin."

"It's not on that patient I'm to do violence," Burns explained, at Ellen's look of astonishment. "He's just mixing things up on purpose.

It's a charity case for mine--but none the less honour, on that account.

I have a chance to try out a certain new method, adapted from one I saw used for the first time abroad. If it doesn't work I'll--drop several pegs in my own estimation, and in self-confidence."

"It will work," said Leaver, "in your hands. The country surgeon is going to surprise one or two of my colleagues to-morrow."

The morrow came. Charlotte and Ellen drove with the two men to the hospital, and watched them disappear within its bare but kindly walls.

"How they can do it!" observed Charlotte, as the car went on. "I'm proud of them that they can, but the eagerness with which they approach such work, the quiet and coolness, and the way they bear the suspense afterward when the result is still doubtful,--oh, isn't it a wonderful profession?"

At noon they returned in the car to the hospital. It was some time before Leaver and Burns emerged, but when they did it was easy for the two who awaited them to infer that all had gone well.

"It's a pity to bring this suggestive odour out to you untainted ones,"

said Burns, as he took his place opposite Charlotte, "but it can't be helped. And as we bring also the news that Jack Leaver has brought down the hospital roof with applause this morning, you won't mind."

"What did he do?" Charlotte asked, eagerly.

Burns briefly described the case--without describing it at all--after the manner of the profession when enlightening the laity. He brought out clearly, however, the fact that Leaver had attacked with great skill and success several exceedingly difficult problems, and that his fellow surgeons had been generous enough to concede to him all the honour which was his due.

"And now--what about your case?" Charlotte asked, realizing suddenly what the morning's experience was to have been to Burns himself.

"Died on the table," said Burns, with entire coolness. His face had sobered at the question, but his expression was by no means crestfallen.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Charlotte began, earnestly.

But her husband interrupted her. "No condolences are due, dear. He gave a dying man the most merciful sort of euthanasia, and at the same time demonstrated a new method as daring as it was triumphant. With a case taken a month earlier it would have saved a life. The demonstration is a contribution to science. If he received no applause it was because we don't applaud in the presence of death, but there was not a man there who didn't realize that in certain lines the country surgeon could give them a long handicap and still win."

Burns looked out of the window without speaking. His sea-tanned face showed a deeper shade under Leaver's praise. Leaver himself smiled at the averted profile of his friend, and went on, while Ellen looked at him as if he had given her something which money could not buy.

"I wish," said John Leaver, laying a firm-knit hand on Burns's knee, "you'd come to Baltimore, Red. Between us we'd do some things pretty well worth doing. Without undue conceit I think I could promise you a backing to start on that would give you a place in a twelvemonth that couldn't be taken away from you in a decade. Why not? It's a beautiful city to live in. Your wife is a Southerner, born and bred; it would be home to her among our people. My wife and I care more for your friends.h.i.+p than for that of any other people on earth. What is friends.h.i.+p for, if not to make the most of?"

Burns turned and looked at him, then at his wife, then back at Leaver.

There was a strange expression in his hazel eyes; they seemed suddenly on fire beneath the heavy dark eyebrows. He took off his hat and ran his hand through his coppery thick locks. Then:

"Are you serious, Jack?" he questioned. "Or are you trying the biggest kind of a bluff?"

"Absolutely serious. How should I be anything else? You taught me certain values up at your home last summer--you and Mrs. Burns. One was, as I have said, the worth of a big, true friends.h.i.+p. I've been thinking of this thing a long time. It's not the result of your performance this morning. If you had failed entirely in that particular attempt my faith in you would not have been shaken a particle, nor my desire to have you a.s.sociated with me here. But there's no denying that what you did this morning would easily make an entering wedge for you. Why not take advantage of it? Will you think it over?"

Burns looked again at his wife. Her eyes held an expression as beautiful as it was inscrutable. He could not read it.

He turned back to Leaver. "Yes, we'll think it over," he said briefly.

Then he looked out of the window again. "What's the name of this park?"

he asked.

The conversation veered to follow his lead. It was not resumed during the drive home, nor again that day, between the four. It cannot be denied that the subject was discussed by John Leaver and Charlotte through varying degrees of hopefulness and enthusiasm. As for Burns and Ellen--

In their own quarters that night Burns threw a plump silk couch-pillow upon the floor at Ellen's feet, and himself upon it, by her knee, as she sat in a big chair by the open window. She was still wearing the Parisian-made gown of the evening, with which she had delighted the eyes of them all. It was the one such gown she had allowed herself to bring home, treating herself to its beauty for its own sake, rather than because she could find much use for it in her quiet home.

Burns put up one hand and gently smoothed the silken fabric upon Ellen's knee.

"This is a beauty of a frock," said he. "I can't tell you what you look like in it; I've been trying to find a simile all the evening. Yet it's not the clothes that become you; you become the clothes."

"Thank you. That's a dear compliment--from a husband."

"It's sincere. You've worn such clothes a lot, in your life, before I knew you. You are used to them--at home in them. If we came to Baltimore, and I made good, you would have plenty of use for dresses like this. You would queen it, here."

She smiled, shaking her head. "Taking one's place in society in any Southern city isn't quite such a foregone conclusion, dear," she said.

"Not for strangers from the North."