Grace S. Richmond

“ Suddenly it had seemed to Robert Black that nothing he could say could possibly add to the splendid challenge of them to a flagging human spirit. Almost immediately upon reading the last word he had walked away—he had risen to read them, as if such words could be said only by a man upon his feet. He was gone for perhaps ten minutes, and all the while his heart was back there by the ashes of the dead campfire with Red—fighting alone, as a man must fight, no matter how his friend would help him. Somehow Black was sure that he was fighting—it was not in Red—it couldn’t be—to lay down his arms. ”

“ If Nan could have seen Fanny, as she took her seat in the chair Black placed for her, she would have wondered if she knew her friend, after all. This the girl with the glitter in her eyes, the reckless note in her voice, the captivating ways which Cary Ray knew so well? This was a girl of another sort altogether; one in deep trouble, who presented to the man before her a face so sadly sweet, lifted to him eyes in which lay such depths of anxiety, that he might well summon his best resources to her aid. ”

“ The glittering eyes of the actress looked out over the audience, then lowered suddenly, to rest for one instant on Robert Black. It was an error, and a fatal one, if to nobody but him. Up to that moment she had had him—at that moment she lost him as an enthralled spectator. The little self-conscious action broke the spell she had woven. His gaze left her and rested upon Jane. And there it found—what made him say to himself, suddenly enraged with his own lack of discrimination:
“Have I forgotten to watch you—in watching her? Shame on me! She’s only acting. You are—real!” ”

“ Small wonder that for a long minute nobody found voice to express the moved and shaken condition in which each found himself.
But when it did come, there was nothing wanting. If they were glad beyond measure, these people, that they could honestly approve the work of this brother of Jane’s, this was but a small part of the feeling which now had its strong hold upon them. Wonder, delight, eagerness to see the little drama glow like a jewel upon the stage—these were what brought words to the tongue at length. And then—plans!
“We can’t get it on too quick,” was Red’s instant decision. ”

“ To do this he had used every particle of skill he possessed, and his reward had been the knowledge of the steadily lengthening periods of Cary’s reasonableness and his response to the stimulus which will always be greater than almost any other—the demand of a friend who cares that we live up to his belief in us. Cary had come to think of Robert Black as the best friend he had in the world, after his sister, and to look forward to the hours the two spent together as the brightest spots in a life which had become dimmed at an age when it should have known its fullest zest. ”

“ Don’t go to war to play the old game of hitting hearts. You’re not going to war—I know that—but don’t pretend you want to. It isn’t fair. This thing is one of life or death, and that’s what’s taking men like Doctor Burns and Mr. Black into it. They’ll have no use for anybody who doesn’t offer himself, body and soul. That’s what Jane Ray is doing—but not you, you know. You just want—to marry a man.”
“Oh, but you’re hard!” Fanny got to her feet, moved over to the window and stood looking out, the picture of unhappiness. “Jane Ray, indeed! How does it happen you believe in her so fast? ”

“ Black thought he had never seen a woman take a thing like this with so much sense and courage. How could Red have left her behind, he wondered, just now, when she could do so much for him? Or—couldn’t she? Could any woman, no matter how finely understanding, do for him quite what another man could—a man who would know better than any woman just what it must mean to have the foundations suddenly knocked out from under him like that? ”

“ Jane knew well that she could not have found a patroness of her exhibition whose influence could help her more than that of the wife of Red Pepper Burns.
“Yes, that’s the word,” Nan agreed. “Miss Ray has done wonders. The shop has always been a perfectly charming place—as a shop; but to-night it’s a colourful spot to solicit not only the eye but the heart. The pocket-books and purses will fly open—I’m sure of it. And with Doctor Burns to tell us what we must do—— Oh, no doubt but every poster will be sold to-night.” ”

“ As Red and Ellen and Cary Ray and Robert Black now beheld the dazzling figure before them, there could be no question in their minds that if Miss Fitch could act the part as she now looked it, there would be nothing left to be desired. As for young Tommy Lockhart, he was clearly quite out of his head with a crazy admiration which he did not even attempt to disguise. What was the use? And must not all men be one with him in adoring this radiant creature?
Fanny was a vision—there’s no use denying it. ”

“ However that may be, it can hardly be denied that the early approaches of one spirit to another may contain an exquisite and unapproachable surprise and joy, to remain in memory in the whitest light that shines in a world of shadow.
There is no space to tell the whole story of that day. Of the arrival at the cottage—hardly a cottage, it stretched so far its long gray porches in a roomy hospitality—it can only be said that its welcome proved as friendly as the personality of its hostess. Mrs. Devoe put both arms about the shoulders of Robert Black, greeting him as a mother might have done. ”

“ Besides—oh, yes, he wanted to see the man himself, his friend,—who had faced death for him, as every soldier who went had faced it, for those who were left behind. He wanted to see Robert McPherson Black, and look into those keen, dark eyes of his, and see break over the well-remembered clean-cut face that smile which Red knew the first wave of his arm would bring.
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. ”

“ The American girl whose schooldays had been spent in Paris, who had many friends there, and who wanted to put aside everything promised her at home and go back to the country she had learned to love, to nurse the Frenchmen who since the war began had taught her what true gallantry might be—Cary had sketched her in his rarest colours, a thing of beauty and of love, her heart as tender as her spirit was dauntless. ”

“ Not often does a woman shopkeeper achieve the subtle effect of being a young hostess in her own apartments as did Jane Ray. And, as every woman shopkeeper knows, that is the highest, as it is the most difficult, art of shopkeeping.
She scanned the pictures—one that of the hurdle race, the other a view of a country road, with a white spired church in the distance. In no time she had them fitted into precisely the right frames, these enhancing their values as well-chosen frames do. Delighted but still cautious, Black inquired the prices. ”

“ That night Jane sat beside Dyer’s bed and listened to his account, because he was too happy to be suppressed until he had told her the outlines. She looked at his thin, exalted face, and saw the lines and hollows that hunger and fatigue had brought there, but saw still more clearly the triumph of spirit over body. She had managed that he should lie in a bed next his big friend, and between the reunited pair she felt like a happy warrior herself. ”

“ During those eleven minutes, through part of which Black had been at leisure to glance several times at Red, he had received the distinct impression that he was looking at a much overworked man, who needed certain things rather badly—one of which was another man who was not just a good-fellow sort of friend, but one who understood at least a little of what life meant—and what it ought to mean. ”

“ When I come to die I’d rather have my old friend, Max Buller, M.D., to say a prayer for me—if he knows how—than any preacher who ever came down the pike—except one, and that was a corking old bishop who was the best sport I ever met in my life. Oh, it isn’t that I don’t respect the profession—I do. But I want a minister to be a man as well, and I——”
“But it isn’t quite fair to take it for granted that he isn’t one, is it, Red?” inquired the charming woman at the other side of the table who was his wife.
James Macauley laughed. “Innocent of not being a man till he’s proved guilty, eh, Red?” ”

“ As he watched Black’s way of looking a new acquaintance straight in the eye, as if to discover what manner of man he was, and then of letting the other man take the lead in conversation instead of instantly and skillfully assuming the lead, as if he considered himself a born dictator of the thoughts and words of others—well—Tom said to himself once more that he was jolly glad Robert McPherson Black had come to this parish. ”

“ Do you happen to know, by any analogous experience, just what sort of a night Robert Black spent, alone with himself? If you do, no need to describe it to you. If you have never wrestled with a great spiritual temptation, beating it off again and again only to have it steal up and grip you more powerfully than before, then you can have no conception of what that night brought to Black. A concrete temptation—one to steal or rape or kill—can have no comparison in insidiously disarming power with one made up of forces which cannot be definitely assigned to the right side or the wrong. ”

“ Robert Black was wondering, as he watched her from down in front. Of course he watched her, he would have been hardly human if he had not, or if he had not also come, for the moment, at least, under her spell. Cleverness or real dramatic power—it was difficult to judge, as it is always difficult when the eyes are irresistibly attracted by fascination of face and form. In her dress Fanny had copied to the life the extravagantly revealing outlines of a certain daring and popular vaudeville actress. ”

“ Jane looked up eagerly.
“Come out here, please, where we can talk a minute,” and the tall surgeon led her across the ward to an open door. He paused beside her in this doorway, drawing in deeply the cool damp air which poured in from outside, for the night like so many nights in France was wet. He passed his hand across his brow, smoothing back the dark, straight hair, moist with his unceasing labours.
“My word, but that feels good!” he said. “There are places in the world still, that don’t smell of carbolic and ether.” ”

“ As he sat at the end of the pew nearest the aisle she had a full view of that profile which had first assured Black that Cary was indeed Jane’s brother, and it now struck Miss Fitch as one of the most attractive masculine outlines she had ever seen. Cary was still distinctly pale, but his pallor was becoming more healthy with each succeeding day of Jane’s skillful feeding, and his manner had lost its excessive nervousness. To the eye, by now, he merely looked the interesting convalescent from a possibly severe illness, with every probability of a complete return to full fitness of body. ”

“ Nothing that Tom could have accomplished in a long life of effort could so crown that life with imperishable beauty, or so make it immortal. I rejoice with you, for the lad was my dear friend, and I can never forget him.
Faithfully yours,
Robert Black.
Late that night, when all was quiet in the ward, he wrote this same news to Jane. But at the end of his letter came other words, of such joy and thanksgiving as a man can write only when his heart is very full.
What you tell me of yourself goes to my deepest heart, as you must well know. I knew it would come—it had to come. ”

“ Why not?”
“I think,” said Fanny Fitch, “it’s because I’m made that way. You might as well give me up. If I laugh, it’s as likely as not to be because I want to cry. And if I cry, it’s more than likely to be true that I’m laughing inside. I love to act, on the stage or off of it. How can I help that? It’s the true dramatic instinct. How can I be any more real than I am? Being what you call unreal is reality to me. If I were to try to be what to you is real, I should be more unreal than I am now. There, Mr. Minister what will you do with that?”
Black shook his head. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In Cary’s ear Red now said incisively: “What are you betting that sermon will cost him half his congregation?”
Cary turned, his dark eyes afire. “If it does, we’ll fill it up with vagrants like me. My lord, that was hot stuff! And this is the first time I’ve heard him—more fool I. Why didn’t you let a fellow know?”
Red laughed rather ruefully. “Cary,” he said, “it’s astonishing how we do go on entertaining angels unawares. But when we get one with a flaming sword, like this one, we’re just as liable to cut and run as to stay by and get our own hands on a hilt somewhere.” ”

“ There were a goodly number of officers in her audience, mostly lounging in the rear of the ranks upon the grass, but none the less for that foemen worthy of her steel. She had every opportunity to use her fascinations with one end, and only one, in view. In satisfying her own love of excitement, she could easily, under the guise of entertainment, do these boys in uniform more harm than good. To tell the honest truth it was with this fear in mind that Cary now watched her. ”