Coolidge looked at him and shook his head. His face dropped back into melancholy. He opened his lips and closed them again. Red Pepper Burns opened his own lips--and closed them again. When he did speak it was to say, more gently than he had yet spoken:
"Old fellow, life isn"t in ruins before you. Make up your mind to that.
You"ll sleep again, and laugh again--and cry again, too,--because life is like that, and you wouldn"t want it any other way."
It was time for Coolidge to go, and the two men went in to permit the guest to take leave of Mrs. Burns. When they left the house Coolidge told his friend briefly what he thought of his friend"s wife, and Burns smiled in the darkness as he heard.
"She affects most people that way," he answered with a proud little ring in his voice. But he did not go on to talk about her; that would have been brutal indeed in Coolidge"s unhappy circ.u.mstances.
At the train Coolidge turned suddenly to his physician. "You haven"t given me anything for my sleeplessness," he said.
"Think you must have a prescription?" Burns inquired, getting out his blank and pen.
"It will take some time for your advice to work out, if it ever does,"
Coolidge said. "Meanwhile, the more good sleep I get the fitter I shall be for the effort."
"True enough. All right, you shall have the prescription."
Burns wrote rapidly, resting the small leather-bound book on his knee, his foot on an iron rail of the fence which kept pa.s.sengers from crowding. He read over what he had written, his face sober, his eyes intent. He scrawled a nearly indecipherable "_Burns_" at the bottom, folded the slip and handed it to his friend. "Put it away till you"re ready to get it filled," he advised.
The two shook hands, gripping tightly and looking straight into each other"s eyes.
"Thank you, Red, for it all," said Gardner Coolidge. "There have been minutes when I felt differently, but I understand you better now. And I see why your waiting room is full of patients even on a stormy day."
"No, you don"t," denied Red Pepper Burns stoutly. "If you saw me take their heads off you"d wonder that they ever came again. Plenty of them don"t--and I don"t blame them--when I"ve cooled off."
Coolidge smiled. "You never lie awake thinking over what you"ve said or done, do you, Red? Bygones are bygones with a man like you. You couldn"t do your work if they weren"t!"
A peculiar look leaped into Burns"s eyes. "That"s what the outsiders always think," he answered briefly.
"Isn"t it true?"
"You may as well go on thinking it is--and so may the rest. What"s the use of explaining oneself, or trying to? Better to go on looking unsympathetic--and suffering, sometimes, more than all one"s patients put together!"
Coolidge stared at the other man. His face showed suddenly certain grim lines which Coolidge had not noticed there before--lines written by endurance, nothing less. But even as the patient looked the physician"s expression changed again. His sternly set lips relaxed into a smile, he pointed to a motioning porter.
"Time to be off, Cooly," he said. "Mind you let me know how--you are.
Good luck--the best of it!"
In the train Coolidge had no sooner settled himself than he read Burns"s prescription. He had a feeling that it would be different from other prescriptions, and so it proved:
Rx
Walk five miles every evening.
Drink no sort of stimulant, except one cup of coffee at breakfast.
Begin to make plans for the cottage. Don"t let it turn out a palace.
Ask the good Lord every night to keep you from being a proud fool.
BURNS.
CHAPTER II
LITTLE HUNGARY
"Not hungry, Red? After all that cold drive to-day? Would you like to have Cynthia make you something special, dear?"
R.P. Burns, M.D., shook his head. "No, thanks." He straightened in his chair, where he sat at the dinner table opposite his wife. He took up his knife and fork again and ate valiantly a mouthful or two of the tempting food upon his plate, then he laid the implements down decisively. He put his elbow on the table and leaned his head upon his hand. "I"m just too blamed tired to eat, that"s all," he said.
"Then don"t try. I"m quite through, too. Come in the living room and lie down a little. It"s such a stormy night there may be n.o.body in."
Ellen slipped her hand through his arm and led the way to the big blue couch facing the fireplace. He dropped upon it with a sigh of fatigue.
His wife sat down beside him and began to pa.s.s her fingers lightly through his heavy hair, with the touch which usually soothed him into slumber if no interruptions came to summon him. But to-night her ministrations seemed to have little effect, for he lay staring at a certain picture on the wall with eyes which evidently saw beyond it into some trying memory.
"Is the whole world lying heavy on your shoulders to-night, Red?" Ellen asked presently, knowing that sometimes speech proved a relief from thought.
He nodded. "The whole world--millions of tons of it. It"s just because I"m tired. There"s no real reason why I should take this day"s work harder than usual--except that I lost the Anderson case this morning.
Poor start for the day, eh?"
"But you knew you must lose it. n.o.body could have saved that poor creature."
"I suppose not. But I wanted to save him just the same. You see, he particularly wanted to live, and he had pinned his whole faith to me. He wouldn"t give it up that I could do the miracle. It hurts to disappoint a faith like that."
"Of course it does," she said gently. "But you must try to forget now, Red, because of to-morrow. There will be people to-morrow who need you as much as he did."
"That"s just what I"d like to forget," he murmured. "Everything"s gone wrong to-day--it"ll go worse to-morrow."
She knew it was small use to try to combat this mood, so unlike his usual optimism, but frequent enough of occurrence to make her understand that there is no depression like that of the habitually buoyant, once it takes firm hold. She left him presently and went to sit by the reading lamp, looking through current magazines in hope of finding some article sufficiently attractive to capture his interest, and divert his heavy thoughts. His eyes rested absently on her as she sat there, a charming, comradely figure in her simple home dinner attire, with the light on her dark hair and the exquisite curve of her cheek.
It was a fireside scene of alluring comfort, the two central figures of such opposite characteristics, yet so congenial. The night outside was very cold, the wind blowing stormily in great gusts which now and then howled down the chimney, making the warmth and cheer within all the more appealing.
Suddenly Ellen, hunting vainly for the page she sought, lifted her head, to see her husband lift his at the same instant.
"Music?" she questioned. "Where can it come from? Not outside on such a night as this?"
"Did you hear it, too? I"ve been thinking it my imagination."
"It must be the wind, but--no, it _is_ music!"
She rose and went to the window, pushing aside draperies and setting her face to the frosty pane. The next instant she called in a startled way:
"Oh, Red--come here!"