"Name it! You don't deserve it, but our hearts are rather tender, and we might grant--" Pauline looked arch. But what was the use? n.o.body saw.

Even the pa.s.sengers were watching the one in gray. Spectators always watch the woman at whom the man is looking. And in this case it seemed well worth while, for even the most admirable reserve of manner could not control the tell-tale colour which was slowly mounting under the direct and continued gaze of the man with the red hair. The man himself, it occurred to more than one pa.s.senger, was rather well worth study.

"It's always been a theory of mine that no woman can know a man until she's exchanged letters with him for a considerable period of time--say, a winter," Burns went on. Pauline, made some sort of an exclamation, but he failed to notice it--"Neither can a man know a woman. It's a stimulating experience. Suppose we try it?"

"How often do you propose to write to us?" inquired Pauline.

Now, at last, Red Pepper Burns looked at her. If she had known him better, she would have known that all his vows to keep his tongue from certain words were at that moment very nearly as written in water. But the look he gave her stung her for an instant into silence.

"I shall want to hear about Bob," Ellen replied, "all you can tell me.

I have promised to write to him. You will have to read the letters aloud to him--which will give you a very fair idea of what I am doing. But if you care for an extra sheet for yourself--now and then--"

"An extra sheet! When I am in the mood I am likely to write a dozen sheets to you. When I'm not, a page will be all you'll care to read.

Will you agree to the most erratic correspondence you ever had, with the most erratic fellow?"

"It sounds very promising," she answered, smiling.

The train drew into the city station. The stop was a short one, for the Limited was late. In the rush of outgoing and incoming pa.s.sengers Burns managed, for the s.p.a.ce of sixty seconds, to get out of range of Pauline's ears.

"I shall count the hours till I get that first letter," said he.

She looked up. "You surely don't expect a letter till you have sent one?"

He laughed. "I'm going home to begin to write it now," he said.

Pauline accompanied him to the vestibule where he shook hands with her forgivingly. From the platform he secured a last glimpse of the other face, which gave him a friendly smile as he saluted with his dusty leather cap held out toward her at the length of his arm. When he could no longer see her he drew a gusty sigh and turned away.

As he stood at the street entrance of the big station, waiting for Johnny Caruthers and the Green Imp, this is what he was saying to himself:

"Red, you've made more than one woman unhappy, to say nothing of yourself, by making love to her because she was a beauty and your head swam. This time you've tried rather hard to do her the justice to wait till you know. Only time and absence can settle that. Remember you found a nest of gray hairs in your red pate this morning? That should show that you're gaining wisdom at last, the salt in the red pepper, 'the seasoning of time,' eh, R. P.? But by the rate of my pulse at this present moment I'm inclined to believe--it's going to be a bit hard to write an absolutely sane letter. Perhaps it would be safer if I knew Pauline Pry would see it! I'll try to write as if I knew she would....

But by the spark I thought I saw in those black eyes I don't really imagine Pauline will!"

CHAPTER IX. IN WHICH HE SUFFERS A DEFEAT

The hands of the office clock were pointing to half after two, on a certain September night, when Burns came into his office, alone. The fire in the office fireplace, kept bright until nearly midnight, when his housekeeper had given up waiting for him and gone to bed, had burned to a few smouldering lumps of cannel-slag. A big leather easy-chair, its arms worn with much use, had been pulled into an inviting position before the fireplace, and the night-light by the desk was burning, as usual. All that could be expected had been done by the kind-hearted Cynthia, who comprehended, by signs she knew well and had been watching for several days, that affairs were going wrong with her employer.

But he needed more than could be given him by things inanimate--needed it woefully. He came in as a man comes who is not only physically' weary to the point of exhaustion, but heart sick and sore besides. He dropped his heavy surgical bags upon the floor by the desk as if he wanted never to take them up again, pulled off coat and cap and let them fall where they would, then stumbled blindly over to the big chair and sank into it with a great sigh, as if he had reached the end of all endeavour.

If it had been physical fatigue alone which had brought him to this pa.s.s he might have dropped asleep where he sat, and waked, after an hour or two, to drag himself away to bed, like one who had been drugged. For a short s.p.a.ce, indeed, he lay motionless in the chair in the att.i.tude of one so spent for sleep that he must needs find it in the first place his body touches. But there are times when the mind will not let the body rest. And this was one of them.

The scene he had left lately was burning before his tired eyes; the sounds he had lately heard were beating in his brain. For a week he had been putting every power he possessed into the attaining of an end for which it had more than once seemed to him that he would be willing to sacrifice his own life. He had dared everything, fought every one, had his own way in spite of every obstacle, believing to the last that he could win, as he had so often won before, by sheer contempt of danger.

But this time he had failed.

That was all there was of it--he had failed, failed so absolutely, so humiliatingly, so publicly--this was the way he put it to himself--that he was in disgrace. He had operated when others advised against operation and had seemed to succeed, brilliantly and incredibly. Then the case had begun to go wrong. He had operated a second time--against all precedent, taking tremendous risks--and had lost.

But this was not the worst. He had lost cases before and had suffered keenly over them, but not as he was suffering now. In a world of death some cases must be lost, even by the most successful of all of his profession. But this was an unusual case. This was--O G.o.d how could he bear losing this one?

He had known her from a little girl of eight till now, when at sixteen, bright, beautiful, winsome sixteen, he had... what had he done? She might have had a chance for life--without operation. He had taken that chance away. And she had trusted him--how she had trusted him! Ah, there was the bitter drop in the cup the turn of the knife in the raw wound.

When the others had opposed, she had looked up at him with that smile of hers--how could she smile when she was in such pain?--and whispered: "Please do whatever you want to, Doctor Burns." And he had answered confidently: "Good for you, Lucile--if only they'd all trust me like that I'd show them what I could do!"

Vain boast--wild boast! He had been a fool--twice a fool--thrice a fool! He was a fool clear through--that was the matter with him--a proud fool who had thought that with a thrust of his keen-edged tools he could turn Death himself aside.

And when he had tried his hand a second time, in the last futile effort to avert the impending disaster, she had trusted him just the same. When he had said to her, speaking close to her dull ear: "Dear little girl, I'm going to ask you to go to sleep again for me," she had turned her head upon the pillow, that tortured young head--he would not have thought she could move it at all--and had smiled at him again... for the last time... He would remember that smile while he lived.

He got up from his chair as the intolerable memory smote him again, as it had been smiting him these three hours since the end had come. He began to pace the floor, back and forth back and forth. There were those who said that R. P. Burns threw off his cases easily, did not worry about them, did not take it to heart when they went wrong. It is a thing often said of the men who must turn from one patient to another, and show to the second no hint of how the first may be faring. Those who say it do not know--can never know.

The hours wore on. Burns could not sleep, could not even relax and rest.

To the first agony of disappointment succeeded a depression so profound that it seemed to him he could never rise above it and take up his work again. A hundred times he went painfully over the details of the case, from first to last. Why had he done as he had? Why had he not listened to Grayson, to Van Horn, to Fields? Only Butler had backed him up in his decisions--and he knew well enough that Butler had done it only because of his faith in Burns himself and his remembrance of some of his extraordinary successes, not because his own judgment approved.

Five o'clock--six o'clock--he had thrown himself into the chair again, and had, at last, dropped into an uneasy sort of half slumber, when the office door quietly opened and Miss Mathewson came in. It was two hours before she was due. Burns roused and regarded her wonderingly, with eyes heavy and blood-shot. She stood still and looked down at him, sympathy in her face. She herself was pale with fatigue and loss of sleep, for she had been with him throughout the week of struggle over the case he had lost, and she knew the situation as no one else, even his professional colleagues, knew it. But she smiled wanly down at him, like a pitying angel.

"You didn't go to bed, Doctor," she said, very gently. "I was afraid you wouldn't. Won't you go now? You know there's a day's work before you."

He shook his head. "No--I'd rather get out in the air. I'm going now.

I'd like to take the Imp and--drive to--"

"No, no!"--She spoke quickly, coming closer, as if she understood and would not let him use the reckless, common phrase which sometimes means despair. "I thought you might be feeling like that--that's why I came early. Not that I can say anything to cheer you, Doctor Burns--I know you care too much for that. But there's one thing you must realize--you must say it over and over to yourself--you did your best. No human being can do more."

"A fool's best," he muttered. "Cold comfort that."

"Not a fool's best--a skilful surgeon's best."

He shook his head again, got slowly up from his chair, and stood staring down into the ashes of the long-dead fire. The usually straight shoulders were bent; the naturally well-poised head, always carried confidently erect, was sunk upon the broad chest.

Amy Mathewson watched him for a minute, her own face full of pain; then laid her hand, rather timidly, upon his arm. He looked round at her and tried to smile, but the effort only made his expression the more pitiful.

"Bless your heart," said he, brokenly, "I believe you'd stand by me to the last ditch of a failure."

Her eyes suddenly filled. "I'd let you operate--on my mother--to-day,"

said she, in a low voice.

He gazed into her working face for a long moment, seized her hand and wrung it hard, then strode away into the inner office and flung the door shut behind him.

A half-hour later he came out. He had himself sternly in hand again. His shoulders were squared, his head up; in his face was written a peculiar grim defiance which those who did not comprehend might easily mistake for the stoicism imputed to men of his calling under defeat. Miss Mathewson knew better, understood that it was taking all his courage to face his work again, and realized as n.o.body else could that the day before him would be one of the hardest he had yet had to live. But she was hopeful that little by little he would come back to the same recognition of that which she felt was really true, that, in spite of the results, he had been justified in the risk he had taken, and that he could not be blamed that conditions which only a superhuman penetration could have foreseen would arise to thwart him.

"Cynthia has your breakfast ready for you Doctor," Miss Mathewson said quietly, as he came out. She did not look up from the desk, where she was working on accounts. But as he pa.s.sed her, on his way to the dining-room, he laid his hand for an instant on her shoulder, and when she looked up she met his grateful eyes. She had given him the greatest proof of confidence in her power, and it had been the one ray of light in his black hour.

"Won't you take just a taste o' the chops, Doctor?" urged his housekeeper, anxiously. She knew nothing of the situation, but she had not served him for eight years not to have learned something of his moods, and it was clear to her that he had had little sleep for many nights.

But he put aside the plate. "I know they're fine, Cynthia," said he in his gentlest way. "But the coffee's all I want, this morning. Another cup, please."

Cynthia hesitated, a motherly sort of solicitude in her homely face.

"Doctor, do you know you've had four, a'ready? And it's awful strong."

"Have I! Well--perhaps that's enough. Thank you, Cynthia."