The City of Fire Part 23

Carter's cheek again, But Christie McMertrie's soft burring tongue slid in smoothly:

"What wad ye think o' the briar pattern around the edge? I know it's some worruk, but it's a bonnie border to lie under, an' it's not so tedious whan there's plenty o' folks to tak a hand."

They carried the topic along with a whirl then and Mrs. Harricutt had no more chance to harry her hostess. Then suddenly Mary arose in a panic:

"I left my pies in the oven!" she cried, "They'll be burned to a crisp.

I must go. Miz Harricutt, are you going along now? I'll walk with you.

I want to ask you how you made that plum jam you gave me a taste of the other day. Jim thinks it is something rare, and I'll have to be making some or he'll never be satisfied, that is if you don't mind--!" and before Mrs. Carter realized what was happening Mary had marshalled the Harricutt vulture down the street, and was questioning eagerly about measures of sugar and plums and lemon peel and nuts:

"Now," said Christie setting down her jelly gla.s.s that she had been holding all this time, "We'll be ganging awa. There's a bit jar of raspberry jam for the laddie with the bright smile, an' you think it over and run up and say which pattern you think is bonniest."

"It was just beautiful of you all to come--" said little Mrs. Carter looking from one to another in painful grat.i.tude--"why it's been just _dear_ for you to run in this way--"

"Yes, a regular party!" said Jane Duncannon squeezing her hand with understanding. "See, Mary has left her peas. You'd best put them on to boil for Mark. He'll be coming back pretty soon. Come, Christie, wumman, it's time we was back at our worruk!" and they hurried through the hedge and across the meadows to their home once more, but as they entered the Duncannon gate they marked Billy Gaston, head down, pedalling along over on Maple Street, his jaws keeping rhythmic time with his feet.

One hour later the smooth chug of a car that was not altogether unfamiliar to their ears brought those four women eagerly to their respective windows, and as the old clock chimed the hour of noon they beheld Mark Carter driving calmly down the street toward his own home in his own car. _His own car!_ and Billy Gaston lounging lazily by his side still chewing rhythmically.

Mark's Car! Mark! Billy! _Ah Billy!_ Three of them mused with a note of triumph in their eyes.

And Mrs. Harricutt as she rolled her Sunday bonnet strings mused:

"Now, how in the world did that Mark Carter get his own car down to Economy when he went up with the Chief? He had it down here this morning, I know, for I saw him riding round. And that little imp of a Billy! I wonder why he always tags him round! Miss Saxon ought to be warned about that! I'll have to do it! But how in the world did Mark get his car?"

Billy enjoyed his lunch that day, a bit of cold chicken and bread, two juicy red cheeked apples, and an unknown quant.i.ty of sugary doughnuts from the stone crock in the pantry. He sat on the side step munching the last doughnut he felt he could possibly swallow. Mark was home and all was well. Himself had seen the impressive glance that pa.s.sed between Mark and the Chief at parting. The Chief trusted Mark that was plain.

Billy felt rea.s.sured. He reflected that that guy Judas had been precipitate about hanging himself. If he had only waited and _done_ a little something about it there might have been a different ending to the story. It was sort of up to Judas anyway, having been the cause of the trouble.

With this virtuous conclusion Billy wiped the sugar from his mouth, mounted his wheel and went forth to browse in familiar and much neglected pastures.

He eyed the Carter house as he slid by. Mrs. Carter was placidly shaking out the table cloth on the side porch. Mark had eaten his apple sauce and gone. He pa.s.sed Browns, Todds, Bateses, chasing a white hen that had somehow escaped her confines, but in front of Joneses he suddenly became aware of the blue car that stood in front of the parsonage. It had come to life and was throbbing. It was backing toward him and going to turn around. On the sidewalk leaning on a cane stood the obnoxious stranger for whose presence in Sabbath Valley he, Billy Gaston, was responsible.

He lounged at ease with a smile on his ugly mug and acted as if he lived there! There was nothing about his appearance to suggest _his_ near departure. His disabled car still stood silent and helpless beside the curb. Aw _Gee_!

Billy swerved to the other side of the road to avoid the blue car at a hair's breadth, but as it turned he looked up impudently to behold the strange girl with the flour on her face and the green baseball bats in her ears smiling up into the face of Mark Carter, who was driving. Billy nearly fell off his wheel and under the car, but recovered his balance in time to swerve out of the way without apparently having been observed by either Mark or the lady, and shot like a streak down the road. Beyond the church he drew a wide curve and turned in at the graveyard, casting a quick furtive eye toward the parsonage, where he was glad not to discover even the flutter of a garment to show that Lynn Severn was about. That guy was there, but Miss Lynn was not chasing him. That was as it should be. He breathed a sigh from his heavy heart and stole sadly, back to the old mossy stone where so many of his life problems had been thought out. Still, that guy _was there! He_ had the advantage!

And Mark and that lady! Bah! He sat down to meditate on Judas and his sins. It seemed that life was just about as disappointing as it could be! His rough young hand leaned hard against the grimy old stone till the half worn lettering hurt his flesh and he shifted his position and lifted his hand. There on the palm were the quaint old letters, imprinted in the flesh, "Blessed are the dead--" Gosh yes! _Weren't_ they? Judas had been right after all. "Aw Gee!" he said aloud, "Whatta fool I bin!" He glanced down at the stone as he rubbed the imprint from the fleshy part of his hand. The rest of the text caught his eye.

"Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord!" There was a catch in that of course. It wasn't blessed if you didn't _die in the Lord_. "In the Lord" meant that you didn't do anything Judas-like. He understood. The people who didn't die in the Lord weren't blessed. They didn't go to heaven, whatever heaven was. They went to _h.e.l.l_. Heaven had never seemed very attractive to Billy when he thought of it casually, and he had taken it generally for granted that he being a boy was naturally destined for the other place. In fact until he knew Lynn Severn he had always told himself calmly that he _expected_ to go to h.e.l.l sometime, it had seemed the manly thing to do. Most men to his mind were preparing for h.e.l.l. It seemed the masculine place of final destiny, Heaven was for women. He had ventured some of this philosophy on his aunt once in a particularly strenuous time when she had told him that he couldn't expect the reward of the righteous if he continued in his present ways, but she had been so horrified, and wept so long and bitterly that he hadn't ever had the nerve to try it again. And since Marilyn Severn had been his teacher he had known days when he would almost be willing to go to heaven--for her sake. He had also suspected, at times, that Mr.

Severn was fully as much of a man as Mark Carter, although Mark was _his own_, and if Mark decided to go to h.e.l.l Billy felt there could be no other destiny for himself.

But now, face to face with realities, Billy suddenly began to realize what h.e.l.l was going to be like. Billy felt h.e.l.l surrounding him. Flames could not beat the reproach that now flared him in the face and stung him to the quick with his own sinfulness. He, Billy Gaston, Captain of the Sabbath Valley Base Ball team, prospective Captain of the Sabbath Valley Foot Ball team, champion runner, and high jumper, champion swimmer and boxer of the boy's league of Monopoly County, friend and often tolerated companion of Mark Carter the great, trusted favorite of his beloved and saintly Sunday School teacher, was _in h.e.l.l_! He could never more hold up his head and walk proud of himself. He was in h.e.l.l at fourteen for life, and by his own act! And Gosh hang it! h.e.l.l didn't look so attractive in the near vision stretching out that way through life, and _then some_, as it had before he faced it. He'd rather walk through fire somewhere and stand some chance of getting done with it sometime. "Aw Gee! Gosh! Whatta fool I bin!"

And then he set himself to see just what he had done, while the high walls of sin seemed to rise closer about him, and his face burned with the heat of the pit into which he had put himself.

There was that guy Shafton--sissyman!--He had put him in the parsonage along with his beloved teacher! If he only hadn't taken that ten dollars or listened to that devil of a Pat, he wouldn't have put up that detour and Shafton would have gone on his way. What difference if he had got kidnapped? His folks wouldda bailed him out with their old jewels and things. Whaddid anybody want of jewels for anyway? Just nasty little bits of stone and gla.s.s! Mark had seen the guy there in church. Mark didn't like it. He knew by the set of Mark's mouth. Of course Mark went with Cherry sometimes, but then that was different! Lynn was--well, Lynn was Miss Marilyn! That was all there was about it.

And if he hadn't put up that detour Mark would have gone home that night before twelve and his mother would have known he was home, and likely other people would have seen him, and been able to prove he wasn't out shooting anybody, and then they wouldn't have told all those awful things about him. Of course now Mark was safe, _of course,_ but then it wasn't good to have things like that said about Mark. It was fierce to have a thing like that session meeting to remember! He wanted to kill that old ferret of a Harricutt whenever he thought about it. Then he would be a murderer, and be hanged, and he wouldn't care if he did mebbe. _Aw Gee!_

A meadow lark suddenly pierced the sky with its wild sweet note high in the air somewhere, and Billy wondered with a sick thud of his soul how larks dared to sing in a world like this where one could upset a whole circle of friends by a single little turn of finance that he hadn't meant anything wrong by at all? The bees droned around the honeysuckle that billowed over the little iron fence about a family burying lot, and once Lynn Severn's laugh--not her regular laugh, but a kind of a company polite one--echoed lightly across to his ears and his face dropped into his hands. He almost groaned. Billy Gaston was at the lowest ebb he had ever been in his young life, and his conscience, a thing he hadn't suspected he had, and wouldn't have owned if he had, had risen up within him to accuse him, and there seemed no way on earth to get rid of it.

A conscience wasn't a _manly_ thing according to his code, yet here he was, he Billy Gaston, with a conscience!

It was ghastly!

XIX

Laurie Shafton had caught Lynn as she came down the stairs with a bit of sewing in her hand to give Naomi a direction from her mother, and had begged her to come out on the porch and talk to him. He pleaded that he was lonesome, and that it was her duty as hostess to amuse him for a while.

Lynn had no relish for talking with the guest. Her heart was too sore to care to talk with any one. But her innate courtesy, and natural gentleness finally yielded to his pleading, for Laurie had put on a humility that was almost becoming, and made her seem really rude to refuse.

She made him sit down in the hammock at the far end, however, and insisted on herself taking the little rocker quite near the front door.

She knew her father would soon be returning from some parish calls and would relieve her, so she settled herself with the bit of linen she was hemst.i.tching and prepared to make the best of it.

"It's a shame my car is out of commission yet," began Laurie settling back in the hammock and by some strange miracle refraining from lighting a cigarette. It wouldn't have entered his head that Lynn would have minded. He didn't know any girls objected to smoking. But this girl interested him strangely. He wasn't at all sure but it was a case of love at first sight. He had always been looking for that to happen to him. He hoped it had. It would be such a delightful experience. He had tried most of the other kinds.

"Yes, it is too bad for you to be held up in your journey this way,"

sympathized Lynn heartily, "but father says the blacksmith is going to fix you up by to-morrow he hopes. Those bearings will likely come to-night."

"Oh, but it has been a dandy experience. I'm certainly glad it happened.

Think what I should have missed all my life, not knowing _you_!"

He paused and looked soulfully at Lynn waiting for an appreciative glance from her fully occupied eyes, but Lynn seemed to have missed the point entirely:

"I should think you might have well afforded to lose the experience of being held up in a dull little town that couldn't possibly be of the slightest interest to you," she said dryly, with the obvious idea of making talk.

"Oh, but I think it is charming," he said lightly! "I hadn't an idea there was such a place in the world as this. It's ideal, don't you know, so secluded and absolutely restful. I'm having a dandy time, and you people have been just wonderful to me. I think I shall come back often if you'll let me."

"I can't imagine your enjoying it," said Lynn looking at him keenly, "It must be so utterly apart from your customary life. It must seem quite crude and almost uncivilized to you."

"That's just it, it's so charmingly quaint. I'm bored to death with life as I'm used to it. I'm always seeking for a new sensation, and I seem to have lighted on it here all unexpectedly. I certainly hope my car will be fixed by morning. If it isn't I'll telegraph for my man and have him bring down some bearings in one of the other cars and fix me up. I'm determined to take you around a bit and have you show me the country. I know it would be great under your guidance."

"Thank you," said Lynn coolly, "But I haven't much time for pleasuring just now, and you will be wanting to go on your way--"

He flushed with annoyance. He was not accustomed to being baffled in this way by any girl, but he had sense enough to know that only by patience and humility could he win any notice from her.

"Oh, I shall want to linger a bit and let this doctor finish up this ankle of mine. It isn't fair to go away to another doctor before I'm on my feet again."

He thought she looked annoyed, but she did not answer.

"Did you ever ride in a racer?" he asked suddenly, "I'll teach you to drive. Would you like that?"

"Thank you," she said pleasantly, "but that wouldn't be necessary, I know how to drive."

He almost thought there was a twinkle of mischief in her eye:

"You know how to drive! But you haven't a car? Oh, I suppose that young Carter taught you to drive his," he said with chagrin. He was growing angry. He began to suspect her of playing with him. After all, even if she was engaged to that chap, he had gone off with Opal quite willingly it would appear. Why should he and she not have a little fling?

"No," said Marilyn, "Mr. Carter did not have a car until he went away from Sabbath Valley. I learned while I was in college."

"Oh, you've been to college!" the young man sat up with interest, "I thought there was something too sophisticated about you to have come out of a place like this. You had a car while you were in college I suppose.".