The City of Fire Part 25

The swift color made her face lovely as she spoke, and with the words she turned away and went quickly into the house. The young man looked after her and dared not follow. He had never had a shock like that in his life. Girls had talked about everything under heaven to him at one time or another, but they had never mentioned G.o.d except profanely.

Marilyn went swiftly up to her room and knelt down by her bed, burying her hot cheeks in the cool pillow and trying to pray. She was glad, glad that she had spoken for her poor city children, glad that there was a prospect or help perhaps; but beside and beyond it all her heart was crying out for another matter that was namelessly tugging away at the very foundations of her soul. Why, Oh _Why_ had Mark gone away with that queer girl? He must have seen what she was! He must have known that it was unnecessary! He must have known how it would hurt his friends, and that the man she came to see could have gone as well as he and better.

Why did he go? She would not, she could not believe anything wrong of Mark. Yet _why did he go_?

XX

Billy had no appet.i.te for the nice supper that Aunt Saxon had ready when he came dejectedly home that night. He had pa.s.sed the parsonage and seen through the dining-room window that the rich guy was sitting at the supper table opposite Marilyn laughing and talking with her and his soul was sick within him. That was his doing! n.o.body else but himself to blame!

Aunt Saxon had apple dumplings with plenty of "goo," black with cinnamon just the way he loved it, but he only minced at the first helping and scarcely tasted the second. He chopped a great many kindling after supper, and filled the woodbox, and thoughtfully wound the clock. Then instead of going out with his usual "I gotta beat it!" he sat languidly on the doorstep in the dusk, and when she anxiously questioned if he were sick he said crossly:

"Aw, Gee! Can't ya let a fella _alone_! I'm all in, can't ya _see_ it?

I'm gonta _bed_!" and knowing he had said the most alarming thing in the whole category he slammed upstairs to his own room and flung himself across his bed.

Aunt Saxon filled with vague fears crept softly up after him, tapping at his locked door:

"Willie, what is the matter? Just tell auntie where the pain is and I'll get you some medicine that will fix you all up by morning. I'll get you a hot water bag--!"

"DON'T WANT NO HOT WATER BAGS!" roared the sore hearted Billy. "Can't ya lemme _alone_?"

Silence a moment while Aunt Saxon pondered tearfully and sighfully, then:

"Willie, is it the tooth ache?"

"NoooOH!" roared Billy.

A pause, then:

"Billy, you've had a fall off that wheel and hurt yer head or cut yer knee, I know, I've always thought you'd do that, that old wheel! You oughtta have a new one. But I'll bring the arnica and bathe it. And we'll paint it with iodine--where was it Willie? Yer knee?"

Billy's shoes came to the floor with a bang:

"Aw gee! Can't ya keep yer mouth shut an' let a fella have a little sleep. It ain't _Nowhere_! It ain't _Nothin'_ an' I didn't have no fall an' I don't want no new bicycle. D'ye hear? I don't want nothin' 'cept just to be let alone. I wantta go ta sleep. Ain't I ben tellin' ya fer the last half hour? It ain't _sinful_ fer a fella to wantta take a little sleep is it when he's been up half the night before taking care of a fella on the mountain?--But if I ain't allowed, why then I'll get up an' go out somewheres. I know plenty of places where they'll lemme sleep--"

"Oh _Wil-lee_!" sobbed Aunt Saxon. "That's all right dear! Just you lie right down in your bed and take a good sleep. I didn't understand.

Auntie didn't understand. All right Willie. I'll keep it real still. Now you lie down won't you? You will won't you? You'll really lie down and sleep won't you Willie?"

"Didn't I say I would?" snapped Willie shamedly, and subsided on his bed again while Aunt Saxon stole painfully, noiselessly over the creak in the stair, closed the house for the night and crept tearfully to her own bed, where she lay for hours silently wiping the steady trickle of hopeless tears. Oh, Willie, Willie! And she had had such hopes!

But Billy lay staring wide eyed at the open square of his window that showed the little village nestling among the trees dotted here and there with friendly winking lights, the great looming mountains in the distance, and Stark mountain, farthest and blackest of them all. He shut his eyes and tried to blot it out, but it seemed to loom through his very eyelids and mock him. He seemed to see Mark, his idol, carried between those other three dark figures into the blackness of that haunted house. He seemed to see him lying helpless, bound, on the musty bed in the deserted room, Mark, his beloved Mark. Mark who had carried him on his shoulder as a tiny child, who had ridden him on his back, and taught him to swim and pitch ball and box, Mark who let him go where even the big boys were not allowed to accompany him, and who never told on him nor treated him mean nor went back on him in any way! Mark! _He_ had been the means of putting Mark in that helpless position, while circ.u.mstances which he was now quite sure the devil had been specially preparing, wove a tangled maze about the young man's feet from which there seemed no way of extrication.

Billy shut his eyes and tried to sleep but sleep would not come. He began to doubt if he would ever sleep again. He lay listening to the evening noises of the village. He heard Jim Rafferty's voice going by to the night shift, and Tom McMertrie. They were laughing softly and once he thought he heard the name "Old Hair-Cut." The Tully baby across the street had colic and cried like murder. Murder! _Murder!_ Now why did he have to think of that word of all words? Murder? Well, it was crying like it wanted to murder somebody. He wished he was a baby himself so he could cry. He'd cry harder'n that. Little's dog was barking again. He'd been barking all day long. It was probably at that strange guy at the parsonage. Little's dog never did like strangers. That creak was Barneses gate with the iron weight hitched on the chain to make it shut, and somebody laughed away up the street! There went the clock, nine o'clock! Gee! Was that all? He thought it must be about three in the morning! And then he must have dozed off for a little, for when he woke with a start it was very still and dark, as if the moon had gone away, had been and gone again, and he heard a cautious little mouse gnawing at the baseboard in his room, gnawing and stopping and gnawing again, then whisking over the lath like fingers running a scale on the piano. He had watched Miss Lynn do it once on the organ.

He opened his eyes and looked hard at the window. The dim outline of Stark mountain off in the distance began to grow into form, and what was that? A speck of light? It must be his eyes. He rubbed them sleepily and looked again. Yes, a light. Alert at once with the alertness that comes to all boys at the sound of a fire bell or some such alarm, he slid from his bed noiselessly and stole to the window. It was gone! Aw, Gee! He had been asleep and dreamed it. No, there it was again, or was it?

Blackness all before his eyes, with a luminous sky dimly about the irregular mountain top fringed with trees. This was foolish. He felt chilly and crept back to bed, but could not keep his eyes from the dark spot against the sky. He tried to close the lids and go to sleep, but they insisted on flying open and watching. And then came what he had been watching for. Three winks, and stop, three winks, stop, and one long flash. Then all was dark. And though he watched till the church clock struck three he saw no more.

But the old torment came back. Mark and Cherry and Lynn. The guy at the parsonage and the girl with the floured face and base ball bats in her ears! Aw Gee! He must have a fever! It was hours since the clock had struck three. It must be nearly four, and then it would soon be light and he could get up. There seemed to be a light somewhere down the street through the trees. Not the street lamp either. Somebody sick likely. Hark! What was that? He wished he hadn't undressed. He sat up in bed and listened. The purr of a car! Someone was stealing Mark's car! Mark was away and everybody knew it. n.o.body in Sabbath Valley would steal, except, perhaps over at the plush mill. There were new people there--Was that Mark's car? _Some car_!

With a motion like a cat he sprang into the necessary garment which nestled limply on the floor by the bed, and was at the window in a trice. A drop like a cat to the shed roof, down the rainwater spout to the ground, a stealthy step to the back shed where old trusty leaned, and he was away down the road a speck in the dark, and just in time to see the dim black vision of a car speeding with m.u.f.fled engine down the road toward the church. It was too dark to say it was Mark's car. He had no way but to follow.

Panting and puffing, pedalling with all his might, straining his eyes to see through the dark the car that was flying along without lights, his hair sticking endwise, his sleepy hungry face peering wanly through the dark, he plodded after. Over the Highway! He slowed down and wasn't quite sure till he heard the chug of the engine ahead, and a few seconds later a red light bloomed out behind and he drew a new breath and pedalled on again, his heart throbbing wildly, the collar of his pajamas sticking up wildly like his hair, and one pajama leg showing whitely below his trouser like a tattered banner. The pedals cut his bare feet, and he shivered though he was drenched with perspiration, but he leaned far over his handle bars and pedalled on.

Down past the Blue Duck Tavern, and on into the village of Economy the car went, not rapidly now as though it were running away, but slower, and steadier like a car on legitimate business and gravely with a necessary object in view. Billy's heart began to quake. Not for nothing had he learned to read by signs and actions at the feet of the master Mark. An inner well-developed sense began to tell him the truth.

The car stopped in front of the Chief's house, and a horn sounded softly once. Billy dismounted hastily and vanished into the shadows. A light appeared in the upper window of the house and all was still. Presently the light upstairs went out, the front door opened showing a dimmer light farther in, and showing the outline of the Chief in flannel shirt and trousers. He came down the walk and spoke with the man in the car, and the car started again and turned in at the Chief's drive way, going back to the garage.

Billy left his wheel against a hedge and hiked noiselessly after, slinking behind the garage door till the driver came out. _It was Mark!_

He went down the drive, met the Chief at the gate and they went silently down the dark street, their rubber heels making no noise on the pavement. Economy was asleep and no wiser, but Billy's heart was breaking. He watched the two and followed afar till they turned down the side street which he feared. He stole after and saw them enter the brick building that harbored the County Jail. He waited with shaking limbs and bleeding heart, waited, hoping, fearing, dreading, but not for long. The Chief came out alone! It was as he had feared.

Then as if the very devil himself pursued him, Billy turned and fled, retrieving his bicycle and whirled away noiselessly down the road, caring not where he was going, ready to hang himself, wild with despair and self-condemnation.

The dark lay over the valley like a velvet mantel black and soft with white wreaths of mist like a lady's veil flung aside and blown to the breeze, but Billy saw naught but red winking lights and a jail, grim and red in the midnight, and his friend's white face pa.s.sing in beneath the arched door. The bang of that door as it shut was echoing in his soul.

He pa.s.sed the Fenner cottage. There were lights and moving about, but he paid no heed. He pa.s.sed the Blue Duck Tavern, and saw the light in the kitchen where the cook was beginning the day's work just as the rest of the house had been given over to sleep. There was the smell of bacon on the air. Some one was going away on the milk train likely. He thought it out dully as he pa.s.sed with the sick reeling motion of a rider whose life has suddenly grown worthless to him. Over bottles and nails, and b.u.mping over humps old trusty carried him, down the hill to Sabbath Valley, past the grave yard where the old stones peered eerily up from the dark mounds like wakened curious sleepers, past the church in the gray of the morning with a pinkness in the sky behind. Lynn lying in a sleepless bed listening to every sound for Mark's car to return, and recognizing Billy's back wheel squeak. On down the familiar street, glad of the thick maples to hide him, hunching up the pajama leg that would wave below in the rapidly increasing light, not looking toward the Carters', plodding on, old trusty on the back porch; shinning up the water spout, tiptoeing over the shed roof, a quick spring in his own window and he was safe on his bed again staring at the red morning light shining weirdly, cheerily on his wall and the rooster crowing l.u.s.tily below his window. Drat that rooster! What did it want to make that noise for? Wasn't there a rooster in that Bible story? Oh, no, that was Peter perhaps. He turned hastily from the subject and gave his attention to his toilet. Aunt Saxon was squeaking past his door, stopping to listen:

"Willie?"

"Well." In a low growl, not encouragingly.

"Oh, Willie, you up? You better?"

"Nothin' the matter with me."

"Oh--"

"Breakfast ready?"

"Oh, yes, Willie! I'm so glad you're feeling better." She squeaked on down the stairs sniffing as if from recent tears! Doggone those tears!

Those everlasting tears! Why didn't a woman know--! Now, what did he have to do next? Do! Yes, he must do something. He couldn't just sit here, could he? What about Stark's mountain and the winking light? What about that sissy-guy making up to Miss Lynn? If only Mark were here now he would tell him everything. Yes, he would. Mark would understand. But Mark was in that unspeakable place! Would Mark find a way to get out?

He felt convinced he could, but would he? From the set of his shoulders Billy had a strong conviction that Mark would not. Mark seemed to be going there for a purpose. Would the purpose be complete during the day sometime and would Mark return? Billy must do something before night. He wished it might be to smash the face of that guy Shafton. a.s.suredly he must do something. But first he must eat his breakfast. He didn't want to, but he had to. Aunt Saxon would raise a riot if he didn't. Well, there was ham. He could smell it. Ham for breakfast. Aw gee! Saxy was getting extravagant. Somehow pretty soon if he didn't hang himself he must find a way to brighten up Saxy and pay her back for all those pink tears.

And over on Stark's mountain as the morning dawned a heavy foot climbed the haunted stairs and a blood shot eye framed itself at the little half moon in the front window that looked out over Lone Valley toward Economy, and down over Sabbath Valley toward Monopoly commanding a strategic position in the whole wild lovely region.

Down in the cellar where the rats had hitherto held sway a soft chip, chip, chipping sound went steadily forward hour by hour, with s.p.a.ces between and chip, chip, shipping again, a new kind of rat burrowing into the earth, over close to the edge of the long deserted scanty coal pile.

While up under the dusty beams in a dark corner various old parcels were stowed away awaiting a later burial. From the peep hole where the eye commanded the situation a small black speck went whirling along the road to Monopoly which might be a boy on a bicycle, but no one came toward Stark's mountain on that bright sunny morning to disturb the quiet worker in the dark cellar.

Billy was on his way to Monopoly, his aunt appeased for the time being, with the distinct purpose of buying the morning paper. Not that he was given to literature, or perused the dairy news as a habit, but an idea had struck him. There might be a way of finding out about Mark without letting any one know how he was finding out. It might be in the paper.

Down at Monopoly no one would notice if he bought a County paper, and he could stop in the woods and read it.

But when he reached the news stand he saw a pile of New York papers lying right in front, and the great black headlines caught his eye:

"FATE OF LAURENCE SHAFTON STILL UNKNOWN."

"Son of multimillionaire of New York City who was kidnapped on Sat.u.r.day night on his way from New York to a week-end house party at Beechwood, N. J., not yet heard from. No clew to his whereabouts. Detectives out with bloodhounds searching country. Mother in a state of collapse. It is feared the bandits have fulfilled their threats and killed him. Father frantically offering any reward for news of son!"