Saxon’s pink damp features and anxious eyes and a possible application of the same principle to his own life, as in the case of Judas. But he wasn’t considering himself now. There might come a time when he would have to change his tactics with regard to Aunt Saxon somewhat. She certainly had been a good sport last night. But this wasn’t the time to consider that. He had a great deal more important matters to think of now. He had to find out how he could make it perfectly plain to the world that Mark Carter had not shot a man after twelve o’clock Saturday night at the Blue Duck Tavern. And as yet he didn’t see any way without incriminating himself as a kidnapper. This cut deep because in the strict sense of the word he was not a kidnapper, because he hadn’t meant to be a kidnapper. He had only meant to play a joke on the kidnappers, and at worst his only really intended fault had been the putting up of that detour on the Highway. But he had an uncomfortable conviction that he wouldn’t be able to make the Chief and the Constable, and some of those people over at Economy Court House see it that way. As matters stood he was safe if he kept his mouth shut. Nobody knew but Mark, and he didn’t know the details. Besides, Mark would never tell. Mark would even go to trial for murder before he would let himself out by telling on Billy, Billy knew that as well as he knew that the old mountain on whose feet he lay stretched now would stand up there for ages and always keep his secret for him. Mark was that way. That was why it made it worse for Billy. Judas again! Billy was surprised to find how much Judas-blood there seemed to be in him. He lay there and despised himself without being able to help himself out or think of anything he could do. And then quite suddenly as he was going over the whole circumstance from the time he first listened to Pat’s message into the moss of the mountain, until now, the name Shafton came to him. Laurence Shafton. Shafton, son of William J., of Gates and Shafton. Those were the words the telephone had squeaked out quite plainly. And Shafton. Mr. Shafton. That was the name Mark had called the guy with the car at the parsonage. Mr. Shafton. The same guy, of course. Bah! What a mess he had made of it all. Got Mark kidnapped, landed that sissy-guy on the Severns for no knowing how long, and perhaps helped to tangle Mark up in a murder case. Aw Gee! There’s the train! What could he do? That rich guy! Well, there wasn’t anything to that. He would get out as soon as Mark got his car fixed up and never know he had been kidnapped. And what was he, Billy, waiting here for anyway? Just a chance! Just to see whether Pat and Sam had found out yet that their quarry had vanished. Just to wonder what had become of Link and Shorty.
The trains came and went, and the hush settled down once more at the station. From where he lay, hidden under a ledge, with a thick growth of laurel and sumac between him and the world, Billy could not see the station platform, and had no means of telling whether Pat was about or not.
He had lain still a long time and was beginning to think that his trip had been in vain, when he heard a soft crackling of the twigs above him, a heavy tread crashing through the bushes, a puffing snorting breath from the porpoise-like Pat, and he held his own breath and lay very still. Suppose Pat should take a new trail and discover his hiding place? His heart pounded with great dull thuds. But Pat slid heavily down to the little clearing below him, fumbled a moment with his key, and then in a gruff guarded voice called:
“Hullo! Hullo! Sam? That you? Yes, aw’right! Yes, aw’right! How’s things? What? Hell’s to pay? Whaddaya mean hell? Ain’t you gonta put it over? After all my trouble you ain’t a gonta let that million slip through? What? Oh! Who? The Valet? He’s beat it, has he? Whaddaya mean? _He_ took ’em? _He_ took the pearls an’ diamonds? Well, Em’ruls then! What’s tha diffrunce? _We_ ain’t gottum have we? Oh, bonds too! Well, whattya gonta do about it? Move him? What, the rich guy? Move him where? _Why?_ We ain’ta gonta run no more risks. Link an’ Shorty are sore ‘za pup when they come. I don’t think they’ll stan’ for it. Well, where’ll ya move him? Who? Shorty? Oh, Link? Both? Well, I ain’t seen ’em. I tol’ ’em to keep good an’ far away from me. I don’t build on loosin’ this job just now, See? What? It’s in the papers a’ready? You don’t say! Well, who you figger done that? That Valet? Well, where’s the harm? Can’t you work it all the better? We got the guy, ain’t we? _He_ ain’t gottim that’s certain. We c’n deliver the goods, so we get the reward. How much reward they offerin? You don’t say! Well, I should say, get in yer work soon ‘fore we get caught. Aw’right! I’m with ya. Well, s’long! I’ll be down here at nine sharp. Take a trip to China with ya next week ef ya pull it off. Aw’right! Goobby!” and Pat hung up and puffed his way up the hill again, leaving Billy drenched with perspiration and filled with vague plans, and deep anxiety. He had got a clue but what good was it? How could he work it to the salvation of Mark? He could easily put the sissy over at the parsonage wise, do him a good turn, save his dad some money, but what good would that do Mark? Mark needed to establish an alibi, he could see that with half an eye, but how would anything Billy knew help that along unless–unless he told on himself? For a moment a long trail of circumstances that would surely follow such a sacrificial ordinance appeared before him and burned into his soul, most prominent among them being Aunt Saxon, hard worked and damp-pink-eyed, crying her heart out for the boy she had tried faithfully to bring up. And Miss Lynn. How sad her eyes would grow if Billy had to be tried and sentenced to prison. Not that Billy was afraid to go to prison, in fact the thought of it as an experience was rather exhilirating than not, but he was afraid to have those two know he had gone, afraid of their eyes, their sad eyes! Yes, and he was afraid of the thought of his own ingratitude, for down deep in his heart he could see a long line of things Aunt Saxon had done for him that she hadn’t been obliged to do. Going without a new winter coat to get him an overcoat. His old one was warm, but his arms were out of it too far and he wouldn’t wear it. Sitting up nights the time he drank swamp water and had the fever! That was fierce! How he did rag her! And how patiently she bore it! The scare she had when the dog bit him! As if a little dog bite was anything! Doggone it, why were women such fools!
And now this! Billy sat up with a jerk and shook himself free from the dead moss and leaves, wending his way sulkily across to where he had left his wheel, and pondering–pondering. “Shafton!” There ought to be something there to work on, but there wasn’t!
Meantime Marilyn rode hard down the way to Economy, not slowing her pony till they reached the outskirts of Economy. Her mind was in such a tumult that she felt as if she were being whirled on with circumstances without having a will to choose one thing from another. Mark! The unwelcome guests! Mark and Opal! Mark and Cherry! _Cherry!_ The Chief of Police! Mark! And yes, Cherry! She was on her way to see _Cherry!_ But what was she going to do when she got there, and how was she to excuse her strange visit after almost five years since she had seen the child? If there was truth in the rumor that she was connected with a shooting affair at the Blue Duck, and especially if there was truth in the charge that Mark had been going with her, would it not seem strange–perhaps be misconstrued by Cherry? By her family? They had all known of her own intimacy with Mark in the past. She shrank from the idea. Yet Marilyn Severn had not been brought up to regard public opinion when it was a question of doing something that ought to be done. The only question was, was it really something that ought to be done or was she letting Billy influence her unduly? Billy was shrewd. He knew Mark. He knew a lot more than he ever told. What did Billy know? How she wished she had asked her father’s advise before coming, and yet, if she had, he might have been unduly influenced by dreading to have her put herself in the position of prying into the matter.
As she rode and pondered she came near to the little house on the village street where Cherry lived, a house set out plumb with the sidewalk, and a little gate at the side to go round to the back door where the family lived, the front room being the tailor shop. As she drew near she looked up and was sure she saw Cherry in a short narrow skirt and an old middy blouse scurrying through the gate to the back door, and her heart thumped so hard she was almost tempted to ride on to the store first before making her call. But something in her that always held her to a task until it was completed forced her to dismount and knock at the door.
It seemed long to wait with her heart thumping so, and why did it thump? She found herself praying, “O God, show me what to say!” and then the door was open a crack and a sharp wizened face with a striking resemblance to Cherry’s bold little beauty, was thrust at her. It must be Cherry’s mother. Of course it was!
“Mr. Fenner ain’t in the shop!” said the woman, “He can’t do nothin to-day. He’s sick!”
Marilyn smiled: “But I wanted to see Cherry,” she said, “Aren’t you her mother? Don’t you remember me? I’m Marilyn Severn, her old music teacher. Is Cherry in?”
A frightened look passed over the woman’s face as she scanned the sweet face before her, and then a wily expression darted into her eyes:
“Oh,” she said with a forced smirk, “Yes, Miss Marilyn. Excuse me fer not recognizing you. You’ve grown a lot. Why no, Cherry ain’t at home this morning. She’ll be awful sorry not to see you. She thought a lot of you, she did. She got on so well with you in her music too. I says to her the other day, I says Cherry, I hear Miss Marilyn is home again, you’ll have to take up yer music again, and she says yes, she guessed she would. She’ll be round some day to see you. Sorry I can’t ask you in, but Mr. Fenner’s pretty sick. Oh, just the grip I guess. He’ll soon be all right.”
She began to realize that the woman was in a hurry to get rid of her and she hastened away, relieved yet puzzled at the whole affair. She rode down into the village mechanically and bought a spool of silk and the coffee strainer which had been her legitimate errand to the village, and turning back had scarcely passed the last house before she saw the Chief’s car coming toward her, and Mark, his face white and haggard, looking out from the back seat. He drew back as he recognized her, and tried to hide, and she rode on with only a passing bow which comprehended the whole car; but she was aware of Mark’s eyes upon her, steadily, watching her. She would have known he was watching her from the darkness of the back seat if her own eyes had been shut. What was it all about and what were they doing to Mark?
XVIII
The last house in the village on the road to Economy was the Harricutt’s. It was built of gray cement blocks that the elder had taken for a bad debt, and had neither vine nor blossom to soften its grimness. Its windows were supplied with green holland shades, and its front door-yard was efficiently manned with plum trees and a peach, while the back yard was given over to vegetables. Elder Harricutt walked to Economy every day to his office in the Economy bank. He said it kept him in good condition physically. His wife was small and prim with little quick prying eyes and a false front that had a tendency to go askew. She wore bonnets with strings and her false teeth didn’t quite fit; they clicked as she talked. She kept a watch over the road at all times and very little ever got by her unnoticed.
In wholesome contrast next door was the trim little white cottage where Tom McMertrie and his mother Christie lived, smothered in vines and ablaze with geraniums all down the front walk. And below that, almost facing the graveyard was a little green shingled bungalow. Mary Rafferty kept her yard aglow with phlox, verbenas and pansies, and revelled in vines and flowering shrubs.
These two women were wonderful friends, though forty years marched between them. Mary’s hair was black as a crow’s wing above her great pansy-blue eyes with their long curling lashes, while Christie’s hair was sandy silver and her tongue full of brrrs. They had opposite pantry windows on the neighboring sides of their houses, where they often talked of a morning while Christie moulded her sweet loaves of bread or mixed scones and Mary made tarts and pies and cake for Jim’s supper. Somehow without much being said about it they had formed a combination against their hard little knot of a neighbor behind the holland shades.
The first house on the side street that ran at right angles to the main thoroughfare, just below Rafferty’s, was Duncannon’s. A picket fence at the side let into the vegetable gardens of the three, and the quiet little Mrs. Duncannon with the rippley brown hair and soft brown eyes often slipped through and made a morning call under cover of the kindly pole beans that hid her entrances and exits perfectly from any green holland shaded windows that might be open that way. Jane Duncannon formed a third in this little combination.
On the Monday morning following the session meeting Mary Rafferty and Christie McMertrie were at their respective pantry windows flinging together some toothsome delicacies for the evening meal, that all might move smoothly during the busy day.
A neat line of flopping clothes glimmered in each back yard over the trim “green” that stretched across in front of the back door, and the irons were on in both kitchens preparing for a finish as soon as a “piece” should show signs of dry.
“Hev ye haird whut the extra session meetin’ was called for, Mary?” asked the older woman looking up from her mixing bowl. “Tom went to the mill to tak the place of the noight watchman. His feyther’s dyin’ ye ken, and Tom’s not come by yet. I thot ye might hev haird.”
Mary lifted her eyes with troubled glance:
“Not yet,” she said, “but I’m thinkin of running over to Duncannons as soon as I get these pies in the oven. The clothes won’t be dry for a while, an’ I’ll take my pan of peas to shell. She’ll know of course. Maybe it’s nothing much,–but Jim said they held up Mark Carter and made him come in. It was ten minutes of ten before he got away–! You don’t suppose anybody’s taken the gossip to the session do you?”
“There’s one we know well would be full cawpable of the same,” affirmed Christie patting her biscuits into place and tucking the bread cloth deftly over them, “But I’d be sorry to see a meenister an’ a session as wud be held up by one poor whimperin’ little elder of the like of him.”
“Mr. Severn won’t, I’m sure o’ that!” said Mary trustingly, “but there comes Mrs. Duncannon now, I’ll run over and see what’s in the wind.”
Mrs. Duncannon had grown a smile on her gentle face that was like as two peas to her husband’s wide kindly grin, but there was no smile on her face this morning as she greeted her two friends, and dropped into a chair by the door of Christie’s immaculate kitchen, and her soft brown eyes were snapping: She had an air of carrying kindly mysterious explosives:
“Did ye hear that the old ferret held up Mark Carter last night and as good as called him a murderer in the face of the whole session?” she asked breathlessly.
“And whut said our meenister to thot?” inquired Christie.
Jane Duncannon flashed her a twinkle of appreciation:
“He just clapped the senior elder in the chair as neat as a pin in a pincushion an’ moved an expression of confidence, _utmost_ confidence was the word–!”
“Mmmmmmmm! I thot as much!” commented Christie, “The blessed mon!”
“Oh, I’m so glad!” sighed Mary Rafferty sinking into a chair, “Jim thinks the sun rises and sets in Mark Carter. They were kids together you know. He says people don’t know Mark. And he said if they turned Mark down at the church now, if they didn’t stand by him in his trouble, he had no more use for their religion!”
“Don’t you believe it, Mary Rafferty! Jim Rafferty loves the very ground the meenister walks on!”
“What was that?” exclaimed Jane Duncannon running to the side window. “A strange car! Mary, come here! Is that the Chief of Police from Economy?”
Mary darted to the window followed by the elder woman:
“Yes, it is!” she exclaimed drawing back aghast, “You _don’t_ suppose he’s going to Carter’s? He _wouldn’t_ do that would he?”
“He huz to do his dooty, doesn’t he?” mused Christie, “But thot’s not sayin’ he _loikes_ it, child!”
“Well, he might find a way not to frighten his mother–!”
Mrs. Duncannon stretched her neck to see if he was really stopping at the parsonage, and Christie murmured: “Perhaps he will.”
The little group lingered a moment, till Mary bethought her of her pies in the oven and the three drifted thriftily back to their morning tasks, albeit with mind and heart down in the village.
Presently on the glad morning air sounded again the chug chug of the motor, bringing them sharply back to their windows. Yes, there was the Chief’s car again. And Mark Carter with white haggard face sat in the back seat! Apprehension flew to the soul of each loyal woman.
But before the sound of the Chief’s motor bearing Mark Carter Economyward had passed out of hearing, Jane Duncannon in a neat brown dress with a little round brown ribboned hat set trimly on her rippley hair, and a little round basket on her arm covered daintily with a white napkin, was nipping out her tidy front gate between the sunflowers and asters and tripping down Maple street as if it had been on her mind to go ever since Saturday night.
Even before Mary Rafferty had turned from her Nottingham laced parlor window and gone with swift steps to her kitchen door Christie McMertrie stood on her back step with her sunbonnet on and a glass of jelly wrapped in tissue paper in her hand:
“She’s glimpsed ’em,” she whispered briefly, with a nod toward the holland shades, “an’ she’s up in her side bedroom puttin’ on her Sunday bunnit. She’ll be oot the door in another two meenits, the little black crow! If we bide in the fields we can mak Carters’ back stoop afore she gets much past the tchurch!”
Mary Rafferty caught up her pan of peas, dashed them into a basket that hung on the wall by the door, and bareheaded as she was hastened out through the garden after her friend for all the world as if she were going to pick more peas. Down the green lane between the bean poles they hurried through the picket gate, pushing aside the big gray Duncannon cat who basked in the sun under a pink hollyhock with a Duncannon smile on its gray whiskers like the rest of the family.
“Jane! Jane Duncannon!” called Christie McMertrie. But the hollow echoes in the tidy kitchen flung back emptily, and the plate of steaming cinnamon buns on the white scrubbed table spoke as plainly as words could have done that no one was at home.
“She’s gone!”
The two hurried around the house, through the front gate, across the street with a quick glance up and down to be sure that the Petrie babies playing horse in the next yard were their only observers, and then ducking under the bars of the fence they scuttled down a slope, crossed a trickle of a brook that hurried creekward, and up the opposite bank. Behind Little’s barn they paused to glance back. Some one was coming out the Harricutt door, some one wearing a bonnet and a black veil. They hurried on. There were two more fences separating the meadows.
Mary went over and Christie between. They made quick work of the rest of the way and crept panting through the hedge at the back of Carter’s just as Jane Duncannon swung open the little gate in front with a glimpse back up the street in triumph and a breath of relief that she had won. By only so much as a lift of her lashes and a lighting of her soft brown eyes did she recognize and incorporate the other two in her errand, and together the three entered the Carter house by the side entrance, with a neighborly tap and a call: “Miz Carter, you home?”
Quick nervous steps overhead, a muffled voice calling catchily, “Yes, I’m coming, just set down, won’t you?” and they dropped into three dining-room chairs and drew ‘breath, mopping their warm faces with their handkerchiefs and trying to adjust their minds to the next move.
Their hostess gave them no time to prepare a program. She came hurriedly down stairs, obviously anxious, openly with every nerve on the qui vive, and they saw at once that she had been crying. Her hair was damp about her forehead as if from hasty ablution. She looked from one to another of her callers with a frightened glance that went beyond them as if looking for others to come, as she paused in the doorway puzzled.
“This is a s’prise party, Miz Carter,” began Jane Duncannon laughing, “We all brought our work along and can’t stay but a minute, but we got an idea an’ couldn’t keep it till Ladies’ Aid. You got a minute to spare? Go get your knitting and set down. _Now_! It’s Miz’Severn’s birthday next Sat’day an’ we thought ‘twould be nice to get her a present. What do you think about it?”
Mrs. Carter who had stood tensely in the doorway, her fingers whitely gripping the woodwork, her face growing whiter every minute, suddenly relaxed with relief in every line of her body, and bloomed into a smile:
“Oh, why, _is_ it? Of course! What’ll it be? Why, couldn’t we finish that sunburst bed quilt we started last year while she was away? If we all get at it I think we could finish. There’s some real fast quilters in the Aid. Wait, till I get my apples to pare. I promised Mark I’d have apple sauce for lunch!”
A quick glance went from eye to eye and a look of relief settled down on the little company. She _expected Mark home for lunch_ then!
They were in full tide of talk about the quilting pattern when a knock came on the front door, and Mary Rafferty jumped up and ran to open it. They heard the Harricutt voice, clear, sharp, incisive:
“I came to sympathize–!” and then as Mary swung her face into the sunlight the voice came suddenly up as against a stone wall with a gasp and “Oh, it’s _you_! Where’s Mrs. Carter? I wish to see Mrs. Carter.”
“She’s right back in the dining-room, Mrs. Harricutt. Come on back. We’re talking over how to celebrate Miz Severn’s birthday. Do you like a straight quilting or diamond, Miz Harricutt: It’s for the sunburst coverlet you know!”
“The sunburst coverlet!” exclaimed Mrs. Harricutt irately, as though somehow it were an indecent subject at such a time as this, but she followed Mary back to the dining-room with a sniff of curiosity. She fairly gasped when she saw Mrs. Carter with her small sensitive face bright with smiles:
“Just take that chair by the window, Mrs. Harricutt,” she said affably, “and _excuse me_ fer not getting up. I’ve got to get these apples on the fire, for I promised Mark some apple sauce for lunch, and he likes it stone cold.”
Mrs. Harricutt pricked up her ears:
“Oh, Mark is coming home for _lunch_ then!” Her voice was cold, sharp, like a steel knife dipped in lemon juice. There was a bit of a curl on the tip of it that made one wince as it went through the soul. Little Mrs. Carter flushed painfully under her sensitive skin, up to the roots of her light hair. She had been pretty in her girlhood, and Mark had her coloring in a stronger way.
“Oh, yes, he’s coming home for lunch,” she answered brightly, glad of this much assurance. “And he has to have it early because he has to drive that strange young woman from the parsonage back somewhere down in New Jersey. She came alone by herself yesterday, but the mountain passes sort of scairt her, and she asked Mark to drive back with her.”
“Oh!” There was a challenge in the tone that called the red to Mrs. 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 glass 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 gratitude–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 quantity 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 passed between Mark and the Chief at parting. The Chief trusted Mark that was plain. Billy felt reassured. 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 passed 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 _hell_. 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 hell sometime, it had seemed the manly thing to do. Most men to his mind were preparing for hell. 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 hell Billy felt there could be no other destiny for himself.
But now, face to face with realities, Billy suddenly began to realize what hell was going to be like. Billy felt hell 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 hell_! He could never more hold up his head and walk proud of himself. He was in hell at fourteen for life, and by his own act! And Gosh hang it! Hell 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 glass! 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 hemstitching 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.”.
Lynn’s eyes were dancing:
“Why didn’t you say ‘dump’ like this? That’s what your tone said,” she laughed, “and only a minute ago you were saying how charming it was. No, I had no car in college, I was–” But he interrupted her eagerly:
“Now, you are misunderstanding me on purpose,” he declared in a hurt tone. “I think this is an ideal spot off in the hills this way, the quaintest little Utopia in the world, but of course you know you haven’t the air of one who had never been out of the hills, and the sweet sheltered atmosphere of this village. Tell me, when and where did you drive a car, and I’ll see if I can’t give you one better for a joy ride.”
Lynn looked up placidly and smiled:
“In New York,” she said quietly, “at the beginning of the war, and afterward in France.”
Laurie Shafton sat up excitedly, the color flushing into his handsome face:
“Were you in France?” he said admiringly, “Well, I might have known. I saw there was something different about you. Y. M., I suppose?”
“No,” said Lynn, “Salvation Army. My father has been a friend of the Commander’s all his life. She knew, that we believed in all their principles. There were only a very few outsiders, those whom they knew well, allowed to go with them. I was one.”
“Well,” said Laurie, eyeing her almost embarrassedly, “You girls made a great name for yourselves with your doughnuts and your pies. The only thing I had against you was that you didn’t treat us officers always the way we ought to have been treated. But I suppose there were individual exceptions. I went into a hut one night and tried to get some cigarettes and they wouldn’t let me have any.”
“No, we didn’t sell cigarettes,” said Lynn with satisfaction, “That wasn’t what we were there for. We had a few for the wounded and dying who were used to them and needed them of course, but we didn’t sell them.”
“And then I tried to get some doughnuts and coffee, but would you believe it, they wouldn’t let me have any till all the fellows in line had been served. They said I had to take my turn! They were quite insulting about it! Of course they did good, but they ought to have been made to understand that they couldn’t treat United States Officers that way!”
“Why not? Were you any better than any of the soldiers?” she asked eyeing him calmly, and somehow he seemed to feel smaller than his normal estimate of himself.
“An _officer?_” he said with a contemptuous haughty light in his eye.
“What is an officer but the servant of his men?” asked Lynn. “Would you _want_ to eat before them when they had stood hours in line waiting? They who had all the hard work and none of the honors?”
Laurie’s cheeks were flushed and his eyes angry:
“That’s rot!” he said rudely, “Where did you get it? The officers were picked from the cream of the land. They represent the great Nation. An insult to them is an insult to the Nation–!”
Lynn began to smile impudently–and her eyes were dancing again.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Shafton, you must not forget I was there. I knew both officers and men. I admit that some of the officers were princely, fit men to represent a great Christian Nation, but some of them again were well–the scum of the earth, rather than the cream. Mr. Shafton it does not make a man better than his fellows to be an officer, and it does not make him fit to be an officer just because his father is able to buy him a commission.”
Laurie flushed angrily again:
“My father did not buy me a commission!” he said indignantly, “I went to a training camp and won it.”
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Shafton, I meant nothing personal, but I certainly had no use for an officer who came bustling in on those long lines of weary soul-sick boys just back from the front, and perhaps off again that night, and tried to get ahead of them in line. However, let’s talk of something else. Were you ever up around Dead Man’s Curve? What division were you in?”
Laurie let his anger die out and answered her questions. For a few minutes they held quite an animated conversation about France and the various phases of the war. Laurie had been in air service. One could see just how handsome he must have looked in his uniform. One would know also that he would be brave and reckless. It was written all over his face and in his very attitude. He showed her his “croix de guerre.”
“Mark was taken prisoner by the Germans,” she said sadly as she handed it back, her eyes dreamy and faraway, then suddenly seeming to realize that she had spoken her thoughts aloud she flushed and hurried on to other experiences during the war, but she talked abstractedly, as one whose thoughts had suddenly been diverted. The young man watched her baffled:
“You seem so aloof,” he said all at once watching her as she sewed away on the bit of linen, “You seem almost as if you–well–_despised me_. Excuse me if I say that it’s a rather new experience. People in my world don’t act that way to me, really they don’t. And you don’t even know who I am nor anything about me. Do you think that’s quite fair?”
Lynn looked at him with suddenly arrested attention:
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to be rude. But possibly you’ve come to the heart of the matter. I am not of your world. You know there’s a great deal in not being able to get another’s point of view. I hope I haven’t done you an injustice. I haven’t meant to. But you’re wrong in saying I don’t know who you are or anything about you. You are the son of William J. Shafton–the only son, isn’t that so? Then you are the one I mean. There can’t be any mistake. And I do know something about you. In fact I’ve been very angry at you, and wished I might meet you and tell you what I thought of you.”
“You don’t say!” said Laurie getting up excitedly and moving over to a chair next to hers regardless of his lame ankle, “This certainly is interesting! What the deuce have I been doing to get myself in your bad graces? I better repent at once before I hear what it is?”
“You are the one who owns the block of warehouses down on —- street and won’t sell at any price to give the little children in all that region a place to get a bit of fresh air, the grass and a view of the sky. You are the one who won’t pull down your old buildings and try new and improved ways of housing the poor around there so that they can grow up decently clean and healthy and have a little chance in this world. Just because you can’t have as many apartments and get as much money from your investment you let the little children crowd together in rooms that aren’t fit for the pigs to live in, they are so dark and airless, and crowded already. Oh, I know you keep within the law! You just skin through without breaking it, but you won’t help a little bit, you won’t even let your property help if someone else is willing to take the bother! Oh, I’ve been so boiling at you ever since I heard your name that I couldn’t hardly keep my tongue still, to think of that great beautiful car out there and how much it must have cost, and to hear you speak of one of your other cars as if you had millions of them, and to think of little Carmela living down in the basement room of Number 18 in your block, growing whiter and whiter every day, with her great blue eyes and her soft fine wavy hair, and that hungry eager look in her face. And her mother, sewing, sewing, all day long at the little cellar window, and going blind because you won’t put in a bigger one; sewing on coarse dark vests, putting in pockets and buttonholes for a living for her and Carmela, and you grinding her down and running around in cars like that and taking it out of little Carmela, and little Carmela’s mother! Oh! How can I help feeling aloof from a person like that?”
Laurie sat up astonished watching her:
“Why, my dear girl!” he exclaimed, “Do you know what you’re talking about? Do you realize that it would take a mint of money to do all the fool things that these silly reformers are always putting up to you? My lawyer looks after all those matters. Of course I know nothing about it–!”
“Well, you _ought_ to know,” said Lynn excitedly, “Does the money belong to your lawyer? Isn’t it yours to be responsible for? Well, then if you are stealing some of it out of little Carmela and a lot of other little children and their mothers and fathers oughtn’t you to know? Is your lawyer going to take the responsibility about it in the kingdom of heaven I should like to know? Can he stand up in the judgment day and exempt you by saying that he had to do the best he could for your property because you required it of him? Excuse me for getting so excited, but I love little Carmela. I went to see her a great deal last winter when I was in New York taking my senior year at the University. And I can’t help telling you the truth about it. I don’t suppose you’ll do anything about it, but at least you ought to know! And _I’m not your dear girl, either!_”
Marilyn rose suddenly from her chair, and stood facing him with blazing eyes and cheeks that were aflame. It was a revelation to the worldly wise young man that a saint so sweet could blossom suddenly into a beautiful and furious woman. It seemed unreal to find this wonderful, unique, excitable young woman with ideas in such a quiet secluded spot of the earth. Decidedly she had ideas.
“Excuse me,” he said, and rose also, an almost deprecatory air upon him, “I assure you I meant nothing out of the way, Miss Severn. I certainly respect and honor you–And really, I had no idea of all this about my property. I’ve never paid much heed to my property except to spend the income of course. It wasn’t required of me. I must look into this matter. If I find it as you think–that is if there is no mistake, I will see what I can do to remedy it. In any case we will look after little Carmela. I’ll settle some money on her mother, wouldn’t that be the best way? I can’t think things are as bad as you say–“
“Will you really do something about it?” asked Lynn earnestly, “Will you go up to New York and see for yourself? Will you go around in _every room_ of your buildings and get acquainted with those people and find out just what the conditions are?”
“Why–I–!” he began uncertainly.
“Oh, I thought you couldn’t stand that test! That would be too much bother–You would rather–!”
“No, Wait! I didn’t say I wouldn’t. Here! I’ll go if you’ll go with me and show me what you mean and what you want done. Come. I’ll take you at your word. If you really want all those things come on and show me just what to do. I’m game. I’ll do it. I’ll do it whether it needs doing or not, _just for you_. Will you take me up?”
“Of course” said Lynn quickly, “I’ll go with you and show you. I expect to be in New York next month helping at the Salvation Home while one of their workers is away on her vacation. I’ll show you all over the district as many times as you need to go, if it’s not too hot for you to come back to the city so early.”
He looked at her sharply. There was a covert sneer in her last words that angered him, and he was half inclined to refuse the whole thing, but somehow there was something in this strange new type of girl that fascinated him. Now that she had the university, and the war, and the world, for a background she puzzled and fascinated him more than ever. Half surprised at his own interest he bowed with a new kind of dignity over his habitual light manner:
“I shall be delighted, Miss Severn. It will not be too hot for me if it is not too hot for you. I shall be at your service, and I hope you will discover that there is one officer who knows how to obey.”
She looked at him half surprised, half troubled and then answered simply:
“Thank you. I’m afraid I’ve done you an injustice. I’m afraid I didn’t think you would be game enough to do it. I hope I haven’t been too rude. But you see I feel deeply about it and sometimes I forget myself?”
“I am sure I deserve all you have said,” said Laurie as gravely as his light nature could manage, “but there is one thing that puzzles me deeply. I wish you would enlighten me. All this won’t do _you_ any good. It isn’t for _you_ at all. _Why_ do you care?”
Marilyn brought her lovely eyes to dwell on his face for a moment thoughtfully, a shy beautiful tenderness softening every line of her eager young face:
“It’s because–” she began diffidently, “It’s because they all are God’s children–and I love _Him_ better than anything else in life!”
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 God 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 appetite for the nice supper that Aunt Saxon had ready when he came dejectedly home that night. He had passed 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! Nobody 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 circumstances 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. Nobody 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 muffled 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 passing in beneath the arched door. The bang of that door as it shut was echoing in his soul.
He passed the Fenner cottage. There were lights and moving about, but he paid no heed. He passed 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 passed with the sick reeling motion of a rider whose life has suddenly grown worthless to him. Over bottles and nails, and bumping 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 lustily 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. Assuredly 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 spaces 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 Saturday 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!”
Billy read no further. He clapped down a nickel and stuffed the paper indifferently into his pocket, almost forgetting in his disgust to purchase the county news. “Aw Gee!” he said to himself. “More o’ that Judas stuff. I gotta get rid o’ them thirty pieces!”
He stepped back and bought a County paper, stood idly looking over its pages a moment with the letters swimming before his eyes, at last discovering the column where the Economy “murder” was discussed, and without reading it stuffed it in the pocket on the other side and rode away into the sunlight. Murder! It was called murder! Then Dolph must be dead! The plot thickened! Dead! Murder! Who killed him? Surely he wasn’t responsible for that at least! He was out on the road with Mark when it happened. He hadn’t done anything which in the remotest way had to do with the killing, he thanked his lucky stars for that. And Mark. But who did it? Cherry? She might be a reason for what Mark did last night.
At a turn in the road where a little grove began he got off his wheel and seeking a sheltered spot dropped down under a tree to read his papers. His quick eye searched through the County paper first for the sensational account of the murder, and a gray look settled over his pug countenance as he read. So might a mother have regarded her child in deep trouble, or a lover his beloved. Billy’s spirit was bowed to the depths. When he had devoured every word he flung the paper aside wrathfully, and sat up with a kind of hopeless gesture of his hard young hands. “Aw Gee!” he said aloud, and suddenly he felt a great wet blob rolling down his freckled cheek. He smashed it across into his hair with a quick slash of his dirty hand as if it had been a mosquito annoying him, and lest the other eye might be meditating a like trick he gave that a vicious dab and hauled out the other paper, more as a matter of form than because he had a deep interest in it. All through the description of those wonderful Shafton jewels, and the mystery that surrounded the disappearance of the popular young man, Billy could see the word “murder” dancing like little black devils in and out among the letters. The paragraph about Mrs. Shafton’s collapse held him briefly:
“Aw, gee!” he could see pink tears everywhere. He supposed he ought to do something about that. For all the world like Aunt Saxon! He seemed to sense her youth through the printed words as he had once sensed Mrs. Carter’s. He saw her back in school, pretty and little. Rich women were always pretty and little to his mind, pretty and little and helpless and always crying. It was then that the thought was born that made him look off to the hills and ponder with drawn brows and anxious mien. He took it back to his home with him and sat moodily staring at the lilac bushes, and gave Aunt Saxon another bad day wondering what had come to Willie. She would actually have been glad to hear him say: “I gotta beat it! I gotta date with tha fellas!”
That evening the rumor crept back to Sabbath Valley from who knows where that Dolph was dead and Mark Carter had run away!
XXI
Tuesday morning Lynn slipped down to Carters with a little cake she had made all white frosting and sprinkles of nuts. Her face was white but brave with a smile, and she said her mother wanted to know how Mrs. Carter’s neuralgia was getting on.
But Mrs. Carter was the only one in the village perhaps who had not heard the rumor, and she was gracious and pleased and said she wished Mark was home, he loved nut cake so much.
“You know he was called back to New York suddenly last night didn’t you?” she said. “He felt real sorry to leave so soon, but his partner wired him there was something he must see to himself, and he just took his car and went right away as soon as he got back from taking that girl home. He hoped he’d get back again soon though. Say, who was that girl? Wasn’t she kind of queer to ask Mark to take her home? Seems somehow girls are getting a little forward these days. I know you’d never do a thing like that with a perfect stranger, Marilyn.”
The girl only stayed a few minutes, and went home with a braver heart. At least Mark was protecting his mother. He had not changed entirely. He wouldn’t let her suffer! But what was he doing? Oughtn’t he to be told what rumors were going around about him? But how could it be done? Her father? Perhaps. She shrank from that, Mark had so withdrawn from them, he might take it as an interference. Billy? Ah, yes, Billy!
But Billy did not appear anywhere, and when she got back she found that Shafton’s car had been finished and was ready to drive, and he wanted her to take a little spin with him to try it, he said. He warily invited her mother to go along, for he saw by her face that she was going to decline, and the mother watching her daughter’s white face said: “Yes, Marilyn we will go. It will do you good. You have been housed up here ever since you came home.” And there was nothing for the girl to do but succumb or seem exceedingly rude. She was not by nature rude, so she went.
As they drove by the Saxon cottage Billy was just coming out, and he stared glumly at the three and hardly acknowledged Marilyn’s greeting. He stared after them scowling.
“Hell!” said Billy aloud, regardless of Aunt Saxon at the front window, “Yes _Hell_!” and he realized the meaning of his epithet far better than the young man he was staring after had the first night he had used it in Sabbath Valley.
“What was that you said Willie?” called Aunt Saxon’s anxious voice.
“Aw, nothing!” said Billy, and slammed out the gate, his wheel by his side. _Now_! Something had to be done. He couldn’t have _that_ going on. He was hurt at Mrs. Severn. She ought to take better care of her daughter! In sullen despair he mounted and rode away to work out his problem. It was certain he couldn’t do anything with Saxy snivelling round. And _something had to be done!_
Billy managed to get around the country quite a little that morning. He rode up to Economy and learned that Mr. Fenner, the tailor, was sick, had been taken two nights ago, was delirious and had to have two men to hold him down. He thought everybody was an enemy and tried to choke them all. He rode past the jail but saw nothing though he circled the block three times. The Chief stood out in front talking with three strange men. Billy sized them up for detectives. When there was nothing further to be gained in Economy he turned his steed toward Pleasant Valley and took in a little underground telephone communication between a very badly scared Pat and a very angry Sam at some unknown point at the end of the wire. It was then, lying hidden in the thick undergrowth, that a possible solution of his difficulties occurred to him, a form of noble self sacrifice that might in part do penance for his guilt. Folded safely in his inner pocket was the thirty pieces of silver, the blood money, the price of Mark Carter’s freedom and good name. If he had not taken that he might have fixd this Pat so he would be a witness to Mark’s alibi. But according to the code he had been taught it would not be honorable to squeal on somebody whose money he had taken. It wasn’t square. It wasn’t honorable. It was yella, and yella, he would not be if the sky fell. It was all the religion he had as yet, not to be “yella.” It stood for all the fineness of his soul. But he had reasoned within himself that if in some way he could get that money back to Pat, then he would be free from obligation. Then he could somehow manage to put Pat where he would have to tell the right thing to save Mark. Just how it could be done he wasn’t sure, but that was another question.
When Pat had trundled away to the train he rolled himself out from ambush and went on his way across Lone Valley by a little tree-shaded path he knew that cut straight over to Stark mountain.
Not a ripple of a leaf showed above him as he passed straight up the mountain to the old house, for the watchful eye looking out to see. Billy was a great deal like an Indian in his goings and comings, and Billy was wary. Had he not seen the winking light? Billy was taking no chances. Smoothly folded in his hip pocket he carried a leaf of the New York paper wherein was offered a large reward for information concerning jewels and bonds and other property taken from the Shafton country home on pretense of setting free the son. Also there was a stupendous reward offered for information concerning the son, and Billy’s big thought as he crept along under the trees with all the stealth of a wild thing, was that here was another thirty pieces of silver multiplied many times, and _he wasn’t going to take it!_ He _could, but he wouldn’t!_ He was going to give these folks the information they wanted, but he wasn’t going to get the benefit of it. That was going to be his punishment. He had been in hell long enough, and he was going to try to pull himself out of it by his good works. And he would do it in such a way that there wouldn’t be any chance of the reward being pressed upon him. He would just fix it so that nobody would particularly know he had anything to do with the clews. That was Billy all over. He never did a thing half way. But first he must find out if there was anybody about the old house. He couldn’t get away from those three winks he had seen.
So, feeling almost relieved for a moment Billy left his wheel on guard and crept around to his usual approach at the back before he came out in the open. And then he crept cautiously to the cellar window where he had first entered the house. He gripped Pat’s old gun with one hand in his pocket, and slid along like a young snake, taking precaution not to appear before the cellar window lest his shadow should fall inside. He flattened himself at last upon the grass a noticeless heap of gray khaki trousers and brown flannel shirt close against the house. One would have to lean far out of a window to see him, and there he lay and listened awhile. And presently from the depths beyond that grated window he heard a little scratch, scratch, scratch, tap, tap, tap, scratch, tap, scratch, tap, steadily, on for sometime like his heart beats, till he wasn’t sure he was hearing it at all, and thought it might be the blood pounding through his ears, so strange and uncanny it seemed. Then, all at once there came a puff, as if a long breath had been drawn, like one lifting a heavy weight, and then a dull thud. A brief silence and more scratching in soft earth now.
He listened for perhaps an hour, and once a footstep grated on the cement floor, and coals rattled down as if they were disturbed. Once too a soft chirrup from up above like the call of a wood bird, only strangely human and the sounds in the cellar ceased altogether, till another weird note sounded and they began again.
When he was satisfied with his investigations he began slowly to back away from his position, lifting each atom of muscle slowly one at a time till his going must have been something like the motion picture of a bud unfolding, and yet as silent as the flower grows he faded away from that cellar window back into the green and no one was the wiser. An hour later the watchful eye at the little half moon opening in the shutter might have seen a little black speck like a spider whizzing along on the Highroad and turning down toward Sabbath Valley, but it never would have looked as if it came from Stark mountain, for it was headed straight from Lone Valley. Billy was going home to get cleaned up and make a visit to the parsonage. If that guy was still there he’d see how quick he would leave! If there wasn’t one way to make him go there was another, and Billy felt that he held the trick.
But as fate would have it Billy did not have to get cleaned up, for Miss Severn stood on the front porch looking off toward the mountains with that wistful expression of hers that made him want to laugh and cry and run errands for her anywhere just to serve her and make her smile, and she waved her hand at Billy, and ran down to the gate to speak to him.
“Billy, I want to ask you,–If you were to see Mark Carter–of course you mightn’t, but then you might–you’ll let him know that we are of course his friends, and that anything he wants done, if he’ll just let us know–“
“Sure!” said Billy lighting off his wheel with a downward glance at his dirty self, all leaves and dust and grime, “Sure, he’d know that anyhow.”
“Well, Billy, I know he would, but I mean, I thought perhaps you might find something we _could do_,–something maybe without letting him know. He’s very proud about asking any help you, know, and he wouldn’t want to bother us. You may discover something he–needs–or wants done–while–he is away–and maybe we could help him out, Father or Mother or I. You’ll remember, won’t you Billy?”
“Sure!” said Billy again feeling the warm glow of her friendliness and loyalty to Mark, and digging his toes into the turf embarrassedly. Then he looked up casually as he was about to leave:
“Say is there a guy here named Shafton? Man from n’Yark?”
“Why, yes,” said Lynn looking at him curiously, “Did you want to see him?”
“Well, if he’s round I might. I got a message for him.”
She looked at him keenly:
“You haven’t _seen_ Mark to-day, have you, Billy?”
“Aw, naw,’taint from him,” he grinned reassuringly, “He’s away just now. But I might see him soon ya know, ur hear from him.”
Lynn’s face cleared. “Yes, of course. His mother told me he was suddenly called back to New York.”
“Yep. That’s right!” said Billy as if he knew all about it, and pulled off his old cap with a glorious wave as she turned to call the stranger.
Billy dropped his wheel at the curb and approached the steps as he saw Shafton coming slowly out leaning on a cane. He rustled the folded newspaper out from his pocket with one hand and shook it open as only a boy’s sleight of hand can do, wafting it in front of the astonished Laurie, and saying with an impudent swag,
“Say, z’your name Shafton? Well, _see that?_ Why don’t you beat it home? Your ma is about t’croke, an’ yer dad has put up about all his dough, an’ you better rustle back to where you come from an’ tell ’em not to b’leeve all the bunk that’s handed out to ’em! Good night! They must need a nurse!”
Laurie paused in the act of lighting one of his interminable cigarettes with which he supplied the lack of a stronger stimulant, and stared at the boy curiously, then stared at the paper he held in his hand with the flaring headlines, and reaching out his hand for it began to laugh:
“Well, upon my word, Kid, where’d you get this? If that isn’t a joke! I wonder if Opal’s seen it. Miss Severn, come here! See what a joke! I’m kidnapped! Did you ever hear the like? Look at the flowery sentences. It’s almost like reading one’s own obituary, isn’t it?”
Marilyn, glancing over his shoulder at the headlines, took in the import of it instantly. “I should think you’d want to telephone your mother at once. How she must have suffered!” she said.
Laurie somewhat sobered agreed that it would be a good idea:
“The mater’s a good old scout,” he said lightly, “She’s always helping me out of scrapes, but this is one too many to give up her emeralds, the Shafton Emeralds! Gosh but dad will be mad about them! And Oh, say, call that boy back will you? I want to give him a dollar!”
But Billy had faded down the road with mortal indignation in his breast. To think of giving up a ten thousand dollar reward and having a dollar flung at you! It seemed to measure the very depth of the shame to which he had descended.
The Severns came a few paces out of their indifference to this self-imposed guest and gathered around the sheet of newspaper while Laurie held an intensive conversation with his family beginning with several servants who were too excited at first to identify his voice.
But at last he hung up the receiver and turned toward them:
“Well, I guess there’s nothing for it but for me to pull out. The mater doesn’t think she’ll be satisfied till she has her hands on me. Besides I’ve got to get things started about those jewels. Dad and mother are too excited to know what they’re about. I declare, it’s like being dead and seeing how they feel about it.”
There was a boyish eager look about the young man’s face that made him for the first time seem rather loveable, Mrs. Severn thought. The mother in her rose to appreciation. Lynn was so glad that he was going away that she was almost friendly during lunch. And when the young man was about to depart he went to Mr. Severn’s study and wrote a check for five hundred dollars:
“Just in appreciation of your kindness,” he said as he held it out to the minister.
The minister looked amused but did not offer to take it:
“That’s all right,” he said pleasantly, “We don’t keep boarders you know. You were welcome to what we could give you.”
“But, my dear sir, I couldn’t think of not remunerating you,” declared Laurie.
“And I couldn’t think of taking it,” smiled the minister.
“Well, then take it for your poor people,” he insisted.
“From what Lynn tells me you have more of those than we have,” answered the minister.
The young man looked annoyed:
“Well, then take it for something for your church, another bell or something, anything you’re interested in.”
“I can give you an address of a young missionary out West who is having a hard time of it, and has a very needy parish,” said the minister taking out his fountain pen and writing the address on a card, “but I should prefer that you would send it to him yourself. He wouldn’t take it from me, but if you’d send it he’ll write and tell you what he does with it, and he’ll tell me too, so it will give pleasure all around. He’s a game young chap, and he’s given his life. You couldn’t help but like him.”
Laurie had to be content with this, though he felt annoyed at having to write a letter to a missionary. He felt he shouldn’t know how to address him.
“I’ll send it to-night when I get home,” he declared, “or no, I’ll send it now,” and he sat down at the minister’s desk, and scribbled a note. It read: “Your friend Severn won’t take anything himself for kindness to me, so he’s letting me send you this for your work. Here’s wishing you good luck.” This he signed and handed to the minister with a relieved air as if to say: “There! That’s that!”
“You see,” said Laurie getting up and taking his hat again, “I want to come back here again and see your daughter. I may as well tell you I’m crazy about your daughter.”
“I see,” said the minister gravely, albeit with a twinkle in his eye, “The fact is I’m somewhat crazy about her myself. But in all kindness I may as well tell you that you’ll be wasting your time. She isn’t your kind you know.”
“Oh, well,” said Laurie with an assured shrug, “That’s all right if I don’t mind, isn’t it?”
“Well, no,” said the minister smiling broadly now, “You forget that she might mind, you know.”
“I don’t get you,” said Laurie looking puzzled as he fitted on his immaculate driving glove, “She might mind, what do you mean?”
“I mean that my daughter minds very much indeed whether her men friends ask in a certain tone of voice for something to _drink_ at midnight, and use language such as you used when you first arrived here, smoke continual cigarettes, and have friends like the young woman who visited you last Sunday.”
“Oh! I see!” laughed Laurie thoroughly amused, “Well, after all, one doesn’t have to keep on doing all those things you know–if it were worth one’s while to change them.”
“I’m afraid,” said the minister still amused, “that it would have to be worth your while to change before she would even consider you as a possibility. She happens to have a few ideas about what it takes to make a man, her ideal man, you know.”
Laurie smiled gaily:
“Perhaps I can change those ideas.”
“Help yourself young man. You’ll find it a task, I assure you.”
“Well, I’m coming back, anyway.”
“We shall welcome you,” said the minister politely, but not at all gladly, and Laurie departed without his usual complacency, assuring the minister that he had found Sabbath Valley the garden spot of the world and meant to return soon and often.
Billy watched him from the graveyard enclosure whither he had retired to write a letter, and he made a face and wasted a gesture of defiance after his departing car. So much Billy felt he had accomplished toward reparation. He was now attempting a third act.
On the smooth end of the old stone he had a newspaper spread, and upon that a sheet of letter paper which he had extracted from Aunt Saxon’s ancient box in the old secretary in the corner of the kitchen. Kneeling beside the stone he carefully inscribed the following words:
“Yoors to cummand,
B. Gaston.”
He folded the paper with his smudgy fingers, and stuffed it into a soiled envelope on which he wrote Mark’s name, and as he had seen Lynn write down in the corner of a note that he had taken to Monopoly for her, “Kindness of Billy,” so he wrote “Kindnus of Cheef.” Then he mounted his wheel and rode to Economy. After some apparently aimless riding he brought up at the back of the Chief’s garage where he applied a canny eye to a crack and ascertained just how many and what cars were inside. He then rode straight to the bank where he was pretty sure the Chief would be standing near the steps at this hour. Waiting a time of leisure he handed him the envelope:
“Say, Chief, c’n I trouble you to d’liver that?”
The Chief looked at the envelope and then at Billy and opened his lips to speak, but Billy forestalled him:
“I know you don’t know where he is at all now, Chief, o’ course, but I just thought you might happen to meet up with him sometime soon. That’s all right, Chief. Thank ya.” Billy ended with a knowing wink.
The Chief turned the envelope over, noted that it was unsealed, grinned back and put it in his pocket. They had been good friends, these two, for several years, ever since Billy had been caught bearing the penalty for another boy’s misdemeanor.
“That’s all right Billy,” said the Chief affably, “I won’t forget it– if I see him! Seen anything more of those automobile thieves?”
“Nope,” said Billy sadly, “but I gotta line on ’em. ‘f’I find anythin’ more I’ll callyaup!”
“Do!” said the Chief cordially, and the interview was closed.
Billy bought some cakes at the bakery with ten cents he had earned running an errand from the grocery that morning, and departed on important business. He had definitely decided to give up his thirty pieces of silver. No more blood money for him. His world was upside down and all he loved were suffering, and all because he had been mercenary. The only way to put things right was to get rid of any gain that might accrue to himself. Then he would be in a position to do something. And Pat was his first object now. He meant to give back the money to Pat! He had thought it all out, and he meant to waste no time in getting things straight.
He went to the Economy post office and on the back of a circular that he found in the waste basket he wrote another note:
“Pat. This is blood money an’ I can’t kep it. I didunt no when I undertuk the job wot kind of a job it was. Thers only one way fur yoo to kep yur hid saf, an that is to tel the trooth abot wot hapuned. If yoo ar wiling to tel the trooth put a leter heer sayin so. If yoo don’t I am havin’ you watshed an you will los yoor job an likely be hanged. We are arumd so be keerful. This aint yella. This is rite.
THE KID.”
It was a long job and he was tired when it was finished, for his days at school had been full of so many other things besides lessons that literary efforts were always strenuous for him. When he had finished he went out and carried three parcels for the meat market, receiving in return thirty cents, which exactly made up the sum he had spent from his tainted money. With this wrapped bunglingly in his note he proceeded to ambush near Pleasant Valley. He had other fish to fry, but not till dark. Meantime, if that underground telephone was being used at other times in the day he wanted to know it.
He placed the note and money obviously before the little hidden telephone from which he had cleared the leaves and rubbish that hid it, and then retired to cover where he settled himself comfortably. He knew Pat would be busy till the two evening trains had arrived, after that if he did not come there would likely be no calls before morning again, and he could go on his way. With a pleasant snack of sugar cookies and cream puffs he lay back and closed his eyes, glad of this brief respite from his life of care and perplexity. Of course he couldn’t get away from his thoughts, but what a pleasant place this was, with the scent of sassafras and winter green all around him, and the meadow lark high in the air somewhere. There were bees in the wild honeysuckle not far away. He could hear their lazy drone. It would be nice to be a bee and fly, fly away from everything. Did bees care about things? Did they have troubles, and love folks and lose ’em? When a bee died did the other bees care? Aw Gee! Mark in–j–_No_! He wouldn’t say it! Mark was in New York! Yes, of course he was. It would all come right some day. He would catch those crooks and put ’em in jail–no, first he’d use ’em to clear Mark. When he got done here he was going up to watch the old house and find out about that noise, and he’d see whether Link and Shorty would put anything more over! Link and Shorty and Pat, and that sissy Shafton and Sam, whoever Sam was! They were all his enemies! If Mark were only here how they would go to that old haunted house together and work this thing out. He ought to have told Mark everything. Fool! Just to save his own hide! Just to keep Mark from blaming him! Well, he was done saving himself or getting ill gotten gains. Him for honesty for the rest of his life.
The bees droned on and the lark grew fainter and fainter. Billy’s eyes drooped closer shut, his long curling lashes lay on his freckled cheeks the way they lay sometimes when Aunt Saxon came to watch him. That adorable sweep of lash that all mothers of boys know, that air of dignity and innocence that makes you forget the day and its doings and undoings and think only, this is a man child, a wonderful creature of God, beloved and strong, a gift of heaven, a wonder in daytime, a creature to be afraid of sometimes, but weak in sleep, _adorable!_
Billy slept.
The afternoon train lumbered in with two freight cars behind, and a lot of crates and boxes to manipulate, but Billy slept. The five o’clock train slid in and the evening express with its toll of guests for the Lake Hotel who hustled off wearily, cheerily, and on to the little Lake train that stood with an expectant insolent air like a necessary evil waiting for a tip. The two trains champed and puffed and finally scampered away, leaving echoes all along the valley, and a red stream of sun down the track behind them from a sky aflame in the west preparing for a brilliant sunset. The red fingers of the sun touched the freckles on Billy’s cheek lightly as if to warn him that the time had come. The shutters slammed on at the little station. The agent climbed the hill to his shack among the pines. Pat came out the door and stood on the platform looking down the valley, waiting for the agent to get out of sight.
And Billy slept on!
XXII
Three days later a pall hung over Sabbath Valley. The coroner’s inquest had brought in a verdict of murder, and the day of the hearing had been set. Mark Carter was to be tried for murder–was _wanted_ for murder as Elder Harricutt put it. It was out now and everybody knew it but Mrs. Carter, who went serenely on her way getting her regular letters from Mark postmarked New York and telling of little happenings that were vague but pleasant and sounded so like Mark, so comforting and son like. So strangely tender and comforting and more in detail than Mark’s letters had been wont to be. She thought to herself that he was growing up at last. He spoke of a time when he and she would have a nice home together somewhere, some new place where he would get into business and make a lot of money. Would she like that? And once he told her he was afraid he hadn’t been a very good son to her, but sometime he would try to make it up to her, and she cried over that letter for sheer joy. But all the rest of the town knew that Mark was suspected of murder, and most of them thought he had run away and nobody could find him. The county papers hinted that there were to be strange revelations when the time of the trial came, but nothing definite seemed to come out from day to day more than had been said at first, and there was a strange lack of any mention of Mark in connection with it after the first day.
Lynn Severn went about the house quiet and white, her face looking like an angel’s prayer, one continual petition, but she was sweet and patient, and ready to do anything for anybody. Work seemed to be her only respite from the gnawing horror of her thoughts. To know that the whole village believed that Mark, her life long playmate, had been guilty of a crime so heinous was so appalling that sometimes she just stood at the window and laughed out into the sunshine at the crazy idea of it. It simply could not be. Mark, who had always been so gentle and tender for every living thing, so chivalrous, so ready to help! To think of Mark killing anyone! And yet, they might have needed killing. At least, of course she didn’t mean that, but there were circumstances under which she could imagine almost anyone doing a deed–well what was the use, there was no way to excuse or explain a thing she didn’t understand, and she could just do nothing but not believe any of it until she knew. She would trust in God, and yes, she would trust in Mark as she always had done, at least until she had his own word that he was not trustable. That haughty withdrawing of himself on Sunday night and his “I am not worthy” meant nothing to her now when it came trailing across her consciousness. It only seemed one more proof of his tender conscience, his care for her reputation. He had known then what they were saying about him, he must have known the day before that there was something that put him in a position so that he felt it was not good for her reputation to be his friend. He had withdrawn to protect her. That was the way she explained it to her heart, while yet beneath it all was the deep down hurt that he had not trusted her, and let her be his friend in trouble as well as when all was well.
She had written him a little note, not too intimate, just as a sister might have written, expressing her deep trust, and her sincere desire to stand by and help in any time of need. In it she begged him to think her worthy of sharing his trouble as he used to share his happiness, and to know always that she was his friend whatever came. She had read it over and over to be sure she was not overstepping her womanly right to say these things, and had prayed about it a great deal. But when it came to sending it she did not know his New York address. He had been strangely silent during the last few months and had not written her. She did not want to ask his mother. So she planned to find it out through Billy. But Billy did not come. It had been two days since Billy had been around, or was it three? She was standing at the window looking down the road toward the Saxon cottage and wondering if she wanted to go down and hunt for Billy when she saw Miss Saxon coming up the street and turning in at the gate, and her face looked wan and crumpled like an old rose that had been crushed and left on the parlor floor all night.
She turned from the window and hurried down:
“Miss Marilyn,” Aunt Saxon greeted her with a gush of tears, “I don’t know what to do. Billy’s away! He hasn’t been home for three days and three nights! His bed ain’t been touched. He never did that before except that last time when he stayed out to help Mark Carter that time on the mountain with that sick man, and I can’t think what’s the matter. I went to Miz Carter’s, but she ain’t seen him, and she says Mark’s up to his business in New York, so Billy can’t be with him, and I just know he’s kilt, Miss Marilyn. I just know he’s kilt. I dreamt of a shroud night before last and I can’t help thinkin’ he’s _kilt!_” and the tears poured down the tired little face pitifully.
Marilyn drew her tenderly into the house and made her sit down by the cool window, brought a palm leaf fan and a footstool, and told Naomi to make some iced orangeade. Then she called her mother and went and sat down by the poor little creature who now that somebody else was going to do something about it had subsided into her chair with relief born of exhaustion. She had not slept for three nights and two of those days she had washed all day.
“Now, Miss Saxon, dear, you’re not to worry,” said the girl taking the fan and waving it gently back and forth, touching the work-worn hand tenderly with her other hand, “Billy is not dead, I’m sure! Oh, I’m quite sure! I think somehow it would be hard to kill Billy. He has ways of keeping alive that most of us don’t enjoy. He is strong and young and sharp as a needle. No one can put anything over on Billy, and I have somehow a feeling, Miss Saxon that Billy is off somewhere doing something very important for somebody. He is that way you know. He does nice unusual things that nobody else would think of doing, and I just expect you’ll find out some day that Billy has been doing one of those. There’s that man on the mountain, for instance. He might be still very sick, and it would be just like Billy to stay and see to him. Maybe there isn’t anybody else around to do it, and now that Mark has gone he would feel responsible about it. Of course he ought to have told you before he went, but he wouldn’t likely have expected to stay long, and then boys don’t think. They don’t realize how hard it is not to understand–!”
“Thas’so, Miss Marilyn,” sniffed Miss Saxon, “He don’t hardly ever think. But he mighta phomed.”
“Well, it isn’t likely they have phones on the mountain, and you haven’t any, have you? How could he?”
“He mighta phomed to you.”
“Yes, he might, but you know how boys are, he wouldn’t want to bother anybody. And if the man was in a lonely cabin somewhere he couldn’t get to a phone.”
“Thas’so too. Oh, Miss Marilyn, you always do think up comfort. You’re just like your ma and pa. But Billy, he’s been so kinda peaked lately, so sorta gentle, and then again sorta crazy like, just like his mother useta be ‘fore her husband left her. I couldn’t help worryin’.”
“Well, now, Miss Saxon, I’ll inquire around all I can without rousing any suspicion. You know Billy would hate that.”
“Oh, I know he would,” flushed the little woman nervously.
“So I’ll just ask the boys if they know where he is and where they saw him last, and don’t you worry. I’ll tell them I have a message for him you know, and you just stop crying and rest easy and don’t tell a soul yet till I look around. Here comes mother. She’ll help you better than I can.”
Mrs. Severn in a cool white dimity came quietly into the room, bringing a restful calm with her, and while Lynn was out on her errand of mercy she slipped a strong arm around the other woman’s waist and had her down on her knees in the alcove behind the curtains, and had committed the whole matter to a loving Heavenly Father, Billy and the tired little Aunt, and all the little details of life that harrow so on a burdened soul; and somehow when they rose the day was cooler, and life looked more possible to poor Aunt Saxon.
Presently came Lynn, brightly. She had seen the boys. They had met Billy in Economy day before yesterday. He had said he had a job, he didn’t know how long it would last, and he might not be able to come to base ball practice. He told them who to put in his place till he got back.
“There, now, Miss Saxon, you go home and lie down and take a good sleep. You’ve put this whole thing in the hands of the Lord, now don’t take it out again. Just trust Him. Billy’ll come back safe and sound, and there’ll be some good reason for it,” said Mrs. Severn. And Aunt Saxon, smiling wistfully, shyly apologetic for her foolishness, greatly cheered and comforted, went. But Lynn went up to her little white room and prayed earnestly, adding Billy to her prayer for Mark. Where was Billy Gaston?
When Miss Saxon went home she found a letter in the letter box out by the gate addressed to Billy. This set her heart to palpitating again and she almost lost her faith in prayer and took to her own worries once more. But she carried the letter in and held it up to the window,