XIV

Mark Carter and Billy as they rode silently down the little street toward Aunt Saxon's cottage did not speak. They did not need to speak, these two. They had utmost confidence in one another, they were both troubled, and had no solution to offer for the difficulty. That was enough to seal any wise mouth. Only at the door as Billy climbed out Mark leaned toward him and said in a low growl:

"You're all right, Kid! You're the best friend a man ever had! I appreciate what you did!"

"Aw!" squirmed Billy, pulling down his cap, "That's awright! See you t'morra' Cart! S'long!" And Billy stalked slowly down the street remembering for the first time that he had his aunt yet to reckon with.

With the man's way of taking the bull by the horns he stormed in:

"Aw, Gee! I'm tired! Now, I'spose you'll bawl me out fer a nour, an' I couldn't help it! You always jump on me worst when I ain't to blame!"

Aunt Saxon turned her pink damp face toward the prodigal and broke into a plaintive little smile:

"Why, Willie, is that you? I'm real glad you've come. I've kept supper waiting. We've got cold pressed chicken, and I stirred up some waffles.

I thought you'd like something hot."

Billy stared, but the reaction was too much. In order to keep the sudden tears back he roared out crossly:

"Well, I ain't hungry. You hadn't oughtta have waited. Pressed chicken, did ya say? Aw _Gee_! Just when I ain't hungry! Ef that ain't _luck_!

An' waffles! You oughtta known better! But bring 'em on. I'll try what I can do," and he flung himself down in his chair at the table and rested a torn elbow on the clean cloth, and his weary head on a grimy hand. And then when she put the food before him, without even suggesting that he go first and wash, he became suddenly conscious of his dishevelled condition and went and washed his hands and face _without being sent_!

Then he returned and did large justice to the meal, his aunt eyeing furtively with watery smiles, and a sigh of relief now and then. At last she ventured a word by way of conversation:

"How is the man on the mountain?" Billy looked up sharply, startled out of his usual stolidity with which he had learned from early youth to mask all interest or emotion from an officious and curious world.

Miss Saxon smiled:

"Mrs. Carter told me how you and Mark went to help a man on the mountain. It was nice of you Billy."

"Oh! _that_!" said Billy scornfully, rallying to screen his agitation, "Oh, he's better. He got up and went home. Oh, it wasn't nothing. I just went and helped Cart. Sorry not to get back to Sunday School Saxy, but I didn't think 'twould take so long."

After that most unusual explanation, conversation languished, while Billy consumed the final waffle, after which he remarked gravely that if she didn't mind he'd go to bed. He paused at the foot of the stair with a new thoughtfulness to ask if she wanted any wood brought in for morning, and she cried all the time she was washing up the few dishes at his consideration of her. Perhaps, as Mrs. Severn had told her, there was going to come a change and Billy was really growing more manly.

Billy, as he made his brief preparation for bed told himself that he couldn't sleep, he had too much to worry about and dope out, but his head had no more than touched the pillow till he was dead to the world.

Whatever came on the morrow, whatever had happened the day before, Billy had to sleep it out before he was fit to think. And Billy slept.

But up the street in the Carter house a light burned late in Mark's window, and Mark himself, his mother soothed and comforted and sent to sleep, sat up in his big leather chair that his mother had given him on the last birthday before he left home, and stared at the wall opposite where hung the picture of a little girl in a white dress with floating hair and starry eyes. In his face there grew a yearning and a hopelessness that was beyond anything to describe. It was like a face that is suffering pain of fire and studying to be brave, yet burns and suffers and is not consumed. That was the look in Mark Carter's eyes and around his finely chiseled lips. Once, when he was in that mood travelling on a railway carriage, a woman across the aisle had called her husband's attention to him. "Look at that man!" she said, "He looks like a lost soul!"

For a long time he sat and stared at the picture, without a motion of his body, or without even the flicker of an eyelash, as if he were set there to see the panorama of his thoughts pa.s.s before him and see them through to the bitter end. His eyes were deep and gray. In boyhood they had held a wistful expectation of enchanting things and doing great deeds of valor. They were eyes that dream, and believe, and are happy even suffering, so faith remain and love be not denied. But faith had been struck a deadly blow in these eyes now, and love had been cast away. The eyes looked old and tired and unbelieving, yet still searching, searching, though seeing dimly, and yet more dim every day, searching for the dreams of childhood and knowing they would never come again. Feeling sure that they might not come again because he had shut the door against them with his own hand, and by his own act cut the bridge on which they might have crossed from heaven to him.

A chastened face, humbled by suffering when alone, but proud and unyielding still before others. Mark Carter looking over his past knew just where he had started down this road of pain, just where he had made the first mistake, sinned the first sin, chosen pride instead of humility, the devil instead of G.o.d. And to-night Mark Carter sat and faced the immediate future and saw what was before him. As if a painted map lay out there on the wall before him, he saw the fire through which he must pa.s.s, and the way it would scorch the faces of those he loved, and his soul cried out in anguish at the sight. Back, back over his past life he tramped again and again. Days when he and Lynn and her father and mother had gone off on little excursions, with a lunch and a dog and a book, and all the world of nature as their playground. A little thought, a trifling word that had been spoken, some bit of beauty at which they looked, an ant they watched struggling with a crumb too heavy for it, a cl.u.s.ter of golden leaves or the scarlet berries of the squaw vine among the moss. How the memories made his heart ache as he thought them out of the past.

And the books they had read aloud, sometimes the minister, sometimes his wife doing the reading, but always he was counted into the little circle as if they were a family. He had come to look upon them as his second father and mother. His own father he had never known.

His eyes sought the bookcase near at hand. There they were, some of them birthday gifts and Christmases, and he had liked nothing better than a new book which he always carried over to be read in the company. Oh, those years! How the books marked their going! Even way back in his little boyhood! "Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates." He touched its worn blue back and silver letters scarcely discernible. "The Call of the Wild." How he had thrilled to the sorrows of that dog! And how many life lessons had been wrapped up in the creature's experience! How had he drifted so far away from it all? How could he have done it? No one had pushed him, he had gone himself. He knew the very moment when after days of agony he had made the awful decision, scarcely believing himself that he meant to stick by it; hoping against hope that some great miracle would come to pa.s.s that should change it all and put him back where he longed to be! How he had prayed and prayed in his childish faith and agony for the miracle, and--_it had not come!_ G.o.d had gone back on him.

He had not kept His promises! And then he had deliberately given up his faith. He could think back over all the days and weeks that led up to this. Just after the time when he had been so happy; had felt that he was growing up, and understanding so many of the great problems of life.

The future looked rosy before him, because he felt that he was beginning to grasp wisdom and the sweetness of things. How little he had known of his own foolishness and sinfulness!

It was just after they had finished reading and discussing Dante's Vision. What a wonderful man Mr. Severn was that he had taken two children and guided them through that beautiful, fearful, wonderful story! How it had impressed him then, and stayed with him all these awful months and days since he had trodden the same fiery way--!

He reached his hand out for the book, bound in dull blue cloth, the symbol of its serious import. He had not opened the book since they finished it and Mr. Severn had handed it over to him and told him to keep it, as he had another copy. He opened the book as if it had been the coffin of his beloved, and there between the dusty pages lay a bit of blue ribbon, creased with the pages, and jagged on the edges because it had been cut with a jack knife. And lying smooth upon it in a golden curve a wisp of a yellow curl, just a section of one of Marilyn's, the day she put her hair up, and did away with the curls! He had cut the ribbon from the end of a great bow that held the curls at the back of her head, and then he had laughingly insisted on a piece of the curl, and they had made a great time collecting the right amount of hair, for Marilyn insisted it must not make a rough spot for her to brush. Then he had laid it in the book, the finished book, and shut it away carefully, and gone home, and the next day,--the very next day, the thing had happened!

He turned the leaves sadly:

"In midway of this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray Gone from the path direct:--"

It startled him, so well it fitted with his mood. It was himself, and yet he could remember well how he had felt for the writer when he heard it first. Terrible to sit here to-night and know it was himself all the time the tale had been about! He turned a page or two and out from the text there stood a line:

"All hope abandon ye who enter here."

That was the matter with himself. He had abandoned all hope. Over the leaf his eye ran down the page:

"This miserable fate Suffer the wretched souls of those who lived Without praise or blame, with that ill band Of angels mixed, who nor rebellious proved Nor yet were true to G.o.d, but for themselves Were only."

How well he remembered the minister's little comments as he read, how the sermons had impressed themselves upon his heart as he listened, and yet here he was, himself, in h.e.l.l! He turned over the pages again quickly unable to get away from the picture that grew in his mind, the vermilion towers and minarets, the crags and peaks, the "little brook, whose crimson'd wave, yet lifts my hair with horror," he could see it all as if he had lived there many years. Strange he had not thought before of the likeness of his life to this. He read again:

"O Tuscan! thou who through the city of fire Alive art pa.s.sing,--"

Yes, that was it. A City of Fire. He dwelt in a City of Fire! h.e.l.l!

There was a h.e.l.l on earth to-day and mortals entered it and dwelt there.

He lived in that City of Fire continually now. He expected to live there forever. He had sinned against G.o.d and his better self, and had begun his eternal life on earth. It was too late ever to turn back. "All Hope abandon, ye who enter here." He had read it and defied it. He had entered knowing what he was about, and thinking, poor fool that he was, that he was doing a wise and n.o.ble thing for the sake of another.

Over in the little parsonage, the white souled girl was walking in an earthly heaven. Ah! There was nothing, _nothing_ they had in common now any more. She lived in the City of Hope and he in the City of Fire.

He flung out the book from him and dropped his face into his hands crying softly under his breath, "Oh, Lynn, Lynn--Marilyn!"

XV

For one instant Lynn stood against the closed door, flaming with anger, her eyes flashing fire as they well knew how to flash at times. Then suddenly her lips set close in a fine control the fire died out of her eyes, she drew a deep breath, and a quick whimsical smile lighted up her face, which nevertheless did not look in the least like one subdued:

"You know I could get very angry at that if I chose and we'd have all kinds of a disagreeable time, but I think it would be a little pleasanter for us both if you would cut that out, don't you?" She said it in a cool little voice that sounded like one in entire command of the situation, and Opal turned around and stared at her admiringly. Then she laughed one of her wild silvery laughs that made them say she had a lute-like voice, and sauntered over toward her hostess:

"You certainly are a queer girl!" she commented, "I suppose it would be better to be friends, inasmuch as we're to be roommates. Will you smoke with me?" and out from the depths of a beaded affair that was a part of her frock and yet looked more like a bag than a pocket, she drew forth a gold cigarette case and held it out.

Marilyn controlled the growing contempt in her face and answered with spirit:

"No, I don't smoke. And you won't smoke either--_not in here!_ I'm sorry to seem inhospitable, but we don't do things like that around here, and if you have to smoke you'll have to go out doors."

"Oh, really?" Opal arched her already permanently arched, plucked brows and laughed again. "Well, you certainly have lots of pep. I believe I'm going to like you. Let's sit down and you tell me about yourself?"

"Why don't _you_ tell me about _yourself_?" hedged Marilyn relaxing into a chair and leaving the deep leather one for her guest, "I'm really a very simple affair, just a country girl very glad to get home after four years at college. There's nothing complex and nothing to tell I a.s.sure you."

"You're entirely too sophisticated for all that simplicity," declared Opal, "I suppose it's college that has given you so much poise. But why aren't you impressed with Laurie? Simply _everybody_ is impressed with Laurie! I don't believe you even know who he is!"