The City of Fire Part 13

The service that evening had been one of peculiar tenderness. The minister prayed so earnestly for the graces of forgiveness, loving kindness and tender mercy, that several in the congregation began to wonder who had been hard on his neighbor now. It was almost uncanny sometimes how that minister spotted out the faults and petty differences in his flock. Many examined their own hearts fearfully during the prayer, but at its close the face of the senior Elder was stern and severe as ever as he lifted his hymn book and began to turn the leaves to the place.

Then the organ mellowed forth joyously:

"Give to the winds thy fears, Trust and be undismayed, G.o.d hears thy prayers and counts thy tears G.o.d shall lift up thy head."

Elder Harricutt would much rather it had been "G.o.d the All Terrible."

His lips were pursed for battle. He knew the minister was going to be soft hearted again, and it would fall to his lot to uphold the spotless righteousness of the church. That had been his att.i.tude ever since he became a Christian. He had always been trying to find a flaw in Mr. Severn's theology, but much to his astonishment and perhaps disappointment, he had never yet been able to find a point on which they disagreed theologically, when it came right down to old fas.h.i.+oned religion, but he was always expecting that the next sermon would be the one wherein the minister had broken loose from the old dyed-in-the-wool creeds and joined himself to the new and advanced thinkers, than whom, in his opinion, there were no lower on the face of G.o.d's earth. And yet in spite of it all he loved the minister, and was his strong admirer and loyal adherent, self-appointed mentor though he felt himself to be.

Over on the other side of the church Elder Duncannon, tall, gaunt, hairy, with kind gray eyes and a large mouth, reminding slightly of Abraham Lincoln, sang earnestly, through steel bowed spectacles adjusted far out on the end of his nose. Behind him Lemuel Tipton, also an elder, sandy, with cherry lips, apple cheeks and a fringe of grizzled red hair under his chin, sang with his head thrown back, looking like a big robin. The minister knew he could depend on those two. He scanned his audience. The elders were all present. Gibson. He had a narrow forehead, near-sighted eyes, and an inclination to take the opposite side from the minister. His lips were thin, and he pursed them often, and believed in efficiency and discipline. He would undoubtedly go with Harricutt.

Jones, the short fat one who owned the plush mills and hated boys. He had taken sides against Mark about the memorial window. No hope from him! Fowler, small, thin, gray, with a retreating chin, had once lived next to Mrs. Carter and had a difference about some hens that strayed away to lay. Harricutt likely had him all primed. Jones, Gibson, Harricutt--three against three. Joyce's vote would decide it. Joyce was a new man, owner of the canneries. He was a great stickler for proprieties, yet he seemed to feel that a minister's word was law--Well--! _G.o.d_ was still above--!

The benediction held a tenderness that fairly compelled the waiting congregation to attend with their hearts.

"Let's go over there and hear that girl play," suggested Laurie suddenly, "Church is out and we'll make her play the bells. They're simply _great_. She's some _player!"_

Opal leaned back in her chair and regarded him through the fringes of her eyelashes, laughing a silvery peal that s.h.i.+vered into the reverence of the benediction like a shower of icicles going down the back. Marilyn heard and blended the Amen into the full organ to break the shock as the startled congregation moved restlessly, with half unclosed eyes. Elder Harricutt heard, shut his eyes tighter, and pressed severe lips together with resistance. This doubtless was that woman they called Cherry. That irreverent Mark Carter must be close at hand. And on the rose-vined porch Laurence Shafton felt the sting of the laugh and drew himself together:

"Oh, Laurie, Laurie!" she mocked, "You might as well be dead at Saybrook Inn or imprisoned for killing a family as fall in love with that girl.

She isn't at all your kind. How would you look singing psalms? But come on, I'm game! I can see how she'll hate me. Can you walk?"

They sauntered slowly over to the church in the fragrant darkness, he leaning on a cane he had found by the door. The kindly, curious people coming out eyed them interestedly, looking toward the two cars in front of the parsonage, and wondered. It was a neighborhood where everybody took a kindly interest in everybody else, and the minister belonged to them all. Nothing went on at his house that they did not just love and dote on.

"Seems to me that girl has an awful low-necked dress for Sunday night,"

said Mrs. Little to Mrs. Jones as they walked slowly down the street, "Did you catch the flash of those diamonds on her neck and fingers?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Jones contemptuously, "paint on her face too, thick as pie crust. I saw her come. She drove her own car and her dresses were up to her knees, and such stockings! With stripes like lace in them!

And little slippers with heels like knitting needles! I declare, I don't know what this generation is coming to! I'm glad my Nancy never wanted to go away to boarding school. They say it's terrible, the boldness of young girls nowadays."

"Well, if you'd ask me, _I'd_ say she wasn't so very _young!"_ declared Mrs. Little. "The light from the church door was full in her face when I was coming down the steps, and she looked as if she'd cut her eye teeth sometime past."

"She had short hair," said Mrs. Jones, "for she pulled off her hat and ran her fingers through it just like a boy. I was cutting bread at the pantry window when she drove up and I couldn't help seeing her."

"Oh, when my sister was up in New York this spring she said she saw several old gray-haired women with bobbed hair. She said it was something terrible to see how the world had run to foolishness."

"Well, I don'no as it's wicked to bob your hair," said Mrs. Jones. "I suppose it does save some time taking care of it if you have curly hair, and it looks good on you, but mercy! It attracts so much attention.

Well, I'm glad we don't live in New York! I declare, every time I come to church and hear Mr. Severn preach I just want to thank G.o.d that my lines are cast in Sabbath Valley. But speaking of going to boarding school, it didn't hurt Marilyn Severn to go. She's just as sweet and unspoiled as when she went away."

"Oh, _her!_ You _couldn't_ spoil her. She's all _spirit_. She's got both her father's and mother's souls mixed up in her and you couldn't get a better combination. I declare I often wonder the devil lets two such good people live. I suppose he doesn't mind as long's he can confine 'em to a little place among the hills. But my soul! If those two visitors didn't need a sermon to-night I never saw folks that did. Do you know, when that man came last night in a broken down car he swore so he woke us all up, all around the neighborhood. If it had been anybody else in town but Mr. Severn he'd been driven out or tarred and feathered.

Well, good-night. I guess you aren't afraid to walk the rest of the way alone."

Back in the church Marilyn had lingered at the organ, partly because she dreaded going back to the house while the two strangers were there, partly because it was only at the organ that she could seem to let her soul give voice to the cry of its longing. All day she had prayed while going quietly about her Sabbath duties. All day she steadily held herself to the tasks that were usually her joy and delight, though sometimes it seemed that she could not go on with them. Billy and Mark!

Where were they? What had their absence to do with one another? Somehow it comforted her a little to think of them _both_ away, and then again it disquieted her. Perhaps, oh, perhaps Mark had really changed as people said he had. Perhaps he had taken Billy to a baseball game somewhere. In New York or many other places that would not seem an unusual thing, she knew, not so much out of the way. Even church members were lenient about these things in the great world. It would not be strange if Mark had grown lax. But here in Sabbath Valley public opinion on the keeping of the Sabbath day was so strong that it meant a great deal. It amounted to public disgrace to disregard the ordinary rules of Sabbath; for in Sabbath Valley working and playing were alike laid aside for the entire twenty-four hours, the housewives prepared their dinner the day before, an unusually good one always, with some delectable dessert that would keep on ice, and everything as in the olden time was prepared in the home for a real keeping of a day of rest and enjoyment of the Lord. Even the children had special pasttimes that belonged to that day only, and Marilyn Severn still cherished a box of wonderful stone blocks that had been her most precious possessions as a child, and had been used for Sabbath amus.e.m.e.nt. With these blocks she built temples, laid out cities, went through mimic battles of the Bible until every story lived as real as if she had been there. There were three tiny blocks, one a quarter of a cube which she always called Saul, and two half the size that were David and Jonathan. So vivid and so happy were those Sunday afternoons with mother and father and the blocks.

Sabbath devoted to the pursuance of heavenly things had meant real joy to Marilyn. The calm and quiet of it were delight. It had been the hardest thing about her years in the world that there seemed to be so little Sabbath there. Only by going to her own room and fencing herself away from her friends, could she get any semblance of what had been so dear to her, that feeling of leisure to talk and think about Christ, her dearest friend. I grant she was an unusual girl. There is now and then an unusual girl. We do not always hear about them. They are not always beautiful nor gifted. It chanced that Marilyn was all three.

So she sat and played at her dear organ, played sweet and tender hymns.

Played gentle, pleading, throbbing themes that almost spoke their words out, as she saw Elder Harricutt leading his file of elders into the session room which was just behind the organ. She knew that in all probability there was to be a time of trial for her father, and that some poor soul would be mauled over and ground up in the mill of criticism, or else some of her father's dearest plans were to be held up for an unsympathetic discussion. She thanked G.o.d for the strong homely face of Elder Duncannon as he stalked behind the rest with a look of uplift on his worn countenance, and she played on softly through another hymn, until suddenly somehow, she became aware that the two strangers on the parsonage porch had left their rockers and were coming slowly across the lawn. The woman's hard silvery laugh rang out and jabbed into the tender hymn she was playing, and she stopped short in the middle of a phrase, as if the poor thing had been killed instantly. The organ seemed to hold its breath, and the sudden silence almost made the little church tremble.

She sat tense, listening, her fingers spread toward the stops to push them in and close the organ and be gone before they arrived if they contemplated coming in, for she had no mind to talk to them just now.

Then coldly, harshly out from the cessation of great sound came Elder Harricutt's voice:

"But Brother Severn, supposing that it turns out that Mark Carter is a murderer! You surely would not approve of keeping his name on the church roll then, would you? It seems to me that in order to keep the garments of the bride of Christ clean from soil we should antic.i.p.ate such a happening and show the world that we recognize the character of this young man, and that we do not countenance such doings as she has been guilty of. Now, last night, it is positively stated that he and this person they call Cherry Penning were at the Blue Duck--!"

_Cras.h.!.+_ The bells!

Lynn had heard so much through the open session-room door, had turned a quick frightened glance and caught the glimpse of two people coming slowly in at the open door of the church peering at her, had made one quick motion which released the bells, and dashed into the first notes that came to her mind, the old hymn, "Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me, Let Me Hide Myself in Thee!" But instead of playing it tenderly, grandly, as she usually did, with all the sweetness of the years in which saints and sinners have sung it and found refuge and comfort in its n.o.ble lines, she plunged into it with a mad rush as if a soul in mortal peril were rus.h.i.+ng to the Refuge before the gates should be forever closed, or before the enemy should s.n.a.t.c.h it from the haven. The first note boomed forth so sharply, so suddenly, that Elder Harricutt jumped visibly from his chair, and his gossipy little details were drowned in the great tone that struck. Behind his hand, the troubled minister smiled in spite of his worries, to think of the brave young soul behind those bells defending her own.

Down the aisle just under the tower Opal Verrons paused for an instant startled, thinking of prison walls, and of the dead man lying at Saybrook Inn that night. Suddenly the words of the telegram flashed across her: "What disposition do you want made of the body?" The body!

The _body!_ Oh! Her eyes grew wide with horror. She ought to answer that telegram and give them his home address. But why should she? What had she to do with him now? Dead. He was _Dead_. He had pa.s.sed to another world. She shuddered. She looked around and shrank back toward Shafton, but Laurie was wrapt in the vision of Saint Cecilia seated at the organ under the single electric light that the janitor had left burning over her head. She resembled a saint with a halo more than ever, and his easily excited senses were off chasing this new flower of fancy.

Behind the organ pipes the session sat with the reputation of a man in their ruthless fingers, tossing it back and forth, and deliberating upon their own d.a.m.ning phrases, while the minister sat with stern white face, and sought to hold them from taking an action that might brand a human soul forever. Marilyn needed no more than those harsh words to know that her friend of the years was being weighed in the balance.

Many a Sabbath afternoon in his childhood had Mark Carter spent with her playing the stone block play of David and Jonathan, and then eaten bread and milk and apple sauce and sponge cake with her and heard the evening prayers and songs and said good-night with a sweet look of the Heavenly Father's child on his handsome little face. Many a time as an older boy had he sung hymns with her and listened to her read the Bible, and talked it over with her afterward. He had not been like that when she went away. Could he so have changed? And Cherry Fenner! The little girl who had been but ten years old when she went away to college, Cherry a precocious little daughter of a tailor in Economy, who came over to take music lessons from her. Cherry at the Blue Duck! And with Mark! Could it be true? It could not be true! Not in the sense that Mr. Harricutt was trying to make out. Mark might have been there, but never to do wrong.

The Blue Duck was a dance hall where liquor was sold on the quiet, and where unspeakable things happened every little while. Oh, it was outrageous! Her fingers made the bells crash out her horror and disgust, and her appeal to a higher power to right this dreadful wrong. And then a hopeless sick feeling came over her, a whirling dizzy sensation as if she were going to faint, although she never fainted. She longed to drop down upon the keys and wail her heart out, but she might not. Those awful words or more like them were going on behind the organ there, and the door was open--or even if the door was not open they could be heard, for the room behind the organ was only screened by a heavy curtain!

Those two strangers must not hear! At all costs they must not hear a thing like this! They did not know Mark Carter of course, but at any rate they must not hear! It was like having him exposed in the public square for insult. So she played on, growing steadier, and more controlled. If only she could know the rest! Or if only she might steal away then, and lie down and bear it alone for a little! So this was what had given her father such a white drawn look during his sermon! She had seen that hard old man go across the lawn to meet him, and this was what he was bringing her father to bear!

But the music itself and the words of the grand old hymns she was playing gradually crept into her soul and helped her, so that when the lame stranger made at last his slow progress up to the choir loft and stood beside her she was able to be coolly polite and explain briefly to him how the organ controlled the action of the bells.

He listened to her, standing in open admiration, his handsome careless face with its unmistakable look of self indulgence was lighted up with genuine admiration for the beautiful girl who could play so well, and could talk equally well about her instrument, quite as if it were nothing at all out of the ordinary run of things that she were doing.

Opal, sitting in the front pew, where she had dropped to wait till her escort should be satisfied, watched him at first discontentedly, turning her eyes to the girl, half wondering, half sneering, till all at once she perceived that the girl was not hearing the hot words of admiration poured upon her, was not impressed in the least by the man, did not even seem to know who he was--or care. How strange. What a very strange girl!

And really a beautiful girl, too, she saw, now that her natural jealousy was for the moment averted. How extremely amusing. Laurie Shafton interested in a girl who didn't care a row of pins about him. What a shouting joke! She must take it back to his friends at the sh.o.r.e, who would kid him unmercifully about it. The thing had never been known in his life before. Perhaps, too, she would amuse herself a little, just as a pastime, by opening the eyes of this village maiden to the opportunity she was missing? Why not? Just on the verge of his departure perhaps.

And now, with tender touch, the music grew softer and dropped into the sorrowful melody:

"The mistakes of my life have been many, The sins of my heart have been more, But I come as He has bidden.

And enter the open door.

I know I am weak and sinful, It comes to me more and more But since the dear Saviour has bid me come in I'll enter the open door."

It was one of the songs they used to sing together, Mark and she, on Sunday afternoons just as the sun was dropping behind the western mountain, and Marilyn played it till the bells seemed to echo out a heart's repentance, and a great forgiveness to one far, far away.

At its first note the song was recognized by Mark Carter as he drove along through the night and it thrilled him to his sad sick soul. It was as if she had spoken to him, had swept his heart strings with her white fingers, had given him her sweet wistful smile, and was calling to him through the dark. As they came in sight of the church Billy pulled his cap a little lower and tried to keep the choke out of his throat.

Somehow the long hours without sleep or food, the toil, the anxiety, the reaction, had suddenly culminated in a great desire to cry. Yes, _cry_ just like a baby! Why, even when he was a baby he didn't cry, and now here was this sickening gag in his throat, this smarting in his eyelids, this sinking feeling. He cast an eye at Cart. Why, Cart looked that way too. Cart was feeling it also. Then he wasn't ashamed. He gulped and smudged his dirty hand across his smarting eyes, and got a long streak of wet on the back of his hand which he hastily dried on the side of his sweater, and so they sat, two still dark figures travelling along quietly through the night, for Carter had shut off the engine and let the natural incline of the road carry them down almost in front of the church.

When they reached the church they saw a figure standing with a lifted hand. The janitor, ordered by Harricutt to keep a watch.

The car stopped at once.

"Mark, they're wantin' ye in there," he said with a flirt of his thumb over his shoulder and a furtive glance behind, "Keep yer eyes peeled, fer old Cutter-up is bossin' the job, an' _you know him!"_

Billy sat up and took notice.

Mark got out with a grave old look upon his face, and started up the walk. Billy made a move to follow, hesitated, drew back, held himself in readiness and watched, all his boy instincts and prejudices keen on the trail again.

And so to the old sad song of his mistakes and sins Mark entered the door of the sessions room where once he and Marilyn had gone one happy summer morning to meet the session and confess their faith in Christ.