The City of Fire Part 35

I'm _afrrrr-aid!"_

Cherry clutched at Marilyn's arm, and looked up with far off gaze in which terror seemed frozen.

The minister's daughter leaned farther over and gathered the fragile form of the sick girl in her arms tenderly, speaking in a soothing voice:

"Listen Cherry. Don't be afraid. Jesus is here. He'll go with you!"

"But I'm afraid of Jesus!" the sharp little voice pierced out with a shudder, "I haven't been--_good!"_

"Then tell Him you are sorry. You _are_ sorry, aren't you?"

"Oh, _yes!"_ the weak voice moaned. "I--never--_meant_--no--harm! I only--wanted--a little--good time--!"

The eyes had closed again and she was almost gone. The doctor had come in and he now gave her another spoonful of medicine. Marilyn knew the time was short.

"Listen, Cherry, say these words after me!" Cherry's eyes opened again and fastened on her face, eagerly:

"Jesus, I'm sorry--!"

"Jesus--I'm--sor-ry--!" repeated the weak voice in almost a whisper.

"Please forgive me," said Marilyn slowly, distinctly.

"Please--for--give--!" the slow voice repeated.

"And save me--save--!" the voice was scarcely audible.

The doctor came and stood close by the bed, looking down keenly, but Cherry roused once more and looked at them, her sharp little voice stabbing out into the silence piercingly,

"Is that--_all?_"

"That is all," said Marilyn with a ring in her voice, "Jesus died to take care of all the rest! You can just rest on Him!"

"_Oh-h!_" The agony went out of the pinched little face, a half smile dawned and she sank into rest.

As Marilyn went home in the dawn with the morning star beginning to pale, and the birds at their early wors.h.i.+p, something in her own heart was singing too. Above the feeling of awe over standing at the brink of the river and seeing a little soul go wavering out, above even the wonder that she had been called to point the way, there sang in her soul a song of jubilation that Mark was exonerated from shame and disgrace.

Whatever others thought, whatever she personally would always have believed, it still was great that G.o.d had given her this to make her know that her inner vision about it had been right. Perhaps, sometime, in the days that were to come, Mark would tell her about it, but there was time enough for that. Mark would perhaps come to see her this morning. She somehow felt sure that at least he would come to say he was glad she had stayed with his mother. It was like Mark to do that. He never let any little thing that was done for him or his pa.s.s unnoticed.

But the morning pa.s.sed and Mark did not come. The only place that Mark went was to see Billy.

"Billy, old man," he said, sitting down by the edge of the bed where Billy was drowsing the early morning away, just feeling the bed, and sensing Saxy down there making chicken broth, and knowing that the young robins in the apple tree under the window were grown up and flown away.

"Billy, I can't keep my promise to you after all. I've got to go away.

Sorry, kid, but she'll come to see you and I want you to tell her for me all about it. I'm not forgetting it, Kid, either, and you'll know, all the rest of my life, _you and I are buddies!_ Savvy, Kid?"

Billy looked at Mark with big understanding eyes. There was sadness and hunger and great self control in that still white face that he wors.h.i.+pped so devotedly. All was not well with his hero yet. It came to him vaguely that perhaps Mark too had even yet something to learn, the kind of thing that was only learned by going through fire. He struggled for words to express himself, but all he could find were:

"I say, Mark, why'n't'tya get it off'n yer chest? It's _great!_"

Perhaps there wouldn't have been another human in Sabbath Valley, except perhaps it might have been Marilyn who would have understood that by this low growled suggestion Billy was offering confession of sin as a remedy for his friend's ailment of soul, but Mark looked at him keenly, almost tenderly for a long minute, and shook his head, his face taking on a grayer, more hopeless look as he said:

"I can't, Kid. It's _too late!_"

Billy closed his eyes for a moment. He felt it wasn't quite square to see into his friend's soul that way when he was off his guard, but he understood. He had pa.s.sed that way himself. It came to him that nothing he could say would make any difference. He would have liked to tell of his own experience in the court room and how he had suddenly known that all his efforts to right his wrong had been failures, that there was only One who could do it, but there were no words in a boy's vocabulary to say a thing like that. It sounded unreal. It had to be _felt_, and he found his heart kept saying over and over as he lay there waiting with closed eyes for Mark to speak: "Oh, G.o.d! Why'n'tchoo show him Yerself?

Why'n'tchoo show him Yerself?" He wondered if Miss Lynn couldn't have shown Mark if he had only gone and talked it over with her. But Mark said it was too late, "Well, Why'n'tchoo show him Yerself, then?

Why'n'tchoo show him Yerself, G.o.d,--_please!_"

Mark got up with a long sigh:

"Well, s'long, Kid, till I see you again. And I won't forget Kid, you know I won't forget! And Kid, I'm leaving my gun with you. I know you'll take good care of it and not let it do any damage. You might need it you know to take care of your Aunt, or--or--Miss Severn--or!"

"Sure!" said Billy with s.h.i.+ning eyes clasping the weapon that had been Mark's proud possession for several years. "Aw Gee! Ya hadn't oughtta give me this! You might need it yourself."

"No, Kid, I'd rather feel that you have it. I want to leave someone here to kind of take my place--watching--you know. There'll be times--!"

"Sure!" said Billy, a kind of glory overspreading his thin eager face.

"_Aw Gee!_ Mark!"

And long after Mark had gone, and the sound of his purring engine had died away in the distance, Billy lay back with the weapon clasped to his heart, and a weird kind of rhythm repeating itself over and over somewhere in his spirit: "Why'n'tchoo show him Yerself, G.o.d? Why'n'tchoo show him Yerself? You will! I'll bet You _will_! yet!"

And was that anything like the prayer of faith translated into theological language?

Aunt Saxon went up tiptoe with the broth and thought he was asleep and tiptoed down again to keep it warm awhile. But Billy lay there and felt like Elisha after the mantle of the prophet Elijah had fallen upon him. It gave him a grand solemn feeling, G.o.d and he were somehow taking Mark's place till Mark got ready to come back and do it himself. He was to take care of Sabbath Valley as far as in him lay, but more particularly of Miss Marilyn Severn.

And then suddenly, without warning, Miss Marilyn herself went away, to New York she said, for a few weeks, she wasn't sure just how long. But there was something sad in her voice as she said it, and something white about the look she wore that made him sure she was not going to the part of New York where Mark Carter lived.

Billy accepted it with a sigh. Things were getting pretty dry around Sabbath Valley for him. He didn't seem to get his pep back as fast as he had expected. For one thing he worried a good deal, and for another the doctor wouldn't let him play baseball nor ride a bicycle yet for quite a while. He had to go around and act just like a "gurrull!" Aw Gee!

Sometimes he was even glad to have Mary Little come across the street with her picture puzzles and stay with him awhile. She was real good company. He hadn't ever dreamed before that girls could be as interesting. Of course, Miss Marilyn had to be a girl once, but then she was Miss Marilyn. That was different.

Then too, Billy hadn't quite forgotten that first morning that Saxy got her arms around him and cried over him glad tears, bright sweet tears that wet his face and made him feel like crying happy tears too. And the sudden surprising desire he felt to hug her with his well arm, and how she fell over on the bed and got to laughing because he pulled her hair down in his awkwardness, and pulled her collar crooked. Aw Gee! She was just Aunt Saxy and he had been rotten to her a lot of times. But now it was different. Somehow Saxy and he were more pals, or was it that he was the man now taking care of Saxy and not the little boy being taken care of himself? Somehow during those weeks he had been gone Saxy had cried out the pink tears, and was growing smiles, and home was "kinda nice"

after all. But he missed the bells. And nights before he got into bed he got to kneeling down regularly, and saying softly inside his heart: "Aw Gee, G.o.d, please why'n'tcha make Mark understand, an' why'n'tcha bring 'em both home?"

XXVIII

Marilyn had not been in New York but a week before she met Opal. She was waiting to cross Fifth Avenue, and someone leaned out of a big limousine that paused for the congestion in traffic and cried:

"Why, if that isn't Miss Severn from Sabbath Valley. Get in please, I want to see you."

And Lynn, much against her will, was persuaded to get in, more because she was holding up traffic than because the woman in the limousine insisted:

"I'll take you where you want to go," she said in answer to Lynn's protests, and they rolled away up the great avenue with the moving throng.

"I'm dying to know what it is you're making Laurie Shafton do," said Opal eagerly, "I never saw him so much interested in anything in my life. Or is it you he's interested in. Why, he can't talk of anything else, and he's almost stopped going to the Club or any of the house parties. Everybody thinks he's perfectly crazy. He won't drink any more either. He's made himself quite _notorious_. I believe I heard some one say the other day they hadn't even seen him smoking for a whole week.

You certainly are a wonder."

"You're quite mistaken," said Lynn, much amused, "I had nothing to do with Mr. Shafton's present interest, except as I happened to be the one to introduce him to it. I haven't seen him but twice since I came to New York, and then only to take him around among my babies at the Settlement and once over to the Orphans' Home, where I've been helping out while an old friend of mine with whom I worked in France is away with her sick sister."