The City of Fire

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The minister was conscious of Lynn's mother standing in the doorway
just behind him, although she had made no noise in entering. And at
once she knew he was aware of her presence.

"Isn't that Mark Carter?" she asked just above a breath.

He nodded.

"And she doesn't know! You haven't told her?"

The minister shook his head.

"He will tell her. See, he is telling her now!"

The mother drew a shade nearer.

"But how do you know? See, she is doing the talking. You think he will
tell her? _What_ will he tell her, Graham?"

"Oh, he will not tell her in words, but every atom of his being is
telling her now. Can't you see? He is telling her that he is no longer
worthy to be her equal. He is telling her that something has gone
wrong."

"Graham, what do you _think_ is the matter with him? Do you think
he is--BAD?" She lifted frightened eyes to his as she dropped into her
low chair that always stood conveniently near his desk.

A wordless sorrow overspread the minister's face, yet there was
something valiant in his eyes.

"No, I can't think that. I must believe in him in spite of everything.
It looks to me somehow as if he was trying to be bad and couldn't."

"Well, but--Graham, isn't that the same thing? If he wants to be?"

The minister shook his head.

"He doesn't want to be. But he has some purpose in it. He is doing
it--perhaps--well--it might be for _her_ sake you know."

The mother looked perplexed, and hesitated, then shook her head.

"That would be--preposterous! How could he hurt her so--if he cared. It
must be--he does not care--!"

"He cares!" said the man.

"Then how do you explain it?"

"I don't explain it."

"Are you going to let it go on?"

"What can be done?"

"I'd do something."

"No, Mary. That's something he's got to work out himself. If he isn't
big enough to get over his pride. His self-consciousness. His--whatever
he calls it--If he isn't big enough--Then he isn't _big_ enough--!"
The man sighed with a faraway patient look. The woman stirred uneasily.

"Graham," she said suddenly lifting her eyes in troubled question,
"When your cousin Eugenie was here, you remember, she talked about it
one day. She said we had no right to let Lynn become so attached to a
mere country boy who would grow up a boor. She said he had no
education, no breeding, no family, and that Lynn had the right to the
best social advantages to be had in the world. She said Lynn was a
natural born aristocrat, and that we had a great responsibility
bringing up a child with a face like hers, and a mind like hers, and an
inheritance like hers, in this little antiquated country place. She
said it was one thing for you with your culture and your fine
education, and your years of travel and experience, to hide yourself
here if you choose for a few years, pleasing yourself at playing with
souls and uplifting a little corner of the universe while you were
writing a great book; but it was quite another for us to allow our
gifted young daughter to know no other life. And especially she harped
on Lynn's friendship with Mark. She called him a hobbledehoy, said his
mother was 'common', and that coming from a home like that, he would
never amount to anything or have an education. He would always be
common and loaferish, and it wouldn't make any difference if he did, he
would never be cultured no matter how much education he had. He was not
in her _class_. She kept saying that over. She said a lot of things
and always ended up with that. And finally she said that we were
perfectly crazy, both of us. That she supposed Lynn thought she was
christianizing the boy or something, but it was dangerous business, and
we ought to be warned. And Graham, _I'm afraid Mark heard it!_ He
was just coming up on the porch as she finished and I'm almost sure he
heard it!"

The eyes of the minister gave a startled flicker and then grew
comprehending. "I wondered why he gave up college after he had worked
so hard to get in."

"But Graham! Surely, if he had heard he would have wanted to show her
that she was wrong."

"No, Mary. He is not built that way. It's his one big fault. Always to
be what he thinks people have labeled him, or to seem to be. To be that
in defiance, knowing in his heart he really isn't that at all. It's a
curious psychological study. It makes me think of nothing else but when
the Prince of the Power of the Air wanted to be God. Mark wants to be a
young God. When he finds he's not taken that way he makes himself look
like the devil in defiance. Don't you remember, Mary, how when Bob
Bliss broke that memorial window in the church and said it was Mark did
it, how Mark stood looking, defiantly from one to another of us to see
if we would believe it, and when he found the elders were all against
him and had begun to get ready for punishment, he lifted his fine young
shoulders, and folded his arms, and just bowed in acquiescence, as if
to say yes, he had done it? Don't you remember, Mary? He nearly broke
my heart that day, the hurt look in his eyes; the game, mistaken,
little devil! He was only ten, and yet for four long months he bore the
blame in the eyes of the whole village for breaking that window, till
Bob told the truth and cleared him. Not because he wanted to save Bob
Bliss, for everybody knew he was a little scamp, and needed punishment,
but because he was _hurt_--hurt way down into the soul of him to
think anybody had _thought_ he would want to break the window we
had all worked so hard to buy. And he actually broke three cellar
windows in that vacant store by the post office, yes, and paid for
them, just to keep up his character and give us some reason for our
belief against him."

The wife with a cloud of anxiety in her eyes, and disapproval in her
voice, answered slowly:

"That's a bad trait, Graham. I can't understand it. It is something
wrong in his nature."

"Yes, Mary, it is sin, original sin, but it comes at him from a
different direction from most of us, that's all. It comes through
sensitiveness. It is his reaction to a deep and mortal hurt. Some men
would be stimulated to finer action by criticism, he is stimulated to
defy, and he does not know that he is trying to defy God and all the
laws of the universe. Some day he will find it out, and know that only
through humility can he make good."

"But he is letting all his opportunities go by."

"I'm not so sure. You can't tell what he may be doing out in the world
where he is gone."

"But they say he is very wild."

"They were always saying things about him when he was here, and most of
them were not true. You and I knew him, Mary. Was there ever a finer
young soul on earth than he with his clear true eyes, his eager tender
heart, his brave fearlessness and strength. I can not think he has sold
his soul to sin--not yet. It may be. It may be that only in the Far
Country will he realize it is God he wants and be ready to say, 'I have
sinned' and 'I will arise.'"

"But Graham, I should think that just because you believe in him you
could talk to him."

"No, Mary. I can't probe into the depths of that sensitive soul and dig
out his confidence. He would never give it that way. It is a matter
between himself and God."

"But Lynn--"

"Lynn has God too, my dear. We must not forget that. Life is not all
for this world, either. Thank God Lynn believes that!"

The mother sighed with troubled eyes, and rose. The purring of the
engine was heard. Lynn would be coming in. They watched the young man
swing his car out into the road and glide away like a comet with a wild
sophisticated snort of his engine that sent him so far away in a flash.
They watched the girl standing where he had left her, a stricken look
upon her face, and saw her turn slowly back to the house with eyes
down--troubled. The mother moved away. The father bent his head upon
his hand with closed eyes. The girl came back to her work, but the song
on her lips had died. She worked silently with a far look in her eyes,
trying to fathom it.

The eyes of her father and mother followed her tenderly all that day,
and it was as if the souls of the three had clasped hands, and
understood, so mistily they smiled at one another.

Billy Gaston, refreshed by a couple of chocolate fudge sundaes, a
banana whip, and a lemon ice-cream soda, was seated on the bench with
the heroes of the day at the Monopoly baseball grounds. He wore his
most nonchalant air, chewed gum with his usual vigor, shouted himself
hoarse at the proper places, and made casual grown-up responses to the
condescension of the team, wrapping them tenderly in ancient sweaters
when they were disabled, and watching every move of the game with a
practised eye and an immobile countenance. But though to the eyes of
the small fry on the grass at his feet he was as self-sufficient as
ever, somehow he kept having strange qualms, and his mind kept
reverting to the swart fat face of Pat at the Junction, as it ducked
behind the cypress and talked into the crude telephone on the mountain.
Somehow he couldn't forget the gloat in his eye as he spoke of the
"rich guy." More and more uneasy he grew, more sure that the expedition
to which he was pledged was not strictly "on the square."

Not that Billy Gaston was afraid. The thrill of excitement burned along
his veins and filled him with a fine elation whenever he thought of the
great adventure, and he gave his pocket a protective slap where the
"ten bones" still reposed intact. He felt well pleased with himself to
have made sure of those. Whatever happened he had that, and if the man
wasn't on the square Pat deserved to lose that much. Not that Billy
Gaston meant to turn "yellow" after promising, but there was no telling
whether the rest of the twenty-five would be forthcoming or not. He
fell to calculating its worth in terms of new sweaters and baseball
bats. If worst came to worst he could threaten to expose Pat and his
scheme.

During the first and second innings these reflections soothed his soul
and made him sit immovable with jaws grinding in rythmic harmony with
the day. But at the beginning of the third inning one of the boys from
his Sunday-school class strolled by and flung himself full length on
the grass at his feet where he could see his profile just as he had
seen it on Sunday while he was listening to the story that the teacher
always told to introduce the lesson. He could see the blue of Lynn
Severn's eyes as she told it, and strangely enough portions of the tale
came floating back in trailing mist across the dusty baseball diamond
and obscured the sight of Sloppy Hedrick sliding to his base. It was a
tale of one, Judas, who betrayed his best Friend with a kiss. It came
with strange illogical persistence, and seemed curiously incongruous
with the sweet air of summer blowing over the hard young faces and
dusty diamond. What had Judas to do with a baseball game, or with Billy
Gaston and what he meant to do on the mountain that night?--and earn
good money--! Ah! That was it. Make good money! But who was he
betraying he would like to know? Well if it wasn't on the square
perhaps he was betraying that same _One_--Aw--Rats! He wasn't
under anybody's thumb and Judas lived centuries ago. He wasn't doing
any harm helping a man do something he wasn't supposed to know what.
Hang it all! Where was Mark Carter anyway? Somehow Cart always seemed
to set a fella straight. He was like Miss Lynn. He saw through things
you hadn't even told him about. But this was a man's affair, not a
woman's.

Of course there was another side to it. He _could_ give some of
the money to Aunt Saxon to buy coal--instead of the sweater--well,
maybe it would do both. And he _could_ give some to that fund for
the Chinese Mission, Miss Lynn was getting up in the class. He would
stop on the way back and give her a whole dollar. He sat, chin in hand,
gazing out on the field, quite satisfied with himself, and suddenly
some one back by the plate struck a fine clean ball with a click and
threw the bat with a resounding ring on the hard ground as he made for
a home run. Billy started and looked keenly at the bat, for somehow the
ring of it as it fell sounded curiously like the tinkle of silver. Who
said thirty pieces of silver? Billy threw a furtive look about and a
cold perspiration broke out on his forehead. Queer that old Bible story
had to stick itself in. He could see the grieving in the Master's eyes
as Judas gave Him that kiss. She had made the story real. She could do
that, and made the boy long somehow to make it up to that betrayed
Master, and he couldn't get away from the feeling that he was falling
short. Of course old Pat had _said_ the man had money _belonging_ to
_him_, and you had to go mostly by what folks _said_, but it did look
shady.

The game seemed slow after that. The two captains were wrangling over
some point of rule, and the umpire was trying to pacify them both.
Billy arose with well feigned languor and remarked, "Well, I gotta beat
it. Guess we're gonta win all right. So long!" and lounged away to his
wheel.

He purchased another soda at the drug store to get one of his fives
changed into ones, one of which he stowed away in his breast pocket,
while the remainder was stuffed in his trousers after the manner of a
man. He bent low over his handle bars, chewing rythmically and pedaled
away rapidly in the direction of Sabbath Valley.

III

The bells of the little stone church were playing tender melodies as he
shot briskly down the maple lined street at a break neck pace, and the
sun was just hovering on the rim of the mountain. The bells often
played at sunset, especially Saturday evenings, when Marilyn Severn was
at home, and the village loved to hear them. Billy wouldn't have owned
it, but he loved to hear those bells play better than anything else in
his young life, and he generally managed to be around when they were
being played. He loved to watch the slim young fingers manipulating the
glad sounds. A genius who had come to the quiet hill village to die of
an incurable disease had trained her and had left the wonderful little
pipe organ with its fine chime of bells attached as his memorial to the
peace the village had given him in his last days. Something of his
skill and yearning had fallen upon the young girl whom he had taught.
Billy always felt as if an angel had come and was ringing the bells of
heaven when Marilyn sat at the organ playing the bells.

This night a ray of the setting sun slanting through the memorial
window on her bronze gold hair gave her the look of Saint Cecilia
sitting there in the dimness of the church. Billy sidled into a back
seat still chewing and watched her. He could almost see a halo in
yellow gold sun dust circling above her hair. Then a sudden revulsion
came with the thought of "that guy Judas" and the possibility that he
and the old fellow had much in common. But Bah! He would go to the
mountain just to prove to himself that there was nothing crooked in it.

The music was tender that night and Billy felt a strange constriction
in his throat. But you never would have guessed, as Lynn Severn turned
at the end of her melody to search the dimness for the presence she
felt had entered, that he had been under any stress of emotion, the way
he grinned at her and sidled up the aisle.

"Yeah, we won awright," in answer to her question, "Red Rodge and
Sloppy had 'em beat from the start. Those other guys can't play ball
anyway."

Then quite casually he brought forth the dollar from his breast pocket.

"Fer the Chinese Fund," he stated indifferently.

The look in her face was beautiful to see, almost as if there were
tears behind the sapphire lights in her eyes.

"Billy! All this?"

He felt as if she had knighted him. He turned red and hot with shame
and pleasure.

"Aw, that ain't much. I earned sommore too, fer m'yant." He twisted his
cap around on his other hand roughly and then blurted out the last
thing he had meant to say:

"Miss Lynn, it ain't wrong to do a thing you don't know ain't wrong, is
it?"

Marilyn looked at him keenly and laughed.

"It generally is, Billy, if you think it _might_ be. Don't ever
try to fool your conscience, Billy, it's too smart for that."

He grinned sheepishly and then quite irrelevantly remarked:

"I saw Cart last night."

But she seemed to understand the connection and nodded gravely:

"Yes, I saw him a moment this morning. He said he might come back again
this evening."

The boy grunted contentedly and watched the warm color of her cheek
under the glow of the ruddy sunset. She always seemed to him a little
bit unearthly in the starriness of her beauty. Of course he never put
it to himself that way. In fact he never put it at all. It was just a
fact in his life. He had two idols whom he worshipped from afar, two
idols who understood him equally well and were understood by him, and
for whom he would have gladly laid down his young life. This girl was
one, and Mark Carter was the other. It was the sorrow of his young life
that Mark Carter had left Sabbath Valley indefinitely. The stories that
floated back of his career made no difference to Billy. He adored him
but the more in his fierce young soul, and gloried in his hero's need
of faithful friends. He would not have owned it to himself, perhaps,
but he had spoken of Mark just to find out if this other idol believed
those tales and was affected by them. He drew a sigh of deep content as
he heard the steady voice and knew that she was still the young man's
friend.

They passed out of the church silently together and parted in the glow
of red that seemed flooding the quiet village like a painting. She went
across the stretch of lawn to the low spreading veranda where her
mother sat talking with her father. Some crude idea of her beauty and
grace stole through his soul, but he only said to himself:

"How,--kind of--_little_ she is!" and then made a dash for his
rusty old wheel lying flat at the side of the church step. He gathered
it up and wheeled it around the side of the church to the old
graveyard, threading his way among the graves and sitting down on a
broad flat stone where he had often thought out his problems of life.
The shadow of the church cut off the glow of sunset, and made it seem
silent and dark. Ahead of him the Valley lay. Across at the right it
stretched toward the Junction, and he could see the evening train just
puffing in with a wee wisp of white misty smoke trailing against the
mountain green. The people for the hotels would be swarming off, for it
was Saturday night. The fat one would be there rolling trunks across
and the station agent would presently close up. It would be dark over
there at eight o'clock. The mountains loomed silently, purpling and
steep and hazy already with sleep.

To the left lay the road that curved up to the forks where one went
across to the Highway and at right angles the Highway went straight
across the ridge in front of him and sloped down to the spot where the
fat one expected him to play his part at eight o'clock to-night. The
Highway was the way down which the "rich guy" was expected to come
speeding in a high power car from New York, and had to be stopped and
relieved of money that "did not belong to him."

Billy thought it all over. Somehow things seemed different now. He had
by some queer psychological process of his own, brought Lynn Severn's
mind and Mark Carter's mind together to bear upon the matter and gained
a new perspective. He was pretty well satisfied in his own soul that
the thing he had set out to do was not "on the level." It began to be
pretty plain to him that that "rich guy" might be in the way of getting
hurt or perhaps still worse, and he had no wish to be tangled up in a
mess like that. At the same time he did not often get a chance to make
twenty-five dollars, and he had no mind to give it up. It was not in
his unyellow soul to go back on his word without refunding the money,
and a dollar of it was already spent to the "Chinese Fund," to say
nothing of sundaes and sodas and whips. So he sat and studied the
mountain ahead of him.

Suddenly, as the sun, which had been for a long time slipping down
behind the mountains at his back, finally disappeared, his face
cleared. He had found a solution.

He sprang up from the cold stone, where his fingers had been
mechanically feeling out the familiar letters of the inscription:
"Blessed are the dead--" and catching up the prone wheel, strode upon
it and dashed down the darkening street toward the little cottage near
the willows belonging to his Aunt Saxon. He was whistling as he went,
for he was happy. He had found a way to keep his cake and eat it too.
It would not have been Billy if he had not found a way out.

Aunt Saxon turned a drawn and anxious face away from the window at his
approach and drew a sigh of momentary relief. This bringing up boys was
a terrible ordeal. But thanks be this immediate terror was past and her
sister's orphaned child still lived! She hurried to the stove where the
waiting supper gave forth a pleasant odor.

"Been down to the game at M'nop'ly," he explained happily as he flung
breezily into the kitchen and dashed his cap on a chair, "Gee! That ham
smells good! Say, Saxy, whad-ya do with that can of black paint I left
on the door step last Saturday?"

"It's in a wooden box in the corner of the shed, Willie," answered his
Aunt, "Come to supper now. It'll all get cold. I've been waiting most
an hour."

"Oh, hang it! I don't s'pose you know where the brush is--Yes, I'm
coming. Oh, here 'tis!"

He ate ravenously and briefly. His aunt watched him with a kind of
breathless terror waiting for the inevitable remark at the close:
"Well, I gotta beat it! I gotta date with the fellas!"

She had ceased to argue. She merely looked distressed. It seemed a part
of his masculinity that was inevitable.

At the door he was visited with an unusual thoughtfulness. He stuck his
head back in the room to say:

"Oh, yes, Saxy, I _might_ not be home till morning. I _might_
stay all night some place."

He was going without further explanation, but her dismay as she
murmured pathetically:

"But to-morrow is the Sabbath, Willie--!" halted him once more.

"Oh, I'll be home time fer Sunday-school," he promised gaily, and was
off down the road in the darkness, his old wheel squeaking
rheumatically with each revolution growing fainter and fainter in the
night.

But Billy did not take the road to the Junction in his rapid flight.
Instead he climbed the left hand mountain road that met the Forks and
led to the great Highway. Slower and slower the old wheel went, Billy
puffing and bending low, till finally he had to dismount and put a drop
of oil in a well known spot which his finger found in the dark, from
the little can he carried in his pocket for such a time of need. He did
not care to proclaim his coming as he crept up the rough steep way. And
once when a tin Lizzie swept down upon him, he ducked and dropped into
the fringe of alders at the wayside until it was past. Was that, could
it have been Cart? It didn't look like Cart's car, but it was very
dark, and the man had not dimmed his lights. It was blinding. He hoped
it was Cart, and that he had gone to the parsonage. Somehow he liked to
think of those two together. It made his own view of life seem
stronger. So he slunk quietly up to the fork where the Highway swept
down round a curve, and turned to go down across the ridge. Here was
the spot where the rich guy would presently come. He looked the ground
over, with his bike safely hidden below road level. With a sturdy set
of satisfaction to his shoulders, and a twinkle of fun in his eye, he
began to burrow into the undergrowth and find branches, a fallen log,
stones, anything, and drag them up across the great state highway till
he had a complete barricade.

There had come a silverness in the sky over the next eastern mountain,
and he could see the better what he was doing. Now and again he stopped
cautiously and listened, his heart beating high with fear lest after
all the rich guy might arrive before he was ready for him. When the
obstruction was finished he got out a large piece of card board which
had been fastened to the handle bars of his wheel, and from a box also
fastened on behind his saddle he produced his can of paint and a brush.
The moon was beginning to show off at his right, and gave a faint
luminus gleam, as he daubed his letters in crudely.

"DETOUR to SABBATH VALLEY.
Rode flooded. Brige down."

His card was large, but so were his letters. Nevertheless in spite of
their irregularity he got them all on, and fastened the card firmly to
the most obvious spot in the barricade. Then with a wicked gleam of
mischief in his eye he looked off down the Highway across the ridge to
where some two miles away one Pat must be awaiting his coming, and gave
a single mocking gesture common to boys of his age. Springing on his
wheel he coasted down the humps and into the darkness again.

He reflected as he rode that no harm could possibly be done. The road
inspector would not be along for a couple of days. It would simply mean
that a number of cars would go around by the way of Sabbath Valley for
a day or so. It might break up a little of the quiet of the Sabbath day
at home, but Billy did not feel that that would permanently injure
Sabbath Valley for home purposes, and he felt sure that no one could
possibly ever detect his hand in the matter.

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