The City of Fire

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Billy looked at Mark with big understanding eyes. There was sadness and
hunger and great self control in that still white face that he
worshipped 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 passed 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, God! 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, God,--_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 shining 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, God?
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, God 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, God, 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."

"For mercy's sake! You don't mean that Laurie consented to go among the
poor? I heard he'd given a lot of money to fix up some buildings, but
then all the best men are doing things like that now. It's quite the
fad. But to go himself and see the wretched little things, Ugh! I don't
see how he could. He must be quite crazy about you I'm sure if he did
all that for you."

"Oh, he seemed to want to see them," said Lynn lightly, "and he
suggested many of the improvements that he is making himself. They tell
me he has proved a great helper, he is on hand at all hours
superintending the building himself, and everybody is delighted with
him--!"

"Mmmm!" commented Opal looking at Marilyn through the fringes of her
eyes. "You really are a wonder. And now that you are in New York I'm
going to introduce you to our crowd. When can you come? Let's see.
To-morrow is Sunday. Will you spend the evening with me to-morrow?
I'll certainly show you a good time. We're going to motor to--"

But Lynn was shaking her head decidedly:

"I couldn't possibly spare a minute, thank you. I'm only out on an
errand now. I'm needed every instant at the Home!"

"For mercy sake! Hire someone to take your place then. I want you.
You'll be quite a sensation I assure you. Don't worry about clothes, if
you haven't anything along. You can wear one of my evening dresses.
We're almost of a size."

"No," said Lynn smiling, "It simply isn't possible. And anyway, don't
you remember Sabbath Valley? I don't go out to play Sunday nights you
know."

"Oh, but this is New York! You can't bring Sabbath Valley notions into
New York."

Lynn smiled again:

"You can if they are a part of you," she said, "Come in and see how
nicely I'm fixed."

Opal looked up at the beautiful building before which they were
stopping.

"Why, where is this?" she asked astonished, "I thought you were down in
the slums somewhere."

"This is a Home for little orphan children kept up by the Salvation
Army. Come in a minute and see it."

Following a whim of curiosity Opal came in, and was led down a long
hall to a great room where were a hundred tiny children sitting on
little chairs in a big circle playing kindergarten games. The children
were dressed in neat pretty frocks such as any beloved children would
wear, with bright hair ribbons and neckties, and each with an
individuality of its own. The room was sunny and bright, with a great
playhouse at one end, with real windows and furniture in it and all
sorts of toboggan slides and swings and kiddy cars and everything to
delight the soul of a child. On a wide space between two windows
painted on the plaster in soft wonderful coloring blended into the gray
tint of the wall, there glowed a life size painting of the Christ
surrounded by little children, climbing upon His knees and listening to
Him as He smiled and talked to them.

Opal paused in the doorway and looked at the picture first, shyly,
shamedly, as though it were no place for her to enter, then curiously
at the little children, with a kind of wistful yearning, as if here
were something she had missed of her own fault. Lynn called out a
charming baby and made her shake hands and bow and say a few listing
smiling words. Opal turned to Lynn with a strangely subdued look and
spoke in a moved tone:

"I guess you're right," she said, "You wouldn't fit at my company.
You're different! But some day I'm coming after you and bring you home
all by yourself for a little while. I want to find out what it is you
have that I need."

Then she turned with swift steps and went down the hall and out the
door to her waiting limousine, and Lynn smiled wonderingly as she saw
her whirled away into the world again.

Lynn had not seen Mark.

Laurie Shafton had called upon her many times since those two trips
they had taken around the settlements and looking over his condemned
property, but she had been busy, or out somewhere on her errands of
mercy, so that Laurie had got very little satisfaction for his trouble.

But Mark had seen Lynn once, just once, and that the first time she had
gone with Laurie Shafton, as they were getting out of his car in front
of one of his buildings. Mark had slipped into a doorway out of sight
and watched them, and after they passed into the building had gone on,
his face whiter and sadder than before. That was all.

Marilyn was to spend only a month in New York, as at first planned, but
the month lengthened into six weeks before the friend whose place she
was taking was able to return, and two days before Marilyn was
expecting to start home there came a telephone message from her mother:

"Lynn, dear, Mrs. Carter is very low, dying, we think, and we must find
Mark at once! There is not a minute to lose if he wants to see her
alive. It is a serious condition brought on by excitement. Mrs.
Harricutt went there to call yesterday while everybody else was at
Ladies' Aid. And Lynn, _she told her about Mark!_ Now, Lynn, can
you get somebody to go with you and find Mark right away? Get him to
come home at once? Here is the last address he gave, but they have no
telephone and we dare not wait for a telegram. See what you can do
quickly!"

It was four o'clock in the afternoon when this message came. Lynn put
on a uniform of dark blue serge and a poke bonnet that was at her
disposal whenever she had need of protection, and hurried out.

She found the address after some trouble, but was told that the young
gentleman was out. No one seemed to know when he would return.

Two or three other lodgers gathered curiously, one suggesting a
restaurant where he might be found, another a club where he sometimes
went and a third laughed and called out from half way up the stairs:

"You'll find him at the cabaret around the corner by ten o'clock
to-night if you don't find him sooner. He's always there when he's
in town."

Sick at heart Lynn went on her way, trying carefully each place that
had been suggested but finding no trace of him. She met with only
deference for her uniform wherever she went, and without the slightest
fear she travelled through streets at night that she would scarcely
have liked to pass alone in the daytime in her ordinary garb. But all
the time her heart was praying that she might find Mark before it was
too late. She tried every little clue that was given her, hoping
against hope that she would not have to search for her old friend in a
cabaret such as she knew that place around the corner must be. But it
was almost ten o'clock and she had not found Mark. She went back to the
first address once more, but he had not come, and so she finally turned
her steps toward the cabaret.

Sadly, with her heart beating wildly, hoping, yet fearing to find him,
she paused just inside the doors and looked around, trying to get used
to the glare and blare, the jazz and the smoke, and the strange lax
garb, and to differentiate the individuals from the crowd.

Food and drink, smoke and song, wine and dance, flesh and odd perfumes!
Her soul sank within her, and she turned bewildered to a servitor at
the door.

"I wonder, is there any way to find a special person here? I have a
very important message."

The man bent his head deferentially as though to one from another
world, "Who did you want, Miss?"

"Mr. Mark Carter," said Marilyn, feeling the color rise in her cheeks
at letting even this waiter see that she expected to find Mark Carter
here.

The man looked up puzzled. He was rather new at the place. He summoned
another passing one of his kind:

"Carter, Carter?" the man said thoughtfully, "Oh, yes, he's the guy
that never drinks! He's over there at the table in the far corner with
the little dancer lady--" The waiter pointed and Lynn looked, "Would
you like me to call him, Miss?" Lynn reflected quickly. Perhaps he
might try to evade her. She must run no risks.

"Thank you, I will go to him," she said, and straight through the maze
of candle lighted tables, and whirling dancers, in her quiet holy garb,
she threaded her way hastily, as one might have walked over quicksands,
with her eye fixed upon Mark.

She came and stood beside him before he looked up and saw her, and then
he lifted his eyes from the face of the girl with whom he was talking,
and rose suddenly to his feet, his face gone white as death, his eyes
dark with disapproval and humiliation.

"Marilyn!" His voice was shaking. He knew her instantly in spite of
poke bonnet and uniform. She was the one thought present with him all
the while, perhaps for years wherever he had been. But he did not look
glad to see her. Instead it was as if his soul shrank shamedly from her
clear eyes as she looked at him:

Marilyn had not known what she was going to say to him when she found
him. She did not stop to think now.

"Mark, your mother wants you. She is dying! You must come quick or she
will be gone!"

Afterwards she repeated over the words to herself again and again as
one might do penance, blaming herself that she had not softened it,
made it more easy for him to bear. Yet at the time it seemed the only
thing there was to say, at such a time, in such a place. But at the
stricken look upon his face her heart grew tender. "Come," she said
compassionately, "We will go!"

They went out into the night and it was as if they had suddenly changed
places, as if she were the protector and he the led. She guided him the
quickest way. There was only a chance that they might catch the
midnight train, but there was that chance. Into the subway she dived,
he following, and breathless, they brought up at the Pennsylvania
station at their train gate as it was being closed, and hurried
through.

All through that agonized night they spoke but few words, those two who
had been so much to one another through long happy years.

"But you are not going too?" he spoke suddenly roused from his daze as
the train started.

"Yes, I am going too, of course, Mark," she said.

He bowed his head and almost groaned:

"I am not worthy,--Marilyn!"

"That--has nothing to do with it!" said Marilyn sadly, "It never will
have anything to do with it! It never did!"

Mark looked at her, with harrowed eyes, and dropped his gaze. So he
sat, hour after hour, as the train rushed along through the night. And
Marilyn, with head slightly bent and meek face, beneath the poke bonnet
with its crimson band, was praying as she rode. Praying in other words
the prayer that Billy murmured beside his bed every night.

But Billy was not lying in his bed that night, sleeping the sleep of
the just. He was up and on the job. He was sitting in the Carter
kitchen keeping up the fires, making a cup of tea for the nurse and the
doctor, running the endless little errands, up to the parsonage for
another hot water bag, down to the drug store for more aromatic spirits
of ammonia, fixing a newspaper shade to dull the light in the hall, and
praying, all the time praying: "Oh, God, ain'tcha gonta leave her stay
till Mark gets here? Ain'tcha gonta send Mark quick? You know best I
'spose, but ain'tcha _gonta?_" and then "Aw Gee! I wisht Miss Lynn
was here!"

In the chill before the dawning the two stepped down from the train at
a little flag station three miles from Sabbath Valley on the upper road
that ran along the Ridge. They had prevailed upon the conductor to let
them off there. Mark had roused enough for that. And now that they were
out in the open country he seemed to come to himself. He took care of
Lynn, making her take his arm, guiding her into the smooth places,
helping her over rough places. He asked a few questions too. How did
she know of his mother's condition? How long had she been this way? Had
she any idea that his mother's heart was affected? Did she have a
shock?

Lynn did not tell all she knew. It was hard enough without that. He
need not know that it was the knowledge of his disgrace that had
brought her to the brink of death.

So, walking and talking almost as in the old days, they passed into
Sabbath Valley and down the street, and Christie McMertrie listening
perhaps for this very thing, crept from her bed in her long flannel
night gown, and big ruffled night cap, and looked out the window to see
them go by. "Bless them!" she breathed and crept back to her bed again.
She had nursed all day, and all the night before, and would have been
there too to-night, only Mary Rafferty took things in her own hands and
had her go to bed, herself taking charge. Mrs. Duncannon was there too.
There really was no need of her, but Christie could not sleep, and
after they passed she rose and dressed and slipped down the street with
a hot porridge that had been cooking on the stove all night, and the
makings of a good breakfast in her basket on her arm.

Mark Carter reached home in time to take his mother in his arms and bid
her good-bye. That was all She roused at his voice and touch, and
reached out her little pretty hands toward him. He took her in his big
strong arms and held her, kissed her with tender lips and she drew a
beautiful smile of perfect content, and slipped away, with the graying
golden hair straying out over Mark's sleeve to the pillow in a long
curl, and a quiver of her last smile on the pretty curve of her lips,
as if this was all that she had waited for, the little pretty girl that
had gone to school so long ago with golden hair and a smile. Billy,
standing awed in the doorway whither he had come to say there was more
hot water ready, caught the vision of her face, remembered those school
days, and felt a strange constriction in his throat. Some day Saxy
would have to go like that, and would show the little girl in her face
too, and he maybe would have to hold her so and think of how cross he
had been. Aw Gee! Whattaqueer thing life was anyhow! Well, hadn't his
prayer been answered? Didn't Mark get here in time? Well, anyhow it was
likely better for Mrs. Carter to go. But it was rotten for Mark. Aw
Gee! _Mark_! Was _this_ the way he had to learn it? Aw Gee! Well,
God would have to show him. _He_ couldn't dope it out anyhow.

During the days that followed Mark hardly stirred from the side of the
pretty little clay that had been his mother except when they forced him
for a little while. An hour before the service he knelt alone beside
the casket, and the door opened and Marilyn came softly in, closing it
behind her. She walked over to Mark and laid her hand on his hand that
rested over his mother's among the flowers, and she knelt beside him
and spoke softly:

"Oh, God, help Mark to find the light!"

Then the soul of Mark Carter was shaken to the depths and suddenly his
self control which had been so great was broken. His strong shoulders
began to shake with sobs, silent, hard sobs of a man who knows he has
sinned, and tears, scalding tears from the depths of his self-contained
nature.

Marilyn reached her arm out across his shoulders as a mother would try
to protect a child, and lifted her face against his, wet with tears and
kissed him on his forehead. Then she left him and went quietly out.

* * * * *

"Well," said Mrs. Harricutt with satisfaction as she walked home after
the funeral with Christie McMertrie, "I'm glad to see that Mark Carter
has a little proper feeling at last. If he'd showed it sooner his Ma
mighta ben in the land of the living yet."

Christie's stern face grew sterner as she set her teeth and bit her
tongue before replying. Then she said with more brrrr than usual in her
speech:

"Martha Harricutt, there's na land that's sa livin' as tha land where
Mark Carter's mither has ganged tae, but there's them that has mair
blame to bear fer her gaein' than her bonny big son, I'm thinkin', an'
there's them in this town that agrees with me too, I know full well."

Down in front of the parsonage the minister had his arm around Mark
Carter's shoulders and was urging him:

"Son, come in. We want you. Mother wants you, I want you. Marilyn wants
you. Come son, come!"

But Mark steadily refused, his eyes downcast, his face sad, withdrawn:

"Mr. Severn, I'll come to-morrow. I can't come tonight. I must go home
and think!"

"And you will promise me you will not leave without coming, Mark?"
asked the minister sadly when he saw that it was no use.

"Yes, I will promise!" Mark wrung the minister's hand in a warm grip
that said many things he could not speak, and then he passed on to his
lonely home. But it was not entirely empty. Billy was there, humbly,
silently, with dog-true eyes, and a grown up patient look on his tired
young face. He had the coffee pot on the stove and hot sausages cooking
on the stove, and a lot of Saxy's doughnuts and a pie on the table.
Billy stayed all night with Mark. He knew Saxy would understand.

XXIX

In the middle of the night the fire bell rang out wildly. Three minutes
later Mark and Billy were flying down the street, with Tom McMertrie
and Jim Rafferty close after and a host of other tried and true, with
the minister on the other side of the street. The Fire Company of
Sabbath Valley held a proud record, and the minister was an active
member of it.

The fire was up in the plush mill and had already spread to a row of
shackley tenements that the owners of the mills had put up to house the
foreign labor that they had put in. They called them "apartment"
houses, but they were so much on the order of the city tenements of
several years back that it made Lynn's heart ache when she went there
to see a little sick child one day. Right in the midst of God's trees
and mountains, a man _for money_ had built a death trap, tall, and
grim and dark, with small rooms and tiny windows, built it with timbers
too small for safety, and windows too few for ventilation, and here an
increasing number of families were herded, in spite of the complaints
of the town.

"I ben thenkin' it would coom," said Tom as he took long strides. "It's
the apartmints fer sure, Jimmy. We better beat it. There'll be only a
meenit er so to get the childer oot, before the whole thing's smoke!"

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