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 pass 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 God. 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 pass, 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 cluster 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 pass 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!_ God 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 God, 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 hell! 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 passing,--”
Yes, that was it. A City of Fire. He dwelt in a City of Fire! Hell!
There was a hell 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 God 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 noble 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!”