The City of Fire. Grace Livingston Hill
nose was thin and red, and her eyes had that awful blue that eyes get that have been much washed with tears. The soft waves of her hair drooped thinly, and the coil behind showed more threads of silver than of brown in the morning sun that shot through the branches of the cherry tree. She had a frightened look, as if Billy had brought some awful news, or as if it was his fault, he could not tell which, and he began to feel that choking sensation and that goneness in the pit of his stomach that Aunt Saxon always gave him when she looked frightened at something he had done or was going to do. Added to this was that sudden premonition, and a memory of that drooping still figure in the dark up on the mountain.
Mrs. Carter sat down the candle on a shelf and raised the window:
“Is that you Billy?” she asked, and there were tears in her voice.
Billy had a brief appalling revelation of Mothers the world over. Did all Mothers—women—act like that when they were fools? Fools is what he called them in his mind. Yet in spite of himself and his rage and trembling he felt a sudden tenderness for this crumply, tired, ghastly little pink rimmed mother, apprehensive of the worst as was plain to see. Billy recalled like a flash the old man at the Blue Duck saying, “I'm sorry for his ma. I used to go to school with her.” He looked at the faded face with the pink rims and trembling lips and had a vision of a brown haired little girl at a desk, and old Si Appleby a teasing boy in the desk opposite. It came over him that some day he would be an old man somewhere telling how he went to school—! And then he asked:
“Where's Mark? Up yet?”
She shook her head apprehensively, withholdingly.
Billy had a thought that perhaps some one had beat him to it with news from the Blue Duck, but he put it from him. There were tears in her eyes and one was straggling down between the crimples of her cheeks where it looked as if she had lain on the folds of her handkerchief all night. There came a new tenderness in his voice. This was Mark's mother, and this was the way she felt. Well, of course it was silly, but she was Mark's mother.
“Man up the mountain had n'accident. I thought Mark ud he'p. He always does,” explained Billy awkwardly with a feeling that he ought to account for his early visit.
“Yes, of course, Mark would like to help!” purred his mother comforted at the very thought of every day life and Mark going about as usual, “But—” and the apprehension flew into her eyes again, “He isn't home. Billy, he hasn't come home at all last night! I'm frightened to death! I've sat up all night! I can't think what's happened—! There's so many hold-ups and Mark will carry his money loose in his trousers pocket—!”
Billy blanched but lied beautifully up to the occasion even as he would have liked to have somebody lie for him to Aunt Saxon:
“Aw! That's nothing! Doncha worry. He tol' me he might have t'stay down t'Unity all night. There's a fella down there that likes him a lot, an' they had somekinduva blowout in their church last night. He mightuv had ta take some girl home out of town ya know, and stayed over with the fella.”
Mrs. Carter's face relaxed a shade:
“Yes, I've tried to think that—!”
“Well, doncha worry, Mizz Carter, I'll lookim up fer ya, I know 'bout where he might be.”
“Oh, thank you Billy,” her face wreathed in wavering smiles brought another thought of school days and life and how queer it was that grown folks had been children sometime and children had to be grown folks.
“Billy, Mark likes you very much. I'm sure he won't mind your knowing that I'm worried, but you know how boys don't like to have their mothers worry, so you needn't say anything to Mark that I said I was worried, need you? You understand Billy. I'm not really worried you know. Mark was always a good boy.”
“Aw sure!” said Billy with a knowing wink. “He's a prince! You leave it t'me, Mizz Carter!”
“Thank you, Billy. I'll do something for you sometime. But how's it come you're up so early? You haven't had your breakfast yet have you?”
She eyed his weary young face with a motherly anxiety:
“Naw, I didn't have no time to stop fer breakfast,” Billy spoke importantly, “Got this call about the sick guy and had to beat it. Say, you don't happen to know Mark's license number do you? It might help a lot, savin' time 'f'I could tell his car at sight. Save stoppin' to ast.”
“Well, now, I don't really—” said the woman ruminatively, “let me see. There was six and six, there were a lot of sixes if I remember—”
“Oh, well, it don't matter—” Billy grasped his wheel and prepared to leave.
“Wait, Billy, you must have something to eat—”
“Aw, naw, I can't wait! Gotta beat it! Might miss 'im!”
“Well, just a bite. Here, I'll get you some cookies!”
She vanished, and he realized for the first time that he was hungry. Cookies sounded good.
She returned with a brimming glass of milk and a plate of cookies. She stuffed the cookies in his pockets, while he drank the milk.
“Say,—” said he after a long sweet draught of the foaming milk, “Ya, aint got enny more you cud spare fer that sick guy, have ya? Wait, I'll save this. Got a bottle?”
“Indeed you won't, Billy Gaston. You just drink that every drop. I'll get you another bottle to take with you. I got extra last night 'count of Mark being home, and then he didn't drink it. He always likes a drink of milk last thing before he goes to bed.”
She vanished and returned with a quart of milk cold off the ice. She wrapped it well with newspapers, and Billy packed it safely into the little basket on his wheel. Then he bethought him of another need.
“Say, m'y I go inta the g'rage an' get a screw driver? Screw loose on m'wheel.”
She nodded and he vanished into the open barn door. Well he knew where Mark kept his tools. He picked out a small pointed saw, a neat little auger and a file and stowed them hurriedly under the milk bottle. Thus reinforced without and within, he mounted his faithful steed and sped away to the hills.
The morning sun had shot up several degrees during his delay, and Sabbath Valley lay like a thing new born in its glory. On the belfry a purple dove sat glistening, green and gold ripples on her neck, turning her head proudly from side to side as Billy rode by, and when he topped the first hill across the valley the bells rang out six sweet strokes as if to remind him that Sunday School was not far off and he must hurry back. But Billy was trying to think how he should get into that locked house, and wondering whether the kidnappers would have returned to feed their captive yet. He realized that he must be wary, although his instinct told him that they would wait for dark, besides, he had hopes that they might have been “pinched.”
Nevertheless he approached the old house cautiously, skirting the mountain to avoid Pleasant Valley, and walking a mile or two through thick undergrowth, sometimes with difficulty propelling the faithful machine.
Arrived in sight he studied the surroundings carefully, harbored his wheel where it would not be discovered and was yet easily available, and after reconnoitering stole out of covert.
The house stood gaunt and grim against the smiling morning. Its shuttered windows giving an expression of blindness or the repellant mask of death. A dead house, that was what it was. Its doors and windows closed on the tragedy that had been enacted within its massive stone walls. It seemed more like a fortress than a house where warm human faces had once looked forth, and where laughter and pleasant words had once sounded out. To pass it had always stirred a sense of mystery and weirdness. To approach it thus with the intention of entering to find that still limp figure of a man gave a most overpowering sense of awe. Billy looked up with wide eyes, the deep shadows under them standing out in the clear light of the morning and giving him a strangely old aspect as if he had jumped over at least ten years during the night. Warily he circled the house, keeping close to the shrubbery at first and listening as a squirrel