Weaver looked up with quick apprehension.
“Of course,” he said and brought out a roll of bills, handing them to her. “Have you a place to keep this safely?”
“Certainly,” she said crisply.
“Then you will go out the same passage by which you entered and you will find a car parked just outside the door. To the left. The key is in it, and it is being guarded by one of our men, but you will not see him unless there is some warning to give you. You will drive back to the Forty-Third Street station. Get out of the car and someone will immediately take possession of it. You go into the station and find your train. Here are your tickets. You will find a reservation in the Pullman, but you must enter it carefully. They would probably not permit you in the Pullman in that garb if you were seen. You have your other clothing?”
“Yes,” said the girl. “I’ll change on board, of course.”
“Very well. Now you better hurry. You haven’t too much time to spare, and the next train would be awkward, because it will be getting daylight. Here are directions, what to do about returning, and my telephone number. Now go, quickly. You have done well so far. Be careful not to spoil it all.”
“Of course not,” she said with a little cocksure smile, and hurried away.
Chapter 15
When Lisle lay down to sleep that night, it was with a wonderful sweet peace upon her. Even the thought that John Sargent was gone away and that she would not be likely to see him again for a very long time because no one could know how soon or how far the soldiers would be sent, could not dampen her joy. It was as if some great gift had been given her. Something that no distance or parting or contingency of life could ever cloud for her. She felt that now she knew him. His hands had held hers, his lips had touched hers, his arms had been about her and drawn her close. That made them happy in one another in a very special way.
She didn’t stop to reason about it, nor think if it was a wise friendship, or any worldly thing like that. She just glorified in the sweetness of it without trying to reason it all out. The fact that he had gone far away somehow set the whole matter as a thing apart from ordinary happenings, took away all objections that others might raise, all plans for the future. There just seemed to be the now, the today, with its precious knowledge that he cared for her. How did she know that, she questioned herself? Why, his eyes had said it plainly as they looked into her own; his lips as they clung to hers had told her. And he had called her “Dear” as he left her. Not the silly “Oh, dolling!” that people were flinging about today, but gravely, sweetly “Dear!” That seemed to have more meaning than the common endearments that were not really endearments at all, only imitation ones with no meaning behind them. And he belonged to her Christ, whom she was beginning to love and serve. That gave her great joy and peace. That meant there could be no question about him. Even her mother, when she came to know everything about it and understand, could not but approve. But that was something that could wait. He was gone away, and she could keep it for herself, unless there would come a time when her mother could know him for herself.
She found herself suddenly contrasting him with Victor in a new way. She thrilled with pride over him that he had gone as a soldier. It was hard to have him gone, and there was fear and peril in the thought, yet rejoicing, too, because it showed what kind of a brave, loyal man he was. No hiding behind a safe, pleasant job at home for him, even though it had been easy. He wanted to feel that he was doing the right thing. He wanted to fight for his country. He had had a safe defense job and could have stayed, but he had heard the “sound of the trumpet” in his soul and he had answered it. Oh, he was one to be proud of, her John, her Christian soldier boy!
And once again as she drifted off to sleep, she felt the thrill of his kiss on her lips, the holding of his arms about her, and his voice saying, “Dear!” Oh, there was no room now for Victor in her heart, for Victor had heard no sound of a trumpet in his life, or if he had, he had not answered it. He had listened to the blare of trumpets that called him to please himself. Victor, the little playmate who had always had everything he wanted and never wanted things for other people, not even for his country, but only for himself.
And with the thought of her young lover’s kiss thrilling on her lips, she fell asleep and dreamed of clouds of glory and a cause of righteousness that was serving their Lord. The glory of the Lord and the sound of the trumpet!
But when Lisle awoke in the morning and recalled the joy and the thrill of the meeting with her new friend, it seemed to her all like a wonderful dream, and she wondered if it could have been only a figment of her imagination, or just a wishful vision.
Till suddenly the memory of that precious kiss thrilled across her consciousness, and she knew it had been real. And then a joy she had not dreamed existed swept in and enveloped her whole being.
She went down to breakfast with a light in her face, a joy in her eyes, that her mother noticed at once. She had not seen that look in her girl’s face since she was a happy, carefree little girl playing around all day long. It was something real, and her mother studied over it while they ate and talked of trifling matters. She decided that the cause must in some way be connected with Victor. For Victor had been her childhood companion, and they had seemed so happy together. Somehow Victor must have done something to make her happy about him again. At last she said, “Have you been seeing Victor these days while you were away from the house?”
“Victor?” said Lisle with a dreamy, faraway look in her eyes. “No, I haven’t seen Victor anywhere. He doesn’t frequent the places I’ve been lately. You wouldn’t catch him even so near an army as the canteen amusing the soldier boys. Victor is enjoying himself somewhere. He is a slacker!”
“Oh, my dear! I don’t think you ought to say that,” said her mother. “His mother tells me he is very much interested in his work, and you know it is most important, what the Vandingham plant is doing. Sometimes he cannot spare time to come home for his meals. He feels he is needed at the plant, and he sends out for a sandwich and a cup of coffee.”
Lisle gave her mother an unbelieving look.
“I’m afraid Victor’s mother doesn’t know all about her son,” she said after a moment’s thought. “I’m afraid she believes everything he tells her.”
“My dear! You don’t think Victor would lie, do you? Not lie to his mother!”
“Yes, I’m afraid he would,” said the girl gravely. “He used to do it when he was a kid. Tell her he felt sick when he simply wanted to stay home from school. Tell her yes, he had worn his boots, when I knew he hadn’t thought of it. When I knew he’d flung them back in the closet after she had returned to the dining room after telling him to wear them. He used to say he had done an errand for her when I knew he hadn’t even gone near the place. And I don’t believe Victor has changed much since those days. Not for the better, anyway.”
“Oh, my dear! You seem so bitter against your old friend. Don’t you think perhaps you have a duty toward him, to help him to better things? How would it be if you were to ask him over to dinner tonight and spend a happy evening with games and music the way you used to enjoy yourselves? I believe you could make him happy again and make him want to stay around among the right kind of people. His mother is quite worried about that girl he has for a secretary. She wants him back associating with you. She feels he is terribly hurt about you, and the reaction has turned him toward that awful girl. His mother feels that girl is terrible, though the only time I ever saw her, she seemed a rather pretty child. A bit too sophisticated, perhaps, for Victor and his family traditions, of course, but not bad. Not really bad. I told Mrs. Vandingham I thought she was a little too hard on the girl and was sure Victor’s upbringing would tell in the end. He wouldn’t be led by any but the right type of girl. I’m sure that girl isn’t so bad.”
“If you had seen her at the party, Mother, I’m afraid you would have thought so. She was rather unspeakable.”
“Oh, well, at the party. I
suppose the poor child has never been out much to the right kind of party and wouldn’t know quite how to act.”
“No, Mother! It wasn’t that! Oh, you don’t understand! You wouldn’t have liked her actions, her dress, anything about her.”
“Well, try to feel as kindly as you can toward her, dear. She probably won’t trouble your life at all if Victor comes around all right. And I do think it is your Christian duty, dear, to try to be nice to Victor. Try to lead him back to his old self. To better things. Don’t you think you might, dear?”
“No!” said Lisle quickly. “I don’t think there is anything I can do for Victor. I’m done with him, Mother, utterly done. He disgusts me. Lying around in a pretty office with a pretty secretary, taking her out to lunch and to dance and to night clubs half the night, while other men are either in training or at the battle front.”
“But my dear, you don’t know many other young men, do you? You have been so exclusively with Victor during the years that you really are quite to yourself now. I blame myself for that. You haven’t enough friends. I should have seen to that!”
Lisle laughed joyously.
“Oh, you dear little mother. Don’t go and worry about a thing like that. I have friends galore. Fine friends. You ought to see some of the splendid fellows we have coming to the canteen nights when they are in town. They are real young men.”
“But you don’t know them, my dear. You never went around with them. They may be much more slackers in their hearts than you think Victor is.”
“No, Mother, you’re mistaken. Some of these fellows are true Christian young men, with real purposes in life. You’d be surprised. Someday I want you to come down with me and meet some of them. Perhaps I’ll bring them home for an evening, if you don’t mind.”
“Why, of course, child. I suppose that would be a patriotic and benevolent thing to do, to show them a good time when they are away from home, and I’ll be glad to help entertain them. But that isn’t like old friends. You surely wouldn’t rate absolute strangers ahead of an old friend.”
“Why, Mother, they are not absolute strangers. I’ve met them again and again. I know what some of them are. You and Father couldn’t help approving of them. Some of them have left fine prospects to go to war because they think it is right. Some are fliers, some are artillery men, some are officers.”
“Oh, older men, I suppose.”
“No, young men, as young as Victor. And they are solemnly glad to go and do their duty fighting. One of them told me that he felt as if he had heard a trumpet sounding in his soul calling him to go.”
“Why, how poetic! That sounds like quite a young boy! Such a boy as Victor used to be when he came here so often.”
“No,” said Lisle, “he is not so young. He’s finished college and been working for a year or more. And he’s not a bit like Victor. Mother, you seem quite sold on Victor again. I thought you had seen enough of his outrageous actions to disgust you. I’m afraid I see his mother’s fine artistic hand in this. She has been talking to you, hasn’t she?”
“Well, yes, I had a little talk with her yesterday. She came over to talk with me about you. She wanted me to coax you to ask Victor to come back here. She is very worried about him. She thinks you have cast him off, and she feels it is a great mistake. She says you are driving him into a life that isn’t his natural element.”
“Well, Mother, the next time you see Mrs. Vandingham, please tell her that I am not going to coax Victor over here. I’m entirely satisfied to have him stay away. I don’t want to see him anymore.
“And we did quarrel. I guess you could call it that. He wanted me to marry him right away, and I wouldn’t. I won’t ever marry him. I don’t want to go with him anymore either. I’m sorry for his mother, that she has such a son, but I don’t want him. I don’t love him, and I never could. He says love is all hooey, but I know better, and I don’t want any such marriage, ever. You wouldn’t want that for me, would you, Mother?”
“Why, of course not, dear. Love is the foundation of all true marriages. Without it, married life would be intolerable. But I thought you used to be very fond of Victor.”
“Why, yes, fond of him as a playmate. But when I began to grow up, I saw how very weak and full of faults and selfishness he is. And I never really loved him, even as a child, only in the sense that one is kind and pleasant to playmates. I don’t enjoy his kind of play. He’s drunk half the time, Mother. That’s no foundation for even friendship.”
“He is? Oh, my dear! I didn’t know that. Why, of course you couldn’t go around with one who did that. But I want you to be sure that there isn’t anything you could do to help him, that might bring him back to reason. For his mother’s sake, dear, if not for his own. Do forgive him.”
“Why, yes, of course I’ll forgive him. I just don’t want anything more to do with him. I can’t help rather despising him, either, a fellow who is downright afraid to go and enlist. I’m sure that is what is at the bottom of this ridiculous need for him to take over his father’s business. Do you know, I met Mr. Vandingham yesterday, and he looks as well as he ever did, and he said he was feeling fine. I think Victor and his mother cooked up all this keeping him at home, just because she was afraid to have him go to war, too, for fear he would get wounded.”
“Oh, my dear! Do you think anyone would do that in these terrible days when our country needs to keep the world free and safe and happy? Of course, I feel sorry for Mrs. Vandingham, but I don’t think she ought to do that, even if she did feel afraid. But, dearest, if you are going to feel so hard and bitter, I’m afraid you will do yourself out of having any friends at all. I wouldn’t like to have you grow up and feel alone, because just your father and mother aren’t enough for you. You’ll want friends.”
“I have friends, Mother. Wonderful friends. Though I’m sure my father and mother are better for me than getting tied up to a young man I would have to despise.”
“Oh, my dear, I don’t want to get you tied up, of course, not yet. Not to Victor, unless he changes, of course. But I don’t want you to be snobbish. Answer me honestly, Lisle. Do you know anyone that you admire as you used to admire Victor?”
Lisle’s cheeks grew rosy and she looked steadily at her mother and answered quietly with a lilt in her voice, “Yes, Mother dear. I do! But that’s very slight praise, for I never really admired Victor, except that I always knew he was good-looking. But Mother, Victor will never change unless he should someday yield himself to the Lord Jesus Christ, and then he wouldn’t be Victor anymore. He’d be God’s man.”
“Why, my dear! What a startling thing to say! I’m sure Victor always went to Sunday school as a child. I’m sure he has a good moral character, doesn’t he?”
“I’m not so sure of that even, Mother. And going to Sunday School doesn’t always ensure getting to know the Lord Jesus. I went, but I never knew Christ as I do now, and it’s wonderful! Of course, if Victor could get to know Christ, it surely would make a difference in him. But Mother, I’m afraid he’s so full of self, he never would be willing to yield and take Christ instead.”
The mother looked embarrassed.
“Well, dear, I never heard you talk this way before. Of course, religion does make a difference in some people’s lives, but I can’t understand why you don’t want to work on Victor and try to get him to understand this way of living you profess to have found.”
“Oh, I do. I don’t feel really well enough grounded yet to go out and teach people, but you know yourself, Mother, that Victor never would accept teaching from anybody. Living is all that would count with him. Certainly I want my life to be such that he can see Christ in me. But I’m afraid that would not include making Victor a constant companion anymore. Mother, I wish you’d come with me again down to that Bible class. I’m sure you would get to love it.”
“Well, perhaps,” said her mother doubtfully. “But child, why don’t you ask Victor to go down there sometime?”
“Mother!” said Lisle bre
athlessly. “You know perfectly well he never would go, and if he did, he would just sit and make fun of it all the time.”
“He might go with you, Lisle, if you asked him in the right way.”
“No, Mother, I don’t think he would. And besides, I can’t make advances to Victor to get him to go to a Bible class. You don’t want me to do that, Mother. And that is the only way I could get him to do anything. You know I can’t do that!”
“No, of course not, dear,” sighed her mother. “Well, I’m sorry I’ve troubled you, and I do hope sometime you’ll find someone who cares for you who is as good and true and perfect as your father has always been.”
“Yes,” said Lisle cheerfully, “that is what I want, too. And if I don’t get that kind of man, I don’t want any. I couldn’t really love and trust any other kind.”
“Of course not, dear. I only thought there might be a way to help Victor for his poor mother’s sake.”
“We can pray,” said Lisle softly.
“Yes, dear, of course,” said the mother again, embarrassedly. She was not used to talking freely about religious matters. It almost shocked her to hear Lisle speak frankly about them. She had reserved traditions and upbringing, but she was thoroughly glad her daughter had such high principles.
“And then, you know,” said her mother, “I don’t want you to go sorrowing all your days because you can’t find a man just like your father.”
There was a quiet wistfulness in the smile she gave her daughter, and Lisle bent and kissed her mother sweetly, her heart singing to herself. But I’ve found one, dear mother, and someday I’ll tell you about it. But she did not speak yet, only gave her mother a second precious kiss. And then said thoughtfully a moment later, “I’ll be praying for Victor, of course, Mother. We’ll be praying. I should have thought of that before.”
Then she went to her room to pray. First for Victor, that he might someday come to know the Lord and know how much he needed Him. And then with thanksgiving for the knowledge of another man who was right and true like her father. She might not even see him anymore, but she thanked God for him and let a song ring in her heart about it, giving a radiance of joy on her face that her mother could not quite understand, and yet rejoiced over.