“Oh, yes it would. If people saw you had confidence in me enough to marry me—”
“But I haven’t, Victor. I don’t know that I ever really had confidence in you. Certainly, if there was some other way in which I could help you I would, if it was right, but this would be impossible.”
“You mean you’d let me hang if it came to that? Suppose they charged me with murdering that workman, and you knew you could save my neck by marrying me, Lisle, wouldn’t you do it? Lisle, I ask you, won’t you take pity on me?”
Sadly, she looked at him and shook her head.
“I couldn’t, Victor. It would be wrong. Marriage isn’t a thing like that.”
“There you go again, preaching! When I’m nearly crazy and all but dead, and you preach what’s right and what’s wrong. As if there was any such thing as right and wrong! Is it right to refuse to save a life when you’re asked to? If you didn’t want to stay married afterward there is always divorce, you know. I know you don’t think that is a pretty word, but it’s modern, and fits the times, and it would be a way out for you afterward, in case you didn’t like it.”
Lisle sprang to her feet.
“Stop, Victor. Stop! Stop! You shan’t say such things! They are awful, and they make me simply hate you!”
“Yes, there you go again, getting sentimental and preaching, and all the time my life is hanging in the balance. You know, after all, this is your fault. I wanted you to marry me long ago. I wanted the wedding to be announced at my party. If you had done that, then there wouldn’t have been any of this trouble. I wouldn’t have even known Erda, nor invited her to my party, nor had her for my secretary, and none of this could have happened. The government wouldn’t have been in trouble either. It’s all your fault. I just took up with that little snake of a girl to spite you, because you wouldn’t get married when I wanted to. I picked her up off the street and got acquainted with her, just so you would see I could get anybody I wanted to. And now do you know what will happen to you, because you’re so particular and won’t marry me? You’ll never find a man that’s up to your ideals. You want somebody that’s perfect, and there isn’t such an animal. You’ll just be an old maid, and then how will you feel?”
“That isn’t a bad fate,” said Lisle serenely. “I’d much rather be unmarried all my life than marry a man I didn’t love or respect. But I have found a man I can both love and respect, so that is not the point.”
Victor started to his feet and gave her such a look of hate as she hadn’t imagined he could harbor in his shallow soul.
“You’ve found another man that suits you, have you? I demand to see him. I’ll bet a hat I can find a lot of flaws in his character, even judged by your narrow standards. Where is he, I say! I demand to meet him!”
“He’s in the army and far away from here. In the army, where you ought to be this minute. If you’d been in the army, you wouldn’t have been in all this trouble.”
But Victor’s anger was by no means under control. He was white with rage.
“In the army, is he? Some poor lowdown private I suppose,” he sneered. “I’ll get him sometime, see if I don’t. Just a little rat of a buck private.”
“That would make no difference to me, even if it were true, which it isn’t.” She smiled, for she suddenly remembered the insignia she had seen on the arm of John Sargent as he swung onto the train. “But a buck private is more honorable than a man who doesn’t want to help fight to defend his country, who just sits at home in a luxurious office and does nothing but amuse himself. But Victor, I don’t want to talk this way to you. I can see that you are in awful trouble, and if there were any right way to help you I would, even if I can’t marry you. There’s only one thing I know to do that will really help. I’ll go to God and pray for you. If you knew the Lord Jesus Christ, I am sure He would help you to a place where you wouldn’t get into great unhappiness like this. He would change your life and make you over again into a happy man.”
Victor stared at her, and then he sneered.
“New line of preaching,” he said hatefully. “Sounds a little childish, don’t you think? Men in trouble don’t swallow such old-fashioned chaff. You can’t put a little religious salve on my burns after you’ve refused to help me out of purgatory.”
Lisle looked at Victor with compassion.
“I’m sorry, Victor. I can’t help in the way you ask, and I honestly believe that the only one who can possibly help you is God. I know what I am talking about, for I have got to know Him myself, and He is wonderful!”
Victor stumbled to his feet and looked at her as she were a viper.
“Well, I’ll never go to Him, do you understand? But I didn’t think you’d go back on me, not when I asked you to save my life.” He walked unsteadily out of the room, across the hall, out the front door, and slammed it dramatically behind him.
Lisle stood staring pitifully after him, with tears blurring into her eyes for the young man who had so scorned the only help she could offer.
She went up to her room, deeply saddened by the interview. It had seemed so dreadful to refuse an old friend something that would help him in his terrible situation. But of course it was something she could not do—marry him—even if her heart were not elsewhere. She could not marry Victor, ever. She could not marry one whom she did not love.
“Well?” said her mother, suddenly appearing at the door, an anxious red spot on each cheek. “What did you do? Did you try to help him?”
“Yes, Mother, I tried to tell him about the Lord. But he wouldn’t listen. He said he would never go to God for help. You see, Mother, he is in awful trouble and he wanted my help, not God’s.”
“Oh, my dear! And couldn’t you give it to him?”
“No, Mother. The only thing he wanted was for me to marry him, so people would have confidence in him.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand. Have confidence in him? How? And what an extraordinary reason for marrying anyone!”
“Yes, Mother. Wasn’t it? You see, the Vandingham plant is in great trouble. That girl Victor had for a secretary has stolen something important that the plant was making, as well as the blueprints of the machine, and sent them to the enemy, and she has been sending messages out of the country, secrets of the government. Also, a man was killed the night she got the stuff out of the plant, and they have found the revolver with which he was shot among her things. And now, because Victor took her out to nightclubs, they are trying to tie him up with the sabotage outfit and say that he and the girl had arranged this robbery between them. Victor thinks if I would marry him the confidence of people would be restored in him and that our name and influence might help him.”
“What an unspeakable little selfish creature he is!” said the mother indignantly. “Willing to take a girl who used to be his friend into a situation like that! Willing to lean on a wife instead of standing on his own merits! Oh, my dear! Of course you couldn’t marry a creature like that! Oh, I am ashamed that I asked you to be kind to him.”
“Well, Mother, I tried to be kind. I told him I was sorry for him, but that I could never marry him. I suggested that God was the one to help him, but he just turned away with a sneer. He said he didn’t care to have any help like that!”
“My dear, I think he is the most contemptible young man I ever heard of. The idea that he would be willing to hide behind a girl for protection! That he would wish to drag you and your respectable family into a mess like this! Drag us all into court and into the contempt of the government. I am sorry for his mother, of course, and it goes without saying that she can have had nothing to do with this whole affair. She is suffering the consequences of spoiling her son, and I guess we can’t do anything about it. I think we shall just have to put Victor out of our thoughts. Certainly your father will be furious that Victor should have made any such outrageous proposition to you now.”
“Please, Mother, don’t tell Father anything about it tonight. He looked so tired today.”
; “Yes, I know,” sighed the mother. “I was really troubled about him when he left this morning. I guess he is carrying some pretty heavy financial burdens these war days. He doesn’t talk much about it. That has never been his way. But I hear him sigh every little while, and when I ask him what is the matter he tries to smile and says, ‘Oh, well, nothing much perhaps. Nothing, I suppose, in comparison with what they are bearing across the waters. Maybe everything will be all right by and by, but things are most uncertain now.’ ”
Lisle went to her room and finished her letter to John and forgot all about Victor and his trouble, except when some little reminder saddened her with the memory. Poor Victor, who didn’t want God to help him, even in his trouble! But she kept on thinking of her father. Suppose something should happen to her father! Suppose he should get very sick, and she hadn’t told him or her mother about John yet. Somehow she couldn’t feel satisfied not to have them know. But yet, perhaps it was John’s place to tell them. He had spoken in his letter as if he would like them to know. Or had he? She would wait a little and not say anything until the way seemed to open.
Chapter 19
The days went by, and the trouble at the Vandingham plant went quietly on. The government had power to keep the most of it out of the press, even if the Vandinghams didn’t. There was a mere mention briefly of sabatoge discovered among the workers in the plant, definitely settling around one woman who had worked in the office and her fellow-plotters, two men from outside. Erda’s name wasn’t mentioned at first, but it got around who the young woman was, and she was seen no more in the night social life with Victor. People mentioned Victor’s name with raised eyebrows and wondered. Victor was not in evidence anywhere. If he was held in jail, or his family had had influence enough to keep him out on bail, or what, wasn’t known, but there was much speculation.
Later, there was more mention of Erda Brannon and a trial she was undergoing, but only most briefly. There was also the word murder in connection with the item, but there were no headlines, and the trial was private and secret. The government saw to that.
Another item weeks later announced that Miss Brannon had been found guilty, with a word or two about her lineage, which connected her definitely with the enemy and spies. With her, three others had been tried and sentenced. Their names were Entry, Lacey, and Weaver, but nobody seemed to know them, and public interest failed to connect them with any known definite group.
Sometime after this, Victor appeared now and then, from whatever confinement he had been under, but he had an ugly hangdog look and was scarcely recognizable for the handsome youth he used to be. He went no more to the Kingsleys and was not seen in social life. He seemed to have dropped out of everything. A little later it was said he was in the army. His mother wept a great deal and continued to blame Lisle Kingsley for it all. She would scarcely speak to Lisle’s mother, who was very indignant at her attitude.
So life was going on. Lisle’s graduation had been quiet, and she immediately joined herself to more war work. Gossips watched her and tried to pity her that she seemed to have lost connection with their social group. They wondered if she wasn’t brokenhearted that Victor seemed out of the running. Of course, she wouldn’t want to marry Victor, now that all this talk had been going on about him. Now that people were hinting the Vandinghams were not as rich as they used to be. Or was that so? Some said they were richer than ever and that the government was not holding Victor’s father to blame. They were still using the plant for some important work. But nobody knew anything much about it, and what they made up varied so much that one scarcely could tell what to think.
Letters had been coming from John Sargent from a distant point, and Lisle had been able to write to him, sending on some letters she had written at the first, so that their heart-life should be unbroken. John had been promoted. He was doing something important connected with investigation. His title carried very little idea of what he was doing. It was secret work, and Lisle gathered that there was often danger connected with it. It involved going among fighters, and being one of them at times, but it was a position of trust, and John was proud and happy that his officers had counted him worthy.
Then one glorious morning there came word that John was being sent home on leave to take some special word to Washington. He would probably arrive a few hours after she received his message and would try to call her on the telephone as soon as he had opportunity, and he might be able to be a few days in her vicinity.
The message came in an official envelope and created quite a sensation in the Kingsley household. Mrs. Kingsley carried it to her daughter, greatly apprehensive lest it might in some way be connected with Victor Vandingham, who was in the army, and much to his chagrin as yet was only a private. He didn’t call it “buck private” anymore. He tried to dignify it as a “temporary” place to wait for a fine commission that he confidently expected would come his way someday.
But Lisle’s voice fairly lilted as she took John’s letter. Then, with radiant face, and a voice that was full of joy, she took her letters, the few she had selected to show to her parents pretty soon, and went to her mother’s room to reveal the story of her soldier-betrothed.
“But why didn’t you tell us before, dear?” reproached her mother, when the question of John Sargent’s respectability had been settled to her entire satisfaction. “We would have been so pleased to enjoy your romance with you.”
“Mother, dear, I wanted to wait until you could at least see him, before you knew. I was afraid you would blame me for taking up with an almost stranger, a person who was practically insignificant as far as this world goes. Just a person I got to know best as a plain little religious matter.”
The mother looked thoughtful.
“Yes, dear, perhaps I would,” she admitted. “But I can see there is true worth in this young man. And, of course, there is reassurance always in the fact that he has to do with religious affairs.”
Mrs. Kingsley had learned a great deal in the few times she had attended that Bible study class.
“Dear mother,” said Lisle, tenderly kissing her forehead. “Wait till you see him. Wait till you look into his blue eyes and see his shining hair that is like spun gold and his smile that is like sunshine.”
“Dear! I’m so happy for you,” said her mother, drawing her daughter into her arms and holding her close. “And your father will be so delighted.”
“Yes, Father will like him. Oh, Mother, I’m so happy!”
“Well, now we’ll have to plan for him to come here as soon as he is free, for as long as he can stay.”
“Mother,” said Lisle eagerly, “I’d like us to be married before John goes back, and if he thinks it’s at all possible, I’d like to go with him. For I’m sure his leave won’t be very long. Would you feel very badly to have me do that?”
There were sudden tears in her mother’s eyes, but she managed a trembling smile.
“We’ll see!” she quavered. “Your father and I—we all—will talk it over. If—your—John thinks—it’s right.”
They were happily married very quietly, no stylish wedding, but there was great joy in all hearts, and it was a happy going away. The mother and father felt they could have perfect confidence in trusting their girl to this young man.
“Such a pity!” said Lisle’s girlfriends from her old intimate group, “not to have a real wedding, when there would have been so many uniforms. Uniforms do make such a dressy wedding! And Lisle has certainly picked a swell looker! Funny how quiet she was about it all. One would have thought she’d want to show him off. All the girls would have been envious. He’s a great deal better looking than Victor even. Strange how Lisle always picked good lookers! Of course, she’s beautiful and all that, but she’s so awfully quiet, and she doesn’t seem to care to go to nightclubs or parties. Somebody told me she is getting interested in religion. Can you imagine it? Lisle Kingsley? Of course, a little religion doesn’t hurt in an unobtrusive way, but it certainly doesn’t fit with a m
odern girl’s happy life. But Lisle just isn’t happy anymore!”
“Not happy? But she never did drink or smoke, you know. And she certainly looks happy now.”
“Yes, she does, but anybody would, getting married to a good-looking man like that one. Well, I only wish she had had a big wedding. I was just dying to get a new dress, and I know she would have asked me to be a bridesmaid. We always were such close friends.”
“Yes,” said the other girl, “here, too! But this is war times, of course, and you can’t have everything.”
Victor, languishing under the cloud of public suspicion in a uniform of the most insignificant soldier he could possibly be, read the notice of that quiet wedding with a bitter feeling of humiliation in his heart. His one-time girl had married another man! And when he read the man’s name and found that Lisle had married his old college enemy, he felt that he had reached the depths of utter humiliation, and it wasn’t fair! All this to come to Victor Vandingham! Victor had not learned to recognize his own follies and weaknesses. He thought he was something noble and deserved everything he wanted in this life.
But back in the Kingsley home, the father and mother were talking it over.
“Lisle looked very happy, didn’t she, Father?” said the mother, brushing away a bright tear. “And so sweet! It seemed to me I had never seen her look so glad since she was a very little girl.”
“Yes,” said the father, “she looked so entirely satisfied. And she’s got a wonderful man! I like him! The more I see of him, the better satisfied I am. And I’m so glad he went right into the army as soon as he was free to go. Of course, I know he had a good defense job and all that, but I’m glad that he wanted to get into danger and do his part. He wasn’t just trying to save his hide, like that young Vandingham! I do admire a man who has courage, a sense of right and wrong, and isn’t all for himself. I like him!”