The Street of the City (20 page)

“I see,” said Willoughby. “I do remember something about Allison Harrison losing her roommate that she liked so much. But I’m glad to know about it now. We are not just strangers to one another. We have a background of mutual friends through several years. We can start with that, and the next time we have a chance to talk about it very likely we’ll find a few others, just for anyone who accuses us of picking one another up on the ice. But, this is the church, and the organ is playing. I guess we are just about on time. Shall we go in?”

I
t was a very solemn sermon to which the two listened, after the beautiful singing which preceded it was over. It took up the Bible outline of the national frontiers at the time of the end of the present age, as they are referred to in the seventh of Daniel and elsewhere. It showed how the nations would realign themselves so that two opposing groups would be separated by the line of the Rhine and the Danube, the boundary of the ancient Roman Empire. The speaker quoted famous war commentators’ speculations which showed that it would be possible for the realignment to take place quickly, even within only a few weeks’ time.

“Why, I never knew that the Bible told things like this,” said Frannie. “Did you? I didn’t know that it definitely told what was going to happen on the earth in these days that are so long after the Bible was written. I knew, of course, that there were prophecies of general things, but I never knew it went into detail. I never even tried to read any of the prophecies. I thought people weren’t meant to understand them. Did you know all this?”

“Well, I knew in a general way that there were prophecies that had to do with the latter days of this age. I knew there were prophecies of wars, and one battle in particular, the last one, called Armageddon. Everybody was wondering in the last world war whether Armageddon was soon due. But I gather that not many of the church people have paid much attention to such things, only accepting them as a vague description of matters that would occur in the far-distant future, like the Day of Judgment. People who had any Christian background at all have sort of taken these things for granted. It is only within recent years that any large number of Christians have seriously set themselves to study and discover what it is all about. I’ve been hearing a couple of young Christian students talk, and they mentioned a few of the things we heard tonight. That prophecy about the Prince of Rosh—it interested me a lot, so I thought I would like to hear some more. That’s why I suggested coming here tonight. It’s rather startling, isn’t it? Did you enjoy the talk?”

“I thought it was wonderful,” said Frannie. “I’d like to hear more. I suppose there are books or papers, perhaps, that would tell more about those things.”

“I think there are,” said Willoughby. “I know those fellows used to have a lot of books and magazines around their rooms, and now and then I would pick up one and read a bit. I’ll find out their names and try to get hold of some of them. By the way, Lady Winthrop asked me to come to her house tomorrow night to a class they have, studying the Bible. Would you like to go? I’ll ask her if I may bring you.”

“Oh, I’d love it, but I wouldn’t like you to ask her about me. You know I’m the girl from the wrong side of the river.”

“Now look here! That’s not fair. Lady Winthrop isn’t like that at all! She seemed anxious to get all the people she could to come, and she wouldn’t even know that your side of the river is not the aristocratic side. She’s the most democratic Christian lady I’ve ever seen. If you’d like to go, I’ll see that she asks you. I know it will be all right, and I’ll be calling for you a little before eight o’clock. I think from what she said that they are studying something along these lines of prophecy.”

“Well, I certainly would enjoy hearing more about what we listened to tonight,” said Frannie with a sigh. “I wish Mother was where she could hear that man sometimes. I don’t think Mother has ever heard anything like that. Do you suppose that was all true, or is some of it just fanciful, just some imagination added to a few vague facts?”

“No, definitely not,” said Willoughby. “This man we heard tonight ranks as one of the foremost Christian scholars in the city, and indeed I understand, in the country. He sifts his facts before he presents them to the world, and he is not only a scholar, but very spiritual, they say. Shall we go and hear him again sometime?”

“I would love to,” said Frannie wistfully. “It is all so new to me. It makes the Bible seem real, and brings the prophecies right down to where we live, not as if they were away off and rather uncertain.”

“Yes, it does,” said Willoughby. “That’s what struck me when I talked with those friends of mine. I thought at first they were just fanatical on that subject, but they certainly managed to make me wonder if there was something in it. And then I began to think what if it were true that Christ may appear any day. If it is, it makes living in these days seem almost grand. Did you think of that when he was talking tonight about the silver trumpet sounding and all those signs which precede the return of Christ to the earth later? Those were very interesting. I always supposed those signs in the sun and moon and so on meant the end of the world and the Judgment Day.”

“So did I,” admitted Frannie, “and I believe most people do who have read the Bible as carelessly as I have.”

“Well, I guess that is true, but it’s thrilling to realize that the times of those things may be almost upon us. And, of course, there were ancient prophecies fulfilled when Christ came to earth the first time. I remember studying that around Christmastime when I was a little kid in Sunday school. But nobody talked to me then about any coming back again. I always thought things were just going on and on this way till sometime there would come a day of judgment and then there would be heaven.”

“Yes, I guess I thought so, too,” said Frannie. “Of course they didn’t study about anything like that in college, not even in the Bible course. It was mostly like a history course with some poetry mixed in.”

“Yes, that’s about the size of it. But I didn’t take a Bible course. In our university it was known as one of those easy make-shifts taken to escape really hard work. Of course, engineering was my major, and I just took what went with it. But I see my mistake now. Of course if the Bible really is the Word of God, as my mother taught me, it should be the most important!”

“Yes,” said Frannie, “I suppose it should. I never thought of that. And I have never counted it very important at all, although of course I’ve believed it.”

“Well, you’re one ahead of me,” said the young man gravely. “I’m not sure I have, not always. Though of late, with this war, I’ve been thinking I was wrong to let doubts in. Doubts don’t help the situation much in times like these. Not for men, anyway.”

“No, nor for women either,” said Frannie seriously. “It doesn’t look very happy ahead in life for anybody, does it? Unless there is something to expect like what we heard tonight.”

“That’s right,” said Willoughby.

They walked on till they came to the bridge, and looking down the crystal way, they saw the moon shining, making the path of the river into beaten gold. They stood there for some minutes quietly looking.

“It is a glorious sight, isn’t it?” said the young man. “I keep thinking what Lady Winthrop said about it. She had some Bible verses about the street of the city being pure gold, as it were transparent glass. I can see what she meant now, can’t you? Look down toward the city and see those tall buildings. It isn’t hard to imagine the unearthly beauty of a Heavenly City in this light, with the soft mist of the evening around it. That Lady Winthrop is a remarkable woman, and it doesn’t seem as if she was old in the least. She has the naive childlikeness of a very young person, or she never would have thought of such similes, even with that Bible verse to start on.”

“Yes, she seemed so to me,” said Frannie, “though, of course, I saw her only a few minutes. But I do want to know her better. I thought she was lovely, and I know Mother would love her. I hope we can be friends.”

“I’m sure you will be,” said Willoughby with conviction.

Then suddenly Frannie swung around and looked upstream.

“Look!” she said. “It’s wonderful up this way, too. Those are ‘the eternal hills.’ And see that tower of stone among the evergreens, and the river just below like a sheet of silver. It might be a part of the Heavenly City.”

“Yes, it’s wonderful!” said Willoughby. And then he turned and looked down at her with a great gentleness in his face.

“You’re a bit of poet yourself, aren’t you?” he said with a tender smile in his eyes for the sweet girl.

After a minute or two longer he drew her hand within his arm, and they started on again.

“I’d like to linger here till the moon sets,” he said half wistfully, “but you and I are both working people. We have to get to work early in the morning. I mustn’t keep you up too late. Of course it isn’t to be compared with the hour you would go home from one of Marietta’s dances that she tried to tempt you with, but we aren’t in her class so we won’t worry about that. Besides, I suppose you have to think about not worrying your sick mother by staying too late.”

“Yes,” said Frannie. “You’re very thoughtful and most kind. My mother will appreciate it, I know. As I do also. But it has been very lovely tonight, and I’ve learned a lot. I shall never forget that sermon. It made me feel that the Bible is as real today as when it was written, and that it is for me as much as ever it was for the people in the New Testament days.”

For answer Val Willoughby laid his hand over Frannie’s with a quick, warm pressure.

“I’m glad!” he said, and then added, “I’m glad we went. I think that sermon made me see a lot of things also that I’ve been missing for a long time. Somehow I think that you have helped, too. There’s something in having a friend along who understands.”

“Oh, thank you!” said Frannie. “Yes, I think I do understand. Because it’s something I’ve never had myself and always felt uneasy about it. Only I couldn’t bring it out in the open, because I had to be strong for my mother’s sake.”

They were still for a long time as they walked slowly down the paved way from the bridge, and the bright silver street stretched away to where the softly lit towers and turrets of Lady Winthrop’s imaginary city stood shadowy against a star-pricked dome of blue.

As they turned to go up to the little old white picket gate of the brick house, Willoughby said in a tone that was almost like a sacrament, “I’m glad I have found you. It is good to have you for a friend. In the uncertain days that are ahead of us both perhaps we can figure this thing out together.”

“Oh!” said Frannie softly, and her voice was so soft it was scarcely audible.

And while all this was going on, two men had been waiting silently, back in the shadow of great alder bushes, up several paces from the inland side of the house, one a tall man, and the other burly, with a shovel held in his hard hand, the spoon part of the implement stuck sharply in the ground where the outer frozen crust had been removed for a foot or so. The man was leaning back against the stout handle of the shovel in an interval of his cautious labor. At his feet, well concealed by a pile of snow, lay a worn, old toolbox with a sturdy pickax beside it, both its pointed ends caked with frozen mud and ice.

“We oughtn’t to have come so early,” said the big man. “You don’t have very good sense in your calculations, Mike. I didn’t want any of the family around while we do this.”

“Well, they didn’t any of them go out last Sunday. They went to bed early. Every light out at eight-thirty. I figured they’d do the same this week. But anyhow, don’t you worry. The young dame will be all absorbed in her boyfriend. She won’t notice anything out of the way, and anyway nobody can see us from the house.”

“Okay,” said the other. “But it seems to me you’ve bungled this all the way through. What exactly did that agent say about the owner? Tell me again. Tell me every word.”

“Well, he said he hadn’t heard from him yet. He said the old chap was sick and had gone to a hospital, and he couldn’t get in touch with him.”

“But what did he say about a contract?”

“Said there wasn’t any. Said they just rented the house and paid one month’s rent down. Their month is up the seventh. He said if we paid a lump sum down we could take over, and he’d send a notice to the folks that the place was sold.”

“The seventh! But that’s too late! We’ve got to bring our stuff here now and get going. I’ve got big obligations.”

“Yep. I told him that, and he said there wasn’t no reason in the world, if we wanted to, that we couldn’t bring lumber here and park it on the back of the lot. The tenants never asked how large the lot was. They just wanted the house anyhow. So I told Nick to bring on yer lumber tonight. That okay with you?”

“What? Do you mean he’s bringing it here, tonight, now, in a few minutes? Why, the folks will hear. You can’t get away with that.”

“Oh sure we can. Not just in a few minutes, I don’t mean, for I figured it would take us a couple of hours to get these here wires uncovered and pulled out the way you want. So I told him to begin to load up around ten and come in by the back road. You couldn’t get a sledge down the river without making a whole lotta noise, and being an unusual sound it might be noticed, wake somebody, you know. But coming in by the back road, if we have them boards carried in, one at a time, and lay ’em down careful-like, there won’t be a sound to give us away. And by morning they’ll only be a pile of old boards. You know all of ’em are weathered stuff. And if they see ’em they’ll just think they never noticed ’em before.”

“Well, maybe so,” said the big man uncomfortably. “But this ain’t the way I intended to work it. I figure on playing safe every step of the way, and we would, too, if you had carried out your part of the bargain. If anything goes wrong on this deal I’ll just lay it to your fault and pay you accordingly, understand that?”

“Say, look here now, you signed a paper saying how much you were willing to give.”

“Sure I did, but there were things you were to do, and you haven’t done one of ’em on time yet.”