"Marilyn!" His voice was shaking. He knew her instantly in spite of
poke bonnet and uniform. She was the one thought present with him all
the while, perhaps for years wherever he had been. But he did not look
glad to see her. Instead it was as if his soul shrank shamedly from her
clear eyes as she looked at him: Marilyn had not known what she was going to say to him when she found
him. She did not stop to think now.
"Mark, your mother wants you. She is dying! You must come quick or she
will be gone!"
Afterwards she repeated over the words to herself again and again as
one might do penance, blaming herself that she had not softened it,
made it more easy for him to bear. Yet at the time it seemed the only
thing there was to say, at such a time, in such a place. But at the
stricken look upon his face her heart grew tender. "Come," she said
compassionately, "We will go!"
They went out into the night and it was as if they had suddenly changed
places, as if she were the protector and he the led. She guided him the
quickest way. There was only a chance that they might catch the
midnight train, but there was that chance. Into the subway she dived,
he following, and breathless, they brought up at the Pennsylvania
station at their train gate as it was being closed, and hurried
through.
All through that agonized night they spoke but few words, those two who
had been so much to one another through long happy years.
"But you are not going too?" he spoke suddenly roused from his daze as
the train started.
"Yes, I am going too, of course, Mark," she said.
He bowed his head and almost groaned: "I am not worthy,--Marilyn!"
"That--has nothing to do with it!" said Marilyn sadly, "It never will
have anything to do with it! It never did!"
Mark looked at her, with harrowed eyes, and dropped his gaze. So he
sat, hour after hour, as the train rushed along through the night. And
Marilyn, with head slightly bent and meek face, beneath the poke bonnet
with its crimson band, was praying as she rode. Praying in other words
the prayer that Billy murmured beside his bed every night.
But Billy was not lying in his bed that night, sleeping the sleep of
the just. He was up and on the job. He was sitting in the Carter
kitchen keeping up the fires, making a cup of tea for the nurse and the
doctor, running the endless little errands, up to the parsonage for
another hot water bag, down to the drug store for more aromatic spirits
of ammonia, fixing a newspaper shade to dull the light in the hall, and
praying, all the time praying: "Oh, God, ain'tcha gonta leave her stay
till Mark gets here? Ain'tcha gonta send Mark quick? You know best I
'spose, but ain'tcha gonta?" and then "Aw Gee! I wisht Miss Lynn
was here!"