“Of course not, dear!” said Hannah. “You have a right to choose your friends. In fact, it is misleading if a girl accepts invitations from a man she doesn’t want to make her friend.”
“Well, that’s the way I feel. But Mother has made my life miserable every time she comes home. She invites him to dinner, and she insists on my hanging around and showing him this and that, and she puts me into situations where I simply have to sit down and talk or seem just awfully rude. She keeps telling me that I can’t afford to turn down a young man like that, so well off and so successful and charming, that I may never get another chance, and all that! Oh, I oughtn’t to tell you this and burden you with my annoyances, I know. You have enough troubles of your own.”
“You are not burdening me, dear. I’m glad to be an escape valve for you. And I’m so sorry you have to listen to such talk. But what does she think your father would do if you were married?”
“Well, she says the doctor says he won’t live long anyway. Yes, she says just that! Isn’t it dreadful! My dear father who is just beginning to love me the way he used to when my own mother was alive! I’m sure he does. His eyes have grown to be loving eyes. Ever since that day when—when Mr. Parsons prayed with him!”
“Call him Father Charles, Joyce. He would have liked that. He loved you, child! He wouldn’t have wanted you to put him so far away as ‘Mr. Parsons.’”
“Father Charles! What a dear name! I will!” And her heart gave a faint little thrill of delight. The name seemed to bring Rowan nearer to her.
“Father used to think the Lord would come very soon,” mused Hannah. “He spoke of how he would be with Him if He came while I was living. It’s been very beautiful to think about!”
“Oh, wouldn’t that be wonderful!” said Joyce. “If the Lord would come, my father would get well, wouldn’t he? He’d be changed in a moment. How I wish I knew! But I’m going to read to him about the Lord’s coming tonight. Do you know, I always read in the Bible to him every night, and he lies and watches me with his eyes wide open, and an almost eager look in them? And then I kneel down and pray a few words. I’m going to tell him how Father Charles was saying the Lord might come and bring him back with Him to get us. And oh, Mother Hannah—may I call you that?—my own mother would be with Him, too, wouldn’t she? How wonderful!”
When Joyce was gone Hannah stood watching her make her way across the meadow, and thinking how dear she was. Then the stinging though came that she was more loving than her own Myra. Poor Myra! But she used to be loving! She was just harried now beyond endurance. And Mark wasn’t a Christian man. That made all the difference in the world. Oh, he went to church usually, once on Sunday, but that was all the interest he took in religious matters. How careful parents ought to be to teach their children not to have fellowship with unbelievers, not to choose their close friends from among them, not to marry them! Oh, how could Myra ever have happiness in this world? And she wasn’t paying much attention to the next world either, that was sure. Poor Myra, weeping over disappointments and not looking up for God’s way and God’s appointments! Well, even that, too, might be brought in His good time to a solution. She must just leave it to God!
Then Hannah set to work to make her home look like itself and pretend that she was getting ready for Rowan. It was only a game to keep her cheerful. She had been through so many hard things! And she had promised Charles she would keep happy for Rowan! But it was so hard to keep the tears back! At every turn there was something to remind of the loved ones who were gone! Myra and Rowan and Charles! How blessed it was that one didn’t have to stay in this land of sorrow and pain forever, and that over There, there would be no more parting!
Myra, poor darling Myra! She had to trust her with God, too. Why was it so much harder to trust Myra with God than even the other two who were gone from her? Charles who was at Home with God, Rowan who was off in some unknown, unthinkable place, Myra who was in a home with her husband and child? Well, God was as much with one as the other, and she must trust and not be afraid.
So that night she lay down in her lonely house, in her lonely bed, alone for the first time since she had come as a bride into that house. But she looked up and said:
“It’s all right, Father; Thy will be done!”
Chapter 17
The storm raged for three long days and nights, and when at last the wind and drenching rain ceased to slant across the stricken ship, and they looked around them, there was nothing but tempestuous water on every hand; their frail lifeboat was tossed like a bit of flotsam in its mighty power.
The men were strangely grim and silent. They watched and waited, and kept apart from the two who were of a different world. Not even now was the vigilance relaxed that kept them away from the hatch that marked the line of separation. Rowan wondered idly why they cared anymore, since all would likely perish in a little while. They could not navigate with broken masts and rent sails. They had no motor, and surely the boat must have sprung a leak, for it seemed to his landsman’s mind that no boat could stand the shocks that this one had and live through. They were at the mercy of the sea.
Silently the crew stood around, helpless. Only Rowan and Jason went calmly on trying to do the useless duties that have been assigned to them when they first came on board, just to keep them sane and trusting. The other men watched them curiously but said little to them. For a time fear showed in their eyes, but as night drew on the two noticed that the look of stark fear was gone, they had lost their apathy, and in its place was a tensity of strain that was almost expectancy.
Rowan and Jason went to their bunks early, as soon as their evening rations had been served. They had noticed that the portions were larger now than they had been for the last two days. What was the idea? Was the captain getting reckless? Did he think they were going down in the night, perhaps, and that they might as well enjoy one last meal? But they had got beyond trying to fathom the thoughts of their captain.
They were worn out with the long nursing of their friend and exhausted by the days and nights of the storm. It had been impossible to sleep much when the masts were snapping and each moment seemed that it might be the last. But now they slept heavily, almost as soon as they lay down, and did not hear strange noises, nor voices that did not belong to their crew.
Vaguely Rowan roused once and was aware of something unusual, hurrying feet, falling of metal objects, weird lights that flashed back and forth like a code. But as much as he thought at all he felt it must be a dream, and he turned over with a sigh, thinking he heard Joyce singing.
Later someone roused him, waked Jason, too, and a voice commanded. Was that the captain? Yes, the captain was shaking him awake. “Can you row a boat?”
“Oh yes,” said Rowan, instantly himself. “Sure I can. Is the ship going to sink?”
“Yes, the ship is sinking. It won’t be long. Put on all the clothes you have, and take your blankets. Go out and get into the boat alongside!”
Rowan roused Jason and they hurried their few things together, taking their blankets as they were told. They took also what warm things of Kinder’s they could reach with a single motion and then they were out following the captain. Two of the crew who could not speak English were standing by the rail holding ropes. A small lifeboat was bobbing down there in the mighty sea, like a cork on a billow. It was barely discernible in the thick darkness. There were oars at rest on its gunwales.
“But I thought we had no boats,” protested Jason, looking down in wonder. “I thought they were all torn away in the storm.”
“There’s the boat,” said the captain roughly, “get in, and be quick about it if you want a chance for your life.”
“But is there room for everybody?” Rowan hesitated. “I can die as well as anybody else. I forced myself upon you. I don’t want you to give up your chance of life to me.”
“Get in!” was the grim command. “Everybody’s got a place.”
Rowan and Jason were lowered into the boat, and then ins
tead of following after them the captain disappeared.
“Pull away!” someone commanded. They couldn’t identify the voice, and Rowan thought a weird shape like the ghost of a ship loomed on the other side of the old wreck. But just as he sighted it the lights everywhere went out, and they were alone, they two in that little boat out on a wide sea in the dark! In a frail little boat that looked like an eggshell. But of course it must be a dream.
Just to prove it was, Rowan sat down and tried an oar, but he might as well have dipped a feather in Niagara. He shipped it quickly and made sure it was fast. There was no use rowing in a sea like that. They must just drift.
Morning revealed the fact that there was food in the bottom of the boat, enough for several days. Then the captain had set them adrift on purpose alone! He had meant to get rid of them! They looked at one another in the ghastly morning light, with those green towering walls of water around them. They looked at the oars that seemed so fragile, and then they looked up.
The sky was clearing. Calmer weather might come, but were they ever going to be able to row that boat on the sea? It was heavy and neither of them had ever had experience on the water.
Gradually they thought back into their dreams and began to piece out the story of the night. Those must have been guns, signal guns that were shot off, and they had dreamed they were thunder! And that had certainly been another ship standing by! A sister ship, perhaps, out to search for the lost after the storm. Their own boat must have been carrying something precious indeed to be searched for so carefully in such a storm! And what were those strange noises in the night? Precious metal being moved, or weapons? They could not tell. They probably never would know. And now they began to be aware that they had been sent away so that they could not tell what they did know.
A curious thing, they had been on that ship for weeks, and yet they had never found out just what it was about it that made it fantastic; they had never been able to figure out what wickedness it was carrying out, that perhaps should have been revealed to the powers that be, whoever they were.
“We were dumb, I suppose,” said Jason. “We certainly were dumb. Get as near as that to mystery, and crime perhaps, and then be set adrift without finding out.”
“We weren’t meant to clean up the universe,” said Rowan.
They talked about it a few minutes, theorizing, and then because their own fate was even more interesting than the ship with its unknown cargo, they discussed the possibilities of life and death.
“Well, if we can’t navigate,” said Jason at last, “I move we lie down and finish our sleep.”
So they lay down, but somehow they could not sleep.
“Rowan,” said Jason suddenly, “I want to talk to you. I’ve got a girl back at home and I begin to think I love her. Do you think that’s wrong?”
“Wrong?” said Rowan. “How would it be wrong? What kind of a girl is she?”
“Oh, she’s a wonderful girl! She’s far too good for me. She has eyes like the sky, and hair with the sunshine tangled in it, and she wears a little pink dress. She has a lovely smile, and dimples in her cheeks. Her name is Rose. Do you think it’s wrong for me to be thinking of her all this time? She doesn’t even know I love her. But I got to thinking that here we are probably about to die, and I’d like to think she was here and I was talking to her. I’d like to think she kissed me if I was dying. I guess I’m getting a fever, don’t you think, or I wouldn’t talk this way, would I? I guess I’m wandering or I wouldn’t be thinking of such weird things.
Rowan looked at his friend. “No, kid, you’re just lonesome; you’re not out of your head. Who is she? Does she care, too?”
“Yes, she said she cared, but I guess she just meant she cared for me to stay at home and make good or something like that. It’s Rose Allison, the minister’s daughter! Now, do you think I’m crazy? Loving a girl like that? I never had anything to do with her, either, only just saw her in school, till a few days before I came away.”
And then Jason told him the story of how he had talked with her on the telephone.
When he had finished Rowan looked at him. “Well, I guess I’d better confess, too, since you’ve told me this. I love your sister, Joyce, and before I came away I took her in my arms and kissed her! I wouldn’t ever have told that to you till I’d seen her, and found out if she really cares for me. But now it looks as if we were on our way to heaven and it can’t hurt for us to have the comfort of knowing each other’s hearts. I’ve been thinking if it should so be that you are saved somehow and should ever get home, I’d like to have you tell her that I love her, and that I’ve been thinking of her and loving her ever since I left her. Of course, I don’t know whether she cares for me, but she won’t mind hearing it if I’m gone, anyway.”
“Sure she loves you,” said Jason confidently.
“How do you know that?”
“Caught her looking out her window watching you drive away to college, and weeping all over the place. Sure she’s loved you, since ever I can remember. Brothers can tell.”
Rowan considered this gravely, then he said, “Thanks awfully for telling me that, brother! I can call you brother now, you know.”
“It’s been about the biggest thing in my life for a long time to think that someday maybe you would be that!” The boy’s voice was very gentle as he said it, and then, even in the midst of their intimate confessions he felt embarrassed and hurried on. “But say, brother”—he stopped and grinned—“if it should be the other way around and I’m called and you get home, would you sometime tell Rose Allison for me that I loved her, and that her saying she cared and would believe in me about saved me from suicide when I first started out. I kept on thinking I’d make good and come back and show her, and right then I began to know I loved her, and I’ve thought about her and dreamed about her ever since. You tell her, too, how I’ve been saved, and maybe it was her asking me to that meeting that helped in that, too. Will you do it, Rowan?”
“I surely will!” promised Rowan solemnly.
“Well, then you pray for us both, and then let’s go to sleep. I can’t look at those green walls any longer.”
So they lay down side by side, expecting confidently that they would wake up in heaven.
And the little boat went drifting, drifting, guided by an unseen Hand!
Chapter 18
There was a great excitement in the village. Corey Watkins had been taken to the police headquarters between two policemen, and nobody could quite believe it, though the rumor had been well authenticated.
Nothing had been given out officially yet, but it was said that James Goodright and some other officials of the bank not named had caught Corey at work on the books in the night!
Later it came out that the Watkins home had been searched and they had found a false partition in Corey’s den, behind which was a capacious safe in which they had found the rest of the papers that had been missing since the robbery, papers that were more valuable than anything else that had been lost, papers that established without a doubt the fact that Jason Whitney had nothing to do with the robbery. They were the papers that Jason had handled the last thing before he left, having been sent to put them into the safe. And when they could not be found, suspicion was at once fixed upon him.
But there were none of his fingerprints on the papers, and now that they were found, of course he could not have stolen them. Now that they had caught Corey a good many things in the past were explained.
But though suspicion was removed from Jason in the matter of the valuable papers, and though Sam Paisley had at last recovered and exonerated him from any part in the night raiding of the bank, the fact remained that Jason and Rowan were still missing, and the town could not bear that. They wanted to get the facts in orderly array and clean up the whole matter.
So a committee waited upon Hannah and offered to get up a posse of trained police and detectives to go out west and search for the two young men. It was supposed the men who escaped from t
he law when the Rowleys were taken had fled there. To that end, they begged her to tell all that she knew of Rowan’s departure.
Hannah thanked them with her habitual calm. She even found tears in her eyes that these hardheaded, quick-to-believe-and-suspect, self-righteous neighbors of hers had come with this belated offer. But she declined their help. She told them that all that she knew of Rowan’s going was that he had felt that Jason had gone out discouraged and rather desperate perhaps, because things seemed against him, and that Rowan had hurried after him to bring him back. Where he had gone she did not know, but he had promised to return, and told her she could trust him. She was confident that something was detaining him beyond his power or she would have heard from him. She was sure that he had not gone with the Rowleys and she had never felt that they had had time to kidnap the boys and take them along. They wouldn’t have any reason to do so. She was trusting God to bring them back in His own good time. She thanked them for their kind intentions and sent them away rubbing their hands in self-satisfaction that they had made such a noble gesture.
Then the town settled into its routine calm to await their next excitement, meanwhile whetting its tongue on occasional exclamations about poor Mrs. Watkins. Saying, “Just to think that such a nice young man as Corey, so well fixed and all, could have been such an awful hypocrite!” Though some said they had always thought he had sly eyes.