Sound of the Trumpet (29 page)

“Are you still my friend?” he managed to stumble out presently, in the midst of her attempt to be pleasantly impersonal and talk about the weather and sports, and ask him if he had met any of the soldiers in town. Then he suddenly burst with his pitiful question.

Lisle looked at him sharply.

“Friend? Why, yes, your
friend
, I suppose. Why?”

“Does that mean you would be my friend enough to do something to help me out of a jam?”

“Why—I guess so—that is—I couldn’t promise, of course, until I knew what it is you want, what you need.”

“Yes, you would say that!” sneered the old Victor bitterly.

“What is it, Victor, what is the matter?”

“Matter enough!” he said sourly, tossing his heavy lock of black curls off his forehead. “I’m in a heck of a mess, and as far as I can see, you are the only one who can help me out. I wouldn’t have come to you if there had been any other way, because you’ve been so hard on me, and so sort of fanatical and sentimental. But there isn’t anybody who can help me out but you, and if you won’t help me, I might as well go out and drown myself in the river.”

“Why, Victor! What in the world is the matter? What has happened?”

“Plenty!” said the boy, basking under her kindly distressed tone. “But there isn’t anything the matter that you can’t help me out of if you really will do it. I knew if I came to you, you would forget you’re mad at me and be ready to help. You always were a good little sport that way whenever I got into a scrape. Why, you see, that little gold digger I’ve been having for a secretary has been caught giving away our plant secrets to the enemy. Besides that, she stole an important part of a secret machine we’re making for the government, and it can’t be found. And she stole the blueprints. Important blueprints that the enemy can use to duplicate our machines. And on top of all that, they think she killed a man as she was trying to get away with it. They’ve searched her room and found the gun the bullet came from hidden in one of her shoes, and they have proof enough to electrocute her. They’ve found she’s gotten in touch with a shortwave radio and has been giving away our plant secrets to the enemy right and left. They’ve got her hard and fast.

“But that’s not the worst of it. You see, the government men are trying to tie me up to it. They think just because I’ve been kind to her and taken her out socially to help her have a good time here, away from her home and friends, that she and I have been in cahoots on this, and they’re trying to ring me in on it, too, get me in the trial, and get me all tangled up asking questions. Of course, they’d try that with dad, too, if he wasn’t so darned respectable. They know he didn’t do it. And it’s pretty near killing him. It isn’t out in the public eye yet, of course, but it soon will be, and I’ve got to do something about it right away or I’ll have to go to jail, and mighty quick, too. They took Erda yesterday along with a couple of men who planned the whole thing, and she’ll ring me in on it, too, plenty. She hasn’t a bit of conscience about it. So I came to you. I knew you’d be willing to forget old scores and let bygones be bygones and help me out.”

“But I don’t see how I could help you out in a situation like that. I haven’t any influence with policemen or the government.”

“Oh yes, you can do it, all righty. You don’t need influence with police or courts. If you’ll just drop past arguments and marry me, nobody will trouble any more about it. They’ll know if you married me, I’m all right. They’ll know you have confidence in me, and that would settle it for most people. And a daughter of old J. D. Kingsley! He has influence, plenty. And he would do all he could to get me off, if I was your husband. Oh, it’s a cinch. I wouldn’t have any more trouble if you’d marry me right away. You know you and I could go out now and be married and then put it in the evening papers, and everything would be all okey-dokey. Will you do it, Lisle? If you will, I’ll be a model man from now on. I won’t even drink much, just a glass or two now and then when we’re at parties. I won’t ever get tight. And we’ll have all kinds of a grand time. Come on, Lisle, say you’ll do it. It’ll be all right. Your parents won’t care, seeing it’s to save my life and keep me out of jail. You’re a good scout. You’ll marry me, won’t you?”

Lisle looked at her former playmate, aghast.

“Victor! How perfectly
terrible
! I’m awfully sorry for you, but you know I can’t marry you for a reason like that. I can’t marry someone I don’t love, even if it were to save everybody’s life. It wouldn’t be right! And it wouldn’t do a bit of good, either, to get married. The government wouldn’t have any more faith in you because you got married in a time like this, no matter who you married, and they wouldn’t stop arresting you and trying you because you’d gotten married. That’s a silly idea. Getting married is too solemn a business to be rushed into to save your neck when you’re in trouble. No, Victor, I couldn’t
possibly
marry you,
ever
. I don’t love you and never will. And you know it wouldn’t do any good anyway.”

“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.