The Strange Proposal (9 page)

“How could he read if it was dark? You didn’t have electric light in the camp did you?”

Sam threw back his head and laughed.

“I’ll say we didn’t. We had pine knots lighted and stuck in trays of sand—big wooden trays up on a post, and they flared like torches. They burned all night.”

“And he could read by that light?”

“Sure, he read to us every night before we went to bed. Just read, and sometimes told us what it meant, just a word.”

“What did he read?”

“Oh, the Bible,” said Sam, as if he was surprised she didn’t know. “He reads that all the while anyway, when he isn’t doing anything else. You come on him lying in the hammock with his little Bible. He carries it in his pocket everywhere and gets it out when he’s resting or anything. And he sure does make it plain when he reads it, just the way he says the words, without any talk at all, just reading. We fellas all liked it a lot. We wished he’d read longer, but he never did. It was always short. And then he’d sing.”

“Oh, he sings, does he?”

“I’ll say he sings! He’s got a peach of a voice. And when he sings out in the open like that, it’s great! It just rolls out and echoes across the lake. And then he made us sing, too.”

“What did you sing?” Mary Elizabeth’s voice was filled with a kind of wonder. This Bible-slant on the man was something unexpected. Was it part of his duty as a scoutmaster? Was he under some kind of religious organization and had to read to the boys? She was considering this as she asked about the singing.

“Why, that first night we sang a chorus. He sang it first and then he taught it to us. Even Jeff sang. You know Jeff can sing!”

“Yes, he’s got a wonderful voice,” assented the audience.

“Well, when the two sang together, it was great. They took different parts, and say, it was silky!”

“What was the chorus?”

“Why, it was just a chorus. We learned a lot of them. Want me to sing it for you?”

“Oh yes, that would be great!”

Sam’s clear treble voice piped out sweetly, every word distinct:

“That’s good!” said Mary Elizabeth, hiding her astonishment. “Sing it again!”

Sam sang it again.

“It’s very catchy. Try it once more, and I’ll hum it with you.”

They sang it together several times, and Mary Elizabeth saw it gave the boy pleasure.

“Gee, we had a good time down there!” he said, his face kindling with memory. “We useta sing till the old palm trees would rattle. We learned a lot of those choruses. I got a book at home full of ’em. I’ll show it to you sometime when you come around.”

“I’d like to see it.”

“Here’s another. We useta sing this for a sort of grace sometimes before we ate.

“That’s rather rousing, but wasn’t it a bit hard on the little kid who hadn’t any house because his father and mother were separated?”

“No, he just loved it. He useta go around singing it. It doesn’t mean this earthly house down here, you know. It means heaven, and God’s your Father.”

“Oh!” said Mary Elizabeth in a small, rebuked voice, marveling at the freedom of childhood. There was no embarrassment in Sam’s voice. And yet she was positive most boys wouldn’t speak like this of religious matters. Probably it was just this camp experience that had given him a different slant on such things. And that, of course, would be due to John Saxon! Amazing John Saxon!

She gave a little nervous shiver, warm though the day was. Serpents and God! Her new friend and beloved was as familiar with one as with the other. No wonder he had dared propose to a stranger going down a wedding aisle! Was she sure she wanted a man like that, even though he could woo her in a deeper strain than any who had ever come courting her before? Even though every new thing she heard about him but thrilled her the more? God and serpents!

Sam was singing over again that everything was all right in his Father’s house, and presently Mary Elizabeth was singing it, too, taking the alto and delighting the boy with the blending of harmony.

“Say, that’s great! I wish you had been down there, Mary Beth, you’d have just fitted!”

“Hmm!” said Mary Elizabeth. “I don’t know what your Mr. Saxon might have thought about it. By the way, Sam, why did you say I was like him? I’m curious about that.”

Sam grinned.

“It was you sending me for those chocolates. And, gee! Isn’t it about time we ate some?”

Mary Elizabeth handed over the chocolates with a smile, and Sam crammed in a big chocolate peppermint and went on.

“Gee, you were nice, just handing over a lotta money and not saying how much to spend. If my family had sent me, they’d have counted out the money and told me just what kind I hadta buy because it was ‘wholesome.’ Gosh! I hate that word wholesome! But you just let me have the fun of choosing. And that’s the way Mr. Saxon does. He makes even work fun, and he’s always doing something for somebody, no matter whether he can afford it or not. Why, he hocked his watch and some of his best medical books to send a little kid up north to a special hospital where he needed to go.”

“He did?” said Mary Elizabeth, soft color stealing into her face. “How kind of him! But—hasn’t he got any watch now?”

“Oh, yes, Jeff found it out and bought his things back and managed to get ’em back to him so he didn’t know who did it.”

“That was nice of Jeff!” said Mary Elizabeth, drawing a long breath and wondering why she was so glad that John Saxon did not have to go without his watch and valued medical books. “Sing that first song again, Sam, it kind of haunts me. There’s something catchy in the tune.”

So they sang it again and again, till Mary Elizabeth knew the words by heart.

“I’ll sing ya another!” volunteered Sam. “Here’s one we useta sing for morning prayers. It’s to the tune of ‘The Bells of Saint Mary’s.’ You know that one, don’t ya?”

Mary Elizabeth hummed a little experimental bar or two.

“That’s it. Only ya don’t know the right words. You just havta remember four kinds of songs and you have it. This is it:

“Well, that’s nice,” said Mary Elizabeth, feeling a new kind of joy in the boy’s pleasure. She wondered if she hadn’t been missing something in life by not cultivating children before. Then she remembered Aunt Clarice’s words.

“By the way,” she said quite casually, “how would you like to get out and stretch your legs a few minutes? See those three butterflies out there over that patch of buttercups? How about seeing if you can catch one of them?”

Sam looked at her awesomely.

“You don’t mean you’d stop on the way and let me chase butterflies?”

“Why not, if you’d like to?”

“But I thought you were in an awful hurry to get home?”

“Well, I thought I was,” said Mary Elizabeth slowly, “but I don’t know as it makes so much difference as that. I’d like to see you chase butterflies. If I didn’t have my good shoes on, I’d come and try my own hand at it.”

Sam gave her a glowing look and started out of the car with a bound, but when he reached the fence rail and was about to spring over, he suddenly turned back and hurried to where the car was parked.

“Say, I don’t know as we’d better stop,” he said cautiously, casting a furtive eye back on the road. “The folks might catch up with us, and Mother’d give me the dickens for holding you up when you are in such a hurry.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Mary Elizabeth with a grin. “We’re not on the regular road that they will take. I thought it would be more fun to be by ourselves.”

The boy’s eyes were filled with comprehension of her complicity and with the deepest admiration that the eyes of a boy can hold.

“Say, you’re swell!” he said eagerly. “You’re just like Mr. Saxon! I didn’t know there were two folks in the whole world like that! You and he oughtta—oughtta—”

“Oh, that’s all right, Sam,” laughed the girl hastily, “don’t worry about that. Run off and catch your butterflies before they are gone. I’ll just sit here and think of something else nice to do.”

Then Mary Elizabeth lay back on the cushions, with her cheek against the fine leather of the upholstery and her eyes upon the dreamy, lazy little June clouds that floated across a faultless blue, and thought of the new things she had been hearing about John Saxon. And then she closed her eyes and felt again his lips upon hers, thrilled again at the memory of his arms about her, at the words he had whispered in her ear. John Saxon! Oh, John Saxon! Why did you come marching down the aisle, disturbing all Mary Elizabeth’s well-ordered conventional life and stirring up all sorts of longings that had never wakened before in her heart? Why did you make yourself the answer to every yearning of her heart, and yet be a new kind of person who would not fit at all into life as she knew it?

S
am came back eagerly with two butterflies, one pinioned in his cap, the other in his handkerchief. His face was dirty and wet with perspiration, his hands were grimy, and his hair stood on end, but he was happy and his eyes were dancing.

“Gosh! That was fun!” he said as he climbed into the car.

Mary Elizabeth made him mop up to a certain extent at a brook before they stopped for lunch, gave him an extra handkerchief for a towel, and loaned him a little gold-plated comb she carried in her handbag to comb his recalcitrant hair. By this time he was as wax in her hands, and she felt another thrill of having captured his heart.

They had a wonderful lunch at a wayside dairy, with milk in tall foaming goblets and ice cream made from rich cream, a few cakes and crackers for foundation, and they both decided it was the best lunch they had tasted in a long time.

After lunch, Mary Elizabeth drove along through a bit of woodland, and Sam, with the map on his lap and pointing out the turns to take in the road, fell to singing again.

“I know a fount where sins are washed away!”

“Sam, why do you like that song so much?” she asked. “What have you to do with sins? You never did any very great sinning yet. You’re only a kid.”

“Oh, that doesn’t make a difference,” said Sam soberly. “Mr. Saxon said there was only one sin God judges people for, anyway. All the others come outta that.”

“What’s that?” asked Mary Elizabeth sharply, wondering what new revelation was to come.

“Unbelieving,” said Sam.

“Unbelieving?” said the girl in surprise.

“Yep! That’s the big sin. That’s sin. The others are only small sins, and they’re the result of it.”

“What on earth do you mean, child?”

“Well, it’s right!” said Sam with conviction. “It’s all in the Bible. Mr. Saxon read it to us and made us say it over and over and over. There isn’t one of us will ever forget it.”

“Well, explain, Sam. I don’t understand.”

“Why, you see, sin began in heaven,” said Sam.

“In heaven? How could it? I thought heaven was perfect and everybody there was supposed to be sinless!”

“It was, till Lucifer got stuck on himself,” said Sam earnestly. “He thought he was It and wanted to be like God. He really wanted to be God and have everybody worship him, and so he had to be thrown out of heaven.”

Mary Elizabeth looked down at him in amazement.

“Go on,” she said.

“Well, then Lucifer—he was called Satan by that time—came down to the Garden of Eden after God made Adam and Eve, and got in a snake and told ’em it wasn’t so what God had said. You see God said they’d die if they ate any fruit off that forbidden tree, and they believed Satan instead of God and did what God told them not to, and that’s how sin got on earth. And death. That’s why death hadta come. ‘Cause God hadta keep His word.”

Mary Elizabeth stared at the boy, astounded. This was extraordinary talk for a boy. Also, it was a story Mary Elizabeth had never heard before. She wasn’t very familiar with the Bible, and Satan to her had always been something to joke about. It had never occurred to her that he was a literal person. Could it be that Sam had this right?

“Where did you get all this?” she asked after a moment’s thought.

“Oh, it’s in the Bible! Mr. Saxon read it to us. We studied Genesis an hour every morning while we were off on that trip. It was great. We liked it. Everybody liked it. Jeff did, too. We had an examination on it the last day, and I got ninety-eight. I passed all right. And Mr. Saxon is sending us lessons this summer to do by correspondence.”

“He is?” said his astounded audience. Then after an instant’s hesitation, “Do you—pay him for that?”

“Pay him? Not on yer life. He does that just because he’s interested. He wants us to get on. He wants everybody ta be saved. That’s the most he cares about.”

“Saved?” said Mary Elizabeth with a puzzled expression. “Just what do you mean by that?”

“Why, saved! Eternal life and all that! ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ Dontcha know that? Everybody knows that. That’s John 3:16, ya know.”

“Why—it seems to me I’ve heard it somewhere,” said Mary Elizabeth uncertainly, perceiving that she was losing favor fast with her young companion.

“Well, that’s about the most important verse there is, I guess. People can be saved just knowing that and nothing else.”

Mary Elizabeth looked at him as if he had suddenly begun to speak in an unknown tongue.

“Just what do you mean by being saved?” she asked at length.