Sound of the Trumpet (21 page)

“Never!” said John. “How could I feel that way about a beautiful kindness?”

“Well, I would have loved to send more flowers and also send some to the service if I had known about it. I never read the death notices, and of course I didn’t know. But I did want to let you know how I sympathize with you.”

“Thank you,” said John. “That means a lot to me. And someday in heaven, I’m sure my little grandmother will be thanking you, too.”

“Oh, what a lovely thought! I shall look forward to that!”

“And now I mustn’t keep you any longer. I know you must be tired. But I do want you to promise me that you will never go down to that neighborhood again alone, please? I would love to take you down sometime if I were free, but since I can’t, please get someone to go with you. Or else don’t go. Will you do that? It’s important or I wouldn’t ask it.”

“Why, thank you for your interest. Yes, of course I’ll promise. In fact, my mother is rather worked up about it and would be more so if she knew what happened tonight. She insists that I go in the car, so you needn’t worry. But I’m sorry you had to miss the meeting tonight. It was wonderful!” They talked for several minutes about the message, and then before he hung up he asked Lisle to describe the man who tried to take her home. What did he look like? And Lisle did her best.

“He’s medium height, sort of slender and drab-looking, hat drawn down over his eyes, a little round-shouldered, with his hands in his pockets and his coat collar turned up. It was rather dark out by the street door, and the light from the streetlight shone right into my eyes, but that is the impression he gave me.”

“Well, I guess it’s the same man I saw one day. Wanted me to take a crooked job. Has kind of a whine when he speaks, doesn’t he?”

“Oh yes, definitely.”

“Well, thank you. Now, take care of yourself.”

“Oh, but I don’t have to take care of myself,” said Lisle with a little lilt of a laugh in her voice. “The teacher quoted a verse tonight, and I’m taking it to live by. ‘The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by Him, and the Lord shall cover Him all the day long.’ He helped me to see that I would not be presuming to take that for mine and that I might count myself ‘beloved’ of the Lord.”

“Oh yes, of course. I’m glad you feel that way. I’ll be praying, too, that He will guide you. Well, good night!”

“Good night,” said Lisle softly, and then, “But oh, where are you now? You said you had moved. May I have the address?”

But John Sargent had hung up.

“Oh,” mourned Lisle. “Why didn’t I find that out sooner?”

B
ut John Sargent seemed to have disappeared from off the face of Lisle’s earth again. He did not call up the next day as she had hoped. He did not write. And when she tried to call him on the telephone at the place where he had told her he worked, they said there was no such person there at the time. He might have worked there some time ago, the janitor wasn’t sure, but he wasn’t there now. And, no, they didn’t have his present address. He hadn’t left a forwarding address.

She did not know that there had not passed a day since that night he talked to her that he had not walked by her home, sometimes several times. She did not know that there had been not a day when he had not communicated quietly over the kitchen telephone with Joseph or the butler, and found out in a businesslike way of the safety of the young lady of the house. He had made a compact with the butler and the chauffeur to keep a watch on her, and had told them how to let him know if anything was wrong or she should be missing. Not that he revealed his identity, only as a friend. “One of the boys she had helped” he called himself to the servants who had found out that certain gangsters were trying to pull something with her as the victim and he was doing his best to stop it. Neither did Lisle know that he had gone that first night, as soon as he hung up the receiver, straight to her father and had told him all he needed to know to protect his daughter, without troubling her too much with nervous fears. She did not know that even her mother had been made aware that great protection should be about her. And she did not know that the police were a guard about her continually wherever she went.

Oh, it is true that John Sargent’s police-friend did call at the house one early evening just after dinner and ask to see her for a brief interview. And her father, after speaking with the policeman first, came back to Lisle with a smile on his kindly face.

“I suggest that you go in and see him, daughter,” he said to her, as if it were a matter of small moment. “It is only right that we should do our best to help the police, who are our natural protectors, to do their work well. You needn’t be startled, child. He merely wants to get your impression of the man who offered to take you home that night that Joseph had the accident with the car, and I think you should try your best to remember everything you can about it.”

So Lisle went into the reception room, met the police officer, and did her best to describe Lacey, even mentioning the other times when she had thought she saw him watching her.

The officer thanked her and said he thought he had a line on the man and that her description tallied with their suspicions. He told her that it was important because it was linked up with something some spies were trying to pull off for the enemy. She personally just happened to be the intended victim that night through whom they hoped to work their plans. But she needn’t worry lest it would happen again. They thought they had the kingpin of the gang safe in jail, and were now sure of this other man, and perhaps another, who was the head instigator. Then he smiled and went his way, and Lisle heard nothing more about it, and did not even know certainly that there had been a plot to kidnap her. Her main concern was that she could not get in touch with John Sargent and tell him of some wonderful comfort she had heard at the class that she thought might help him.

So the busy days went on, and Lisle was deeper and deeper in war work, going to classes whenever her duties at the university did not interfere, and going to her Bible class at the mission whenever she could persuade someone to go with her. Sometimes it would be Joseph or Mark or even the butler, but often it was her mother. Once her father went and sat studying the plain, simple people with the radiance of trust and peace in their faces, wondering how these people seemed to have gotten hold of such deep wisdom and half deciding that he, too, someday would take time to find out just what it was all about and if there was anything in it that they with all their wealth and culture and righteousness were in the way of missing.

Every time that Lisle went to the mission, or even went abroad on the street, she was always looking for the young man with the very blue eyes and the true smile. But he was never there. And because she had kept silent about him for so long, she was shy about mentioning him, so her mother and father knew nothing about her contacts with John Sargent.

And then, the very next time she saw him, he was in uniform.

Lisle had been taking a visiting girlfriend to catch her New York train. As she waved farewell and turned to walk back to her car where Joseph was waiting, she saw a group of soldiers standing on the other side of the platform, and foremost among them, standing just a little apart and looking back toward the street as if he were searching for someone, stood John! In uniform!

Lisle’s heart gave a sudden quick leap of mingled dread and triumph. He was in
uniform
! He had said he wanted to go, and now he was going. But oh, he was
going
! That was something else she hadn’t considered yet. How was she going to feel about having him go away? Of course, she hadn’t been seeing him much. What right had she to have that desperate sinking feeling? He was nothing to her but a casual acquaintance. That she had allowed him to become something more in her thoughts was a matter she had not reckoned on. That would have to be dealt with later, when she was by herself with her thoughts. But now, he was here, and she was seeing him! She could have this to remember! How fine he looked in his uniform!

All this was just a bit of coloring in her mind as she went with swift steps to meet him.

As if he had been drawn by her very approach to turn, he looked behind him and saw her coming. Then quickly he dropped the suitcase he was carrying and hurried to meet her, his smile lighting up his face like a flash of sunshine. He came with both hands out, a quiet eagerness upon him that she had not seen in him before. Her own hands went out to meet his, and so they met, clasping each other’s hands and looking into one another’s eyes.

“Oh,” she said, speaking first, almost breathlessly. “You are
going
! I did not know you were in the army! I’m so glad I happened to meet you!”

“Yes, it is great for me! I almost got up the courage to call you and say good-bye, but I really had very little time. My orders just came through, and it was all I could do to rush what I had to finish and get off at the time ordered. But I wanted to see you. I wanted so much to know if you are all right. I’ve had a report from the detective people who are looking after you in a way, you know.” He smiled. “You knew they were going to do that, didn’t you?”

“Why, yes, you told me something like that, but I supposed that was only for a day or two. I thought that was over long ago.”

“No,” said John, looking down at her with an almost loving look in his eyes. “It was still going on. They have orders to keep you in mind as long as any of that gang is at large, although I don’t believe that you’ll have any more trouble now that I’ll be gone. You see, they had tried to rope me into their spy gang, and as they happened to see us together that night of the blackout, they figured that you and I were friends and that if they got you in trouble they could bribe me into telling them what they wanted to know by promising to let you out if I came across. Only you see, they misfired when they tried to get you into that man’s car and their man got arrested. So I really think you’ll have no further trouble with any of that gang. If I thought you would, I don’t believe I would have the heart to go away. I couldn’t see anything happening to you.”

All this time they were gripping each other’s hands and looking into each other’s eyes, breathlessly aware that it was a train they were waiting for, and that when it came, it would snatch them inexorably apart. They were irrationally unaware of any who might be observing them. And because it was something so new and so glad to them both to have found one another at this, the last moment as it were, they had thoughts for nothing else but the moment.

She smiled gently.

“You know, it’s rather wonderful to have someone—someone outside my home, I mean—take that much thought for me.”

“It has been great to feel I had the right,” he said meaningfully. “Just because I happened to know some danger that those who were closer to you did not know. I am so glad you did not resent my interference in your affairs.”

“Resent!” said Lisle with a wonderful, understanding look. “Does one resent God’s care? And yours was very much like His, I think, so quiet, so thoughtful that I didn’t know it was there. I can never thank you enough.”

“I don’t want thanks,” said John, with a close pressure of the hands he held. “It is enough if you will count me in a measure as one of your friends.”

“Of course. In full measure,” said Lisle warmly, nestling her hands softly in his. “I am glad you are my friend. Only, I wish you did not keep out of sight so much. I wish—I
wish
—you didn’t have to go away. Though, of course, I know it is right that you should. But you were doing defense work in the shipyard, weren’t you? Wasn’t that just as important?”

John shook his head.

“Yes, it was defense work, and important, but an older man who couldn’t be accepted for actual fighting could do what I was doing, and I have known for some time that as soon as I was free, I must go. It was as if I heard a trumpet sounding in my soul, calling me. I felt I must!”

“Oh, that is a beautiful way to put it!” said Lisle. What a wonderful, exceptional young man he was! The thought fairly blazed in her eyes, shone in her face, and her fingers answered the pressure of his clasp on her own.

Then steadily, his clasp tightened, as he looked down into her eyes and saw she was sincere. And something unspoken thrilled between them, some intangible sweetness that was almost like a physical touch, and a great joy came into Lisle’s heart. It was so keen that it reminded her of that first time she had seen him in the street and they had smiled. That time that she had known they were friends, and would be always, even if they did not meet for a long, long time. That memory flashed through her mind and became a part of her brief knowledge of him, even while she drank in the look in his eyes, the admiration in his face.

Around them the world was going placidly on, with all eyes for the group of soldiers in their fresh new uniforms. The bystanders were filled with pride in their country and their army and the victory they were expecting to celebrate very soon, because these fine-looking young men were going over somewhere, anywhere, to deal with the enemy.

But there was something more than just admiration and patriotic pride in the look that Lisle had for John. It was much deeper, with a hope far beyond the few months or years that men allowed for any war. It was a tender regard that looked forward into the eternities. This John was going away, yes, but whatever he was, he was looking forward to a day when there would surely be a heaven to come to, and where they two would surely meet. Yes, even if the circumstances of war should separate them so that he would not be coming back
here
.

Of course, there was no time to think out all this. It was merely a quiet atmosphere that gave the grave lovely setting to their little meeting.

Of the people who saw them, there were a few taking special notice. They were John’s fellow comrades. They were interested in “that guy Sargent.” He wasn’t well known to them yet, as they hadn’t been together long—just a few days—and were only linked by the order that was sending them to a certain training camp together, with a common destination. But they were interested because he was one of them and there was a pretty girl talking to him. An exceedingly pretty girl.