The Witness Part 6

"Well, then, yer surely a blessed child o' G.o.d Himself, anyhow, and this is a great night fer this poor little room to be honored with a pretty prayer like that!"

Scarcely hearing her, he said good night and went thoughtfully down the dark stairs, a strange sense of peace upon him. Curiously enough, while he felt that he had left the Presence up in that little dismal room, it yet seemed to be moving beside him, touching his soul, breathing upon him! He was so engrossed with this thought that it never occurred to him that he had given the old woman every cent he had in his pocket. He had forgotten entirely that he had been hungry. A great world-wonder was moving within his spirit. He could not understand himself. He went back with awe over the last few minutes and the strange new world into which he had been so suddenly plunged.

Scarcely noticing how he went, he got himself out of the intricacies of the court into a neighborhood a shade less poverty-stricken, and stood upon the corner of a busy thoroughfare in an utterly unfamiliar district, pausing to look about him and discover his whereabouts.

A little child with long, fair hair rushed suddenly out of a door on the side-street, eagerly pulling a ragged sweater about his small shoulders, and stood upon the curbstone, breathlessly watching the coming trolley.

The car stopped, and a young girl in shabby clothes got out and came toward him.

"Bonnie! Bonnie! I've got supper all ready!" the child called in a clear, bird-like voice, and darted from the curb across the narrow side-street to meet her.

Courtland, standing on the corner in front of the trolley, saw, too late, the swift-coming automobile bearing down upon the child, its head-lights flaring on the golden hair. With a cry the young man sprang to the rescue, but the child was already crumpled up like a lily and the relentless car speeding onward, its chauffeur darting frightened, cowardly glances behind him as he plunged his machine forward over the track, almost in the teeth of the up-trolley. When the trolley was pa.s.sed there was no sign of the car, even if any one had had time to look for it. There in the road lay the little, broken child, the long hair spilling like gold over the pavement, the little, still, white face looking up like a flower that has suddenly been torn from the plant.

The girl was beside the child almost instantly, dropping all her parcels; gathering him into her slender arms, calling in frightened, tender tones:

"Aleck! Darling! My little darling!"

The child was too heavy for her to lift, and she tottered as she tried to rise, lifting a frightened face to Courtland.

"Let me take him," said the young man, stooping and gathering him gently from her. "Now show me where!"

CHAPTER VI

Into the narrow brick house from which he had run forth so joyously but a few short minutes before, they carried him, up two flights of steep stairs to a tiny room at the back of the hall.

The gas was burning brightly at one side, and something that sent forth a savory odor was bubbling on a little two-burner gas-stove. Courtland was hungry, and it struck his nostrils pleasantly as the door swung open, revealing a tiny table covered with a white cloth, set for two.

There was a window curtained with white, and a red geranium on the sill.

The girl entered ahead of him, sweeping back a bright chintz curtain that divided the tiny room, and drew forth a child's cot bed. Courtland gently laid down the little inert figure. The girl was on her knees beside the child at once, a bottle in her hand. She was dropping a few drops in a teaspoon and forcing them between the child's lips.

"Will you please get a doctor, quick," she said, in a strained, quiet voice. "No, I don't know who; I've only been here two weeks. We're strangers! Bring somebody! anybody! quick!"

Courtland was back in a minute with a weary, seedy-looking doctor who just fitted the street. All the way he was seeing the beautiful agony of the girl's face. It was as if her suffering had been his own. Somehow he could not bear to think what might be coming. The little form had lain so limply in his arms!

The girl had undressed the child and put him between the sheets. He was more like a broken lily than ever. The long dark lashes lay still upon the cheeks.

Courtland stood back in the doorway, looking at the small table set for two, and pushed to the wall now to make room for the cot. There was just barely room to walk around between the things. He could almost hear the echo of that happy, childish voice calling down in the street: "Bonnie!

Bonnie! I've got supper all ready!"

He wondered if the girl had heard. And there was the supper! Two blue-and-white bowls set daintily on two blue-and-white plates, obviously for the something-hot that was cooking over the flame, two bits of bread-and-b.u.t.ter plates to match; two gla.s.ses of milk; a plate of bread, another of b.u.t.ter; and by way of dessert an apple cut in half, the core dug out and the hollow filled with sugar. He took in the details tenderly, as if they had been a word-picture by Wells or Shaw in his contemporary-prose cla.s.s at college. They seemed to burn themselves into his memory.

"Go over to my house and ask my wife to give you my battery!" commanded the doctor in a low growl.

Courtland was off again, glad of something to do. He carried the memory of the doctor's grizzled face lying on the little bared breast of the child, listening for the heart-beats, and the beautiful girl's anguish as she stood above them. He pushed aside the curious throng that had gathered around the door and were looking up the stairs, whispering dolefully and shaking heads:

"An' he was so purty, and so cheery, bless his heart!" wailed one woman.

"He always had his bit of a word an' a smile!"

"Aw! Them ottymobbeels!" he heard another murmur. "Ridin' along in their glory! They'll be a day o' reckonin' fer them rich folks what rides in 'em! They'll hev to walk! They may even have to lie abed an'

hev their wages get behind!"

The whole weight of the sorrow of the world seemed suddenly pressing upon Courtland's heart. How had he been thus unexpectedly taken out of the pleasant monotony of the university and whirled into this vortex of anguis.h.!.+ Why had it been? Was it just happen that he should have been the one to have gone to the old woman and made her toast, and then been called upon to pray, instead of Tennelly or Bill Ward or any of the other fellows? And after that was it again just coincidence that he should have happened to stand at that corner at that particular moment and been one to partic.i.p.ate in this later tragedy? Oh, the beautiful face of the suffering girl! Fear and sorrow and suffering and death everywhere! Wittemore hurrying to his dying mother! The old woman lying on her bed of pain! But there had been glory in that dark old room when he left it, the glory of a Presence! Ah! Where was the Presence now? How could _He_ bear all this? The Christ! And could He not change it if He would--make the world a happy place instead of this dark and dreadful thing that it was? For the first time the horror of war surged over his soul in its blackness. Men dying in the trenches! Women weeping at home for them! Others suffering and bleeding to death out in the open, the cold or the storm! How could G.o.d let it all be? His wondering soul cried out, "Lord, if Thou hadst been here!"

It was the old question that used to come up in the cla.s.s-room, yet now, strangely enough, he began to feel there was an answer to it somewhere; an answer wherewith he would be satisfied when he found it.

It seemed an eternity of thought through which he pa.s.sed as he crossed and recrossed the street and was back in the tiny room where life waited on death. It was another eternity while the doctor worked again over the boy. But at last he stood back, shaking his head and blinking the tears from his kind, tired, blue eyes.

"It's no use," he said, gruffly, turning his head away. "He's gone!"

It was then the girl brushed him aside and sank to her knees beside the little cot.

"Aleck! Aleck! Darling brother! Can't you speak to your Bonnie just once more before you go?" she called, clearly, distinctly, as if to a child who was far on his way hence. And then once again pitifully:

"Oh, darling brother! You're all I had left! Let me hear you call me Bonnie just once more before you go to mother!"

But the childish lips lay still and white, and the lips of the girl looking down upon the little quiet form grew whiter also as she looked.

"Oh, my darling! You have gone! You will never call me any more! And you were all I had! Good-by!" And she stooped and kissed the boy's lips with a finality that wrung the hearts of the onlookers. They knew she had forgotten their presence.

The doctor stepped into the hall. The tears were rolling down his cheeks. "It's tough luck!" he said in an undertone to Courtland.

The young man turned away to hide the sudden convulsion that seemed coming to his own face. Then he heard the girl's voice again, lower, as if she were talking confidentially to one who stood close at hand.

"Oh Christ, will You go with little Aleck and see that he is not afraid till he gets safe home? And will You help me somehow to bear his leaving me alone?"

The doctor was wiping away the tears with a great, soiled handkerchief.

The girl rose calmly, white and controlled, facing them as if she remembered them for the first time.

"I want to thank you for all you've done!" she said. "I'm only a stranger and you've been very kind. But now it's over and I will not hinder you any longer."

She wanted to be alone. They could see that. Yet it wrung their hearts to leave her so.

"You will want to make some arrangements," growled the doctor.

"Oh! I had forgotten!" The girl's hand fluttered to her heart and her breath gave a quick catch. "It will have to be very simple," she said, looking from one to another of them anxiously. "I haven't much money left. Perhaps I could sell something!" She looked desperately around on her little possessions. "This little cot! It is new just two weeks ago and he will not need it any more. It cost twenty dollars!"

Courtland stepped gravely toward her. "Suppose you leave that to me," he said, gently. "I think I know a place where they would look after the matter for you reasonably and let you pay later or take the cot in exchange, you know, anything you wish. Would you like me to arrange the matter for you?"

"Oh, if you would!" said the girl, wearily. "But it is asking a great deal of a stranger."

"It's nothing. I can look after it on my way home. Just tell me what you wish."

"Oh, the very simplest there is!"--she caught her breath--"white if possible, unless it's more expensive. But it doesn't matter, anyway, now. There'll have to be a _place_ somewhere, too. Some time I will take him back and let him lie by father and mother. I can't now. It's two hundred miles away. But there won't need to be but one carriage. There's only me to go."

He looked his compa.s.sion, but only asked, "Is there anything else?"